Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Blue Boomers like me don't identify with Red Boomers like the W.Bush's and Gingrich's at all. So we have trouble with your attribution of "you guys" to us. We had nothing to do with what the Republicans did; we opposed it as best we could.

That's because it has nothing to do with red vs. blue, it has to do with everything. All the stuff. It's not about principles, it's about total and utter mismanagement. It's about putzing around with broken systems like everything is okay for 30 years and not figuring out how to fix them, which would have benefited both of you, and instead having a quarter century pissing contest with a few years in there where you're collectively so scared of brown people you just agree so long as neither side points out other members if the other sides knees are knocking.

"You" Millennials and X/Yers have no power at all now, because power still flows from the ballot box and the corporate board rooms. You do not vote, so you have no voice in politics. And you don't own corporations yet, so you have no voice there either. Looks like you are out of luck.

Actually, we have all the power. We're the ones that actually do the stuff. All those crappy, low paying, crack the whip jobs? Those are the ones where people are actually doing stuff. All we really have to do is agree to ignore the law makers, the corporate directives, etc. and we literally have all the power.

While I respect Danilynn's perspective, and would never consider it to be off the table, we could very well end the 4T with civil disobedience, a hallmark of the 1T. Forget occupy, "shut up, I work here, you don't." could very well be the millennial power play. What could anyone do to stop it? If the bosses called the cops and got the same treatment, their enforcement literally stops.

More than likely, it won't work like this and eventually there would be a formal election or an execution, some sort of kangaroo court where everyone evidences that they tried to do it better than we did it to the poor prisoners in Gitmo... Whatever. But I can tell you, it won't go down red verse blue. How do I know this?

Because Boomers don't offer the Millennials anything. The Missionaries, they worked for the favor of the GIs, they killed prohibition, they started all sorts of programs for the young unemployed, they really put effort into it. The Transcendentals definitely set up some home steading to remove everyone that wasn't interested or committed to the big hissy fit out of the way, but prospering in their own way, which removed excess labor so everyone got a fair wage. The Guided were compensated, probably not proportionally, but there was an effort. The Awakening generation was probably the closest to a generation that didn't pay for the sacrifice, but they represented more of the Tory faction, with really relatively few of them backing the Liberty and Republicans, and they wound up spending their end of life in a world they found confusing to them. The ones who made the sacrifice, guys like Franklin paid for the sacrifice by investing a lot into their communities.

I think the relevant fable here is the pied piper. You guys are gearing up for this long, drawn out conflict where you pummel either into oblivion for the good of your egos, but... You don't have anyone to actually fight the war. Literally nobody else is lining up to say "I'm going to shoot this gun at people so that I can have this gun taken from me" on one side and "I'm going to kill these people so they can't have an abortion" on the other. There's nothing in here for us, and I know you guys don't care and that's fine, but you can expect to get swept out of the way for it that's the best case scenario.

Originally Posted by Danilynn

regardless of when I will not allow my kids to be cannon fodder. No matter how old I may be, as long as I am breathing and walking I will take their place. I brought them in this world and I made a promise I intend to keep, which I will protect them no matter the personal cost as long as I breathe.

You may not have a choice. You may end up sacrificing your sons and daughters to the Moloch that is aggressive and pointless warfare because the people who truly rule America consider your children expendable when there are higher purposes -- like getting profits from war production, gaining captive markets, and getting control of raw materials. Kids who do not want to be cannon fodder are told that the go to war and face bullets or that they face the bullets of a firing squad. We may not be there yet, but we could be soon. Command trumps conscience in an oligarchy or a despotism.

America is not under the rule of a despotic leader (the Constitution leaves few holes for such), but it is rapidly becoming a right-wing oligarchy in which democracy is a ghost. As such it will become more warlike. One of the big contributors to world peace has been that democracies do not wage wars on democracies -- but despotic and oligarchic regimes attack everything. When democracy is absent, groups that can profit from war (military contractors, business interests intent upon expanding their zones of captive markets or securing cheap resources and labor) push it. Warlike oligarchies are able to stir up war frenzy with minimal resistance from pacifists who flourish in democracies, and in the absence of checks from a legislature that contains a meaningful opposition that might deny a war for profit, the undemocratic regime can get war. The media are unable to question whether war is wise.

Kids who do not want to be cannon fodder are told that the go to war and face bullets or that they be executed. We may not be there yet, but we could be soon. Command trumps conscience in an oligarchy or a despotism.

Sure, there was an election, but one with ominous tendencies. Many Republicans won because the front groups of the Koch syndicate succeeded in reducing the number of people voting due to a climate of contempt for the political process that they created. Guess what? That climate will get even uglier. But note that the Republicans who won now take their orders not from voters but instead from the Koch syndicate.

You may have liked what Republican pols said in official campaign speeches, but you have no idea what those pols promised Koch front groups such as Americans for Prosperity. I understand their agenda -- privatization of Social Security, abolition of minimum wage laws, the end to public education, termination of environmental and workplace-safety laws, a shift of taxes from the super-rich to the non-rich, outlawry of unions (because if businesses wish to not deal with unions, then they should be free to avoid dealing with them) and the near-giveaway of the public sector to profiteers. It's what the Republican winners promised to the Koch syndicate that matters more than what those politicians promised to voters.

If what I say is true, then I have little to live for in America. I'd like to believe otherwise, but wishful thinking and two dollars gets a two-dollar cup of coffee. Two dollars and no wishful thinking gets one the same cup of coffee. Unfortunately the 'drink' that the Hard Right now serves the American political heritage is vitriol.

