First para. from Kurt Andersen article in today's 'The Atlantic'....

gliderboy

gliderboy

Well-Known Member
From my parents’ teenage years in the 1930s and ’40s through my teenage years in the 1970s, American economic life became a lot more fair and democratic and secure than it had been when my grandparents were teenagers. But then all of a sudden, around 1980, that progress slowed, stopped, and in many ways reversed.

I didn’t really start understanding the nature and enormity of the change until the turn of this century, after the country had been fully transformed. One very cold morning just after Thanksgiving in 2006, I was on the way to Eppley Airfield in Omaha after my first visit to my hometown since both my parents had died, sharing a minivan jitney from a hotel with a couple of Central Casting airline pilots—tall, fit white men around my age, one wearing a leather jacket. We chatted. To my surprise, even shock, both of them spent the entire trip sputtering and whining—about being bait-and-switched when their employee-ownership shares of United Airlines had been evaporated by its recent bankruptcy, about the default of their pension plan, about their CEO’s recent 40 percent pay raise, about the company to which they’d devoted their entire careers but no longer trusted at all. In effect, about changing overnight from successful all-American middle-class professionals who’d worked hard and played by the rules into disrespected, cheated, sputtering, whining chumps.

The rest of the article is interesting as well:
www.theatlantic.com

College-Educated Professionals Are Capitalism’s Useful Idiots

How I got co-opted into helping the rich prevail at the expense of everybody else
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
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gliderboy said:
From my parents’ teenage years in the 1930s and ’40s through my teenage years in the 1970s, American economic life became a lot more fair and democratic and secure than it had been when my grandparents were teenagers. But then all of a sudden, around 1980, that progress slowed, stopped, and in many ways reversed.

I didn’t really start understanding the nature and enormity of the change until the turn of this century, after the country had been fully transformed. One very cold morning just after Thanksgiving in 2006, I was on the way to Eppley Airfield in Omaha after my first visit to my hometown since both my parents had died, sharing a minivan jitney from a hotel with a couple of Central Casting airline pilots—tall, fit white men around my age, one wearing a leather jacket. We chatted. To my surprise, even shock, both of them spent the entire trip sputtering and whining—about being bait-and-switched when their employee-ownership shares of United Airlines had been evaporated by its recent bankruptcy, about the default of their pension plan, about their CEO’s recent 40 percent pay raise, about the company to which they’d devoted their entire careers but no longer trusted at all. In effect, about changing overnight from successful all-American middle-class professionals who’d worked hard and played by the rules into disrespected, cheated, sputtering, whining chumps.
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A jitney in Omaha?
 
gliderboy said:
From my parents’ teenage years in the 1930s and ’40s through my teenage years in the 1970s, American economic life became a lot more fair and democratic and secure than it had been when my grandparents were teenagers. But then all of a sudden, around 1980, that progress slowed, stopped, and in many ways reversed.

I didn’t really start understanding the nature and enormity of the change until the turn of this century, after the country had been fully transformed. One very cold morning just after Thanksgiving in 2006, I was on the way to Eppley Airfield in Omaha after my first visit to my hometown since both my parents had died, sharing a minivan jitney from a hotel with a couple of Central Casting airline pilots—tall, fit white men around my age, one wearing a leather jacket. We chatted. To my surprise, even shock, both of them spent the entire trip sputtering and whining—about being bait-and-switched when their employee-ownership shares of United Airlines had been evaporated by its recent bankruptcy, about the default of their pension plan, about their CEO’s recent 40 percent pay raise, about the company to which they’d devoted their entire careers but no longer trusted at all. In effect, about changing overnight from successful all-American middle-class professionals who’d worked hard and played by the rules into disrespected, cheated, sputtering, whining chumps.

The rest of the article is interesting as well:
www.theatlantic.com

College-Educated Professionals Are Capitalism’s Useful Idiots

How I got co-opted into helping the rich prevail at the expense of everybody else
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
Click to expand...
The Atlantic, founded in Boston, Much MUCH better than Harpers.

