From the Atlantic:
Can Immigrants Save the Housing Market?
Since the recession, there’s been concern over the lack of new households formed and the decreased rate of homeownership in the U.S. And while some suggest that the share of people who choose to buy instead of rent should never ratchet up to the nearly 70 percent seen at the height of the bubble, many lament the loss of the American Dream,which promoted buying a home as a symbol of success and adulthood.
But in some groups the dream, at least of homeownership, is alive and well. During the past two decades, immigrants have accounted for 27.5 percent of all household growth, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. When it comes to growth among younger generations, the foreign-born population is even more significant, accounting for nearly all the household growth for those under the age of 45.
Last year, immigrant households made up 11.2 percent of owner-occupied housing according to the JCHS—that’s up from only 6.8 percent in 1994.
The exact rate of homeownership varies among different immigrant groups, but overall the share of immigrants who own homes is growing. In 2000, the rate of homeownership among immigrants stood at 49.8 percent, according to a study by the Research Housing Institute of America. By 2010 the rate was 52.4 percent, and by 2020 that number will climb to about 55.7 percent, the study predicts. In the third quarter of 2014 the overall homeownership rate in the U.S. was 64.4 percent, according to the Census Bureau.
There are several reasons behind the growth rate in homeownership for immigrants, but part of the impetus may be that many immigrant populations are less cynical about the idea of homeownership than their American-born counterparts. “They view homeownership as a piece of the rock. It’s a benchmark of being settled,” says Dowell Myers, a professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC. “They view homeownership as the American Dream and they buy into that.”
…
Even more compelling are the possibilities for homeownership among the children of immigrants. “When you look at the children of immigrants they actually exceed the native born on a lot of measures: on income, on education, on homeownership,” says Masnick.
Frist. And I see you’ve found a story waking up to a point I’ve seen discussed here for years. This place is so cutting edge, it isn’t funny.
“When you look at the children of immigrants they actually exceed the native born on a lot of measures: on income, on education, on homeownership,” says Masnick.
I give you, the native born muppet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-Dqj4fHmM
Here come the millennials. My friend that is 31, turning 32 in July, just had an offer accepted. Buying in north jersey suburbia.
Millennials will be buying. Things will get better, gentlemen.
…just had an offer accepted. Buying in north jersey suburbia.
What town? What was the price?
No yard, an apartment sized kitchen, unfinished basement and no pictures of the bathrooms which I’ll take as verification that they’re original. Asking price is $797,000 which is $150,000 more than the actual selling price.
http://www.njmls.com/listings/index.cfm?action=dsp.info&mlsnum=1432639&dayssince=&countysearch=false
Timing is not quite right on Montvale.
They took the pictures off zillow. Look it up on mls. This is his first time purchasing a home. Just got married in November. Of course, you would never buy this, but people will. His mother-in-law lives on sunset in pequannock (2 min away), his brother lives in montville (5 min away), and his brother-in-law live in montville (10 min away). So I’m sure that played into it, just assuming here. So it’s not only about waiting for the absolute perfect home, other factors at play too. As for the price, I was not in the proper setting to speak about money matters. I’ll just wait till the price is listed as official public knowledge, rather than ask. He told me two days ago.
See what I found on #Zillow!
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/39434229_zpid
Fast Eddie says:
January 10, 2015 at 9:08 am
…just had an offer accepted. Buying in north jersey suburbia.
What town? What was the price?
Grim,
Why just Montvale? A unqualified, not serious seller abounds everywhere. Underwater muppets and nothing even worth looking at.
Pumpkin,
It sounds like they landed a nice house. I hope it’s not near a flood zone.
7- I think it’s a great property. Pond in the back. Over an acre of flat land at the end of a culdesac. My wife would never buy a bi-level, but that’s just due to her head being up her ass.
Because of Mercedes
Because of Mercedes
Followed by BMW and every other Fortune 1000 in the area. Sell? Sell to whom?
Immigrants
Where are they working?
#216 Eddie Ray (previous thread)
Searching the archives? Devoting a lot more attention to this than I am, that’s for sure.
As Bi used to say “I can write a script to do that in 30 seconds” Its a lot easier to search here than it is to search Pacer. (Technology 1, Law 0)
If we are talking Retro topics, I can’t say I didn’t see this coming.
Gary is it still O’s fault that the GOP are talking Lady Parts as one of the most important issues facing the country in the first week of Congress.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/08/republicans-abortion_n_6438522.html
#14
“Where are they working?”
At the Delis, gas stations, nail salons, Chinese restaurants and dry cleaners they own.
Check your privilege……
A wacky former MIT professor took cinema verite to a whole new level by robbing a Manhattan bank and recording the heist, authorities said.
Joseph Gibbons, 61, a filmmaker and “visual artist’’ who taught for a decade at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, has gone rogue, robbing banks as part of his latest “art’’ project.
Gibbons was charged on Friday with robbery after allegedly making off with $1,000 from a Capital One branch at Bowery and Grand Street in Chinatown.
While waiting for his arraignment, the eccentric academic boasted to fellow inmates that his crime was for art’s sake.
“He was doing research for a film,” said his dazzled cell-mate Kaylan Sherrard, 27.
“It’s not a crime; it’s artwork… He’s an intellectual,” Sherrard gushed.
In former interviews, Gibbons has admitted to using illegal drugs to inspire his short, semi-autobiographical films.
“The romantic idea of the artist getting involved in these kinds of activities as a kind of research, gaining experience. But that was the big inspiration on me,” Gibbons told online art journal “Big, Red & Shiny.”
Now facing felony charges in two states, Gibbons appears to have taken his modus operandi a bit far.
He entered the Manhattan bank on New Year’s Eve around 2 p.m., wielding a camcorder and politely handed the teller a note demanding a donation for his church, according to court documents.
Rhode Island police had also been hunting for Gibbons, who staged a similar stick-up there in mid-November and made off with $3,000 in cash, authorities said.
Judge Abraham Clott set bail at $50,000 after Gibbons’ attorney said his client was mentally sound.
Gibbons, who lives in a Boston suburb, has held teaching gigs and artistic fellowships with several esteemed organizations.
He was a visiting artist at Bard College in the ’90s and an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2001-2010, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The filmmaker, who’s been out of work for four years, had previously waxed romantic about basing art on his own illicit activities.
“I just worried if I had enough problems within me that I could exploit. So when I ran [out] of my own—I started creating them—I made one or two films based on drug addiction.
Before that it was voyeurism,” Gibbons once told the art journal.
Check your privilege……
A wacky former MIT professor took cinema verite to a whole new level by robbing a Manhattan bank and recording the heist, authorities said.
