death rates of white middle class American males

[Eric the Green]

Yes, I hear you. The 16-year malaise, however, was mainly noticeable before 2008 only among those who opposed the Bush cabal. The economy recovered from the dot com bust without much trouble, though it was an anemic recovery. And the malaise represents a social mood, which defines a turning, not a generation.

Theory adherents will need to do more research on this, but it will not consist of info and ideas about the events, trends and moods of the years after 2000. It will consist of the behaviors of the children and parents born in which particular years.

Meanwhile I am very much satisfied with the year 2008 as the 4T start, which is also the year (and month) I predicted it to start here on the forum. The war on terror did not define a new mood; it was the same old mood. The MIC dominant in society. Nothing new at all. Back to the fifties. Culture wars still a blazin' too; they determined the 2004 election and kept the war monger in power. No change in mood at all. Abortion, Anita Hill and Monica Lewinsky still uppermost in American minds. Not until the great crash did the mood settle in that something is wrong with America. Even then, as the article SomeGuy posted points out, some inside the bubble of prosperity in both parties still don't see it.

By the way I predicted the 9-11 event too decades in advance, although not all the details that I should have predicted. But the essential thing. The war in Afghanistan went on longer than I thought it would, but I never saw it as something that would define a new turning. Wars occur in all turnings; they don't help define a 4T unless they are an existential threat to the nation, and 9-11 was not that.

You can take it to the bank that the 4T in progress will last at least until 2028. And the next prophet generation will begin its birth in 2025, give or take a year.

[SomeGuy]

Teach,

That's where I got it. I just decided to leave out Dreher's usual hand-wringing. 

The thought about the generational divide is interesting, but a 2000ish start date for the next gen would imply a 4T start a few years after, so not necessarily diverging from the theory.

Although really, I don't think this judgement can be made in real time.  As Eric said, you are really going to have to analyze the generational characteristics of the younger cohorts once they have had a chance to develop an actual personality.  I think we're a little early for that yet.

[TeacherinExile]

(02-20-2017, 10:44 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Teach,

That's where I got it. I just decided to leave out Dreher's usual hand-wringing. 

The thought about the generational divide is interesting, but a 2000ish start date for the next gen would imply a 4T start a few years after, so not necessarily diverging from the theory.

Although really, I don't think this judgement can be made in real time.  As Eric said, you are really going to have to analyze the generational characteristics of the younger cohorts once they have had a chance to develop an actual personality.  I think we're a little early for that yet.

The article to which you linked was one of best articles I've read on this forum.  (Kudos)

If I were still teaching in high school, I might be able to see a distinct generational boundary at play among the students.  I taught freshman and sophomore English, as well as Creative Writing (where the evidence might be even more compelling).  If 2001 is indeed the boundary line, I would be teaching those kids now (ages 15/16).  The last cohort of Xers and the first cohort of Millennials passed through my classroom, and the differences between the two generations could not have been more distinct, an anecdotal observation that my colleagues corroborated at the time.

[Odin]

(02-21-2017, 10:48 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(02-17-2017, 01:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I might post the next report next week. But meanwhile, what do you think are the causes of this trend?

I have my opinions, of course....

This statistic started with boomers in 1999 from the age of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to about the age of Mark Warner and Lindsay Graham, and has increased markedly since then until today for Xers from the age of Chris Christie to about the age of Marco Rubio. The line runs upward from 1999 to today for those aged 45-54.

It concentrates among those without higher education.

These are the folks who put Trump in the White House. Still enough of them around to do that, I guess.

This sickness is contagious.

Many of them have lost jobs. Many of them are using drugs and overdosing. There is increased social isolation and seclusion. Suicides are rampant.

I think culture is important; the fact that TV, music, movies are so vacuous and negative in these days of the 3T and 4T. This makes a difference. And this extends to decline of social gathering places like churches, union halls, clubs, and families of people that have moved away, with many left behind in red states because of industrial decline. Guns make suicide easy, and drugs and alcohol make self-medication and escape easy.

Americans have such empty lives that if they lose their job, they can't see any purpose for themselves. This is due to the inherent emptiness of our culture, and inability to recognize what life is about, despite the counter-cultural movements that revealed it, but were ignored and condemned in white middle red-state America. Like maybe doing some creative things: the arts, science, entreprenuership, new relationships or family, contributing to and helping others, going back to school, or moving to a blue state where culture and opportunity is greater. Unwillingness to take the financial risk of change because money is too tight. If your life is empty, and thus doesn't get you high or fulfilled on life, it's easier to take a drug or a drink to get a false and addictive high instead. Despair leads to self-destruction.

