Progressive policies are squeezing the life out of the economy, they are on the home stretch to de-develop the country.
"“Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries," Holdren and his co-authors wrote. "This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.” - White House Science and Technology Adviser, John P. Holdren.
1 get rid of the disincentive of working hard to gain wealth -- Eliminate the progressive income tax.
2 get rid of the disincentive to holding wealth -- Eliminate property and excise taxes.
3 Eliminate the disincentive to entrepreneurship Eliminate business licensing and excessive bonding requirements.
Not a magic bullet but a good start and therefore never going to happen
Well, one thing that can be done is to learn the lessons the people who raised the hippies tried (and failed) to pass onto them. “Don’t live beyond your means”, and “family sticks together”. We need to cease and desist with naming every decade or two and start realizing that we are all on the same team. If you can’t be divided, you are harder to conquer :)
LOL! I was born in the late 40s. Never been on a cruise. I had a '61 Chevy in college, an oil-burning deathtrap. I've never played golf. I've never lived in a gated community. I retired from the Navy, where living was spartan. The author of this piece is a Liberal idiot.
“and we’ve seen the middle class more solid in places like Canada, Germany, and Scandinavia”
That was the Salon in the US. The below is the WSWS in Germany. Same story, just the names change ...
Germany: The shrinking middle class and the rise of inequality
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/03/germ-m22.html
Articles like these claiming the demise of the middle class are just wishful thinking on the part of progressives.
I’m a boomer with three grown children and they are doing just fine.
The people I work with mostly are younger than me and they aren’t boomers and they are also doing fine. Right on track with where I was at their age.
What happened is the hippies happened. Just undo their narcissistic nonsense, stop listening to them, electing them, and you’ll go a long way toward getting back on track IMHO.
Socialists/liberals destroy the middle class while pinning the blame on conservatives. Classic marxist maneuver.
What is this idiot talking about-natural resource depletion?
energy shortages?
In the next twenty years we will probably find more gas and oil. If the environmental wackos left them alone, we would have more hydro dams then we have now.
Others on FR know more about this than I, but I understand safer more efficient nuclear power plants will also be coming on-line.
Didn't I say just last week on the thread SHOULD WE RETIRE RETIREMENT? thread that hoarding the jobs would be next?
We don’t begrudge these people – our teachers and professors, our older friends, our parents and other relatives – comfort in their gray years. The way Americans, in the days before social security and other protections, lost their footings in old age was simply inhumane. But why couldn’t the prosperity be spread so that those born in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and after can enjoy the same stability and wealth?
Uh-oh... 401(k) confiscation, anyone?
-PJ
The problem isn’t just a crippling recession and an economic “recovery” that has mostly gone to the richest one percent, but the larger shifting of wealth from the middle to the very top that’s taken place since the late ‘70s.
That sort of "shift" turns out to be impossible to measure inasmuch as the definitions of "wealthy", "very top", and "1%" turn out to mean whatever the author of the moment intends them to mean for the purposes of narrative. And it neglects one major shift in spending that contrasts this present government budget from the ones of 50 - 200 years ago. It neglects the economic costs of social welfare spending, where the transfer of money is from the productive middle class to the less productive welfare classes. This is fairly well-defined to have occurred since the onset of the Great Society programs in the 60's. How much did that take out of the economy? Try an estimated $22 Trillion. It's a pretty big hole - the entire GDP of the U.S. was $3 trillion in 1960 (measured in 2005 dollars). This has been like that since the Boomers left short pants in the 60's. It doesn't appear to have made it over the author's intellectual radar horizon.
we’ll nod to the usual suspects: Globalization, technology, and the depletion of natural resources (especially energy) meant that the postwar boom would not last forever.
The author is welcome to nod anywhere he likes but that doesn't make it true. Technology in particular has been a net generator of wealth, not a drain, and I'd love to know what natural resources (especially energy) the author considers "depleted" - oil, whose production is at a record high? Nuclear power, whose production has been curtailed by political obstruction? Coal, whose industry has been deliberately targeted by the sitting administration? Hydroelectric, the target of a deliberate turn-back on the part of the environmental movement? Nor are we short of a mighty wind of hot air so long as Salon is being published. What depletion?
