2018 American Political Scene

[astralis]

worker productivity and efficiency are at historical highs, so the idea that any one generation is harder working or lazier than another is nonsensical.

what we see as populist rage now is simply the economic degradation of what was considered basic principles of being middle-class: a house, two kids, college. it's not that the workers are lazier, but that the fruits of their labor are very obviously going elsewhere. you're not going to support that with the income from one semi-skilled worker. for that matter, these days it's difficult even with the income from two white-collar professionals!

the costs of all those things have exploded, far beyond the income growth. hell, even cost of medicine is going through the roof.

that's why even the GOP has turned populist in propaganda these days.

[Officer of Engineers]

worker productivity and efficiency are at historical highs, so the idea that any one generation is harder working or lazier than another is nonsensical.

How much of that is my generation or the generation that we taught?

A Master Plumber and a Master Electrician making $200K+ a year is nothing to sleeze about. You have to pay your dues, yes but absolutely nothing wrong with that.

[antimony]

What did taking out Gaddafi do for western credibility ? Are countries more likely to trust the west after that or less.

It seems memories are very short when it comes to international affairs

Who else are people going to ally with ? China !?!

What does trade, automation, and economics have anything to do with whatever you are saying?

[Double Edge]

What does trade, automation, and economics have anything to do with whatever you are saying?

Self interest. Whether its military or trade. i am challenging this idea of long lasting damage that requires us to time travel into the future to verify

Astralis was talking military here

you make the same argument using trade

Why are they different ?

TTP talks are continuing with other countries who full well expect the US to join one day. Will the US be denied entry. No

[TopHatter]

I don't associate the shortage of people in my generation going into the trades for "lower work ethic", it's more an indictment on how we were groomed by the educational system, popular culture, and our parents to go to college to be successful. The trades were shown to us to be unglamorous, dispassionate, and a sign of complacency in a world where we were all somehow expected to be doctors, lawyers, and CEOs. Instead, many of my friends who were unable to break into academia and the high professions find themselves scrambling between multiple jobs to pay off student loans and picking up additional credentials for alternate professions.

I'd argue my generation is just as hard working, if not moreso, than previous ones. We just also happen to be the most misdirected.

I had the exact same experience back in the early 90's. The mantra pounded into our heads was "Gotta go to college to get a good job otherwise you'll wind up ruining your body in the building trades".

My guidance counselor was aghast when I informed her that I was not going to college. However I had zero idea of what I wanted out of further education and I'd be damned before I shelled out 6 figures with no plan or direction. In retrospect I could have and should have taken a course or two at the local community college, but that was never put forth as a viable option. It was either a four-year degree or you were a loser in the job market.

But, adhering to the Sinatra Doctrine, I was determined to find my own way in the world: Keep my nose clean, keep away from the party and drugs scene, stay single and child-free.

I didn't know what that way was until several years later, but I found it (logistics) and lo and behold I entered my 40's with an extremely sanguine outlook on life, a homeowner with a criminally tiny mortgage (bought at the extreme bottom of the housing crisis), I'm still single and childfree... and still without a single hour of college time or a dime of student loan debt to my name.

Not bad for a kid whose daddy was born on a mountain top in Tennessee in the family living room, delivered into the world by his daddy.

[Double Edge]

Not bad for a kid whose daddy was born on a mountain top in Tennessee in the family living room, delivered into the world by his daddy.

They call that home delivery in my part of the world : D

I have family of that generation delivered like that.

The mantra pounded into our heads was "Gotta go to college to get a good job otherwise you'll wind up ruining your body in the building trades".

This is more of an american thing. In the UK the amount of people going to college after school was about 5% in the early 90s. Seems abnormally low

With the yuppie generation, working for three or four years meant you knew more, made more than a graduate entering the work force. That changed with recessions. But i've noticed there is more of a working class ethic with the Brits. Americans were better educated in comparison at least in the big cities.

[Red Team]

Exactly what I'm talking about. Pick something. Stick with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with just paying the bills. We have Doctors from India driving cabs in NYC because for whatever reason, they could not get a license to practise in the US. But they're paying the bills just so their kids have a chance at something better. IT DOES NOT MEAN THEIR KIDS WILL BE BETTER BUT THEY HAVE THAT CHANCE. Just a chance. That kind of sacrafice and ethics I don't see with this generation as they deemed having personal social media access as a job prequesit.

At the end of the day, everyone of us just wants to put food on the table and a roof over our heads for our families. That's what is important, not being a CEO of the next big thing.

I completely agree, the American educational curriculum is entirely too focused on academics--a relic of the cold war when we were trying to outscience the Soviets. Currently our trade profession curricula are offered as entirely separate programs from the regular curriculum, with only ONE year of exposure to introductory trade programs in 7th grade. We need to do a better job of telling our youth that there's other pathways to success that don't have to go through college.

