Tangential Comment from Bachman thread - gnashing of teeth over political polarity

[mtnlaurel]

If everyone is so frickin' concerned about Family Values why don't they (whoever 'they' are) all REALLY focus on getting their BEhinds to the negotiating table and create jobs or at the very least an environment that will lead to JOBS FOR OUR FAMILIES.

This Great Recession has kicked my family in the nuts repeatedly and we are fraying because of it - if there is another serious dip in the economy due to them 'richarding' around up there with the debt ceiling, it's 'gonna be a mess.
And we did the responsible thing: advanced degrees (check), 6 month emergency fund (check), kids once we could afford them (check) - we got out of our mortgage immediately when my DH was laid off in the summer of '08, praise the Lord - and thankfully he's employed again after over a year of unemployment, thank the Lord.
I just don't think that my family can withstand getting clotheslined by the economy again....
I'm sure we could - I AM a crafty little survivor, so I know really we'll be ok - and obviously thanks to Voluntary Simplicity I'm not totally held hostage by consumerism.

If DC screws around and kills the illusion of the 'American Dream' they are going to have all kinds of trouble on their hands.
The belief that you can better your circumstances through hardwork & education is one of glues that holds us together as a nation.

[Tenngal]

because they are more concerned with the re-elections and re-lining of thier wealthy contributors pockets. How many of our elected officials really have to worry about jobs, healthcare, retirement, etc? If they had to contend with the same broken system as us, it would be different.

[ApatheticNoMore]

If everyone is so frickin' concerned about Family Values why don't they (whoever 'they' are) all REALLY focus on getting their BEhinds to the negotiating table and create jobs or at the very least an environment that will lead to JOBS FOR OUR FAMILIES.

I wonder how much is even in their power. I mean look the whole world is capsized. The latest news is Spain and Italy are on the verge of bankruptcy and the Euro nations can't really afford to bail them out if it came to that (these aren't little tiny economies, they are "too big to bail" :~)). Now that may seem off topic, but I'm just saying to some degree these problems are global. Global bond traders rule the world, yea those who will buy government debt. That's the cost paid for going in debt (as a country, but all countries run on debt to some degree it's just a question of how much).

So the global economy is in a very risky state. And that's just economic chaos, everyone knows the whole thing is fundamentally environmentally unsustainable as well.


This Great Recession has kicked my family in the nuts repeatedly and we are fraying because of it - if there is another serious dip in the economy due to them 'richarding' around up there with the debt ceiling, it's 'gonna be a mess.
And we did the responsible thing: advanced degrees (check), 6 month emergency fund (check), kids once we could afford them (check)

The thing about doing all the "right things" is that it can always be pooh poohed. Are your advanced degrees in liberal arts of social science? People can say: oh the horror, you should have gotten them in business, or engineering or healthcare. Until there are too many MBA's and then it's you should have gotten them in x, y, z. Not really my position, just what people do to DISTANCE themselves from those who are suffering by saying it could not happen to them because those people didn't do the right things like I do see.

As individuals we have *some* control to increase our odds of being successful, it would be ridiculous to argue otherwise, but the economy is severely fraying yes and a lot of sure paths aren't anymore. Any certain path to staying in the middle class based on degrees is becoming increasingly obsolete (I mean sure they sometimes improve your odds, but again no guarantee). It is probably not even a sophisticated enough approach for individuals these days, job markets for a field should probably be researched to death too, and even then things may change in the time it takes you to get the credentials. This isn't even done because people are raised on whole perceptions of the world that include things like "degrees will make you middle class", and these are basic world-views that sink in at a very deep level. Besides the job market is too complex for anyone to make total sense of, would probably take whole applications of chaos theory or something :). We do what we can.


If DC screws around and kills the illusion of the 'American Dream' they are going to have all kinds of trouble on their hands.
The belief that you can better your circumstances through hardwork & education is one of glues that holds us together as a nation.

