The Observation Deck

The guy I just voted into office, he's so up to his eye-balls in his predecessors' poor decision-making and total disregard for sound budgetary policy, my/his issues will never see the light of day.

Did you miss the signing of the Porkulus bill?

Off Subject but definitely worth viewing

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

Nope, I'm right there with you and our other 320 million co-conspirators. Every pundit and his brother says some form of expenditure is needed; should he just ignore the problem and put his head in the sand? Damned if you do, politically dead if you don't. What the Bill shouldn't contain is tax cuts. When has a tax cut ever inspired a company to hire someone? Companies make things/provide services. When there is a demand for things/services, people get hired. Soak the rich, I say. They can afford it, plus, it keeps them on their toes.

Soak the rich, I say.

As long as I am not the one getting soak then it is all good

I think there has been a sea change in the American character. Every generation has faced its own threats, and I certainly don't think today's children's fears of getting a dead battery in their ipod is worse than the prospect of starvation faced by children in the first depression, nor the prospects of atomic obliteration faced by children in the 50s and 60s.

But over my lifetime I have dealt with people of all generations since the depression, and I have seen a change. In the earliest of these generations, there was a sense that you were obligated to take care of yourself, and even a mistrust of government involvement in our personal lives. They accepted that they had an obligation to serve their government, such as in fighting wars, but expected nothing in return. Many of them wouldn't put money in a bank, even after the government started insuring such accounts. The idea of Social Security taking care of you in your old age had not yet caught on. People expected to work as long as they could, to be cared for by their families thereafter, and to die shortly after retiring. Medicare and Medicaid did not exist. Some of the earliest entitlement programs were created as gifts of a grateful country (such as the GI bill), rather than as inducements to serve your country, or vote a certain way. I should add that those attitudes changed over the years, and those of those early generations who survive today have accepted what we have created, and are as outspoken as anyone in demanding entitlements today. I would attribute this to the natural human tendency to look around, see what others are getting, and feeling that you should be getting as much.

Over the years, entitlements became a much bigger part of our lives, and people of more recent generations seem less inclined to do something for their country without recompense. So many kids today will turn up their noses at a job like flipping burgers, ignoring the fact that such a job would give them work experience, and instead try to live off their parents or some government program.

We have always had what we today call homeless people. But years ago when one wandered through the neighborhood, he would at least offer to do some chores in return for food or money. Now they don't even bother to wander, they just homestead a corner and demand that people give them money. Of course, today that have a chorus of supporters who sing of reasons they cannot work, and would consider it uncivilized if someone were to ask for some work in return for his donation. The numbers of non-producers and under-producers seems to have increased with our efforts to make their lives more comfortable, and to be careful not to shame them for their unwillingness to work.

Our colleges have contributed to this change. In my youth, scholarships were given based on merit, but the schools were starting to give grants and loans to attract students who lacked the records to get a scholarship. And the schools were very willing to kick you out for non-performance, unless you were someone like Ted Kennedy. I recall sitting in an indoctrination where the dean told us to look at the person on each side of us, and realize that one of the three would not be back the next year. However, as the money poured in, the schools lowered their standards to the point where almost anyone could stay in school as long as they wanted. Over the years performance continued to decline, with many teachers refusing to give an earned failing grade on the grounds that it would subject the student to the draft.

Over the years, scholarships based on merit almost disappeared, and now they offer a package based on need. I don't really have a problem with that, as most of the people I knew who got merit scholarships were from very well-off families and would have gone to school anyway, and if this change allows some achieving student from a family that cannot afford college to get an education, that is, to me, a benefit to the country. Unfortunately, the idea of entitlements has corrupted this process, and to a prospective student today, it is more important to establish credentials in a group with entitlement preference, than to get good grades. So while I think education is the key to improving our society, I am not convinced that our educational system is serving that objective, because today's graduate may have a degree based on entitlements, rather than a degree based on mastery of the subjects.

So as to the original subject, I think there has been a change in attitudes about entitlements over the years, but that change has affected all of us, even those who had a very different attitude years ago.

I would call it "professionalism inflation" or credential creep rather than grade inflation.

technical work that used to take a few extra math and science classes in highschool, maybe a few courses outside of high school and on the job training, now takes a Bachelor's degree.

suburban sprawl dillutes the tax base. new districts compete by how many of their teachers and administrators have masters degrees or more, how many students go to college, and so many other worthless metrics.

Excellent assessment Will. I don't want to return to Leave it to Beaver or Pleasantville, but as you flip through channels of American pop culture, one sees the change in values. I can get past the Jerry Springer freak festivals and the idolization of reality shows that range from real housewives of (insert city) to the Kardasians for God sakes?

But I'm not wild about the youth gangsta movement that thinks gang bangin' and cop killing is cool. The lyrics are off the charts. There is no law against it - nor should there be.

But we are going to reap all the rewards of de-sensitized kids with no real sense of right and wrong (used to be called values). There is no consequence to doing whatever you want from corporate boardrooms to school playgrounds. Cool! We get to live with what that is.

Dustin James wrote:
But we are going to reap all the rewards of de-sensitized kids with no real sense of right and wrong (used to be called values). There is no consequence to doing whatever you want from corporate boardrooms to school playgrounds. Cool! We get to live with what that is.

when I was in first grade a girl named Francis kept trying to hug and kiss me on the playground. I had to literally pry her off me. The Noon Aid made me stand in the corner for the rest of recess. nowadays Francis would be hit with criminal charges because the law is dumb, and administrators are dumb.

