Considering that there are already plenty of politically motivated violent incidents (fights, arson, etc.) and threats of such, we are already there – and the amount of blood that may be shed in the future may be greater.
Expect racism and other forms of bigotry to increase as people increasingly view “other” people as competitors for what they see as a shrinking economy, or as some other kind of “threat”.
Well, at my current age (61), both of my grandfathers were dead. My grandmothers were not particularly healthy either. At 61, my mother was a soon-to-be widow whose husband (69) was dying of self-induced lung cancer (3 packs a day). I’m certainly much better off than either of my parents, as is DH (his mother died of alcoholism at 59). So… better health, better prospects for the future. Both of us have vastly benefited from modern medicine (I was cured of chondrosarcoma at 51, DH has been in remission from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma since 2001).
As for our kids… I’d say they’re doing okay, although 31-DD is back in school and working part time while 30-DS lives in a tiny house (rented) while he starts company number 2. Neither are married or have kids–which seems late, but is fairly typical for their generation. Who knows what’s coming?
I could argue that constantly increasing consumption is not sustainable and that our kids should expect to be comfortable but not live in luxury. I’m not sure I’d make that argument. The sharing economy is an interesting one. My kids have access to a car for a few hours if they wants one–doesn’t need to own one. Easier that way and cheaper, too. Also, what’s “comfortable” these days would have seemed like major luxury not that long ago. The family farm wasn’t even electrified until my father was 21 (and finishing college).
When my mother was 25 and 9 months pregnant with my older sister, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Her (first) husband enlisted the next day–and she was a single mother, working full-time, until 1945, when he returned from the war and they divorced. My father’s children by his first marriage were raised by his parents after his wife died while he was gone for six years covering WW2.
Our children may not be better off than us, but I would certainly argue they’ll be much better off than their grandparents.
One thing to keep in mind is that while the mobility wasn’t a myth, it wasn’t shared societywide.
In fact, this mobility was practically denied to racial minorities due to blatant discriminatory practices prevalent back then. For instance, Black and other racial minorities didn’t benefit from that era’s prosperity anywhere to the same degree as their White counterparts.
This was underscored by an account an older cousin related yesterday about his recently deceased father/my uncle when he first arrived in the US in the late '50s.
Despite his status of being a college graduate and earning his accountancy certification here in the US, the level of racial discrimination was still so strong that if one was a racial minority/looked visibly foreign, they weren’t considered acceptable candidates in most companies for any official accountancy job or any White collar job with upward mobility.
It was still the common practice for them to be hired and stuck in basic clerk positions which were normally given to real murikans who haven’t graduated high school.
It was only after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the changing attitudes which made such discriminatory practices not only illegal, but also increasingly socially unacceptable did my uncle start getting better job offers and promotions his educational training, skillsets, and work ethic merited.
^Plus, there has been proven discrimination in lending practices historically as well as in the ability for people of color to buy in certain areas which limited these groups’ abilities to benefit from the real estate appreciation that many of the past generation or two benefitted from and led to a significant source of wealth accumulation.
The spouse and I outearn our parents…but our parents have good pensions and good medical insurance. So we have to save more than they did to cover retirement and health care costs. Our everyday standard of living is higher, but we work longer hours. I’d say we are better off. The big “better off” step-up was from my immigrant grandparents (manual labor) to my parents.
D1 is doing better than her parents were at her age. I just looked at what my post-undergrad 30-some years ago salary would be nowadays adjusted for inflation and she is almost double that. D2 will not match that, at least not in the short term. But the spouse and I faced a far more certain future than our children do. Jury is out on if they’ll be better off.
Fascinating. My parents benefitted from a country which both supported individual freedom and also was concerned with overall well being. Their salaries and pensions came from state and local government. Their children were educated to become highly productive members of society by schools and universities supported by (again) state and local government. We all now pay far more in taxes due to that success, thus helping to pay it forward for those just starting on that journey. Our family’s health care was covered by insurance that was affordable and had low deductibles and co-pays. A sibling was diagnosed in their early 20’s with a serious and ultimately fatal illness. Health care costs over 5-6 years ran into seven figure territory–covered by insurance and/or settled by the hospitals and doctors.
