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Post by spudbuddy on Aug 25, 2010 10:37:06 GMT -6
Good points all. Funny - in my little town, the housing market is bolstered no small bit by ethnic persuasions who consider it commonplace to step outside the nuclear family model...the brother in law plus working spouse plus a couple of kids sharing some subdivisioned monster mansion, and not minding a bit that the division of domestic space closely resembles that of a family of five grown in the traditional Levittowne model... Thirty years of supersizing ourselves to death have shifted realities somewhat. The truth is - that four incomes collectively will pay for that mansion (whereas two won't.)
Yes, I agree - income-producing jobs creates demand for goods - but the jobs attached to creating those goods don't do us much good when they're removed elsewhere. It sure weirds me out when I'm in some part of town I haven't visited in awhile, and notice some factory or warehouse (the kind that used to employ hundreds) turned into some kind of restaurant thing that employs a couple of dozen (and at greatly reduced wages, dependent upon tips from the presently still well-heeled.)
But what happens in the long run if house prices don't tumble? Do they just invent brand new exotic enablers all over again? Does three quarters of what's on the market wind up in foreign ownership? Will it matter so much if 90% worth of the next decade's graduating classes forestall marriage, family, career and everything else, and just park themselves in the parental basement or granny flat while smartly awaiting future developments? Isn't that the logical aftermath of the most perfect of storms?
I still get a queasy feeling - that the actual price of a house - is a magician's trick of deflected attention - away from the fact that the actual income necessary to pay for the damned thing has been pathetcally inadequate for quite some time. Strange - how the whole idea of what is actually affordable - has been warped off the map.
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Post by spudbuddy on Aug 7, 2010 5:15:27 GMT -6
Interesting overview... Makes me think that all the name-calling and finger-pointing in the past two years, with all the attendant need for blame-identification has obscured the causes and effects - yet grade school kids could figure out pretty quick what happens in a market that far outstrips what people really earn. As with educational costs, housing just exemplifies our culture of debt-acceptance.
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Post by spudbuddy on Jul 21, 2010 23:01:52 GMT -6
That's a pretty incredible historic quote........... proves that our ability to learn from history falls right into the same lame category as the dog ate my homework (or some such tripe.) We don't seem to learn a damned thing, um? I had no idea whatsoever that good old TJ and Elizabeth Warren are of such similar stripe (the stars long departing for southeast Asian opportunities) Methinks that the beards listen'd better to him though -
But what circles we've run - like tail chasing dawgs to arrive back at the same dizzy gillespie (only he blew a better horn.)
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Post by spudbuddy on Jul 19, 2010 8:38:54 GMT -6
Perhaps the plan is to replace the middle with a new, improved, very precise and specific Conned-Sumer class.....something morphed into perfect aquiescence.....with everyone working three and a half part-time service jobs, dancing down the debt spiral, supporting with cultish determination all corporate activity that is in reality squeezing them to death.
I dunno...........apparently polygamists talk 14 year-old virgins into joining the harem by promising some kinda heaven that makes the barter worth the trade....................... Could be that the financial version of that same con-job is the promise of our national hope: You too............(whomever you may be) can one day be rich! too! yeah.
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Post by spudbuddy on Jul 19, 2010 8:24:50 GMT -6
Could be good to ponder this: How does this bubble history over the past three years reflect back all the attendent attitudes that go along with it? Obviously some smart guy some time ago thought it was brilliant to ship a lot of toxic effluent along with the jobs that create it overseas - the ultimate consequence was that we stopped making much of anything.....except houses, which became our principle manufactured item. (If they could figure out a cost-effective way of prefabbing them in southeast Asia and shipping them across the water, I'm sure they would have done that too.) I think the bubble has many parents....and I think it's genesis goes way back, long before 3 years ago.
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Post by spudbuddy on Jul 14, 2010 23:56:18 GMT -6
Well, 50% chews into the heart of the middle class quite nicely, doesn't it? Whatever happened to the good old "working class"? (a term that seems to be whistling past the graveyard....thought I heard echoes of Joe Hill........) Strange days: deferred retirement / 30-something rec-room boomerang "kids" / deferred marriage/kids.....weird infantalized over-educated hordes simmering on the sidelines, chafing like minor league stars growing butt-sores on major league benches... Stranger days - that anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together still believes that sending the equivalent of India's GDP overseas for enhanced corporate profits was anything short of comatose mental floss......... combined with the sort of partisan shrugs when questioned on just why did we wind up with nothing but a consumptive economy in the first place...(about as bright an idea as the very first Ponzi scheme) and after all is said and done - this bizarre Frankencapitalist thing they refer to as an economic model that requires no capital investment in anything that one can kick, whack, bounce a basketball off, or beat with a bat - in short, resembling more the mists of dry ice at a boomer-nostalgic rock concert........how was it we were supposed to actually create wealth, um? Another great depression? Seems to me that's just the preliminary overture to the greatest rocked opera of them all.
