What’s left of the economy will roll off a cliff

Jeez, baby boomers done FUCKED everything up.

BBoomers brought in two straight decades of ME ME ME. Now before you old farts start screaming for your Geritol, I want to be clear, I loathe my generation too.

As part of Gen Y, I am very critical of my peers. So many seem to be suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. I have yet to meet a peer who wasn’t all about self-promotion. It’s like you don’t even make friends anymore. You make temporary alliances. And the rank ignorance that my generation wallows in makes me want to smash my head against my concrete block book case. When you read studies that say 50% of current high school students don’t think it’s okay to question authority, well, we’re in for a big fucking treat in ten years.

The thing that pisses me off the most about my generation is that they think you can just jump into art or other complex subjects and become a professional in those fields without some amount of study and training. Almost EVERYONE in my generation that I’ve ever met thinks this way. Everyone in my generation thinks they are great photographers who make profound statements with their boring photos. Everyone in my generation think they can be abstract artists without learning the ropes first. Everyone in my generation is also a fucking Billy Wilder. Oh yeah, and they think they can become professional writers without reading a goddamned thing too.

Okay, below is a quick summary of the best I can think I can do for myself. Constructive criticism is more than welcome.

I’m a bi-lingual electrical engineer, and this fall I will be joining a small volunteer team at my firm setting up manufacturing in a developing country with budget and export surpluses, no GMO foods, and limited IMF/WTO influence. Infrastructure is on the upswing, but youth unemployment remains stubbornly on the high side. Personally, I’m getting a 50% raise, paid housing, paid transport, and paid R&R to designated areas. Costs of living are significantly lower than the developed world.

Yes, security is going to be an issue, but I feel as though the stability of the economic situation versus what is going to happen in China, Europe, and the US tends to balance that concern.

@arrowinbuttocks
You are my new favorite commenter. I love the distinction between “friend” and “ally”. And “interior decorator for the web” is priceless. My favorite course in college was Art History. My favorite artist is Brueghel. He said, “Enough with the Madonnas. I want to paint my neighbors at a village festival.” As a youngster I went to the Chicago Art Institute and fell in love with Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” which is my desktop image.

There is no greatest generation or worstest. But our schools have let us down. From this site I learned about Paul Taylor Gatto’s book “The Underground History of Education”. We are making little robots not people.
Yes, you are right. They have elevated “self-promotion” to an actual discipline. It’s called now an MBA in Business or Masters of Bullshit Artistry. It’s what used to be called “sales” and you never needed a degree to be a salesman. We were told both Boomers and Beyond that business was everything. New York founded by the industrious Dutch was where you came to do the hustle. But even those of us who went there “to save the world through art” (in my case in the theater) discovered that the game was rigged. So how to pay the rent?

Meanwhile there is an alternative and always has been. There is another way to organize society rather than around markets or in a hierarchy. The Occupy movement had free libraries and free instruction from the teach ins. For a time, they showed a different way to organize.

@MontanaMaven

Thanks for your encouraging comments.

I agree that no generation is better than another. Each generation has to be judged on the context of the times and the circumstances they face. The so-called Greatest Generation were a bunch of racist assholes, AND they got a huge huge assist from the Russian Army, but no one seems to mention that.

I don’t mean to belittle people and their choice of pursuing a career in arts. There are a lot of great artists who have had little formal training, but most of them were also geniuses too. People who are not geniuses, myself included, need to swallow our pride and start at point A. On the other hand, in a way, it’s not my generation’s fault either. We don’t really have much left to explore in the world of ideas, so that’s a tough place to start, especially for artists. However, even if everything that is worth saying has been said, it don’t mean we can’t try a little harder.

@DodgeMagnum

Go for it man and don’t look back.

@Julien

You’re being very reasonable right now, and I hate that! Just kidding! You’re right. There are good people out there. They are very rare though. You have to admit that people are a lot more proud of being stupid and ignorant than they were 30-60 years ago. Baby boomers may be a lot of things, but I don’t think they hate intellectuals like Gen Y does.