And there are people it has always been pretty untrue for like those living generation after generation in the ghetto. But yea, while they still have more opportunities, it's the middle class now, at risk. There are TONS of things our politicians are doing wrong!!!! We bailed out bankers rather than homeowners!!! I'm a renter and have never had an unaffordable home loan in my life. But come on, bailing out the bankers versus homeowners, I know which one would have been fairer (not the bankers). We continue to fund several wars and semi-wars, meanwhile tons and tons of people in the country are unemployed. UP FRONT we committed to the bail outs and the wars, now we don't have money for anything that might help the ordinary person economically. It's like buying a Porche on a 20k a year income and continually saying to the landlord "sorry can't pay rent, I'm totally broke, I already COMMITTED to the Porche see .... and I can't get out of it now" (that is exactly the argument we make for the wars). Meanwhile there has been a very deliberate transfer of money to the rich in the last few decades which doesn't help anything. Ok, maybe some degree of that is just the result of global capitalism, I won't say none of it is, but to the extent that the WHOLE global economy has been backstopped by the U.S. Fed, uh no, it's not just the invisible hand either. I'm not sure what would help economically at this point. A new green WPA? I'm don't know ....

[ApatheticNoMore]

Individuals are supposed to be infinitely flexible in responding to job markets these days too. So your manufacturing/real estate/whatever career has gone away. Be flexible, bend but don't break, find a new career. So ok say you have this mental flexibility down pat. So retrain.

But there's all kinds of what economists would call "transaction costs" in actually retraining. The ability to easily slip from one thing to another is not AT ALL facilitated, the wheels are more rusty than greased. Several transaction costs:
1) ever increasing barriers of entry to new fields. Oftentimes these barriers to entry are VERY deliberately built. When you need more and more advanced degrees just to enter the same field even when that field seems to be in some shortage, you know you've tripped on a real barrier
2) ever increasing costs of education, yea switching careers is a lot harder when you run up tens of thousands in debt every time it happens. And you are supposed to switch careers what 7 times in a lifetime. Oh yea just take out college debt seven times in your lifetime,that sounds like a reasonable plan!
3) inability to get classes at public schools, which are the only real way to avoid the massive debt of #2. But if you can't get the classes you need to switch in a timely manner where is the economic flexibility to switch to new labor markets? Education as a means of gearing a workforce to economic changes actually make sense. Education for a liberal arts broad perception of the world may make some sense too but probably should be apart from the former. What doesn't make sense is education as a means of ever accelerating barriers to entry (more and more advanced degrees to do the same thing).

Which really brings me to: our economic problems aren't just the structural types described above where a worker's field went away. Sure this applies to some of the unemployed, like real estate agents. But way way deeper fundamental problems exist, as in there just aren't enough jobs period!

[Gina]

The Republicans' prime objective is return to power. And the best way to do that is to do whatever they have to in order to keep the economy bad. In 2010 they were elected on the promise of 'jobs, jobs, jobs' yet they have done absolutely nothing about that. They are more interested in blocking whatever the president wants, even if they are things they formerly endorsed. Mitch McConnell clearly stated that his main goal was to keep Obama a one-term president - in other words, Republicans first, country be damned.

They would rather have the country go down the tubes in order to be elected than anything else. It is that simple.

I speak as a still-registered Republican whose Grand Old Party has been pulled out from under her by the power hungry lunatic fringe. And, yes, I'm not happy about it.

[iris lily]

... In 2010 they were elected on the promise of 'jobs, jobs, jobs'...

I disagree. While that may be what you think happened in the election, that's not what I saw.

Taking the bloated federal government down several pegs is what the fall elections were about. In my group of Republican friends we don't talk about the Republicans creating jobs, although certainly an environment that promotes business growth would aid that.

I personally don't expect the gooberment to make "jobs jobs jobs" and if they are, they aren't doing what I want them to do, they would be acting like Democrats.

[Alan]

If everyone is so frickin' concerned about Family Values why don't they (whoever 'they' are) all REALLY focus on getting their BEhinds to the negotiating table and create jobs or at the very least an environment that will lead to JOBS FOR OUR FAMILIES.


The thing is, government cannot create jobs (other than government jobs that depend entirely on the private sector to support), it can only try to perpetuate an environment where the economy can grow which leads to jobs.

The real problem now is that we have a government which is anti-business. It has expressed an interest in inhibiting the economy through it's desire to regulate, to make energy more expensive, to keep employers guessing about what the long term cost per employee will be, to seize more and more money through taxation, making the prospect of off-shoring more and more likely for those businesses that can.

If you are interested in improving your prospects, your best bang for your buck would be to kick all the progressives out of government. They won't be happy until they've equalized the playing field for everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

[poetry_writer]

Individuals are supposed to be infinitely flexible in responding to job markets these days too. So your manufacturing/real estate/whatever career has gone away. Be flexible, bend but don't break, find a new career. So ok say you have this mental flexibility down pat. So retrain.

