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From the Upshot section of the New York Times:
The American Dream, Quantified at Last
David Leonhardt DEC. 8, 2016
The phrase “American dream” was invented during the Great Depression. It comes from a popular 1931 book by the historian James Truslow Adams, who defined it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.”
In the decades that followed, the dream became a reality. Thanks to rapid, widely shared economic growth, nearly all children grew up to achieve the most basic definition of a better life — earning more money and enjoying higher living standards than their parents had.
These days, people are arguably more worried about the American dream than at any point since the Depression. But there has been no real measure of it, despite all of the data available. No one has known how many Americans are more affluent than their parents were — and how the number has changed.
It’s a thorny research question, because it requires tracking individual families over time rather than (as most economic statistics do) taking one-time snapshots of the country.
The beginnings of a breakthrough came several years ago, when a team of economists led by Raj Chetty received access to millions of tax records that stretched over decades. The records were anonymous and came with strict privacy rules, but nonetheless allowed for the linking of generations.
The resulting research is among the most eye-opening economics work in recent years. You’ve probably heard some of the findings even if you don’t realize it. They have shown that the odds of escaping poverty vary widely by region, for instance, an insight that has influenced federal housing policy.
If you want to know what Professor Chetty’s spectacular trove of data on your (purportedly confidential) tax returns really demonstrates, see my 2015 Taki’s Magazine analysis “Moneyball for Real Estate.”
After the research began appearing, I mentioned to Chetty, a Stanford professor, and his colleagues that I thought they had a chance to do something no one yet had: create an index of the American dream. It took them months of work, using old Census data to estimate long-ago decades, but they have done it. They’ve constructed a data set that shows the percentage of American children who earn more money — and less money — than their parents earned at the same age.
The index is deeply alarming. It’s a portrait of an economy that disappoints a huge number of people who have heard that they live in a country where life gets better, only to experience something quite different.
Among Americans born in 1940, by their thirties, 92% were making more than their parents had.
Among Americans born in 1980, it was a fifty-fifty tossup whether they’d be doing better or worse than their parents had.
That’s really bad.
There’s no data yet on those born in 1990, but the trend is bleak.
As usual, I did a text search on the string “migr” to see if there is any mention in the lengthy NYT article of “immigration” or “migrants” or similar words.
Of course there is not.
Even though a Presidential election was just fought in sizable part over immigration policy, it remains virtually inconceivable for our designated elites to think analytically rather than sentimentally about immigration’s effects on American life.
Even Leonhardt might get himself in trouble for using the phrase “American Dream” in its politically incorrect obsolete sense of meaning the hope of American citizens that their children will do better than themselves. Today, however, “American Dream” has been retconned 180 degrees to mean the Zeroth Amendment: the unquestionable civil right of foreign citizens to move to the United States without so much as a doubtful glance from Americans, much less a skeptical op-ed.
Whether this new definition of American Dream has anything to do with the death of the old definition of the American Dream is not something you would think about if you knew what’s best for your career.
Given their respective twitter feeds, Steve has broken Murray’s willingness to ignore crime thinkers.
Broski
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442884/trump-labor-secretary-immigration
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/11/donald-trump-insists-that-wages-are-too-high/
Puzder is opposed to minimum wage hike because he thinks it will lead to automation of fast food restaurants http://fortune.com/2016/03/17/automate-fast-food/
His views are mainstream conservative/Republican http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5198736447001/?#sp=show-clips
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4608108178001/?#sp=show-clips
You can't put a positive spin on this clunker.
His eateries here in So Cal, are all staffed by illegals and the food is terrible. Expensive and totally bland. Imagine a hamburger with no taste. It's the human equivalent of pig slop. And just wait until it gets cold - yeach!!. And oh don't try to reheat it.
First Trump hires that jeb Bush and common Core supporter for Dept of Education and now this guy.
This stinks. It's becoming clear the American worker isn't who Trump cares about.
I don't like this pick, but it is consistent with what Trump has been saying. He wants to be very tough on illegals while still helping business get the cheap labor they want.
Without fear there is no PC.
With fear there is neither reason nor honesty.
My father was better off than me, at least in a positional sense. On the other hand I’ve not had to go and kill Germans.
With what fracking has done to US energy production, it is an interesting thought experiment to ponder what the “American Dream” would look like in 40 years if the US eliminated all immigration for 40 years on 1/20/17.
Well there we go. Combine this with the rising death rate and crime rate and it seems pretty obvious that the country is falling apart in every conceivable way. I voted for Trump in the primary and the general, and maybe he can help, but things have really gone off the rails
http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqka5kBpAW1qlr140o1_500.gif
Obesity, ignorance, divorce, illegitimacy, social isolation, no jobs, no culture, no future... How the hell is this country alive? There sure is a lot of ruin in a nation I guess.
This article diverts attention form the real issue which is the inequality. Among the 50% of born in 1980 who make more than their parents there are a few who make insanely more than everybody else including their parents.
This is how all great people, and great countries, “quit”.
Like somebody wrote, nothing can destroy them, except for themselves.
You can’t know less history than I, so you know that.
I’m fairly certain the stats would look identical, if not worse, for immigrationless Japan. This is more a matter of diminishing returns to labor productivity as an economy scales
The enlargement of the production-possibility frontier has historically mostly come from W. Euro and N. American innovations, but has radically slowed in the last decades. Why? General sclerosis is part of the reason (over-regulation and so on), but a specific element is that capital deepening of the workforce was a big part of economic development, but with the availability of vast pools of cheap labor (i.e., immigration), the incentive for investing in a deeper capital workforce disappears, and so the expansion of the production possibility frontier--and therefore the American Dream (old version)--grinds to a crawl.
https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality/
it remains virtually inconceivable
Yes, it definitely seems that way — and what might be the reason for that? — can you take a shot at giving the most important/biggest reason(s) for that?
ZOMG AMERICAN DREAM LOL
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/refugees-in-st-louis-pursue-american-dream-despite-uncertain-political/article_6f3f562b-4f77-5662-89c5-1d56985add3e.html
From the article:
The Davos/Soros conventional wisdom is remarkably stupid on many subjects. David Leonhardt clearly has a high IQ, but is totally clueless on the biggest issue of our time: it just doesn’t register. Also, the discussion about education is hillarious. You know and I know that the elite conventional wisdom about K-12 education policy is absurd, but nevertheless this is what gets printed in the prestige press.
I wonder how long it will take for places like the NYT to figure out that Open Borders killed the American Dream. I’m giving the over/under at 25 years.
Dad was skilled trades at GM at 35 in the mid ’50s, made about $10K a year; $80 to $90K inflation adjusted. Us 4 kids born in the ’50s never got close to that when we were 35; about $60K or so, inflation adjusted.
When the 30 year Post War Boom ended in ’73, that was it for most of the middle and lower middle classes and below; they were never going see the fat times ever again. It was going to take two incomes, few or no kids, moving to the low cost parts of the country to make it. If you call what they got ‘making it’….
I think Leonhardt puts a lot of effort into not noticing certain things so that he can put effort into noticing other things. For example, you’ll notice that he’s the only person at the Times who regularly publishes articles showing that two parent families appear to have a large and partially causal effect on all sorts of outcomes. You wouldn’t think this would be controversial, but Slate devoted several articles to excoriating him for it.
This is a pretty good article, though immigration is actually an important omission for multiple reasons. First, because as Steve notes they increase labor supply, pushing down wages for new workers. But equally importantly to the thrust of the article, because immigrants overwhelmingly out earn their parents (who lived somewhere poorer), the graph for native born Americans would almost certainly look even more dire.
The children of servicemen kill in war show no sign of any above average level of social pathology. In general "shared environment" which includes thing such as family structure, SES, type of schooling, etc. has only a minor effect on children. The most important causal factor on how children turn out is genetics and after that something called "non-shared environment". The nature of "non-shared environment" is obscure at present but it includes factors not shared in common by siblings so in particular it is independent of family structure, SES, type of schooling etc.
OT, I visited a factory today in a part of the country that is arguably the capital of establishment conservatism (except for DC).
The unionized hourly workers had hung an enormous, 20-foot-wide Trump banner from the rafters.
Someone mentioned it to our host, who strikes me as a Jeb Bush voter. He claimed never to have noticed it.
I always thought The American Dream referred to Dusty Rhodes.
It seems more or less impossible to do this. Like ‘income’ … is it family income or individual income and then what about two income couples, etc.
And then this is pre tax income, no? And inflation? etc. I dunno.
What about a single welfare mother, who has one daughter. Who is also a welfare mom with one daughter. Does she earn more by just staying in the same place? Or should she move to Wisconsin?
One thing for sure. The poor. Every single generation is gonna be fatter than their parents.
(I looked at the article and actually clicked on one excel table …. and gave up).
The epitaph of America may say that we took the peace dividend and all other surplus value we could find and hosed it directly into the 0.01%'s bank accounts, the ass cheeks of our underclass, and the importation of the most intractable immigrants we could find.
Speaking of that, if you believe that the labor supply increase from immigration drives down wages, you should DEFINITELY think the labor supply increase from women in the workforce drives down wages; it is bigger in size and women are more evenly spread across the skill distribution.
The single best step would be to stop diluting the share of this country’s capital that middle- and low-income children [sic!] have at their disposal. The second-best step would be to stop importing labor that lowers the value of the labor of the capital-deprived children. And the best thing is that both of these steps can be taken by one simple policy that is all benefit and no cost: no immigration!
Better yet, white children could focus on gorging themselves with math and science programs and learning how to develop analytical essays rather than receiving gimmedats from their divorced parents.
Even if all immigrants were deported, their jobs of cutting crass, working as cooks, or serving as maids would not necessarily be filled by whites. Wages would have to increase; in turn, businesses would raise prices to cover those costs.