How did this post degenerate into a bunch of bullshit comments about generations? My 75 year old “liberal” PBS Newshour watching father is better informed than my rabid Fox News quoting mother, but not to the point where he could have recognized what a fraud Obama was, and not to the point where he understands economics much better. This “Me generation” rant above is just more ignorant bullshit.

This country lost it’s way when it simultaneously decided that too much regulation of business was the thing holding it back, and unlimited military spending was the solution to international problems, and when it foolishly thought it could raise SS taxes on the boomers and post-boomers and lower taxes on the rich to beef up the “trust fund” in exchange for raising the taxes on the rich when the boomers started to retire. Predictably the rich have conveniently forgotten that side of the bargain, and it will be impossible to raise taxes on them again because of the power they have built up with their low taxes and deregulation/regulatory capture.
The ignorance and foolishness behind all of this spans every generation, even if their flavors vary. People of every age were driving SUVs when oil was cheap and plentiful, and nobody was striking for better retirement plans or healthcare those crappy 401ks were on the Dow 30,000 track and real estate “investments” (no, your home is not really an investment) looked safe, rewarding and foolproof.

Oh, yeah, as regards my last comment, even 5 years into this depression, I don’t think a significant number of Americans have learned SHIT about their individual or collective mistakes of the last 40 years. So don’t even count on a few taps on the brakes before they take us over that cliff edge.

the dude wasn’t even talking about how the country lost its way. he’s just talking about the problems his specific generation is facing, and then you write all this bullshit about how america lost its way. yeah, wrong conversation you dumb motherfucker.

When you read studies that say 50% of current high school students don’t think it’s okay to question authority, well, we’re in for a big fucking treat in ten years.

Pretty predictable though, isn’t it? It’s exactly what you’d expect from people raised in the “don’t taze me bro” era, it’s all they’ve ever really known.

guest says:

This country lost it’s way when it simultaneously decided that too much regulation of business was the thing holding it back, and unlimited military spending was the solution to international problems, and when it foolishly thought it could raise SS taxes on the boomers and post-boomers and lower taxes on the rich to beef up the “trust fund” in exchange for raising the taxes on the rich when the boomers started to retire. Predictably the rich have conveniently forgotten that side of the bargain, and it will be impossible to raise taxes on them again because of the power they have built up with their low taxes and deregulation/regulatory capture.

It’s going be hard to top that explanation of the consequences of Reaganism in a paragraph or less. Further, it’s amazing that since the rise of industrial capitalism members of the monied class have been able to pit racial, religious, regional, national, right to work labor and other groups against their counterparts in order to distract from the hidden in plain sight class war they’re always waging and now, as attested to in this thread, members of the monied class have been able to sew inter-generational conflict successfully into the fabric of their camouflage.

I’m 42.

Going back to the thread topic…I agree with Ian that the economic outlook is bleak, the gov’t is tapped out, good ideas for charge are successfully boxed out by funding old school special interests and now an advancing pro sport stadium bubble for Goldman Sachs.

The best prospects I’ve seen have been hyper-local sustainability projects, but that means plant now to harvest this fall, and re-learn how to do preserving for winter; skills most people have lost pre-boomer…so share that knowledge with friends if you have it.

Job creators? No where in sight. Bondholder/mortgageholder haircuts? An election year pretense more than reality, nothing close to the Iceland 150% solution. Sounds depressing (which sounds like depression), because it is.

CMike, that’s a pretty awesome paragraph of your own.

As Chris Hedges put it:

“It [liberal servility to the democratic party] is also the result of an infantile understanding of the mechanisms of power. The divide is not between Republican and Democrat. It is a divide between the corporate state and the citizen. It is a divide between capitalists and workers. And, for all the failings of the communists, they got it.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_country_needs_a_few_good_communists_20100531/

God, this is a great thread. And Ian, I fear you are right. Just so much election-year razzmatazz.