Joseph Gibbons, 61, a filmmaker and “visual artist’’ who taught for a decade at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, has gone rogue, robbing banks as part of his latest “art’’ project.
Gibbons was charged on Friday with robbery after allegedly making off with $1,000 from a Capital One branch at Bowery and Grand Street in Chinatown.
While waiting for his arraignment, the eccentric academic boasted to fellow inmates that his crime was for art’s sake.
“He was doing research for a film,” said his dazzled cell-mate Kaylan Sherrard, 27.
“It’s not a crime; it’s artwork… He’s an intellectual,” Sherrard gushed.
In former interviews, Gibbons has admitted to using illegal drugs to inspire his short, semi-autobiographical films.
“The romantic idea of the artist getting involved in these kinds of activities as a kind of research, gaining experience. But that was the big inspiration on me,” Gibbons told online art journal “Big, Red & Shiny.”
Now facing felony charges in two states, Gibbons appears to have taken his modus operandi a bit far.
He entered the Manhattan bank on New Year’s Eve around 2 p.m., wielding a camcorder and politely handed the teller a note demanding a donation for his church, according to court documents.
Rhode Island police had also been hunting for Gibbons, who staged a similar stick-up there in mid-November and made off with $3,000 in cash, authorities said.
Judge Abraham Clott set bail at $50,000 after Gibbons’ attorney said his client was mentally sound.
Gibbons, who lives in a Boston suburb, has held teaching gigs and artistic fellowships with several esteemed organizations.
He was a visiting artist at Bard College in the ’90s and an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2001-2010, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The filmmaker, who’s been out of work for four years, had previously waxed romantic about basing art on his own illicit activities.
“I just worried if I had enough problems within me that I could exploit. So when I ran [out] of my own—I started creating them—I made one or two films based on drug addict!ion.
Before that it was voyeurism,” Gibbons once told the art journal.
Check your privilege……
A wacky former MIT professor took cinema verite to a whole new level by robbing a Manhattan bank and recording the heist, authorities said.
Joseph Gibbons, 61, a filmmaker and “visual artist’’ who taught for a decade at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, has gone rogue, robbing banks as part of his latest “art’’ project.
Gibbons was charged on Friday with robbery after allegedly making off with $1,000 from a Capital One branch at Bowery and Grand Street in Chinatown.
While waiting for his arraignment, the eccentric academic boasted to fellow inmates that his crime was for art’s sake.
“He was doing research for a film,” said his dazzled cell-mate Kaylan Sherrard, 27.
“It’s not a crime; it’s artwork… He’s an intellectual,” Sherrard gushed.
In former interviews, Gibbons has admitted to using illegal dr^gs to inspire his short, semi-autobiographical films.
“The romantic idea of the artist getting involved in these kinds of activities as a kind of research, gaining experience. But that was the big inspiration on me,” Gibbons told online art journal “Big, Red & Shiny.”
Now facing felony charges in two states, Gibbons appears to have taken his modus operandi a bit far.
He entered the Manhattan bank on New Year’s Eve around 2 p.m., wielding a camcorder and politely handed the teller a note demanding a donation for his church, according to court documents.
Rhode Island police had also been hunting for Gibbons, who staged a similar stick-up there in mid-November and made off with $3,000 in cash, authorities said.
Judge Abraham Clott set bail at $50,000 after Gibbons’ attorney said his client was mentally sound.
Gibbons, who lives in a Boston suburb, has held teaching gigs and artistic fellowships with several esteemed organizations.
He was a visiting artist at Bard College in the ’90s and an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2001-2010, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The filmmaker, who’s been out of work for four years, had previously waxed romantic about basing art on his own illicit activities.
“I just worried if I had enough problems within me that I could exploit. So when I ran [out] of my own—I started creating them—I made one or two films based on dr^g addict!ion.
Before that it was voyeurism,” Gibbons once told the art journal.
Check your privilege……
A wacky former MIT professor took cinema verite to a whole new level by robbing a Manhattan bank and recording the heist, authorities said.
Joseph Gibbons, 61, a filmmaker and “visual artist’’ who taught for a decade at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, has gone rogue, robbing banks as part of his latest “art’’ project.
Gibbons was charged on Friday with robbery after allegedly making off with $1,000 from a Capital One branch at Bowery and Grand Street in Chinatown.
While waiting for his arraignment, the eccentric academic boasted to fellow inmates that his crime was for art’s sake.
“He was doing research for a film,” said his dazzled cell-mate Kaylan Sherrard, 27.
“It’s not a crime; it’s artwork… He’s an intellectual,” Sherrard gushed.
In former interviews, Gibbons has admitted to using illegal dr^gs to inspire his short, semi-autobiographical films.
“The romantic idea of the artist getting involved in these kinds of activities as a kind of research, gaining experience. But that was the big inspiration on me,” Gibbons told online art journal “Big, Red & Shiny.”
Now facing felony charges in two states, Gibbons appears to have taken his modus operandi a bit far.
He entered the Manhattan bank on New Year’s Eve around 2 p.m., wielding a camcorder and politely handed the teller a note demanding a donation for his church, according to court documents.
Rhode Island police had also been hunting for Gibbons, who staged a similar stick-up there in mid-November and made off with $3,000 in cash, authorities said.
Judge Abraham Clott set bail at $50,000 after Gibbons’ attorney said his client was mentally sound.
Gibbons, who lives in a Boston suburb, has held teaching gigs and artistic fellowships with several esteemed organizations.
He was a visiting artist at Bard College in the ’90s and an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2001-2010, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The filmmaker, who’s been out of work for four years, had previously waxed romantic about basing art on his own ill!cit activities.
“I just worried if I had enough problems within me that I could exploit. So when I ran [out] of my own—I started creating them—I made one or two films based on dr^g addict!ion.
Before that it was voyeur!sm,” Gibbons once told the art journal.
I thought Rosita was the native born muppet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=453qY0cr7-s
#14 Gary
LG, 2000 new Hi-Tech workers.
Gary is it still O’s fault that the GOP are talking Lady Parts as one of the most important issues facing the country in the first week of Congress.
No less important than your side attempting to change the foundation of this country by instituting Statism.
pathetic
Don’t forget immigrants from Staten Island and outer parts of Queens. Commute from NJ is better to Manhattan, housing costs are lower and you get more and taxes, once NYC 3% income tax is figured in are similar.
Listed at $799,000, 18 months ago; currently at $645,000. They have another $50,000 drop to go:
http://www.njmls.com/listings/index.cfm?action=dsp.info&mlsnum=1443270&dayssince=&countysearch=false
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/12/bill-6
Don’t forget immigrants from Staten Island and outer parts of Queens. Commute from NJ is better to Manhattan, housing costs are lower and you get more and taxes, once NYC 3% income tax is figured in are similar.
