How come the USA is underrated?

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: XS650
Originally Posted By: mechanicx
In the 50's they were saying higher automation and productivity would allow a shorter work week. It didn't turn out that way at all.


The people making that prediction didn't take into consideration that the benefits of higher automation and productivity would go to the owners of the means of production.

So you are saying the fact that we have many more people in the US with a MUCH higher standard of living compared to the 50's is not correct?


No. He said what he said. As I've pointed out to you many times, high productivity has its price in terms of how many of your people benefit from the alleged advancement in technology.

In the highest productivity possible, with all manufacturing and services being automated, there would be no employment.

Slide that back a tick or two and you have fewer people benefiting from higher productivity. They "tinkle down" with their grace and afford the rabble a living ..as kind and noble as they are.

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Originally Posted By: expat
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
We have prevalent poverty in this country where about 30% of the children go to bed hungry at any given time.

Really? Then how come I keep seeing all of this stuff about the obese kids epidemic and all of the restrictions on food that are needed to "solve" the problem?


Wrong Food?


I think it was meant to said children are malnutrition but obese, somehow it got lost in translation and becomes going to bed hungry.


I meant 'hungry', not 'malnourished'. But I checked my number and I was wrong about the 30% and regret the hasty post. I did not remember the right number - around 36 million people, including around 13 million children, in the USA are food-insecure at any given time.

This sort of statistics can be found on the USDA site among others. Here is a quote from the latest report available:

Economic Information Bulletin No. (EIB-56) 49 pp, September 2009

Eighty-four percent of U.S. households with children were food secure throughout 2007, meaning that they had consistent access to adequate food for active, healthy lives for all household members. Nearly 16 percent of households with children were food insecure sometime during the year, including 8.3 percent in which children were food insecure and 0.8 percent in which one or more children experienced very low food security—the most severe food-insecure condition measured by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Numerous studies suggest that children in food-insecure households have higher risks of health and development problems than children in otherwise similar food-secure households. This study found that about 85 percent of households with food-insecure children had a working adult, including 70 percent with a full-time worker. Fewer than half of households with food-insecure children included an adult educated past high school. Thus, job opportunities and wage rates for less educated workers are important factors affecting the food security of children. In 2007, Federal food and nutrition assistance programs provided benefits to four out of five low-income, food-insecure households with children.

More information available at:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/fanrr42/

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
food insecure

Now that is fuzzy government speak if I ever heard it. Kinda' like "food deserts"...

It's pretty easy to get the result you want when you don't define the categories.
Quote:
No. He said what he said.

What he said is flat out wrong:
Quote:
* Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
* Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
* Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
* The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the averagecitizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
* Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
* Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
* Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
* Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports...erty-in-America

Now compare most of those things to WEALTHY people just 100 years ago. THEY didn't have most of those things but now the "poor" people do. It's quite obvious that the investment and wealth generation of those "Evil" "owners of production" benefit EVERYONE.

Creating wealth, makes a people wealthy. Punishing achievement and wealth creation, makes them poorer.

Quote:
Slide that back a tick or two and you have fewer people benefiting from higher productivity.

And yet, with the amazing efficiency we have, we are able to employ hundreds of millions more people than we used to have....

all the while dramatically raising their living standards.
Efficiency = wealth. Or do you want us to go back to digging ditches and tending fields by hand?

 

[buster]

Quote:
In the highest productivity possible, with all manufacturing and services being automated, there would be no employment.



Quote:
"Animals are concerned with many of the same things as humans: they need food, shelter, security, mobility and pretty much strive to live productive and stress-free lives, just like people. However, animals don't use money. Money is a human construct and it has gotten us to think the wrong way about many things in our lives. "Stop thinking about the money!"



… one wants to explain the empirical fact that involuntary unemployment is only associated with money-using contractual economies. In other words, real economies that do not use money and money labor contracts to organize production (e.g., feudalism, slave economies, South Sea Islanders discovered by Margaret Meed, etc) may possess important nonlinearities and even an uncertain future — but there is never an important involuntary unemployment problem. Slaves are always fully employed as well as are serfs in feudalism…….Finally it should be noted that herds of animals, schools of fish, etc organize together to solve the economic problems of What? How? For Whom? Without using money, contracts or markets, these animals still face complex nonlinear problems in their search for food and interaction with other herds. Yet animals never suffer from involuntary unemployment!.

Professor Paul Davidson
University of Tennessee

 

[Tempest]

So buster you are saying that we should all live like animals??