Don't go down the path of Harpers index, bunch of NY newspeak thatll dull your whits! The only syrup is Maple Syrup!
 
Boris Badenov said:
Eh. You mentioned it was founded in Boston, and it's not real hard to tell. Certainly a certain subset of intelligent perspectives.
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I do my little New Englander dance a lot, but as seriously as i can say it, economist is one if a kind. Really keeps thing in perspective.
 
TLDR

I wish that they'd give you a cliff notes of what the article is about before you dive in right at the beginning. Got halfway thru and stopped reading, something about unions being whittled down and the rich get richer.
 
If we're reading hoity toity stuff, I prefer "Garden & Gun"

Homepage

Garden and Gun magazine celebrates the modern South and features the best in Southern food, style, travel, music, art, literature, and sporting culture.
gardenandgun.com gardenandgun.com
 
Anyone care to set the over/under on this thread getting banished to the Lavatory? I'm gonna say post #27.

This was a great (albeit long) read. Thanks for sharing.
 
Richman said:
If we're reading hoity toity stuff, I prefer "Garden & Gun"

Homepage

Garden and Gun magazine celebrates the modern South and features the best in Southern food, style, travel, music, art, literature, and sporting culture.
gardenandgun.com gardenandgun.com
Click to expand...

I looked for a laugh, and then started reading about that '33 Alfa. I would like to subscribe...
 
Former Clinton Sec. of Labor Robert Reich has written a new book... " The system: Who rigged it, How we fix it."

I am now retired and old enough to remember the change brought about by a young man, who grew up near me in South West Michigan, named David Stockman. He was an economics advisor to Ronald Regan in his first administration, holding the title of budget director. He, a few others, had the idea of a new economics called, "Trickle Down", economics. It was literally scribbled on the back of a napkin and made simple so that Ronald Regan could understand it.

1. Cut taxes on the wealthy- they are the job creators
2. The wealthy will create more jobs and the benefits will "trickle down" to the workers. Their productivity and wages will increase.
3. More economic activity will happen and the most wondrous thing of all will happen, tax receipts will go up because of greater economic activity.


When G.H.W. Bush, Bush Sr., was running against Ronald Regan for the GOP nomination for President in 1980, he called it Vodoo Economics. He was right. Trickle down economics is a crock of •. It doesn't work, simply speaking. The defenders of "trickle down" might point to today's tech giants as proof of their claim. Apple's gross revenue was 280 billion last year. Microsoft was 138.7 billion, Dell 92.2 billion, IBM and Intell were 76 and 75 billion. That amount of American economic activity is great except that it doesn't "trickle down" to American workers in any meaningful way. It has "trickled down" to China keeps lot's of factories humming there. "Trickle down" economics has fueled the rise of China. Our political problems today with China are a result of economic decisions made as a result of Reaganomics and those that followed him.

Robert Reich is a liberal but he is also a good writer and economist. If you read his stuff you will see that he does show how specific government actions have exacerbated our current economic woes for the shrinking middle class. I say exacerbated because behind the problems of specific government taxing and spending decisions are globalization and automation which are also making life tougher for many on the bottom. There is a short Youtube (11 min) video of the book's major premise.

For those who are uneasy about radical change in economics, I would say think of it this way. Simply unraveling / undoing some of the worst decisions made by the Reagan Administration, in an incremental manner, could help to start improving things. Going back to the Glass / Stegal way of doing business for banks. That depression era law kept Banks out of the Stock market. A more graduated income tax, that is to say, higher taxes on higher income individuals. Regan used to love to quote the founding fathers, but he was often wrong about it. Americans proposed various solutions to the threat of corrupting wealth and power. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson proposed progressive estate taxes. In 1797, famed Revolutionary writer Thomas Paine recommended an estate tax to fund annual old-age pensions and a small payment to every person at age 21. More common were calls to limit land holdings. Fight for economic equality is as old as America itself.

John Adams was also critical of concentrated wealth. Long before “the one percent” became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply “the few”—the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich. John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy.