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Post by spudbuddy on May 21, 2010 5:28:41 GMT -6
I dunno.....could be that when the housing market finally (if ever) climbs back up into reasonable health again, we'll be introduced smartly to the 8-dollar gallon of gasoline, and then the whole damned thing will start all over again... Something else that is only a matter of time. Just weird...how so many crave what looks exactly like the sit-com studio interiors of all the laugh-a-lots they watched on tv back in their tender years. Something borders enough on the familiar that sloppy sentiments displace common sense altogether.
I can't imagine any other single thing (especially not an academic degree) that signifies and qualifies the modern psyche for middle class status more than home ownership. Yet ironically, other than job loss, what other activity has produced more poverty lately than failed housing? It's as if 40 or 50 million welfare bums suddenly got the runs to glory and decided they too could live like royalty and join the exalted club of upper mobility (all on "free" credit). Because the "business" was too busy blurring their eyesight with a turbo-charged shell game, no one bothered to remind themselves that it always was wise to consider affordability before unloading one's wallet. Ah well. Life's a cartoon.
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Post by spudbuddy on May 21, 2010 5:07:41 GMT -6
So let's get this straight: not having much of anything else to manufacture or produce, they desperately build more oversupply / meanwhile forclosed families destined for tent cities join the ranks of failed consumers. Bright shiny tinkets attract the ones who only ever learned how to worship the brand-new...anything else is yesterday's news. A sizeable chunk of traditional new home buyers have defected into student loan hell...couldn't afford a doghouse, meanwhile Walton-style double-ups and extended family tribal overcrowding shortens up the inventory. Looks good on Vegas. Matches the accessories, fits the accourtements.
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Post by spudbuddy on Mar 20, 2010 19:12:56 GMT -6
I dunno.........playing with numbers is a cute trick for bureaucrats and pole cats.....luvly propaganda - just look at how many starving millions Mao played tiddly winks with 50 years ago. Don't know what it would take to shaming them into admitting that the real numbers are real bad.
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Post by spudbuddy on Mar 20, 2010 19:03:59 GMT -6
My adult children go straight into the ridicule mode whenever historic prices are mentioned. Just a hint of what prices used to be talk becomes contempt for the aged. That could very quickly turn from contempt to envy - depending on the circumstances. My father was a married man with two kids by the age of 23. And a profession (engineer) which spanned a working life of almost 45 years. These days I notice a lot of 30-somethings planning some form of marital adventure by the time they hit 40................ and then perhaps after that, a kid maybe..... Sad thing - that an economy strangles so many of the standard mileposts we used to measure attainment of adulthood by. I understand the need for caution - many responsible people need to know they have some kind of foundation set in place before making such important life choices........and if they're lucky enough to hang on to a healthy career, then it appears they have it all.......but if they wait that long to start a family, there's one thing they can never have for love or money: their youth. It always weirds me out - looking at pictures of families in the '40's and 50's...........the parents look so young. That's because they are. I wonder about that sometimes - the psychology of youthful parenthood, and how that dances with the psychology of children. When I was a boy, I used to think my mother was the most beautiful angel alive - that's because she was - and part of that had to do with her youth. I think in future times a lot of women are going to miss out on that........but who's to know? how to measure? Here's a thought. When I was sixteen I had a job with a railroad company that paid me $1.25/ hr - and 40% of my monthly takehome pay rented an apartment in my town. Today, earning about $19/ hr - that same apartment would cost over 50% of takehome pay. In 1960, a family paid a mortgage, a few bucks a month for a landline phone (shunning long distance like the plague) and tacked up a junky aerial for free tv. Beyond basic food, a cribbage board and a few vinyl record albums filled out the monthly entertainment budget. Money might have been scarce, but there were precious few temptations to scare it out of watchful wallets. It was so easy then - to live in a community you didn't have to apologize to, for living a modest lifestyle. Modesty was not looked upon as failure - just good common sense....which was actually highly respected. But then - at that time, most adults were old enough to remember a real Depression.
