This is not your father's USA

[EstimatedProphet]

1) In the 1960's (just 40 years ago) it was common for the average wage-earner to work a blue-collar job and support a family, which included a stay-at-home spouse. Try doing that today.

2) 25 years ago, the average CEO in a major company made a salary on the order of 40-50 times what the average employee did-easily enough to live a life of luxury. Now it's 10 times that, so each CEO equals some 500 average citizens in the economy. This becomes very important when you consider that those 500 people do a lot more driving of the basic economy than the CEO, buying groceries, durable goods, etc.

3) 30 years ago legalization of marijuana was a serious topic of discussion. The subject isn't even discussable now. In that time there hasn't been a great increase in problems with marijuana use, and there have been problems with several other drugs (crack, crystal meth are just 2 examples) that aren't getting addressed.

4) 30 years ago the various civil rights movements were beginning to make progress. Today's society is openly racist and sexist.

We all know these things at DU, and talk about them openly. Still, it is sometimes shocking to reflect that all these changes, this reversal of decency, has happened within most of our lifetimes. A very short period indeed, to try and reverse us all into a new middle ages.

[MADem]

1. If we can just get past these dark ages, the pendulum will swing once more

But the bad news is, anyone who is coming into middle age now will have to deal with geezerdom while the pendulum swings back again. Those of us who are a bit older may miss out, unless they find ways to keep us alive after a hundred.

Not a wish I would make on my worst enemy...

[Bluebear]

2. K&R

[sweetheart]

10. kernighan Richie?

C? The link is not working.. K&R means "c" where i come from... not
that relevant to this thread... it must mean something else.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~fleck/computer-vision-handbook/c.html

[Bluebear]

14. It means kicked and recommended.

'C? The link is not working.. K&R means "c" where i come from... not
that relevant to this thread... it must mean something else.'

[NC_Nurse]

3. Yes, thanks to the unholy alliance

of the "Christian" right and the rich repubbies we are currently circling the evolutionary drain.

[Xenotime]

4. It's *'s fault....

he put his focus on this "terror". He's taking the country to fight his own personal demons. What a loser.

[justabob]

7. He's made it worse, but he didn't start the process

This mess we are in started 30 years ago or longer, each step bringing us that much closer to where we now find ourselves. The 'war on terror' is just an expansion of the 'war on drugs' and other such policies.

[EstimatedProphet]

8. Absolutely

The pendulum started swinging with Goldwater. It's swung further right each stroke.

[Warpy]

17. Kennedy did the original damage

when he lowered the top tax rate on the richest 0.5% from 90% to 70%, thus giving men like Scaife a large supply of play money with which to buy the government.

You have to admit they did a good job.

[union_maid]

5. My son is very turned off to politics

He wasn't before, but now he thinks things can't improve. He'll probably get engaged again, but that's not the point. The point is that I realized he was never alive in a time when we were progressing and when a better world seemed like a certainty, never mind a possibility. He was a teenager during the Clinton years when things were better, but let's face it - they were better, but not really inspiring. Since then it's just been downhill all the way.

I hope we can reverse course. I have to believe that we can.

[Indy_Dem_Defender]

32. I'm probably in the same category as your son

I was a teenage during the 90's as well, I was really into politics always getting my best grades in social study classes. The monica scandal happen my senior year and I got tired of the crap and didn't pay much attention after that. Fast forward during my sophomore year of college I started taking political science classes and getting interested again, then I had to quit college after my sophomore year due to being poor. I intended to return when I could afford it, but with the chimp in office it's impossible to be able to save money when your working a job that don't pay anything. I'm finally returning to school this semester didn't think it would take me almost 5 years to be able to afford to go again, it was just hard to keep the vision and path i wanted to go clear after that long of a time. Like the post says this isn't your father's USA, or grandfather's either, anyone who thinks young people who are from lower to middle class families have the same chances today of success as past generations in the same situations is crazy.

[EstimatedProphet]

33. I think this highlights a potential weakness

If you were a teenager in the 90's you were born after Carter. Like him or not, Carter was our last progressive president. You don't remember the ideas of positive social justice that were starting to come out under Ford and Carter. They disappeared under Reagan, replaced by caricatures of welfare queens and xenophobia.

There's a large block of voting people now that can't see the change in this country on a gut level, because they never lived through it. It's not their fault; it isn't a lack of intellect or comapssion at all. But, unlike many of the people 40 and up, who have grown up with the FDR ideals and the concept of government acting as a helping hand for the average American, there's a young generation that has never experienced the ideas of a culture working toward progressivism and equality. They don't know what's been taken away from us, because it began to happen before they were born.