The economic stresses are caused by computer automation, free trade, and wage and salary decline due to concentration of income for the bosses; plus a failed education and cultural system, and poor social services and lack of investment in public infrastructure.

And of course, you can make the situation even much worse by taking out your frustration and despair on liberals and voting Republican, because you are brainwashed into one of their ideologies that hook you: blame the colored people, blame immigrants, blame PC and identity politics, blame women and feminism, blame non-Christians and lax morality, blame welfare recipients, blame taxes, blame gun control, and don't question the bosses, but look to them for salvation, because they are the "job creaters" and are not "dependent," or you can also fall for religious right nostrums and "make America great again!" or patriotic and militarist slogans. When your life is empty, you can't question authority or think critically and with imagination, and you are ripe fruit and easy pickins for a demagogue like Trump. The result is that there are no social services or income supports to help boost you and your community out of economic ruin and emotional despair. No, that would be dependency on big government, and I am too strong and self-reliant to do that. Oh pardon me, I need to get my fix......

America is sick, literally, and needs a great big change, and soon. Something to blast these people out of their deadly self-defeating patterns! There is a greater destiny for America, hidden in our history and our western and world culture, if only we can find it again. If only we can look past our despair and prejudice.

Eric you are looking at this through a 2T filter. RE: bold text.

If the average person loses their job, they lose the benefits that go with the job. Especially health care and dental. Plus others. They lose cash flow. If one is living paycheck to paycheck, that means immediate distress. Loss of purpose is the least of their worries.

Either there need to be enough jobs to employ those who are not knowledge workers, or, there needs to be universal income.

Exactly, Eric seems to have forgotten Malsow's Hierarchy of Needs, basic material needs come before everything else. Material needs was something middle class Boomers did not have to worry about growing up.

[pbrower2a]

Food is easy to get. In a rough time I got TANF, and the food allotment that I got was enough to allow me to get such luxuries as strawberries and asparagus. (Of course such is possible because I am not buying candy, potato chips, pastries, ice cream, and highly-processed foods). I can live on that. I am eating better than I did before I got the aid.* I have made a birthday cake for my brother, and I have made a soup that sells for $12 a cup at a rather expensive restaurant that I have been to a few times on special occasions). Yes, I pinch pennies, and I have little changed my eating habits except to eat more fruits and vegetables that my brother dislikes.

I would gladly trade eligibility for sodas for dog food; the dog would surely appreciate that trade-off, and it would be better for both of us. The dog keeps me in a better emotional state.

*I could probably write a pamphlet on how to live well on food aid. Of course, farewell high-markup stuff like potato chips, pastries, cookies, candy, highly-processed foods, ready-to-eat meats... Make sure to use store discounts. I would suggest that everyone on food aid get a free cookbook from the state.

Let me tell you about my Italian onion soup. Get a can of onion soup, put in some croutons (ideally some stale bread soaked in some garlic), and top it with provolone cheese. Add oregano and perhaps a little tarragon for taste and color.

For a Spanish variant...

[pbrower2a]

Here is one illustration:



Food is rather low on the hierarchy of needs. Security of employment and resources, having support from family members, not having to make degrading choices in ethical issues, and having a rainy-day fund is about where the people that we discuss as dying unduly early are terribly lacking. When people are lacking in safety they are likely racked in fear and guilt. They are probably also bored out of their minds.

[SomeGuy]

My complaint with the idea of Basic Income as a solution to some of the problems brought up in that Commentary article I linked to is that we have already have a functional equivalent with the explosion in disability claims, TANF, and the like.  The people in question aren't starving, they're playing videogames and drinking themselves to death/doing drugs.

You can see similar (barring minor differences in culture) outcomes with neds/chavs/boggans/what-have-you in the rest of the Anglosphere, hikikomori in Japan, or, more alarmingly, the European jihadists (overwhelming concentrated not in the first generation immigrants, but the second and third ones growing up on public assistance*).

Man does not live on bread alone.

* Which, in wacko liberal logic, means that there is no risk of bringing in an unlimited number of low-skilled refugees to a society with high youth unemployment and increasing automation, because it's mostly their children and grandchildren who will be likely to have problems.  Presumably because, in the longrun, we're all dead, amirite? 