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Post by spudbuddy on Mar 20, 2010 17:10:47 GMT -6
Perot sure had it right. And Gore sure had it wrong. The idea that NAFTA and globalization would help the US was idiotic from its outset. The numbers disproved any possible benefit from the start. You can't sacrifice American jobs, and substitute the buying power of poor workers in foreign countries for that of higher-paid workers in the US. Though the Clintonistas praised this as 'opening up markets to many millions of new consumers,' this was never a valid argument. It's not the number of consumers that counts, it's their aggregate buying power. 500 million new "consumers" making $1/day does not offset the buying power loss of even 50 million American workers who're making $90/day. It takes wages and money to buy American products, not just numbers of potential consumers. How in the hell was a poor country with a fraction of America's buying power going to buy large amounts of US-produced goods? How were they ever going to offset the buying power loss of the American workers they replaced? Answer: They can't. This seem like a no-brainer. And it was a no-brainer in 1993. Sanders summed up the core of NAFTA and globalization by describing it as: " the moronic belief that while it's bad for American workers, its somehow good for poor people in the rest of the world." You know, the sad part of all this........I can buy with Canadian dollars that are almost at par - the Frye boots (made in America, though often sifted through Mexico) the Gibson guitars (still wandering in from Boseman Montana) and a whole host of other good stuff..........that "used" to be made in America. Funny - American-made products are so long gone that what I remember was good quality....so far back that it was a time when quality standards were high enough to put today's "quality control" to shame. Anyhow, I completely agree with the concept....the purchasing power of "free" trade participants has everything to do with the eventual consequences. The scheme was always in place...corporate wet dreams about American purchasing power sucking up cheap stuff made elsewhere for peanuts. All amounting to swollen profits - that the average American buyer was never going to benefit from.
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 25, 2010 21:54:43 GMT -6
You're welcome! As with a lot of issues - I've come across many negative responses to the rising student loan "crisis" (because in the past, a huge number of grads have done all right, and managed to move on, have a life, career - and still pay the loans off.) However, if one takes the time to sift as carefully as possible through the whiners, and get to the real issue, I think there's something going on that's starting to resemble the mortgage mess (especially the upside down part of it.) I hear this all the time - too many young people rush headlong into debt right out of high school and right into university...which is true. It might be nice to see more of them take a year or two off, work, clear their heads, make careful choices, etc. But then on the other hand - what else do we really expect them to do? I mean, they're hammered from the getgo, and it doesn't let up for 13 straight years, and all they know is that they'll die in the gutter absolutely, if they don't nail a degree. Immediately. - which sadly, isn't true at all. I think it's sadder still - that "working" class = abject failure in our social motif, now. Everybody has to be a professional, wear white collars, tickle technology, live lifestyles that resemble movie mock-ups. (Ever notice how a schoolteacher in a Hollywood movie lives in a major American city as if they were pulling in a million a year?) weird. - the kids sure noticed, though.
You have to ask yourself - in these times, how can hundreds of thousands of American teenagers willingly take on amounts of debt that would buy a house in some states? All before they have any idea what kind of entrance they will have into any job market. Doesn't that seem sort of...........reckless? Right. When I was a foolish 18 year-old, my idea of reckless was to goof off, drive uninsured, piss through dead-end jobs for beer and travel money...............debt-free. No financial liability whatsoever. Ha. I was just into my thirties before anyone would let me have credt. Thinking back - that was a huge favor. I really see it as a two-sided issue, though. On the one hand - the sheer cost of an education is an outrage. Prices are way out of line. If we could kill educational lending for just one year - the system would tank. The few dozen thousand rich man's sons and daughters would hardly create an echo in all those near-empty lecture halls. They'd be forced to re-think the model. On the other hand, what they do with loan money after people graduate isn't outrageous - it's criminal. There is no good reason at all that a defaulted loan has to double, triple, or more. Too bad compound interest couldn't take my savings account into the stratosphere! One must remember that sallie mae and other nasty bandit outfits applied the truest, bluest, brightest and best corporate extractions methods in the grand style. It looks to me like they'd set out to do to American students exactly what the World Bank and the IMF did to the developing world. (and when you think about it - for some of the same reasons, ideologies, philosophies....) Everyone's just tryin' to get a leg up...
