Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

We got educated at the highest rate ever, and the offshoot of that are companies like Microsoft and Apple, and major advances in healthcare like microsurgery. In the arts, which I'll address loosely, we created a huge volume of popular music and a whole lot of cinema eye-candy. Feel free to argue that we're less artsy than the Silents, but we did deliver.

Then again, we also did some nasty stuff.

Lots of folks like to dump on us boomers, and those on the edges don't want to identify with us. Probably it's because we were so hyped for a while. Folks like Kepi just lump all older folks together, blame them for their troubles, and call them all "boomers" just because we are a convenient target.

Some years ago some Boomers I know were proud of being such because it meant that we were in the know about the old and new paradigms of civilization and could see through the illusions handed down to us. There were real feelings of "peace and love" among boomers during the Awakening; it was not posturing. But then the 3T came, and Boomers became more self-righteous, stubborn, bossy, etc.

I think the book and its readers tend to be too insulting toward all the generations. It can be therapeutic to face our faults, but it usually only justifies finger-pointing. Civics get off easy in the book, but others put them down for various reasons. Not all Xers are cynical survivalists, though many are. Not all boomers are imperious and narcissistic, though many are. But many are not these things either, so using those words can stoke the urge to put others down, even more than create mutual understanding.

Originally Posted by JDW

Thanks for the link, Chas. We need a thread just for this PBS series. Has anybody started one yet?

I think ASB'65 tried to back when it first aired (or at least when she first became aware of it circa 2011 or so), but not a lot of people wanted to talk about it and/or sit through the entire six hours. I do admit though it paints American history in a way which makes the eras in which they discuss come to life in a way a lot of history classes can't replicate. My favorite episodes have to be Episode 2 - A New Eden, and Episode 4 - A New Light. The pattern she kept noticing repeating itself was that there always was a 1T event to try and re-spark faith in some manner, which is headed by some figure head who typically is a religious Civic.

The movement grows and diversifies during the 2T, spreading its message and being more widely accepted.

The 3T it gets challenged for its hegemony or its attempt at hegemony.

The 4T it dies off as church attendance traditionally nose-dives and remains low until the 1T event that comes along to get everyone excited again about a new idea.

That's the general pattern she noticed IIRC.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

We got educated at the highest rate ever, and the offshoot of that are companies like Microsoft and Apple, and major advances in healthcare like microsurgery. In the arts, which I'll address loosely, we created a huge volume of popular music and a whole lot of cinema eye-candy. Feel free to argue that we're less artsy than the Silents, but we did deliver.

Then again, we also did some nasty stuff.

I'm not going to argue the art work, that you guys did well. I don't think much from this saeculum will really be "preserved" as I think that, in general 1880 to probably after I'm well dead will be considered either extremely transitional or a pinnacle of decadence much like that of the Roman Empire. It will either be akin to man coming out of the caves fire the first time or an era lived by elites as a glory day gone by. I think our music reflects that... It's just... mostly not classical. It's a break in a millenia long standing tradition, and I don't think it will last forever, but I really like it.

But when it comes to the stuff that really matters. Making a world where it's not difficult to make ends meet. Creating stable communities. Not torturing and bombing people as a general rule. Having a just legal system. It's just been probably the most abysmal tour of the failings of a system I've ever seen. I mean "some nasty stuff"? The housing bubble alone was probably one of the most irresponsible things anyone has ever done, especially because the analog is clearly buying stocks on margin prior to the great depression, but it's like an entire generation wanted to act like they never read a history book. The template was clearly there, but it's like... You guys just can't help yourselves. I mean we're right here again, only it's worse yet because of QE for the better part of the decade.

Under the current saeculum we cannot imagine society consciously approving of the taking of an innocent human life.

Really, what about collateral damage? For example, drone attacks that are undertaken knowing that they will kill innocents. Airstrikes and bombing campaigns in conventional war fall into the same category, as does capital punishment both of which necessarily kill innocent people as collateral damage.

Originally Posted by JDW

The expectation of history being linear is what drives the turnings and makes awakenings especially a surprise.

