America in Four Graphs

[TheItinerantSon]

 

[VINYLONE]

Thank the last four administrations for all of this...hell, the administrations since Nixon have all supplied the fuel to this fire.

 

[Surely]

I heard a speech about debt yesterday that was pretty amazing. The guy who gave it compared hearing the information to a trip to the dentists office, painful but necessary. He talked about how much consumer debt there is now and how much debt the banks and financial institutions are carrying. At the end he pulled up the government debt. He didn't want to get into a political debate so he just mentioned that people who are in the working class now who are not saving for retirement but are instead planning on having the government take care of them are going to be in for a rude awakening. He also mentioned how we are 10-15 years behind what is happening in Europe. Over there people are used to having the government pay for everything but now that the governments are out of money and saddled with huge amounts of debt they are having to cut the services to their citizens. It was a sobering lesson.

 

[moevillini]

I heard a speech about debt yesterday that was pretty amazing. The guy who gave it compared hearing the information to a trip to the dentists office, painful but necessary. He talked about how much consumer debt there is now and how much debt the banks and financial institutions are carrying. At the end he pulled up the government debt. He didn't want to get into a political debate so he just mentioned that people who are in the working class now who are not saving for retirement but are instead planning on having the government take care of them are going to be in for a rude awakening. He also mentioned how we are 10-15 years behind what is happening in Europe. Over there people are used to having the government pay for everything but now that the governments are out of money and saddled with huge amounts of debt they are having to cut the services to their citizens. It was a sobering lesson.

So it government a leading indicator or a trailing indicator?

I think of debt as the domino theory for the "New Millennium" - last century it referred to the spread of Communism, this century it's the spread of debt.

 

[The-Joker]

Thank the last four administrations for all of this...hell, the administrations since Nixon have all supplied the fuel to this fire.

 

[TheItinerantSon]

my interpretation of these four graphs is that the economy is undergoing structural changes that nobody can really do anything about. Our jobs arent going to china, they arent going to mexico, they arent going to finance the debt - they're going to machines.

The rapid pace of automation is whats causing a significant part of the economic distress (in terms of economic well-being of average americans) that we're experiencing. And yet, its a positive force in the long-run and we'd be foolish to try to stop it.

And automation is only going to become more and more prevalent. Already people are working on video-tracking technologies that will make quality control positions obsolete. Soon voice recognition and AI systems will become sophisticated enough to really cut into call center/teller/broker jobs.

We went through this in agriculture. 1875 it took 4/5s of the population to make enough food for everyone to eat. Now it takes 1% of the population and we make more food than ever before. All the hands and minds that we freed up from food production have made the world a richer and happier place. Now we're going through the same thing in manufacturing and services. Except this time instead of taking a hundred years to happen, its happening in a matter of decades.

Its a soft-landing in the sense that we have more food and material comforts than ever before - compare your cell phone now to the one you had in 1999. Compare your TVs... But at the same time as a society we have to understand that total employment may no longer be possible and do our very best to build social structures that take that into account.


Maybe having a new civilian conservation core that goes around fixes all teh roads in double time is a good idea? Maybe we can build that smart grid, with all the labor thats currently freed up?

I dont know what the answers are, but i know its the only question worth asking

 

[C l u t c H 385]

And automation is only going to become more and more prevalent. Already people are working on video-tracking technologies that will make quality control positions obsolete. Soon voice recognition and AI systems will become sophisticated enough to really cut into call center/teller/broker jobs.

Those things always make me wants to throw my phone through the wall. I usually just start cussing at them until I get a human.

 

[franklin]

my interpretation of these four graphs is that the economy is undergoing structural changes that nobody can really do anything about. Our jobs arent going to china, they arent going to mexico, they arent going to finance the debt - they're going to machines.

The rapid pace of automation is whats causing a significant part of the economic distress (in terms of economic well-being of average americans) that we're experiencing. And yet, its a positive force in the long-run and we'd be foolish to try to stop it.

And automation is only going to become more and more prevalent. Already people are working on video-tracking technologies that will make quality control positions obsolete. Soon voice recognition and AI systems will become sophisticated enough to really cut into call center/teller/broker jobs.

We went through this in agriculture. 1875 it took 4/5s of the population to make enough food for everyone to eat. Now it takes 1% of the population and we make more food than ever before. All the hands and minds that we freed up from food production have made the world a richer and happier place. Now we're going through the same thing in manufacturing and services. Except this time instead of taking a hundred years to happen, its happening in a matter of decades.

