Posted on 02/12/2010 5:58:58 AM PST by Tolik
I don’t dispute economic incentives and pressures (driven by high taxes as well as the factors you identify) as the driving factors for declining family size in a modern economy. But I distinguish between the decline from ten children down to, I don’t know, three or four children, and a further decline (by choice not inability) down to one or zero children. At a certain point, I think materialism, self-centeredness, family breakdown, a general feeling of despair or purposeleness and similar factors have a significant impact when family sizes get down to the anemic range, and that such an outlook is tied to a general decline in rigorous European-based Christianity.
Unions are POWERFUL BEYOND ACCEPTING and spreading tentacle's into every employer or single persons having their own employment, IE day care, coming under the umbrella of unions without our voting on it.
We are watching the demise of our life styles on fast forward escalation.
I would love to be wrong. How deep and how bad is yet to be seen. Look at Zimbabwe ... the farmers there (largely Dutch, German, etc. that had been there successfully for 40 -50 years having successful farms ... lost them all. Not willingly. some were shot. All were seized.
Did they believe it would happen? NO way.
Reminds me of the world-view of Thomas Jefferson who fought tooth and nail against Alex Hamilton's different vision of an increasingly capitalistic society. Hamilton won out and the result was the metropolis of NYC.
In 1800 something like 90% of Americans were farmers.
By 1900 it was still over 50% of Americans farming.
By 2000 less than 5% of Americans worked on farms.
First of all, was there any reduction in US farm output as a result of declining farming populations? No, just the opposite.
And where did all those former farmers go?
For well over 100 years they went into manufacturing, which peaked as a percentage sometime after 1960. Since then, just as with farming, productivity per worker has vastly increased, while numbers of manufacturing jobs declined.
Where are all those former manufacturing workers now going? To service jobs -- in venacular, they (we) are flipping hamburgers and selling real estate. They (we) are also designing, building, operating and repairing the hi-tech machines which have eliminated so many unskilled workers' jobs.
Here's the ultimate truth of the matter: in the long run, unskilled work will go away. What will remain forever are the hi-tech and service jobs. And most in demand will be those rare folks who combine the personal skills of a salesman with the technical skill of an engineer.
That's the future FRiend. Go for it. :-)
I was thinking more along the lines of blue States and red States, with the Blues being the Democrats, and the Greens being the, well, Greens and other radicals.
You have to wonder how much America would be improved if suddenly we had 30,000 fewer ultra leftist radicals. There would certainly be a lot of academic positions opening up in the universities.
Rule #2: pay the army.
The ultimate solution is not service jobs because we don’t need so many in those businesses. Malls and stores are closing right and left. Many to most service jobs are idiotic and provide no real benefit to society. Like all those nail salons that sprung up in the last few decades.
Plenty of the consumer crap is inane too thus those that sell it are useless too
My point is that plenty of what passes for economic activity in America is pointless and not needed. A huge medical sector that contributes hugely to GDP just means people are sicker than they should be and should drop their unhealthy habits. Then the GDP shrinks
It was and remains empty moralizing by crabbed would be Catos.
The western empire fell because the forthieth man to conquer it as spoils in a civil war decided he'd rather be called a king than an emperor.
Generals had been conquering the empire for centuries. For centuries, their armies had been German, and for the last few, the generals were, too.
Civil war is what destroyed the western empire, in other words. Not one civil war, but endless civil war after civil war. So many that the empire as a joke if not a disgrace, rather than a prize.
Nobody is interested in dying for a political football used exclusively for the benefit of the cynical murdering dictators who seized it by force.
The only thing remotely of the same tendency in the modern west is the hyperpolitical, hyperpartisan attitudes of modern ideological parties. That all is politics, that the party comes before the country, that the purpose of the party is the material benefit of its adherents - those are in common with Rome in its decline. But we aren't murdering each other over such things, so we don't (yet) have their disease.
Hand everything over to me. Problem solved.
Sometimes it is necessary to illustrate absurdity...
Actually to Jefferson's credit, he recognized that the Louisiana purchase meant putting the US on Hamilton's road and not on his own preferred small yeoman republic one. But he also recognized it was in the interests of the country. When push came to shove, he chose greatness.
Hamilton knew greatness was the thing to aim for, all along...
Rule #3: Give the Army a defined objective, and let them achieve it!
For those men of working age there are not enough jobs to go around. That’s part of the reason so many useless government jobs are cooked up
We can produce enough food and manufactured items with an ever smaller number of workers. To avoid this cruel truth we create asset bubbles. We keep many employed in white collar sectors which do nothing to increase our wealth. Wall Street and lawyers come to mind. Dittos for mortgage brokers....many of them have no job since the phony housing boom collapsed
I am old enough to know an age when the labor of all working age men was needed. This is not how is today. Go open up some useless malls. Many malls and Sams Clubs are closing because they were never needed in the first place
Rule #4: and film it
Maybe your labor is as pointless as a global warm-monger. These climate scientist are another sign of how structurally out of wack our economy is. They are basically welfare bums on the gov’t teat who cannot find private employment for their weather skillzz
Income is not raised by being in an industry that you approve of or that makes things you can hit with a stick. It is raised by productivity, and productivity is created and maintained by free competitive forces moving men and capital to where it does the most good, and away from legacy roles that no longer contribute anything.
There is nothing wrong with the US economy. It remains productive because it is free. The cycle we always have had and always will have; it makes no difference in the long run. Americans are more productive now than ever, and all the crapstorm moralizing nonsense pretending we are poor or broke is just that, nonsense. Every generation is richer than the last by large amounts and that goes straight on. Nothing happening now, or in the recent past, endangers any of it in the slightest.
Thanks VDH is a great read.
With all due respect you are spouting familiar gibberish. My simple contention is there is not enough real meaningful work to go around. All due to computerization and automation. You will never disprove this. Don’t waste your time
Far better to continue on w your illusions
I would never say such awful inhumane things if we were to go back just 110 years to 1900. All men were needed to labor and were useful
If you went back to 1840 we used slaves because all the labor we needed could not be done by the free men we had. These days it is the opposite. We don’t need slaves and we don’t need 50% of the working age men we have. Their labor is not needed though we still want them to be consumers to rev up our consumer economy
Americans are more productive now than ever, and all the crapstorm moralizing nonsense pretending we are poor or broke is just that, nonsense. Every generation is richer than the last by large amounts and that goes straight on. Nothing happening now, or in the recent past, endangers any of it in the slightest.
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That productivity is exactly why the labor of so many is no longer needed. Why they are unemployed and will stay so. Productivity is a double edged sword
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