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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
In an age of political animus, increasing hostility toward "others," and 24/7 media coverage that seems to focus on the negative, a recent article in Frontiers in Psychology provides a glimmer of hope, particularly for those who live in the United States.
Written by Yale University academic Gabriel Grant, "Exploring the Possibility of Peak Individualism, Humanity's Existential Crisis, and an Emerging Age of Purpose" aims to clear up two competing views of today's cultural narrative in the United States. First is the traditional view of the next generation—millennials—whom many view as individualistic, materialistic, and narcissistic. Some even refer to millennials as "Gen Me" in response to those who develop their "personal brand" with selfies and social media posts.
In stark contrast there is a view of millennials as rejecting selfish values and leading America into a "great age of purpose." Unlike previous generations, simply earning money is not enough for them—significant data shows that younger people are searching for purpose in their lives and their work. Consider the fact that the non-profit group 80,000 Hours (whose name represents the amount of time spent at work in the average lifespan) even exists. 80,000 Hours provides career advice to help young people build careers with social impact. Universities and businesses are increasingly following this path to help millennial workers achieve their goal of finding purpose in their lives.
Both sides can provide reams of anecdotal evidence that supports their view of millennials, and until recently, there have been few studies on the issue. In his article, however, Grant theorized that Google's digitization of millions of books and the Ngram Viewer, a tool that shows how phrases have appeared in books, could allow a quantified analysis of culture over the past two centuries, and he used this approach to quantitatively test the popular notion that a drive for purpose is increasing. What he found is encouraging.
Yeah, because people with a healthy ego would never possibly do volunteer work...
Source: https://opensource.com/article/17/10/rise-open-source
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @01:44AM (3 children)
I see you don’t understand basic economic competition and comparitive advantage.
Europe was fucking LEVELLED. American industry was in HIGH GEAR. They had no competition.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 11 2017, @02:21AM (2 children)
Neither which is relevant here. Compete for what market? There wasn't much European competition in internal US markets prior to the Second World War. And the US maintained [tradingeconomics.com] a near negligible trade surplus or deficit until the mid 1970s (when it started running deficits). So not much in the way of global trade advantage for the US either.
And comparative advantage means merely that one can still produce stuff to mutual advantage even when another party is superior at the activity. A crippled Europe would have much less comparative advantage to offer to the US and hence, would contribute less to the wealth and economy of the US.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:52AM (1 child)
khallow, seriously, such displays of ignorance do not serve you well. If you are going to attempt to assert such insane things, at least have the decency to fabricate some citations, or something. And, I am beginning to have an even lower opinion of your grasp of economics, if this is indeed possible.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:05AM
In comparison, during the 1970s, the Japanese automobile industry started outcompeting US automakers (measured as growing share of US and global auto markets which US share declined) with autos being a huge market. That resulted in the first significant trade deficits in the US, with Japan having corresponding large trade surpluses. So during a known period of superior competition, we see it reflected in the measure of trade deficits/surpluses.