[David Horn]

(02-20-2017, 04:08 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

(02-20-2017, 03:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I can't find that thread, so I guess I want to answer here. If the year 2001 begins the homelander generation (Z), then it will last for 24 years. The saeculum will not diverge from the cosmic cycle. Well, you heard it here. Check back here after 2025!

I ran across the same article this morning in The American Conservative, and instantly found it eminently germane to S&H theory.  The passage below written by Nicholas Eberstadt was particularly riveting:

Yes, things are very different indeed these days in the “real America” outside the bubble. In fact, things have been going badly wrong in America since the beginning of the 21st century.

It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around then—and broke down very badly.

The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons sounding, for more than a decade and a half...

It is my contention that the Year 2000 is a generational marker, the end of the Millennial cohort.  The 16-year malaise since then, which Eberstadt supports well, could be characterized as a complex Fourth Turning crisis or a hybrid 3T/4T turning (an extended cusp, if that is possible without invalidating S&H theory).

I would argue that something started going wrong about 1973, when the rise in productivity and rising wages for workers became disconnected.  We relied on dual-incomes and credit as alternatives to rising wages and salaries until that stopped working, and now here we are.  But the damage was done in the '70s.  It just took us a while to notice.

[David Horn]

(02-21-2017, 10:48 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: ... Either there need to be enough jobs to employ those who are not knowledge workers, or, there needs to be universal income.

I agree, and that will become only more obvious as we try everything else first.  I suspect that the PTB are not even cognizant of the impact technology has on the lives of hoi polloi, so they are still assuming that a rising tide will lift all boats.  Well, some boats are leaking badly and others have already sunk. 

It's hard to compete for a job that pays little but can be done for next to nothing by a machine.

[David Horn]

(02-22-2017, 10:19 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: My complaint with the idea of Basic Income as a solution to some of the problems brought up in that Commentary article I linked to is that we have already have a functional equivalent with the explosion in disability claims, TANF, and the like.  The people in question aren't starving, they're playing videogames and drinking themselves to death/doing drugs.

You can see similar (barring minor differences in culture) outcomes with neds/chavs/boggans/what-have-you in the rest of the Anglosphere, hikikomori in Japan, or, more alarmingly, the European jihadists (overwhelming concentrated not in the first generation immigrants, but the second and third ones growing up on public assistance*).

Man does not live on bread alone.

* Which, in wacko liberal logic, means that there is no risk of bringing in an unlimited number of low-skilled refugees to a society with high youth unemployment and increasing automation, because it's mostly their children and grandchildren who will be likely to have problems.  Presumably because, in the longrun, we're all dead, amirite? 

OK, but what alternative are you suggesting?  Gaming the system, which is what you  are noting here, requires one to look broken to get money ... so they look broken.  Yes, the system gets scammed frequently.  A system that required no scamming, might solve a lot of the downside issues you see ... or not.  At some point, universal income, or something similar, will be tried out of desperation.  Then we'll know.

[The Wonkette]

(02-22-2017, 09:45 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Food is easy to get. In a rough time I got TANF, and the food allotment that I got was enough to allow me to get such luxuries as strawberries and asparagus. (Of course such is possible because I am not buying candy, potato chips, pastries, ice cream, and highly-processed foods). I can live on that. I am eating better than I did before I got the aid.* I have made a birthday cake for my brother, and I have made a soup that sells for $12 a cup at a rather expensive restaurant that I have been to a few times on special occasions). Yes, I pinch pennies, and I have little changed my eating habits except to eat more fruits and vegetables that my brother dislikes.

I would gladly trade eligibility for sodas for dog food; the dog would surely appreciate that trade-off, and it would be better for both of us. The dog keeps me in a better emotional state.

*I could probably write a pamphlet on how to live well on food aid. Of course, farewell high-markup stuff like potato chips, pastries, cookies, candy, highly-processed foods, ready-to-eat meats... Make sure to use store discounts. I would suggest that everyone on food aid get a free cookbook from the state.

Let me tell you about my Italian onion soup. Get a can of onion soup, put in some croutons (ideally some stale bread soaked in some garlic), and top it with provolone cheese. Add oregano and perhaps a little tarragon for taste and color.

For a Spanish variant...

