The Screwed Generation

[cardgame]

Exactly, saving yourself doesn't solve the problem, it just shifts it to someone else.

 

[luiz]

Exactly, saving yourself doesn't solve the problem, it just shifts it to someone else.

Saving yourself solves your problem, which ought to be your main priority.

 

[Disgustipated]

You don't need "Mexicans" to pick fruit, but you do need people willing to work long hours outside at a repetitive task. Americans are unwilling to do this, for the most part, for what farmers are willing/able to pay. Needing immigrants for those jobs indicates, surprise surprise, that the free market is an abject failure.

Nope, my father picked apples, and he was white. People will do these jobs if that's the way to make money. Food prices will go up, so be it.

And yes I'm one of the few advocating eliminating welfare entirely. It's made people lazy.

 

[stinkubus]

If the immigrants have stolen jobs from Americans without much in the way of job skills then wouldn't they have a legitimate reason for being on welfare (unable to compete via wages)?

 

[Birdjaguar]

If everyone with the intelligence and drive to forge other paths leaves teaching, where is that going to leave us?

Honestly, I can't think of a more apt illustration of the destructiveness of Boomers' "me first" attitude in the context of a failing capitalist system. People shouldn't have to choose between pursuing a worthwhile vocation and economic security. The fact that that is even a choice that has to be made means that the people who have shaped our society post-WWII have utterly failed.

I never stopped teaching. My move from the classroom to an office allowed me to teach a lot of people differently. I taught adults how to write, figure things out, do math in the real world, work with others, explain their conclusions, hold a first job, etc. etc. etc.

As I see it, the best way to change the world is to do so one person at a time. The Bill Gates of the World can do things on a grand scale. I'm more effective at a more local level trying to do right by those I have responsibility for.

 

[metalhead]

Nope, my father picked apples, and he was white. People will do these jobs if that's the way to make money. Food prices will go up, so be it.

And then nobody will buy the food because it is too expensive, the farms will go out of business, and then not only are the pickers out a way to make money, the farmers are too.

Socially engineering them all dead through the elimination of the welfare state doesn't really solve any problems. All it would do is destroy the economy.

I never stopped teaching. My move from the classroom to an office allowed me to teach a lot of people differently. I taught adults how to write, figure things out, do math in the real world, work with others, explain their conclusions, hold a first job, etc. etc. etc.

More evidence the system has failed.

 

[Birdjaguar]

More evidence the system has failed.

They system has always failed. the hows and whys may change, but people typically don't. Your system, whatever it is, will fail too. The trick is how you measure success and what you consider failure. And then there is the great mass of the middle, or is it a zero sum game?

 

[Hrothbern]

They system has always failed. the hows and whys may change, but people typically don't. Your system, whatever it is, will fail too. The trick is how you measure success and what you consider failure. And then there is the great mass of the middle, or is it a zero sum game?

You say quite a lot in just a few words !

On "systems" that fail:
That depends on what perception you have what the "system" was made for.
Example: when municipial health care came into being in Amsterdam in the late 19th century, the time of many contagious diseases (TBC, Cholera, etc), this was not done so much to help the poor, from a equality right, but done to protect the lifes of the establisment and the middle class. The only practical (lowest cost) way to achieve that was better health care for all, because (contagious diseases) there was no good enough housing segregation between poor and rich.
Example: when in the late 19th century, higher level education was made more accessable for talents out of the lower classes, this was not done from an equality right of education, but from the practical policy not to waste intelectual potential for the development of the crafting skills and knowledge base needed for a faster development of GDP of the country, the national interest.

In both cases it was NOT done from the principle of equal rights.... and ofc NOT measured on that goal as well.
ofc the socialists DID sell the achievement as an equality right. And so it became over time indeed an equality right, also because the increased prosperity allowed the country as a whole to pay for it.
It is just how you spin it.
And people who take that public health care in a strict equality perception have, as of today, good grounds to state that our health system fails, because there is indeed still a difference in quality between the base level and what rich people can afford on top of that.
Whereas many (neoliberal) people will have the opinion that the system is "more" than ok in fullfilling expectations.

I think that many "systems" have the same Babylonian confusion of goals and expectations.... and the subsequent competition to revision the original goals and considerations compared to the moment the "system" was set up.
In that sense "systems" will always fail, for the simple reason that people have differing ideas about it.
And besides that perception issue, systems have practically seen always a balance between blind spots and loopholes. The prevalence of one or the other based on the total amount of resources made available and the technocratic quality of the regulations.

On "people typically don't":
This is, as I see it, the social Darwinism component in or stated differently the "individual's citizens responsibility" balanced by a general base level of social securities.
Every country culture, also depending on the general prosperity, made another balance there.