Besides, is it not a company's best interest to secure cheap labor to maximize profits for their shareholders? How do you propose to reign in their capitalistic endeavors? Would not that interference run counter to free market principles?
That’s a novel and plausible critique, which presumably could be confirmed or denied with some Japanese statistics. Irrespective of how that goes, I would still ask the question, what is it that the Japanese (or other) economy scales to? I would answer that it is to the frontier forged by the Western innovation. (I mean “frontier” in the sense of production–possibility frontier, not where cowboys and Indians fight.)
The enlargement of the production-possibility frontier has historically mostly come from W. Euro and N. American innovations, but has radically slowed in the last decades. Why? General sclerosis is part of the reason (over-regulation and so on), but a specific element is that capital deepening of the workforce was a big part of economic development, but with the availability of vast pools of cheap labor (i.e., immigration), the incentive for investing in a deeper capital workforce disappears, and so the expansion of the production possibility frontier–and therefore the American Dream (old version)–grinds to a crawl.
This is a new thing in history. The poor used to be thinner not fatter.
The epitaph of America may say that we took the peace dividend and all other surplus value we could find and hosed it directly into the 0.01%’s bank accounts, the ass cheeks of our underclass, and the importation of the most intractable immigrants we could find.
That comment by Mark Krikorian is a bit tendentious. What the Secretary of Labor nominee Andy Puzder believes is that U.S. wages, at the low end, are not justified by labor productivity. This view is echoed by Trump too:
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/11/donald-trump-insists-that-wages-are-too-high/
Puzder is opposed to minimum wage hike because he thinks it will lead to automation of fast food restaurants http://fortune.com/2016/03/17/automate-fast-food/
His views are mainstream conservative/Republican http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5198736447001/?#sp=show-clips
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4608108178001/?#sp=show-clips
Krikorian is absolutely right. Passing up Kobach for HHS and now putting an open boarders activist at labor is a huge disappointment and an insult to the heavily union areas that had the hardest swing toward Trump and put him over the top in PA, MI, and WI.Increasing the minimum wage is good policy and good politics. Automation means less desire by employers for low-wage labor. The minimum wage also puts a stop to the business model of crappy fast food places and Central Valley farming where the employer pays $9 for immigrant labor, while the public pays $30-40 an hour for benefits for the immigrant and his family.
Because of their sky-high birthrates, ceasing the importation of millions of third-world immigrants as of January would never be enough. We have to send back many millions already in residence, starting with the most violent criminals, but not ending until the American cultural equilibrium is re-attained. None of this is going to happen, but it’s pleasant to imagine.
This is not their home, they know it, we know it.
As an aside, to me it's self-evident that anyone with dual citizenship should be prohibited from voting in US elections and should no foreigner or dual-citizen should be allowed to own any significant stake in any media company or manufacturer of defense industry material.
Even with zero immigration, on 1/20/57, USA will be a Hispanic heavy nation with fewer whites. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/04/03/what-america-will-look-like-in-2050-less-christian-less-white-more-gray/?utm_term=.8f21458e7eee
The big problem with this chart is that in relies on long-term inflation estimates, and there is no single right answer on what inflation estimate to use. The most common ones are CPI and GDP deflator, neither of which measure improvements in the quality of the goods and services whose price they track. This is not much of an issue one year to the next, but it makes comparisons about the worth of a dollar over time problematic.
Beyond the essentials of food, shelter, and basic medical care, people care most about relative economic status. Since higher status people tend to have more children, it is inevitable that people will on average have lower relative status than their parents.
I'd expect differences in the dollar scale to just "smear out" the curves a little with some error bars (causing the '60 and '70 curves to overlap more) but the differences between '80, '50, and '40 would remain significant.
The epitaph of America may say that we took the peace dividend and all other surplus value we could find and hosed it directly into the 0.01%'s bank accounts, the ass cheeks of our underclass, and the importation of the most intractable immigrants we could find.
Not every word of this is exactly elegant, but every word is exactly right.
"... hosed it directly into the 0.01%’s wallets, the asses of our underclass, and the importation of the most intractable immigrants we could find."
There, that's better.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/11/donald-trump-insists-that-wages-are-too-high/
Puzder is opposed to minimum wage hike because he thinks it will lead to automation of fast food restaurants http://fortune.com/2016/03/17/automate-fast-food/
His views are mainstream conservative/Republican http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5198736447001/?#sp=show-clips
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4608108178001/?#sp=show-clips
That’s gibberish. Wages are not “justified,” rather they are paid by entities that believe the labor they receive in return is worth as much or more than the wage.
Krikorian is absolutely right. Passing up Kobach for HHS and now putting an open boarders activist at labor is a huge disappointment and an insult to the heavily union areas that had the hardest swing toward Trump and put him over the top in PA, MI, and WI.
Increasing the minimum wage is good policy and good politics. Automation means less desire by employers for low-wage labor. The minimum wage also puts a stop to the business model of crappy fast food places and Central Valley farming where the employer pays $9 for immigrant labor, while the public pays $30-40 an hour for benefits for the immigrant and his family.
If fast food workers demand higher wages, say by deporting all illegal workers or stricter E-Verify causing labor shortage, the restaurants will just become dispensing machines with a sophisticated ATM like front end to enter orders. The back end cooking robots will likely be from/assembled from parts sourced in Germany or Asia.
There is a reason why there are many more fast food places than the sit down kind with tablecloth and metal cutlery. Most people can't afford to go to the latter, at least frequently. If fast food restaurants become expensive, they will go the same way as the full service places.
I think Trump's strategy is to follow Red state model of job creation (plentiful jobs at lower wages) rather than Blue state model (fewer high paying jobs). I think the choice of Puzder signals that.
https://www.rt.com/uk/369763-capita-jobs-robots-automation/
OT: Puzder Ex Wife Says 'She Made The Whole Thing Up’ Regarding False Alleged Abuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ68_yx6wjI
The shape of the curve is interesting, especially the capped trend in recent years at the low percentiles. Probably with some more thought in the light of day and without a few drinks, I could better understand a simple picture for the income distribution and its change over the years–it doesn’t seem like you’d need Chetty’s raw data to take a reasonable guess at these curves.
It looks like the functional form transitions from a logarithm to a logistic curve (or some kind of complementary error function), and there’s some simple explanation in terms of familiar statistical distributions that would give this result.
However, I’m not used to looking at economics data and don’t have a feel for it, so what’s interesting to me (arrogant La Griffe du Lion-style scaling arguments) could be mundane to experts.
Beyond the essentials of food, shelter, and basic medical care, people care most about relative economic status. Since higher status people tend to have more children, it is inevitable that people will on average have lower relative status than their parents.
What’s your guess of the fractional difference between inflation estimates?
I’d expect differences in the dollar scale to just “smear out” the curves a little with some error bars (causing the ’60 and ’70 curves to overlap more) but the differences between ’80, ’50, and ’40 would remain significant.
Bad choice, establishment oligarch who made bank employing shit loads of illegals in his FF joints. Worse he’s a Jeb Bush man and globalist.
You can’t put a positive spin on this clunker.
His eateries here in So Cal, are all staffed by illegals and the food is terrible. Expensive and totally bland. Imagine a hamburger with no taste. It’s the human equivalent of pig slop. And just wait until it gets cold – yeach!!. And oh don’t try to reheat it.
First Trump hires that jeb Bush and common Core supporter for Dept of Education and now this guy.
This stinks. It’s becoming clear the American worker isn’t who Trump cares about.
Dude, despair is a sin.
Krikorian is absolutely right. Passing up Kobach for HHS and now putting an open boarders activist at labor is a huge disappointment and an insult to the heavily union areas that had the hardest swing toward Trump and put him over the top in PA, MI, and WI.Increasing the minimum wage is good policy and good politics. Automation means less desire by employers for low-wage labor. The minimum wage also puts a stop to the business model of crappy fast food places and Central Valley farming where the employer pays $9 for immigrant labor, while the public pays $30-40 an hour for benefits for the immigrant and his family.
My guess is that Pudzer will be Trump’s first opportunity to give us a “you’re fired!” as President, and it may not take long, if he even gets through the senate.
Krikorian is absolutely right. Passing up Kobach for HHS and now putting an open boarders activist at labor is a huge disappointment and an insult to the heavily union areas that had the hardest swing toward Trump and put him over the top in PA, MI, and WI.Increasing the minimum wage is good policy and good politics. Automation means less desire by employers for low-wage labor. The minimum wage also puts a stop to the business model of crappy fast food places and Central Valley farming where the employer pays $9 for immigrant labor, while the public pays $30-40 an hour for benefits for the immigrant and his family.
It was a stupid move on Trump’s part or his advisers. First Carson, Devos and now this Pudzer oligarch. It doesn’t give me good feelings about his future decisions and appointments.
Yes to all three.
My teacher parents made more than their fathers, one of whom was an aerospace engineer and the other a college professor.
Were they higher status as schoolteachers? I don’t think so, but they rode a wave and left their kids in its wake. I look at Hillary and hate her for the arrogance of that generation, which she personifies. I’ll be gritting my teeth as I take care of them in their old age. Lord knows my other siblings won’t do it, but I inherited some streak of loyalty from somewhere I know not, and man have I paid dearly for it.
Personally, I’d give up my own life if it would assure my children’s future. But looking around I know it wouldn’t (quite the contrary), so I can’t. I’m not sure most baby boomers even know what sacrifice means, besides maybe having to cut a deal with the kids they screwed over in order to spend some time with the grandkids they suddenly found interesting after they’d already been taught to eat with utensils and wipe their own butts.