Amazing. All of these deli, dry cleaning, nail place, etc. owners can supposedly afford these 4/2.5 houses in Northern Jersey yet, the costs of overhead, fees, taxes and insurance to run a business in this state is suffocating. And who are the muppets using these services? Other immigrants or the natives that were born and raised here? Because we know the natives aren’t buying these businesses and doing the 80 hours per week to run them. And where are the natives working again? Three companies leave and one arrives. See where I’m going here? x + y = what?
25- Any business or individual that leaves this area is replaced. It might not be instantly, but in time, it always gets filled and some. It’s a highly desirable area to live. How many counties in the nyc metropolitan region regularly make wealthiest or best to live in. Good luck finding that in other regions. Mercedes executives will realize in due time that they wish they were in Bergen County nj. They will realize they chased the carrot for short term profit at the expense of quality of life. If you live the executive lifestyle, you will realize why nyc has the highest concentration of billionaires and millionaires in the U.S. and prob even the world. Montvale real estate will be fine. It’s a highly desirable town to live in and that is not just because of Mercedes. It will survive.
If Montvale was located in Tenn or Georgia, good luck absorbing this blow. Due to its’s location, Montvale real estate will more than be able to absorb this blow. Sure, it hurts, but it won’t last forever. Location is too sought after.
#25 FE
80 hours a week and three generations living in the same house. I’ve seen some even go as far as ‘hot bunks’ like on a Submarine.
Great tenants (when you can get them) as they pay cash and don’t complain.
I was assigned to work at Mercedes Benz in Montvale NJ, twice. Once in the early 90s then again in the late 90s.
ARROGANT and DEMANDING but generous (IF the job got DONE, RIGHT). I regret billing too little. Eh, we all made good money.
Funny thing. They often hired two or three consulting firms to analyze a project before proceeding.
Recently worked with the Germans again (not Mercedes). Same, but my CEO bills them.
[15] fabian,
Legal search is about a lot more than code writing. Anyone can collect the data; you have to know what to do with it.
Anyway, my response was about attitude. You care a lot more about your posts than I do. Function of time and priority, I guess.
This sounds like a good job for pumperkins:
Real Estate Research Analyst – Otteau ValuationGroup is a leading real estate valuation and consulting firm seeking a researchanalyst to perform market research, analysis and report writing in our EastBrunswick office.
Candidatesshould possess the following skills:
Strong written and verbal communication skills
High proficiency in Microsoft Excel and Word
Organized, detail oriented and capable of multi-tasking
Prior work experience in real estate, consulting, or valuation is preferred but not required.
Maybe, IF he can get by with 45k, Obola bennies and no bonus (Hey, he’s a ‘bigtime’ landlord and ‘playa’ ya know).
Huh, and I used think I was Charlie Bro. here!
Hello, Neat post. There is an issue with your web site in web explorer, would test this?
IE still is the marketplace leader and a good portion of other folks will
pass over your fantastic writing due to this problem.
re: “The Future Belongs to them.”
Yes it does.
Check this lady….
“After I finish my shift at the bakery, I start my shift at Starbucks. I work 95 hours per week at three different jobs. One of my sons graduated from Yale, and I have two more children in college. And when they finish, I want to go to college too. I want to be a Big Boss. I’m a boss at the bakery right now, but just a little boss. I want to be a Big Boss.”
https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork?fref=nf
[34] juice
She should check her privilege.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-09/venezuelans-throng-grocery-stores-on-military-protection-order.html
Another milestone for anon’s and ottos model state.
Looks like the Venezuelan government didn’t read “Economics in One Lesson” by Hazlett. Maybe just read some irrelevant review of it by some leftist crank. Venezuelan people are now increasingly equal in their lack of useful goods, which is just what some people want.
Great. Venezuela gives free heating oil to our poor, while they begin to starve their entire population. They’re like a North Korea with good weather and oil.
Ask and ye shall receive . . .
“Marcy Houses resident Nisaa, a 22-year-old black woman who declined to give her last name, pointed to a nearby street corner and said that until a few weeks ago, there was always a patrol car parked there.
She thought the decrease in police presence was a good thing because so many of Marcy’s residents feared confrontations with the cops. “It actually makes people feel better,” she said.”
http://news.yahoo.com/poor-york-neighborhoods-residents-ask-where-police-222159358.html
Back to the Dinkins era, when NYC was dangerous, filthy and much more fun.
Anybody wanna go to Show World and catch Robin Byrd?
Hi folks, if you wanna lose some pounds you should search in google –
Laerdhat’s weightloss
it’s good point to start your fight with fat
Henry A. Giroux | Authoritarianism, Class Warfare and the Advance of Neoliberal Austerity Policies
Monday, 05 January 2015 10:54 By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis
Right-wing calls for austerity suggest more than a market-driven desire to punish the poor, working class and middle class by distributing wealth upwards to the 1%. They also point to a politics of disposability in which the social provisions, public spheres and institutions that nourish democratic values and social relations are being dismantled, including public and higher education. Neoliberal austerity policies embody an ideology that produces both zones of abandonment and forms of social and civil death while also infusing society with a culture of increasing hardship. It also makes clear that the weapons of class warfare do not reside only in oppressive modes of state terrorism such as the militarization of the police, but also in policies that inflict misery, immiseration and suffering on the vast majority of the population.
Capitalism has learned to create host organisms and in the current historical conjuncture one of those organisms is young people, who are forced to live under the burden of crushing debt. (1) Moreover in the midst of a widening inequality in wealth, income and power, workers, single mothers, youth, immigrants and poor people of color are being plunged into either low-paying jobs or a future without decent employment. (2) For the sick and elderly, it means choosing between food and medicine. Austerity now drives an exchange relationship in which the only value that matters is exchange value and for students that means paying increased tuition that generates profits for credit companies while allowing the state to lower taxes on the rich and mega corporations. (3)
Under this regime of widening inequality that imposes enormous constraints on the choices that people can make, austerity measures function as a set of hyper-punitive policies and practices that produce massive amounts of suffering, rob people of their dignity and then humiliate them by suggesting that they bear sole responsibility for their plight. This is more than the scandal of a perverted form of neoliberal rationality; it is the precondition for an emerging authoritarian state with its proliferating extremist ideologies and its growing militarization and criminalization of all aspects of everyday life and social behavior. (4) Richard D. Wolff has argued that “Austerity is yet another extreme burden imposed on the global economy by the capitalist crisis (in addition to the millions suffering unemployment, reduced global trade, etc.).” (5) He is certainly right, but it is more than a burden imposed on the 99%; it is the latest stage of market warfare, class consolidation and a ruthless grab for power waged on the part of the neoliberal, global, financial elite who are both heartless and indifferent to the mad violence and unchecked misery they impose on much of humanity.