You didn't really address M&L's point. The empirical data clearly shows a trend to less violence. Murder rates have fallen about two orders of magnitude over the past six centuries. For a paper I am working one I have constructed a time of events of group violence in Britain and America. it is clear that the lethality of these events, described as internal instabilities by Pitrim Sorokin has diminished over time, whereas the quantitity and political impact of these events has not. So for example you see states overthrown by violence frequently in the 8th through 11th centuries, a bit less through to the 17th century and then very infrequently since 1700 (only one real civil war in Britain and America since 1700). Labor strikes became most frequent in the 1950's and yet all the deadly violence associated with that had occurred in the past (the last strike fatality was in 1943 IIRC). After WW II we had lots of strikes and popular demonstrations with very little deadly violence. Even riots have small death tolls (I don't think anyone has died in the recent Ferguson event or in the large-scale demonstrations against the Iraq war in 2003).

The movie Selma portrayed the police killing of a handful of black folks as a big deal (and based on the legislative response to this small amount of violence I would say it was).

One could argue that the mid-century level of violence was abnormally low. For example police today kill larger numbers of black folks every year with no response at all from the public at large, and there is a political movement supporting a right to individual violence which is accompanied by a rising death toll from so-called spree shooters. Personally I think this is just a cyclical perturbation from a long-term declining trend, but I have yet to assemble the data to demonstrate this.

Originally Posted by Kepi

The housing bubble alone was probably one of the most irresponsible things anyone has ever done, especially because the analog is clearly buying stocks on margin prior to the great depression, but it's like an entire generation wanted to act like they never read a history book. The template was clearly there, but it's like... You guys just can't help yourselves.

I think you've got it wrong. The people who run things during a turning aren't the guys sitting at the top of the hierarchies. It's the managers in the trenches. Reading an account of the late 1960's speculative frenzy called "The Go-Go Years" I noted that many older managers talked about the need to "get a kid" who could stomach buying the sort of overpriced junk that fueled the boom and made the fortunes at the time. Remember it is the JOB of a money manager to make money for his clients. It is NOT acceptable for them to hide when assets are over priced and so give shitty returns to their clients while their competitors are delivering stellar results. They will go out of business if they underperform too long.

I saw the same sort of thing in the 1990's bubble on the Yahoo Finance boards where typically younger investors were lecturing on how "the internet changed everything". I suspect this same "trees grow to the skies" mentally of the go-go-years and the tech bubble was manifest in the housing bubble (and in the bubbles of today). In the 1960's the guys at the top were GI's the hot-shot managers were Silent and the "kids" were Boomers. In the 1990's bubble the kids were late-wave Gex Xers and the hot shots were late wave Boomers and early wave Xers.

For the bubble of the 2000's the kids were now millennials and the hot-shots were Xers. The "guys" you are referring to are mostly Xers, not Boomers. The Boomers were mostly sitting at the top, sort of like the GI's in the 1960's folks who needed to get a kid. That they need to participate was obvious. For years managers provided stable double digit returns to clients instead the 2% that a safe conservative approach would yield. Which fund would YOU choose, the one averaging 2% over the last 5 years or the one averaging 11%? As Jim Cramer says, money managers have to belong to the school of what's happening now, else they stop running money.

The Reactive generation is the one who typically is in charge of a 4T. The Boomer's role today is stewardship, not leadership. FDR was steward of the New Deal, it was created and implemented by the Lost, which IMO makes them the true "greatest generation", for they built a world that would intentionally benefit those who came after, not themselves. I wonder if your generation is up to the challenge of the times. Will they match the greatness of the Lost?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Lots of folks like to dump on us boomers, and those on the edges don't want to identify with us. Probably it's because we were so hyped for a while. Folks like Kepi just lump all older folks together, blame them for their troubles, and call them all "boomers" just because we are a convenient target.

Some years ago some Boomers I know were proud of being such because it meant that we were in the know about the old and new paradigms of civilization and could see through the illusions handed down to us. There were real feelings of "peace and love" among boomers during the Awakening; it was not posturing. But then the 3T came, and Boomers became more self-righteous, stubborn, bossy, etc.

I think the book and its readers tend to be too insulting toward all the generations. It can be therapeutic to face our faults, but it usually only justifies finger-pointing. Civics get off easy in the book, but others put them down for various reasons. Not all Xers are cynical survivalists, though many are. Not all boomers are imperious and narcissistic, though many are. But many are not these things either, so using those words can stoke the urge to put others down, even more than create mutual understanding.