James Madison, "The man who is possessed of wealth, who loss on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages...unless wisely provided against, what will become of our government. " https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/321956-the-man-who-is-possessed-of-wealth-who-lolls-on

To end this post, I would say that the map of a more fair economy, is in our recent history. The economy of the 1950's and 60's functioned just fine for the great majority of Americans and the tax rates were very high for the rich. We are in a global economy with winners and losers and we can't turn back the clock on that process but we can have a fairer tax system for a start.
 
Zapphod Beblebrox said:
Former Clinton Sec. of Labor Robert Reich has written a new book... " The system: Who rigged it, How we fix it."

I am now retired and old enough to remember the change brought about by a young man, who grew up near me in South West Michigan, named David Stockman. He was an economics advisor to Ronald Regan in his first administration, holding the title of budget director. He, a few others, had the idea of a new economics called, "Trickle Down", economics. It was literally scribbled on the back of a napkin and made simple so that Ronald Regan could understand it.

1. Cut taxes on the wealthy- they are the job creators
2. The wealthy will create more jobs and the benefits will "trickle down" to the workers. Their productivity and wages will increase.
3. More economic activity will happen and the most wondrous thing of all will happen, tax receipts will go up because of greater economic activity.


When G.H.W. Bush, Bush Sr., was running against Ronald Regan for the GOP nomination for President in 1980, he called it Vodoo Economics. He was right. Trickle down economics is a crock of •. It doesn't work, simply speaking. The defenders of "trickle down" might point to today's tech giants as proof of their claim. Apple's gross revenue was 280 billion last year. Microsoft was 138.7 billion, Dell 92.2 billion, IBM and Intell were 76 and 75 billion. That amount of American economic activity is great except that it doesn't "trickle down" to American workers in any meaningful way. It has "trickled down" to China keeps lot's of factories humming there. "Trickle down" economics has fueled the rise of China. Our political problems today with China are a result of economic decisions made as a result of Reaganomics and those that followed him.

Robert Reich is a liberal but he is also a good writer and economist. If you read his stuff you will see that he does show how specific government actions have exacerbated our current economic woes for the shrinking middle class. I say exacerbated because behind the problems of specific government taxing and spending decisions are globalization and automation which are also making life tougher for many on the bottom. There is a short Youtube (11 min) video of the book's major premise.

For those who are uneasy about radical change in economics, I would say think of it this way. Simply unraveling / undoing some of the worst decisions made by the Reagan Administration, in an incremental manner, could help to start improving things. Going back to the Glass / Stegal way of doing business for banks. That depression era law kept Banks out of the Stock market. A more graduated income tax, that is to say, higher taxes on higher income individuals. Regan used to love to quote the founding fathers, but he was often wrong about it. Americans proposed various solutions to the threat of corrupting wealth and power. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson proposed progressive estate taxes. In 1797, famed Revolutionary writer Thomas Paine recommended an estate tax to fund annual old-age pensions and a small payment to every person at age 21. More common were calls to limit land holdings. Fight for economic equality is as old as America itself.

John Adams was also critical of concentrated wealth. Long before “the one percent” became a protest slogan, American founding father John Adams feared the power of a class he called simply “the few”—the wellborn, the beautiful, and especially the rich. John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy.

James Madison, "The man who is possessed of wealth, who loss on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages...unless wisely provided against, what will become of our government. " A quote by James Madison

To end this post, I would say that the map of a more fair economy, is in our recent history. The economy of the 1950's and 60's functioned just fine for the great majority of Americans and the tax rates were very high for the rich. We are in a global economy with winners and losers and we can't turn back the clock on that process but we can have a fairer tax system for a start.
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The foxes are guarding the henhouse, friend. Everything you posted is spot on. But these issues aren't going to be legislated away by the current establishment simply because it's too lucrative to do so. Both parties. Unless there is wholesale change with an interest to improve things instead of make them worse, I don't see it getting better.

Sorry to be Debbie downer.
 
And yet Americans run to the polls every 2 and 4 years voting for people who they actually think give a damn.........
 
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