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I have an 18 year archive of my thoughts.
If I've been saying something for years, there's years of me saying it here.
Even if I only said it once, it's here.
I strongly suspect that some of the pricks in the comments are coming to these topics very recently, because they're all using the same phrases.
It makes me believe that these are not their thoughts, but others who pique their emotions.
You cannot reason someone out of an emotional position, and they can't be reasoned with.
Plus, they're pricks about it. I'm not making an archive of people being pricks, so they don't get their comment published here.
Many of my thoughts here are of the "thinking out loud" type. The ideas are still plastic and malleable.
I am wondering if the whole student loan kerfuffle has an analogy.
"This is the way it's always been done, and it's always worked out," is strong.
People taking on too much debt is not new. Overborrowing on student loans is not new.
But it's a problem all of a sudden.
What changed? Who changed it?
I look back 100 years ago and wonder if its comparable to The Great Depression.
The surprise with The Great Depression was that the economy didn't right itself as it always did. Boom and bust was a cycle, and whatever set off The Great Depression's bust, kept the recovery boom from happening.
Go back and read the confused news articles!
So, what's changed and who changed it?
I will say there's another thing these two situations have in common.
Both are solved with there being a large supply of good jobs. The Great Depression didn't really end until after VJ Day for the US. Longer for Europe and Asia.
How can we get those jobs here in the US so that even someone like me can get a job and pay shit back.
Maslow was prescient about this. To pay back a loan you need to have a surplus of money beyond the basic needs. You are going to find out that few people can live on just their basic needs for long, so the surplus funds must also exceed the lower level of psychological needs.
There needs to be more and better jobs.
I think we're going to find that the reason there aren't is because of a group we like to call "The Government".
I think this because I can recall when belly lint weaving degrees led to well paying jobs.
Why did those jobs go away?
Who changed the circumstances?
Hint, "You don't know."
Oftentimes those jobs went away because of the "U" word, that being unions. And the unions' leadership, in order to stay 'current' and 'relevant' and made up issues to keep the union membership involved.
ReplyDeleteI remember in the late 60's and early 70's, you could not watch an hour of tv without being bombarded by the garment workers union commercials. "Just look for, the Union label." So the unions got their big pay increases and jobs went away to foreign countries because it was cheaper.
Seriously, unions? Are they good now? Just look at the writers' strike which now has become the actors' strike and the cast of "Oppeheimer" walked out of the premiere of their movie (a dick move which makes me not want to watch said movie. Are they actually working to improve their memberships' physical work areas or are they doing this to feather the union leaderships' nests?
Just look who gets paid during a strike. It ain't the rank and file usually. It's the leadership. Same with voting support, most union members are actually kinda libertariain if not outright conservative, but the leadership sends all the money to leftists.
As to the root cause for the continued existence of a Great Depression in the United States, well, look no farther than the socialistic programs put in by the 1930's Dear Leader. Been well known for a long time that rather than shortening the effects of the Depression, the actions kept doubling down and making more and more problems for people trying to get out of said Depression.
Seriously, the monetary supply is iffy, so Let's Confiscate Precious Metals!!!! Brilliant! Force people to go to a devalued paper currency or hide their gold. Brilliant!!! Ah, not enough jobs, so let's kill what jobs are actually in demand right now, like the Firearm Industry!!! Brilliant!!!!! Ah, this business needs employees but the WPA took away the employees and won't let the business hire any!!!!!!!! BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!
And we see the exact same tactic used by the Clinton Administration, the Obama Administration and the Biden Administration. "Oh, things look ungood, let's toss 5 bazillion pounds of government regulation, bureaucracy, taxes and everything else we can to make it more ungood while we make beaucoup monies trading on insider information." And, yes, happened during the Bush Admin also, betwen the TSA and the bank bailouts, so fault there too.
I guess I need to be more specific about The Great Depression. One reason we transitioned from Coolidge to Roosevelt was the recession didn't just come to an end on its own like recessions always had.
DeleteI think Coolidge mishandled it, but Roosevelt made it actively worse.
I've said, repeatedly, "There's damn little that the government actively do to make the economy better. But there's an endless list of things they can do (and have done) that will make it worse."
I think you mean Herbert Hoover more than Coolidge? Coolidge might be blamed for what led up to the Great Depresson, but the 1929 stock market crash that marked it's beginning didn't happen until after Hoover had taken office. I dunno. I've always thought that Hoover kind of got a bum rap. He really hadn't been in there long enough to be totally blamed although he is often largely criticized for not doing enough to fight it. But on the other hand, given that Roosevelt did too much, I'm not sure that things might not have turned around quicker if left to their own than by a lot of what Roosevelt did, which in many ways I believe ushered in the rise of modern libtardism.
Delete-swj
Coolridge got screwed as he was, in an international recession, wanted to ride it out and let the stormy seas settle. Which could have worked. Just would have taken a long time.
DeleteSame with Hoover. Hosed no matter what he did.
I think Trump showed how to handle a recessive or depressive economy. Get government hands off the necks of the people who want to work. Roll back legislation, roll back taxes, roll back the bureaucracy and let businesses do business.
ReplyDeleteYou can see this effect on the local level. Find a city or town not controlled or overly affected by the DNC and their stupid policies and look at how it is mostly prospering. Small businesses exist (maybe not thriving, but existing, providing jobs, money and materials to other people) and crime is prosecuted. Dem controlled hellholes? Full of uncontrollable crime, businesses failing right and left, individual people not having right of association or right to rent to who they want and more and more policies that just continue the downward spiral of recession and depression.
Look at big Yankee states and how they are bleeding money and workers to Southern states like Florida. Or the Western states that are getting businesses and good employees who are fleeing California's ruined cities.