I could go on and on. My grandma potty trained me while my parents were pursuing diverse romantic interests. My grandpa taught me to throw a baseball and skip rocks after picking me up every day from daycare and kindergarten for three years in a row. Did I get that kind of help? Oh no, the very idea strikes me as ludicrous. After all, I had to take care of my own baby sister starting at the age of, what, three? I used to be left alone with a german shepherd as a babysitter (at least he was pretty smart and never drunk). The idea of leaving small children alone with these people leaves me with a vague feeling of dread. They may have more money than me, but I suspect that this is largely because their children’s interests were pretty low on their list of priorities. Thanks to boomer-inspired family law, it would have been in my best interests to say “sayonara” to my kids years ago, but I took another path, and I swallowed the bitterness for family’s sake.
I could whine and cry and call myself unfortunate, but actually this was normal for my generation, so I didn’t feel so deprived. In fact, it was liberating sometimes. I remember one very rich girl whose mother regularly forgot her after school who would sit there weeping while I happily roamed the vacant campus on dark winter evenings. I’d ask her “What’s the problem? Don’t you like it when they leave you alone?” In hindsight, I realized she didn’t have grandparents around. I did, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I could mention other friends (lots of them) who had it a lot worse. I mean, really bad 1970s/80s liberated lesbian/swinger mothers and all that fun stuff. But those aren’t my stories to tell. I’m actually pretty surprised more of this hasn’t come out in art, especially because so many of my contemporaries and especially those who gravitated toward the arts came out of some of the weirdest of “free love” cults (like Children of God — I know a few of them from my youth), but we late genXers have a way of keeping our cards close to our chests.
They can have their money. Let them spend it on nursing homes staffed by African immigrants — I know they’d rather blow it on third worlders than ever deign to leave a dime to posterity. It’s all going to end like Citizen Kane some day, except with a bonfire of Stones and Beatles vinyl collections. Like Lot, I’d walk away from it all and never look back.
/rant
Whats more, despite their obvious total lack of wisdom on the matter they will be full of unsolicited advice for you on how to raise your kids.
Bit of a generalization, that. I am part of "that generation" and I assure you that my circle does NOT in any way reflect the values which she embraced. She came of age among that segment of the Boomer Generation which has been bequeathed the title--Ahem!--"The Best and The Brightest". The fact that they turned out to be neither doesn't deter from their narcissism. The Boomers, like every other generation, consist of tens of millions of people of all walks of life and levels of education. The Clinton segment of that generation remains a small part, despite their claims to the contrary.
I just treat it like early onset Alzheimer's.
Hey iSteve, what about all those immigrants from $1/day countries? I bet they are doing better than their parents in El Salva-Somalia. Immigrants you see keep the American dream alive.
One class of worker that would seem to by definition to be doing better is government workers. I wonder what it would look like for police who’s children were police?
The epitaph of America may say that we took the peace dividend and all other surplus value we could find and hosed it directly into the 0.01%'s bank accounts, the ass cheeks of our underclass, and the importation of the most intractable immigrants we could find.
Being poor used to mean — within living memory! — hard physical labor.
Krikorian is absolutely right. Passing up Kobach for HHS and now putting an open boarders activist at labor is a huge disappointment and an insult to the heavily union areas that had the hardest swing toward Trump and put him over the top in PA, MI, and WI.Increasing the minimum wage is good policy and good politics. Automation means less desire by employers for low-wage labor. The minimum wage also puts a stop to the business model of crappy fast food places and Central Valley farming where the employer pays $9 for immigrant labor, while the public pays $30-40 an hour for benefits for the immigrant and his family.
Help me understand why “the labor they receive in return is worth as much or more than the wage” can’t be restated as “wage justified by productivity?”
Steve, despite all the blather and bullshit from economists about free trade ‘not being a zero sum game’, it’s worth bearing in mind that through out this time period in which American incomes have stagnated, those in China and elsewhere in east Asia have sky-rocketed, and continue to sky-rocket.
A vast proportion of the American economy now, effectively, is out sourced to the far east as far as labor content goes. It’s the familiar equation of perfect competition tending to equalize the cost of labor input over time – ie – a medium between the USA and China, but with the center of gravity biased toward China, despite the quibble, quibble, quibble of the wholly owned Wall Street subsidiary school of economists.
Plus, you’ve got the familiar story of massive uncontrolled third world immigration causing a pincer movement in the other direction.
While I can’t quickly find comparable statistics for Japan, the changing parameters of income distribution in the two countries suggest that the situation in the two countries is markedly different: since 1970 income distribution has become far more skewed in the US (with the share of income going to the top 1% doubling, from 9% to 18%), while for Japan it has stayed relatively constant (around 10%).
https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality/
Broski
What do you mean by this?
I just reviewed some of the charts in Murray’s “Coming Apart” and I’ve been thinking the same thing. How has this country not collapsed yet? I’m reminded of Shamus the Pirate in Family Guy.
Obesity, ignorance, divorce, illegitimacy, social isolation, no jobs, no culture, no future… How the hell is this country alive? There sure is a lot of ruin in a nation I guess.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/21/not-just-the-1-the-upper-middle-class-is-larger-and-richer-than-ever/
30% is still a minority and the situation is not healthy, but it can certainly explain the muddling along and lack of collapse.
To put it in perspective, America's upper middle (29%) plus middle (32%) classes well outnumber the total middle class in Latin American countries (34% in Chile, 26% Mexico, 28% Brazil, 19% Guatemala) and none of those countries are collapsing.
You could use the non economic term “justified” in that way for an economic relationship, but it is still gibberish. If a worker’s wage is not “justified” then why is he employed at all? He just wants better workers for lower wages.
Your theory means that every x-ray tech and every doctor gets paid exactly or less than what they are really worth as measured by production. Hmm.
Labor can take an institution for ransom when the law makes that possible. The result is wage distortion. Laws about disparate impact can make it uneconomical to fire all the negative-worth employees.
Lots of people are paid more than they're worth.
Face it. The American Dream is Dead. It was never true. It was Madison Avenue drivel that was spoon fed to you with corn products and cigarettes while you watched a Fantasy that looked like Fifty Shades of Played. Cynical comic George Carlin told you straight out. The reason they call it the American Dream is it isn’t real. Its all one Big Club and YOU AIN’T IN IT.
The Gilded Age of the Vanderbilts was a magical time. The WASPs made an American Aristocracy that seemed as classy as The British Royals. Nowadays, the fake elites are American Idol wearing diamonds and tablecloth patterns without underwear and featuring Kim Kardashian’s Ass. There’s a Lovecraft Unholy Cosmic Horror there, I’ll tell you that. That’s not real class, man. Its hair and makeup, with botox, bad lighting and years of substance abuse problems.
Trump is the inevitable result of the MTV Fake Real World of fast edits, scripted reality and experts who made a career of following squirrels. The Reagan Era is over. In the 1980s, we could afford to be idealists, but now its just too expensive. Moose and Squirrel have taken the stage. Fearless Leader must go.
Pop some corn. It looks like The Revolution will be televised.
I'd expect differences in the dollar scale to just "smear out" the curves a little with some error bars (causing the '60 and '70 curves to overlap more) but the differences between '80, '50, and '40 would remain significant.
I don’t think there is a right answer. Someone who loves gadgets, computers, and recorded music is going to have experienced huge deflation while someone who values personal services and Manhattan apartments will have suffered a lot of inflation.
I think this is worse than DeVos and Carson, conventional GOP policy on education and public housing is OK by me.
GDP per capita has supposedly tripled since 1980 and we earn less than our parents did. This really is outrageous.
It is the middle, lower middle and working class who have seen stagnation or decline.
No with that “all is lost” mindset.
You do understand if we cut mass immigration, deported millions, changed immigration, we would still be a majoirty white nation, why? because hispanics have less kids as generations pass.
National Review cares about Americans all of the sudden? Who knew?
I don’t like this pick, but it is consistent with what Trump has been saying. He wants to be very tough on illegals while still helping business get the cheap labor they want.
Were they higher status as schoolteachers? I don't think so, but they rode a wave and left their kids in its wake. I look at Hillary and hate her for the arrogance of that generation, which she personifies. I'll be gritting my teeth as I take care of them in their old age. Lord knows my other siblings won't do it, but I inherited some streak of loyalty from somewhere I know not, and man have I paid dearly for it.
Personally, I'd give up my own life if it would assure my children's future. But looking around I know it wouldn't (quite the contrary), so I can't. I'm not sure most baby boomers even know what sacrifice means, besides maybe having to cut a deal with the kids they screwed over in order to spend some time with the grandkids they suddenly found interesting after they'd already been taught to eat with utensils and wipe their own butts.
I could go on and on. My grandma potty trained me while my parents were pursuing diverse romantic interests. My grandpa taught me to throw a baseball and skip rocks after picking me up every day from daycare and kindergarten for three years in a row. Did I get that kind of help? Oh no, the very idea strikes me as ludicrous. After all, I had to take care of my own baby sister starting at the age of, what, three? I used to be left alone with a german shepherd as a babysitter (at least he was pretty smart and never drunk). The idea of leaving small children alone with these people leaves me with a vague feeling of dread. They may have more money than me, but I suspect that this is largely because their children's interests were pretty low on their list of priorities. Thanks to boomer-inspired family law, it would have been in my best interests to say "sayonara" to my kids years ago, but I took another path, and I swallowed the bitterness for family's sake.
I could whine and cry and call myself unfortunate, but actually this was normal for my generation, so I didn't feel so deprived. In fact, it was liberating sometimes. I remember one very rich girl whose mother regularly forgot her after school who would sit there weeping while I happily roamed the vacant campus on dark winter evenings. I'd ask her "What's the problem? Don't you like it when they leave you alone?" In hindsight, I realized she didn't have grandparents around. I did, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I could mention other friends (lots of them) who had it a lot worse. I mean, really bad 1970s/80s liberated lesbian/swinger mothers and all that fun stuff. But those aren't my stories to tell. I'm actually pretty surprised more of this hasn't come out in art, especially because so many of my contemporaries and especially those who gravitated toward the arts came out of some of the weirdest of "free love" cults (like Children of God -- I know a few of them from my youth), but we late genXers have a way of keeping our cards close to our chests.