How much has their standard of living increased in millions of years with their moneyless structures?
Answer: NONE.

Animals also do not have personal property rights. Is that what you are advocating here?

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
What he said is flat out wrong:


None of what you posted had anything to do with increased productivity.

You keep going on some false assumption of the myth "doing more for man, so man can do more". It's obvious that you don't need too many people to provide the needs of many. This works if you have something else for the people you put out of work to do.

We don't.

So, again, what are the unneeded idle people supposed to do in your ultra high efficiency ultra high productivity world?

Quote:
Now compare most of those things to WEALTHY people just 100 years ago. THEY didn't have most of those things but now the "poor" people do. It's quite obvious that the investment and wealth generation of those "Evil" "owners of production" benefit EVERYONE.


So the Queen and all the royals were like the rabble of today? This is so laughable. Carnegie and all the barons were like the paupers of today? Please, you're really embarrassing yourself. The Astons? Heck, Rockefeller never had an ipod nor light beer.

Quote:
And yet, with the amazing efficiency we have, we are able to employ hundreds of millions more people than we used to have.... smirk all the while dramatically raising their living standards.


for the time being. As you can clearly see, our lofty perch was not sustainable. We're falling ..and no fairytale rhetoric that you can pretend to believe will alter that.

Quote:
Efficiency = wealth.


For whom? Those displaced by the evolution? Are you training to be a space cowboy?

Again, what do you do with the unneeded people?

Just answer that one question. Just that one. Suppose you manage to have a nation full of Uncle Bill's. Just which one is going to beg for food? Which one will efficiency his job off shore?

Which one will kick you to the curb and shut the door when you're obsolete and worthless as a viable employee?

Just that one question. Simple ..short ..and, please, to the point. What do you do with your unneeded people?? How are they fed? Housed? Educated? Treated? Just how to you do that with so few producers paying the bills?


"Give me a ping, Vasili. ONE ping only, please".

 

[Tempest]

Quote:

Again, what do you do with the unneeded people?

Indeed, Gary. Since you don't like historical facts, please do tell me your solution to the "problem" of efficiency and the people it supposedly displaces.
Quote:
The Astons? Heck, Rockefeller never had an ipod nor light beer.

And now the "poor" in this country do.

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:

Again, what do you do with the unneeded people?

Indeed, Gary. Since you don't like historical facts, please do tell me your solution to the "problem" of efficiency and the people it supposedly displaces.


So I take it that you haven't a clue of what occurs in the void of all those jobs, correct?

I thought so. So just efficiency out all the people you can ..and ..that's about it. Make yourself wealthy and leave a wake of poverty behind you.

Okay. Now I understand what you're saying. When you say "Create wealth". You mean for as few as can or as many as can ..and the consequences ..collateral damage ..net loss ..be darned.

A race to the bottom of Tales of Human Bondage.


Works for you!

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Animals also do not have personal property rights. Is that what you are advocating here?


You've never seen animals fight for their turf have you? We human do the same by justifying it with law. When law becomes too skewed, people think it isn't just, and they do all sorts of things to make them feel just, like crime, revolution, riot, lawsuit, political campaign, posting on BITOG, etc.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:

Again, what do you do with the unneeded people?

Indeed, Gary. Since you don't like historical facts, please do tell me your solution to the "problem" of efficiency and the people it supposedly displaces.


Oh I know this, we human tends to find stupid things to do to waste our efficiency on, like building fashion clothing, iPod, HDTV, advertisement, playing music, etc.

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan

So I take it that you haven't a clue of what occurs in the void of all those jobs, correct?

I thought so. So just efficiency out all the people you can ..and ..that's about it. Make yourself wealthy and leave a wake of poverty behind you.

Okay. Now I understand what you're saying. When you say "Create wealth". You mean for as few as can or as many as can ..and the consequences ..collateral damage ..net loss ..be darned.

A race to the bottom of Tales of Human Bondage.


Works for you!

So you're just here complaining and have no solution to the too high "efficiency" problem that you are purporting?

Why don't we ban trucks, cars and trains? That make work for people moving things wouldn't it?

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear

Oh I know this, we human tends to find stupid things to do to waste our efficiency on, like building fashion clothing, iPod, HDTV, advertisement, playing music, etc.

How about spending time on oil related chat forums? Is that a waste of efficiency?

