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I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech: The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our
by jraines 10y ago
I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech:
The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.
As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.
Everything he listed has gotten worse, not better. Both local communities and our institutions have fragmented, crumbled, or turned, at least in part, cynically exploitative (see: degree mills, asset forfeiture, Creflo Dollar, myriad regulations enabling rent-seeking and hindering free enterprise).
Because HN and tech world chatter is my background noise, I think about Universal Basic Income, though I don't know much more about it than a definition. It seems to me the "winners" in the current game can provide assistance and some level of comfort in a more expansive and efficient way than the degrading system in place today. But they can't provide meaning. Neither can the institutions Carter listed, alone. At minimum, an earned trust in all or most of them is a foundation on which secure footing can be had to build a life, a family, a community. But I don't know how we get there from here. It sure doesn't seem that either party is steering that way, or that our current media is capable of engaging with the situation without driving 10 different outrage-optimized wedges through it.
The civic and moral fabric of the nation is not an election-winning topic, as Carter found out.
- TelAviv_1 10y agoBut then, why does Jimmy Carter want terrorist regimes to blow up school busses in my country?
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoYou were right until your last sentence. Reagan made the nation feel that its civic and moral fabric was strong. Nevermind that his policies undermined civil society and his religious backing was hypocritical of anything close to Christ's teachings on compassion, it made people feel strong and so it won him the election.
- jbooth 10y agoTrump's got the same thing with the specific brand of disempowered people that the article's talking about.
- emblem21 10y agoI have found people are frequently ready to kill one another to protect THEI specific brands of the disempowered of choice, often at the expense of the disempowered brand they despize.
- api 10y agoThe culture war is a great tool for dividing the disempowered and keeping economic issues off the table.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ktRolster 10y agoI'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech: Don't worry, there is someone here who promises to "Make America Great Again"
- tim333 10y ago>Everything he listed has gotten worse, not better Not productivity. It's roughly doubled. http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-productivity-tell-us-about-the-us-economy.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/what-can-labor-producti...
- loup-vaillant 10y agoThe Luddites were right: all other things being equal (they aren't), more productivity means less jobs. Right now, not everyone can work full time, and it shows no sign of ever getting better: demand simply does not grow as fast as productivity. This means lots of free time. The question is, how do we allocate it? There are only 2 ways to do it: have everyone work less, or have less people work at all. Really, this is a no-brainer. Yet somehow, we're still opting for unemployment (have less people work at all). We can do better.
- Bartweiss 10y agoUnemployment is more efficient. It's not a choice between 20% unemployment and giving everyone 4 day work-weeks (20% work cut), it's a choice between 20% unemployment and 4.5 day work-weeks. Training, communication, organization, and a dozen other things are per-worker costs which incentivize employing fewer people full-time. The only exceptions are regulatory distortions that incentivize part-time labor to avoid paying benefits. And those jobs only exist at the bottom of the pay scale (where flat healthcare costs dominate scaling efficiency costs), which is where full-time work is required to survive. It's not just foolishness, the current system is more efficient while being more devastating. We can absolutely do better, but it's going to take a serious realignment.
- tim333 10y agoWhen agricultural productivity went up people got different jobs and things got better unless you think all us coders should be out digging potatoes instead. Unemployment through lack of demand is another issue and can happen with or without productivity changes. See for example Singapore with 2% unemployment and high productivity and say Mozambique with 60% unemployment and low productivity (figures from Wikipedia).