Just want to posit that maybe Mr. Rush meant that compared to third world workers (such as Chinese), American workers are very much LESS underpaid. In otherwords, a Chinese factory laborer is very much underpaid, whereas the American laborer is only slightly underpaid.Originally Posted by monoghan
FWIW.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
Woo-hoo! I'm a bit less underpaid as of today! No raise for two years, and the one two years ago was a minus five percent (and I got to pay for bennies, too); since this morning (when I got 'promoted' to fill a position recently vacated -- no actual raises expected for at least another year or two), I am once again taking home more than I did back when I started here five years ago as an intern (when overtime was plentiful). Yay for me!:-?
Another Greg Palast interview.... He details the whole World Bank/IMF scheme and discusses involvement on the part of Enron and Junior Bush.
http://www.gregpalast.com/printerfriendly.cfm?artid=125
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GP: And so one of the things that is happening is that, in fact, I was supposed to be on CNN with the head of the World Bank Jim Wolfensen and he said he would not appear on CNN ever if they put me on. And so CNN did the craziest thing and pulled me off.
AJ: So now they are threatening total boycott.
GP: Yea right. So what we found was this. We found inside these documents that basically they required nations to sign secret agreements, in which they agreed to sell off their key assets, in which they agreed to take economic steps which are really devastating to the nations involved and if they didn't agree to these steps, there was an average for each nation that signed one-hundred and eleven items that they are required to sign on to. If they didn't follow those steps they would be cut-off from all international borrowing. You can't borrow any money in the international marketplace. No one can survive without borrowing, whether you are people or corporations or countries - without borrowing some money and having some credit and ...
AJ: Because of the debt inflation pit they've created.
GP: Yea, well, see one of the things that happened is that - we've got examples from, I've got inside documents recently from Argentina, the secret Argentine plan. This is signed by Jim Wolfensen, the president of the World Bank. By the way, just so you know, they are really upset with me that I've got the documents, but they have not challenged the authenticity of the documents. First, they did. First they said those documents don't exist. I actually showed them on television. And cite some on the web, I actually have copies of some...
AJ: Greg Palast dot com?
GP: Yea, gregpalast.com. So then they backed off and said yea those documents are authentic but we are not going to discuss them with you and we are going to keep you off the air anyway. So, that's that. But what they were saying is look, you take a country like Argentina, which is, you know, in flames now. And it has had five presidents in five weeks because their economy is completely destroyed.
AJ: Isn't it six now?
GP: Yea, it's like the weekly president because they can't hold the nation together. And this happened because they started out in the end of the 80s with orders from the IMF and World Bank to sell-off all their assets, public assets. I mean, things we wouldn't think of doing in the US, like selling off their water system.
AJ: So they tax the people. They create big government and big government hands it off to the private IMF/World Bank. And when we get back, I want to get to the four-parts that you elegantly lay out here where they actually pay off the politicians billions to their Swiss bank accounts to do this transfer.
GP: That's right.
AJ: This is like one of the biggest stories ever, Sir. I'm sorry, please continue.
GP: So what's happening is - this is just one of them. And by the way, it's not just anyone who gets a piece of the action. The water system of Buenos Aires was sold off for a song to a company called Enron. A pipeline was sold off, that runs between Argentina and Chile, was sold off to a company called Enron.
AJ: And then the globalists blow out the Enron after transferring the assets to another dummy corporation and then they just roll the theft items off.
GP: You've got it. And by the way, you know why they moved the pipeline to Enron is that they got a call from somebody named George W. Bush in 1988.
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GP: We are exposing that they are systematically tearing nations apart, whether it's Ecuador or Argentina. The problem is some of these bad ideas are drifting back into the U.S. In other words, they have run out of places to bleed. And the problem is, this is the chief economist, this is not some minor guy. By the way, a couple of months ago, after he was fired, he was given the Nobel Prize in Economics. So he is no fool. He told me, he went into countries where they were talking about privatizing and selling off these assets. And basically, they knew, they literally knew and turned the other way when it was understood that leaders of these countries and the chief ministers would salt away hundreds of millions of dollars.
AJ: But it's not even privatization. They just steal it from the people and hand it over to the IMF/World Bank.
GP: They hand it over, generally to the cronies, like Citibank was very big and grabbed half the Argentine banks. You've got British Petroleum grabbing pipelines in Ecuador. I mentioned Enron grabbing water systems all over the place. And the problem is that they are destroying these systems as well. You can't even get drinking water in Buenos Aires. I mean it is not just a question of the theft. You can't turn on the tap. It is more than someone getting rich at the public expense.
AJ: And the IMF just got handed the Great Lakes. They have the sole control over the water supply now. That's been in the Chicago Tribune.
GP: Well the problem that we have is - look, the IMF and the World Bank is 51% owned by the United States Treasury. So the question becomes, what are we getting for the money that we put into there? And it looks like we are getting mayhem in several nations. Indonesia is in flames. He was telling me, the Chief Economist, Stiglitz, was telling me that he started questioning what was happening. You know, everywhere we go, every country we end up meddling in, we destroy their economy and they end up in flames. And he was saying that he questioned this and he got fired for it. But he was saying that they even kind of plan in the riots. They know that when they squeeze a country and destroy its economy, you are going to get riots in the streets. And they say, well that's the IMF riot. In other words, because you have riot, you lose. All the capital runs away from your country and that gives the opportunity for the IMF to then add more conditions.