They can have their money. Let them spend it on nursing homes staffed by African immigrants -- I know they'd rather blow it on third worlders than ever deign to leave a dime to posterity. It's all going to end like Citizen Kane some day, except with a bonfire of Stones and Beatles vinyl collections. Like Lot, I'd walk away from it all and never look back.
/rant
> The idea of leaving small children alone with these people leaves me with a vague feeling of dread.
Whats more, despite their obvious total lack of wisdom on the matter they will be full of unsolicited advice for you on how to raise your kids.
One class of worker that would seem to by definition to be doing better is government workers. I wonder what it would look like for police who's children were police?
Or rust belt disability lawyers whose children are rust belt disability lawyers
Yeah, you’re right.
“… hosed it directly into the 0.01%’s wallets, the asses of our underclass, and the importation of the most intractable immigrants we could find.”
There, that’s better.
Beyond the essentials of food, shelter, and basic medical care, people care most about relative economic status. Since higher status people tend to have more children, it is inevitable that people will on average have lower relative status than their parents.
The CPI does claim to account for improvements in quality, though I would argue that they don’t do it right.
Since accounting for improvements in quality lowers the CPI result, a government addicted to currency dilution, such as ours, has a vested interest in doing as much of this accounting as possible.
(For the record, the BLS, who administer the CPI, claim that the quality improvement adjustment is not large.)
A vast proportion of the American economy now, effectively, is out sourced to the far east as far as labor content goes. It's the familiar equation of perfect competition tending to equalize the cost of labor input over time - ie - a medium between the USA and China, but with the center of gravity biased toward China, despite the quibble, quibble, quibble of the wholly owned Wall Street subsidiary school of economists.
Plus, you've got the familiar story of massive uncontrolled third world immigration causing a pincer movement in the other direction.
Yes, it’s the old one-two punch of globalism: 1. Outsource what you can to cheap labour locations and 2. Bring in cheap foreigners to do the work that can’t be outsourced.
Okay but to throw a little spanner into the works I suspect this pattern will be the same for the vast majority of the developed world (including low-immigration Japan especially), since the single biggest cause of this should be the end of the 1950-1973 “miracle economy”/trentes glorieuses/Wirtschaftswunder (which had nothing to do with migration and everything to do with the rate of technological change) and with the rise of inequality since 1980 (its global nature implying it probably had little to do with migration specifics).
good point…plus many hispanics are white and 20% of hispanics will marry and mate with whites. Will the Grandchildren of Ted Cruz still be counted as hispanic ? The children of Ted Cruz, although 100% European and just 25% Spanish are considered hispanic today.
Were they higher status as schoolteachers? I don't think so, but they rode a wave and left their kids in its wake. I look at Hillary and hate her for the arrogance of that generation, which she personifies. I'll be gritting my teeth as I take care of them in their old age. Lord knows my other siblings won't do it, but I inherited some streak of loyalty from somewhere I know not, and man have I paid dearly for it.
Personally, I'd give up my own life if it would assure my children's future. But looking around I know it wouldn't (quite the contrary), so I can't. I'm not sure most baby boomers even know what sacrifice means, besides maybe having to cut a deal with the kids they screwed over in order to spend some time with the grandkids they suddenly found interesting after they'd already been taught to eat with utensils and wipe their own butts.
I could go on and on. My grandma potty trained me while my parents were pursuing diverse romantic interests. My grandpa taught me to throw a baseball and skip rocks after picking me up every day from daycare and kindergarten for three years in a row. Did I get that kind of help? Oh no, the very idea strikes me as ludicrous. After all, I had to take care of my own baby sister starting at the age of, what, three? I used to be left alone with a german shepherd as a babysitter (at least he was pretty smart and never drunk). The idea of leaving small children alone with these people leaves me with a vague feeling of dread. They may have more money than me, but I suspect that this is largely because their children's interests were pretty low on their list of priorities. Thanks to boomer-inspired family law, it would have been in my best interests to say "sayonara" to my kids years ago, but I took another path, and I swallowed the bitterness for family's sake.
I could whine and cry and call myself unfortunate, but actually this was normal for my generation, so I didn't feel so deprived. In fact, it was liberating sometimes. I remember one very rich girl whose mother regularly forgot her after school who would sit there weeping while I happily roamed the vacant campus on dark winter evenings. I'd ask her "What's the problem? Don't you like it when they leave you alone?" In hindsight, I realized she didn't have grandparents around. I did, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I could mention other friends (lots of them) who had it a lot worse. I mean, really bad 1970s/80s liberated lesbian/swinger mothers and all that fun stuff. But those aren't my stories to tell. I'm actually pretty surprised more of this hasn't come out in art, especially because so many of my contemporaries and especially those who gravitated toward the arts came out of some of the weirdest of "free love" cults (like Children of God -- I know a few of them from my youth), but we late genXers have a way of keeping our cards close to our chests.
They can have their money. Let them spend it on nursing homes staffed by African immigrants -- I know they'd rather blow it on third worlders than ever deign to leave a dime to posterity. It's all going to end like Citizen Kane some day, except with a bonfire of Stones and Beatles vinyl collections. Like Lot, I'd walk away from it all and never look back.
/rant
” I look at Hillary and hate her for the arrogance of that generation, which she personifies.”
Bit of a generalization, that. I am part of “that generation” and I assure you that my circle does NOT in any way reflect the values which she embraced. She came of age among that segment of the Boomer Generation which has been bequeathed the title–Ahem!–”The Best and The Brightest”. The fact that they turned out to be neither doesn’t deter from their narcissism. The Boomers, like every other generation, consist of tens of millions of people of all walks of life and levels of education. The Clinton segment of that generation remains a small part, despite their claims to the contrary.
Justify can mean to show to be reasonable. You’re behaving like those that complain when you make a spelling mistake, only this isn’t even a mistake.
Your theory means that every x-ray tech and every doctor gets paid exactly or less than what they are really worth as measured by production. Hmm.
Labor can take an institution for ransom when the law makes that possible. The result is wage distortion. Laws about disparate impact can make it uneconomical to fire all the negative-worth employees.
Lots of people are paid more than they’re worth.
When your religion takes over you make sure to erase the previous one. The previous civic religion has turned into the blackest evil so it can never compete with the new one. While you are on the outs you appeal to “moral relativism” to get people to consider your new narrative of how the universe is ordered. Remember in the early Bush2 administration the cuckservative whining about how horrible liberals are because they believe in “moral relativism”? According to google ngrams “moral relativism” started to decline and then leveled off about 10 years ago. I predict that in the coming years you’ll see all these leftists talking about how there is an absolute morality the same way the cucks used to.
Were they higher status as schoolteachers? I don't think so, but they rode a wave and left their kids in its wake. I look at Hillary and hate her for the arrogance of that generation, which she personifies. I'll be gritting my teeth as I take care of them in their old age. Lord knows my other siblings won't do it, but I inherited some streak of loyalty from somewhere I know not, and man have I paid dearly for it.
Personally, I'd give up my own life if it would assure my children's future. But looking around I know it wouldn't (quite the contrary), so I can't. I'm not sure most baby boomers even know what sacrifice means, besides maybe having to cut a deal with the kids they screwed over in order to spend some time with the grandkids they suddenly found interesting after they'd already been taught to eat with utensils and wipe their own butts.
I could go on and on. My grandma potty trained me while my parents were pursuing diverse romantic interests. My grandpa taught me to throw a baseball and skip rocks after picking me up every day from daycare and kindergarten for three years in a row. Did I get that kind of help? Oh no, the very idea strikes me as ludicrous. After all, I had to take care of my own baby sister starting at the age of, what, three? I used to be left alone with a german shepherd as a babysitter (at least he was pretty smart and never drunk). The idea of leaving small children alone with these people leaves me with a vague feeling of dread. They may have more money than me, but I suspect that this is largely because their children's interests were pretty low on their list of priorities. Thanks to boomer-inspired family law, it would have been in my best interests to say "sayonara" to my kids years ago, but I took another path, and I swallowed the bitterness for family's sake.
I could whine and cry and call myself unfortunate, but actually this was normal for my generation, so I didn't feel so deprived. In fact, it was liberating sometimes. I remember one very rich girl whose mother regularly forgot her after school who would sit there weeping while I happily roamed the vacant campus on dark winter evenings. I'd ask her "What's the problem? Don't you like it when they leave you alone?" In hindsight, I realized she didn't have grandparents around. I did, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I could mention other friends (lots of them) who had it a lot worse. I mean, really bad 1970s/80s liberated lesbian/swinger mothers and all that fun stuff. But those aren't my stories to tell. I'm actually pretty surprised more of this hasn't come out in art, especially because so many of my contemporaries and especially those who gravitated toward the arts came out of some of the weirdest of "free love" cults (like Children of God -- I know a few of them from my youth), but we late genXers have a way of keeping our cards close to our chests.
They can have their money. Let them spend it on nursing homes staffed by African immigrants -- I know they'd rather blow it on third worlders than ever deign to leave a dime to posterity. It's all going to end like Citizen Kane some day, except with a bonfire of Stones and Beatles vinyl collections. Like Lot, I'd walk away from it all and never look back.
/rant
Let it go for your own sake.
I just treat it like early onset Alzheimer’s.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqka5kBpAW1qlr140o1_500.gif
Obesity, ignorance, divorce, illegitimacy, social isolation, no jobs, no culture, no future... How the hell is this country alive? There sure is a lot of ruin in a nation I guess.
Because the top 30% are doing very well and doing better than before. The decline is far from universal, and the number of people climbing up from the middle class partially offsets those who drop out of the middle class:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/21/not-just-the-1-the-upper-middle-class-is-larger-and-richer-than-ever/
30% is still a minority and the situation is not healthy, but it can certainly explain the muddling along and lack of collapse.