We all use labels, but the overuse of labels without any thought of the individuals in large groups tends to interfer with communication and dialogue.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I think you've got it wrong. The people who run things during a turning aren't the guys sitting at the top of the hierarchies. It's the managers in the trenches. Reading an account of the late 1960's speculative frenzy called "The Go-Go Years" I noted that many older managers talked about the need to "get a kid" who could stomach buying the sort of overpriced junk that fueled the boom and made the fortunes at the time. Remember it is the JOB of a money manager to make money for his clients. It is NOT acceptable for them to hide when assets are over priced and so give shitty returns to their clients while their competitors are delivering stellar results. They will go out of business if they underperform too long.

I saw the same sort of thing in the 1990's bubble on the Yahoo Finance boards where typically younger investors were lecturing on how "the internet changed everything". I suspect this same "trees grow to the skies" mentally of the go-go-years and the tech bubble was manifest in the housing bubble (and in the bubbles of today). In the 1960's the guys at the top were GI's the hot-shot managers were Silent and the "kids" were Boomers. In the 1990's bubble the kids were late-wave Gex Xers and the hot shots were late wave Boomers and early wave Xers.

For the bubble of the 2000's the kids were now millennials and the hot-shots were Xers. The "guys" you are referring to are mostly Xers, not Boomers. The Boomers were mostly sitting at the top, sort of like the GI's in the 1960's folks who needed to get a kid. That they need to participate was obvious. For years managers provided stable double digit returns to clients instead the 2% that a safe conservative approach would yield. Which fund would YOU choose, the one averaging 2% over the last 5 years or the one averaging 11%? As Jim Cramer says, money managers have to belong to the school of what's happening now, else they stop running money.

The Reactive generation is the one who typically is in charge of a 4T. The Boomer's role today is stewardship, not leadership. FDR was steward of the New Deal, it was created and implemented by the Lost, which IMO makes them the true "greatest generation", for they built a world that would intentionally benefit those who came after, not themselves. I wonder if your generation is up to the challenge of the times. Will they match the greatness of the Lost?

Okay, two things here.

1) You're incorrect on real estate especially where it relates to banking. They're industries dominated by older workers. When I was watching the restate market explode in the mid-2000's there were some Xers and Millennial cuspers in the game, but generally the agents were Boomers, the Mortgage Brokers were Boomers, the managers were Boomers, and so on and so forth. Generally you had Boomer managers and Boomer hot shots. It's only within maybe the last 3 years where I've seen Xer managers as a general rule, and often they rule with the SOPs in their pockets because they'll get tarred and feathered by their Boomer bosses if there's the slightest amount of dissent. What it generally looks like is that every Boomer feels entitled to rise to a particular level and they have refused to exit before they get to that level.

But more importantly:

2) I want talking about something as narrow as a few industries for a decade. I was talking about a trend of the generation as a collective, for 30 years or more. They fundamentally don't understand the concept of a price to high. In the 80's, when you really saw the generation starting to buy houses, the prices went up exponentially, while wages did not. In relation to wages, home prices rose about 5 to 10 times by the time that we got to 2007. It was such a ridiculous excess caused by over competition I'm amazed that anybody bought the idea that real estate couldn't go down, like it was some magical unicorn market, but there it was. The problem starts and ends with Boomer over consumption, and the over competition that came from it. Name a price, and price and there will be Boomers willing to pay it and drive it up. There's piece they wouldn't pay, and even more so, there's no loan amount they wouldn't sign to. Now what comes next is going to twist everyone's heads, because those prices can't stay where they are with the diminished salaries and benefits that Xers and Millennials have gotten, and it'll all crash, again.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I think you've got it wrong. The people who run things during a turning aren't the guys sitting at the top of the hierarchies. It's the managers in the trenches. Reading an account of the late 1960's speculative frenzy called "The Go-Go Years" I noted that many older managers talked about the need to "get a kid" who could stomach buying the sort of overpriced junk that fueled the boom and made the fortunes at the time. Remember it is the JOB of a money manager to make money for his clients. It is NOT acceptable for them to hide when assets are over priced and so give shitty returns to their clients while their competitors are delivering stellar results. They will go out of business if they underperform too long.

I saw the same sort of thing in the 1990's bubble on the Yahoo Finance boards where typically younger investors were lecturing on how "the internet changed everything". I suspect this same "trees grow to the skies" mentally of the go-go-years and the tech bubble was manifest in the housing bubble (and in the bubbles of today). In the 1960's the guys at the top were GI's the hot-shot managers were Silent and the "kids" were Boomers. In the 1990's bubble the kids were late-wave Gex Xers and the hot shots were late wave Boomers and early wave Xers.