AJ: And that makes them even more desperate. So it is really an imperial economy war to implode countries and now they are doing it here with Enron. They are getting so greedy - they are preparing it for this country.
GP: I've just been talking to, out in California just yesterday, from here in Paris, the chief investigators of Enron for the State of California. They are telling me some of the games these guys are playing. No one is watching that. It's not just the stockholders that got ripped off. They sucked millions, billions of dollars out of the public pocket in Texas and California in particular.
AJ: Where are the assets? See, everybody says there are no assets left since Enron was a dummy corporation - from the experts I've had on and they transferred all those assets to other corporations and banks.
GP: Well yea, this stuff has really gone just like a three-card Monty game. I mean remember that there is money at the bottom. You did pay California's electric bills according to the investigations, they are telling me that they were pumped up unnecessarily by 9 to 12-billion dollars. And I don't know who they are going to get it back from now.
AJ: Well they actually caught the Governor buying it for $137 per megawatt and selling it back to Enron for $1 per megawatt and doing it over and over and over again.
GP: Yea, the system has gotten completely out of control and these guys knew exactly what was happening. Well, you have to understand that some of the guys who designed the system in California for deregulation then went to work for Enron right after. In fact, here I'm in London right now and we have, the British has some responsibility here. The guy who was on the audit committee of Enron, Lord Wakeham. And this guy is a real piece of work, there isn't a conflict of interest that he hasn't been involved in.
AJ: And he is the head of NM Rothschild.
GP: There isn't anything that he doesn't have his fingers in. He's on something like fifty Boards. And one of the problems, he was supposed to be head of the audit committee watching how Enron kept the books. And in fact, they were paying him consulting fees on the side. He was in Margaret Thatcher's government and he's the one who authorized Enron to come into Britain and take over power plants here in Britain. And they owned a water system in the middle of England. This is what this guy approved and then they gave him a job on the board. And on top of being on the board, they gave him a huge consulting contract. So you know, this guy was supposed to be in charge of the audit committee to see how they were handling their accounts.
AJ: Well, he is also the head of the board to regulate the media.
GP: Yes, he is, because I have run into real problems, because he regulates me.
AJ: They are also trying to pass laws in England where you've got an 800-year old well, or in some cases a 2000-year old well that the Romans built that's on your property and they say we are putting a meter on it. You can't have your own water.
GP: Yea, and that's Lord Wakeham. I mean this is the guy from Enron. He is a real piece of work. He can't be touched here because like I say he actually regulates the media. So if you complain, he's got his hand on your pen.
AJ: Burrow into NM Rothschild, you'll find it all there. Go through these four points. I mean you've got the documents. The IMF/World Bank implosion, four points, how they bring down a country and destroy the resources of the people.
GP: Right. First you open up the capital markets. That is, you sell off your local banks to foreign banks. Then you go to what's called market-based pricing. That's the stuff like in California where everything is free market and you end up with water bills - we can't even imagine selling off water companies in the United States of America. But imagine if a private company like Enron owned your water. So then the prices go through the roof. Then open up your borders to trade - complete free marketeering. And Stiglitz who was the chief economist, remember he was running this system, he was their numbers man and he was saying it was like the opium wars. He said this isn't free trade; this is coercion trade. This is war. They are taking apart economies through this.
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GP: Well you know, it is horrifying stuff that, unfortunately, I have been handed and Stiglitz, was very courageous for him to come out and make these statements. Like I said, he didn't provide me the documents. The documents really sealed it because it said this is what really happened. They really do say sign on the dotted line agreeing to 111 conditions for each nation. And the public has no say; they don't know what the hell is happening to them. All they know....
AJ: Go back into privatization. Go through these four points. That's the key. It sends billions to politicians to hand everything over.
GP: Yea, he called it briberization, which is you sell off the water company and that's worth, over ten years, let's say that that's worth about 5 billion bucks, ten percent of that is 500 million, you can figure out how it works. I actually spoke to a Senator from Argentina two weeks ago. I got him on camera. He said that after he got a call from George W. Bush in 1988 saying give the gas pipeline in Argentina to Enron, that's our current president. He said that what he found was really creepy was that Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the world's price for their gas and he said how can you make such an offer? And he was told, not by George W. but by a partner in the deal, well if we only pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little bit for you to go in your Swiss bank account. And that's how it's done.
AJ: This is the ....
GP: I've got the film. This guy is very conservative. He knows the Bush family very well. And he was public works administrator in Argentina and he said, yea, I got this call. I asked him, I said, from George W. Bush. He said, yea, November 1988, the guy called him up and said give a pipeline to Enron. Now this is the same George W. Bush who said he didn't get to know Ken Lay until 1994. So, you know.....
AJ: So now they are having these white-wash hearings. You know I was at Enron yesterday in Houston because I'm now here in Austin. We were like 30-feet from the door, right on the sidewalk and I have it on video - goons came up and said you can't videotape. I said go ahead and have me arrested. I mean I'm talking on the sidewalk, Greg.
