Cry Baby Boomers

[Timsup2nothin]

When I lived in Hawaii we had a three bedroom townhouse for a family of five. The townhouse next door, which was the same floor plan, was owned by three sisters who lived there together. They had two husbands, their mom, and some number of children in various sizes. Most evenings they were out on their lanai playing guitars and singing together...not all of them, just different combinations. Collectively they were probably the happiest family I've ever been neighbors with.

 

[W|M]

Anyway, I've just found personally the use of space in many houses to be lacking in the New World where big open interior spaces are unused and ill-decorated. Truly hideous beasts that defy good taste. I readily accept that my values are controversial!

that's more the case of the US/canada, not as much in latin america

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I spend enough time just trying to figure out what everyone does. In the last 50 years the workforce has gone from mainly male to a more balanced situation (forgive the clunky wording) but the economic issues faced don’t seem to really improve that much over time.

There is a quite massive difference once you look at poverty rates, even in countries like US, poverty in the past was significantly worse in the past than it is today but since poverty is often relative, it may not look like improvements have been made. Also worth to keep in mind that world population basically doubled in the last 60 years or so which would put more burden on the resources.

 

[Gorbles]

Anyway, I've just found personally the use of space in many houses to be lacking in the New World where big open interior spaces are unused and ill-decorated. Truly hideous beasts that defy good taste. I readily accept that my values are controversial!

If it helps, mine is full of stuff for the children, and a lot of the stuff in storage is mine that is too valuable to just throw out. A lot of books in storage boxes, old hobbyist (Warhammer) stuff, and so on.

I doubt this helps the "ill-decorated" part, but it's definitely used. And what open space there is my toddler runs backwards and forwards, up and down, most of the day long. So open space that is also used

It doesn't relate to boomers. we just digressed. The original question was about the high home ownership rates in Eastern Europe. the answer turned out to be: When the soviet style regimes collapsed, the new governments sold all the housing at very low prices to the current residents. You then didn't want the name "socialism" associated with those nations because it didn't fit your idea of what socialism is. So then I asked for examples of successful socialism as you define it. If you like I can ask the same question in the other thread. My ask is pretty simple: please point out a success (by your definition) story that fits with your definition of socialism. If it is a process (ongoing revolution?) without a describable end picture, then point out where that process is working to your satisfaction. Thanks.

It's not my "idea" of socialism, though. It's like pointing at a bus and calling it a car, and then claiming we're arguing my idea of a car. This is what I don't understand. It's not like we've had a thousand threads where people repeatedly explain the concept of socialism, and go over circular discussions about nominally-socialist countries, their relative successes, and so on.

If there was a tl;dr, its that your assignation of blame (however loosely meant) was inaccurate. I don't know what else to say.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Gorbles You keep avoiding naming any nations running or that have run a successful socialism based program and are now dwelling on the whole "what is socialism question". That is why I've said define it any way you want and just point out what you have seen as a success story. I'm not looking to argue over your definition. You don't even have to define it. Just give me some examples of it's success. I can figure out from your examples what you mean by success and the real world outcomes you are looking for.

 

[RobAnybody]

I thought this would be an appropriate place to enshrine my 1000th post. In a silly generation-war thread with a nothing-burger post. Feels appropriate. Here goes: Gen X rules, whoo... meh... no, we don't. Carry on.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

@Gorbles You keep avoiding naming any nations running or that have run a successful socialism based program and are now dwelling on the whole "what is socialism question". That is why I've said define it any way you want and just point out what you have seen as a success story. I'm not looking to argue over your definition. You don't even have to define it. Just give me some examples of it's success. I can figure out from your examples what you mean by success and the real world outcomes you are looking for.

Also it is worth to keep in mind that business don't have any more reason to want to pay their shareholders rather than workers and many don't pay their owners anything other than promising prospecting future growth and instead reinvest the money back into the business.

Keep in mind that share wealth is not an stable source of wealth, so these rich billionaires are only rich billionaires because their shares have a perceived value that make them billionaires but this can drop anytime.

The economy system used is thus more designed at creating rich and productive business rather than rich individuals, but people can still be seen as rich if they own a part of the business. Obviously this is pretty much the reason why it is so popular because it is very good at competing out any competing economic system.

Obviously this may sound very bad, but keep in mind that the people who benefit the most in the long term seems to be the poorest people who now can afford stuff that was unthinkable generations ago and that is largely caused by the economic system pushing the business to be as effective as possible which end up cutting prices on many goods, because whoever can sell the best goods at the lowest prices have a significant market advantage.

So business whose purpose is to maximize the wealth of their shareholders will eventually be outcompeted by growth focused business who spend their resources on maximizing productivity and that is a good thing for the economy.

Also keep in mind that countries like Sweden may have higher wealth inequallity than US and in many ways employ the "capitalist" system to a more serious degree but at the same time don't seems to have the same issues seen in US which have probably more to do with politics rather than pure economics. Basically US problem are US problem, not nessicarly "capitalist" problems, other countries manage to run maybe more "purer" form of "capitalism" but at the same time have more equality. Each country's problem needs to be looked at that country's perspective rather than some sort of global problem, because a good solution for one country may not work for another country.

Stuff like anti union is clearly caused by american culture or something like that. The "capitalist system" is not by itself anti union since it is concerned by productivity and stuff like unions that can keep workers happy and productive would actually be encouraged by the system, like the countries with best worker rights have many countries with similar economic systems as US. I read that a bank in South Korea actually tried to reduce how long their workers stayed and found out that by keeping workers away at night they saw a productivity increase, not decrease.