Just a nit. I don't believe you receive TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). What you receive sounds like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as Food Stamps. TANF is cash assistance given to parents and children for a temporary period (between 1 and 5 years depending on the state) who have no other source of income. It is very rarely given these days even to those who qualify. It is not provided to childless 60+ year old men. On the other hand, SNAP is available to all US citizens, with a few exceptions, who meet the income guidelines, and for someone over 60, there would be no work registration requirements.

There are websites on cooking well on a SNAP diet. Here is one http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014...amp-budget. Another one: http://wholesomemommy.com/category/whole...mp-budget/.

[pbrower2a]

I stand corrected. It is likely to last until I get Social Security unless I get incredibly lucky in the job market or marry a rich widow.

...Do you think the cookbook a good idea?

[Eric the Green]

(02-21-2017, 10:48 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(02-17-2017, 01:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I might post the next report next week. But meanwhile, what do you think are the causes of this trend?

I have my opinions, of course....

This statistic started with boomers in 1999 from the age of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to about the age of Mark Warner and Lindsay Graham, and has increased markedly since then until today for Xers from the age of Chris Christie to about the age of Marco Rubio. The line runs upward from 1999 to today for those aged 45-54.

It concentrates among those without higher education.

These are the folks who put Trump in the White House. Still enough of them around to do that, I guess.

This sickness is contagious.

Many of them have lost jobs. Many of them are using drugs and overdosing. There is increased social isolation and seclusion. Suicides are rampant.

I think culture is important; the fact that TV, music, movies are so vacuous and negative in these days of the 3T and 4T. This makes a difference. And this extends to decline of social gathering places like churches, union halls, clubs, and families of people that have moved away, with many left behind in red states because of industrial decline. Guns make suicide easy, and drugs and alcohol make self-medication and escape easy.

Americans have such empty lives that if they lose their job, they can't see any purpose for themselves. This is due to the inherent emptiness of our culture, and inability to recognize what life is about, despite the counter-cultural movements that revealed it, but were ignored and condemned in white middle red-state America. Like maybe doing some creative things: the arts, science, entreprenuership, new relationships or family, contributing to and helping others, going back to school, or moving to a blue state where culture and opportunity is greater. Unwillingness to take the financial risk of change because money is too tight. If your life is empty, and thus doesn't get you high or fulfilled on life, it's easier to take a drug or a drink to get a false and addictive high instead. Despair leads to self-destruction.

The economic stresses are caused by computer automation, free trade, and wage and salary decline due to concentration of income for the bosses; plus a failed education and cultural system, and poor social services and lack of investment in public infrastructure.

And of course, you can make the situation even much worse by taking out your frustration and despair on liberals and voting Republican, because you are brainwashed into one of their ideologies that hook you: blame the colored people, blame immigrants, blame PC and identity politics, blame women and feminism, blame non-Christians and lax morality, blame welfare recipients, blame taxes, blame gun control, and don't question the bosses, but look to them for salvation, because they are the "job creaters" and are not "dependent," or you can also fall for religious right nostrums and "make America great again!" or patriotic and militarist slogans. When your life is empty, you can't question authority or think critically and with imagination, and you are ripe fruit and easy pickins for a demagogue like Trump. The result is that there are no social services or income supports to help boost you and your community out of economic ruin and emotional despair. No, that would be dependency on big government, and I am too strong and self-reliant to do that. Oh pardon me, I need to get my fix......

America is sick, literally, and needs a great big change, and soon. Something to blast these people out of their deadly self-defeating patterns! There is a greater destiny for America, hidden in our history and our western and world culture, if only we can find it again. If only we can look past our despair and prejudice.

Eric you are looking at this through a 2T filter. RE: bold text.

If the average person loses their job, they lose the benefits that go with the job. Especially health care and dental. Plus others. They lose cash flow. If one is living paycheck to paycheck, that means immediate distress. Loss of purpose is the least of their worries.

Either there need to be enough jobs to employ those who are not knowledge workers, or, there needs to be universal income.

2Ts never end. Spiritual needs are always uppermost. No doubt about the economic needs and stresses. Great cause for worry. 4Ts never end either; we always need subsistence. But the trend of escapism into drugs and alcohol or suicide by gun; these are trends that speak of ennui and despair. There's more than just lack of money going on. Poor people all over the world go on, and don't check out. It's an emotional/spiritual need there too; lack of purpose. Why should people blow their brains out for getting fired, as happened to the family of one of the people interviewed in the PBS report? The loss of a job means little to a person who has other ways to a fulfilling and meaningful life. Artists frequently starve, but they carry on. These people have no sense of what life is about. It is an art, not mere subsistence. That is always true; not just during 2Ts. It's a fact of life.