GP: Well, you know, I was there in May, telling people in Britain you've never heard of Enron, but ... And these are the guys who have figured out how to (garbled) this government. In fact, we saw some interesting documents, a month before Bush took office, Bill Clinton, I think to get even with Bush's big donor, cut Enron out of the California power market. He put a cap on the prices they could charge. They couldn't charge more than one-hundred times the normal price for electricity. That upset Enron. So Ken Lay personally wrote a note to Dick Cheney saying get rid of Clinton's cap on prices. Within 48 hours of George W. Bush taking office, his energy department reversed the clamps on Enron. OK, how much is that worth for those guys. You know that has got to be worth, that paid off in a week all the donations.
AJ: Listen at the bombs you are dropping. You are interviewing these ministers, former head of IMF/World Bank economist - all of this, you've got the documents, paying people's Swiss Bank accounts, all this happening. Then you've got Part 2, what do they do after they start imploding?
GP: Well, then they tell you to start cutting your budgets. A fifth of the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the unemployment benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the education budgets, I mean horrible things. Now if you cut the economy in the middle of a recession that was created by these guys, you are really going to absolutely demolish this nation. After we were attacked on September 11, Bush ran out and said we got to spend $50 to $100 billion dollars to save our economy. We don't start cutting the budget, you start trying to save this economy. But they tell these countries you've got to cut, and cut, and cut. And why, according to the inside documents, it's so you can make payments to foreign banks - the foreign banks are collecting 21% to 70% interest. This is loan-sharking. If fact, it was so bad that they required Argentina to get rid of the laws against loan-sharking. because any bank would be a loan-shark under Argentine law.
AJ: But Greg, you said it yourself and the documents show it. They first implode the economy to create that atmosphere. They institute the entire climate that does this.
GP: Yea, and then they say, well gee, we can't lend you any money except at these loan- shark rates. We don't allow people to charge 75% interest in the United States. That's loan-sharking.
AJ: Part 3 and Part 4. What do they do after they do that?
GP: Like I said, you open up the borders for trade, that's the new opium wars. And once you have destroyed an economy that can't produce anything, one of the terrible things is that they are forcing nations to pay horrendous amounts for things like drugs - legal drugs. And by the way, that's how you end up with an illegal drug trade, what's there left to survive on except sell us smack and crack and that's how...
AJ: And the same CIA national security dictatorship has been caught shipping that in.
GP: You know, we are just helping our allies.
AJ: This is just amazing. And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar. What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan?
GP: Well, in Part 4, you end up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President of Venezuela.
AJ: And they install their own corporate government.
GP: What they said was here you've got an elected president of the government and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics - they would just support a transition government. What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup d'etat, if the military overthrows the current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what I'm going to do is, I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government - and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as they did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military and I'm telling you watch this space: the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil companies.
AJ: Greg Palast, here is the problem. You said it when you first came out of the gates. They are getting hungry, they are doing it to the United States now. Enron, from all the evidence that I've seen was a front, another shill, they would steal assets and then transfer it to other older global companies, then they blew that out and stole the pension funds. Now they are telling us that terrorism is coming any day. It's going to happen if you don't give your rights up. Bush did not involve Congress and the others who are supposed to be in the accession if there is a nuclear attack in the secret government, Washington Post -"Congress Not Advised of Shadow Government." We have the Speaker of the House not being told. This looks like coup d'etat here. I'm going to come right out with it. We had better spread the word on this now or these greedy creatures are going to go all the way.
GP: I'm very sad about one thing. I report this story in the main stream press of Britian. I'm on the BBC despite Lord Wakeham. I know he doesn't like me there. I'm in the BBC, I'm in the main daily paper, which is the equivalent of the New York Times or whatever, and we do get the information out. And I'm just very sorry that we have to have an alternative press, an alternative radio network and everything else to get out the information that makes any sense. I mean this information should be available to every American. I mean, after all, it's our government.
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I wonder how Brian defines the state of being "underpaid".
I mean, I don't know about you, but the Gross amount on my pay stub squares with the rate I agreed to work for. (Now, I have some issues with the Net, but that's an issue with tax rates...)
If everyone is being underpaid, they should report their employers to the police...
Is there a rock somewhere where God inscribed the official correct pay rates for various jobs? Is it visible to everyone, or can only people of a given political stripe and government bureaucrats see it?
Re: Another Manifest Destiny
With all due respect, Croak, I haven't the foggiest idea what the heck you're talking about.
It's implied in what I said earlier. The optimum pay for the work force in general is what maintains consumer demand at a level sufficient to sustain growing prosperity. Any less than that is underpay. Another way to think of it is that wages must keep pace with productivity; if productivity grows while wages stay stagnant or decline, then the goods produced cannot be purchased and the economy goes into recession.I wonder how Brian defines the state of being "underpaid".
It's one of the inherent flaws of a competitive market economy that systematic underpay (by the above definition) tends to occur and worsen. To combat this tendency, mature economies encourage the formation of labor unions and pass laws and regulation to define and uphold rights for workers. It doesn't work perfectly but it does work to a large degree. Unfortunately, much of our investment is occurring nowadays in immature economies where less enlightened policies prevail.
You're not under the delusion that this agreement was entirely voluntary on your part, are you?the Gross amount on my pay stub squares with the rate I agreed to work for.