But there's all kinds of what economists would call "transaction costs" in actually retraining. The ability to easily slip from one thing to another is not AT ALL facilitated, the wheels are more rusty than greased. Several transaction costs:
1) ever increasing barriers of entry to new fields. Oftentimes these barriers to entry are VERY deliberately built. When you need more and more advanced degrees just to enter the same field even when that field seems to be in some shortage, you know you've tripped on a real barrier
2) ever increasing costs of education, yea switching careers is a lot harder when you run up tens of thousands in debt every time it happens. And you are supposed to switch careers what 7 times in a lifetime. Oh yea just take out college debt seven times in your lifetime,that sounds like a reasonable plan!
3) inability to get classes at public schools, which are the only real way to avoid the massive debt of #2. But if you can't get the classes you need to switch in a timely manner where is the economic flexibility to switch to new labor markets? Education as a means of gearing a workforce to economic changes actually make sense. Education for a liberal arts broad perception of the world may make some sense too but probably should be apart from the former. What doesn't make sense is education as a means of ever accelerating barriers to entry (more and more advanced degrees to do the same thing).

Which really brings me to: our economic problems aren't just the structural types described above where a worker's field went away. Sure this applies to some of the unemployed, like real estate agents. But way way deeper fundamental problems exist, as in there just aren't enough jobs period!

I agree. I wonder what would be a real workable way to get more jobs. All of the crap we buy is made overseas. We just peddle it. Not sure of what a real solution would be at this point.....

[Spartana]

I agree. I wonder what would be a real workable way to get more jobs. All of the crap we buy is made overseas. We just peddle it. Not sure of what a real solution would be at this point.....

Yep. It would be nice to see a manufacturing base come back to the USA but don't think it will happen because of cost. Too expensive to manufacture here (wages, environmental protections, etc...) so don't see that happening...ever. The US is going the way that most every country in history has once it shifts from producer to consumer - a steady downhill trend economically.

[LDAHL]

The "Death of American Manufacturing" is a bit of a political urban legend. We still produce close to 20% of the world's output with about 5% of the world's population. We have seen probably a permanent decline in manufacturing employment, as much due to increasing productivity as foreign competition. Clearly, this isn't going to be a great century for low and semi-skilled workers.

I've often thought that trade protectionism is to the Left what creationism is to the Right: a really dumb idea fervently clung to by an influential minority that makes the whole movement seem a bit silly.

[poetry_writer]

Yep. It would be nice to see a manufacturing base come back to the USA but don't think it will happen because of cost. Too expensive to manufacture here (wages, environmental protections, etc...) so don't see that happening...ever. The US is going the way that most every country in history has once it shifts from producer to consumer - a steady downhill trend economically.

So if we arent going to make things here because of the cost and the environment, where would jobs comes from? I dont see any solution. What else could create jobs?

[poetry_writer]

The "Death of American Manufacturing" is a bit of a political urban legend. We still produce close to 20% of the world's output with about 5% of the world's population. We have seen probably a permanent decline in manufacturing employment, as much due to increasing productivity as foreign competition. Clearly, this isn't going to be a great century for low and semi-skilled workers.

I've often thought that trade protectionism is to the Left what creationism is to the Right: a really dumb idea fervently clung to by an influential minority that makes the whole movement seem a bit silly.

I dont see the "low and semi skilled" workers as you call them as being the problem. Actually many of them are very skilled at what they do. There are no frikkin jobs to do their skills at.....So what do you think the solution is? Millions are unemployed and desperately want to be employed....

[ApatheticNoMore]

I don't believe manufacturing is unskilled.

But anyway, competition is pretty fierce in the labor market for what would be called more "skilled" jobs too, at least around here. I see what companies want, not only all the skills with zero learning curve at all, but having worked in the EXACT (not similar but exact match) same industry before etc.. The screening goes far beyond just someone who can do the job.

[LDAHL]

I dont see the "low and semi skilled" workers as you call them as being the problem. Actually many of them are very skilled at what they do. There are no frikkin jobs to do their skills at.....So what do you think the solution is? Millions are unemployed and desperately want to be employed....

I’m not blaming low and semi-skilled laborers for structural changes in the world economy. It’s not their fault countries like China and India began to realize the folly of socialist policies and actually began to compete. It’s not their fault technology left so many of them behind. And it’s certainly not their fault that decades of pusillanimous immigration enforcement has depressed the price of low skilled labor.
What can government do? Apart from subsidizing retraining and promoting higher educational standards, I would say mostly stay out of the way. Reduce the amount of capital sucked into the black hole of the deficit. Don’t try picking the winners and losers through industrial policy – they’re simply not smart enough to do it. Refrain from inflating the currency to the point where investing for the future becomes problematic. Keep regulations to a reasonable minimum . Rationalize the tax code. Stop treating business like the enemy .