While we were discussing, it was easy to toss out generatiional comments, both aggressive and defensive…but I must admit that is part of the problem. We must focus on the true issue–which is we are in this soup together, and the real issue is an elite oligarchy that is making clumsy economic decisions.

I suggest reading the Real Economics blog (it is on Ian’s blogroll in the right column above) to bone up on your predator-producer, oligarchy-worker econ. It has helped me greatly. Ian is my go-to guy for getting it straight on politics, and he also has helped me greatly.

My last remark is that it is all about solidarity when taking on the state decisions, that is why Poland named their uprising party that, and it is not limited to taking on ‘communist’ regimes in Poland. It is the reason any Arab Spring made any headway, it takes a village to change a village, you can’t just let your son take a beating, you have to take it by his side. More so, non-violent change is still possible, but it requires twice the volume of participants, active participants with pots and wooden spoons and not just quiet blog comments or emails to your favorite representative. It might even mean you lead it.

I have recommended and will again anything by David Graeber for alternatives to neo-liberalism. Most of his writing is available free on line. His latest book “Debt: The First 5000 Years” chronicles other forms of organization such as “gift societies”. It is a great book on the definition and history of debt. Debt is a promise. In 2008 we discovered that the rich 1% will always keep their promises to the other members of the 1%. But promises to the 99%? Ha. Ha. Ha.

Also the great and fun labor writer Tom Geoghegan (“Which Side are You On” history of the labor movement) wrote a great Harper’s piece called “Infinite Debt: How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy”. Almost all our current woes around the world are because we eliminated caps on usury. There’s a reason charging extreme interest was considered a sin. It is a sin to create paupers.

And then we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter’s term, and which had been so taken for granted that no one ever even mentioned it to us in law school. That’s when we found out what happens when an advanced industrial economy tries to function with no cap at all on interest rates.

Here’s what happens: the financial sector bloats up. With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing. Sure, GM is awful. Sure, it doesn’t innovate. But the people who could have saved GM and Ford went off to work at AIG, or Merrill Lynch, or even Goldman Sachs. All of this used to be so obvious as not to merit comment. What is history, really, but a turf war between manufacturing, labor, and the banks? In the United States, we shrank manufacturing. We got rid of labor. Now it’s just the banks.

April 2009 Harpers’s (the old Harpers that kicked ass and is no longer).
And this was done by Democrats.

Tony, there are many potential approaches to make the descent of the current economy less painful until it meets its ultimate demise, or the majority of us do, whichever comes first, but there is no turning the economy around, meaning overall aggregate growth. In fact, as has been mentioned, a new way of living and interacting is what is called for, so it’s not appropriate to associate that potential new “economy” with the old “economy” by referring to it thereafter as “turning the economy around.”

Once, long ago, I wanted to go into politics. I thought I could be a crusader and change everything.

I’ve since realized that the US currently doesn’t allow for crusaders; it either corrupts them, marginalizes them, or if they get too dangerous, exterminates them.

What can’t be stopped, though, is an educator. It’s impossible to practically ban a teacher from teaching, because at various times we are all teachers, and other times we are all students learning from those around us.

Perhaps it’s the classical literature I spent so much time reading, but I think now that the drawing of minds to wisdom, whether young or old, is the best hope for this and any age. In times of crisis, wise counsel can be a force for calm- or action, if that’s what is needed. So if peril is ahead, I say: cling fast to your books. They won’t save us, but they may give us the ability to save ourselves.

(I also turned away from politics because I realized I had a capacity for megalomania, and I didn’t wish to nurture it in modern American politics’ toxic soil)

>>doing things like a financial transactions tax, a multi-trillion dollar clean energy infrastructure program, and a direct jobs program, are politically “impossible.”<<

The president can create as much money as he wants and use it for alternative energy and jobs programs. Of course, President Obama has no interest in those things.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011083103/proof-platinum-coin-seigniorage-political-game-changer-progressives

FTB, thanks for that link. I appreciate his final comment, so it must be noted.