If that's a metaphor for it being a law of nature, yes.Is there a rock somewhere where God inscribed the official correct pay rates for various jobs?
Much of the fiber optic will end up being used. The fraction that will not is a tiny fraction of the total inventory of capital goods--hardly "rampant capital destruction". I'd say barely perceptible. Malinvestment (like the excess investment in fiber optic) is a normal part of an investment boom, the same thing happened with railroads numerous times and with real-estate/land on a semi-regular 18-year cycle throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.The following are examples of real capital consumption:You didn't explain what you mean by real capital consumption.:lol: Of course you don't! That's the whole point of the Fed "holding down" interest rates -- to disguise the loss of capital (presumably until more can be formed to fill the gap).Could you expand on this concept of real capital consumption? I see no evidence of a decline in capital stock.
Beautiful!
- The thousands of miles of dark fiber optic line in the ground. Even if those lines are someday put to use, the capital expended in putting them up now is unavailable for present use anywhere, and the amount of value they lose (via rot, obsolescence, maintenance, etc) is value gone forever -- since it never provided more than a 0% return.
- The manufacture of cruise missiles. These things are completely obliterated at the end of their life cycle (along with other capital investments). During their life cycle, they produce no capital returns (and, in fact, require maintenance and transport -- which themselves drain capital stocks).
In both cases, the capital consumed consisted at least of the materials used in the manufacture of either product, the resources expended to keep alive the people who worked on them, and the accellerated wear on the machinery used to make the products. These things were expended to no future return. Thus, the capital, once had, has been consumed.
The second example is a weapon. It is not a capital good. You can make a similar argument for luxury consumer goods like the Bagwhan's Caddies.
Well, at least you thought about it. It seems to me that if goods produced cannot be purchased, their prices will go down, but I'm not sure we have any FUNDAMENTAL disagreement here. For example...
Your beef seems to be that you wish the workers in poor countries would hurry up and get labor unions and better conditions so that they would stop driving wages down. I agree that this would be good. These things take time, but any protestation such as yours is part of the vast machinery of forces driving the market, so I cannot object to your protests.
I might dispute that the problem represents a "flaw" in competitive market economy. It would be nice if the balancing process worked faster, sure, but information processing takes time in any system. I suppose it could be descibed as a "flaw" if any better system could be indicated.
Now, HERE we do have a fundamental disagreement.
No doubt, you are saying that my agreement was partially involuntary because I recognized that better choices did not exist at the time.
Look, ANY decision in the real world could be described as "involuntary" in this way. You may think that your point is clever, but it is truly banal.
Sure, one could say that "nobody every makes a free decision" because they are influenced by their environment and circumstances, but one could also say that "nobody ever does anything they don't want to do", because even a person who is tortured to confess "wants" to confess so the pain will stop.
Both statements would be equally true. I repeat, your point is banal.
To further illustrate, I could argue that everyone "wants" to change babies diapers, because the alternative is worse.
In your system, I suppose, I would make $300K per year, bed nubile starlets on a regular basis, and never have to change another diaper? If so, count me in on Rush-ism. If not, I'll stick to the free market, thanks.
Uh, is it okay for me to say that I'm underpaid and it's my own damn fault if I am? :-?
On second thought, those bennies look awfully good. Think I'll stay right where I am right now.
Sanford:
Sure. So will profits. So will the number of them produced next year. So will the number of people hired for the purpose. So will the wages of those that are hired (since the demand will be lower, which drops price). It's a vicious cycle. But no single business (unless it's a monopoly) can break the cycle, because choosing to increase one's operating costs puts one at a competitive disadvantage.It seems to me that if goods produced cannot be purchased, their prices will go down
That hasn't occurred, not because enough time hasn't gone by, but because they live under repressive governments that don't protect their rights. Or even affirmatively infringe their rights. There was a time in this country when workers who tried to form unions got their heads routinely broken by cops, the National Guard, and private corporate goons, with the government looking the other way the latter case. Still true in a lot of places, though not in America any longer.Your beef seems to be that you wish the workers in poor countries would hurry up and get labor unions and better conditions so that they would stop driving wages down.
Both statements are indeed equally true, and my point was that the claim that one's wages are just and right because they are voluntarily chosen is specious. One chooses only from among available alternatives. I disagree that this is "banal."Sure, one could say that "nobody every makes a free decision" because they are influenced by their environment and circumstances, but one could also say that "nobody ever does anything they don't want to do", because even a person who is tortured to confess "wants" to confess so the pain will stop.
Both statements would be equally true. I repeat, your point is banal.
What is coercion? It is the limiting of choices to make sure that any decision not to cooperate with the coercer is insufferably painful. A slave has the free will not to work, if he doesn't mind being whipped. An employee in a third-world country similarly has the free will not to work for a sweatshop, if he doesn't mind seeing his children starve.
The only choices we make that can meaningfully be called "voluntary" are those where the consequences of doing differently are endurable. I am currently working for a lot less money than in my last job, because it is a step into a field that promises to be a lot of fun, and perhaps very lucrative down the road. THAT was a voluntary decision, because I had acceptable alternatives. But for many that is not the case.
No, information processing today is quite rapid. The wage differential does not reflect a slow balancing process. Nor can it be explained by an unfettered free market. The issue is low-wage countries keep their wages low relative to those of Americans--by keeping their currencies low.