Considering the big variation between individual people in capabilities (genes, social background, character), there will always be people that are not able to reach a satisfying spot in society, and have to deal with that in their to be adapted expectations of their lifes. The amount of people in misery depending on the amount of social security.
And yes.... The trick is how you measure success and what you consider failure..... The classic caste system in India is a nice example how you can adapt, find individual "peace" in terms of "realistic" expectations.

I think such an approach, accepting fundamentally class and caste, is wrong.
And that defines for me a minimal scope and level of equality rights that a decent society should have.
Full equality under law, and to some degree equality on health and education is not enough.
And yes... it will cost public, tax payers money. Already under pressure from demographic and climate changes.

 

[Ryika]

And then nobody will buy the food because it is too expensive

We actually had a similar case here in Germany in 2014+2015, where milk got so cheap that farmers were making serious losses. Then prices for milk and milk products were increased, in many cases by up to 40%. Some people argued that it's a bad idea to do that, as it will decrease the demand for milk products.

Turned out to be hot air, absolutely nothing changed at all. Demand did not decrease in statistically relevant amounts.

Didn't know that you're pro exploiting Mexicans though.

 

[metalhead]

I can't think of anything less productive than trying to explain economics to you

Strawman away however it makes you feel clever, though. Makes you look rather like a simpleton, but you seem to be able to entertain yourself.

They system has always failed. the hows and whys may change, but people typically don't. Your system, whatever it is, will fail too. The trick is how you measure success and what you consider failure. And then there is the great mass of the middle, or is it a zero sum game?

They don't have to. This is fundamentally the terrible Boomer mindset in a nutshell. "Things are always going to be crappy, so I might as well get mine." No, actually. We can educate everyone. We can make sure that people don't need to be taught literacy as adults. Sure, there will always be people who fall through the cracks, but the ability to build a system that works for the vast majority of people is not some impossible pipe dream. It just takes the will to do so.

 

[Ryika]

Ah yes, metalhead stays true to his username.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You say quite a lot in just a few words !

On "systems" that fail:
That depends on what perception you have what the "system" was made for.
Example: when municipial health care came into being in Amsterdam in the late 19th century, the time of many contagious diseases (TBC, Cholera, etc), this was not done so much to help the poor, from a equality right, but done to protect the lifes of the establisment and the middle class. The only practical (lowest cost) way to achieve that was better health care for all, because (contagious diseases) there was no good enough housing segregation between poor and rich.
Example: when in the late 19th century, higher level education was made more accessable for talents out of the lower classes, this was not done from an equality right of education, but from the practical policy not to waste intelectual potential for the development of the crafting skills and knowledge base needed for a faster development of GDP of the country, the national interest.

In both cases it was NOT done from the principle of equal rights.... and ofc NOT measured on that goal as well.
ofc the socialists DID sell the achievement as an equality right. And so it became over time indeed an equality right, also because the increased prosperity allowed the country as a whole to pay for it.
It is just how you spin it.
And people who take that public health care in a strict equality perception have, as of today, good grounds to state that our health system fails, because there is indeed still a difference in quality between the base level and what rich people can afford on top of that.
Whereas many (neoliberal) people will have the opinion that the system is "more" than ok in fullfilling expectations.

I think that many "systems" have the same Babylonian confusion of goals and expectations.... and the subsequent competition to revision the original goals and considerations compared to the moment the "system" was set up.
In that sense "systems" will always fail, for the simple reason that people have differing ideas about it.
And besides that perception issue, systems have practically seen always a balance between blind spots and loopholes. The prevalence of one or the other based on the total amount of resources made available and the technocratic quality of the regulations.

On "people typically don't":
This is, as I see it, the social Darwinism component in or stated differently the "individual's citizens responsibility" balanced by a general base level of social securities.
Every country culture, also depending on the general prosperity, made another balance there.

Considering the big variation between individual people in capabilities (genes, social background, character), there will always be people that are not able to reach a satisfying spot in society, and have to deal with that in their to be adapted expectations of their lifes. The amount of people in misery depending on the amount of social security.
And yes.... The trick is how you measure success and what you consider failure..... The classic caste system in India is a nice example how you can adapt, find individual "peace" in terms of "realistic" expectations.

I think such an approach, accepting fundamentally class and caste, is wrong.
And that defines for me a minimal scope and level of equality rights that a decent society should have.
Full equality under law, and to some degree equality on health and education is not enough.
And yes... it will cost public, tax payers money. Already under pressure from demographic and climate changes.

You read an awful amount into what I wrote and most of that wasn't there. It is interesting if you think I'm a social Darwinist in support of India's caste system. My thinking is really quite different. Large complex systems managed by people where people do most of the actual work tend to fail because of the people. The more automated a system gets, the better and more equal the delivery of products or services. It is far easier to deliver good service of high quality to 1 million people than it is to 300 million people.