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 25, 2010 15:39:08 GMT -6
ah crapfrankly, i was surprised to see sallie mae spending money on lobbying. (I also thought sallie mae was a government operation like fannie and freddie- apparently not. I wonder how many other people are confused as well) On the other hand, I am worried about what prevents the government bureaucrats from becoming bloated and slow. This should explain nicely what actually happened. studentloanjustice.org/problem.htmI suppose if the govenment hath given then taketh away again, that could be a good thing...especially if they can redesign a lending system to somehow desist from turning a 30-thousand dollar loan into 80 grand as quick as a rabbit out of a hat. Of course, Sallie is pissed at losing her toys, now that daddy is threatening not only to take the T-bird away, but the bottomless credit card too. Check out her stock performance through the past decade - for a real experience more thrilling than a Coney Island roller coaster!
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 25, 2010 11:16:01 GMT -6
So many things to address here (I work in the higher education "industry"). I suppose for all those still in love with the historically individualistic great gambling roll of the dice - and the random sampling of educated winners out there, it is still too easy for too many to view education as the road to upward mobility. But the rules are all skewed, now. All over the map. There is no reason why student loan payback rules have to be so draconian - except the obvious reason. Were repayment regulations drawn down to resemble any other kind of consumer debt - and were they regulated with strict ceilings governing interest rates and accruals - and were collections strictly adhered to payments geared to income, well then - the wheels would fall off. The lenders would go broke. Broke, not because students are all en mass, slimy welches - but because the education-to-wealth model doesn't work anymore, and hasn't for quite some time. Obviously.
Higher education needs to be rethought. I imagine there are still a relatively small number of people out there who believe in higher education for its own sake. Perhaps they're the ones who can "afford" to think so idealistically. The other 99.9% of the population see it as the ticket to a better working life. That's no secret.
On a lighter note (with darker humor) here's a little sly entertainment morsel that brings the issue into sharp focus. This one's almost as good as the clip of a debt collector calling an elevator, somewhere in Florida.... (the soundtrack is definitely better.) I figure that's the real dark side of the consequences of higher education - the reality that hits home, the one that reminds graduates that their best efforts now resemble a lost wild weekend in Vegas - the one in which they gambled away their futures. enjoy!
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 24, 2010 10:12:08 GMT -6
I dunno....milk from NZ is better than milk from the farm down the road? (if it works out cheaper - than we missed out on golden opportunities to buy lunar real estate, too.) .......I heard there was 40 acres on Mars going for pennies on the dollar. I see a weird picture with cute fuzzy squiggles: Big money sucked a lot of debt interest payments out of the third world. When those profits dried up, the new game on the block was to suck debt interest payments out of the new western third world. First second third fourth and fifth worlds all eventually collapse into each other, and Big Money has conquered the works, more tidy than the Mongols did in the 13th century. It's a pretty neat trick. They don't even have to be as good on a horse, or storm fortresses. wow.
As to Islamist Sharia versus anything else - findamentalism in itself is a burnt weenie sandwich, I think. It can always be used by powerful interests to promote private agendas. A minaret sure beats a lot of other weird modern architecture, when it comes down to esthetics of design. Too bad about all the prayer-yelling, though. Could be worse. Could be Britney Spears 5 times daily. wow. (makes one wonder, which religion is what)
I keep wondering, though - when all the middle-classed entitlements have dried up and blown away, and no-one can afford to consume anymore...then where do the profits come from? I mean, a default is still a default.........they don't have enough coin in the piggie bank to park billions of paupers in debtor's prisons. Pulling magical middle classes like rabbits out of a hat may be a nice little conjuring trick....but I don't think anyone ever actually ate those rabbits - just entertainment props. How about we just reverse gears? All those upwardly mobile folks in China can start buying American-made kewpies, backscratchers and soycrackers.
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 23, 2010 9:53:55 GMT -6
Ah, DWP.........driving while poor / SWP.....sleeping while poor / PWP......parking while poor. The real crime of course, is not whatever the hell you do with the car - it's being poor. As if people WANT to sleep in a car instead of a furnished bedroom. Strange - the eyes that are so well-trained now, to look past the desperation, and not see it at all. Just like all those innocent people falsely accused of whatever - who become "imaged" (don'tcha just love it?) in the human likeness of a criminal - all for someone else's "convenience".....who knows? new job opportunities, perhaps! Of course - to keep the RE "industry" staggering along....just another way to scare otherwise competent, intelligent people to move heaven and earth (and hell as well) to keep some kind of roof over their heads.
