Octopus Overlords

noxiousdog wrote:

malchior wrote: What leads to you assume that? Job growth / GDP growth in general has been below the norm. This has been the longest jobs recession since the Great Depression. We still don't have as many jobs as before the bubble. Population has been growing so just on the average there is likely less opportunity.

According to Isg's chart, nearly 85% of people are fully employed. That's a good start.

noxiousdog wrote:Seriously? I'm supposed to feel sorry that someone has put in a whole 2 years worth of work and hasn't achieved the "American Dream"?

Isgrimnur wrote:It's certainly not going down nearly as quickly as unemployment. Great, we have more people with massive college debt working at the new gas stations and Starbucks that are popping up.

The median pay of millennial college graduates was $45,500 -- not that much more than the $43,663 that young adults made two decades ago and the $44,770 earnings of people ages 25 to 32 three decades earlier.

$43,663.00 in 1994 has the same buying power as: $68,634.29 in 2013.

RunningMn9 wrote: I just cringe at the notion that children should grow up in this world with the goal to ignore being what they want to be in favor of turning themselves into an "asset" for someone else. It just sounds gross when you put it like that.

malchoir wrote:Less people working means less jobs period.

LordMortis wrote:But that could also mean more people living he life of Riley. I don't think that's the story here but wouldn't it be nice if it were.

LordMortis wrote:Now my check doesn't look so good (as a college grad from 95) as a college grad looking to get break in to teaching, they were offering $18,000 at the time for the schools I could get in to. Maybe as much as $30,000 in an exclusive, you've got to blow the right people, position. Using my degree to get a job not in teaching got me about the same pay ($18,000 a year out of college).

$43,663.00 in 1994 has the same buying power as: $68,634.29 in 2013.

So as 20 year degree holder, I make less than the median college grad today. My sympathy is shrinking.

RunningMn9 wrote:

geezer wrote:If you study stuff you like in college instead of what makes you an asset

I feel like that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer hires Dominicans to make Cuban cigars...where talking about people, right?

I don't disagree with your point that their strategy will necessarily result in lower pay. That's the way the world works. I just cringe at the notion that children should grow up in this world with the goal to ignore being what they want to be in favor of turning themselves into an "asset" for someone else. It just sounds gross when you put it like that.

LordMortis wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote: I just cringe at the notion that children should grow up in this world with the goal to ignore being what they want to be in favor of turning themselves into an "asset" for someone else. It just sounds gross when you put it like that.

Aye. It does sound that way. Where is that cracked editorial on "You are an object and are what you can offer other people" in response to why you can't a girlfriend?

geezer wrote:

LordMortis wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote: I just cringe at the notion that children should grow up in this world with the goal to ignore being what they want to be in favor of turning themselves into an "asset" for someone else. It just sounds gross when you put it like that.

Aye. It does sound that way. Where is that cracked editorial on "You are an object and are what you can offer other people" in response to why you can't a girlfriend?

But isn't that fundamentally true? The thing is that my belief is that just about everyone has something to offer someone, but the problem is that some people expect the second party to operate on what's offered, instead of what's needed, and that just irrational. The cool thing, though, is that if you're industrious enough you can generally either find another 2nd party that DOES want what you are offering, OR you can create the demand/need for your offering if you're willing to put in the risk.

That said, the tragedy of it is that many young people (not just millenials, but much younger children) are not taught how properly "offer" what they have, whether via parental neglect, failing schools or simple lack of guidance. Essentially, my own caveat to my beliefs is that it's critical to remember that people that are failed by the system as children are at a serious disadvantage as adults.

RunningMn9 wrote:My problem is that the way it is being talked about is very dehumanizing IMO. Human beings are more than their economic utility to someone else.

Aren't they?

WASHINGTON — The earnings gap between young adults with and without bachelor’s degrees has stretched to its widest level in nearly half a century. It is a sign of the growing value of a college education despite rising tuition costs, according to an analysis of census data released Tuesday.

Young adults with a high school diploma earned 62 percent of the typical salary of college graduates.

That is down from 81 percent in 1965, the earliest year for which comparable data are available.

The analysis by the Pew Research Center shows the increasing economic difficulties for young adults who lack a bachelor’s degree in today’s economy that is polarized between high- and low-wage work. As a whole, high school graduates were more likely to live in poverty and be dissatisfied with their jobs, if not unemployed.

