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.
I'm not terribly upset. (I just hope I stay employed.) Methinks the article is describing more that glamorous "culture" of retirement, which IMHO will fade away as rapidly as shuffleboard.
I never saw myself playing golf in Florida. Not one of those happy, cultured people on the retirement home brochures resembles me. For me, it's a straight road to the assisted living facility. In between I hope to work while God gives me the strength.
Nobody likes a whiner, moaner, groaner, complainer. Leastway, success doesn't.
I bet this same author supports policies like Obamacare, which has put a huge squeeze on the middle class and increasing the corporatization of healthcare providers and putting small independent practices out of business.
"When the whole world brought its savings to the United States, people of mediocre skills and slack work habits could afford big houses, expensive vacations, and (at taxpayer expense) generous pensions. Why Americans expected to live well indefinitely on the largesse of foreign investors is a question for the psychiatrists, not the economists."
--Spengler, Asia Times
Big Government buried the middle class. Period.
I think you missed the mark. When the problem is isolated to this country, the problem is localized to us.
Add in things like the dismantling of unions that has accelerated apace since Ronald Reagan crushed the air-traffic controllers, and we’ve seen the middle class more solid in places like Canada, Germany, and Scandinavia, and begin to grow in a number of nations even while it shrinks here.
The article completely demolishes the blame game on the left.
"But you know what else the original Boomers brought us? Despite their dabbling with progressivism and hippie utopianism, this group served as the shock troops for market-worshipping neoliberalism and the Reagan-Thatcher shift in the ‘70s and ‘80s. They gave us junk bonds and the privatization push and Gordon Gekko. Some of them went into the corporate world and started dismantling. "
Again, the problem is localized to our dismantling any controls over greed capitalism. Which has now succeeded in ruining capitalism itself. Yes, the middle class is traded out in today's U.S. business model. Now doing the best in the world. But the price paid is that the middle class can no longer depend on greed capitalism for jobs but resort to the government. The baby has gone out with the wash water. God Help Us.
http://www.generationjones.com/?page_id=26
This explains my generation.
Translation:
They have, we want it, we should take it.
I am the late Boomer kid, as is my husband. We did BETTER under Reagan & has policies. That all went to trash once the Left took over. I was a potter-sculptor, making extra money while being (the most important job in the world- a Mother & housewife). I made good money then. Once the Left took over, people started to not have extra income to buy handmade items. Once the craft circuit died, that was when Wally World stepped in with Cheap-Chinese-Junk. I closed my studio.
The Left slowly killed tiny home businesses. They were also the ones who said I was “inferior” for not working outside of the home and for thinking my chosen life was of any worth.
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Maybe that is why they hate my kind & want to destroy those who chose to succeed with hard work, save for the future, including for a pension to make our retirements comfortable.
Agriculture, mining, as much manufacturing as possible and the understanding that competition is healthy comprise the foundation of a healthy economy. Both political parties are quite socialist and have been excessively so for a very long time.
Show me one candidate for the presidency, who would lay off even a quarter of all current government employees to balance the budget and take some of the regulatory (zoning, planning, building, etc.), tax and fee weight off of new, small manufacturing shops.
There’s no effective difference between influential Democrats and Republicans in my sparsely populated, remote, Republican majority county (very large area). All of both parties are either employed by government or government-supported businesses (mostly state and local) or pensioners from government. All are NIMBYs and against any new, small competition, any new building of homes, against families, and most of all, against seeing any young men at work.
The Left are contraindicators. We’re due for an American Renaissance.
Pretty wretched class envy article. Pure victimization. Pure tripe.
“I’m poor because the Boomer’s stole my lifestyle. Never mind I am a lazy ass who won’t lift a finger to fund my lifestyle.”