I useta be kind of homeless back in the transition days from late teens to early twenties....that wasn't an economic thing though, that was just a lazy way of growing up. To think that hundreds of thousands of hardworking people are going down that same road, and not necessarily at just a rosy, carefree time of life - is a national tragedy. More than tragic, it's criminal - the real crime the cops will never investigate.
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 23, 2010 9:36:48 GMT -6
grabs me....."traditionally three sectors leading the way out of a recession....banking, housing, and auto manufacture"..........which is probably the biggest reason why there is no recovery in terms of jobs. I've got a novel idea. Let's make things again. (besides lousy cars and prefab McHouses) Of course, for that to happen, the profit-religion of business has to re-align itself with job creation. Otherwise we still wind up with a society that can't afford itself. If the population refused altogether - debt that it can't pay back - the "economy" would tank. The wheels would stop. I think that says a lot right there. The "new" poor were never really that rich. They were living in the attic of a Vegas casino, sneaking past the slot machines....I think their wealth was the illusion - their poverty is all too real.
I suppose as their numbers swell, we may see interesting developments. Unlike the traditional chronic underclass, they're better educated, and have a strong sense of what they've lost. They are far more likely to organize politically and socially, than those that have been kicked around for generations. Ironically - they would probably have a lot to learn from those on the bottom - survival skills.
Sometimes I get the feeling there's a "ghost market" that lives all around us, invisible. The one that could thrive if some power were taken back from all the assholes who preach about new realities, new world order, international competitiveness, and all the other good reasons why American jobs should be shipped elsewhere. That never benefited a domestic working class. We were never going to wind up with a quarter billion "knowledge industry" workers, typing prettily, white collared, in neat and tidy little cubicles. That's just a bad sci fi novel. I say, let the giant corporations flounder. Stand up and tell them where to stick their "free" trade, and their stock options. If they can't create jobs - get the hell out. And replace them with a few hundred thousand hungry little businesses whose biggest asset is their workforce. Apparently these rules don't work anymore. I'm not sure why. I am sure that the fiscal fantasies of the past 30 years are the result of the population trying to figure out how to fudge the rules....why would so many have lived off their home equity and other forms of hallucinated wealth? The wage income wasn't there. I'd like to think that long before America turns into another Brazil, a whole lot of jobless people with a lot of time on their hands, would find some way to rock the boat, a little. "No such thing as a bad job." There is the sound of desperation. That little virus is slowly worming its way up the social ladder. Perhaps Mrs, Eisen's greatest asset is the sense of humor she hasn't lost, yet.
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 22, 2010 12:45:20 GMT -6
I recall reading a book a few years back (yes, a real book!) that posed an interesting question: Which of two books most resembles modern America? 1984 or Brave New World? By the end of the book, it had become patently obvious who the winner was. An infotained and techno-mesmerized society.....more of a "Slave New World" though, really - don't you think?
Also, it's a sad thing - harkening back in history to how America actually climbed out of the Great Depression (other than wartime production) but certainly by 1946, an entire industrial infrastructure was just sitting there, waiting to be plugged back in. If it weren't so sad it would be funny.....the idea that everybody can now spend 50 grand on an education, or retrain for that same amount, and then we can all go sit in cubicles and pound keys for middle-class money. It is funny though.....how so many don't seem to notice that the real price tag of middle class has slowly crept up....well beyond the average household income. Factor in costs of health care, education, retirement.....for a family to have that covered now, the way it was for the three decades after WW2, they'd need to be pulling in what? over 100 grand a year? (and be able to do that consistently, without a break....with cost of living increases....for 40 years..... How can anybody believe in the idea of a secure middle class existence anymore, unless they're in the top 5% of earners? (which is a sort of self-defeating oxymoron, no?)
Perhaps it is the illusion of that security, or the steadfast obsession with acquiring it somehow, that has several million new lambs led to the higher educational slaughterhouse each year........not to just slap together a degree in something....but to howl out and chase down professors with whom they will scream themselves hoarse, arguing over half a percentage point's worth of icing on their GPA.....why? Grad school. That's where the big money is. (shhh) the big money left town long ago. What a farce.