Competition is great. So is a safety net. The best country in the world can–and should–afford one. Good education and health care shouldn’t require competition on an individual basis.
@cobrat:
You are correct, and I never meant to say that such mobility was available to all, despite what the type that hagiorize the 1950’s try to claim, there were a lot of peope where the ‘if you work hard, you can achieve in this country’ who didn’t stand a chance back then. I think I was aiming it more that the white working class, who in the 1950’s and 1960’s achieved the middle class dream. It was never equal,while the working class in the northeast and the traditional rust belt flourished, those in weak labor rights states down south lived with low wages and few benefits, and organized labor didn’t make gains down there until much later, and it still never reached the level as elsewhere.
@slitheytove:
Keep in mind that ‘socialism’ only applies to the things that don’t benefit someone. The farmers who go around screaming about ‘socialism’ don’t factor in things like the crop insurance they get from the government, that for really low, low premiums insures them in case their crop fails, or the myriad subsidies they get for growing/not growing, they don’t factor in the interstate highway system that allowed their crops to get to market (not a sure thing before that) and in fact be exported, they don’t count things like the rural electrification authorty that was responsible for their farm having power, or the often government generated power they pay a fraction of what many of us do.
One of the ironies of those who say the 1950’s was the hallmark of the triumph of capitalism are forgetting the many socialistic programs that helped that happen (socialistic in their eyes). the government strongly backed organized labor, which allowed a lot of working class people a chance to live the middle class lifestyle, live in their own home, decent schools, college for their kids. It was in the 1950’s that the federal DOE started making education grants and backed loans that could make college affordable, the post world war II GI bill meant that millions learned a valuable trade or went to college, and VA mortgages meant they could afford their own home. The interstate highway system spurred the growth of areas like the southwest, and the massive federal government dams projects (TVA, Washington state, elsewhere) spurred economic growth that wouldn’t have happened without it and is still paying off.
I also get a little tired of those whose days are full of the Ayn Rand coolaid who spout "socialism’ as if the USSR was actually a socialistic economy, it wasn’t, the USSR was a communistic one, one that, unlike the socialist, refused to recognize the boundary between the private and public, but immediately we get the comparisons to a demand economy if anyone actually says that the government has a role in things, in the economy, it is basically stupid, it is like the religious who go around blaming ‘atheism’ for the excesses of the USSR and other such places,conveniently ignoring the many supposedly ‘religious’ societies (Nazi era Germany was a pretty religious place, 90% of people attended church regulary and so forth) that were brutal dictatorships…the people who spout that in my experience rarely look at their own lives or of those around them to see just how much ‘socialism’ has done for them, I find it especially appalling when a person who grew up benefitting from the very strong organizied labor that held sway until roughly the 1970’s, the kids of blue collar workers who could afford a home in a place with good schools, send them to college, telling me how much the unions screwed up the country, when they benefitted from it, I think part of the problem is they have no vision of what it was like for blue collar workers pre WWII.
The problem as many have said is that the economy in many ways is shrinking, GDP may be growing, but the amount that goes to those who actually produce something is shrinking and has been. A larger and larger share of the economy is going to those whose job it is to produce numbers on a page so others can read those pages, nod favorably at who they work for, so they can raise the stock price and make the few even more well off, the only raise in wages is basically among those who benefit from stocks, whether it is executives and the like, the trading/hedge fund world that manipulates it, or the very well off investors who are the chief clients of this. Regular cash wages have been stagnant or declining for many. The top 20% will always do well, in almost any economy, but the ones to the left and down? Their economy is constricting, and will continue to. Even assuming that things like outsourcing and automation will bring the cost of things down, the way TV sets are dirt cheap today, unless they plan on making it so it costs nothing to produce, and they can give it all away, there is a large pool of consumer and economic demand that is shrinking, and eventually it is going to bite them because the top 20% can’t generate the demand lost by the rest.