To put it in perspective, America’s upper middle (29%) plus middle (32%) classes well outnumber the total middle class in Latin American countries (34% in Chile, 26% Mexico, 28% Brazil, 19% Guatemala) and none of those countries are collapsing.
When considering these stats, keep in mind group differences. This is true of class as it is for race. Average test scores in the USA may seem low, but when taking into account large minority groups and comparing Euro-Americans to Europeans, a different story other than school failure emerges. Similarly, American average earnings really vary by class, and it isn’t only the top 1% who have been doing well in the USA. The “upper middle class”, those families making 100k to 350k per year, have seen a growth in their numbers and in their incomes (even adjusted for inflation). This group is now about 29% of the population.
It is the middle, lower middle and working class who have seen stagnation or decline.
“The second-best step would be to stop importing labor that lowers the value of the labor of the capital-deprived children.”
Better yet, white children could focus on gorging themselves with math and science programs and learning how to develop analytical essays rather than receiving gimmedats from their divorced parents.
Even if all immigrants were deported, their jobs of cutting crass, working as cooks, or serving as maids would not necessarily be filled by whites. Wages would have to increase; in turn, businesses would raise prices to cover those costs.
Besides, is it not a company’s best interest to secure cheap labor to maximize profits for their shareholders? How do you propose to reign in their capitalistic endeavors? Would not that interference run counter to free market principles?
35 years of astronomical increases in debt, as interest rates fell, causing the capital value of prior debt to increase, constitutes a phenomenal increase in monetary "wealth," all of it inflationary.
That the effect was to plow almost exclusively asset prices higher and not wages, seems to have fooled many that this is a "low inflation" period. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, and price increases (including wage increases) are only a result.
The last 35 years of monetary madness have warped perceptions (and economic statistics) so thoroughly that few people see the forest for the trees.
Another interest aspect of this data, at least from what I noticed on the WaPo’s charts, was the dispersion of outcomes for the children over time. Looking at children of parents who earned in the middle 80% of income, i.e. not the richest or poorest of the population, over time, you see that how much more or less than they earn than their parents grows dramatically.
Basically, it’s not just that the odds of earning less than your parents is going up, the odds that you earn dramatically less than they do – and dramatically less than your peers – also increased, well, dramatically.
It’s one thing to earn $60,000 a year when your father earned $70,000 a year. It’s a whole other issue if you earn $35,000.
The chances of your life going completely off the rails relative to your parents seems to be increasing.
Also, GDP per capita was close to $30k in 1980. It’s now $56,000. We shouldn’t be seeing this big drop in kids’ income compared to their parents. The rich really are taking a huge portion of income gains. Makes you wonder how long this situation can last, especially given the lack of cohesiveness in our country.
Then again, welfare for the poor and TV for the middle class seems to keep a lid on things.
How about investing in a balanced mutual fund instead, like 50 blue chips 50 percent us treasuries instead of putting all your eggs on your salary, plus you get taxed at 15 percent.
Check out the Fed's Survey of Consumer of Consumer Finances sometime. Pretty depressing stuff.
One interesting aspect of it, however, is that the wealthy's net worth and/or financial assets (portfolio) don't grow as fast as the underlying assets. Could be that they're spending the return or that they're just really bad investors.
You can't put a positive spin on this clunker.
His eateries here in So Cal, are all staffed by illegals and the food is terrible. Expensive and totally bland. Imagine a hamburger with no taste. It's the human equivalent of pig slop. And just wait until it gets cold - yeach!!. And oh don't try to reheat it.
First Trump hires that jeb Bush and common Core supporter for Dept of Education and now this guy.
This stinks. It's becoming clear the American worker isn't who Trump cares about.
Oh Lawdy, I agree! We has been Dolt schlossed by the God Emperor! I think we should all culturally appropriate the Japanese ritual of seppuku and end ourselves now. Or maybe we could just have some nice Guyana punch.
Dude, despair is a sin.
Better yet, white children could focus on gorging themselves with math and science programs and learning how to develop analytical essays rather than receiving gimmedats from their divorced parents.
Even if all immigrants were deported, their jobs of cutting crass, working as cooks, or serving as maids would not necessarily be filled by whites. Wages would have to increase; in turn, businesses would raise prices to cover those costs.
Besides, is it not a company's best interest to secure cheap labor to maximize profits for their shareholders? How do you propose to reign in their capitalistic endeavors? Would not that interference run counter to free market principles?
No, it would not. The “free market” is not free of legal and moral constraints.
You need a refresher on the definition of free market--A system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqka5kBpAW1qlr140o1_500.gif
Obesity, ignorance, divorce, illegitimacy, social isolation, no jobs, no culture, no future... How the hell is this country alive? There sure is a lot of ruin in a nation I guess.
The oil hasn’t run out yet.
dearime, Or go and kill Japanese. In the sixties a rule of thumb ,for a good living, was you earned $30K by your 30th birthday. I achieved that number and owned a home by age 23, so by those standards I was doing well. Three of my children were born in the late sixties and the last two in the eighties. Financially all five have done better than me by a lot. I think the key to success in this country is a stable family life coupled with taking advantage of the educational opportunities available to you. Four of my five children graduated from public colleges and universities, the youngest from a Jesuit College. All of them, three with Masters degrees, choose courses that gave them a realistic chance at a good income, in other words, no puppeteering degrees. I know three young men, none twenty yet, who choose community college and a course in working for the utilities grid. Two years of study and all three are currently employed as probationary linemen. Starting pay pushing $20 per hour and the next jump to $25 p/hr. These are level headed young men who realized a four year college wasn’t for them. The city of Buffalo, with Federal financial aid, just opened a training center to duplicate the course of study that these three young men took. The results will depend on how many prospects the Buffalo training center can attract and hold. Recently, an article in the Buffalo News lamenting the lack of minorities in construction trades, drew this rejoinder from the Carpenter’s Business Agent…” is it too much to ask that applicants know basic math, fractions and how to read a rule?”
1969 was 16% less. Doctors have always averaged less than $200K/yr. There isn't any job you can realistically get in your 20s today that pays that. (that has more than 10K people that age getting paid over $200K). In terms of prep schools or Ivy League tuition that $30K would buy 10 years including room and board, which would today cost $630K. Nice you did so well, but this is the reason later generations hate the boomers to a degree the boomers don't seem to realize.
Starting pay pushing $20/hr: $2.63/hr. 1965, $3.12/hr 1969, a bit over double minimum wage -
but that had a pension that nobody offers today in the private sector.
Here in Atlanta I'm seeing $15/hr., 6-12 hrs./ wk. for test prep tutoring requiring top 1% test scores.
Since both countries (and all countries) have their economies and economic statistics warped by the greatest increase in indebtedness in human history, conclusions remain difficult to draw.
What about comparisons to grand parents and great grand parents. If my father was in the top 75% but I am in the top 25%, and my son is in the top 30%, what does that mean. The higher you go the greater chances of the son not exceeding the father.
Better yet, white children could focus on gorging themselves with math and science programs and learning how to develop analytical essays rather than receiving gimmedats from their divorced parents.
Even if all immigrants were deported, their jobs of cutting crass, working as cooks, or serving as maids would not necessarily be filled by whites. Wages would have to increase; in turn, businesses would raise prices to cover those costs.
Besides, is it not a company's best interest to secure cheap labor to maximize profits for their shareholders? How do you propose to reign in their capitalistic endeavors? Would not that interference run counter to free market principles?
If you’re noticing that immigration is preventing inflation from showing up in wages, I concur.
35 years of astronomical increases in debt, as interest rates fell, causing the capital value of prior debt to increase, constitutes a phenomenal increase in monetary “wealth,” all of it inflationary.
That the effect was to plow almost exclusively asset prices higher and not wages, seems to have fooled many that this is a “low inflation” period. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, and price increases (including wage increases) are only a result.
The last 35 years of monetary madness have warped perceptions (and economic statistics) so thoroughly that few people see the forest for the trees.
When the long illusion of Unlimited Resources ends, and markets reprice the value of our Mt. Vesuvius of debt piled up these 35 years, I strongly suspect that lots of immigrants who arrived in the last couple decades will pack up and go home.
This is not their home, they know it, we know it.
As an aside, to me it’s self-evident that anyone with dual citizenship should be prohibited from voting in US elections and should no foreigner or dual-citizen should be allowed to own any significant stake in any media company or manufacturer of defense industry material.
For the record, all three of my sons are doing way better that I did at their ages. Of course, graduating college into a deep recession didn’t help me, and my experiences helped me steer them away from the numerous pitfalls trapping their peers (e.g., wasting time and money on useless degrees, getting mired in student debt, etc.).
Better yet, white children could focus on gorging themselves with math and science programs and learning how to develop analytical essays rather than receiving gimmedats from their divorced parents.
Even if all immigrants were deported, their jobs of cutting crass, working as cooks, or serving as maids would not necessarily be filled by whites. Wages would have to increase; in turn, businesses would raise prices to cover those costs.
Besides, is it not a company's best interest to secure cheap labor to maximize profits for their shareholders? How do you propose to reign in their capitalistic endeavors? Would not that interference run counter to free market principles?
They’ve already been doing that – well, more force-feeding than gorging – creating massive mismatches in the labor market. There are well-paying trade jobs rotting in the fields thanks to the abstraction cargo cult of you and yours’.
No.
Got any other questions?
Krikorian is absolutely right. Passing up Kobach for HHS and now putting an open boarders activist at labor is a huge disappointment and an insult to the heavily union areas that had the hardest swing toward Trump and put him over the top in PA, MI, and WI.Increasing the minimum wage is good policy and good politics. Automation means less desire by employers for low-wage labor. The minimum wage also puts a stop to the business model of crappy fast food places and Central Valley farming where the employer pays $9 for immigrant labor, while the public pays $30-40 an hour for benefits for the immigrant and his family.