Lil Wayne narrates the current popular "what is G" commercials for Gatorade featuring a montage of some of the top athletes.

There were some commercials combining Snoop Dog with Ellen Degeneres last year. I can't recall what the commercial was for. It may have been a credit card or a cellular phone service.

Michael Phelps - one of the top athletes in the world - is dumped by numerous sponsors for one bong hit.

we're in an Algae Bloom type era of entertainment and resource use. Still Blooming! for a little while.

Will Brown wrote:I think there has been a sea change in the American character. Every generation has faced its own threats, and I certainly don't think today's children's fears of getting a dead battery in their ipod is worse than the prospect of starvation faced by children in the first depression, nor the prospects of atomic obliteration faced by children in the 50s and 60s.

An excellent post all the way around.

Thanks.

At least the New Republic agrees with me:

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plan ... -idea.aspx

people generally grow up to reflect the culture they are from. There is drift as new technology changes habits. much of culture is production and consuming. it seeps into the vernacular and becomes close to natural.

it is no coincidence that goofball hippies sprang from the first generation of children who grew up with television and suburbia. Along with a large wave of blue collar junkies and wall street coke heads and Neo-Conjobs.

Fashion became more garish and standards of dress became lower as textile production shifted from the northeast to the south and then oversees.

Not much point in becoming an engineer or machinist. all that stuff is far away. whenever I overhear someone telling anecdotes about industrial work they are usually over 60 and in a barbershop getting an 8 dollar hair cut.


President McKinley got it right. I can't tell if these quotes are authentic - they are from the internet. but they ring wise and Good:

[quote = "William McKinley"]“I am a tariff man, standing on a tariff platform.â€

ryan costa wrote:Professional Creep is about maximizing the prestige of your qualifications to limit the pool of applicants. this yields red tape from hell, unaffordable healthcare, expensive repetitive remedial education, etc.

Did MBA's cause the recession? You might find this interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008 ... on-banking

Even though we don't agree on much there is much we agree on.

You don't need a college degree to do most jobs that require a college degree.

Free trade is the best path to prosperity but free trade with China makes no sense at all.

Most American companies are run by carpetbaggers.

Bill Call wrote:
Did MBA's cause the recession? You might find this interesting:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008 ... on-banking

Even though we don't agree on much there is much we agree on.

You don't need a college degree to do most jobs that require a college degree.

Free trade is the best path to prosperity but free trade with China makes no sense at all.

Most American companies are run by carpetbaggers.

what is prosperity? when do gains in productivity really pay off in terms of more time?

As so much of manufacturing and agriculture became commodified, marginalized, and ultimately outsourced or the domain of illegal immigrants. larger portions of the population feed themselves into the services and professions industry. This lowers wages in much of the service industry, and drastically increases them in other segments. the chief product is tedium and byzantine processes. most high school drop outs or lower-end graduates should be doing the work done mostly by illegal immigrants. that is the most that is needed to improve student performance.

gains in productivity are mostly applied to real estate speculation. expanding rotting urban cores chase up property values beyond the rotting urban core. commute distances are up, shopping malls are bigger. living expenses go up, free time goes down.

This far into our second oil war in the middle east, we do not need any more "prosperity".

MBAs are not important. President G.W. Bush is the pinnacle of the MBA president.

Economics isn't real science. John Kenneth Galbraith seemed to understand that. reducing past trends to a few variables, then tricking the variables up into advanced math that looks good on paper. Everything about American history proves a pro-tariff policy is the best(unless returning to it causes you to run into all the problems caused by free trade faster). Ravi Batra's books over the last 18 years are all you need.

Coincidently, the most prominent academic work in support of free trade usually includes quite a lot of qualifications and conditions. the most realistic of those involve progressive income taxes. the least realistic of those involve "corporations not chasing low wages".

I run into people who randomly begin chanting or incanting vast streams of hip hop. I can only presume they've spent hundreds of hours listening to it and chanting along. sometimes they'll listen to it with portable head phones or their cell phones will go off quite loudly with custom ring tones, or they will drive past in a car playing it on very audible speakers. It is very audible, but I cannot make out most of the words. just the cursing and ethnic slurs and some of the verbs. They have plenty of prosperity, but I would not trust them to sell me a Big Mac.

Louis CK agrees with you as well...

Click Here Please

Jim DeVito wrote:Louis CK agrees with you as well...

Click Here Please

Mindless consumerism begets mindlessness. there is no point in creating new goods, because most of them will be manufactured overseas: it doesn't create job growth the way Henry Ford created job growth. Outsourcing makes it cheaper. Stylistic obsolescence and functional obsolescence happens faster all the time. Disposable goods equals disposable habits. the purpose of each microsoft upgrade since 2000 is to slow down your hardware: now you need new hardware. most of the hardware will not be made here or assembled here.

I got a kick out of reading this anthology of old Ray Bradbury short stories. Because most of his towns and small cities in the future still had movie theaters on mainstreet. they still had soda fountains at the pharmacy down the street. sometimes the characters even walked there. it was very strange.