These people are losing their jobs, savings, homes, investments, families and their will to live with every passing day. Perhaps “losing” isn’t the right word, because it’s not as if they just misplaced all of these things. Instead, these things have been forecefully stripped from the people, who are LOSING their patience for financial oppression. It is times like these when you root for the system to quickly collapse into a heap of rubble through mass protest and unstoppable financial contagion, because the alternative is to watch it burn down slowly by the filthy hands of the corporate elites, as the smoke suffocates the life out of everyone else who is trapped within it.

Isn’t that the truth!

Rob, that was exactly my thinking when I read that. For some reason, I didn’t post my reaction. I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking it.

FTB mentioned on the Greecey Turkey thread about the emergence of the underground/black economy when states collapse. It would be wise to understand how that might emerge, specifically, in your various locales, and position yourself to take full advantage of it, and perhaps lead the effort. If not, someone else will, and all too often, it’s the thugs who grab control of it, and once they do, it’s very difficult to wrangle it from their filthy, sadistic hands.

I personally can’t wait until it all rolls off a cliff.

I understand the sentiment, and find myself becoming more convinced that this is the only way real change can come about. However, I’m still squeamish about the inevitable suffering that will accompany it. Yes, there is suffering now, and more to come if the system keeps staggering along, and yet…

Only then will we be able to rebuild it on a sound and sustainable basis.

I find this hugely optimistic. Who is this “we” of which you speak, who will magically take control after the deluge? It will more likely be thugs, as it always has been.

Interesting comments here. No surprise here that we’re headed for the scrap heap of history and I expect that the collapse will be sudden and horrific for most. As I look around my suburban surroundings, you’d never guess that the shit is about to hit the fan though. Many of my neighbors seem blissfully unaware and are continuing to spend as if everything is okay. I’ve got one neighbor who was bragging about spending $ 3000 to put out some landscaping basically to block the view of my garden which she apparently finds objectionable. The thing that will make this thing worst is people like her. They’re wedded to the view out of the rear view mirror as we traverse a quickly receding past while refusing to look out the front windshield at the train wreck we’re about to encounter. As for me, I’m trying to prepare as best I can, but one is limited with respect to what can be done now. Ideally, I’d prefer to be living in a more rural setting and away from proximity to large urban areas. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, but there’s still quite a bit of local farming that’s done in this area and I figure that’s good about my situation. This will be a huge and devastating event for most people and the media is doing a very good job of keeping a lid on what’s happening in Europe which leaves most without any forewarning.

@Arrowinbuttocks:

BBoomers brought in two straight decades of ME ME ME. Now before you old farts start screaming for your Geritol, I want to be clear, I loathe my generation too.

For starters, I think that the “Baby Boomer” group is too large and diverse to be discussed with any accuracy. There is a large divide in life experiences between the job prospects for those born in 1946 vs, say, 1962. The latter could just go to college, get an English degree, and end up with a good-paying job; for the latter, those had already dried up.

I think there’s not only that aspect, but that the Baby Boomer generation always had at least a bimodal distribution. Many of them were genuinely idealistic and committed to making a better world, and are still that way today. But others many were always “all about me” and Nixon was right–end the draft and the anti-war protests against Vietnam all dried up once *their* skins weren’t on the line anymore. AND, many Boomers were never remotely progressive. If you look newsreels of the faces of angry whites spitting, heckling, and throwing things at the Civil Rights marchers and workers, you’ll see a lot of young ones. Those people are Boomers too.

To sum up: the stereotype of the Boomer as a youthful liberal who later sold out and voted for Reagan is a false one. The progressivism of the 1960s activists was always oversold; these were always a minority in their own generation.

<blockquote? As part of Gen Y, I am very critical of my peers. So many seem to be suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. I have yet to meet a peer who wasn’t all about self-promotion. It’s like you don’t even make friends anymore. You make temporary alliances.

I like Gen Y’ers in many ways. However, I agree with that assessment, and moreover I know of other Gen Y’ers who would agree with you.