Its a soft-landing in the sense that we have more food and material comforts than ever before - compare your cell phone now to the one you had in 1999. Compare your TVs... But at the same time as a society we have to understand that total employment may no longer be possible and do our very best to build social structures that take that into account.


Maybe having a new civilian conservation core that goes around fixes all teh roads in double time is a good idea? Maybe we can build that smart grid, with all the labor thats currently freed up?

I dont know what the answers are, but i know its the only question worth asking

Maybe another Lewis Turning Point is needed? Unskilled workers are what they are. Automation doesn't make wealth disappear as is often intended. The wealth has an opportunity to go somewhere else, animal spirits willing.

Maybe we don't prize services enough to make the necessary transitions yet. Things are easier for many to value, or pay up for, as the memory is always in front of you and is transferable (not "wasted"). But we only need so many things. Maybe the next generation will be called generation massage, as they find great value in paying up for services. Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that the trend is moving in this direction in services such as dining, recreation, and entertainment. Younger adults "throw their money away" in ways their parents would never dream of doing.

Service jobs can be very well paying if the server is actually a professional as opposed to a college student picking *** while flipping pancakes. Maybe we need all those bitchy McDonald's cooks going to culinary school instead of bitching about all those McDonald's and Walmart jobs. I mean, I'm not paying a "liveable wage" for you to flip a ******* bean-burger. If people were willing to do that then I imagine they'd just demand the pay and do the work themselves.

 

[franklin]

That's a nice chart of pretty much consistent productivity gains. The 200+ year average in America is about 2%/year, regardless of political power swings. The sky isn't falling.

Cash incomes. Of course the '60's and '70's look higher. Total compensation continues to rise (hint: Workers have maintained their % share of the economy). The sky isn't falling.

Workers have been leaving the workforce since the 50+ year peak in 2001. So what? The trend cannot go in one way forever.

I thought we don't manufacturer anything in this country anymore??? What? Manufacturing has risen substantially?

I love working less for more, don't you? Or are you trading in that John Deere for a sickle? The sky isn't falling.


Pessimism and negativity are in a bubble.

 

[Surely]

I thought we don't manufacturer anything in this country anymore??? What? Manufacturing has risen substantially?

I love working less for more, don't you? Or are you trading in that John Deere for a sickle? The sky isn't falling.


Pessimism and negativity are in a bubble.

Yeah, you're right. Everything is great economically in this country. No need to save for a rainy day people. Just keep spending and borrowing. It will never catch up with you.

 

[VINYLONE]

Yeah, you're right. Everything is great economically in this country. No need to save for a rainy day people. Just keep spending and borrowing. It will never catch up with you.

That's what you're supposed to do in a debt based economy.

 

[TheItinerantSon]

Cash incomes. Of course the '60's and '70's look higher. Total compensation continues to rise (hint: Workers have maintained their % share of the economy). The sky isn't falling.

If you have a link to that figure, i'd be interested in having it (not doubting you, just would like to be able to show that to people).

Secondly, even with that being true, the % is staying the same because some workers are increasing compensation while other workers...are seeing their jobs disappear.

I love working less for more, don't you? Or are you trading in that John Deere for a sickle? The sky isn't falling.

Pessimism and negativity are in a bubble.

I mean yes, the material gains are great, and I said as much.

My whole point with these graphs was to make the case, that this trend (more and more stuff, less and less work) was not going away for a decade plus and that I don't think this is because of globalization/immigration/govt spending. And if this is going to be our new reality, we need to adjust our social structures to take this into account.

We need our institutions to be more flexible in dealing with part-time/contract workers. We need to change our education system dramatically, so that it spends less time teaching facts and more time teachign independent thinking etc.

 

[GVC]

We need our institutions to be more flexible in dealing with part-time/contract workers. We need to change our education system dramatically, so that it spends less time teaching facts and more time teachign independent thinking etc.

Good luck selling that to the American public/Military Industrial Complex, commie.

 

[VINYLONE]

We need our institutions to be more flexible in dealing with part-time/contract workers. We need to change our education system dramatically, so that it spends less time teaching facts and more time teachign independent thinking etc.

A focus on math and science is also a must...especially if we are to keep up with the rest of the world.

 

[Jazz Spazz]

That's what you're supposed to do in a debt based economy.