You have been fooled, as have so many others. Soon enough you will realize that liberalism allows a safer and more just world. What were we offered? Traditional values? Every right-wing tyrant stands for tradition -- the tradition of peonage enforced with the lash. Economic growth? We have all the production that we need; our economic mess is that we distribute the productivity so unevenly as it is -- and put the Hard Right in power and the inequity will only intensify. We will be making stuff that we can't sell while Americans starve.

You have some empathy. You have some conscience. You could never be a fascist. You have simply been snookered. Not all traditions are defensible. Not all technologies are suitable for preservation.

The problem in American politics is in part that the Soft Right -- people capable of making some compromises for the betterment of America as a whole instead of going full throttle on plutocracy -- has vanished. It's as if liberalism (the Soft Left) disappeared and what remained was some orthodox Marxism reminiscent of Brezhnev. The Hard Right wants peonage for all but a small privileged class.

So far as I can figure, the Koch syndicate will all but choose the Republican nominee for President in 2016 -- and that will be the one most willing to obey the most outrageous and horrific orders. If that means mowing down protesters and strikers, then that is what the Koch family will get as the Democratic nominee.

...I am not that radical. I would be perfectly happy with the economy of the 1950s with a few technological tweaks. I may have been born then, but I saw relics of that time into the 1970s. We need more emphasis upon investment in plant and equipment with fair pay that allows those who do the work get a stake in the system. I could live with a household as spartan in its setting because the technology that we have allows us to do more with lesser material. But that is technology, and not economic brutality. As I recall the 1950s environment had little clutter. Do we need more material stuff now than then? Surprisingly not.

But basic human needs are the same; people must get food, rest, and shelter. If people are to ever amount to anything they need education -- and as a strict rule, the higher the normal level of education is, the better life is in health, crime, employment, and creditworthiness. The Hard Right wishes to return to the brutality of the capitalism that Karl Marx knew, and not the more humane consumer economy that began to emerge about a century ago.

Originally Posted by Kepi

That's because it has nothing to do with red vs. blue, it had to do with everything. All the stuff. It's not about principles, it's about total and utter mismanagement. ....

Wow, maximum pwnage.

Well, let's fly this trial balloon:

OK, college tuition is screwed up. [ I know this because one of my Millie nephews has stuff all over his Facebook on it. ]

Problem: Millies who choose to go to college will most likely have mortgage size debts to pay off. Now if you're a Millie who does not go to college, then it's minimum wage city, man.

Fix. If you're a governor or a state rep who can get enough colleagues to go with you do this:
Haul the state regents into a room and tell them to get rid of the cruft or you will pay them minimum wage so they can feel the pain. Also tell them to stop building white elephants like new dorms if they're just to be built to make the campus pretty. Next, change priorities from fixing other countries' infrastructure and start fixing ours. Just dust off the WPA so folks in hock to their eyeballs can get a bit of relief. The money can be found by shutting down corporate loopholes, and getting out hellholes like Afghanistan.

I think suggesting that folks move their money from banks to credit unions would also make a nice touch.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Sure, there was an election, but one with ominous tendencies. Many Republicans won because the front groups of the Koch syndicate succeeded in reducing the number of people voting due to a climate of contempt for the political process that they created. Guess what? That climate will get even uglier. But note that the Republicans who won now take their orders not from voters but instead from the Koch syndicate.

Here is a visual display. HTH
-Rags.

Originally Posted by Kepi

While I respect Danilynn's perspective, and would never consider it to be off the table, we could very well end the 4T with civil disobedience, a hallmark of the 1T. Forget occupy, "shut up, I work here, you don't." could very well be the millennial power play. What could anyone do to stop it? If the bosses called the cops and got the same treatment, their enforcement literally stops.

Definitely, such acts of defiance against established socioeconomic hierarchies are the hallmark of all genuine revolutions.

On a related note, there was a bit of humor at my work where my new boss joked that he didn't need to be there because the store almost runs itself!

Originally Posted by Danilynn

You know which box tends to get opened after the ballot box and soap box fail right? That's called the ammo box.

Or a box with a detonator in it.

This time it could be car bombs which are even more lethal. If one does not care whether one lives or dies, then making one is easy enough. Think of Timothy McVeigh... on the Left.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Oil is a horrible, horrible long-term economic bet, too.

If we build that pipeline, it will never turn a penny in real, aggregate profit.

The only people who will see any benefit are the ones who own it, and taxpayers are going to be left holding the empty bag when the oil trade trickles to a close and we have a big mess to clean up.

But if the Arabs pull any more oil blackmail - or if a war simply disrupts the normal flow of oil from the Middle East - the pipeline can be nationalized, just as Harry Truman nationalized the coal mines in 1946 to break John L. Lewis' coal-miners' strike.

As for cutting the corporate tax rate: A wide gap between the top marginal income tax rate and the corporate tax rate was the hallmark of a past genre of Republicanism - Eisenhower Republicanism, which on today's political-economic spectrum might as well be a product of the Progressive Labor Party.

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

But if the Arabs pull any more oil blackmail - or if a war simply disrupts the normal flow of oil from the Middle East - the pipeline can be nationalized, just as Harry Truman nationalized the coal mines in 1946 to break John L. Lewis' coal-miners' strike.

As for cutting the corporate tax rate: A wide gap between the top marginal income tax rate and the corporate tax rate was the hallmark of a past genre of Republicanism - Eisenhower Republicanism, which on today's political-economic spectrum might as well be a product of the Progressive Labor Party.