To begin, clear goals are needed and need to be accepted by significant stakeholders. What is the system trying to do? What does success look like? What resources will be available and how will they be applied across a multitude of starting points? Who will manage the system and how will they be held accountable? Will the system be responsive enough to adjust as times change? These are all big and difficult questions to gain consensus on.

Private and small rural schools can more easily succeed than large urban school systems because they are easier to manage and usually have more resources per student. Particular urban schools can do well if staff and parents and boards stay focused: dedication of staff and parents. Good management. Even well planned systems fail; usually it is because of the people. Greed, power, control all step in to corrupt efforts. Those are human issues and aren't likely to disappear any time soon. AI automation will help in the future.

In the US the Social Security system is a large complex system that actually works pretty well. It has taken years to get it to this level, but it does a good job of serving millions, most of whom aren't rich. Automation has helped.

In my opinion, what will work in small nations will not work in very large ones, at least not quickly. The US is too big and too diverse at every level for a one size fits all approach to things like education, jobs, job skills, housing, healthcare, income inequality, etc. Will good solutions cost a lot of money? Yes they will. And the first step at any level (local, city, regional, state and national) is consensus on the problem, the situation, and the goals. We don't seem to be able to get through that stage.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There is a one size fits all approach that I think could work to solve a lot of problems quickly.

Universal Basic Income

I would set the floor at $20,000 per adult per year. I'd pay for it by skimming a few percent off the defense budget and raising taxes on the highest income brackets (if it's even necessary to do this to avoid cutting the defense budget by more than 10%).

 

[Birdjaguar]

They don't have to. This is fundamentally the terrible Boomer mindset in a nutshell. "Things are always going to be crappy, so I might as well get mine." No, actually. We can educate everyone. We can make sure that people don't need to be taught literacy as adults. Sure, there will always be people who fall through the cracks, but the ability to build a system that works for the vast majority of people is not some impossible pipe dream. It just takes the will to do so.

There are lots of reasons to criticize the boomers, but keep in mind that they are ones that brought you the electronic revolution, the civil rights movement, the equal rights movement, and all the lesser movements that spun off from those. Yeah, there was bad stuff too, but on net, the world is a better place for more people now than it was in 1950.

By the way, what is your solution to the mess created by boomers?

 

[Birdjaguar]

There is a one size fits all approach that I think could work to solve a lot of problems quickly.

Universal Basic Income

I would set the floor at $20,000 per adult per year. I'd pay for it by skimming a few percent off the defense budget and raising taxes on the highest income brackets (if it's even necessary to do this to avoid cutting the defense budget by more than 10%).

That could certainly help some problems. One unintended consequence might be that corporations et al just raise prices such that the new money doesn't mean much. The implementation of UBI would need to be well managed and perhaps done in stages.

What would be the goals of such a program?
How would you measure success?
Would it matter if I just drank or smoked or gambled my UBI away?
Could/should UBI be targeted towards particular problems first? Housing money? Healthcare money?
What problems, if any, will be created if people are quite happy to just live off their UBI?
If i make $100,000 a year working, do I get a UBI too?
If a job disqualifies me from a UBI payment, then we've set a new minimum wage by default.

 

[cardgame]

UBI is a great idea that expands economic freedom until you get into the details, where rent-seeking lives. You'd have to install some harsh measures against landlords to stop them from just taking it all.

"Oh, UBI is going to give everybody $20k a year? Looks like our rent just went up 20k per annum."

Also, we don't actually have the money for it, unless we print the money; 20k per family is 3e+12 (however you say that)

 

[ls612]

UBI is a great idea that expands economic freedom until you get into the details, where rent-seeking lives. You'd have to install some harsh measures against landlords to stop them from just taking it all.

"Oh, UBI is going to give everybody $20k a year? Looks like our rent just went up 20k per annum."

Also, we don't actually have the money for it, unless we print the money; 20k per family is 3e+12 (however you say that)

It seems like you have hit the nail on the head. Just printing money without increasing real output doesn’t make people better off, it just causes inflation barring other contractionary monetary influences.

 

[Hrothbern]

You read an awful amount into what I wrote and most of that wasn't there. It is interesting if you think I'm a social Darwinist in support of India's caste system. My thinking is really quite different. Large complex systems managed by people where people do most of the actual work tend to fail because of the people. The more automated a system gets, the better and more equal the delivery of products or services. It is far easier to deliver good service of high quality to 1 million people than it is to 300 million people.

To begin, clear goals are needed and need to be accepted by significant stakeholders. What is the system trying to do? What does success look like? What resources will be available and how will they be applied across a multitude of starting points? Who will manage the system and how will they be held accountable? Will the system be responsive enough to adjust as times change? These are all big and difficult questions to gain consensus on.