...

The report found that not only does a college degree typically yield much more inflation-adjusted earnings than before, but a high school diploma also is now worth less. That adds to a widening earnings gap that Pew researchers found mirrors the US gap between rich and poor.

For instance, college graduates ages 25 to 32 who were working full time now typically earn about $17,500 more annually than employed young adults with a high school diploma ($45,500 versus $28,000); those with a two-year degree or some college training earned $30,000. In 1965, before globalization and automation wiped out many middle-class jobs in areas such as manufacturing, the inflation-adjusted gap was just $7,449.

Meanwhile, median earnings for high school graduates have fallen more than $3,000, from $31,384 in 1965 to $28,000 last year.

Young adults with just high school diplomas now are also much more likely to live in poverty, at 22 percent compared to 7 percent for their counterparts in 1979.

Kraken wrote: tl;dr: Due to the disappearance of mid-level jobs, you're boned if you don't have a college degree.

malchior wrote:I'm not saying this is a new trend. It is a continuing trend that is only getting worse and has long-term ramifications. My point was that if the number of jobs is decreasing in an absolute sense then there is generally less opportunity. We're seeing it all over the place in the data. There is absolutely no way to say these kids have the same or more opportunity.

noxiousdog wrote:It wouldn't surprise me in the least. "lack of skills" could very easily qualify you for being disabled.

Most SSDI recipients receive between $300 and $2,200. The average SSDI payment in 2014 is $1,148. The maximum disability benefit in 2014 is $2,642.

Kraken wrote:tl;dr: Due to the disappearance of mid-level jobs, you're boned if you don't have a college degree.

malchior wrote:

Kraken wrote:tl;dr: Due to the disappearance of mid-level jobs, you're boned if you don't have a college degree.

And we don't have enough supply of higher education to supply all the demand as is.

PLW wrote:

malchior wrote:

Kraken wrote:tl;dr: Due to the disappearance of mid-level jobs, you're boned if you don't have a college degree.

And we don't have enough supply of higher education to supply all the demand as is.

I don't know what this means. Do you mean supply is less than demand at the old price? That sounds right to me, and it's the reason the price went up.

Combustible Lemur wrote:Not the most data centric piece but it sounds right

Kraken wrote:

Combustible Lemur wrote:Not the most data centric piece but it sounds right

Something's wrong here...

Uh oh, bitly couldn't find a link for the bitly URL you clicked.

A generation ago it could reasonably have been asserted that the overall growth rate of the economy was the main influence on the growth in middle-class incomes and progress in reducing poverty. This is no longer a plausible claim.

The share of income going to the top 1 per cent of earners has increased sharply. A rising share of output is going to profits. Real wages are stagnant. Family incomes have not risen as fast as productivity. The cumulative effect of all these developments is that the US may well be on the way to becoming a Downton Abbey economy. It is very likely that these issues will be with us long after the cyclical conditions have normalised and budget deficits have at last been addressed.

THE MYSTERY OF our diminishing workforce is the stuff of policy debates, but the fact is, globalization and technology have spawned a new economy with fewer jobs. Despite commanding similar market values, Twitter(TWTR) has just 2,300 full-time employees -- or 3.4% that of Deere(DE) (DE). A Philadelphia Federal Reserve study also suggests the labor force is shrinking because boomers are retiring. And 1.5 million boomers will turn 65 in each of the next 15 years. They're not coming back to work, no matter how much the economic cycle improves.

Graying geezers are just part of the exodus. The number of younger Americans ages 25 to 54 who have quit and don't want a job increased 5% last year. David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, paints a persuasive picture of an economy rife with mismatched job skills: Some 23% of small businesses have at least one position open that they cannot fill, the most in six years. Unemployment among college graduates is just 3%, so access to education -- preferably without crippling student debt -- would help. Skilled-labor shortages abound in manufacturing, construction, transportation services, and technology, and the crop of job openings nationwide recently climbed above four million for the first time since March 2008. "The problem is that this is not translating into new hirings," which are growing just 1.7%, Rosenberg writes. If all four million openings are filled, our unemployment rate would fall to 4%

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

...

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:

".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites."

...

The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth:

"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."

A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is:

"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy.