[astralis]

My guidance counselor was aghast when I informed her that I was not going to college. However I had zero idea of what I wanted out of further education and I'd be damned before I shelled out 6 figures with no plan or direction. In retrospect I could have and should have taken a course or two at the local community college, but that was never put forth as a viable option. It was either a four-year degree or you were a loser in the job market.

this is very much the college problem today. college as a dumping ground for people who don't know what they want to do (problematic, but can be fixed) and essentially turn it into an ongoing party (where the true problem is). this is actually a weird historical reversion to mean, because prior to the GI Bill, college WAS pretty much finishing-schools for the rich, meant more for the personal connections than what you learned.

of course, businesses buy into this because a college diploma is the lazy man's way of weeding people out.

the issues you identify in the early 90s are magnitudes worse now, which is why college tuition has exploded (that and the state governments massively cutting back on education spending).

a lot of interconnected processes. the collapse of unions, American trade schools and skilled/semi-skilled labor. automaton. huge foreign influx into US universities (out of state tuition >>>> state tuition after all). there's a lot of urgent issues that need to be addressed but hey, let's all enjoy that $40/paycheck tax-cut.

[astralis]

Red Team,

We need to do a better job of telling our youth that there's other pathways to success that don't have to go through college.

but this cannot be done by "merely" changing the educational system alone. there MUST be viable, and even more importantly stable careers open at the end of the educational process.

if you look at the general direction of the American workforce, it's actually going to the other way. the rise of contractor jobs which promise greater immediate pay but fewer benefits and little job stability (this is euphemistically called "flexibility"). the popularity of this is because it's more economically efficient, turning humans closer to the discrete economic units envisioned in Econ 101.

[GVChamp]

Trade school education is not going to catch on because it reeks of classism. And there's no way us upper-middle-class people are going to tell our kids to become plumbers. That'd be f'in stupid. The average plumber salary is $48k. The average accounting salary is $67k, and accounting is a "safety job," the kind of thing you end up doing if you are a loser kid who posted lots of shit on the internet and had years of depression (like me).

You can still have a nice life on a $48k/year salary, though. You just won't have a freaking new $80k pickup truck and you won't live in the nicest neighborhood. But you'll still have a quality used car and an okay house with more major appliances than any British home, and the US gov't will cover quite a bit of your insurance premium, too.

No one in my generation is going to "pay your dues." That's code for "and here's a 2% pay raise, you keep working hard and you might get promoted next year, you know, if we can find it in the budget!" Companies offer double-digit raises to jump ship, so we're going to take those offers. We'd be stupid not to. The companies are stupid for trying to milk their current employees for low wages and then being shocked, absolutely shocked, when they jump ship for market rates.

Between extra 401k and extra bonus, I got something like 15% bonus to get this current job, and I'm looking for another internal position that's going to be another 15%. Nope, not going to sit here with another 2-3% raise after being misled about promotion possibilities because "pay your dues." If you have a hole on your team now, that sounds like a YP (YOUR PROBLEM)

[Officer of Engineers]

Trade school education is not going to catch on because it reeks of classism. And there's no way us upper-middle-class people are going to tell our kids to become plumbers. That'd be f'in stupid. The average plumber salary is $48k.

Like everything else, that depends on you. There's a hell of a lot of difference being certified for house plumbing than being certified to manage an office high rise or new condo water and sewage needs. If you're happy doing house plumbing, all the world to you but that does not mean you can't go up if you want to.

There's a reason for Master Plumber and Master Electrician Certifications and it ain't 2% a year.

And your post reeks of what I'm talking about. You and your upper middle class are blind to what the trades can offer. Paying your dues in this case is called Apprenticeship, aka learning on the job.

[tbm3fan]

the costs of all those things have exploded, far beyond the income growth. hell, even cost of medicine is going through the roof.

that's why even the GOP has turned populist in propaganda these days.

Fixed it based on all I am seeing in costs from education to transportation to housing to health care. You know the basic stuff you need and not the incidentals.

[astralis]

Trade school education is not going to catch on because it reeks of classism. And there's no way us upper-middle-class people are going to tell our kids to become plumbers. That'd be f'in stupid. The average plumber salary is $48k. The average accounting salary is $67k, and accounting is a "safety job," the kind of thing you end up doing if you are a loser kid who posted lots of shit on the internet and had years of depression (like me).

You can still have a nice life on a $48k/year salary, though. You just won't have a freaking new $80k pickup truck and you won't live in the nicest neighborhood. But you'll still have a quality used car and an okay house with more major appliances than any British home, and the US gov't will cover quite a bit of your insurance premium, too.

even then, what you describe as a "nice life on a $48K/year salary" is not equivalent to what was possible in the 1950s or hell, the 1970s.

and good luck sending your kids to college when even state schools now cost a minimum of $40K.

oh, and retirement? pensions don't really exist anymore. hope you've had a good set of years on the stock market.

what was deemed a strictly middle-class lifestyle back then (NOT upper middle-class) is essentially the boundary between the middle/upper-middle class now, IE the difference between earning $50K a year and $75K a year.

Old Economy Steve is one of those memes are that hit it square on the nail.



there's a reason why Paul Ryan's libertarian vision is as popular as cancer even within his own party.

[Officer of Engineers]

and good luck sending your kids to college when even state schools now cost a minimum of $40K.

Well, this makes trade apprenticeships more the appealing, doesn't it?

[Officer of Engineers]

what was deemed a strictly middle-class lifestyle back then (NOT upper middle-class) is essentially the boundary between the middle/upper-middle class now, IE the difference between earning $50K a year and $75K a year.

I challenge this. What we have today is not even possible even if you had $2bil back in the 70s. On demand face-to-face communications across the majority of the globe. Information access that even Nixon, Ford, and Carter could not even dream of. Year round fruits and vegetables. My life is consderibly easier than it was in the 70s.