Private and small rural schools can more easily succeed than large urban school systems because they are easier to manage and usually have more resources per student. Particular urban schools can do well if staff and parents and boards stay focused: dedication of staff and parents. Good management. Even well planned systems fail; usually it is because of the people. Greed, power, control all step in to corrupt efforts. Those are human issues and aren't likely to disappear any time soon. AI automation will help in the future.

In the US the Social Security system is a large complex system that actually works pretty well. It has taken years to get it to this level, but it does a good job of serving millions, most of whom aren't rich. Automation has helped.

In my opinion, what will work in small nations will not work in very large ones, at least not quickly. The US is too big and too diverse at every level for a one size fits all approach to things like education, jobs, job skills, housing, healthcare, income inequality, etc. Will good solutions cost a lot of money? Yes they will. And the first step at any level (local, city, regional, state and national) is consensus on the problem, the situation, and the goals. We don't seem to be able to get through that stage.

My bad if what I wrote is picked up as accusing you of the things you say
I used Social Darwinism & the classic India caste system as a kind of most primitive base line for any system.
To what we can degenerate if we are not actively countering negative societal developments.

Your nutshell text was open to many interpretations.... so I used it to highlight some mechanisms around it... your answer to it clarifies more of your thoughts behind you nutshell text

And yes... scale size and better AI of a system do influence the technocratic quality, just like the scale size (lesser anonimity) of the stakeholders is important for the quality, and to some degree also for a better allignment of goals and expectations.

And direction on topic of screwed generations....
Helping out a family member, or a neighbor, a colleague directly or through a system is still very much helping out a "we". At the anomimous big scale size that "we" becomes more artificial and turns easily into "them".
Living small scale means a "we" with real life people with many differing opinions, human-human interaction, encouraging tolerance and societal cohesion.
Living anonimously big scale, also driven by geopolitical reasons (the EU and emerging other "trading" blocks), also driven by (social) media, far beyond the classic social scale size, overfeeded with likeminded electrons as a fluid "we", and real people more "them"..... much less tolerance needed and social cohesion outgroup ? .... to what practical purpose ?
That development, less "we" more "them", is I think stressing the support of systems, that are fundamentally based on the societal cohesion of a "we".
At the possible, and I am afraid, likely expense of the young generations, the age group depending on what country you live in.

I also think that what you did, helping out people around (also as part of your job ?), is an important antidote to counter the general development towards nmore anonimity.
System discussions, whether technocratic or ideological, will imo not be enough.

I believe that every individual has duties as a citizen, to his abilities, to be a valuable part of his own human-human real life social groups, even if only very small.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

That could certainly help some problems. One unintended consequence might be that corporations et al just raise prices such that the new money doesn't mean much. The implementation of UBI would need to be well managed and perhaps done in stages.

What would be the goals of such a program?
How would you measure success?
Would it matter if I just drank or smoked or gambled my UBI away?
Could/should UBI be targeted towards particular problems first? Housing money? Healthcare money?
What problems, if any, will be created if people are quite happy to just live off their UBI?
If i make $100,000 a year working, do I get a UBI too?
If a job disqualifies me from a UBI payment, then we've set a new minimum wage by default.

The goal would be to give money to people to supplement their income and free them from wage slavery. What they do with it is up to them. Success would be measured in a massive increase in economic activity. I don't know how you would measure self fulfillment but that would surely be a component of success.

It doesn't matter if people smoked or gambled it away; it's their money to do what they please with. There would be a large amount of squandering going on but that's unavoidable. We already tolerate tax-payer sponsored squandering by the rich so I'm not sure why we would prohibit it from anyone else.

Everyone would get UBI, regardless of income. That's the only fair way to do it.

There would have to be some sort of controls on landlords and other industries, for sure.

UBI is a great idea that expands economic freedom until you get into the details, where rent-seeking lives. You'd have to install some harsh measures against landlords to stop them from just taking it all.

"Oh, UBI is going to give everybody $20k a year? Looks like our rent just went up 20k per annum."

Also, we don't actually have the money for it, unless we print the money; 20k per family is 3e+12 (however you say that)

So it's the same magnitude as the Trump tax cuts, only every year. You are right, that income level is unsustainably high. You also show how laughable my suggestion is that it could be payed for with only 10% of the military budget.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

UBI would allow for the elimination of many benefit programs and for this reason it has some support among conservatives. It would allow people to do what they want with the money (i.e. increase personal liberties) and eliminate a host of social programs and thereby increase overall efficiency. That's a win-win for 'big heart' conservatives.

If the government gave out $20k, that would eliminate food stamps and drastically reduce social security payments.