In the long run, labor productivity is the only source for wealth creation and higher wages. i.e. other than the bubble pump and dump we are seeing in US for the last two decades. If it were not so, any nation can wish high wages and become wealthy. That is not possible. A good example is Argentina.
If fast food workers demand higher wages, say by deporting all illegal workers or stricter E-Verify causing labor shortage, the restaurants will just become dispensing machines with a sophisticated ATM like front end to enter orders. The back end cooking robots will likely be from/assembled from parts sourced in Germany or Asia.
There is a reason why there are many more fast food places than the sit down kind with tablecloth and metal cutlery. Most people can’t afford to go to the latter, at least frequently. If fast food restaurants become expensive, they will go the same way as the full service places.
I think Trump’s strategy is to follow Red state model of job creation (plentiful jobs at lower wages) rather than Blue state model (fewer high paying jobs). I think the choice of Puzder signals that.
https://www.rt.com/uk/369763-capita-jobs-robots-automation/
OT: Puzder Ex Wife Says ‘She Made The Whole Thing Up’ Regarding False Alleged Abuse
In the short to medium run, wages can grow much faster than productivity if we reverse policies that have taken labor's share of national income to historic lows and corporate profits to historic highs.
Were they higher status as schoolteachers? I don't think so, but they rode a wave and left their kids in its wake. I look at Hillary and hate her for the arrogance of that generation, which she personifies. I'll be gritting my teeth as I take care of them in their old age. Lord knows my other siblings won't do it, but I inherited some streak of loyalty from somewhere I know not, and man have I paid dearly for it.
Personally, I'd give up my own life if it would assure my children's future. But looking around I know it wouldn't (quite the contrary), so I can't. I'm not sure most baby boomers even know what sacrifice means, besides maybe having to cut a deal with the kids they screwed over in order to spend some time with the grandkids they suddenly found interesting after they'd already been taught to eat with utensils and wipe their own butts.
I could go on and on. My grandma potty trained me while my parents were pursuing diverse romantic interests. My grandpa taught me to throw a baseball and skip rocks after picking me up every day from daycare and kindergarten for three years in a row. Did I get that kind of help? Oh no, the very idea strikes me as ludicrous. After all, I had to take care of my own baby sister starting at the age of, what, three? I used to be left alone with a german shepherd as a babysitter (at least he was pretty smart and never drunk). The idea of leaving small children alone with these people leaves me with a vague feeling of dread. They may have more money than me, but I suspect that this is largely because their children's interests were pretty low on their list of priorities. Thanks to boomer-inspired family law, it would have been in my best interests to say "sayonara" to my kids years ago, but I took another path, and I swallowed the bitterness for family's sake.
I could whine and cry and call myself unfortunate, but actually this was normal for my generation, so I didn't feel so deprived. In fact, it was liberating sometimes. I remember one very rich girl whose mother regularly forgot her after school who would sit there weeping while I happily roamed the vacant campus on dark winter evenings. I'd ask her "What's the problem? Don't you like it when they leave you alone?" In hindsight, I realized she didn't have grandparents around. I did, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I could mention other friends (lots of them) who had it a lot worse. I mean, really bad 1970s/80s liberated lesbian/swinger mothers and all that fun stuff. But those aren't my stories to tell. I'm actually pretty surprised more of this hasn't come out in art, especially because so many of my contemporaries and especially those who gravitated toward the arts came out of some of the weirdest of "free love" cults (like Children of God -- I know a few of them from my youth), but we late genXers have a way of keeping our cards close to our chests.
They can have their money. Let them spend it on nursing homes staffed by African immigrants -- I know they'd rather blow it on third worlders than ever deign to leave a dime to posterity. It's all going to end like Citizen Kane some day, except with a bonfire of Stones and Beatles vinyl collections. Like Lot, I'd walk away from it all and never look back.
/rant
What is the arrogance you see in them? Where is it manifest?
What careers are they pursuing?
Great idea for those who can save, but, then again, those people are generally doing pretty well anyway.
Check out the Fed’s Survey of Consumer of Consumer Finances sometime. Pretty depressing stuff.
One interesting aspect of it, however, is that the wealthy’s net worth and/or financial assets (portfolio) don’t grow as fast as the underlying assets. Could be that they’re spending the return or that they’re just really bad investors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/09/daily-202-trump-over-performed-the-most-in-counties-with-the-highest-drug-alcohol-and-suicide-mortality-rates/584a2a59e9b69b7e58e45f2e/?utm_term=.b2bab2970b72
So for this guy here there is no future in the United States. Not even a little bit. My entire industry was gutted and shipped to china so now earning a living is as hard as it’s ever been. Sure, I’ve made some mistakes, but always thought i could make up for it until my industry was destroyed.
Now, there is no hope, no future, just managing the decline until death. And i know TONS of people just like me.
Is it any wonder why white people are killing themselves with opiates?
And i don’t look forward to those final years on the death bed with a care giver that doesn’t speak the language or, in the back of her/his mind, wanna pay me back for 400 years of oppression…..what a fucking nightmare the USA has become.
If you were an all powerful president or leader of the country, what are the three most important policies you would implement?
It's a tall order. Even just figuring out what to do. Work within an existing system? Or my theoretically favored approach, pay it lip service - then organize institutions and work together to carve ourselves out a nation within a fake nation.
My vision is pretty ambitious. It all makes such sense in my head. Organize, pool money. Take the market sectors for example, currently occupied by Indians with convenience stores and hotels.
Make tax evasion a civic virtue (just like in Italy). I have lots and lots of ideas. But they all take a willingness to work together, and Assabiyah.
With just the technology we have now, it is entirely possible to form a whole alt news system. The distribution medium is here. I'm quite sure we can work around the "elite" talent that currently reads the teleprompter. All you need is to generate the audience that knows it is there, and views it as a virtue to watch that instead of the mainstream media.
And it may be a minority viewpoint, but Hollywood and TV shows... eh, it's just not all that. Lately I've been viewing a number of short films on Youtube made by... well whoever, hard to tell.
The storyline and acting really isn't that far off the usual crap you see on cable tv. The camerawork always has that cheap look though. And given the lack of budget these guys have, it's not surprising that a lone protagonist wandering an apocalyptic wasteland is a common theme.
Music? Same. Could be done. Lot easier than video honestly. There are SO many people out there that can play and sing as well as the acts you see in pop music. Most of them don't look anywhere as attractive though.
The big one is ripping away the money tube going from us to Wall Street and the FIRE sector. You basically have to take it as a given that every last elected official is an enemy and a quisling. So we have to do what we can.
I'd like to see usury laws come back. Banks allowed to operate in only one state. State banks like North Dakota's across the country. Basically an eternal and unending state of cold fiscal war fought by people voting with their pocketbook and willing to take a hit to stick it to Goldman Sachs, even just a little.
Realistically the regulators and federal laws would stick their pointy heads in. But Savings banks dedicated to individual communities, investing ONLY in that community. Kickstarters for micro, and even bigger industries.
A tall order, but not sure we have any alternatives.
“Puzder is opposed to minimum wage hike because he thinks it will lead to automation of fast food restaurants”
And of course he’s right. Where he’s wrong, though, is to use the real or supposed labor shortage to support mass immigration. Puzder’s claims are contradictory. If America has a labor shortage then we shouldn’t be concerned about “killing” jobs by raising the minimum wage, since no Americans are available to take those jobs anyway. The only jobs we should be concerned about losing under a higher minimum wage are those jobs held by Americans. Puzder just wants growth in profits, which generally results from growth in revenues. The easiest ways to do that are increases in population (leading to more sales) and reduction in labor costs.
Bit of a generalization, that. I am part of "that generation" and I assure you that my circle does NOT in any way reflect the values which she embraced. She came of age among that segment of the Boomer Generation which has been bequeathed the title--Ahem!--"The Best and The Brightest". The fact that they turned out to be neither doesn't deter from their narcissism. The Boomers, like every other generation, consist of tens of millions of people of all walks of life and levels of education. The Clinton segment of that generation remains a small part, despite their claims to the contrary.
Connie, As another member of your generation I thank you for your crisp reply.
Basically, it's not just that the odds of earning less than your parents is going up, the odds that you earn dramatically less than they do - and dramatically less than your peers - also increased, well, dramatically.
It's one thing to earn $60,000 a year when your father earned $70,000 a year. It's a whole other issue if you earn $35,000.
The chances of your life going completely off the rails relative to your parents seems to be increasing.
Also, GDP per capita was close to $30k in 1980. It's now $56,000. We shouldn't be seeing this big drop in kids' income compared to their parents. The rich really are taking a huge portion of income gains. Makes you wonder how long this situation can last, especially given the lack of cohesiveness in our country.
Then again, welfare for the poor and TV for the middle class seems to keep a lid on things.
Citizen, Good comment and in the sixties when I earned $30k, my first house, in a first ring suburb, with great schools, cost me $24K and a brand new station wagon was about $3k. I remember looking at a rock solid Victorian house, all brick, in the Elmwood Village section of Buffalo, back when I bought my first house. The house was listed at $24k, probably could have got it for $20k, but no garage, no drive and a tiny yard. That house today command $350K minimum.
Low cost, white neighborhoods almost don't exist anymore in many (maybe most) cities. If you are middle class, you are forced to either have a dramatically long commute or pay many times your income to get a decent neighborhood. That wasn't the case before massive immigration for most people.
But, hey, at least you get to enjoy the Buffalo weather. ;)
Don E, Great point. A doctor in the 20s, 30s and 40s was greatly respected, but not well paid. His son, a doctor in the 50s and 60s and 7os was well paid. His grandson, a doctor today, unless he is a specialist, is well paid, but not in proportion to what his father made. That’s one reason formerly exclusive country clubs now have membership drives. A $125K income in the 60s and 70s bought a lot of house and car. A well appointed SUV now cost $60k and tuition at a Jesuit Prep HS will set you back $12K per year around here.