According to Zygmunt Bauman, casino “capitalism proceeds through creative destruction. What is created is capitalism in a ‘new and improved’ form – and what is destroyed is the self-sustaining capacity, livelihood and dignity of its innumerable and multiplied ‘host organisms’ into which all of us are drawn/seduced one way or another.” (6) Creative destruction armed with the death-dealing power of ruthless austerity measures benefits the financial elite while at the same time destroying the social state and setting the foundation for the punishing state, which now becomes the default institution for those pushed out of the so-called promise of democracy. (7) Both neoliberal-driven governments and authoritarian societies share one important factor: They care more about consolidating power in the hands of the political, corporate and financial elite than they do about investing in the future of young people and expanding the benefits of the social contract and common good.
The stories that now dominate the European and North American landscape are not about economic reform; instead, they embody what stands for common sense among market and religious fundamentalists in a number of mainstream political parties: shock-and-awe austerity measures; tax cuts that serve the rich and powerful, and destroy government programs that help the disadvantaged, elderly and sick; attacks on women’s reproductive rights; attempts to suppress voter ID laws and rig electoral college votes; full-fledged assaults on the environment; the militarization of everyday life; the destruction of public education, if not critical thought itself; and an ongoing attack on unions, social provisions, and the expansion of Medicaid and meaningful health care reform. These stories are endlessly repeated by the neoliberal and neoconservative walking dead who roam the planet sucking the blood and life out of everyone and everything they touch – from the millions killed in foreign wars to the millions at home forced into underemployment, foreclosure, poverty or prison. (8)
The passion for public values has given way to the ruthless quest for profits and the elevation of self-interests over the common good.
Right-wing appeals to austerity provide the rationale for slash-and-burn policies intended to deprive government-financed social and educational programs of the funds needed to enable them to work, if not survive. This is particularly obvious in the United States, though it is even worse in countries such as Portugal, Ireland and Greece. Along with health care, public transportation, Medicare, food stamp programs for low-income children, and a host of other social protections, public goods and social provisions are being defunded or slashed as part of a larger scheme to dismantle and privatize all public services, goods and spheres. The passion for public values has given way to the ruthless quest for profits and the elevation of self-interests over the common good. The educational goal of expanding the capacity for critical thought and the outer limits of the imagination has given way to the instrumental desert of a mind-deadening audit culture. We cannot forget that the deficit arguments and austerity policies advocated in its name are a form of class warfare designed largely for the state to be able to redirect revenue in support of the commanding institutions of the corporate-military-industrial complex and away from funding higher education, health care, a jobs program, a social wage, workers’ pensions and other crucial public services. Of course, the larger goal is to maintain the ongoing consolidation of class power in the hands of the 1%.
I also want to argue that austerity measures serve another purpose conducive to the interests of the financial elite. Such measures also produce ideologies, policies and practices that depoliticize large portions of the population, particularly those who are unemployed, cast out, homeless, tied to low-paying jobs, experiencing devastating poverty, suffering under the weight of strangulating debt and struggling just to survive. For example, in Greece, where austerity policies have aggressively been put into place, belt-tightening measures have left millions in misery while leaving the resources and lifestyles of the rich untouched. The unemployment rate in Greece hovers around 27 percent. “Suicides have shot up. Cars sit abandoned in the streets. People sift garbage looking for food [and] about 900,000 of the more than 1.3 million who are out of work have not had a paycheck in more than two years, experts say.” (9) Similar problems face the rest of Europe as well as the United States.
Politically paralyzed under the ideological fog of a hyper-individualism that insists that all problems are the responsibility of the very individuals who are victimized by larger systemic and structural forces, it is difficult for individuals to embrace any understanding of the common good or social contract, or recognize that the private troubles that plague their lives are connected to larger social issues, and that nothing will change without the necessity of engaging in collective action with others to dismantle the neoliberal system of violence and cruelty.
Austerity measures not only individualize the social; they also produce massive disparities in wealth, income and power that impose immense constraints on people’s well-being, freedom and choices, while serving to undermine any faith in government, politics and democracy itself.
Austerity measures not only individualize the social; they also produce massive disparities in wealth, income and power that impose immense constraints on people’s well-being, freedom and choices, while serving to undermine any faith in government, politics and democracy itself. The distrust of public values and egalitarian approaches to governance coupled with a wariness, if not a disdain for group solidarities and compassion for the other, nourish and promote a dislike of community engagement, social trust and democratic public spheres. Austerity produces a world without safety nets or the social and political formations that embrace democratic forms of solidarity. Clinging “fiercely to neoliberal ideals of untrammeled individualism and self-reliance,” many young people not only embrace therapeutic models of selfhood but develop a deep distrust, if not resentment, of any notion of the social and shun obligations to others. (10)
Austerity measures purposely accentuate the shark cage relations emphasized by the economic Darwinism of neoliberalism and in doing so emphasize a world of competitive hyper-individualism in which asking for help or receiving it is viewed as a pathology. The notion that one should only rely on one’s self-interest and sense of resilience functions largely to privatize social problems and depoliticize those who buy into such a logic. The danger here is that the sense of atomization and powerlessness that neoliberalism produces also makes people prone to extremist politics. That is, the distrust of the social contract, government, democratic values and class-based solidarities also nourishes the conditions that give birth to extremist groups who demonize immigrants, push a strident nationalism and appeal to calls for racial purity as a way of addressing the misery many people are experiencing, all the while deflecting attention away from the poisonous violence produced by neoliberalism and ways in which it can be confronted and challenged through a host of democratic approaches that reject austerity as a tool of reform. (11)
By eroding the middle class and punishing working and poor people of color, it becomes difficult for radical movements to emerge, and consequently politics gets emptied of any hope for a democratic future. In the midst of a culture of survival and the normalization of violence, thoughtlessness prevails as time becomes a deprivation focused largely on the need to simply stay alive. Under such circumstances, time becomes a burden, making it difficult for individuals to think critically, grapple with complex problems and resist neoliberal notions of citizenship, which define citizens largely as consumers. As critical thought withers and citizenship turns into a pathology, democracy is reduced to matters of self-interest and falls prey not only to a depoliticizing cynicism, but also a call for anti-democratic alternatives such as the demand for “illiberal democracy,” which is taking place in Hungary and “is characterized by extreme nationalism, free-market capitalism designed to promote the interests of the state, government control of the media and concentrated power in the executive branch of the government.” (12)
The turn to authoritarian capitalism is on the rise and can be found in “Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.” (13) The principles of authoritarian capitalism are also on full display in the austerity policies pushed without apology by Republican Party extremists and their Democratic Party cohorts in the United States. Channelling Ayn Rand, right-wing politicians such as Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio argue for the most extreme austerity policies under the guise that moral weakness and greediness are the debased characteristics of those citizens struggling for financial support and social provisions in the age of austerity. (14) In this discourse, it is not surprising that austerity measures find their ideological legitimation in the notion that self-interest is the foundational element of agency and that selfishness is the highest civic virtue. Rand’s insistence that “there is no such thing as society” when coupled with an aggressive assault on all things public and social does more than disparage democracy; it becomes a blueprint for the rise of fascism. Even liberals such as Paul Krugman are sounding the alarm in the midst of rising inequality and the emergence of totalitarian ideologies that make the circumstances ripe for the appeal and rise of totalitarian ideologies that gave birth to the horrors of fascism and Nazism in Europe in the 1930s. (15)
Austerity measures within the current configurations of power represent the undercurrent of a new form of authoritarianism.