There’s a great irony in the “work hard” aspect as it was only after the blatant discriminatory practices in many areas of US society were eradicated by law and changing attitudes in the mid-late '60s onward did my uncle start getting the job offers and promotions merited by his education, skillset, and outstanding work ethic.
Ironically, some of the most bigoted colleagues at a later company ended up being pushed out of the company as their work ethic and skillset didn’t remotely compare to my uncle’s when the field was no longer as heavily stacked against non-Whites. The same company in which he later received promotions and stayed on till retiring after 30+ years while supporting 3 sons through college.
And I had glimpses of the similar sort of hypocrisy from some of the racist locals in the area around my Midwest college town decrying “welfare queens in the cities” considering most of them were also collecting welfare and other forms of public assistance for decades. Many I’ve met also seem to hold strongly onto their feelings of entitlement for a well-paying middle class job with only some HS education(not even graduating with a full diploma).
@cobrat:
It gets complicated, but a lot of your observations hold true in my experience as well. While I think it is very easy to dismiss the anger out there as whiners who didn’t want to work or compete (basically the idea promulgated by more than a few that the angry people are life’s losers, etc), there are large elements of those who look back to a time when thanks both to racism and a booming economy could get a job that paid decently without much education, a lot of the resentment of affirmative action and also the civil rights laws was in part based on those who could get a job easily because they were the ‘right’ race or gender, not being able to.
There also is a kind of cause and effect thing, many of the places you are talking about, @cobrat, were almost proud of how little they spent on education, on being low tax and on the idea that “see, we do well, and we don’t have fancy-shmancy schools” and that kind of anti education attitude…and when the world changed, their education system couldn’t/can’t handle it.
That said, though, there also are serious issues that need to be addressed. The top 20% will always do well for themselves, and the well educated with the skills generally will do okay, but the problem is that you can’t have an economy based only on the success of the 20%, and you can’t leave those in the middle of the bell curve behind, if we do that you end up with the kind of economy you see in places like South america or Mexico, where the top 20% live behind gated walls and everyone else is left to fend for themselves, with all the ills that come from that. There are no easy answers, but blaming those who are angry today was like the way they blamed blacks and other minorities for their anger over economic and social injustice, the same people who 40 or 50 years ago were saying “what is wrong with the colored, that they can’t see if they just work hard they can do well, there is something wrong with them”, etc, now face the same thing and they are just as angry, the only jobs they face are McJobs and the like, breakdown of families, drugs, you name it…that middle class, or the perception of it, was what has made the US a relatively stable country for a lot of years, and if that perception gets shattered it will get really ugly, even more than we see today.
There are no easy answers, the ideas that everything is China’s fault, or that people are lazy or underserving, are basically simplistic slogans, what is not is the question on how going into the future, where automation (anyone catch when the head of Carrier said they were going ahead with automating the plant in Indiana that Trump said he saved 1000 jobs at? Think those jobs will last in the face of automation?) is taking more jobs, even in places like China, how are we as a country going to face this, as even white collar jobs may be taken over by automation (take a look at Charles Schwab and other financial firms, they now have computerized ‘investment advisors’ that can replace a human advisor (I think many of them currently offer this for free). What happens when white collar tasks get automated by AI? How do we build a world where relatively few are needed to run it? And those are things no one is addressing, a lot of people are running around under the delusion you can recreate the world of the 1950’s, that isn’t going to happen, and what does the term ‘full employment’ really mean? Should perhaps we go to a world where certain levels of income are maintained and then people work at things they have a passion for, things where you need a human being to do it? One thing I do know, the survival of the fittest/lord of the flies kind of mentality where those who succeed are lauded and those left behind are left to rot and told they just can’t cut it isn’t going to work, both economically and socially, an economy dominated by a very small group of people is a banana republic, not a functioning country, and socially it also leads to a banana republic, too,
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51361-HouseholdIncomeFedTaxes_OneCol.pdf may be of interest.