Indeed, the 1950s were the heyday of small business in America, even in activities such as manufacturing and banking in which it would be unthinkable. Of course the Lost were still heavily involved in the American economy, and they were one of the generations most likely to start small businesses. (A hint: however nasty the Great Depression was an excellent time for starting a business. For many of the Lost there was no alternative, and it is arguable that their formation of small businesses did as much to pull America out of the Depression as did the New Deal). The current tax system encourages vertically-integrated cartels and trusts. A small incorporated business or Exxon-Mobil alike pays alike the same flat tax on corporate income. The system has created economies of scale to give Big Business advantages in tax compliance (an IRS audit of a small retailer shuts the business down while the audit goes on, but Wal*Mart has no such problem) and paying off politicians through lobbyists.

(So how can I speak so glowingly of the 1930s as a time for people starting small businesses? First, many of the giant competitors went down. Inventories and equipment from failed entities were available at fire-sale prices. Good, reliable help was readily available. Starting a small business was one of the best ways to relieve the economic distress within an extended family. Difficulties of the time compelled people to seek out and serve customers instead of relying upon impulse buyers. It was a hard time, but a hard time can compel people to do what is best instead of some dream. Good habits are always worth developing).

Maybe America needs the purge of another Great Depression to force it out of some bad habits -- like crony capitalism, obesity, bad education, gross inequality, drug use, government by lobbyist, and sating itself with culture-free entertainment. Did I forget that voting for right-wingers who do horrible things to workers on behalf of the Master Class is a really bad habit?


There's much that few like about the 1950s -- the Red Scare, the survival of Jim Crow in the South, the subordinate role of women, and homophobia. Nobody would seek tearing up the Interstate Highway system to restore the Blood Alley as the normal path to between cities, and we would not take collapsible steering columns and seat belts out of cars. Nobody in good conscience would abandon the polio vaccine. The genie of technological marvels is out of the lamp, and few want it returned. I like my computer, my e-reader, my Blu-Ray disc player, and my flat-screen TV. 1950s style in household furnishings? Sure -- much less clutter, something that high technology really can achieve. Most significantly, anyone in the 1950s with a solid work ethic could get a well-paying job in manufacturing and support a middle-class standard of living.

The Right wants a return to the 1880s or earlier with plantations as the norm for agriculture (even expanding them into the North, which Global Warming would certainly help), the managerial style of Henry Clay Frick, and essentially the 70-hour workweek and 40-year lifespan with plenty of workers recruited as children. Such would now be unpopular, but torture chambers and a few incidents of mowing down protesters and strikers would make people more tolerant of their subjection. Only the rich would have any say in politics.

Now for my assessment of Barack Obama: soon after he became President, the economic meltdown came to an end. Such is no coincidence; he backed the banks, which is what Herbert Hoover would have done had he done what nobody thought of in early 1931 or so and had had a foretaste of what FDR would do. But in rescuing the financial system he rescued also those who had no use for any political life to the left of Francisco Franco, and they had the means with which to start their 'conservative' resurgence... bigger and harder. Scum who believe that the rest of humanity is expendable, and damnable lest it exist solely to enrich and pamper the scum are unfit to rule people best left alone.

Economic stewardship is one of the responsibilities of a President, and few can deny that President Obama has done as well as anybody could have. But it has come at a cost -- strengthening the interests who want an economic order that resembles fascism, a high-tech New Serfdom. Maybe our political system would work better if we had had a full-blown Depression, as there would not be the lavish funds for gutting American democracy.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Because Boomers don't offer the Millennials anything. The Missionaries, they worked for the favor of the GIs, they killed prohibition, they started all sorts of programs for the young unemployed, they really put effort into it. The Transcendentals definitely set up some home steading to remove everyone that wasn't interested or committed to the big hissy fit out of the way, but prospering in their own way, which removed excess labor so everyone got a fair wage. The Guided were compensated, probably not proportionally, but there was an effort. The Awakening generation was probably the closest to a generation that didn't pay for the sacrifice, but they represented more of the Tory faction, with really relatively few of them backing the Liberty and Republicans, and they wound up spending their end of life in a world they found confusing to them. The ones who made the sacrifice, guys like Franklin paid for the sacrifice by investing a lot into their communities.
There's nothing in here for us, and I know you guys don't care and that's fine, but you can expect to get swept out of the way for it that's the best case scenario.

S & H seem to have based their scenario on the Missionary/G.I. relationship. Ignoring young people, by Boomers of whatever background, is very poor tactics. Or maybe sheer oblivious-ness?

Maybe an Xer/Millie combo will end up pulling a Gilded. Without a vision of a grand future, I would imagine that the result would, at best, be a repair job on the old civic order. It occurs to me that Nomads could therefore have an early start on re-creating a 1T world of stability, of functionality.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

We no longer have a democracy. We have an aristocratic-corporatist order. Were I successful as a writer and holding the views that I hold, I would be out of America.

JOKE: There's a new operation that does not even require surgery. It's called a "Limbaugh-tomy". One loses one's conscience, empathy, and capacity for critical thinking and develops a slavish adulation for the rich-and-powerful.

Seems to afflict both the politicians and the voters!

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

I think it has some side effects. You will look like this:



and the ability to channel Rove.

Bears a striking resemblance to Mitch McConnell

Originally Posted by Kepi

That's because it has nothing to do with red vs. blue, it has to do with everything. All the stuff. It's not about principles, it's about total and utter mismanagement. It's about putzing around with broken systems like everything is okay for 30 years and not figuring out how to fix them, which would have benefited both of you, and instead having a quarter century pissing contest with a few years in there where you're collectively so scared of brown people you just agree so long as neither side points out other members if the other sides knees are knocking.

No, you said it had to do with competition. That's the laissez faire model; that's red. That's trickle-down; that's the ideology you referred to. I thought that was obvious.