Austerity measures within the current configurations of power represent the undercurrent of a new form of authoritarianism – one that refuses political concessions and has no allegiances except to power and capital. There is no hope in trying to reform neoliberal capitalism, because it is broken and cannot be simply reformed. Nor is there any hope in believing that the Democratic Party can be used to fix the system given that the rich liberal elite fund it. As Bill Blunden reminded me in a personal correspondence, “the Democratic Party is the graveyard of social movements who quack like progressives but answer to billionaires.” John Stauber gets it right in arguing that the financialization of US society is, among other things, a money machine for the Democratic Party and that the latter’s notion of reform is dead on arrival. Any notion that the rich elite, the 1% are going to fund “radical, democratic, social and economic change” is as disingenuous as it delusional.(16) Neoliberal capitalism is a pathology, and it needs to be replaced by a form of radical democracy that refuses to equate capitalism with democracy. These may be dark times, but the drumbeat of resistance is growing among workers, the poor, people of color, young people, artists, educators and others. The key is to form social movements and political parties that have a comprehensive view of politics and struggle, one imbued with the spirit of collective resistance and the promise of a radical democracy. The cycle of brutality, suffering and cruelty appears overwhelming in light of the normalization of the intolerable violence produced by the politics of austerity and neoliberalism. The realms of imagination that would lead to a new vocabulary of struggle, politics and hope appear in short supply. Yet, even as time is running out, the struggle has to be waged. What has been produced by humans, however inhuman and powerful, can be undone. History is open and not sutured as the apostles of casino capitalism would have us believe.
The stakes in this battle are high because the struggle is not simply against austerity measures but the institutions and economic order that produce them. One place to begin in such a struggle is with a new sense of politics driven by a notion of educated hope. Hope turns radical when it exposes the violence of neoliberalism – acts of state and corporate aggression against democracy, humanity and ecological stability itself. Hope has to make the workings of power visible and then it has to offer thoughtful critiques of this machinery of death. But hope must do more than critique, dismantle and expose the ideologies, values, institutions and social relations that are pushing so many countries today into authoritarianism, austerity, violence and war.
Hope can energize and mobilize groups, neighborhoods, communities, campuses and networks of people to articulate and advance insurgent discourses in the movement toward developing higher education as part of a broader insurrectional democracy. Hope is an important political and subjective register that can not only enable people to think beyond the neoliberal austerity machine – the chronic and intergenerational injustices deeply structured into all levels of society – but also to advance forms of egalitarian community that celebrate the voice, well-being, inherent dignity and participation of each person as an integral thread in the ever-evolving fabric of a living, radical democracy. Hope only matters when it turns outward, confronts the obstacles in its path and provides points of identification that people find meaningful in order to become critical agents capable of engaging in transformative collective action.
The financialization of neoliberal societies thrives on a cruel, hyper-individualistic, survival-of-the-fittest ethic. This is the ethic of barbarians, the thoughtless and cruel financial elite. While fear and state violence may be one of their weapons, the politics of austerity is truly one of their strongest forms of control because it imposes a poverty of mind and body that produces not just a crisis of agency but its death. It is time to take social change seriously by imagining a future beyond the austerity policies and power relations that define the misery and violence of a neoliberal social order. It is also time for human beings to discover something about the potential of their own sense of individual and social agency, one that inspires, energizes, educates and challenges with the full force of social movements against those undemocratic forces that make a mockery of social, economic and political justice. As Pierre Bourdieu once argued, the time is right for the collective production of realist utopias, and with that time comes the need to act with passion, courage and conviction.
Grim,
Unmod please…
The Three Card Monte of Generational Warfare
Posted on January 7, 2014 by Yves Smith
Stock speculator Jay Gould remarked, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” That, sports fans, is the real foundation of the generational warfare propaganda effort.
It’s being openly pushed on college campuses by billionaire and long term heavyweight Republican donor Stan Druckemiller, and is apparently being worked hard through media channels. I was surprised to see a website that has often featured cogent, articulate political analysis serve up a boomer-blaming piece that was all broad stereotypes, and a couple of tidbits presented as evidence when they were at most decoration (I’m not about to dignify it by linking to it). If anyone had tried running a similarly hate-mongering piece about blacks or gays, they would have been called out. At least this post got some pushback in comments.
We have two events happening that may simply be coincident in time in their genesis, but they are working synchronistically in a nasty way. And the driver of one is unquestionably class, not generational. I can’t get over the way young people are falling hook, line and sinker for the efforts to divert attention from the real perps, which are overwhelmingly the top wealthy and their allies and operatives, such as CEOs and C-level executives at large companies, and the large cohort of neoliberal pundits. (Not all are on board; for instance, I know a private equity firm head who loves annoying people in his industry by telling them they need to pay a ton more in taxes and donates generously to “progressive” candidates, but people like him are few in number).
The first is that a small group of audacious, visionary, committed, radical conservatives set in motion a plan in 1971 to undo the New Deal and cut social safety nets back. They did this via a concerted effort to change values and deeply inculcate pro-business thinking, to give economic “freedom” primacy over democracy, and to train lawyers to think like economists (which is at odds with foundational legal concepts like equity) and over time, pack the courts with corporate-friendly judges. The key figures of this movement and its intellectual leaders were all born well before or during the Depression: former Nixon Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell, Henry Manne (founder of the law and economics movement), and of course, Milton Friedman. Its major funders included Birchers like the Coors family (which provided a large donation to help found the Heritage Foundation in 1973) and the Koch family.