Bit of a generalization, that. I am part of "that generation" and I assure you that my circle does NOT in any way reflect the values which she embraced. She came of age among that segment of the Boomer Generation which has been bequeathed the title--Ahem!--"The Best and The Brightest". The fact that they turned out to be neither doesn't deter from their narcissism. The Boomers, like every other generation, consist of tens of millions of people of all walks of life and levels of education. The Clinton segment of that generation remains a small part, despite their claims to the contrary.
I’ve always assumed that the expression ”The Best and The Brightest” was an exercise in sarcasm that was, as is so often the case, lost on Americans.
"the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corsica has been shamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, ......"
It is the middle, lower middle and working class who have seen stagnation or decline.
Shouldn’t one compare Euro-Americans to Euro-Europeans?
Aha, WKPD says that it was mocking and ironic: Junius, published February 7, 1769 –
“the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corsica has been shamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, ……”
Increased housing costs – at least housing in areas with low crime and good schools, i.e. low NAM numbers – is a massive burden on middle class whites caused by immigration. And it’s one that doesn’t show in any statistic.
Low cost, white neighborhoods almost don’t exist anymore in many (maybe most) cities. If you are middle class, you are forced to either have a dramatically long commute or pay many times your income to get a decent neighborhood. That wasn’t the case before massive immigration for most people.
But, hey, at least you get to enjoy the Buffalo weather.
Anatoly,
I recall a section in Carroll Quigley’s book, “Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time,” where he attributes the German Wirtschaftswunder in the 1960s to the constant stream of Germans in post-WWII Europe fleeing the eastern lands for Germany under the Right of Return. The stream of new labor kept wages relatively low compared to the rest of Western Europe. The result was a price/export advantage that pumped the German economy.
I keep this in mind when observing the recklessness of the German government in inviting hordes of immigrants from pre-industrial cultures and alien religions to live in Germany. Is Frau Merkel anticipating the need to repeat the German Wirtschaftswunder with new immigrants in the face of dismal German reproductive rates … or, is she blind to the impact of millions of Muslims from Third World countries on an advanced industrial civilization?
German living standards - and wages - increased massively during the period 1945 - 1980.
In fact Germany expanded so fast that it exceeded Britain in terms of per capita wealth sometime around 1965, for the first time in its history, and much to the eternal chagrin of the British.
Also, it effectively ran out of fleeing Germans from the east and had to import Italians, Turks etc.
“The “free market” is not free of legal and moral constraints.”
You need a refresher on the definition of free market–A system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.
Now, there is no hope, no future, just managing the decline until death. And i know TONS of people just like me.
Is it any wonder why white people are killing themselves with opiates?
And i don't look forward to those final years on the death bed with a care giver that doesn't speak the language or, in the back of her/his mind, wanna pay me back for 400 years of oppression.....what a fucking nightmare the USA has become.
What industry were you in?
If you were an all powerful president or leader of the country, what are the three most important policies you would implement?
You value money more than workers.
So do the globalistas.
Now, there is no hope, no future, just managing the decline until death. And i know TONS of people just like me.
Is it any wonder why white people are killing themselves with opiates?
And i don't look forward to those final years on the death bed with a care giver that doesn't speak the language or, in the back of her/his mind, wanna pay me back for 400 years of oppression.....what a fucking nightmare the USA has become.
Interesting, So sorry for your dismal future and people truly wonder why the Anti-lib, Trump triumphed. Keep the faith my friend.
Now, there is no hope, no future, just managing the decline until death. And i know TONS of people just like me.
Is it any wonder why white people are killing themselves with opiates?
And i don't look forward to those final years on the death bed with a care giver that doesn't speak the language or, in the back of her/his mind, wanna pay me back for 400 years of oppression.....what a fucking nightmare the USA has become.
I think we are just going to have to take care of ourselves.
It’s a tall order. Even just figuring out what to do. Work within an existing system? Or my theoretically favored approach, pay it lip service – then organize institutions and work together to carve ourselves out a nation within a fake nation.
My vision is pretty ambitious. It all makes such sense in my head. Organize, pool money. Take the market sectors for example, currently occupied by Indians with convenience stores and hotels.
Make tax evasion a civic virtue (just like in Italy). I have lots and lots of ideas. But they all take a willingness to work together, and Assabiyah.
With just the technology we have now, it is entirely possible to form a whole alt news system. The distribution medium is here. I’m quite sure we can work around the “elite” talent that currently reads the teleprompter. All you need is to generate the audience that knows it is there, and views it as a virtue to watch that instead of the mainstream media.
And it may be a minority viewpoint, but Hollywood and TV shows… eh, it’s just not all that. Lately I’ve been viewing a number of short films on Youtube made by… well whoever, hard to tell.
The storyline and acting really isn’t that far off the usual crap you see on cable tv. The camerawork always has that cheap look though. And given the lack of budget these guys have, it’s not surprising that a lone protagonist wandering an apocalyptic wasteland is a common theme.
Music? Same. Could be done. Lot easier than video honestly. There are SO many people out there that can play and sing as well as the acts you see in pop music. Most of them don’t look anywhere as attractive though.
The big one is ripping away the money tube going from us to Wall Street and the FIRE sector. You basically have to take it as a given that every last elected official is an enemy and a quisling. So we have to do what we can.
I’d like to see usury laws come back. Banks allowed to operate in only one state. State banks like North Dakota’s across the country. Basically an eternal and unending state of cold fiscal war fought by people voting with their pocketbook and willing to take a hit to stick it to Goldman Sachs, even just a little.
Realistically the regulators and federal laws would stick their pointy heads in. But Savings banks dedicated to individual communities, investing ONLY in that community. Kickstarters for micro, and even bigger industries.
A tall order, but not sure we have any alternatives.
If fast food workers demand higher wages, say by deporting all illegal workers or stricter E-Verify causing labor shortage, the restaurants will just become dispensing machines with a sophisticated ATM like front end to enter orders. The back end cooking robots will likely be from/assembled from parts sourced in Germany or Asia.
There is a reason why there are many more fast food places than the sit down kind with tablecloth and metal cutlery. Most people can't afford to go to the latter, at least frequently. If fast food restaurants become expensive, they will go the same way as the full service places.
I think Trump's strategy is to follow Red state model of job creation (plentiful jobs at lower wages) rather than Blue state model (fewer high paying jobs). I think the choice of Puzder signals that.
https://www.rt.com/uk/369763-capita-jobs-robots-automation/
OT: Puzder Ex Wife Says 'She Made The Whole Thing Up’ Regarding False Alleged Abuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ68_yx6wjI
In the long run, yes.
In the short to medium run, wages can grow much faster than productivity if we reverse policies that have taken labor’s share of national income to historic lows and corporate profits to historic highs.
I’ve had the same thoughts. It boggles the mind that we have a nation at all currently.
It’s like our mutual antipathy for each other helps us form a common bond.
$30k/yr. 1965 = $228K 2016, $114/hr 2000 hrs./yr.
1969 was 16% less. Doctors have always averaged less than $200K/yr. There isn’t any job you can realistically get in your 20s today that pays that. (that has more than 10K people that age getting paid over $200K). In terms of prep schools or Ivy League tuition that $30K would buy 10 years including room and board, which would today cost $630K. Nice you did so well, but this is the reason later generations hate the boomers to a degree the boomers don’t seem to realize.
Starting pay pushing $20/hr: $2.63/hr. 1965, $3.12/hr 1969, a bit over double minimum wage –
but that had a pension that nobody offers today in the private sector.
Here in Atlanta I’m seeing $15/hr., 6-12 hrs./ wk. for test prep tutoring requiring top 1% test scores.
I’m sure it’s individual income being compared. The question is if they have gender so they can take into account the big move of women into the workforce.
Speaking of that, if you believe that the labor supply increase from immigration drives down wages, you should DEFINITELY think the labor supply increase from women in the workforce drives down wages; it is bigger in size and women are more evenly spread across the skill distribution.
Buffalo Joe, no offense, but you are being kind of oblivious — $30K in the 1960s would be an annual salary of over $200,000 today when adjusting for inflation. Earning that at 30 today would be a major, major accomplishment. The people who earn that by 30 these days are usually Wall Street types, really successful salesmen, or top law grads. And most of them work 70+ hours a week in insanely stressful jobs in fantastically expensive cities, often with a shit-ton of debt from expensive educations.
You need a refresher on the definition of free market--A system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.
In other words, only a moral monster believes in the free market. Suit yourself. Free-market fetishism isn’t something I’ve ever espoused.
No, only those who believe in unfettered capitalism believes in the free market.
Family structure has little causal effect on life outcomes for children. It is true that children of single mothers tend to do worst than children in two parent families. But that is not a causal effect. Rather single mothers tend to have lower IQ’s than married mothers and the fathers of the children of single mothers also probably have lower IQ’s. The children of single mothers inherit the low IQ of their parents which is why they do worst.
The children of servicemen kill in war show no sign of any above average level of social pathology. In general “shared environment” which includes thing such as family structure, SES, type of schooling, etc. has only a minor effect on children. The most important causal factor on how children turn out is genetics and after that something called “non-shared environment”. The nature of “non-shared environment” is obscure at present but it includes factors not shared in common by siblings so in particular it is independent of family structure, SES, type of schooling etc.
Delete your account.
> The children of servicemen kill in war
Sorry, but I don't know too many native English speakers who would make that level of grammatical mistake.
The ‘glorious thirty’ probably had more to do with cheap oil and the substitution of oil for coal, more than anything else.
That just can’t possibly be true.
German living standards – and wages – increased massively during the period 1945 – 1980.
In fact Germany expanded so fast that it exceeded Britain in terms of per capita wealth sometime around 1965, for the first time in its history, and much to the eternal chagrin of the British.
Also, it effectively ran out of fleeing Germans from the east and had to import Italians, Turks etc.