I say America is sick because of the wild gyrations in the turnings. A healthy society is in 2T all the time, to an extent at least. Most societies put religion and spirituality first. The society that puts material needs first, is in its last days. Talk about something that Americans forget! Plus the fact that most Tea Party/Trump folks are well off. And Americans, even if in a depressed fiscal condition, are far better off than most other peoples of the world.

Jesus is indeed worth quoting here. Man does not live by bread alone. Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all else will be added. Spoken in the language of his time. Fully relevant today. And Jesus was not someone who ignored the plight of the poor, and the need to help them; or even the need for taxes to help them. But to worry about money, that speaks of lack of faith and purpose. We all need money, but to go suicide and addiction because it's apparently lacking, is an emotional problem. Just consider the lilies of the field. They neither toil nor spin, yet the Lord takes care of them. How much more worthy are you, ye of little faith?

[Eric the Green]

The hierarchy of needs is a great idea. It can be looked at differently from the way it usually is, though. That which is on top of the pyramid, is what rules, like the elite in society. The ultimate driver is the ultimate. And, we all have this pyramid built into our body and soul in the chakra system. We all walk around, sleep, play and work with it going on every moment, regardless of our outer conditions. That pyramid of levels is always there within us, and all levels are available to us all the time, and all levels of ourselves are needed for good functioning.

For example, just ask the slaves in Dixie in 1840, if they had no interest in God, as they sang those gospel songs which white people now sing in church every Sunday down there. Or ask the Hindus who built all those luxuriously-spiritual temples and all those beautiful crafts for centuries whether they ever had as much money as the unemployed coal miners in West Virginia who are doped up.

[Eric the Green]

(02-22-2017, 11:01 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-21-2017, 10:48 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: ... Either there need to be enough jobs to employ those who are not knowledge workers, or, there needs to be universal income.

I agree, and that will become only more obvious as we try everything else first.  I suspect that the PTB are not even cognizant of the impact technology has on the lives of hoi polloi, so they are still assuming that a rising tide will lift all boats.  Well, some boats are leaking badly and others have already sunk. 

It's hard to compete for a job that pays little but can be done for next to nothing by a machine.

And I agree as well.

[Odin]

(02-22-2017, 11:07 AM)David Horn Wrote: OK, but what alternative are you suggesting?  Gaming the system, which is what you  are noting here, requires one to look broken to get money ... so they look broken.  Yes, the system gets scammed frequently.  A system that required no scamming, might solve a lot of the downside issues you see ... or not.  At some point, universal income, or something similar, will be tried out of desperation.  Then we'll know.

Exactly, a person getting a UBI would be able to, say, make and self craft work on Ebay for extra income, something not possible if they are on SSDI.

[Eric the Green]

(02-21-2017, 10:48 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(02-17-2017, 01:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I might post the next report next week. But meanwhile, what do you think are the causes of this trend?

I have my opinions, of course....

This statistic started with boomers in 1999 from the age of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to about the age of Mark Warner and Lindsay Graham, and has increased markedly since then until today for Xers from the age of Chris Christie to about the age of Marco Rubio. The line runs upward from 1999 to today for those aged 45-54.

It concentrates among those without higher education.

These are the folks who put Trump in the White House. Still enough of them around to do that, I guess.

This sickness is contagious.

Many of them have lost jobs. Many of them are using drugs and overdosing. There is increased social isolation and seclusion. Suicides are rampant.

I think culture is important; the fact that TV, music, movies are so vacuous and negative in these days of the 3T and 4T. This makes a difference. And this extends to decline of social gathering places like churches, union halls, clubs, and families of people that have moved away, with many left behind in red states because of industrial decline. Guns make suicide easy, and drugs and alcohol make self-medication and escape easy.

Americans have such empty lives that if they lose their job, they can't see any purpose for themselves. This is due to the inherent emptiness of our culture, and inability to recognize what life is about, despite the counter-cultural movements that revealed it, but were ignored and condemned in white middle red-state America. Like maybe doing some creative things: the arts, science, entreprenuership, new relationships or family, contributing to and helping others, going back to school, or moving to a blue state where culture and opportunity is greater. Unwillingness to take the financial risk of change because money is too tight. If your life is empty, and thus doesn't get you high or fulfilled on life, it's easier to take a drug or a drink to get a false and addictive high instead. Despair leads to self-destruction.