Consider an Indian engineer might make $10,000 a year compared to $100,000 for his Silicon Valley equivalent. Yet the Indian engineer is not being exploited, his apartment costs $125 a month while the US engineer is paying $1500. So he does OK.
Why does this happen? Simplistically, one would expect currencies of countries with deficits like the US to fall in value relative to those with surpluses until deficits and surpluses largely vanished. This would tend to equalize living standards making wages of people having similar productivities (like the two engineers) similar.
But this doesn't happen, largely because of very complex political and economic interactions. In effect, it creates a situation in which the US sort of functions as an empire, but it's a funny kind of empire in that the "tribute" isn't forcibly extracted from unwilling subject nations, but actually rather freely offerred.
Mike:
This may be true w/r/t the engineer you described. But there are other factors involved with lower-end manufacturing workers and agricultural workers, as opposed to the highly skilled and educated. The wages of such workers in places like Indonesia or Bangladesh are low, not only compared to their dwindling ranks of American counterparts, but also when you compare them to the engineers of their own countries. The two engineers you described differ in compensation by a factor of 10, but an American manufacturing worker earns commonly $15 an hour or more, while his third-world counterpart commonly makes $2 a day for a 12-hour shift, or about 16 cents an hour. A tenfold reduction would put him at $1.50 an hour.The issue is low-wage countries keep their wages low relative to those of Americans--by keeping their currencies low.
Re: Another Manifest Destiny
With all due respect, Croak, I haven't the foggiest idea what the heck you're talking about.
Damn, Croaker, I think I just figured it out: Your s.o.b. father left you and mom high and dry! That's it, and somewhere in this story, religion looms large. So was he among the "pioneer husbands who had abandoned their families and joined a railroad gang?" Or some other "manly" pursuit, like war, unions, off on a far and distant shore?
Am I gettin' warm, Croak?
Colder than certain parts of a brass monkey up on Virgil's farm. Marc. My parents were Ozzie & Harriot to me, up in Lambertville, MI, and later on in Toledo. I am personally responsible for what I am...a daunting load to carry around. And it's the attitude of God-Bless-Americans that causes me so much grief. If a politician today doesn't conclude his or her remarks on TV with "God bless America," then he or she had better get out of politics. This un-Constitutional attititude carries an evangelistic thrust in the name of something that seems an aweful like religion to me. And I take special notice of the fact that we are engaging in another Holy Crusade. The president even said so on TV, followed by yet another "God bless America!"
"The More Abundant Life" is less than Utopia when it means body bags, economic chaos, and environmental disaster. I'm all for life, Marc, but the "more" & "abundant" parts are to me clear signs of another Manifest Destiny.
"Let's roll!" "...and it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?..."
--Croaker
Again, you're neglecting the time component. The fact that those cables were manufactured and installed today as opposed to putting those resource to a more profitable (any nonzero return) use today represents a loss. Also don't neglect the capital costs of upkeep (or depreciation) which will accumulate until the cable is used. Malinvestments cannot ever be wholly liquidated (and liquidation itself eats up capital). You asked for an example of capital destruction. I gave it.
Correct. It is neither a capital good -- that is, one used to further future production -- nor a consumer good -- that is, one which satisfies a consumer's wants, but produces no net capital increase. What it does do is require capital to be consumed in its construction, for its upkeep, and for its delivery, as well as destroying capital goods at the end of its life cycle (assuming the aim is good). It represents a net loss in capital; destruction of real capital, as I indicated previously, and as for which you requested elucidation.]The second example is a weapon. It is not a capital good.
Mission accomplished.
http://www.oblivion.net/news/display.php?articleID=796 even mentions "culture wars"! This looks A LOT like 3T stuff to me (just before the SOTU - let's wait to see what happens after that speech though... so far nothing has really changed)
The Antics in the US media is pretty tame in comparsion to what is normal in Europe, Dead Babies being eated, nudity in respectable magazines like Der Spegiel.
The ultimate proof we're in a Third Turning.
All right, I think we've found it right here. Look here for the ULTIMATE PROOF that we are in a Third Turning.
Plaid's Out, Again, as Schools Give Up Requiring Uniforms
By KATE ZERNIKE
New York Times
9/13/2002
CANYON COUNTRY, Calif. -- They tried hard to keep school uniforms going. They relented on the requirement for the logo. They allowed casual Fridays. They phoned every parent in a school of 1,300 students and reminded them that uniforms were mandatory -- though yes, there was the opt-out provision for anyone who really objected.
But soon, teachers were wasting the first 10 minutes of class trying to figure out who had waivers and who was breaking the rules. The rule breakers were crowding the principal's office. By last spring, with only 200 students wearing uniforms, officials at Sierra Vista Junior High did what had come to seem inevitable: they abandoned school uniforms.
"It was nuts; it became a huge distraction," said Beth Shedd, the head of the math department. "It increased friction, it increased discipline problems, having to worry about who was wearing what. It wasn't worth the fight."
Just as Sierra Vista was one of many public schools caught up in the uniform craze of the 1990's, now it is one of many giving up on it. In California alone, where the trend took off, at least 50 schools have abandoned uniforms in the last two years. In and around Salt Lake City, 16 of the 40 schools that once required uniforms have dropped them. School officials report defections in Florida, Kansas and New Hampshire.
