Posted on 04/26/2007 10:17:30 PM PDT by hubbubhubbub
When I was about 9 years old, my father took my elder sister and I to see a performance by a famous magician called Blackstone. What I remember most about the show is when Blackstone, with a flourish of his cape, made an elephant appear onstage out of thin air. It was an astonishing feat, and the crowd - including me - went wild with applause. I had no idea how he did it. After the show however, as we were exiting the theater, my elder sister said, “I didn’t see what was so great about that elephant. It just walked onto the stage and everyone started clapping.”
(Excerpt) Read more at bullnotbull.com ...
I bought a LOGI call option and lost all my money. (Except for 10 bucks.)
Every few hundred years in Western Civilization, there occurs a sharp transformation . . . Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself - its worldview; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world, and the people born can't even imagine the world in which their grandparents live and into which their own parents were born.
We are currently living through just such a transformation.
Interesting article, thanks for posting. It makes one downcast to read of so much debt for young people.
As boomers retire, there will be openings higher up the ladder, and that ripple will open up jobs higher in the 'food chain' for those further down.
My advice to someone young is to work hard, become indispensible ASAP, and play it clean.
There are places besides WalMart, and I see young men in the energy industry (HS/GED) who are making over $20/hr pretty early on. You gotta wanna, and you can't have your heart set on riding a desk in a corner office on day 1 (if ever).
As for the smokestack industry jobs, automation and outsourcing have taken their toll.
From the article:
Earlier this year, in an effort to shore up American manufacturing, the Bush Administration proposed reclassifying hamburger flipping as “manufacturing."
2004 was 'earlier this year'?
I think that my generation will end up retiring sooner and having more wealth later in life than previous generations. We start out in greater debt as we tend to be more aggressive than past generations. I own two houses (quite by accident) that shows a $hi$pot of debt on my record. We have decided to be a one income household and I make enough to support that debt, a wife and two kids. I consider myself average in my generation.
What is considered middle class today in the Midwest anyway?
“What is considered middle class today in the Midwest anyway?”
Probably $30,000-$100,000/year
2004!! Is that why pizza, burger and taco makers now show up in our “manufacturing job” numbers?
“It took Boomers 20 years to get to reach those levels.”
I think you really mean, it took the Fed. Res. 20 yrs to debase the currency to get salaries to those levels. Of course with those levels comes those levels of tax rates too!!
You are to be commended. Unfortunately you are sample of one and NOT the majority of your generation. CNNMoney reports that in the 25-34 age group 68% have no savings, in the 35 to 44 age group 50% have so savings and in the 45 to 54 age group 33% have no savings. All those folks will retire with their hands out to the government and will vote into power anyone who will fill their hands with freshly printed fiat.
Conclusion: Things will get worse not better.
I am not so sure. When you talk about savings, we keep very little $$$ money for a rainy day and I often worry about how much $$$ we have in savings accounts (liquid). We choose to live paycheck to paycheck. I can’t afford to invest the max in my 401K but we keep the cashflow tight on purpose.
Thank you for proving my point. Savings = Income - Consumption.
Right on - two thumbs up for this article.
Right on - two thumbs up for this article.
Really? How many of those manufacturing jobs are there?
Do the Math.
I too am kind of curious to see evidence that this is actually taking place, at least at the fast food and restaurant level. To the best of my knowledge, the most that was ever claimed when the controversy broke in 2004 was that the Bush Administration was 'proposing' it. And even that was a stretch, since the source of the claim was nothing more than a sidebar in the 2004 Economic Report of the President titled 'What is manufacturing?'.
It merely pointed out that someone working for, say, Red Baron Foods making frozen pizzas would be performing a manufacturing job, while the same guy putting together the same ingredients in a pizza parlor would not.
Those are clear-cut examples. The point of the report's sidebar was the line can get blurred in some circumstances. For example, how about the staff of a central kitchen that prepares specialty soups for all the locations of a regional restaurant chain? They are in essence performing repetitious tasks in order to mass produce a product, yet at the same time they are only doing on a slightly larger scale what similar kitchen workers would otherwise be doing in each restaurant.
But at any rate, the reason I pointed that sentence out in the first place was to highlight that the author had no qualms about misrepresenting facts to make his point.
Hub is good at claiming something ridiculous and then running away when I ask him to prove it.
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