I think you are joking... but I will respond to this anyway.

That is the problem, we should not be a debt based economy, we should be a spend what you have and nothing more.
Better yet, spend less than you have.
Too many people are addicted to things and have to buy the best of everything before they have the money to do so.
Credit cards are given out, Loans given out etc to people that dont know how to save, or plan for the future.
Quite blaming the government, and take a little accountability.... blame ourselves for the mess we are in... then go from there.

Until people realise they are part of the problem, and quit pointing the finger of blame at other people or organizations there will be no improvement.

I now step down from my soap box.

 

[VINYLONE]

I think you are joking... but I will respond to this anyway.

That is the problem, we should not be a debt based economy, we should be a spend what you have and nothing more.
Better yet, spend less than you have.
Too many people are addicted to things and have to buy the best of everything before they have the money to do so.
Credit cards are given out, Loans given out etc to people that dont know how to save, or plan for the future.
Quite blaming the government, and take a little accountability.... blame ourselves for the mess we are in... then go from there.

Until people realise they are part of the problem, and quit pointing the finger of blame at other people or organizations there will be no improvement.

I now step down from my soap box.

My comment was definitely sarcastic.

 

[Scat]

I think you are joking... but I will respond to this anyway.

That is the problem, we should not be a debt based economy, we should be a spend what you have and nothing more.
Better yet, spend less than you have.
Too many people are addicted to things and have to buy the best of everything before they have the money to do so.
Credit cards are given out, Loans given out etc to people that dont know how to save, or plan for the future.
Quite blaming the government, and take a little accountability.... blame ourselves for the mess we are in... then go from there.

Until people realise they are part of the problem, and quit pointing the finger of blame at other people or organizations there will be no improvement.

I now step down from my soap box.

I couldn't agree with this more. I can see a huge difference between my grandparents to my parents to myself and even my youngest brother who is 11 years younger than me. Where my grandparents were a product of the Great Depression and bought only what they really needed with cash and saved everything else, my younger brother will go buy a new car just because he tired of the color he currently has. All of his kids have their own room, their own TV, their own cell phone and his daughter that just turned 16 is getting her own car. I know he is in debt up to eyeballs.

The problem is that everyone now feels they need these things, are even entitled to these things, and don't view them as a luxury or want and will do whatever it takes to get them.

 

[VINYLONE]

Just a blog post I came across...

Fixing Education: Will We Ever Learn?

Probably not, but this highlights the problem:

New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years.

....

About 70% of students who sat for the ACT took a core curriculum in high school, but only 29% met college-readiness standards on all four subject exams.

I know the rest of this Ticker is going to be unpopular, but it is nonetheless true:

Classes like "Web Design" and programs that put "computers in every classroom" will do exactly nothing to fix this.

Neither do integrating academic classes across intellectual capability - in fact, doing that is guaranteed to screw the brightest by holding the class back to within the abilities of the weakest students in the group. Nor, for that matter, does buying new textbooks every year advance one inch toward this goal. Biology, Chemistry and Physics don't get "re-written" and neither does mathematics. Classical English requires a stack of actual paperback classics for reading material, and grammar doesn't change every year either! Nor does history, if you're teaching actual history and not "social studies" intended to produce good little sheep instead of providing an intellectually-rigorous examination of both the successes and failures of civilizations from ancient times to the present day.

Intellectual rigor is necessary. But intellectual rigor means handing out lots of "F"s when they're called for - that is, failing students. It means sending home plenty of homework.

And it means cutting the crap in elementary and middle school, and instead of focusing on "smaller classes" and "smartboards in every room" we must instead focus on the CORE subjects with students separated by competence - that is, English, math, science and HISTORY, not "social studies."

All four of those are hard sciences and fact-based. "Social Studies" is not by definition, and the games played there must stop.

We must insist that so-called "core curriculum" students have a year of Biology, Chemistry and Physics in high school - and be prepared to take those classes when they come out of middle school. This means that fluff classes like "earth science" are inappropriate for college-bound students. Senior-year high school students should have a panoply of higher-level science studies to engage in (such as Organic Chem), having completed the core of Biology, Chemistry and Physics by the end of their junior year. We are woefully inadequate in our science education.