Uniforms first took hold as a way of dealing with gang colors and improving school security in the mid-1990's. But soon educators and politicians began to hold them out as cure-alls: if students looked more orderly, schools would be more orderly. Noise and discipline problems would go down, attendance and test scores would go up. Uniforms would blur distinctions between rich and poor and short-circuit the age-old competition over clothes. President Bill Clinton urged uniforms in two State of the Union addresses. President Bush allowed a tax break for them.
Yet in many places, the promises have not panned out. If anything, problems increased as infractions built up and uniforms became a stigma marking poor students. In places like this swelling suburb 35 miles north of Los Angeles, parents seemed less concerned about school safety. But even at urban schools in neighborhoods considered more dangerous, officials say they found it too hard to get parents to go along.
"I think if it had happened and kids really bought into it, I think it might have been a larger, more immediate success," said Donna Wells, the former director of school safety programs for Virginia and a researcher who has studied the effect of uniforms. "But I think uniforms have peaked for now. If there are a couple of school shootings tomorrow, we may see it again. But my sense is that right now people are focused on larger issues."
It is hard to know precisely how many school districts have adopted uniforms and how many have abandoned them. States do not track this information, and federal statistics do not go beyond 1997. As part of a study of school safety measures in 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that uniforms were required at about 20 percent of public and Roman Catholic elementary and middle schools.
In 1994, Long Beach, Calif., was the first big-city school district to adopt uniforms. When school crime rates dropped 22 percent the first year, the district quickly became a model for schools around the country.
So far, uniforms seem to have stuck best in cities. New York City, which came late to the trend, required elementary students to wear uniforms starting in 1999 unless the schools opted out; 75 percent of schools now make them mandatory.
Yet even in Long Beach, officials are tweaking the rules to keep uniforms going. This year, three elementary schools are allowing students to wear blue-and-white Hawaiian print shirts instead of the standard polo shirts as incentive to keep them in uniforms.
"It's a big, big, big, big struggle," said Michael Navia, the principal at Cubberley Elementary in Long Beach, where 60 percent of students wear Hawaiian shirts. "All we have to back us up is the parent."
Generally, public schools have to hold a vote among parents on uniforms, and have to allow them to opt out. That is where the problems begin.
In Canyon Country, teachers and parents talk about the early days of mandatory uniforms wistfully, as if recalling a kind of communal bliss. For years after the school adopted uniforms in 1996, not a single Canyon Country student arrived out of uniform. "Children had more focus, parents had peace of mind," said Randy Parker, the principal at Sierra Vista.
Then in the spring of 1999, a parent at a nearby junior high school objected to mandatory uniforms, saying the policy violated students' constitutional right of free expression. In defense of the state law, a newspaper article pointed out that state law allowed parents to opt out of uniform policies. That was news to many parents at Sierra Vista, and ammunition to their children.
The next day, teachers said, a small group of students showed up out of uniform. They moved through the hallways like a threatening storm cloud, whispering to others of their newly realized rights.
Within a month, 100 students had opted out, and others were showing up out of uniform, or with a change of clothes tucked into their backpacks. That fall, the school relaxed the rules, but the problem got worse.
Parents began using waivers as bargaining chips: get an A in algebra and you do not have to wear the uniform. Others stuffed waivers into Christmas stockings. Mr. Parker had to update the opt-out list daily.
By spring 2001, teachers were pleading to get rid of the policy. The uniform disputes coincided with new state tests, and policing clothes was taking too much time. Mr. Parker took the request to the school board. "I didn't think the tide was going to turn back," he said.
The board wanted the school to try. So the phone calls went out. In the first two days of school in 2001, Mr. Parker met with 100 parents -- leaving 21 new teachers essentially leaderless. Four hundred students opted out in the first week, with the number rising to 500 within a month. By spring, with only about 200 students in uniform, the school told teachers to stop enforcing the rule. In June, the school board repealed the policy.
"Parents want uniforms," Mr. Parker said. "They just don't want uniforms for their kid."
Some parents at Sierra Vista, as at other schools nationwide, said it was too expensive to maintain two sets of clothes. Others, though, said it was the battles they could not afford.
"I have a pile of uniforms at home; I loved them," Wendy Taylor said. "With teenage girls, it made it so much easier in the morning. But when some of the kids stopped, they picked up on it and said, `Everybody else isn't wearing them.' Slowly everybody just stopped."
Other districts have had problems, too.
South of Los Angeles, in Westminster, officials hoped uniforms would even out class and race distinctions in their 17 schools. In fact, they said, uniforms reinforced them. Hispanic and Asian parents, generally poorer, embraced uniforms, while white parents opted out, saying their children wanted to show off new outfits.
Elsewhere, school officials say the opt-outs began corrupting the message they were trying to send. The Highland-Goffe's Falls School in Manchester, N.H., dropped its uniform policy when seven families refused to go along. "The whole idea of education is consistency," said Jim Paul, the principal. "All it takes is one behavior that's inconsistent. The kids start saying, `If they don't have to do it, why should I?' "
Still, others keep trying. In Utah, Karen Morgan, a state representative, sponsored three changes in state law to try to make uniform policies work. This year, Ms. Morgan shepherded a law that largely eliminates opt-out provisions.