[asthmaticeog]

6. Bookmarked & recommended

I've been hammering on point #1 in conversation forfreakinEVER. Personal example: when I was a kid, my dad bought my family a house and car, my mom was stay-at-home, and he had my toddler ass to feed (and I was an eater, as polite relatives would say). And he was an immigrant who hadn't finished college yet. No way in HELL I could afford to do that today and I'm a degreed, award-winning professional. I didn't even grow up in a particulary affluent area, it was quite modest, and it'd be economically out of my reach to move back to the old 'hood. So I ask, why did we decide, as a society, that that sort of stability for modest wage-earners was BAD? Did we go completely off-the-map batshit NUTS?

And in the future, I'll be incorporating your point #2 in my incessant bitchfests about the need for demand-side stimulus.

[EstimatedProphet]

11. No kidding!

In the late 60's/early 70's my dad was a minister for a small town church in Missouri, and going to school at the same time. He made something like $50/WEEK, and still we made it by. Try that today. A minimum liveable salary is about $10/hour, which translates to $20,000/year. Let's see someone raise a family alone on that. AND, that's substantially more than a lot of people make, and a lot higher than minimum wage.

[noahmijo]

9. Another forgotten fact about the CEO: The Golden Parachute

Every CEO is entitled to what is called "The Golden Parachute" which if the CEO is fired by the Board of Directors he/she is entitled to a lump sum of anywhere from $3-15 MILLION (from what I have seen when viewing records of CEO's GP's)

How many average workers do you know are told "Hey don't worry if you get fired or laid off we'll make sure you're set for life in one lump sum!"

[EstimatedProphet]

12. It's called "failing upwards"

The idea that this should be used as a drawing point is sarcastically ridiculous. Why should someone be hired into a major position of influence like a CEO, and be given a contract obligation that actually ENCOURAGES them to fail?

[noahmijo]

13. Why do you hate Jesus?

They earned EVERY step of the way to get into that position....nevermind that their Dad once sat on the same board that hires the CEO into the position.......I'm getting really tired of your anti-American anti-Christian propaganda..

:sarcasm:


On a serious note this is the kind of backtalk I get when I lay out statements like the one you just mentioned.

[EstimatedProphet]

16. I know

We're not allowed to talk about things like this in some circles.

[Acryliccalico]

15. This depresses me

I always felt that this country could swing back and forth. Now I fell like the pendulum is broken. :cry: :kick:

[Osito]

18. Wow, I'm not sure this is even a political topic.

It is easy to be progressive and have problems with the points made.

1) What is your point? Do you want to go back to the economic and social conditions that allowed that to happen? I believe that is a conservative point of view. If you are trying to say that the average blue-collar worker who earns enough to support a family on his income alone is a species that is quickly becoming extinct, to the detriment of us all, then I agree. But then again, I've been accused of being conservative on this point, as well. If you are saying that the economy has changed in ways that push earning power away from blue-collars and toward some other goal, I again agree, but the situation is complicated. There is no politics-only solution to this problem.

2) Yes, and the average movie star gets 10 times the percentage of the box office take, and musicians still get only a pittance for royalties. Economics responds to various pressures. I would prefer the CEO's made less, but probably for reasons different from you. I wish they would spread that wealth around, when there is so much need. It's not so much how much you make, as what you do with it. BTW, there are roughly as many wealthy Democratic CEO's as wealthy Republican CEO's. My comments apply equally to both groups.

3) What? Didn't you just give ammunition to the argument that lack of control of marijuana leads to abuses in more "serious" drugs?

4) I'm really struggling to give a polite response to this one. How's this? Why don't you ask all your black and female friends if they'd like to go back to those days? True there's more to be done, but really, you don't think progress has been made?

I... I... Well, never mind.

[EstimatedProphet]

27. I think it's a political topic

1) The average wage-earner was able to support a family in the 60's, often with one paycheck, often without a college degree. That's no longer true-it typically takes 2 incomes, often more. The economic and social conditions that have caused the situations we have today are due to government deregulation, outsourcing, and flat-out corporate piracy. Case in point: the steel industry in the US lost a substantial amount of functioning mills, not due to an inability to compete, but due to corporate buyouts followed by sell-offs of the facilities for thier resources. In short, they were bought out and scrapped. The end result in the rust belt is higher unemployment and lower-paying jobs. Many people have to take 2 jobs just to get by. That was practically unheard of in the 60's. The situation may not be solely political, but the privatization and de-regulation under the Republican administrations are responsible for a lot of it.