[redfox]

The real problem now is that we have a government which is anti-business. It has expressed an interest in inhibiting the economy through it's desire to regulate, to make energy more expensive, to keep employers guessing about what the long term cost per employee will be, to seize more and more money through taxation, making the prospect of off-shoring more and more likely for those businesses that can.

There are many ways to do & promote business. The Danes have the most stable economy around, have had no bank failures or mortgage defaults, and the highest indices of happiness on several surveys. It seems that there is a model for both providing for social well being and being profitable and stable in business.

[Lainey]

I don't buy the "government is anti-business" excuse. If anything, our government, including our courts, are extremely pro-business. Not to mention that we are one of the most lightly taxed of all the first world countries.

Other than that, I agree with this: "Refrain from inflating the currency to the point where investing for the future becomes problematic. Keep regulations to a reasonable minimum . Rationalize the tax code."

[LDAHL]

There are many ways to do & promote business. The Danes have the most stable economy around, have had no bank failures or mortgage defaults, and the highest indices of happiness on several surveys. It seems that there is a model for both providing for social well being and being profitable and stable in business.

Well, I don’t know how you measure happiness (gigglebytes?), but you’re wrong on the bank failure statement. Amagerbanken, failed in February. They were the eleventh to fail since the 2008 crisis.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I don't buy the "government is anti-business" excuse. If anything, our government, including our courts, are extremely pro-business.

A generalization like the "government is anti-business" or "the government is pro-business" is 100% worthless. That there are certain large national and multinational corporations that often pull the government strings, yes. But if you aren't one of those favored giant corporations there are plenty of laws that make it hard to do business, some entirely justified of course, and many not so much so.


Not to mention that we are one of the most lightly taxed of all the first world countries.

Are we talking business or individual taxes? With individual taxes this is probably somewhat true, but less so than you would think, when you include state and local taxation in the total tax burden.

[creaker]

I don't buy the "government is anti-business" excuse. If anything, our government, including our courts, are extremely pro-business. Not to mention that we are one of the most lightly taxed of all the first world countries.



I think government is very pro-business - otherwise 1000's of lobbyists have done nothing but bash their collective heads against walls for years and years, which I don't believe is true. What happens I think is government often ends up being pro-business by trying to hobble the businesses competing with business they are behind - which looks anti-business. Multiply by that by all the congressmen and all the lobbyists all pulling in their own directions and of course it's going to look like a mess.

That said I think it's the only reason our system has worked for as long as it has - no one thing has been able to pull things too far in one direction without the rest pulling it back.

[Mangano's Gold]

The "Death of American Manufacturing" is a bit of a political urban legend. We still produce close to 20% of the world's output with about 5% of the world's population. We have seen probably a permanent decline in manufacturing employment, as much due to increasing productivity as foreign competition. Clearly, this isn't going to be a great century for low and semi-skilled workers..
For the American worker, I don't think think the "death of manufacturing" is a political legend. The idea of a secure job in manufacturing with wages and benefits that can comfortably support a family and provide for a nice retirement is gone. It is indeed dead. This may mean that you and I can get cheaper salad spinners, book cases, and furnaces, but a large segment of the middle class got taken behind the woodshed and beaten for it. IMO, that the US still produces 20% of world "output" should be little consolation for the former industrial worker. Output doesn't mean output in the tangible sense. It more and more means the output of service workers, like call center workers and nurses aids.

[Mangano's Gold]

Free trade has winners and losers. This isn't hard to either understand or see.

The US, Britain, South Korea and others all became rich by protecting their growing industries. They didn't adopt free trade policies while they were growing into powers. That is a myth. China, Singapore, Germany, Japan, etc..all have industrial policies. The government may have a larger role to play than it currently does, despite 2011 consensus thinking.

[redfox]

Well, I don’t know how you measure happiness (gigglebytes?), but you’re wrong on the bank failure statement. Amagerbanken, failed in February. They were the eleventh to fail since the 2008 crisis.

The happiness survey I read about in Forbes -
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/world-happiest-places-lifestyle-travel-world-happiest.html

Thank you for the correction on the Danish bank failure.