But in Canyon Country, teachers are once again talking about school as a kind of bliss.
"Once we let it go, it was a much quieter place to be," said Ms. Shedd, the math department head. "I can teach again."
Responses to the loss of STS 107/Columbia
I have always has a passion for space and although my studies took me into others realms of science, I am still a space junkie, was a member of the planetary society and L5 and all that. So I have been glued to the TV and radio for the last 24 hours (never mind that it was the sabbath) in concern over the disintegration of Columbia as it reentered the atmosphere. :cry:
I was in my mid-twenties at the time of Challenger and I am in my very early forties today, so I remember both of these events from an adult perspective. (I am in the first cohort of X-ers, born in 1961).
Today, as I watched the Sunday morning news programs, I was struck by how different the reaction of pundits and politicians was to this space shuttle accident compared to the reactions over Challenger in 1986. In 1986 the discussion was almost at once one about who to blame and about whether the Space Program ought to continue at all. The Shuttle Program itself was seen as a retrenchment back from the heroic Apollo program that first landed human beings on the moon. There was also a lot of criticism of the Space Program because it was taking money for pure research when there were starving children in the world, etc. (Not that any of them money cut from NASA actually went to feel starving babies, mind you...). The loss of life was seen as senseless and unecessary. In all, the response was in line with an unraveling era attitude of pessimism and seemed to match the Silent style of leadership.
However, the response to the loss of Columbia seemed very different. Yesterday, every politician I heard interviewed was supportive of NASA's
resolve to deal with the evidence and learn what the cause of the accident was (no mention of blame here) so that we could do what it takes to begin flying the remaining shuttles again as soon as possible. The agencies assigned to do the investigating were governmental agencies and the military and NASA was assigned to play a large role in this. The investigation may indeed be a good test of how well many government agencies can work together to a productive end. The loss of the seven astronauts, while seen as sad, was also seen as having a purpose. ("They knew the risks and faced them willingly..." "They died in pursuit of knowledge to benefit all humanity.."). There seems to be a sense of purposeful resolve to find out what happened, fix it and get on with work that is seen by our national leaders as important and beneficial to the nation.
I think these two responses are very different. S&H talked about how there can be multiple catalists to a 4T. I still think those who remember it, will look back on 9/11 as a definite point of departure after which the mood of the nation changed dramatically. However, I suspect we might look back on the loss of the Columbia as an event that showed us how much had changed and that there is no going back.
Elisheva Levin
"It is not up to us to complete the task,
but neither are we free to desist from it."
--Pirkei Avot
Re: Responses to the loss of STS 107/Columbia
Plus, we can look forward to GWB informing us in a week or so of the evidence he has linking the Columbia disaster to Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Al Q'aeda, and/or that other guy -- what was his name? Bin-something-or-other...?
Re: Responses to the loss of STS 107/Columbia
Your memory of the Challenger explosion is faulty. Actually, the American people were surprisingly unfazed by the accident, and wanted to continue the space program. What caused the space program to continue its dawdling was not public opinion, but the response by the NASA bureaucracy, which was to try to Naderize space travel by making it safer than a trip to the park.
Your view of the 3T circa 1986 is also fundamentally flawed. Actually, there was a good deal of national optimism at the time, fueled by the revival of the US economy from the doldrums of the 1970's (remember 1973?), the rebuilding of the US military into a first-class fighting force (it was practically a fad for young men to join the Marines or the Army at the time), and a few at least symbolic military victories against the Cubans in Grenada and Qaddafi in Libya. This optimism, incidentally, was the reason for their aforementioned unwillingness to give up space after the Challenger disaster.
The reason that the Unravelling eventually decayed into Seinfeld-type hedonism and self-indulgence was not the turning back from the glory days of the Awakening, but rather the failure to make a decisive end to the 2T influence in our society. The Boomers were too absorbed in "finding themselves" to be swayed by the grandeur of space exploration--the last Big Project of the High, initiated by the last High president (as opposed to W.J. Clinton, who was merely a high president). :wink: And although the Reagan Revolution did turn around the malaise of the late Seventies, it did not do away with the bureacracies, race hustlers, neo-Luddites, cynically exploitative trial lawyers, and anti-male feminists that had been spawned by the 2T; thus, when Bush I, who lacked Reagan's strength and courage, took over, the jerks came back in full force. Of course, by this time there was a substantial counter-counterculture to oppose them (Rush Limbaugh and the NRA come to mind), so that they were unable to issue in the New Era they would have liked. However, this counter-counterculture was too busy protecting basic First and Second Amendment rights against the onslaught of Clinton and Janet Reno to have time for big 1T-type projects; thus the space program was allowed to wither on the vine.
Popular culture in the Clinton-era Unravelling was full of anti-technological propaganda. Take the miserable movie Titanic, for instance. The ship's owners are portrayed as irresponsible and evil, because they actually had pride in this spectacular ship. Didn't they know that love is all that matters? Rose and Jack knew it; thus, while all those evil capitalists were trying to drag humanity kicking and screaming into the 20th century, they were being good little hippies and screwing each other. Had the movie had any intellectual integrity, it would have admitted that, although the Titanic's voyage ended in disaster, that it was an anomaly; that ships kept getting better, and that the evil capitalists kept funding advancements that helped the human race. Similarly, Newt Gingrich was viciously attacked by Thomas Disch in the Nation as "Speaker Moonbeam" for actually having visions of a future for mankind in space; didn't he know that such ideas are mere fantasy, and that all we have to look forward to are 500 years of Amory Lovins and Catherine MacKinnon?