This initiative started to bear fruit quickly; 1976 was the year when you see wages starting to stagnate as corporations stopped sharing the benefits of productivity gains with workers. Key figures who helped carry this effort forward include Paul Volcker (who saw breaking the wages expectations of labor as one of the most important objects of his interest rate policy); Ronald Reagan and Randian Fed chair pick, Alan Greenspan; former Nixon Administration cabinet member and billionaire Pete Peterson, who has funded a newly 30 year campaign against Social Security; and Bob Rubin, who turned the Democratic party (and American policy generally) firmly in a neoliberal, pro-finance direction. None of them are boomers.
On the business side, another factor in the fallen standing of American workers that does not get the attention it deserves was the 1980s LBO artists. Most of them were also older (Carl Ichan, Boone Pickens, Saul Steinberg, Harold Geneen, James Goldsmith, Henry Kravis) but Michael Milken’s original issue junk bonds turbo-charged their efforts. They could initially make juicy returns simply by breaking up companies (the parts would often sell for more than the whole), getting rid of corporate fat like art collections, golf courses, and bloated head office staffs. Many companies restructured defensively.
But to keep the game going, the leverage and the squeezing of workers and suppliers increased, leading to more and more outsourcing and offshoring (which even when it worked increased operating risk). CEOs were effectively bribed by giving them hefty performance based packages if they signed up with raiders, giving other companies the excuse to implement similar deals (to retain “talent”). This was another big driver of the deteriorating standing of the middle class: less job security, which meant less bargaining power.
But weren’t the Boomers enablers? No, it was much more the wealthy across all age groups. Election results in both Reagan elections show younger people less in the Reagan camp than older cohorts, but the income is a vastly more powerful predictor: the richer you were, the greater the odds you voted for Reagan. And separately, age cohorts are not political interest groups. Is there a Gen X party or even lobby? A Millennial lobby? These cohorts don’t have unified interests and you can’t find that sort of group exercising political power in any past historical period either. You do see a lobbying group for the old, the AARP, but most people become old, eventually; this is not an organization that represents a particular birth year cohort.
Now we’ve had periodic enclosure efforts where entrepreneurs seek to strip ordinary people of economic rights, such as access to pastureland; they result in the early years of the Industrial Revolution was nearly two generation of falling living standards for ordinary people in England.
But we have a second factor at work, which is incipient collapse dynamics. For instance, various efforts to relocalize are typical of complex societies that are breaking down. The driver is the strain on planetary resources, driven by population increases compounded by rising living standards (leading to higher levels of resource consumption) in so-called developing economies.
That warning was sounded by the Club of Rome in the 1970s. It was quickly discredited because they called for catastrophe a little too early (and even though they revised their original models, their second set of forecasts didn’t undo the impression made by their first release). But again, remember that the assault on it came not just from business, but also from economists who saw it as not just encroaching on their turf but potentially fatal to their raison d’etre. The power of economists in the West is in large measure due to the Cold War: a command and control economy like Russia was seen as better at marshaling resources for war. Soviet Russia had managed the impressive task of industrializing in the 20th Century.
So the economists’ promise of helping structure a free enterprise system to be productive enough to compete with the Communist bloc gave them a seat at the policy table. They were reflexively hostile to an anti-growth message (and that’s before you get into deeply entrenched societal pressures to have children; I can’t tell you how many of my female peers report being harassed by their parents for delaying becoming parents themselves).
So we have two sources of considerable economic and political pressure converging: one a long arc of the Industrial Revolution reaching its limits and placing dangerous strains on the planet, and the second an overt finance-led class war in the US and other advanced economies.
Societally, turning the oil tanker of our global economy would be enormously difficult, even if there was consensus that that needed to be done. But there are too many who are in denial about the urgency of the task.
And we have more immediate political/social pressures in the US, due to the success of the campaign to put control of the country in the hands of the top wealthy, who unfortunately have come to believe their own PR and for the most part are sorely wanting in the sense of noblesse oblige that constrained the behavior of the upper classes in the past.
Needless to say, this is an extremely depressing outlook and particularly disheartening for the young. But they need to identify the right targets if they are to have any hope of changing this picture. They have no hope of winning on their own, which is why turning them against their allies in other age cohorts is such a promising exercise for the people on top of the heap. Sadly, they’ve been able to manipulate ordinary people to act against their interests for forty years. They look to be succeeding yet again.
Boomers suck. Being in CA and observing early boomer retiree behavior has cemented my opinion. Never have I encountered so much NIMBY, entitled, dump-on-our-kids behavior in my life.
That is all.
There are very few young entrepreneurs in CA because boomers control county gubmint and have banned everything except breathing. And that could be next.
Lots of unlicensed choom shops, though…
Sorry, liberals, Scandinavian countries aren’t utopias
Want proof that the liberal social-democratic society works?
Look to Denmark, the country that routinely leads the world in happiness surveys. It’s also notable for having the highest taxes on Earth, plus a comfy social-safety net: Child care is mostly free, as is public school and even private school, and you can stay on unemployment benefits for a long time. Everyone is on an equal footing, both income-wise and socially: Go to a party and you wouldn’t be surprised to see a TV star talking to a roofer.
The combination of massive taxes and benefits for the unsuccessful means top and bottom get shaved off: Pretty much everyone is proudly middle class. Danes belong to more civic associations and clubs than anyone else; they love performing in large groups. At Christmas they do wacky things like hold hands and run around the house together, singing festive songs. They’re a real-life Whoville.
In the American liberal compass, the needle is always pointing to places like Denmark. Everything they most fervently hope for here has already happened there.
So: Why does no one seem particularly interested in visiting Denmark? (“Honey, on our European trip, I want to see Tuscany, Paris, Berlin and . . . Jutland!”) Visitors say Danes are joyless to be around. Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world. (Its fellow Nordics the Icelanders are in front by a wide margin.) Some 5% of Danish men have had sex with an animal. Denmark’s productivity is in decline, its workers put in only 28 hours a week, and everybody you meet seems to have a government job. Oh, and as The Telegraph put it, it’s “the cancer capital of the world.”
So how happy can these drunk, depressed, lazy, tumor-ridden, pig-bonking bureaucrats really be?
Those sky-high happiness surveys, it turns out, are mostly bunk. Asking people “Are you happy?” means different things in different cultures. In Japan, for instance, answering “yes” seems like boasting, Booth points out. Whereas in Denmark, it’s considered “shameful to be unhappy,” newspaper editor Anne Knudsen says in the book.
Moreover, there is a group of people that believes the Danes are lying when they say they’re the happiest people on the planet. This group is known as “Danes.”