The economic stresses are caused by computer automation, free trade, and wage and salary decline due to concentration of income for the bosses; plus a failed education and cultural system, and poor social services and lack of investment in public infrastructure.

And of course, you can make the situation even much worse by taking out your frustration and despair on liberals and voting Republican, because you are brainwashed into one of their ideologies that hook you: blame the colored people, blame immigrants, blame PC and identity politics, blame women and feminism, blame non-Christians and lax morality, blame welfare recipients, blame taxes, blame gun control, and don't question the bosses, but look to them for salvation, because they are the "job creaters" and are not "dependent," or you can also fall for religious right nostrums and "make America great again!" or patriotic and militarist slogans. When your life is empty, you can't question authority or think critically and with imagination, and you are ripe fruit and easy pickins for a demagogue like Trump. The result is that there are no social services or income supports to help boost you and your community out of economic ruin and emotional despair. No, that would be dependency on big government, and I am too strong and self-reliant to do that. Oh pardon me, I need to get my fix......

America is sick, literally, and needs a great big change, and soon. Something to blast these people out of their deadly self-defeating patterns! There is a greater destiny for America, hidden in our history and our western and world culture, if only we can find it again. If only we can look past our despair and prejudice.

Eric you are looking at this through a 2T filter. RE: bold text.

If the average person loses their job, they lose the benefits that go with the job. Especially health care and dental. Plus others. They lose cash flow. If one is living paycheck to paycheck, that means immediate distress. Loss of purpose is the least of their worries.

Either there need to be enough jobs to employ those who are not knowledge workers, or, there needs to be universal income.

So far, Americans seem to be behaving more like Germany in the 1930s than America in the 1930s. The economically challenged are looking to fear and prejudice promoted by demagogues than to liberal social programs for answers to their plight. Is that because Americans today are more cultural and intellectually deprived than they were in the 1930s? They can't see the solutions; they only react to fear and prejudice.

[Ragnarök_62]

(02-22-2017, 10:19 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: My complaint with the idea of Basic Income as a solution to some of the problems brought up in that Commentary article I linked to is that we have already have a functional equivalent with the explosion in disability claims, TANF, and the like.  The people in question aren't starving, they're playing videogames and drinking themselves to death/doing drugs.

You can see similar (barring minor differences in culture) outcomes with neds/chavs/boggans/what-have-you in the rest of the Anglosphere, hikikomori in Japan, or, more alarmingly, the European jihadists (overwhelming concentrated not in the first generation immigrants, but the second and third ones growing up on public assistance*).

Man does not live on bread alone.

* Which, in wacko liberal logic, means that there is no risk of bringing in an unlimited number of low-skilled refugees to a society with high youth unemployment and increasing automation, because it's mostly their children and grandchildren who will be likely to have problems.  Presumably because, in the longrun, we're all dead, amirite? 

1. Here's what I find strange. What about planting a garden?   I think you can get quite a bang for the buck if seeds were allowed.  I know this firsthand.  Just today, I planted onions in my garden. It's that time in Oklahoma. Later, I'll plant some ghost peppers which are really, really nutritious.  Yeah, they're hot as hell, but that's what makes 'em so good. Capsaisin's an antioxidant and it literally burns fat away. I also wonder to no ends why wild edibles aren't mentioned. Dandelions are not weeds, but very nutritious salad greens. Yeah, I don't apply weed killer to my dandelions, but rather harvest them from the lawn and make salad from them. So, dude, you're correct, man does not live by bread alone. henbit is another green I use for salads.

2. Rags is a cheapskate because he's a Taurus , so if something's already growing in the lawn, hell, why not eat it if it's a salad green?

3. Drugs/booze. : You know, I really think this is one of Strauss/Howe's prophecies come true.  If anyone read the book, Generations, then those persons have an inside track on this issue. For those of us born in 1961-1964, it's just social pathologies moving up the age scale. 

4. Jihadis/ riff raff. There's been a spate of rioting/sponging off of host countries, etc.  I sincerely hope the US can learn from other nation states' fuckups.