In fact, the reaction to the Columbia tragedy is no more favorable to space exploration than the reaction to the Challenger. There is still talk of an "investigation"--always a chilling and hostile word. Nevertheless, I also see Sen. Bill Nelson, a liberal Democrat who in 1975 would probably have been calling for the abolition of NASA, the money to be spent on organic foods, talking favorably today about plasma rockets. That is a sign that things are getting better.
By the way, it is not necessarily a good thing that so many people want to continue the shuttle flights; for an alternate view, read this article by Charles Krauthammer from the year 2000:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...2/204pkfxj.asp
Essentially, he's saying that the shuttle exists only to serve the space station, which only exists to promote "peace and understanding" between nations. The Moon may be as good a base for future space exploration as an orbiting station--although, unlike Krauthammer, I'm inclined to believe that the station may still have some uses.
Re: Responses to the loss of STS 107/Columbia
Um, if I may ask, how old were you, Dom, when the Challenger blew up?
I was twenty-six, a recent college graduate and entree to the professional rat-race and extremely well aware of what was going on around me. Unfazed my ass!!! The American public was absolutely devastated by the Challenger explosion-- in fact, good, patriotic conservatives who remembered the glory days of the Apollo moon program seemed to have been by far the most troubled of us all. People were indeed wondering if it was worth continuing the space program, largely because there didn't seem to be a goal worth losing human lives over (such as a manned landing on Mars) within reach. It didn't have a damned thing to do with a supposedly bloated and disingenuous NASA bureacracy at all. Myself, I changed my major from physics to civil engineering in 1981, largely because there didn't seem much point in pursuing a career in Space Sciences that --at the time -- weren't going anywhere very exciting.
Regarding the 3T mood in 1986, yes Mr. Reagan's forays into Grenada and Libya (we'll forget about Lebanon here, for discusion's sake) had succeeded in getting America over its post-Vietnam malaise, and because of that-- along with Mr. Gorbachev's new glasnost policy -- the fear of nuclear war was beginning to wane. But it was the Challenger disaster that suggested rather strongly that the old America -- that which could both imagine and accomplish nearly anything it wished -- was not "back" as the President would rather have had us believe. Such was the genesis of Xer-style "whatever" cynicism that emerged full-blown by the early 1990s, a confirmation that the downward spiral the world had been in since the Summer of Love had not reversed, but had in fact accelerated.
Looking back, I would say that Challenger was the 3T's Social Moment, the point at which most people realized that there was no going back even to the Awakening, let alone to the glory days of the High when JFK announced that "We Choose To Go To The Moon....not because it is easy, but because it is hard".
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Columbia turned out to be the Social Moment-- or Regeneracy-- of the current Fourth Turning. We shall see.
Sex, as a societal and political force, and was the primary issue of the previous Awakening. Thus it was the destructive ascendant of AIDS that was primary closer on that era: hence it's closing "social moment."
Not the Challenger disaster.
AIDS....not!
The primary issue of the last Awakening was not sex per se, but power, specifically a struggle between two competing visions-- the conservative vision of the High era as the societal ideal, and the liberal one that sought to toss all "old-fashioned" notions (of not just sex, but ethnicity, war, technological progress, etc.) out the window.
In the early Unravelling period, it was widely assumed that only homo/bisexuals like Rock Hudson, intravenous drug users, and those dumb/unlucky enough to have sex with the aforementioned, got AIDS. What caused ordinary Americans to question their Awakening-era reckless sexual abandon was 1983's Herpesmania, during the summer of which almost half the people in town were rumoured to "have it".
But even that didn't cause the wholesale retreat into cynicism that was the hallmark of the Unravelling. That happened because of the final death of the American can-do GI spirit, as exemplified by LBJ (who took us to the moon), Gerald Ford (who got us past Watergate) and Ronald Reagan (who stared down the Evil Empire and won). It was Challenger that shattered for good our notion that all was well with America again, that the old America of Kennedy and Ike was back.
AIDS? Not even close.
Re: Responses to the loss of STS 107/Columbia
Eighteen and in college.
Your ass and anger aside, the polls consistently showed a majority favoring continuation of the space program.I was twenty-six, a recent college graduate and entree to the professional rat-race and extremely well aware of what was going on around me. Unfazed my ass!!! The American public was absolutely devastated by the Challenger explosion-- in fact, good, patriotic conservatives who remembered the glory days of the Apollo moon program seemed to have been by far the most troubled of us all. People were indeed wondering if it was worth continuing the space program, largely because there didn't seem to be a goal worth losing human lives over (such as a manned landing on Mars) within reach. It didn't have a damned thing to do with a supposedly bloated and disingenuous NASA bureacracy at all. Myself, I changed my major from physics to civil engineering in 1981, largely because there didn't seem much point in pursuing a career in Space Sciences that --at the time -- weren't going anywhere very exciting.