In particular, the tables and charts starting at page 31 can give a quick overview of the distribution of income and federal taxes in 2013 in the US. For example, figure 13 on page 42 shows the inflation-adjusted after-tax income gains from 1979-2013 of the top 1% (+192%) versus the top 20% excluding the top 1% (+70%), the middle three quintiles (+46%), and the lowest quintile (+41%). So that is like 1% income growth per year for the bottom 80%, 1.5% income growth per year for the top 20% excluding the top 1%, and 3.2% income growth per year for the top 1%, although the yearly growth varies from year to year (particularly for the top 1%, whose income is mostly non-labor, unlike the other groups).
So people’s incomes have been growing over the years on average, but only slowly for most. But people may still be dissatisfied because:
a. Those whose income growth is below average could easily be in the negative income growth (i.e. poorer than before). Even a small loss of income can make people much more unhappy than a similar size gain can make them more happy. Also, if losses are concentrated in regions or industries, those losing income may know many others who also are losing income.
b. The relatively large gains of the top 1% may lead to more resentment among the bottom 99% against the top 1%.
Here is the transcript of United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes interview with Jim Cramer: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/05/cnbc-transcript-united-technologies-chairman-ceo-greg-hayes-on-cnbcs-mad-money-w-jim-cramer-today.html
And all paid for by the people of Indiana. The disconnect is astounding.
This is the very mentality which was prevalent in the area around my rural Midwest College town when I was an undergrad and one which I find in other rust belt areas and parts of the south such as the rural area of Mississippi a branch of my extended family lives.
And it’s one which is very alien to the cultures of most immigrants/international students…and not only from Asia. Many Europeans I knew of were struck by how prevalent and more importantly, accepted* such anti-intellectual attitudes were among many Americans.
And some weren’t part of the top 20% as they didn’t meet the academic cut within the same-aged cohort while they were going through their respective countries’ educational systems back in their countries of origin**. However, they all availed themselves of the educational/training opportunities they were offered and made it a point to learn beyond “what’s needed for the job/career path”.
On the flipside, this attitude here in the US isn’t limited to the lower-middle class and lower-income backgrounds…it also infested many comfortably upper/upper-middle class families such as former classmates of Mississippi cousins at the former segregation academy they attended for 1 year before finding the academic rigor/attitudes among classmates were such the parents immediately pulled them out for better educational options.
** Some did attend and graduate from colleges here in the US…including top 50 colleges. And most found the academic rigor to be surprisingly easier than what they experienced even in their non-college track/higher vocational high schools.
Real, per pupil education funding doubled in the US since the early 70s. NAEP scores in reading and math have been almost flat, except for small gains in minority populations. There’s zero evidence to support the theory that increasing educational spending leads to improved student test scores.
"Teasing out the specific effect of money spent is methodologically difficult. Opponents of increased school funding have seized on that ambiguity to argue that, for schools, money doesn’t matter — and, therefore, more money isn’t needed.
But new, first-of-its-kind research suggests that conclusion is mistaken. Money really does matter in education, which could provide fresh momentum for more lawsuits and judgments like the Connecticut decision."
If anyone has one of the approprate email addresses they can download the paper here:
Taiwan’s low educational spending is on par with Latin American countries, yet its test scores are near the top of the international ranks.
And look at how much Wash D.C. spends per capita on public schools. What a travesty…
At least one problem with the Lafortune and Rothstein study is using 4th and 8th grade results. If we want to know how well students are prepared for the work world and college, they should be using the 12th grade results. Granted, that’s on a long lag time. If you look at the national NAEP data, there’s been gains in 8th grade math, since 1990, but they dissipate by 12th grade.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
Trust in most entities and institutions has gone down over the years, according to Gallup polls.
Perhaps the is an unfavorable omen for the future, since lower trust societies tend to be poorer, more corrupt, and less free.
Note that Freedom House says that freedom is on a downward trend in the US.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/united-states