“Over the years I have asked many Danes about these happiness surveys — whether they really believe that they are the global happiness champions — and I have yet to meet a single one of them who seriously believes it’s true,” Booth writes. “They tend to approach the subject of their much-vaunted happiness like the victims of a practical joke waiting to discover who the perpetrator is.”
Danes are well aware of their worldwide reputation for being the happiest little Legos in the box. Answering “no” would be as unthinkable as honking in traffic in Copenhagen. When the author tried this (once), he was scolded by his bewildered Danish passenger: “What if they know you?” Booth was asked.
That was a big clue: At a party, the author joked, it typically takes about eight minutes for people to discover someone they know in common. Denmark is a land of 5.3 million homogenous people. Everyone talks the same, everyone looks the same, everyone thinks the same.
This is universally considered a feature — a glorious source of national pride in the land of humblebrag. Any rebels will be made to conform; tall poppies will be chopped down to average.
The country’s business leaders are automatically suspect because of the national obsession with averageness: Shipping tycoon Maersk McKinney Moller, the richest man in the country before his death in 2012, avoided the national shame of being a billionaire by being almost absurdly hoi polloi. He climbed stairs to his office every day, attended meetings until well into his 90s and brown-bagged his lunch.
An American woman told Booth how, when she excitedly mentioned at a dinner party that her kid was first in his class at school, she was met with icy silence.
One of the most country’s most widely known quirks is a satirist’s crafting of what’s still known as the Jante Law — the Ten Commandments of Buzzkill. “You shall not believe that you are someone,” goes one. “You shall not believe that you are as good as we are,” is another. Others included “You shall not believe that you are going to amount to anything,” “You shall not believe that you are more important than we are” and “You shall not laugh at us.”
Richard Wilkinson, an author and professor who published a book arguing for the superiority of egalitarian cultures, told Booth, “Hunter-gatherer societies — which are similar to prehistoric societies — are highly egalitarian. And if someone starts to take on a more domineering position, they get ridiculed or teased or ostracized. These are what’s called counter-dominance strategies, and they maintain the greater equality.”
So Danes operate on caveman principles — if you find it, share it, or be shunned. Once your date with Daisy the Sheep is over, you’d better make sure your friends get a turn. (Bestiality has traditionally been legal in Denmark, though a move to ban it is underway. Until recently, several “bestiality brothels” advertised their services in newspapers, generally charging clients $85 to $170 for what can only be termed a roll in the hay.)
The flip side of the famous “social cohesion” is that outsiders are unwelcome. Xenophobic remarks are common. At gatherings, the spirit of “hygge” — loosely translated as cozy — prevails. It’s considered uncouth to try to steer the conversation toward anything anyone might conceivably disagree about. This is why even the Danes describe Danes as boring.
In addition to paying enormous taxes — the total bill is 58% to 72% of income — Danes have to pay more for just about everything. Books are a luxury item. Their equivalent of the George Washington Bridge costs $45 to cross. Health care is free — which means you pay in time instead of money. Services are distributed only after endless stays in waiting rooms. (The author brought his son to an E.R. complaining of a foreign substance that had temporarily blinded him in one eye and was turned away, told he had to make an appointment.) Pharmacies are a state-run monopoly, which means getting an aspirin is like a trip to the DMV.
Other Scandinavian countries (Booth defines the term broadly, to include Nordic brethren Iceland and Finland in addition to Denmark, Sweden and Norway) raise other questions about how perfect the nearly perfect people really are. Iceland’s famous economic boom turned out to be one of history’s most notorious real-estate bubbles. A common saying in Denmark about Icelanders: They wear shoes that are too big for them, and they keep tripping over the shoelaces.
The success of the Norwegians — the Beverly Hillbillies of Europe — can’t be imitated. Previously a peasant nation, the country now has more wealth than it can spend: Colossal offshore oil deposits spawned a sovereign wealth fund that pays for everything.
Finland, which tops the charts in many surveys (they’re the least corrupt people on Earth, its per capita income is the highest in Western Europe and Helsinki often tops polls of the best cities), is also a leader in categories like alcoholism, murder (highest rate in Western Europe), suicide and antidepressant usage.
Their leading filmmaker, Aki Kaurismaki, makes features so “unremittingly morose they made [Ingmar] Bergman look like Mr. Bean,” reports Booth.
Finnish etiquette demands little in the way of conversation (the men, especially, speak as if being charged by the syllable) but much in the way of alcohol abuse. It’s considered poor form to leave the party when there is anything left in a bottle. Although their overall alcohol consumption is near the European average, they binge-drink more than almost any other country on the continent. Booze-related disease is the leading cause of death for Finnish men, and second for women.
The suicide rate is 50% higher than in the US and more than double the UK rate. Party guests, even at upscale gatherings, report that, around 11:30 at night, things often take a fighty turn.
It turns out that the “warrior gene” — actually the enzyme monoamine oxidase A, which is linked to impulsive behavior, violence and alcoholism — is especially prevalent in Finland. “Dark” doesn’t just describe winter in the Arctic suburbs, it applies to the Finnish character.
Macho isn’t a problem in Sweden. Dubbed the least masculine country on Earth by anthropologist Geert Hofstede, it’s the place where male soldiers are issued hairnets instead of being made to cut their hair.
But Scandinavian cohesion may not work in conjunction with massive immigration: Almost one-third of the Swedish population was born elsewhere. Immigration is associated in the Swedish mind with welfare (housing projects full of people on the dole) and with high crime rates (these newcomers being more than four times as likely to commit murder). Islamist gangs control some of the housing projects. Friction between “ethnic Swedes” and the immigrants is growing.
Welfare states work best among a homogeneous people, and the kind of diversity and mistrust we have between groups in America means we could never reach a broad consensus on Nordic levels of social spending.
Anyway, Sweden thought better of liberal economics too: When its welfare state became unsustainable (something savvy Danes are just starting to say), it went on a privatization spree and cut government spending from 67% of GDP to less than half. In the wake of the global financial crisis, it chose austerity, eliminating its budget deficit (it now runs a slight surplus).
As for its supposedly sweet-natured national persona, in a poll in which Swedes were asked to describe themselves, the adjectives that led the pack were “envious, stiff, industrious, nature-loving, quiet, honest, dishonest and xenophobic.” In last place were these words: “masculine,” “sexy” and “artistic.”
Scandinavia, as a wag in The Economist once put it, is a great place to be born — but only if you are average. The dead-on satire of Scandinavian mores “Together” is a 2000 movie by Sweden’s Lukas Moodysson set in a multi-family commune in 1975, when the groovy Social Democratic ideal was utterly unquestioned in Sweden.