The thing that pisses me off the most about my generation is that they think you can just jump into art or other complex subjects and become a professional in those fields without some amount of study and training.

That, and the self-promotion bit, I see as a rational response to the wildly unrealistic fantasies of employers. They think if they hire high-degreed people, they will end up with “instant expert” who has all the skills they want and of course then it behooves job applicants to mimic that fantasy. Employers don’t want to actually have to show the applicant the ropes and train them as they don’t want to invest in their employees (because then that makes layoffs a bad thing, which they are, it’s management by fantasy).

Worse, the educational system has become one big resume-padding exercise. I attended a graduation ceremony not too long ago where a student who was giving music recitals and studying multiple degrees was lauded to the skies. I had to ask “Where is her time to actually reflect upon, incorporate, and assimilate what she’s learned?” So much “learning” today is based upon the Asian model (which conservatives think is great, never mind that Asians themselves see its weaknesses) which is: cram and regurgitate upon request for teacher.

Education is thus like one of those game shows where the contestants run some sort of obstacle course, where the goal is to “hit” as many “buttons” as you can in the limited time, so to speak, and it doesn’t matter how well you hit them. Just so you get something you can put down on the resume.

-StewartM

Three conditions must be understood before commenting:
1. Words have become unmoored from their meaning.
2. History has ceased to exist, opinion has taken its place; memory may last the week, they never lasts the month.
3. Education is a lost art, students no longer suffer pedagogics; belief has usurped the position and ephemerality is its foundation.

Admittedly one of the precursors to what is now the baby-boom generation, vintage 1943 and past arguably old, never-the-less becoming a reluctant voice to the growing cacophony and liable to drop out altogether, will add this:

Be very careful about accusations, who you accuse, and of what you accuse them, particularly in the plural. Each person is different, even identical twins are born sequentially, one older than the other (about the only exception are conjoined identical twins and even so there are differences). The language is not conducive to acknowledging let alone speaking in spectrums, but accuracy requires that ability in both speaker and listener. Language tends to be linear as well, try describing some three dimensional event in time, like a wave breaking on the rocks. To depict a generation with a single or even a simple phrase carries the seeds of its contradiction.

Accusing the baby-boom generation of political malfeasance is a handy fallacy, they were robbed of their turn at power through the manufacture of political deceit, begun with Goldwater’s loss 1964, successfully sold as law and order 1968 and again 1972 resulting in ignominy and going underground out of sight until 1980 when political fraud combined with nefarious CIA operatives masquerading as patriots and wearing moral majority bought again political power with the coin of deceit. An ill educated public surrendered their power to brazen treason using flags as bunting lit with the burning crosses of christianist moralists.
The first of that “generation” to obtain the high office did so by guile, having no political tradition other than expediency, nor constraint of political tradition, those once moderates and liberals expelled from the (d)evolving conservative republican party found a place within the broad liberal democratic tent and proceeded to take over the leavers of power. That part of the baby-boom generation that took issue with the establishment policy, whether about war, equal rights, women’s issues, or whatever were silenced by the Nixon administration, terrorized by induced paranoia (CIA, FBI, National Security, targeted assassination, abuse of legal system, war on drugs, etc) into silence, that silence led to the hubris of Watergate that brought down the (white)house. When the moral majority took the reins of power in 1980’s, for the first time in the nation’s history the expansion of political and economic rights was reversed, and has been so ever since. No the baby-boomer generation was split and conquered, that generation never held the reins of power other than as deluded followers of those forces which did exercise power. Only systemic collapse will provide an opportunity for some generation to possibly regain control but the likelihood that any generation will be prepared to successfully take such responsibility is growing remoter each passing day.

Until the history of the period is definitively written, this period will remain as disorienting as a carnival’s house of mirrors and about as useful as well.

1945 here and I concur with Petro, T-Bear.
Too much belief, too much dogma, and not enough, if any, ability at critical thinking and classical education is no more.