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan

So I take it that you haven't a clue of what occurs in the void of all those jobs, correct?

I thought so. So just efficiency out all the people you can ..and ..that's about it. Make yourself wealthy and leave a wake of poverty behind you.

Okay. Now I understand what you're saying. When you say "Create wealth". You mean for as few as can or as many as can ..and the consequences ..collateral damage ..net loss ..be darned.

A race to the bottom of Tales of Human Bondage.


Works for you!

So you're just here complaining and have no solution to the too high "efficiency" problem that you are purporting?

Why don't we ban trucks, cars and trains? That make work for people moving things wouldn't it?


Yep. Not a clue ...answer a question with a question. Same format as usual.

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
food insecure

Now that is fuzzy government speak if I ever heard it. Kinda' like "food deserts"...

It's pretty easy to get the result you want when you don't define the categories.


It's actually a code word for "hungry" but since we are "the best country in the world", we do not have hungry people.

 

[expat]

I think 'food insecure' is proberbly an accurate term if you don't know when you are going to eat next.
Someone how has just eaten may not be hungry, but if you don't know when you will be able to eat again, you have a problem.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
We have prevalent poverty in this country where about 30% of the children go to bed hungry at any given time.

Really? Then how come I keep seeing all of this stuff about the obese kids epidemic and all of the restrictions on food that are needed to "solve" the problem?


Mainly because they are two entirely separate problems; with the only common thread between them being, ruthlessly ironic, that they take place at the same time in the same country.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: PandaBear

Oh I know this, we human tends to find stupid things to do to waste our efficiency on, like building fashion clothing, iPod, HDTV, advertisement, playing music, etc.

How about spending time on oil related chat forums? Is that a waste of efficiency?


yup, the best example of it all. Like us BITOGer can change the world when we debate whether Mobil 1 Extended Performance, GC, or PU are the best oil to death.
Originally Posted By: expat
I think 'food insecure' is proberbly an accurate term if you don't know when you are going to eat next.
Someone how has just eaten may not be hungry, but if you don't know when you will be able to eat again, you have a problem.


It is a different type of problem when you can feed one to obesity and malnutrition with only $6 a day, while you cannot afford to provide yourself what is considered poverty line in 2010 standard, like a roof over your head, bathroom, medication, K12 education, etc. I think the amount of people that are not hungry but are homeless (or marginally homeless like squatting at public area), or are rejected life supporting medication due to afford-ability are a much bigger problem.

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
It is a different type of problem when you can feed one to obesity and malnutrition with only $6 a day, while you cannot afford to provide yourself what is considered poverty line in 2010 standard, like a roof over your head, bathroom, medication, K12 education, etc. I think the amount of people that are not hungry but are homeless (or marginally homeless like squatting at public area), or are rejected life supporting medication due to afford-ability are a much bigger problem.


I think that Tempest's main theme is "what's the problem?". That's if I'm reading between the lines accurately. I mean, he puts up a show, but I think he just doesn't see these issues as something to be dealt with. They may make interesting reading, but ...so

Basically he doesn't see it as his problem, nor society's ..nor something to be corrected. He certainly doesn't want to pay for it either directly or via proxy.

Nothing wrong with that view, per se~. It appears dispassionate ..and I believe in his case that it surely is ..to the point of visceral and punative contempt, but the basic concept is not too flawed. "Not my problem"

I on the other hand tend to look at things as a package and realize that I will be coping with the fall out of anything and everything and that I cannot cope with it well by myself.

Those things would also fall into the "my problem" category under "Natural Law".

 

[Shannow]

If the system has an "optimum" rate of involuntary unemployment that is considerably higher than zero in order to ensure that the system functions at it's highest efficiency, then the system needs to ensure that that involuntary pool of potential workers is kept healthy and nourished for when they get their turn.

After all, if the occasional employed person doesn't return to the unemployed pool every now and then, people will forget how grateful they have to be to the system that they aren't one of the 5-7%.

 

[expat]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
If the system has an "optimum" rate of involuntary unemployment that is considerably higher than zero in order to ensure that the system functions at it's highest efficiency, then the system needs to ensure that that involuntary pool of potential workers is kept healthy and nourished for when they get their turn.

After all, if the occasional employed person doesn't return to the unemployed pool every now and then, people will forget how grateful they have to be to the system that they aren't one of the 5-7%.



I tend to agree, I bet if you do have a society with Zero unemployment, you will still have 5% that are essentially 'not (really) working'