This is particularly silly stuff for any economist to propose, contrary to the facts and blissfully neglectful of the ravages of progressive social policies. Wait, did I say "economist"?
Scott Timberg is a... longtime arts reporter in Los Angeles...
Oh. An arts reporter. We're getting economic analysis from an arts reporter.
...He's the author of the new book, "Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class."
So...what exactly is the author's view of this indispensible "creative class"? Let's check Amazon. Wait for it...
A persistent economic recession, social shifts, and technological change have combined to put our artists—from graphic designers to indie-rock musicians, from architects to booksellers—out of work.
Ah - that would be the very bulwark of productivity within the middle class, wouldn't it? Well, not exactly. Nor is it obvious that redistributive programs benefiting them would help the economy much, if at all. A nice article overall if one enjoys fairy tales.
“the Reagan Revolution was pulling the rug out from under the middle class.”
Another stupid article from Salon. The Reagan years were the best years for America and the middle class. The years from 1983 until 2007 was the longest period of prosperity in history and an era when the middle class prospered. The changes Reagan introduced were what made America and the middle class prosperous.
The post WWII “middle class” was nothing more than an over-privileged, over-paid invention of socialist maneuvering — starting with Roosevelt (who built upon on the damage done by the earlier “progressive” movement) before the war and continuing with EVERY president after that except Reagan.
It was never sustainable to have SO MANY people getting so much more than their economic contribution justified. Artificially high union wages, mixed with social programs funded with sky-high taxes and massive government borrowing created a Potemkin village kind of prosperity that was never going to last.
Meanwhile, while the rich not nominally “richer,” more and more of the nation’s GDP was pushed downward to fund a “right” to home ownership, and all kinds of consumer goodies (today’s version of bread and circuses) to keep people happy. It worked for a while, but it all came crashing down. And the “rich people” of today could not do anything about it if they wanted to.
John D. Rockefeller’s assets alone equaled almost 2% of GDP. If translated into today’s dollars, he would have been worth $340 billion. Andrew Carnegie would have been worth about $300 billion and Cornelius Vanderbilt just under $200 billion. Compare that to the “super-rich” Bill Gates, who is worth less than $80 billion.
The fortunes amassed before the progressive/socialist damage were vast enough to deploy capital — and do so in the capable hands of businessmen who had almost no “well meaning” regulations or restrictions to deal with. Today, we look to government printing presses for the really big money — and with predictable results.
I look forward to the time when we can once again have a legitimate, sustainable and smaller middle class — such as we had when this country was experiencing its greatest economic boom ever and great visionaries were amassing fantastic fortunes.
Have they no editors there?
perhaps the solution is to import a bunch of people from south of the border.
Whatever the sins of the boomers, they weren't really responsible for the corporate raider economy of the 80s and 90s. They were the generation coming up then, but the bosses were still older men who came of age in the 40s and 50s. The boomers only played subordinate roles until they filled their old bosses shoes.
I'm feeling a severe micro-aggression coming on...
-PJ
From this 1951r.
Contributions to Social Security, by me, wife and employers should pay us around $100,000 per year if grown with the S&P500. We will collect a small fraction of that.
The move out of suburbs hurt RE values there, but gen Xrs must be making a killing in Brooklyn-Hoboken-UES-Marina District-SOMA etc.
The H1Bs taking the Silicon Valley jobs are getting US market wages, usually in the low 100s. They marry each other and can afford most anything, anywhere. Our children can (and do) train and obtain these high paying jobs.
Fracking has made fossil fuels virtually unlimited.
My Millenial daughters have been to Europe for fun many times, usually at their own expense, at a younger age than when I went there.
Salon missed it big time.
The air traffic controllers were FEDERAL workers, and yes, part of that AFGE mess.
They, against their federal employment contract, decided to GO ON STRIKE, which was illegal.
Therefore, they, not Reagan, are to blame for their own demise.
The real blame is shared between the left and the Kondratieff winter we’re living through. Even if we get rid of all the destructive left-wing policies starting in 2017, the middle class won’t come back until capitalism rebuilds itself with a generation that has to work to create and accumulate capital, rather than coasting on what the last three generations built.