We blue boomers did not agree with "being scared of brown people." We did not agree with the other side. We fought against the other side. We lost, especially on Dec.10, 2000. We figured out how to fix things just fine. Our programs were not adopted. The voters supported the corporate Reagan-Bush program of trickle down instead. Now you millennials have adopted that choice too. There is no more boomers and millies. We are all now equally culpable.

Actually, we have all the power. We're the ones that actually do the stuff. All those crappy, low paying, crack the whip jobs? Those are the ones where people are actually doing stuff. All we really have to do is agree to ignore the law makers, the corporate directives, etc. and we literally have all the power.

You don't get power by doing stuff in crack the whip jobs, silly. The power resides among those who crack the whips. That's us, not you.

While I respect Danilynn's perspective, and would never consider it to be off the table, we could very well end the 4T with civil disobedience, a hallmark of the 1T. Forget occupy, "shut up, I work here, you don't." could very well be the millennial power play. What could anyone do to stop it? If the bosses called the cops and got the same treatment, their enforcement literally stops.

Strikes and labor stoppages are one effective tool at least to get leverage with employers. That will take a lot of organizing, which so far you millies and X/Yers have shown very little ability at. You can't even get your asses to the polls. It will take a lot more than operating your iphones. But, if you can get it to work, go for it. I'm all for you.

More than likely, it won't work like this and eventually there would be a formal election or an execution, some sort of kangaroo court where everyone evidences that they tried to do it better than we did it to the poor prisoners in Gitmo... Whatever. But I can tell you, it won't go down red verse blue. How do I know this?

Because Boomers don't offer the Millennials anything. The Missionaries, they worked for the favor of the GIs, they killed prohibition, they started all sorts of programs for the young unemployed, they really put effort into it.....

I think the relevant fable here is the pied piper. You guys are gearing up for this long, drawn out conflict where you pummel either into oblivion for the good of your egos, but... You don't have anyone to actually fight the war. Literally nobody else is lining up to say "I'm going to shoot this gun at people so that I can have this gun taken from me" on one side and "I'm going to kill these people so they can't have an abortion" on the other. There's nothing in here for us, and I know you guys don't care and that's fine, but you can expect to get swept out of the way for it; that's the best case scenario.

I don't see any other alternative now but the fight among us. The Millies and X/Yers like you have already shown you will abdicate the fight. You have no power to sweep anybody out of the way. You have no organizing talent, and you do not vote. You take no coherent stand on anything. You will not follow a piper. You have left everything for us blue boomers to do. Millies are slackers who will just sit around and watch, and maybe throw a few fits and march around with a few signs. Totally ineffective, you guys are.

Originally Posted by decadeologist101

Kepi is right. The world is changing and policies need to keep up with new technology and other changes. Technology can make our lives heaven or hell and we have a choice to do either. Policies and the way things are done should make sense in the real world.

The real world is based on political and economic policies. Tech is just a tool for carrying them out, to a small extent. Tech is not the fix. Millennials and X/Yers are tech-obsessed and think tech is the fix. It is not. Tech can not fix greed and exploitation. It cannot fix ideology. It cannot fix the environment, unless the fix is supported by good political policies. It cannot bring peace to the world. It cannot cure superstition and materialism. It cannot fix racism, sexism and homophobia. It cannot fix the power of money and how it is directed. It cannot fix who owns the money, wealth and property.

How can tech ever fix these things? It just makes data flow faster, which makes workers have to work longer for less. That's all tech does. The real world is politics and economics, and tech doesn't matter. Tech may create some new jobs, but what good is that if they are controlled by a few people who hog all the wealth?

Eventually the fix may come when people vote intelligently. That's the only possible fix. We are a long way away from that fix, with very little time left.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Well put. That is exactly one of the Democratic party's big problem. Identity politics is a losing proposition.

You don't want identity politics and PC? Fine. Let's end all racism, sexism and homophobia. Then there will be no need for it.

Maybe younger people would vote if their was actually candidates worth voting for. In Ohio the GOP as so much control over politics here most of the time Democrats only run nominel candidates for the sake of running a candidate in most offices. This years governor election was a huge example of that. They once again picked a real loser of a candidate to run for office and he lost by a huge margin. The Democrats didn't even bother to campaign at all this year in Ohio. More money was thrown at smaller offices then the Governor race this year in Ohio. People were even unaware there was an election for governor this year. Do you really expect a large turn out in Ohio when your biggest race is a fight between loser 1 and loser 2?

Let's look at some cosmic scores for 2016 presidential candidates.

This score is based on statistical analysis of candidates' charts in the 19th and 20th centuries, and which aspects (angles between planets) appear charts of winners and losers. The score represents number of aspects in a chart that have a favorable record, compared to number of aspects that have an unfavorable record. Highest percentage should win, and no-one with a losing or even percentage should win. Notice how close the scores often are in close elections.

This system has worked well in the past. Let's check some races and nominee scores from the past:
* did not work

2012: Obama 8-2, Romney 11-5
2008: Obama 8-2, McCain 9-10
2004: GW Bush 15-3, Kerry 7-9
2000: GW Bush 15-3, Gore 13-6
1996: Clinton 13-2, Dole 9-12
1992: Clinton 13-2, GHW Bush 15-6, Perot 10-13
1988: GHW Bush 15-6, Dukakis 5-15
1984: Reagan 14-4, Mondale 8-14
*1980: Reagan 14-4, Carter 13-0
1976: Carter 13-0, Ford 14-6
1972: Nixon 12-4, McGovern 8-8
1968: Nixon 12-4, Humphrey 12-7, Wallace 6-4
*1964: L Johnson 12-9, Goldwater 20-10
*1960: Kennedy 13-7, Nixon 12-4
1952-56: Eisenhower 15-8, Stevenson 10-21
1948: Truman 18-3, Dewey 4-6
1944: F Roosevelt 13-5, Dewey 4-6
1940: F Roosevelt 13-5, Wilkie 7-6
1936: FDR 13-5, Landon 6-18
1932: FDR 13-5, Hoover 6-13
*1928: Hoover 6-13, Smith 7-7 (two losers!)