We must insist that students be able to take Algebra in their Freshman year of high school. This means the 8th grade year must be pre-Algebra - in middle school at worst. Incidentally, I'd argue that the current "cycle" on this is too wide that is, the typical "Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trig, Calc 1, etc" needs to ideally be reduced so that by one's senior year they're taking Calc 1. This, incidentally, is not seen as a core path anywhere I'm aware of when it comes to high school (absent IB or honors classes), but it damn well ought to be. Algebra should, IMHO, ideally be the core class in 8th grade, meaning you're taking geometry as a freshman.

And when it comes to English, what currently passes is laughable. Four years of english and literature should not only be mandatory, it should be extraordinarily rigorous, with students able to not only read and comprehend classical literature but be able to write in complete, proper sentences long before they graduate. The key to this is a strong reading curriculum in the earlier grades - without a strong reading ability the rest is a waste of time. Strong English skills are mandatory for both science and history - and if you're missing the first you're doomed with the other two.

Susan Traiman, public policy director for the Business Roundtable, called the mismatch between the core curriculum and the test scores "false advertising" by high schools. She also noted that the results spell trouble for businesses.

Of course they're false advertising. But the problem isn't, as often claimed, the "180 days of 50 minute classes." In point of fact the actual instructional time in terms of delivered instruction in the average High School is closer to two hours a day, not six.

This is repeatedly proved by home-schooled kids who manage to grossly exceed these standards while spending two hours a day in formal studies - but they actually work the entire two hours, with the rest being consumed with practical application of what they've learned.

I ran a company in Chicago for more than a decade, with the last five years of it in the city proper with a few dozen people working for me. Fully 80% of the applicants for positions with MCSNet were unable to pass an English and Math class calibrated at the fifth grade.

I demanded that applicants, to obtain an interview, be able to:

Complete 20 mathematics problems demonstrating practical math in a business sense - that is, the sales tax and change on a series of hypothetical transactions.

Demonstrate competence in business English, specifically, sufficient mastery of the language that the applicant could write a simple business letter to a customer explaining and documenting their payment history, along with the amount due.
80% of the people applying for positions - or more - all claiming High School diplomas - could not pass this exam. Yet there was no algebra demanded, say much less geometry or trig - only four-function mathematics performed with a pencil and paper, along with basic sentence structure and grammar!

I had a literal horizontal file cabinet full of failed tests with alleged "resumes" that were supposedly written by applicants that couldn't structure a sentence properly. Who wrote their resumes?

The NEA and the rest of the so-called "Educational Establishment" has failed. We cannot continue to pour money into a system that not only sucks, it has sucked and continues to suck. We don't need more spending, we don't need computers, and we sure as hell don't need $30,000 white boards and $10,000 worth of video games in our schools. What we need is reading, writing, hard science and arithmetic - all of which can be taught very effectively without one high-tech "innovation." Indeed, when it comes to the various mathematical disciplines calculators, computers and other so-called "innovations" are a hindrance, not a help, as they're a CRUTCH. We weren't allowed to use them in my classes and students should be allowed to possess them in school (instead, these days, "graphing calculators" are considered required tools in some high school classes! What the hell is wrong with a piece of graph paper and a pencil?)

The solution is for localities to issue educational vouchers to each parent in the amount of the school funding allocated to their child, and allow them to submit that voucher at the school of their choice, or to homeschool. However, in order to cash that voucher, said student must pass their grade-level standardized test which must be drawn from the core state-wide curriculum in each and every one of the core subjects. Classes must be integrated by intellectual ability so as to both challenge the brightest while allowing those who are not as bright to proceed.

Schools are not to nurture "self-esteem" - they are places of education where one is supposed to learn the core competencies required to succeed in the world of work. Our "educational lobby" has not only failed, they have failed spectacularly, and must be dismantled if we are to ever tackle this problem.

It starts with the parents and the business people in our communities. Until both raise hell and refuse to support the existing system, demanding and in fact forcing change, we will continue to fall behind. We must start with de-certification of the NEA and de-funding of the existing schools if they refuse to spend their time and money on actual education instead of blowing money on gimmicks and "high tech" nonsense.

In short we must play Donald Trump and say the famous two words: You're fired!

 

[TheItinerantSon]

I disagree completely.

How many people on this board have ever used calculus outside of a classroom?

On what planet would you need organic chemistry in high school?

We don't need to be teaching more, we need to be teaching less subjects but with better effectiveness.

 

[One Brow]

Just a blog post I came across...

Apparently, a poster who doesn't pay attention to what does and does not get results in education.