The children of servicemen kill in war show no sign of any above average level of social pathology. In general "shared environment" which includes thing such as family structure, SES, type of schooling, etc. has only a minor effect on children. The most important causal factor on how children turn out is genetics and after that something called "non-shared environment". The nature of "non-shared environment" is obscure at present but it includes factors not shared in common by siblings so in particular it is independent of family structure, SES, type of schooling etc.
Cite please.
Dreams don’t die because turning them into reality is too frustrated. They die when they lose internal meaning. The American Dream involved having political power no matter your economic station in life. Tocqueville remarked : “The striking thing about the United States… is the rarity of lofty ambitions evident in this land where all are actively ambitious.” Americans were interested in “independence”, “self improvement” and gaining “competency.” No one aimed to climb the social ladder and join the upper class, or merely having a higher material standard, because, if you were white, you had sociopolitical power regardless of your class.
I don’t quite understand why in the chart those born in to very rich families are suffering more than the middle in relative terms over four decades. Why so steep?
The 97th percentile drop, say. Will this continue?
I just saw this subject taken up on Michael Smerconish’s show on CNN – further proof that Sailer is America’s unacknowledged conversation starter.
Who the hell decided that this narrow parameter – expectation of making more money that your parents – is the measure of optimism about the “better, richer, fuller” life of the American Dream? Within the group I associate with it’s understood that wealth is the measure of success and status only amongst those that can’t go fast on a tt bike.
Moreover, while lower percentages of affirmative responses in lower income percentiles must surely indicate greater pessimism, the lower percentages amongst those in the higher percentiles may actually indicate an optimistic sentiment: “Things can’t possibly get any better for us than they are now!” Otherwise, one is left to conclude that the American Dream is still very much alive amongst the poor, but all but dead amongst the super-rich.
The children of servicemen kill in war show no sign of any above average level of social pathology. In general "shared environment" which includes thing such as family structure, SES, type of schooling, etc. has only a minor effect on children. The most important causal factor on how children turn out is genetics and after that something called "non-shared environment". The nature of "non-shared environment" is obscure at present but it includes factors not shared in common by siblings so in particular it is independent of family structure, SES, type of schooling etc.
> Family structure has little causal effect on life outcomes for children.
Delete your account.
> The children of servicemen kill in war
Sorry, but I don’t know too many native English speakers who would make that level of grammatical mistake.
MQ, First, thank you for the detailed response. I worked my way through college as a Union Tradesman, starting an apprenticeship my freshman year. I made $10k plus my junior year, while going to college full time, working on steel mill rebuilds that were seven day 12 hour shifts, time and a half for all OT but Sunday, all double time. Times were indeed different then. I remember a boilermaker friend taking two paychecks and buying a new Lincoln Continental right off the showroom floor. As to your Wall Street example, my son, now fifty, choose that path but in a Midwest city, cheaper housing, same stress, but he retired at 40. Nice.
Were they higher status as schoolteachers? I don't think so, but they rode a wave and left their kids in its wake. I look at Hillary and hate her for the arrogance of that generation, which she personifies. I'll be gritting my teeth as I take care of them in their old age. Lord knows my other siblings won't do it, but I inherited some streak of loyalty from somewhere I know not, and man have I paid dearly for it.
Personally, I'd give up my own life if it would assure my children's future. But looking around I know it wouldn't (quite the contrary), so I can't. I'm not sure most baby boomers even know what sacrifice means, besides maybe having to cut a deal with the kids they screwed over in order to spend some time with the grandkids they suddenly found interesting after they'd already been taught to eat with utensils and wipe their own butts.
I could go on and on. My grandma potty trained me while my parents were pursuing diverse romantic interests. My grandpa taught me to throw a baseball and skip rocks after picking me up every day from daycare and kindergarten for three years in a row. Did I get that kind of help? Oh no, the very idea strikes me as ludicrous. After all, I had to take care of my own baby sister starting at the age of, what, three? I used to be left alone with a german shepherd as a babysitter (at least he was pretty smart and never drunk). The idea of leaving small children alone with these people leaves me with a vague feeling of dread. They may have more money than me, but I suspect that this is largely because their children's interests were pretty low on their list of priorities. Thanks to boomer-inspired family law, it would have been in my best interests to say "sayonara" to my kids years ago, but I took another path, and I swallowed the bitterness for family's sake.
I could whine and cry and call myself unfortunate, but actually this was normal for my generation, so I didn't feel so deprived. In fact, it was liberating sometimes. I remember one very rich girl whose mother regularly forgot her after school who would sit there weeping while I happily roamed the vacant campus on dark winter evenings. I'd ask her "What's the problem? Don't you like it when they leave you alone?" In hindsight, I realized she didn't have grandparents around. I did, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I could mention other friends (lots of them) who had it a lot worse. I mean, really bad 1970s/80s liberated lesbian/swinger mothers and all that fun stuff. But those aren't my stories to tell. I'm actually pretty surprised more of this hasn't come out in art, especially because so many of my contemporaries and especially those who gravitated toward the arts came out of some of the weirdest of "free love" cults (like Children of God -- I know a few of them from my youth), but we late genXers have a way of keeping our cards close to our chests.
They can have their money. Let them spend it on nursing homes staffed by African immigrants -- I know they'd rather blow it on third worlders than ever deign to leave a dime to posterity. It's all going to end like Citizen Kane some day, except with a bonfire of Stones and Beatles vinyl collections. Like Lot, I'd walk away from it all and never look back.
/rant
Loyalty to parents is sacred of course, but there are degrees of loyalty, and parents who caused chaos in their kids’ lives though selfish behavior shouldn’t expect more than the barest minimum of support in their old age.
“In other words, only a moral monster believes in the free market.”
No, only those who believe in unfettered capitalism believes in the free market.
I realize I’m late to this, but is there anyone left out there who can help a brotha out? No matter how long I look at that chart, I just can’t find where the 50% figure for 1980 births comes from. I see the 1980 plot dropping permanently below the 50% line at the 34th percentile. I interpret that to mean that 2/3 of the population is unlikely to make as much as their parents. At the 50th percentile, only about 45% make more than did their parents. What am I missing? Even integrating, it’s clear that there’s considerably more area below the 50% line than above.
On a personal note, I’m 40. I make about $54,000 a year, before taxes. I get no benefits except for 5 paid holidays a year. No vacation or sick pay, no pension or 401k, and no insurance. Other than the complete lack of insurance and vacation pay, I’d say my income is about average for my job. My father turned 40 in 1984. He made about $28,000 that year, (about $65,000 today) plus 100% medical coverage for 4 of us, (him, me, my mother, and my brother) 10 paid holidays, 3 weeks combined sick/vacation pay, and a pension plan that currently pays him about $2,400 a month. As a union employee of the dominant company in his field, his pay was, almost by definition, average for the job.
The biggest difference between us? I’m a CNC programmer/prototype machinist, with 20 years of experience. He was a bus driver, with 10 years of experience. Why did he have less experience at the same age? Because he tried being a machinist at about the same age I started, and he found that he couldn’t hack it. I mean no disrespect to my father, but I’m objectively a more valuable employee than he was. I can drive a bus just fine, and I currently have a standing offer to do so professionally. He washed out as a machinist.
Machining is FAR more technical today, and far more intellectually demanding. I need to know almost everything my father was supposed to know 50 years ago, plus be a borderline computer expert. On a daily basis, I use three very expensive and complex software packages, (Mastercam, Solidworks, and Gibbscam) and I still have to program the 9 axis Swiss lathe longhand, because all that fancy software still isn’t powerful enough for the most complex machines. And once the CNC machines are running, I go back to making parts manually, exactly the same way my father used to in the 60′s. Parts I’ve made are currently in orbit, (and likely on or orbiting other planets) at the bottoms of the oceans, inside human bodies, and pretty much everywhere else you can think of. And today, the pay for that is over $10,000 less every year (inflation adjusted) than a fairly typical Greyhound driver made in the 80′s.
Of course, bus drivers don’t make that much anymore, either. According to Glassdoor,com, it looks like bus drivers average about $45,000 a year now, or about 70% of what my father made in the 80′s. While immigration has probably driven that down some, I get the impression that bus driving is still a much whiter profession than machining. Unlike machining, there’s no way to outsource bus drivers. And as of yet, they still face no competition from automation. (for the moment) Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single job that’s changed less over those 32 years than driving, in terms of either the job requirements, or value to society. On paper, it should be about as stable a profession as there is. But wages haven’t come close to keeping up with inflation.
I agree completely that immigration and outsourcing have hurt Americans severely. But it seems to me there’s more going on. It seems like every job outside the top levels of finance, government, or entertainment, is slowly converging on about $20 per hour. This is coming from both the bottom and the top, as minimum wage (at least in California) is currently going up much faster than inflation, while higher income jobs are going up much slower. In my field, for instance, a lead machinist now typically makes less than twice what a first day apprentice makes, even though he’s dozens of times more productive. Some here would blame immigrants, communism, capitalism, Jews, SJWs, etc. I don’t claim to know what’s behind it, but it’s clearly NOT Adam Smith’s invisible hand. There’s a concerted effort in this country, and probably the world, to force 99.99% of the population back to the status of undifferentiable serfs, who can be mixed, matched, or disposed of, at will. It’s clear to me that whomever is behind this movement has come to the conclusion that allowing the talented to rise is more dangerous than it is productive, so everyone must be held back to the level of the lowest. Globalism is one, but only one, of the means this person/group is using, so I don’t think ending it will solve the problem. I’m 100% behind Trump’s stated goal of tackling globalism. But I fear that even if he’s wildly successful, we still won’t make any progress until the masses quit fighting amongst ourselves, and pick up the torches and pitchforks. The system can’t be “fixed”, because it isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as intended.
Sorry for the rant. Sometimes you get started writing, and just have to go where it takes you.