Some possible candidates for 2016:

Democratic

Hillary Clinton 9-8
Bernie Sanders 10-0
Jim Webb 14-8
Elizabeth Warren 9-5
Cory Booker 10-3
Joe Biden 14-11
Martin O'Malley 14-14 ***
Joe Manchin 14-7
Andrew Cuomo 10-7 **
Brian Schweitzer 10-7
Al Gore 13-6
Kirsten Gillibrand 12-13
John Hickenlooper 18-13
Tim Kaine 8-15
Richard Blumenthal 15-3
Tammy Baldwin 12-8 ***
George Clooney 16-12 ***

Republican

Jeb Bush 16-6
Rob Portman 19-10
Mitt Romney 11-5
Rand Paul 12-8 ***
Marco Rubio 17-12
Paul Ryan 16-13
Chris Christie 16-15 ***
Bobby Jindal 14-13
Mike Huckabee 6-6
Ted Cruz 4-6
John Thune 12-7 ***
Mitch Daniels 10-13
John Boehner 11-9
Rock Santorum 7-7
Rick Perry 9-5
John Kasich 8-15
Scott Walker 6-10
Sam Brownback 8-12

**cannot win in 2016 due to Saturn return
*** if elected in 2016, would lose for 2nd term due to Saturn return, and cannot win in 2020

Looks like the GOP is going to start eating it's own even before the new Congress is sworn in.

Pride cometh before the fall. Please proceed, Tea Party...

Pasted from the link:

Many also fumed when Mr. McConnell stated the obvious: Republicans do not have the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act because they cannot override a presidential veto on their own. (It takes 67 votes to do so; they have 52 seats now, with the possibility of picking up two more.) The next day, he and Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal insisting that, indeed, repeal remained a goal.


But what about the filibuster?

So it wouldn't even reach Obama's desk.

Originally Posted by Odin

Looks like the GOP is going to start eating it's own even before the new Congress is sworn in.

Pride cometh before the fall. Please proceed, Tea Party...

Unfortunately the real power in America is in the Romanov -- excuse me, Koch -- dynasty.

Phooey. If we are to have a royal family, then let it be the House of Windsor. Or Orange. Or Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Or Borbon-y-las-Dos-Sicilias. Or Glucksburg.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

You don't want identity politics and PC? Fine.

No I don't. Remember that GenX and Millies have been subjected to speech codes in universities.

Cf. http://www.aaup.org/report/freedom-e...s-speech-codes

So my verdict. Speech codes violate the 1st amendment. Furthermore, the definition of "majority" / "minority" is becoming less relevant as each day passes.

Let's end all racism, sexism and homophobia. Then there will be no need for it.

Test run: Rag's "tribes" = [Nordic, Celtic, and Cherokee]

http://thesocietypages.org/colorline...al-generation/

Check the chart. GenX and Milles don't give a hoot about interracial relationships.

Female college attendance exceeds males
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...ve-men-behind/

Homophobia is also becoming a non issue.
http://www.pewresearch.org/key-data-...-pew-research/

So, if you want to get GenX/Millies off to the polls, I assert again that the issue of student loans = financial rape of said generations. So, where was this issue discussed in the recent 2014 elections? I heard nothing, absolutely nothing about this. Student loan bondage is an equal opportunity screw job and yet nobody ever brings it up.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Wow, maximum pwnage.

Well, let's fly this trial balloon:

OK, college tuition is screwed up. [ I know this because one of my Millie nephews has stuff all over his Facebook on it. ]

Problem: Millies who choose to go to college will most likely have mortgage size debts to pay off. Now if you're a Millie who does not go to college, then it's minimum wage city, man.

Fix. If you're a governor or a state rep who can get enough colleagues to go with you do this:
Haul the state regents into a room and tell them to get rid of the cruft or you will pay them minimum wage so they can feel the pain. Also tell them to stop building white elephants like new dorms if they're just to be built to make the campus pretty. Next, change priorities from fixing other countries' infrastructure and start fixing ours. Just dust off the WPA so folks in hock to their eyeballs can get a bit of relief. The money can be found by shutting down corporate loopholes, and getting out hellholes like Afghanistan.

I think suggesting that folks move their money from banks to credit unions would also make a nice touch.

Not the worst idea, but it doesn't resolve the true issue, which is that the degrees don't have a pay-off for most of the people in them, yet they're sold as the way to "not wind up flipping burgers. Now, let's ignore the fact that the truth is that if they actually wanted to make money they'd go into elevator/escalator repair, plumbing, electrical, or basically any skilled trade, because everyone already knows that. Let's ignore the fact that there's nothing wrong with flipping burgers, it's an honest, difficult job that should earn everyone who is in it a living wage with a little more to boot, because everyone already knows that. Let's zero in on the degree system itself, instead.

So you go to high school and they tell you that you have to get a degree and it's the gateway to financial success and security. And they tell you that nothing else beats it. But the thing is, back when a college degree was a pre-existing sign of success. Not many people went. Either you went because your family was well off and as a result you could burn 4 years earning being an idiot away from your dad so that when you got back he could put you in an advanced position and not risk being embarrassed by you or you were a prodigy and therefore you're success was all but already guaranteed.