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 16, 2010 8:29:36 GMT -6
I suppose this follows the "Just-in-time" workforce model. Not surprised. But I can see where this is all going, ultimately. Back in the '70's when jobs were plentiful, but nothing really paid much and all the twenty-somethings were feelin' fine and fancy-free....nobody comitted to long-term planning - the kinds of goals that required consistant employment. Although then - this was for reasons of personal freedom, esthetic lifestyles and whatnot... now it would just be good sense. When ever-growing (reasonably educated) numbers of the workforce are required to accept this working reality, well... (learning their lessons from the recent financial holocaust) they'll just stop planning the kinds of goals that require steady employment - the kind that we used to actually have to depend upon, to pay for marriages, kids, houses, late-model cars, and all the other attendent accoutrements of adult living.
Should be interesting to watch the playback from such confrontation...the business and corporate community (and their endless need for profit and growth) versus a whole lotta workers who aren't going to finance their material worlds on credit or imagined wage growth. Of course - that requires a whole new set of disciplines - but fear is a good teacher.
You know, it's strange. Forty years ago, there would have been little pressure to climb any ladder with such splintered rungs. The folly of such behavior would have been painfully obvious. Response to a job market that couldn't deliver basic security would have delivered a different set of rules, and its own brand of financial "maturity." (don't buy what you can't afford / don't commit to any long-term financial obligations.) ........but then, credit cards had hardly just begun - in fact, for most workers in that position, credit didn't exist at all.
I guess the best historical comparison we have in recent memory, would be the recession of the early 80's. (just before it all started to unwind.)
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 11, 2010 19:42:48 GMT -6
no god given right, huh? That's an awful large foot in a foolish mouth - but the cat's outa the bag, anyhow. Makes me ponder - just how "natural" a statement such a pice of hogcrap has become. (considering the perspective of those that are all right, Jack...versus the rest of the citizenship.) ...speaks volumes in the direction of all the good "citizens" who, while appearing to be working are really only playing creatively with paper, and couldn't come up with a constructive idea to further the public cause if it crawled into bed with them. Jobs.........are mere hobbies, it would seem.
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 11, 2010 19:32:26 GMT -6
Globalism and globalization is an outright disaster for all the people of the world, save for the richest 1/10th of 1%. [/quote]
The sad thing about this - rather than being entirely a self-evident statement (as it very well should be, given the evidence) the half a billion wannabe American-style middle classers over there in China and India are held up as, well... half a billion poster children for the big con game. They either don't realize (or don't care) that whatever heights they've risen to are not sustainable. (Athough in India at least, there are responsible voices raised in critical arguments of the game plan.)
It feels to me - more and more...that waiting for economic recovery is sort of like Waiting for Godot. (the check's in the mail)
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Post by spudbuddy on Feb 11, 2010 18:00:26 GMT -6
Productivity has a whole lot to do with profit margins (revenue minus labor and operating costs.) You might want to have a look at some online lectures by professor Rick Wolff. They're a hoot. Since wages began stagnating back in the 1970's - all that liquidity from rising productivity profits has been lent back to the working public, then repaid with INTEREST (talk about doubling your money and then some!) I dunno - it all makes sense to me. If wages had kept pace with inflation over that time, obviously a lot of people would have financed their lives without debt. Considering the flatlined savings rate, and the national private debt rates, it makes for a good argument on professor Wolff's part. When jobs become so toxic to the business model employed....well then, employment becomes a spin of the old lottery wheel. The job market is anything but healthy - regardless of the shell games played on Wall Street. It's pretty sad....when all the good old McJobs start to contract too. The stories that really bother me are the ones describing desperate single parents competing with high school seniors for low-end service jobs. Pitting those vying for video-game and clothes shopping spree allowances - with those struggling to pay bills, rent, and put food on the table for their kids.
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Post by spudbuddy on Jan 28, 2010 19:58:33 GMT -6
It sounds so simple. Too simple. Maybe that's why nobody paid attention. Overpriced houses meant people couldn't afford them. Which means the houses would have gone begging for buyers. Which would have meant that the prices would have had to lower, in order to maintain competitiveness. Which didn't happen, of course, because hallucinated and illusionary "wealth" was created in order to move stock. Those were hallucinations. This is reality. Big difference.