In the film’s signature scene, a sensitive-apron wearing man tells his niece and nephew as he is making breakfast, “You could say that we are like porridge. First we’re like small oat flakes — small, dry, fragile, alone. But then we’re cooked with the other oat flakes and become soft. We join so that one flake can’t be told apart from another. We’re almost dissolved. Together we become a big porridge that’s warm, tasty, and nutritious and yes, quite beautiful, too. So we are no longer small and isolated but we have become warm, soft and joined together. Part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes life feels like an enormous porridge, don’t you think?”
Then he spoons a great glutinous glob of tasteless starch unto the poor kids’ plates. That’s Scandinavia for you, folks: Bland, wholesome, individual-erasing mush. But, hey, at least we’re all united in being slowly digested by the system.
#40 LL
“..Back to the Dinkins era, when NYC was dangerous, filthy and much more fun.”
Us: (wide eyed white kids from the sticks walkin’ down 42nd Street).
Them: (no description necessary if you experienced it) “Smoke, Dope, Coke…”.
Me: How about a machine gun?
Them: Join the Army.
Those were the days…
A comment from an nj.com article on the Mercedes issue.
This is the common mindset that is so ass-backwards. Robin Hood the businesses? The businesses are robin hooding the govt, aka taxpayers, aka you and I. You really think the people are getting over on the businesses through lobbying the govt or do you think the businesses are using (lobbying) the govt to get over on everyone else (including other businesses). Ever occur to you that it’s hard for small business to compete due to regulation created/lobbied by big business to take out its competition?
The best part of this comment, you have a serf complaining that the middle class is already hurting, yet he states that asking the rich and businesses of this state to carry the burden is off the table. So who is going to suck it up and carry the burden, the poor? That makes a lot of sense. The only people (the wealthy) in the position of sucking it up and carrying the burden are off the table according to this idiot. He wants to cut their burden more so that the burden will trickle down to everyone else.
I give up trying to understand people. Some people are just hardwired to think a certain way.
“This is a direct result of our state of political affairs. When we continue to Robin Hood these businesses, we only serve to push them out. Regardless of their political views, the average NJ resident shouldn’t be blind to the fact that asking the rich and the businesses to carry the burden will only serve to further damage this state, because, once they leave, from where does the money come? The middle class. Well, we are already hurting.”
Dublin-headquartered Shire is buying NPS of Bedminster. Precisely the deal flow direction I predicted. Now NPS will be foreign but Treasury can’t block it because it isn’t a true inversion.
Oh, and Shire already started consolidating its operations in Mass. No idea on whether NPS gets relo’d to Mass from Bedminster.
[49] pumpkin,
I agree with you. Robin Hood away!!!
This comment is dead on. Must be from someone that works there and knows the truth. It’s a short term chase by top executives to reach a bonus by cutting costs. This is a direct attack on employees 50 years or older. You can’t fire them due to age discrimination, so you move the headquarters across the country. No one in their 50’s is going to pick up and move. So in one shot, just eliminated all your most expensive employees and their benefits. Company executives will be reimbursed with lovely bonuses for doing the dirty work of throwing away the over 50 employees to the wolves. Not an easy thing to do to people that have given their lives to you. It’s like a General that throws away soldiers once they turn 50, not acknowledging any of the fighting they had done, just what is their current value, and concluding that their costs are too high, could easily be replaced by a younger soldier for half the cost.
This makes me sick. Do not want to be a part of a society that acts this way.
“The portly governor offered a tract of land around Camden for MBUSA to move to. Interestingly enough, Camden and Atlanta are on the top 25 crime areas. Cannon only lies when he moves his lips. He was told to reduce his costs by 500m. The way to do that and not get sued is by moving your corporate headquarters to a business friendly state. This way, you can legally shed older higher earners just before they are eligible for pensions and medical by telling them ( which has happened over the past few days) that their jobs are being terminated. What the Atlanta fathers don’t know is that those positions which will come from New Jersey wont have New Jersey salary rates.”
Right pumpkin,
They don’t let companies fire people, raise prices, or cut costs in Venezuela, which combined with free government education and healthcare, is why they have such a thriving middle class there.
If Venezuela decided to be the United States’ bitch, I bet things would be much better for them. Just sayin…
Ragnar says:
January 11, 2015 at 10:44 pm
Right pumpkin,
They don’t let companies fire people, raise prices, or cut costs in Venezuela, which combined with free government education and healthcare, is why they have such a thriving middle class there.
#20 Fast Eddie
“No less important than your side attempting to change the foundation of this country by instituting Statism.”
Leaving aside the “My side”, at some point I hope you see the dumb irony in that statement.
#30 Eddie Ray
” You care a lot more about your posts than I do”
Is this like your issues with MSNBC were you rail against them, but you seem to be only one that actually watches. Why do you care how much thought I put into my posts?
As always, unless you have something to add to the conversation, walk on by.
And I’m not advocating that you can’t fire people. I’m just stating that it is a pretty messed up practice to throw our workers to the street just because they have been working a long time and are making more money than a new young employee. What’s next, no raises for any one because you could higher someone for less? Only a matter of time till some executive comes out with the idea that raises are too cost prohibitive. Yes, that’s the current path we are on. With Mercedes Benz now paying their american workers at least 20% less in atl, does Mercedes now understand that a certain base of their customers will now have 20% less to purchase Mercedes. Sure you cut and see positive short term gains, but what happens down the line when you want to raise the price on your Mercedes and your competition has followed suit and reduced their labor costs by 20% as well? Now you have to drop your price 20%.
It’s the same argument against minimum wage, pay the workers more and the cost of the product goes up. Well, if you cut the workers pay or cut their job, same result, prices have to come down. We all know prices don’t ever come down, so what will give in this age of wage arbitrage? Something has to give and my bet is on wage inflation.
Ragnar says:
January 11, 2015 at 10:44 pm
Right pumpkin,
They don’t let companies fire people, raise prices, or cut costs in Venezuela, which combined with free government education and healthcare, is why they have such a thriving middle class there.
Here is a novel idea, why not just leave it.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/09/new_study_says_we_should_leave_most_remaining_fossil_fuels_in_the_ground.html
58- good comment from that article. Ragner, justify an unregulated free market for this situation.
“It’s been well demonstrated that markets are ineffective when action depends on coordinated, not individual, responses. Free market ideology is associated with phrases like ‘the tragedy of the commons’ — i.e. the collapse of the cod fishery, where each person’s individual optimization in the market led to the destruction of the resource.”
47 That was brillant. Did you write that yourself?
[56] Fabian
“As always, unless you have something to add to the conversation, walk on by”
That’s priceless coming from you.