What degrees became by admitting 88% of all highschool graduates, in one form or another, was a situation where 28% of the population has one. So that's good, right? 28% of people are guaranteed to not be flipping burgers, right? And if that 88% graduated, they, too would be able to go into high paying power positions, too, right? Except those jobs are generally reserved for the top 15% of income earners. You see the problem here?

You probably said "there are more people holding degrees than there are positions available!" And, of course that's the right argument. Part of the millennial frustration is, and you'll here this again and again, "I did everything they told me to, and I still lost." The reality is that, not only do we not have enough positions in that top 15% of income earners for them now. We won't ever. At best, there will only be enough upper middle class jobs for half of all possible Millennials at their prime income years. And that's not pulling that percentage down for all the people who took up a trade, start a business but don't have a degree, inherit money and do nothing, etc. Now, not only does this affect the people with degrees who have ridiculous levels of debt and won't be getting that fancy upper middle class job to make it all worth while eventually, but where are our unlucky debt holders going? That's right! The middle class earning positions. So half of the middle class positions in society will be held by people who are effectively being marginalized by their debt into being working or lower class, which means that only the people without degrees or debt from degrees will be able to compete in the housing market or able to devote ant of their income to a retirementment plan.

Therefore:

1) Reducing the price of admissions is not enough, enrollment has to be shrunk down to about 25% of all high school grads so that we can maintain a continual 5% so that top tier incomes can be comprised of people who either are degree holders, fortunate, or in high demand fields without having to get more than one of those.

2) If anyone intends to retire and/or not completely annihilate the value in the housing market, we're going to have to outright, no hoops, no shame, no penalties, forgive all the student loan debt. Even with that, we're probably going to need to eliminate the housing debt, too, because once the stock market crashes again, most Boomers won't have the assets they need to retire, but their debt load on their housing won't allow them to sell at a price that gets them there.

Basically, on a macro scale, we're almost to do or die time economically and last I checked, society doesn't have a save game feature.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

No, you said it had to do with competition. That's the laissez faire model; that's red. That's trickle-down; that's the ideology you referred to. I thought that was obvious.

Only because you have a rather terminal case of prophet borne myopia. I'm not talking about ideals. I'm talking about fact. Your generation's mismanagement started with your inability to understand how competition in pricing works. The fact that you guys are blindsided by price bubbles all the time is testament to that fact. The fact that you guys went along with the 401 swindle, an other testament. The fact that your business practices have two moves: reduce salaries, remove benefits, another.

It's not that you guys promote competition as an ideal. It's that for some reason you guys don't understand the basics of it in practice, and so managing it? For get it. Boomers, like all prophets, love superlatives and developing overly complex ranking systems. It's always their downfall. Unfortunately for us, you guys never seemed to develop the prophet virtues that balance that out.

We blue boomers did not agree with "being scared of brown people." We did not agree with the other side. We fought against the other side. We lost, especially on Dec.10, 2000. We figured out how to fix things just fine. Our programs were not adopted. The voters supported the corporate Reagan-Bush program of trickle down instead. Now you millennials have adopted that choice too. There is no more boomers and millies. We are all now equally culpable.

But by a long shot, to any of it. Blue Boomers are just as likely to start bombing brown people as anyone. Ask Clinton. Ask Obama. Shoot, Hillary is chomping at the bit to nuke Iran. Blue Boomers didn't develop solutions, they monkeyed with Republican economics throughout the nineties, and decried a public option in healthcare even though they held the entirety of congress. They dashed net neutrality, they won't stop spitting on us, and despite the fact that Obama tried to make it an issue the Democrats would rather argue about a 30 year old court case than fix our decaying infrastructure. We aren't equally culpable, the Democrats didn't do their job and we didn't stop them from getting the boot. I tried to think of one worthwhile thing that that useless party did for me in the past two years and I really couldn't think of a single one.

You don't get power by doing stuff in crack the whip jobs, silly. The power resides among those who crack the whips. That's us, not you.

Ramses II would agree. Nero would, too. Look where it got them. The fact is we really have all the power. At ant given time, we can show up, or not, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Strikes and labor stoppages are one effective tool at least to get leverage with employers. That will take a lot of organizing, which so far you millies and X/Yers have shown very little ability at. You can't even get your asses to the polls. It will take a lot more than operating your iphones. But, if you can get it to work, go for it. I'm all for you.

Why bother? We can just keep monkey wrenching elections until either somebody decides that our livelihoods matter more than the ideals of self absorbed nags, or we're old enough to take the power and fix it ourselves. Strikes would likely divide Millennials, as Boomer politicians would send in storm trooper cops (who would likely be Millennials at this point) with tear gas and rubber bullets, and there we are in the middle of what we don't want: Red vs. Blue Boomer civil war.

I don't see any other alternative now but the fight among us.

And you never have. It's all you guys have ever wanted, and if you're going to do it, you'll have to do it yourselves.

The Millies and X/Yers like you have already shown you will abdicate the fight.

Exactly, so ask yourself the same question I ask everyone about how there's going to be some new, grand civil war. You and what army? I mean, If you guys want to grab a rifle and actually march, be my guest, but my guess is that you'll all be dead from heat exhaustion and over exertion by the time you reach the battle field. The fact is that abdication is the smartest thing we can do. Nobody gets shot over which side of the egg is appropriate to crack, nobody gets turned into second class citizens anymore than they already have, a bunch of cranky idealist failures go home unhappy. I don't see a way that we're losing anything.

You have no power to sweep anybody out of the way.

Funny, I can think if seven Democratic senators who would tell you differently because they won't be senators anymore come January. We didn't even have to do anything. It's gas and brakes. If the Democrats do their job, we show up and vote and they win. If they don't, we don't show up and they lose.

You have no organizing talent, and you do not vote. You take no coherent stand on anything.

