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America divided – this concept increasingly graces political discourse in the U.S., pitting left against right, conservative thought against the liberal agenda. But for decades, Americans have been rearranging along another divide, one just as stark if not far more significant – a chasm once bridged by a flourishing middle class.
Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, believes the ongoing death of “middle America” has sparked the emergence of two countries within one, the hallmark of developing nations. In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.
In his view, the United States is shifting toward an economic and political makeup more similar to developing nations than the wealthy, economically stable nation it has long been. Temin applied W. Arthur Lewis’s economic model – designed to understand the workings of developing countries – to the United States in an effort to document how inequality has grown in America.
The 2017 World Economic Forum had the answer: "The people who have not benefited from globalization need to try harder to emulate those who have succeeded," and, "'People have to take more ownership of upgrading themselves on a continuous basis.'"
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:19PM (7 children)
You'd rather laugh at people who made bad decisions in high school and are now suffering than, as part of a society, help them.
Fuck you.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:45PM (6 children)
That's an interesting point although off topic.
Lets say as a SN automobile analogy "we" had a ridiculous cultural tradition of giving every 16 year old boy a motorcycle and a motorcycle license. The accident rate would be utterly horrific. Criticism of that cultural tradition as being really stupid decision is entirely orthogonal to discussing how we're going to dispatch enough ambulances to scrape up all the bodies, or if we should, or whatever. Regardless of treatment of the effects, the point remains that was a really dumb cultural decision to implement.
If someone convinces you to do something stupid, its gonna hurt. If I tell you to hit your thumb with a hammer and you're dumb enough to do it, darn right I'm gonna laugh, but its really weird to assume I'm going to prevent you from obtaining medical treatment later. A lot of people are going to be walking around with crooked thumbs or wearing casts for a couple weeks and explaining to curious little kids that's a living example of why hitting your thumb with a hammer is a bad idea, regardless if someone tells you to do it, is good.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:09PM (5 children)
Then you're an asshole, but we've already established that. Back to the original topic, about some people making poor decisions in high school.
There's no fundamental reason wasting a few years in high school should ruin someone's life. It's a flaw of our society that it occasionally does. If someone screws around between the ages of 15 and 18 and flunks a lot of classes, all that really should happen is that person should have to repeat a few classes, graduate a few years later, graduate college a few years later, and then enter the work force a few years after the student who didn't screw around. Screwing around 2 years should really only put you back two years, not your whole life. If we had basic income and cheap or free college for students who could prove they're qualified, that's all that would happen.
If it would also result in more screwing around in high school, that would be a good thing. The message many high school students receive at the moment is "do your absolute best academically, ignore every other aspect of your life, and sacrifice all your happiness for the future". This is a hideous thing to demand. 15-year-olds should be working on academics about 6-8 hours a day and socializing and having a lot of protected sex in their free time. Flunking out of high school isn't the only way to waste your youth; not having any fun is another way. You don't get those years back.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Wednesday May 24 2017, @08:15AM (4 children)
Interesting thought.
Could you please explain why I should be paying for someone else to piss around for a few years, while away valuable educational opportunities that someone else who actually wanted them could have had?
There is no natural right to fuck around on someone else's done you know.
Then again, I suspect you don't know..
One day you will probably learn.. And then complain that it's all someone else's fault.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:44PM (3 children)
Your first question seems to be based on the false premise that I want to exclude qualified people from educational opportunities. I don't want to do that, and I'm not sure why you thought I did, since my post sort of says the exact opposite..
Regarding your question about why the government should sponsor such a program even though (you assert) the beneficiaries have no fundamental right to it, that question seems to be based on the premise that I'm a libertarian. I'm not. My ethical philosophy is premised on utilitarianism. If you're unaware of it, you should look it up on Wikipedia. It may expose you to some new ideas, and I believe that humanity's shared ethics is slowly converging toward a philosophy of utilitarianism, so it would be beneficial to you as well as everyone else if you at least make an effort to get with the program. Most modern ethical arguments are implicitly based on it, unless the person making the argument has been externally brainwashed by libertarianism or Christianity, and it meshes about as nicely with Enlightenment ideals as libertarianism does without being absurd and horrible like libertarianism is. Many ancient ethical concepts, made long before utilitarianism was even explicitly a thing, also have implicit premises drawing from utilitarianism. As an example, the biblical Golden Rule is seemingly based on a proto-utilitarian conception of ethics, and certainly not a proto-libertarian one.
HAND.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday May 25 2017, @09:45PM (2 children)
Can you say more about why you think utilitarianism and libertarianism are opposed? For starters it seems to me like one is a system of ethics and the other is a political philosophy. I imagine implementing utilitarianism as a political system would involve somehow accurately measuring the costs and benefits of a particular policy to a lot of people, and what libertarianism tends to do is assume that each citizen is the best equipped to do that for themselves. To relate this to the prior discussion, I don't see a high-school education as having benefits anywhere approaching the personal and economic cost, but some people evidently do. So if I'm going to be redistributing my income to young people, I'd really prefer that they get to make that call themselves. If they want to spend that money on pot and art supplies for two years, or save it for two years and then get the schooling, I could see that being a net benefit to society, but I don't think anyone but the student is really fit to judge better what would maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. So I guess I'm not seeing how (non-extreme*) libertarianism and utilitarianism are incompatible in this case.
* I'm pretty sure there are plenty of libertarians who're okay with taxation, but want more individual control over how it's spent. It's unfair to characterize a movement by its most extreme positions.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:59PM (1 child)
You're right; some people tend to use libertarianism as an ethical philosophy, but it's really more of a political philosophy.
The main way I think libertarianism is incompatible with a utilitarian concept of ethics is that it actively opposes giving people a hand when they make mistakes. I definitely think people should have the freedom to do what they want with their own lives, but, sometimes, people will do something short-sighted, like not buy health insurance, and it's definitely not very utilitarian to then let them suffer the full consequences of that short-sightedness, like die of cancer. So, it makes sense to have a safety net to take care of that. Sometimes, like with health insurance, the best way to take care of that is to just have the state either tax everyone and use the revenue to provide health care to everyone at no additional cost, or force everyone to buy health insurance or pay an additional excise tax on their entire income. Most libertarians would say to the person who didn't buy health insurance and got cancer, "Well, you had the freedom to do that stupid thing, and you did it, and now you have the freedom to beg your family and friends to pay for your cancer treatment, and, if they don't, you also have the freedom to fuck off and die. Maybe other people will learn from your death not to make the same mistake you did. Have fun with you freedom."
If what you're suggesting is basic income -- where everyone or at the very least everyone with a low enough income gets a stipend each year, and can use it on whatever they want -- I can get behind that. It's always best to be teaching people who want to learn, so if some young people are too immature to want to learn and would rather smoke pot for a few years first, and then get bored of that and _THEN_ finish school, you have a good idea there.
If your idea is "give young people a one-time windfall, and if they choose not to use it to pay for tuition, let them flip burgers the rest of their lives", I would argue that's not such a good idea.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Saturday May 27 2017, @10:43PM
Interesting food for thought. Thanks!