2) Not a fair comparison-movie stars have always been paid much higher than the other film workers. Corporate CEOs have increased their comparative salaries by a factor of 10 in the last 25 years. But even if movie stars have increased their salaries at a similar rate, jobs aren't being outsourced to other countries because of them. CEOs have been expanding their salaries and bonuses at the expense of labor. And it matters because of this: If every CEO is worth 50 employees, then the purchase power for common consumer goods is at a 50-1 ratio; i.e. the 50 employees put their money back into the economy for durable goods, but the CEO only buys 1:50th of the same amount. Now, the CEO represents 500 employees, and the money going back into the economy is 10 times less, since the CEO has expanded his buying power at the expense of 450 employees. That's 450 less loaves of bread, gallons of milk, t-shirts, what have you. The money that would be spent in a local community goes to stocks, bank accounts, luxuries, foreign travel, and less into standard consumer goods. this is of course a simplification, but the effect is still there, and CEOs making profits at the expense of employees has a direct impact on the economy.

3) No, I am saying that marijuana is over-regulated, and harder, more destructive drugs are still around. How does that argue for the idea that marijuana leads to harder drugs? We've been prosecuting marijuana offenses with mandatory-minimum sentences for years now, and it has had no effect on drug use. Clearly it isn't answering the problem, and we are farther away from legalization/decriminalization than we were in the late 70's. It's become a sacred cow that's draining our economy and imprisoning citizens, but god forbid we seriously talk about changing things.

4) I concede a poor choice of words, and I apologize. I should not have said "openly racist and sexist", although I believe that racism and sexism are still too much a problem. However, I did mean that society is racist and sexist still-it simply uses code words and ideas to express it now, rather than stating it outright. For example, the emails that flew around about the Katrina aftermath never came out and blamed blacks specifically, but they did claim ridiculous falsehoods about what was going on, such as Katrina victims demanding things from the rescue workers, being rude to them, cursing them, etc. Here's an example. And the implication that the problems that occurred were due to the fact that most of the victims were black is very strong in them all. And this doesn't count the numerous references to "towelheads" and "cameljockeys" from the Right. So, no, society may not be more racist, but it is still racist today, and it is disappointing when we consider that, for a time, it looked like we would make some more progress than we have.
Actually, I do believe that we did make more progress for a while, and we are moving backwards now.

[Eric J in MN]

19. I don't believe that racism and sexism are more accepted now

that in the 1960s. I believe they are less accepted.

[EstimatedProphet]

28. See #27-I misworded.

[Erika]

20. I believe Reagan brought into play the worship of the rich

and the accumulation of money as a sign you were automatically a good person.

He nuanced that rich people were worthy of respect, the poor were not. The rich were worthy of tax breaks, the poor were not.

I believe this has fully entrenched itself into our economic system today. No appreciation for the worker or for the fact their buying power is what keeps this country going.

[noahmijo]

21. I think it's always been entrenched starting with John Calvin

Whom anyone who calls him or herself a so called Christian and subscribes to this kind of thinking follow-I call them Calvinists because that's what they are.

I don't disagree that Reagan did his part to keep this attitude going strong even introducing it to the younger generation at that time (I was born in 1981) but still it's always been this country's overall attitude to piss on the less fortunate because that's the way Jesus says it should be.

[lesab]

24. what?

I don't want to get into an argument but Jesus said "you will be judged by how you treat the lowest among you". I am a christian and progressive as I believe Jesus would be today. Please don't make fun of me or label me.

Edited to add: The religious right isn't in my view very religious and act like hypocrites.

[noahmijo]

25. I was being sarcastic when I "quoted" Jesus

And I also judge a tree by the fruit it bears.

[C_U_L8R]

22. Apparently it's not our USA either....

our country and our constitution are being crapped on
by fascist fundie freepers and corrupt bush cronies !

It's so sad that these creeps are in power....
they are doing so much damage to all people.

[troubleinwinter]

23. 30 years ago, I put my paper ballot in the box and took for granted

that it would be counted.

[EstimatedProphet]

31. Another big one to add to the list

[Neil Lisst]

26. All true. Gone is the tacit agreement between company and worker.

No one in today's US can count on being with their company next year, or even having this company exist next year.

[Acryliccalico]

29. Sad but true..................n/t

:kick:

[checks-n-balances]

30. Also gone is the tacit agreement between government and citizen

Just echoing what post #23 reflects...

Today we still have "government," but - tragically - NO LONGER is it OF, BY, or FOR THE PEOPLE.