Sure we do. We show up and make sure that the government stays gridlocked. It's organized and involves voting half the time. We take a completely coherent stand on everything: we don't want either of you to win. We want you to stay gridlocked until either the time comes that someone represents us or we can systematically knock you all out of the power structure.

You will not follow a piper. You have left everything for us blue boomers to do. Millies are slackers who will just sit around and watch, and maybe throw a few fits and march around with a few signs. Totally ineffective, you guys are.

We're already following a piper, his name is "Neitherofyou".

Originally Posted by Kepi

The Missionaries, they worked for the favor of the GIs, they killed prohibition, they started all sorts of programs for the young unemployed,

In 1932 people acted. The took the presidency and Congress that was in the hands of one party and put the other one overwhelming in control. What did they achieve in over the 1933-34 period? They achieved the end of the decline, achieved by massive monetary stimulus. The Depression continued on for six more years after the 1934 election.

Over 2006-8 people acted. The took the presidency and Congress that was in the hands of one party and put the other one in control for two years. What did they achieve by doing this? They achieved the end of the decline, achieved by massive monetary stimulus. They also got a new entitlement program (expanded Medicaid and ACA). In other words they got MORE from 2008 than they had gotten in 1932.

What neither of them got was the massive stimulus program that ended the economic decline. In the last 4T that showed up FDR's third term. Are people going to hand Democrats overwhelming control of both the presidency and Congress in 2016 so as to get the stimulus that should arrive in 2017 (if we keep the schedule from last 4T)? Almost certainly not. History does not repeat.

Also, it was NOT missionaries who dealt with the Depression, it was the Lost who gained the majority in the 1936 election. FDR stopped the bleeding in 1933 just as Obama did in 2009. That's all. All the other effective accomplishments of the FDR administration came AFTER the 1934 election, which Republicans won this time.

The situation in 1932 was different than today. Back then the Democratic party was an alliance of Progressives, immigrant minorities AND Red Staters. It doesn't make any sense today, but the Red folks hated Republicans because they called themselves the party of Lincoln and they hated Lincoln or at least what he stood for (and still do). Todays Republicans call themselves the Party of Reagan.

Today's Democrats consist of progressives, minorities (including immigrants) and moderates Basically they exchanged the Red folks for the Republican moderates.

In 1934, Democrats had the Solid South (Red voters are very loyal) and were able to win a majority of Blue votes because they had stopped the economic decline even though the economy was still very very bad. This gave allowed progressives to enact incomes policy like unemployment insurance and the rest of Social Security, as well as legalizing labor organizing. In 2010 these same voters who increased Democratic power in 1934 took them out. So nothing more could be done this time. And now the time for action has past.

The Transcendentals definitely set up some home steading to remove everyone that wasn't interested or committed to the big hissy fit out of the way, but prospering in their own way, which removed excess labor so everyone got a fair wage.

Fair wages were not achieved by removing labor. If you do that, employers simply replace the lost workers with automation and keep unemployment high. The principle way wages rose was through two mechanisms: One was strong growth (when demand is strong, employers have to act fast to exploit it, they don't have time to implement automation). The other (and more important) factor was the decline in hours works achieved by rebellion of workers against their employers other wise known as the labor movement (rather than withdrawing people from the labor force as you advocate (what happens to the people deprived of income), they withdraw the amount of labor per worker. The average work week for full-time employees around 1820 was 70 hours. By the Depression 4T it had fallen to about 40.

What this did was make less hours of labor available for employers for the same weekly wage. This in turn gave employers an incentive to automate, thus reducing the need for labor hours and boost the productivity of the labor they still employed, which allowed them to pay the higher wages demanded by their workers. Of course they did not choose to do strove to stop it, hiring private security forces employ violence on strikers up to the level of warfare:

(By August 29, battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of gas and explosive bombs left over from the fighting in World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect during treason and murder trials following the battle.

In the last 4T striking became legal. With a friendly government workers no longer felt they had to risk their lives fighting the bosses. And for a while, all was good. Wages continued to rise with productivity after WW II for almost 30 years. But times changed. With strikers no longer getting roughed up or killed it was no longer possible to use employer excess (like the bombs mentioned above) for PR purposes. As the Lost generation who had fought these battles passed, people forgot what it had been like. The conservative movement began in the 1950's with the paramount goal of neutralizing labor so as to restore the proper balance between rich and poor that had been destroyed by government overreach during the world wars and by over-mighty Labor since then. Their first attempt (1964) was a complete failure, but in 1980 they succeeded. For decades wages have failed to rise with productivity. They have taken the degree of economic unfairness (to the rich) from its peak in 1980 (when the ratio of the wealth of the richest family to GDP reached a minimum and CEOs were paid a trivial 40 times median income) to levels today equivalent to those in 1929. But there is more work to do. Relative to GDP, the richest families at the turn of the 20th century were still wealthier than those today AND they did not have to pay income tax.

You are trying to convert a class-based struggle to a generational one. It is not Boomers that make your economic lot not very promising. It's rich people. And there are rich Milles just as their are rich members of every generation.

There are currently 11.8 million Millennials age 18-30 living in U.S. households with annual incomes exceeding $100,000, according to the Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluent Survey. Plus, never before has such a large group of young people been raised by wealthy parents: 34% of today’s Millennials have been wealthy throughout their lifetime, say American Express and the Harrison Group.

Originally Posted by Danilynn

regardless of when I will not allow my kids to be cannon fodder. No matter how old I may be, as long as I am breathing and walking I will take their place. I brought them in this world and I made a promise I intend to keep, which I will protect them no matter the personal cost as long as I breathe.

Unfortunately, you may not be able to stop them in 2025.