For the bubble of the 2000's the kids were now millennials and the hot-shots were Xers. The "guys" you are referring to are mostly Xers, not Boomers. The Boomers were mostly sitting at the top, sort of like the GI's in the 1960's folks who needed to get a kid. That they need to participate was obvious. For years managers provided stable double digit returns to clients instead the 2% that a safe conservative approach would yield. Which fund would YOU choose, the one averaging 2% over the last 5 years or the one averaging 11%? As Jim Cramer says, money managers have to belong to the school of what's happening now, else they stop running money.

The Reactive generation is the one who typically is in charge of a 4T. The Boomer's role today is stewardship, not leadership. FDR was steward of the New Deal, it was created and implemented by the Lost, which IMO makes them the true "greatest generation", for they built a world that would intentionally benefit those who came after, not themselves. I wonder if your generation is up to the challenge of the times. Will they match the greatness of the Lost?

I do tend to believe the mid-life generation has the most impact in every turning and set the tone.

For example now, Nomads can be extremely influential, having there hands in every industry as an active middle manager, and parenting young generations and possibly older ones (their parents as they enter senior age).

A turning is a 3-generation affair, and maybe now a 4-generation affair. All contribute to setting the tone. Youth do provide a lot of the energy.

It was certainly Xers who drove the over-consumption in housing in the 2000s. They were of buying age. No doubt many of the managers and brokers were boomers.

Speculators drove up the price of housing since the 1980s. It is highest here in the Bay Area, where it started. Silents, Boomers and Xers were all involved. As for wages, they were frozen by Republicans and their trickle-down economics policies, instituted by Republican GIs and Silents and continued by Republican Boomers and Xers. It is too bad the Republicans won, but you place the blame there, not the generation. You change it by replacing Republicans, not Boomers. And the Democrats need to be real ones, who are pushed by concerned citizens to do the right things.

Luckily, a lot more people vote by party than generation. Most voters have never heard of S&H and other theories about Boomers and Millennials. It's issues and policies who count, far more than the supposed personalities of generations.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

You didn't really address M&L's point. The empirical data clearly shows a trend to less violence. Murder rates have fallen about two orders of magnitude over the past six centuries. For a paper I am working one I have constructed a time of events of group violence in Britain and America. it is clear that the lethality of these events, described as internal instabilities by Pitrim Sorokin has diminished over time, whereas the quantitity and political impact of these events has not. So for example you see states overthrown by violence frequently in the 8th through 11th centuries, a bit less through to the 17th century and then very infrequently since 1700 (only one real civil war in Britain and America since 1700). Labor strikes became most frequent in the 1950's and yet all the deadly violence associated with that had occurred in the past (the last strike fatality was in 1943 IIRC). After WW II we had lots of strikes and popular demonstrations with very little deadly violence. Even riots have small death tolls (I don't think anyone has died in the recent Ferguson event or in the large-scale demonstrations against the Iraq war in 2003).

The movie Selma portrayed the police killing of a handful of black folks as a big deal (and based on the legislative response to this small amount of violence I would say it was).

One could argue that the mid-century level of violence was abnormally low. For example police today kill larger numbers of black folks every year with no response at all from the public at large, and there is a political movement supporting a right to individual violence which is accompanied by a rising death toll from so-called spree shooters. Personally I think this is just a cyclical perturbation from a long-term declining trend, but I have yet to assemble the data to demonstrate this.

If that was the point, then I'm not sure it was the right one to make. I'm reminded of the episode A Taste of Armageddon from the original Star Trek series, in which a 500-year war had become acceptable because the killing was civilized and orderly. The same thing has become true of how we kill people: lethal injections, surgical air strikes, abortion procedures. (This list should have everybody ticked at me. )

In what way does the trend of history make some type of euthanasia unlikely, should the next awakening generation see an overall benefit to society?

Originally Posted by Kepi

Okay, two things here.

1) You're incorrect on real estate especially where it relates to banking. They're industries dominated by older workers. When I was watching the restate market explode in the mid-2000's there were some Xers and Millennial cuspers in the game, but generally the agents were Boomers, the Mortgage Brokers were Boomers, the managers were Boomers, and so on and so forth.

Who are you talking about? The folks who sell the house or the guys who sold the paper. The first are irrelevant. Brokers cannot offer loans unless their outfit tells them too. And their outfit isn't going to tell them so unless they can move the paper.

