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Americans have become lazy and it's hurting the economy
CNN Money ^ | April 12, 2017 | Heather Long

Posted on 04/12/2017 2:19:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Americans have become lazy, argues economist Tyler Cowen.

They don't start businesses as much as they once did. They don't move as often as they used to. And they live in neighborhoods that are about as segregated as they were in the 1960s.

All of this is causing the U.S. to stagnate economically and politically, Cowen says in his new book: "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream." Growth is far slower than it was in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and productivity is way down, despite everyone claiming they are working so hard.

"Innovation is painful. That's why we don't do more of it," Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, told CNNMoney. His book makes the case that all of the upheaval of the 1960s and 70s caused people to strive for safety and the status quo in the decades after that.

"Just look at how people bring up children today. Often they won't even let children go outside," he says.

Even technology, the one area that has seen some innovation in recent years, has been mostly aimed at making us want to stay home and relax.

"Tech's great. It's fun. I've got four Amazon packages outside my door. But we have a problem with this precisely because it's enjoyable and comfortable," he says. "All this tech innovation encourages leisure and staying at home."

Trump is the 'great reset'

Cowen believes we've gone too far in trying to create perfect, insulated lives for ourselves and our kids....

(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; Society
KEYWORDS: diversity; economy; immigration; innovation; jobs
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1 posted on 04/12/2017 2:19:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Uh...increasing taxes and regs play a role too..


2 posted on 04/12/2017 2:21:22 PM PDT by goodnesswins (Say hello to President Trump)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

And, who was instrumental in causing this? You know who.


3 posted on 04/12/2017 2:21:45 PM PDT by Parmy
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Get rid of Welfare and Unemployment benefits, and you’ll be surprised how motivated people will suddenly get.


4 posted on 04/12/2017 2:21:54 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

This is true, but the reason is we have exported opportunities from America to other countries.

Trump is the FIRST president in an entire generation, who is actually for American growth first.

I don’t know if he will follow-through, but he’s really the first. Americans can grow, an innovate, but we need to grow HERE for a while.

Globalization has gotten far, far ahead of America.

We need to buy American goods.

Go to any store. Any store. In any town. In any state. Coast to coast, pick a store, go inside, pick up any product.

Anywhere...

“Made in China”


5 posted on 04/12/2017 2:24:56 PM PDT by cba123 ( Toi la nguoi My. Toi bay gio o Viet Nam.)
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To: dfwgator

Welfare and other benefits such as Medicaid for healthy young people have made it more lucrative and a wage any startup can afford to pay. You are so right.


6 posted on 04/12/2017 2:26:42 PM PDT by StAntKnee (Add your own danged sarc tag)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Oh, I’ll move into the ghetto right now. And start my own in-home baking business as I want to...oh, wait. Those pesky regulations about 3 sinks and industrial kitchen perfection and bribes to inspectors. Never mind. I’ll continue being lazy.


7 posted on 04/12/2017 2:28:50 PM PDT by miss marmelstein
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To: goodnesswins

That interferes with his narrative.

25 years ago I was able to start a vending machine route by calling Coke and telling them where to put the machines (for locations I found) for a 20 bucks a month rental to me. As long as I used their product.

That’s opportunity’s long gone.


8 posted on 04/12/2017 2:32:01 PM PDT by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust cIonservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: goodnesswins
Uh...increasing taxes and regs play a role too..

Yep. Many of the sorts of people that used to start their own businesses are now learning ways of making a life outside of the system. For good reason.
9 posted on 04/12/2017 2:32:25 PM PDT by Garth Tater (What's mine is mine.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Corporations and small business have done everything in their power to undermine real wages in the USA with unbridled immigration. Well guess what? It worked. Add to that Big Educations™ run away costs and you are left with a pretty demoralized generation that sees some flaws in the so call capitalist society. We do everything to promote socialism and dependency and wonder why it happens.

The globalist - capitalist system works for the top 10%.

10 posted on 04/12/2017 2:32:52 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Why start a business, if you’re continually fighting the government to do so?


11 posted on 04/12/2017 2:38:31 PM PDT by kaehurowing
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Meanwhile, across the pond...

http://news.sky.com/story/sky-views-thin-skinned-millennials-need-a-spanking-10834132


12 posted on 04/12/2017 2:42:15 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
From Wikipedia:

In an August 2014 blog post, Cowen wrote, "Just to summarize, I generally favor much more immigration but not open borders, I am a liberal on most but not all social issues, and I am market-oriented on economic issues. On most current foreign policy issues I am genuinely agnostic as to what exactly we should do but skeptical that we are doing the right thing at the moment. I don’t like voting for either party or for third parties."

13 posted on 04/12/2017 2:44:08 PM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: goodnesswins

0bamacare, too. So many businesses have had to close doors because of it.


14 posted on 04/12/2017 2:44:34 PM PDT by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: goodnesswins

How is that whole filthy “Great Society” thing working out?

Of course, the fulcrum of the change was having child labor protections apply to teenagers. As though people fourteen through seventeen needed to be saved from the concept of earning what they get.

If people aren’t working during the years they learn the easiest then a work ethic isn’t one of the things they learn. This was pointed out in the nineteen sixties, and the unmitigated idiots who disregarded this immutable reality in favor of merely fostering higher academic averages (as if the two were mutually exclusive) brought their progeny to the point where we are now.

Sloth is almost as damaging as drugs, and is perhaps as difficult to cast off.


15 posted on 04/12/2017 2:45:17 PM PDT by MrEdd (MrEdd)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

¿ que !


16 posted on 04/12/2017 2:47:46 PM PDT by ßuddaßudd (>> M A G A << "What the hell kind of country is this if I can only hate a man if he's white?")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
What, Socialism doesn't work? Who would have thunk that!
17 posted on 04/12/2017 2:47:55 PM PDT by Chgogal (I will NOT submit, therefore, Jihadists hate me.)
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To: dfwgator

So you’re saying, if Obamacare causes a guy to lose his job, he shouldn’t get unemployment benefits?

Wouldn’t a better solution be to help create a better environment for people to start businesses of their own? I mean, look at eBay. People are trying to sell stuff on eBay, but our lawmakers want to make them collect sales tax from their customers. Even mail-order companies can’t collect sales tax from any state unless the company has a brick-and-mortar presence in that state. Yet our politicians want to go after the little guys trying to make good.

Instead of judging others, walk a mile in their shoes. It’s not so easy to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, if the taxman has taken the bootstraps from you.


18 posted on 04/12/2017 2:48:35 PM PDT by lbtbell
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To: Colonel Kangaroo
I generally favor much more immigration but not open borders,

That is like saying I'm on a weight loss diet but I like to have desert at every meal.

19 posted on 04/12/2017 2:48:38 PM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

My God. Do you know what it takes to start a business today compared to 40 or 20 or even 10 years ago? Environmental statements and fees and more paper work and fees and health insurance and fees and more paperwork. All for no more reason than to provide high paying jobs to the laziest people on Earth, bureaucrats. What is this clown smoking?


20 posted on 04/12/2017 2:48:48 PM PDT by Seruzawa (I keel you Vorga feelthy.)
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