[iris lily]

There are many ways to do & promote business. The Danes have the most stable economy around, have had no bank failures or mortgage defaults, and the highest indices of happiness on several surveys. It seems that there is a model for both providing for social well being and being profitable and stable in business.

Get me into a monoculture like Denmark, only made up of my fellow Scots Americans, and we'd have this ship turned right 'round pronto. It's easier to row in the in the same direction when you share core values and vision.

The big Melting Pot of the U.S and all of its cultures and geographic traditions make for a far more complex society that is harder to maneuver.

Scandoculture may be interesting but only somewhat relevant to the problems of the U.S.

[Mangano's Gold]

Get me into a monoculture like Denmark, only made up of my fellow Scots Americans, and we'd have this ship turned right 'round pronto. It's easier to row in the in the same direction when you share core values and vision.

The big Melting Pot of the U.S and all of its cultures and geographic traditions make for a far more complex society that is harder to maneuver.

Scandoculture may be interesting but only somewhat relevant to the problems of the U.S.
It pains me to say this and I debated keeping my mouth shut. I'm going to be blunt. You are right that it is harder here in the US than Scandanavia. Translation: Scandanavia doesn't have the blacks, or their version of blacks in the numbers that we do. Racial antipathy in the US isn't overblown. It is wildly understated. A whole lot of Americans don't want the blacks to get a f-n penny. So cut the programs. If it were just Anglos/Scotsmen, no problem, we'd find an accomodation. But not the f-n blacks. You (iris) may not feel this way. Your post may have just been poorly worded, but it illustrates a basic, uncomfortable, tribal truth.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I think government is very pro-business - otherwise 1000's of lobbyists have done nothing but bash their collective heads against walls for years and years, which I don't believe is true. What happens I think is government often ends up being pro-business by trying to hobble the businesses competing with business they are behind - which looks anti-business. Multiply by that by all the congressmen and all the lobbyists all pulling in their own directions and of course it's going to look like a mess.

That may be quite accurate. I also think that with the sheer complexity of all the hundreds of pages in bills NOBODY REALLY KNOWS what they are voting for anymore. Seriously.

The government nearly put one company I worked for recently out of business. And the threat there was real. It wasn't just a company complaining about tax increases, just because that's how companies propagandize. Nah I saw well enough from an insider perspective, it was laws that would have put them out of business. And no they weren't poisoning the water supply or anything, I wouldn't work for a company that was doing harm anyway, I just wouldn't, but that company was quite benign. Anyway, it was just unintended side effects of obscure portions of bad laws (see what I mean when I say noone entirely knows what they are even doing, not at the detailed level that can make or break a company anyway).

Things become easier if you become a huge national or multinational corporation. You suddenly have the ears of congressmen and can prevent this being put out of business by bad laws thing that smaller companies often can't. In fact you can even write the laws to your favor. In fact I think entanglement with government kind of almost automatically comes when a company reaches a certain size. It may start courting government as a customer and pretty soon be getting even a decent chunk of it's revenue that way. I seldom think you can be a huge corporation without being involved with the government.

[LDAHL]

For the American worker, I don't think think the "death of manufacturing" is a political legend. The idea of a secure job in manufacturing with wages and benefits that can comfortably support a family and provide for a nice retirement is gone. It is indeed dead. This may mean that you and I can get cheaper salad spinners, book cases, and furnaces, but a large segment of the middle class got taken behind the woodshed and beaten for it. IMO, that the US still produces 20% of world "output" should be little consolation for the former industrial worker. Output doesn't mean output in the tangible sense. It more and more means the output of service workers, like call center workers and nurses aids.

It's not so much the death of manufacturing as the decline of the highly paid semi-skilled manufacturing job. The 20% is manufacturing output excluding services. We simply are producing more per worker, often replacing labor with technology. That, coupled with a half-century trend of competitors recovering from a global war and in some cases from brutally stupid socialist policies, has meant fewer jobs in that sector.

We can look for scapegoats, subsidize failure and erect self-destructive trade barriers, or we can compete. There is no conspiracy against the US middle class. History and technology have moved on. The great majority of us used to work on farms, but we adapted, however painfully, to new realities. That will have to happen again.

[LDAHL]

The happiness survey I read about in Forbes -
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/world-happiest-places-lifestyle-travel-world-happiest.html

Thank you for the correction on the Danish bank failure.

So what they're really measuring are the numbers of people who feel the need to tell surveyors that they're happy.