I want talking about something as narrow as a few industries for a decade. I was talking about a trend of the generation as a collective, for 30 years or more. They fundamentally don't understand the concept of a price to high.

Of course they do. We grew up with CPI-type inflation, your generation has never seen it. Look when I was a kid candy bars with a dime, then a 15 cents. then 20, then 25, then 30. The price of candy bars triples in the few short years when I was a kid interested in their price. When I started mowing lawns at 14, gas was 35 cents. Then it was 50 and by the time I started college it was $1. When I was 16 I rarely took out the family car cuz it has a hole in the gas tank and we couldn't fill it more than maybe a quarter tank. That tank got 5 mpg. So I would have to put in $2 in the tank (an hour's wage or a sixer of cheap beer) every time I took it out. So I didn't. Inflation was a real thing. It has taken years for me to get used top a world where prices go down as weall as up (e.g. recent experience with gas prices).

The prices you are talking about are asset prices. There is such a thing as asset inflation, but nobody thinks of it that way. With most things when they go down in price you buy. But not assets. What do people do when the stock market crashes like in 2008? They SELL. And what do they do when stocks are rising? They BUY. It makes no sense. In the late 1990's houses became and asset. For years we have been told that buying a house is an investment. And with the fall in interest rates from 1981 to 1998, house prices could rise without increasing in valuation. In the 2000's valuations rose just like they did with stocks in the 1990's.

You might ask who can afford these houses. That answer is it doesn't matter. As long as the price rises, if you cannot afford the house payment you can sell iot for even money to someone else who has a teaser rate so that can afford it for a while. Sure its a Ponsi scheme. So are all assets in the final a analysis. The only thing that stops this from happening is the mount of money thge investor class has. With rising inequality there is more and more money to blow up more and more bubbles.

It has nothing to do with the people who buy houses. It's entirely on the supply size, and by supply I mean investable money. We have been running a supply side economy (i.e an economy biased in favor the moneyed class) for 35 years. None of this will change until tax rates on the rich go up to confiscatory levels. Your generation is showing no interest in doing this, so it is unlikely to change. Look at the last election, those most affected by this didn't even show up to vote.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I think ASB'65 tried to back when it first aired (or at least when she first became aware of it circa 2011 or so), but not a lot of people wanted to talk about it and/or sit through the entire six hours. I do admit though it paints American history in a way which makes the eras in which they discuss come to life in a way a lot of history classes can't replicate. My favorite episodes have to be Episode 2 - A New Eden, and Episode 4 - A New Light. The pattern she kept noticing repeating itself was that there always was a 1T event to try and re-spark faith in some manner, which is headed by some figure head who typically is a religious Civic.

The movement grows and diversifies during the 2T, spreading its message and being more widely accepted.

The 3T it gets challenged for its hegemony or its attempt at hegemony.

The 4T it dies off as church attendance traditionally nose-dives and remains low until the 1T event that comes along to get everyone excited again about a new idea.

That's the general pattern she noticed IIRC.

I have now finished watching the whole series. Wow! It captures so much of what we've been talking about that I don't know where to begin. I especially gained an appreciation for Lincoln. His sympathies were obviously with the abolitionists, but he was frustrated with both sides seeing themselves as right. (One can appreciate the logic that saving the Union was a greater priority than freeing the slaves, for the simple reason that the latter could not be accomplished without the former.) It also confirmed for me that the South was every bit as much in atonement mode as the North. More on all this later.

Had Abraham Lincoln live today (and had any actual chance of being president) one might imagine him being aligned somewhat to the Right or to the Left, but he would not have rubber stamped either agenda without thinking it through. Much has been made about his constitutional excesses during the war. I'm not sure how much of that was within his control given the pressure he was under by extremists within his cabinet and the dire consequences of not winning. I tend to think of him as a fireman, willing to damage the house in order to put out the fire with an understanding that all could be rebuilt when the emergency was over. One can only imagine the long-term damage that might have been prevented had he lived out the remainder of his term and kept the radical Republicans in check.

The more I learn about the man the more I admire him, especially how he rose above the knee-jerk atonement mood. It seems hard today to find leaders who seek common ground without compromising their principles. Too often they are either unyielding ideologues or shills.