Best way to stave off a depression or recession? Let it burn out. There's really no way to control it. Let it burn, let it eat what it eats, and then rebuild.
We should never have saved the banks in the early 2000's. Of course, we should never have forced or created the opportunity for sub-prime and adjustable-rate mortgages to take over the financial system like they did (and making Barney Frank and his pals a helluva lot of money from... insider trading. Why is Congress and the federal bureaucracy the only entities allowed to make money off of insider trading?)
Same with the big auto companies. They're failing, killed often by unions (see the first coupla paragraphs) so let them fail locally and they'll move in-country to places where they won't fail (surprising to nobody, places where unions don't rule.. hmmm, almost like there's a correlation... hmmmm...)
Let the dying horse die. Let the building burn. It's like wildfires. Made worse by lack of logging and lack of forest management that often means people making money off the forest. Put big government regulation and overwatch into wildfires and you get the super fires that we now have.
Not even getting into unfair legislation like it's illegal to kill an endangered animal that's attacking your livestock but you can kill them by the joblots with your wind or solar farm.
Not even getting into unfair bureaucratic assaults that only affect one side of the political spectrum or one side of the political donation system (why is it safer to transfer oil by rail than by pipeline? Hmmm?)
This is, beginning and end, a government problem. Always has been.
ReplyDelete1) Government made the loans non-dischargeable through bankruptcy. Which was pure cronyism between Government, Banking, and Universities, as the sole beneficiaries of that decision.
2) The government loans themselves took all incentive out of banks screening to not lend to idiots, or people with idiotic non-performing majors. (Exactly like the housing crisis was government forcing banks to lend recockulous amounts of money to people who could never repay the loans, and never should have gotten them, save for the reason of "But Mah Diversity!".)
3) Government money is why college tuitions skyrocketted, causing the loans to go up, causing tuition to go up again, causing loans to go up. Lather, rinse, repeat. The Endless teat of government money fueled the unstoppable rise of tuition. (Which went, at 90:10, into more administrators, diversity compliance officers, victim studies programs, etc.) Colleges hired no additional traditional faculty, full-time nor part-time, which caused
the worthwhile programs to become impacted, which made 4-year degrees take 5 and 6 years, which pumped even MORE money into universities' pockets. It's been one giant self-greasing axle, until the graduates couldn't do better than night shift french fry guy at McDonald's, or Starbucks junior apprentice barrista.
Get government out of the whole works, and most of the problem goes away forever.
Then the only people who can get into college have to have the grades and test scores to succeed, major in programs which will enable the repayment of loans, and banks will only be making loans (at their own risk) on students and majors with a high payoff likelihood percentage.
Colleges can offer scholarships out of their own pockets to talented students wanting to major in other subjects, and/or under-represented groups/diversity beans, or WhateverTF they want. It's their money, at that point, and the taxpayer isn't on the hook for it.
Problem solved, QED.
The other kids will have to do what everyone else does: figure out what to do to make a living, first.
If they can manage that, they can complete a degree (if they ever need to) out of their own pocket, down the road, or figure out a way to get their employers to pay for it.
Government broke this, and the best thing to do is eliminate them from the entire process, with a flamethrower.
When 20,000 LGBTEIEIO Office employees and Victim Studies professors become unemployed, because financial reality has hit, then McDonald's and Starbucks will still have enough workers, and minimum wage pressure will cycle downwards instead of upwards.
That won't fix things for people with issues like you have, but the main problem will dwindle into insignificance, and without letting millions of profligate spendthrift idiots off the hook, and then cases like yours with fly-by-night operators like Corinthian Schools could be handled administratively, on a far smaller scale, as befits the fraction of the total problem they represent.
Sorry, I wasn't signed in; that last was me:
ReplyDeleteAesop
http://www.raconteurreport.blogspot.com
I think the average citizen plays a role in 'Why Does Everything Suck' too.When I was a child in the 60's - 70's, the family starting out did not try to emulate the affluent. After home rental period, they lived in a small 'starter' home that was cramped, had a small lawn and wasn't in the gated community. They lived simply and within their means, saving what they could until much later, they would build or purchase a more comfortable house.
ReplyDeleteNow, the young want to start at their Life with the toy's of the rich. Late model car - clothes - and vacation destinations before they had a decent amount saved in the bank.
jrg
In regard to comments by "pricks". Have you considered hiving them off in a single location accessible from the main page: you could call it "Mos Eisley" :).
ReplyDeletePM
On the disappearance of well paid jobs, the rot started in the 70s with MBAs and "maximizing shareholder value" by offshoring and mass layoffs. This accelerated in the 80s and 90s with McKinsey and Bain becoming dominant and killing off well paid mid skill jobs like factory workers and some middle management.
ReplyDelete“ So, what's changed and who changed it?”
ReplyDeleteOh boy, Angus. That’s a question you may not want to ask. If you go there as I did…you can never come back. Noticing things and patterns is a crime in both our countries because it leads to more of the wrong questions, which results in the wrong opinions, which in turn results in wrongthink and crimespeak. You probably don’t want to go there.
Suffice it to say the guys responsible are largely the same ones that kicked off the Great Depression. They are at the heart of your problem with debt. When you pay up, they are the ones that will reap the profit. That’s all I’m gonna say and for the record - I don’t like it either and I wish I was wrong. Some things are actually better in the matrix.
in short: wage stagnation since the early 70s. -Jking
ReplyDeleteI'll also add that I know a lot of finance and economics guys. They've tried explaining and justifying the system, but it's all voodoo. Pure voodoo. -Jking
ReplyDelete