I'm amazed - at all the snake dancing going on, in a pathetic attempt to prop up prices. Is anyone ever going to finally accept that prices have to eventually move back into step with incomes? And if they don't, I'd suggest that then perhaps the problem isn't as much inflated house prices, as much as it's weak income. In a weird way, it's beginning to appear that America can't afford itself. (or its dreams.)
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Post by spudbuddy on Jan 18, 2010 13:02:14 GMT -6
Had a peek at the Economic Alert, and enjoyed Kevin Kearn's article about education not being the pat answer to joblessness. I've been digging around for stuff on this issue lately - after digging around for current stories on educational debt debacles, fiascos and tragicomedies....trying to suss out the bigger picture: That there isn't enough to go around - a lot of people graduating, taking work that their degree was not needed for, grossly underpaid (which makes paying off the student loans that much more difficult.)
My sense of all this comes to a pretty dark assessment: that the educational "industry" is sucking up ever-rising fee income, while the credit industry in cahoots is sucking up ever-increasing interest income on the debts incurred to pay those tuition fees and other educational costs. The combination of the two seems to me to be the perfect symbiotic pair of leeches, sucking a lot of blood out of a lot of young people. That those young people were delivered unto charge card shark heaven forthwith upon enrolment didn't help matters much, especially considering that through their family ties to elders at home, they've acquired the most toxic attitudes about consumer debt....all adding up to a whole lot of lambs sacrificed on financial altars.
Because I work in education myself (major university library) I find myself wondering how many more years it's going to take before massive numbers of young people revolt - not against the idea of higher education (no tuning in, turning on and dropping out for them!) but against the idea of high-cost education that can't be paid for because the jobs it was supposed to lead to, simply aren't there. I have a feeling this could be quite a possible outcome within the decade. Just think .... the college grad who starts their working life with 40 or 50 thousand of debt (or more - the equivalent of a mortgage) - and five or ten years later is still spinning their wheels, because of un - or under - employment. Compared to the high school grad or even dropout who wormed their way into some soul-less service job that at least provided steady employment...the debt-free part of the equation might begin to look rather attractive to "over-educated bums".............bums for no other reason than that their education has become counterfeit.........and that for no other reason than that the domestic economy offers no opportunities in (whatever field they were supposedly educated for.) I'd like to see a couple million grads zoom through university acquiring degrees in absolutely nothing - other than that which guarantees future gainful employment. (medicine? accounting? ultra-high technology?) It's still a crapshoot. Millions of parents yapped at their kids endlessly - to do all the things that were supposed to enable them to avoid this current scenario. Research and development, industrial design, manufacturing.....the million commodities whose sales provided the revenues that created the need for all that job base. But now........well, we'll just sell the world Tinkerbell dvds, uh? (however many brains one of those requires, that's a sad comedown, I'd say.)
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Post by spudbuddy on Jan 17, 2010 23:36:20 GMT -6
Quite a while ago I read something somewhere that pointed out historically (back in the '50's and 60's I guess) a rather small part of American GDP came from exports....which suggested of course that the majority of earnings came from domestic sales. This in a time when Americans made things and sold them to other Americans. Makes one stop for a second and ponder:
What would the domestic economy look like if all those tv sets, cameras, (foreign) cars, and a whole lot of other stuff were manufactured (and subsequently sold) here? This of course strongly suggests the obvious - that those goods would cost more, because the wages of the workers making the stuff would be a lot higher.
........which would mean that in order to have a working market at all, the wages of working people would have to be high enough for them to afford the goods. (which is what I really hate about the Walmart morph-down of the past 30 years)
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Post by spudbuddy on Jan 17, 2010 23:20:25 GMT -6
I agree with everthing you've said here (as the equity ATM's dry up and blow away) and my car-buying habits are pretty much identical to yours. Beaters that last 5 years without complaints are a thing of beauty.... (even if they won't win Miss Auto USA)
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Absolutely. A beater is like the kind smile and the firm handshake of someone who offers a helping hand because it's the decent human thing to do. Nothing cute or superficial about them at all. Beaters keep me mobile. Without them, I'd be standing around watching the "blobs" drive by.
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Post by spudbuddy on Jan 17, 2010 23:11:32 GMT -6
the by-product of too many jobless recoveries, what? I say - keep your damned "recovery" and all its attendant creative paper camouflage...it may give media analysts something to yap about, but what it really costs in terms of human lives is criminal.