Originally Posted by JDW

Had Abraham Lincoln live today (and had any actual chance of being president) one might imagine him being aligned somewhat to the Right or to the Left, but he would not have rubber stamped either agenda without thinking it through. Much has been made about his constitutional excesses during the war. I'm not sure how much of that was within his control given the pressure he was under by extremists within his cabinet and the dire consequences of not winning. I tend to think of him as a fireman, willing to damage the house in order to put out the fire with an understanding that all could be rebuilt when the emergency was over. One can only imagine the long-term damage that might have been prevented had he lived out the remainder of his term and kept the radical Republicans in check.

The more I learn about the man the more I admire him, especially how he rose above the knee-jerk atonement mood. It seems hard today to find leaders who seek common ground without compromising their principles. Too often they are either unyielding ideologues or shills.

The few who do emerge have no chance of being elected President. Jim Webb may not be your cup of tea, but he's a straight shooter. He can't win in today's political world, but it's good to see an honest candidate with no pretension of playing the game.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Who are you talking about? The folks who sell the house or the guys who sold the paper. The first are irrelevant. Brokers cannot offer loans unless their outfit tells them too. And their outfit isn't going to tell them so unless they can move the paper.


Of course they do. We grew up with CPI-type inflation, your generation has never seen it. Look when I was a kid candy bars with a dime, then a 15 cents. then 20, then 25, then 30. The price of candy bars triples in the few short years when I was a kid interested in their price. When I started mowing lawns at 14, gas was 35 cents. Then it was 50 and by the time I started college it was $1. When I was 16 I rarely took out the family car cuz it has a hole in the gas tank and we couldn't fill it more than maybe a quarter tank. That tank got 5 mpg. So I would have to put in $2 in the tank (an hour's wage or a sixer of cheap beer) every time I took it out. So I didn't. Inflation was a real thing. It has taken years for me to get used top a world where prices go down as weall as up (e.g. recent experience with gas prices).

The prices you are talking about are asset prices. There is such a thing as asset inflation, but nobody thinks of it that way. With most things when they go down in price you buy. But not assets. What do people do when the stock market crashes like in 2008? They SELL. And what do they do when stocks are rising? They BUY. It makes no sense. In the late 1990's houses became and asset. For years we have been told that buying a house is an investment. And with the fall in interest rates from 1981 to 1998, house prices could rise without increasing in valuation. In the 2000's valuations rose just like they did with stocks in the 1990's.

You might ask who can afford these houses. That answer is it doesn't matter. As long as the price rises, if you cannot afford the house payment you can sell iot for even money to someone else who has a teaser rate so that can afford it for a while. Sure its a Ponsi scheme. So are all assets in the final a analysis. The only thing that stops this from happening is the mount of money thge investor class has. With rising inequality there is more and more money to blow up more and more bubbles.

It has nothing to do with the people who buy houses. It's entirely on the supply size, and by supply I mean investable money. We have been running a supply side economy (i.e an economy biased in favor the moneyed class) for 35 years. None of this will change until tax rates on the rich go up to confiscatory levels. Your generation is showing no interest in doing this, so it is unlikely to change. Look at the last election, those most affected by this didn't even show up to vote.

No, no, we voted for the guy who was pushing for a tax hike for people earning over $250k/year and a public healthcare option. As we can see, voting didn't exactly do much of anything worth saying, and Infact was to the financial detriment for most of the people affected by the ACA. Voting doesn't do anything unless you're voting for people on your side.

Originally Posted by Kepi

No, no, we voted for the guy who was pushing for a tax hike for people earning over $250k/year and a public healthcare option. As we can see, voting didn't exactly do much of anything worth saying, and Infact was to the financial detriment for most of the people affected by the ACA. Voting doesn't do anything unless you're voting for people on your side.

What about voting for one issue at a time? Pick which issues are the most important to you and vote based on those issues. This might mean you may vote one way for the state election and another way for the national election.

(sorry to go off-topic)

millennialX - I can't reply to your PM! It says your inbox is full haha.

Originally Posted by decadeologist101

What about voting for one issue at a time? Pick which issues are the most important to you and vote based on those issues. This might mean you may vote one way for the state election and another way for the national election.