The failure of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy is all the more striking
because it goes against the likely effects of the limitations of our data. The preferences of
ordinary citizens were measured more directly than our other independent variables, yet they are
estimated to have the least effect

Rip wrote:I fail to see how individual apathy and a tendency to be susceptible to marketing makes it not a democracy. I would say it is a democracy that is so apathetic and uninformed as to be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. Rest assured if the public suddenly became engaged and stopped taking advertising at face value it has as much democratic power as any nation. Failure to properly use the democratic power doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Rip wrote:I fail to see how individual apathy and a tendency to be susceptible to marketing makes it not a democracy. I would say it is a democracy that is so apathetic and uninformed as to be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. Rest assured if the public suddenly became engaged and stopped taking advertising at face value it has as much democratic power as any nation. Failure to properly use the democratic power doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Rip wrote:I fail to see how individual apathy and a tendency to be susceptible to marketing makes it not a democracy. I would say it is a democracy that is so apathetic and uninformed as to be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. Rest assured if the public suddenly became engaged and stopped taking advertising at face value it has as much democratic power as any nation. Failure to properly use the democratic power doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

GreenGoo wrote:

Rip wrote:I fail to see how individual apathy and a tendency to be susceptible to marketing makes it not a democracy. I would say it is a democracy that is so apathetic and uninformed as to be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. Rest assured if the public suddenly became engaged and stopped taking advertising at face value it has as much democratic power as any nation. Failure to properly use the democratic power doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

But does it matter if you get 100% voter turn out if your only options are a democrat or a republican? I mean, if we assume both sides are equally bought and paid for, how would your mythical engaged and educated voting population make any difference in how the country is run?

I'm not being facetious. Right now you have 2 options. In your scenario, you still only have 2 options. They are the exact same options you had prior to your scenario.

More/less votes isn't going to change whether a system is more or less representative of the population as a whole.

GreenGoo wrote:

Rip wrote:I fail to see how individual apathy and a tendency to be susceptible to marketing makes it not a democracy. I would say it is a democracy that is so apathetic and uninformed as to be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. Rest assured if the public suddenly became engaged and stopped taking advertising at face value it has as much democratic power as any nation. Failure to properly use the democratic power doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

But does it matter if you get 100% voter turn out if your only options are a democrat or a republican? I mean, if we assume both sides are equally bought and paid for, how would your mythical engaged and educated voting population make any difference in how the country is run?

I'm not being facetious. Right now you have 2 options. In your scenario, you still only have 2 options. They are the exact same options you had prior to your scenario.

More/less votes isn't going to change whether a system is more or less representative of the population as a whole.

malchior wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Rip wrote:I fail to see how individual apathy and a tendency to be susceptible to marketing makes it not a democracy. I would say it is a democracy that is so apathetic and uninformed as to be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. Rest assured if the public suddenly became engaged and stopped taking advertising at face value it has as much democratic power as any nation. Failure to properly use the democratic power doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

But does it matter if you get 100% voter turn out if your only options are a democrat or a republican? I mean, if we assume both sides are equally bought and paid for, how would your mythical engaged and educated voting population make any difference in how the country is run?

I'm not being facetious. Right now you have 2 options. In your scenario, you still only have 2 options. They are the exact same options you had prior to your scenario.

More/less votes isn't going to change whether a system is more or less representative of the population as a whole.

I don't know if it is that simple. If a truly populist movement rose up and candidates were at actual risk of getting kicked to the gutters I imagine we would see change. However that has never really ever happened here so the chances of it are slim. Thus the powers have rigged the "current" game wherever they can. That is why decisions like Citizens United are so dangerous IMO - they concentrated power where power was already concentrated. It was awful policy. One that is nearly impossible to fix within the current system. Anyway, I don't see a clean exit from this system and think we are going to more than likely to see a failure precipitate change.

Rip wrote: But there was a vote for those candidates to make them the choice for the Republicans and Democrats. Not to mention you are free to vote for a Green candidate or a Libertarian one or any number of other political parties that are in no way prevented by law from campaigning and being elected. The problem is that people misuse or fail to use the power of their vote. That isn't the fault of the system it is the problem of democracy and the people of a democracy itself.

Rip wrote: Even if no one could contribute but $1 to a political campaign people would still make bad choices and/or fail to participate in the process. The biggest weakness of a government that gives all the power to the people is the people themselves. People have made bad choices and their government is reflective of that.

Rip wrote:But there was a vote for those candidates to make them the choice for the Republicans and Democrats.