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Post by spudbuddy on Jan 17, 2010 23:05:25 GMT -6
Gee. I earn 36k and I sure don't feel middle class. Pure workingman. I'd go out the door with a hardhat toting a guitar and a lunchbox... (was a time when that would court middle class values) But that's the weird thing. Sometimes I get the impression that for a lot of folks, middle class is much more a state of mind than earning power. Yet it's that earning power (or more to the point, lack of it) that dictates whether one can live middle class - according to the material accoutrements that define the appropriate lifestyle.
And sadly - for that amount, considering what it can't buy - to rise up into the top half of earners........is a pathetic indictment of wage stagnation.
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Post by spudbuddy on Jan 16, 2010 23:36:04 GMT -6
Yep - the purchasing power spinaround. In 1974 it took less than $4 to fill my Toyota gastank (4 cylinder) It takes about $50 to fill that same size gas tank now - 12 and a half times more money. Income has gone up roughly six and a half times my income back then. Which means at half the rate the gas did. Back in 2003, I began trying to sort all that out - measuring what today's money will buy, and what it won't. The sad thing is that so many essentials have gone through the roof...while so many useless toys have been steadily getting cheaper.
.....when I was 16, the 60-minute phone call back home (crossing about 215 miles - they used to set the rates based on distance back then) cost about $10. A 60-minute call from the Great Lakes to the Great Australian Desert might run about 3 bucks now.
Those 10, 20, 30 percentage points of income gobbled up by housing - is less money for all the other consumer goodies that created at least an illusion of an economy. Of course, the real illusion was that it all ran on funny money (that bank debt magic wand...........where's a fairy godmother when you really need one?)
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Post by spudbuddy on Nov 23, 2009 9:59:02 GMT -6
Ah, a luvly subject, this. I work in a rather gigantic library, with an unusually overstuffed book collection - though it is never as up-to-date as I'd like it to be... still, when I clue into a topic that really grabs me, I like to ignore as best I can the media frenzy, command a bit of patience, and after awhile, find an intelligent author who took the time to write out, at length, and in-depth, a study of the thing (all the while writing in such a manner as can truly engage me, as a reader.) This is a profoundly intimate exchange. If I move through that book slowly, and with lots of time to reflect on what I'm reading, it might take me a month or more, living every day with the topic, and slowly assimilating it into my conscious sensibility....all the while adding my own reflections and ponderings. (usually several dozen books on the go at once.)
Some would call this academic wallowing. I say psaw to that (in polite company.) The immediacy of the moment only teaches how important is collective memory, and honest response to any particular set of stimuli based on what knowledge and wisdom one has already gathered in their life.
To illustrate: I once had a charming young friend who, while immersed in any immediate moment, could hardly wait to scamper off and write it all down in her journal. (she was young.) I remember admonishing her.....just stay, and witness the whole thing, from start to finish - then put in a little overtime....if it's worth writing at all, it will withstand whatever passage of time in which some detail may be forgotten. The cream eventually rises to the top.
Stupid consumers no doubt carve out at least 50% of our 70% consumption GDP.........and that's a tidy addiction our corporate lords will not relinquish gladly - understandably. That nerve reflex from hand to wallet is righteously primal (and although other epochs seemingly slowed the response time....how much smarter were we then?) - or just poorer? (relatively, and in real fiscal terms.)
I believe these be times fraught with pitfalls for anyone wishing to slow the wheels and come to grips with issues that can't be explained away by a 30-second FOX newscast. From the public down to the personal and private, time-honored mechanisms have evolved throughout human history that have proven capable of withstanding the mob mentality, and the inexorible ebb and flow of conventional bullshit. That "modernity" should shoulder all this aside in the name of (progress?)...is the saddest joke played on anyone with two brain cells to rub together, let alone all those capable of adding measurably collective value to the public forum.
Sure, I get irritated by all those who pre-empt my public space into privatized phone booths (it happens constantly) but on a good day I remind myself that I'm the one actually witnessing the advent of the world's daily life....while they are lost in the vacuous bovine cud-chewing of telecommunication. They just can't be alone, with themselves. Sad, that so many should have so little regard for their own fascinations. They wish to be fascinating to others, just not to themselves.
And to prove a point and add a slice to the humor of the situation....I just can't quite imagine "texting" what I've just written....(who would read it anyway?) Like any homo sapien, I'm rather proud of my ten digits.....writing with just my thumbs feels like devolving back to the Jurassic, or beyond.
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