5. I think basic income is a good idea .... if it's restricted to actual citizens of whatever nation state.  

6. Refugees/illegal aliens.  Yeah, mindless idealism does not work.  Globalism/Soros inspired stupidity certainly leaves much to be desired.
http://nypost.com/2017/02/21/actually-sw...-refugees/

You know, I really wish Sweden would get real!

[Eric the Green]

(02-22-2017, 08:17 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(02-22-2017, 10:19 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: My complaint with the idea of Basic Income as a solution to some of the problems brought up in that Commentary article I linked to is that we have already have a functional equivalent with the explosion in disability claims, TANF, and the like.  The people in question aren't starving, they're playing videogames and drinking themselves to death/doing drugs.

You can see similar (barring minor differences in culture) outcomes with neds/chavs/boggans/what-have-you in the rest of the Anglosphere, hikikomori in Japan, or, more alarmingly, the European jihadists (overwhelming concentrated not in the first generation immigrants, but the second and third ones growing up on public assistance*).

Man does not live on bread alone.

* Which, in wacko liberal logic, means that there is no risk of bringing in an unlimited number of low-skilled refugees to a society with high youth unemployment and increasing automation, because it's mostly their children and grandchildren who will be likely to have problems.  Presumably because, in the longrun, we're all dead, amirite? 

1. Here's what I find strange. What about planting a garden?   I think you can get quite a bang for the buck if seeds were allowed.  I know this firsthand.  Just today, I planted onions in my garden. It's that time in Oklahoma. Later, I'll plant some ghost peppers which are really, really nutritious.  Yeah, they're hot as hell, but that's what makes 'em so good. Capsaisin's an antioxidant and it literally burns fat away. I also wonder to no ends why wild edibles aren't mentioned. Dandelions are not weeds, but very nutritious salad greens. Yeah, I don't apply weed killer to my dandelions, but rather harvest them from the lawn and make salad from them. So, dude, you're correct, man does not live by bread alone. henbit is another green I use for salads.

2. Rags is a cheapskate because he's a Taurus , so if something's already growing in the lawn, hell, why not eat it if it's a salad green?

Dandelions, eh? I've heard they're good for you. I say, ick! Get off my lawn! And growing your own requires prodigious amounts of expensive water.

Quote:3. Drugs/booze. : You know, I really think this is one of Strauss/Howe's prophecies come true.  If anyone read the book, Generations, then those persons have an inside track on this issue. For those of us born in 1961-1964, it's just social pathologies moving up the age scale. 

You've reached the age; you're at the top of it though. A few more years and you are passed the most dangerous zone.

Quote:4. Jihadis/ riff raff. There's been a spate of rioting/sponging off of host countries, etc.  I sincerely hope the US can learn from other nation states' fuckups.

I imagine the supposed fuckups are exaggerated. I prefer genuine news sources. The worst nation that fucked up, of course, is Syria.

Quote:5. I think basic income is a good idea .... if it's restricted to actual citizens of whatever nation state.  

Good idea, yes, but good luck with the restrictions.

Quote:6. Refugees/illegal aliens.  Yeah, mindless idealism does not work.  Globalism/Soros inspired stupidity certainly leaves much to be desired.
http://nypost.com/2017/02/21/actually-sw...-refugees/

You know, I really wish Sweden would get real!

Sweden is real; the USA is fucked up bigly.

Globalism has several meanings; some good, some not so good. Throwing that word around therefore means absolutely nothing. And throwing Soros around means even less. Rich Lowry? No thanks. Well-known reactionary.

[The Wonkette]

(02-22-2017, 08:17 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: 1. Here's what I find strange. What about planting a garden?   I think you can get quite a bang for the buck if seeds were allowed.  I know this firsthand.  Just today, I planted onions in my garden. It's that time in Oklahoma. Later, I'll plant some ghost peppers which are really, really nutritious.  Yeah, they're hot as hell, but that's what makes 'em so good. Capsaisin's an antioxidant and it literally burns fat away. I also wonder to no ends why wild edibles aren't mentioned. Dandelions are not weeds, but very nutritious salad greens. Yeah, I don't apply weed killer to my dandelions, but rather harvest them from the lawn and make salad from them. So, dude, you're correct, man does not live by bread alone. henbit is another green I use for salads.

I'm not sure what you mean by "if seeds are allowed". Regarding food stamps (SNAP), you are allowed to purchase seeds. https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items.