This doesn't work in a presidential system because the coalitions are preformatted, and often times the "for or opposed" position is a construct, the reality is that the positions are "to change or not to change." Plus, the thing is that politicians can parrot issues to confirm to public sentiment, and then spend their term doing whatever they like, because the only alternative are the people whose official stance is the opposite of your own. So even though the democrats watched the president of the United States get selected on based on 3 positions: progressive taxation, a public healthcare option, and a retread on War on Terror policies, because the party as a whole did not want those things, they decided to not pass progressive tax laws, turn health care legislation into a convoluted trash heap without a public option that most benefits the wealthy, and then went on to double down on War on Terror initiatives (which the president himself was heard admitting to Hillary Clinton was just pandering to the audience. Then what do they do? Argue about gun control and abortion for the next year or so. Why? Because they benefit from keeping all these things at the status quo and meanwhile felt there was no threat to their position because the competing party held opposite views.

Basically no matter what the issue or how many of them there are, it doesn't matter because the only way to effect a consequence is to cut off your own nose to spite your face. This is the reason Millennials have made me happy, while upsetting liberal Boomers just as badly as they did conservative ones 6 years ago: they will spite any and every face to get what they want to done.

Originally Posted by Kepi

No, no, we voted for the guy who was pushing for a tax hike for people earning over $250k/year and a public healthcare option. As we can see, voting didn't exactly do much of anything worth saying, and Infact was to the financial detriment for most of the people affected by the ACA. Voting doesn't do anything unless you're voting for people on your side.

There was a tax hike on the rich passed, at the end of 2012 I believe; Obama even got it by Boehner. We didn't get the public health insurance option, thanks to Silent DINOs and a Silent RINO. But Obamacare has made health insurance more affordable IF you live in a blue state where the politicians agree with Obamacare.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

There was a tax hike on the rich passed, at the end of 2012 I believe; Obama even got it by Boehner. We didn't get the public health insurance option, thanks to Silent DINOs and a Silent RINO. But Obamacare has made health insurance more affordable IF you live in a blue state where the politicians agree with Obamacare.

Not enough. The rate hike in 2012 was barely enough to constitute a symbolic gesture. The ACA hasn't made healthcare affordable, even as it's forced millions of people to buy policies they can't actually use.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Not enough. The rate hike in 2012 was barely enough to constitute a symbolic gesture. The ACA hasn't made healthcare affordable, even as it's forced millions of people to buy policies they can't actually use.

Not enough, of course. But more than nothing. Of course, "vote for the people on your side." You won't vote for Hillary; I probably won't either, but given the level of intelligence of the American people, she's about the best we can get in 2016, unless Warren runs-- which appears unlikely.

The ACA has made health care more affordable for many people. But not in Virginia. You have to live in a state of sane governance before you can benefit from government policy.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not enough, of course. But more than nothing. Of course, "vote for the people on your side." You won't vote for Hillary; I probably won't either, but given the level of intelligence of the American people, she's about the best we can get in 2016, unless Warren runs-- which appears unlikely.

The ACA has made health care more affordable for many people. But not in Virginia. You have to live in a state of sane governance before you can benefit from government policy.

It's not more than nothing really. Not enough is shit. It's an insult. Like they think we're stupid. They can either do something to get elected and earn the votes, or by not voting we'll ensure that everyone in power is undeserving of a mellon when to comes time to lop heads off.

Originally Posted by Kepi

It's not more than nothing really. Not enough is shit. It's an insult. Like they think we're stupid. They can either do something to get elected and earn the votes, or by not voting we'll ensure that everyone in power is undeserving of a mellon when to comes time to lop heads off.

Not voting will ensure that we get the worst. But we've already seen where that leads: to where we are. To continue that strategy only makes things even worse.

"It's like they think we're stupid." No, I don't think so. There is no "they." We have met the enemy, and it is us. We ARE stupid. If we want better, then we'd better wise up, and soon.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not voting will ensure that we get the worst. But we've already seen where that leads: to where we are. To continue that strategy only makes things even worse.

"It's like they think we're stupid." No, I don't think so. There is no "they." We have met the enemy, and it is us. We ARE stupid. If we want better, then we'd better wise up, and soon.

Funny, by not voting we seemed to get net neutrality immediately, without compromise. Everything obtained by voting was so compromised it might as well not have been done. I'm pleased with the results thus far: the Republicans are now scared that we will vote, the democrats are scared that we won't. Sounds like we've begun to shake the the power structure. By the end if this it will be to it's knees. I don't care who is in power, I care that they do what I tell them to, when I tell them to. We're closer to that now than we were 5 years ago with a universally Democratic Party power structure.