Just something to think about.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

In 1932 people acted. The took the presidency and Congress that was in the hands of one party and put the other one overwhelming in control. What did they achieve in over the 1933-34 period? They achieved the end of the decline, achieved by massive monetary stimulus. The Depression continued on for six more years after the 1934 election.

Over 2006-8 people acted. The took the presidency and Congress that was in the hands of one party and put the other one in control for two years. What did they achieve by doing this? They achieved the end of the decline, achieved by massive monetary stimulus. They also got a new entitlement program (expanded Medicaid and ACA). In other words they got MORE from 2008 than they had gotten in 1932.

What neither of them got was the massive stimulus program that ended the economic decline. In the last 4T that showed up FDR's third term. Are people going to hand Democrats overwhelming control of both the presidency and Congress in 2016 so as to get the stimulus that should arrive in 2017 (if we keep the schedule from last 4T)? Almost certainly not. History does not repeat.

Also, it was NOT missionaries who dealt with the Depression, it was the Lost who gained the majority in the 1936 election. FDR stopped the bleeding in 1933 just as Obama did in 2009. That's all. All the other effective accomplishments of the FDR administration came AFTER the 1934 election, which Republicans won this time.

The situation in 1932 was different than today. Back then the Democratic party was an alliance of Progressives, immigrant minorities AND Red Staters. It doesn't make any sense today, but the Red folks hated Republicans because they called themselves the party of Lincoln and they hated Lincoln or at least what he stood for (and still do). Todays Republicans call themselves the Party of Reagan.

Today's Democrats consist of progressives, minorities (including immigrants) and moderates Basically they exchanged the Red folks for the Republican moderates.

In 1934, Democrats had the Solid South (Red voters are very loyal) and were able to win a majority of Blue votes because they had stopped the economic decline even though the economy was still very very bad. This gave allowed progressives to enact incomes policy like unemployment insurance and the rest of Social Security, as well as legalizing labor organizing. In 2010 these same voters who increased Democratic power in 1934 took them out. So nothing more could be done this time. And now the time for action has past.


Fair wages were not achieved by removing labor. If you do that, employers simply replace the lost workers with automation and keep unemployment high. The principle way wages rose was through two mechanisms: One was strong growth (when demand is strong, employers have to act fast to exploit it, they don't have time to implement automation). The other (and more important) factor was the decline in hours works achieved by rebellion of workers against their employers other wise known as the labor movement (rather than withdrawing people from the labor force as you advocate (what happens to the people deprived of income), they withdraw the amount of labor per worker. The average work week for full-time employees around 1820 was 70 hours. By the Depression 4T it had fallen to about 40.

What this did was make less hours of labor available for employers for the same weekly wage. This in turn gave employers an incentive to automate, thus reducing the need for labor hours and boost the productivity of the labor they still employed, which allowed them to pay the higher wages demanded by their workers. Of course they did not choose to do strove to stop it, hiring private security forces employ violence on strikers up to the level of warfare:


In the last 4T striking became legal. With a friendly government workers no longer felt they had to risk their lives fighting the bosses. And for a while, all was good. Wages continued to rise with productivity after WW II for almost 30 years. But times changed. With strikers no longer getting roughed up or killed it was no longer possible to use employer excess (like the bombs mentioned above) for PR purposes. As the Lost generation who had fought these battles passed, people forgot what it had been like. The conservative movement began in the 1950's with the paramount goal of neutralizing labor so as to restore the proper balance between rich and poor that had been destroyed by government overreach during the world wars and by over-mighty Labor since then. Their first attempt (1964) was a complete failure, but in 1980 they succeeded. For decades wages have failed to rise with productivity. They have taken the degree of economic unfairness (to the rich) from its peak in 1980 (when the ratio of the wealth of the richest family to GDP reached a minimum and CEOs were paid a trivial 40 times median income) to levels today equivalent to those in 1929. But there is more work to do. Relative to GDP, the richest families at the turn of the 20th century were still wealthier than those today AND they did not have to pay income tax.

You are trying to convert a class-based struggle to a generational one. It is not Boomers that make your economic lot not very promising. It's rich people. And there are rich Milles just as their are rich members of every generation.

Forgive me if I doubt information provided by American Express, but I'm going to go ahead and do just that. Really when you look at poverty measures in the US, our measures of poverty are ridiculously short. Sure they say that only one in 5 kids are living in poverty, but let's be clear they're defining that as with a household income under 30k per year for a family of 5. I suspect that any information coming from as company whose rests in keeping the world bathed in debt is going to be skewed to delusional degrees.

Also, when you're talking about class issues there's a massive difference in possible outcomes between generations which does make this a generational issue, and outcomes are always what matters. Housing prices have risen in proportion to income exponentially. Buying a house is the middle class privilege, add it allows people to stabilize their expenditures while renters can expect their annual rent increase to at least eat up any cost of living increase they may receive. The cost of education is another one that's gone up in multiples proportional to income.

So, If you have a single person with an income of 100k or more, more than likely they're doing awesome, even if they have a house sized student loan to pay off. They can still live life with relative ease. However, If it's two people with two house sized student loans, suddenly, they're effectively pushed into the middle class or even the working class effectively because you're basically pulling a half to a third of their income from the start, plus any benefit gained from teaming up is effectively lost when you factor in the additional cost of getting two parties to work, which usually involves having two cars, and gas and insurance for both vehicles, and business acceptable attire for both.

That's what makes it different, Mike. You can count some millennial households earning over $100k as actually being upper middle class. All of them, far from it. More than likely most of them are not capable of realizing facets of the upper middle class privileges: secondary property ownership and investment in financial assets beyond their retirement plans. This is a generational struggle and a class struggle.