Do you think there could be a second Great Depression?

[V.C. Brunswick]

The insight that I took from the article was that the middle class has a lot it can learn from working-class folk -- that "preening about your job and your school" are far less meaningful in the long run than working-class community values, the whole "we look out for each other" ethos that seems to be utterly lost the higher you go on the socioeconomic scale. Middle-class folk, encapsulated in their blister-pack suburbs and their corporate/academic/materialistic hierarchies, seem to have left such ways behind -- but when the crash comes, those are the values that will matter.

You are exactly right. This is how my family got through the Great Depression -- uncles and cousins took care of cousins and uncles, kids helped grandparents, grandparents helped kids, and so on.

And add to the witch's brew the much larger numbers of broken/dysfunctional/estranged families today so that you can't even count on your own family much less your friends and neighbors. The secret to survival during the Depression was the fact that more families back then were intact. Now there's a saying that when poverty moves in, love moves out.

 

[sheeplady]

Oh, I fully agree. But I'll submit that the working class didn't die a natural death in this country. It was taken out and shot in the back of the head in the 1980s and 1990s. And it was the upper-middle class that held the gun.

I'd amend that by saying white collared workers too. I've always thought it was ironic when in the 90s all the techies and other white collared workers were so upset their jobs were being shipped overseas. Suddenly when it was their job it was a problem, but they just sat back and watched our country dismantle people's blue collar jobs in the 70s and 80s without lifting a finger and with little outcry about the lack of humanity. Many of the workers thought it could never happen to them, because they were safe, and they were "smarter" than having it happen to them.

There are very few jobs that can't be sent overseas or contracted through an overseas company with their employees stateside (or fill in whatever country you live in). Very very few. I'm sure there are some that can't be easily shipped overseas, but we're even seeing some outsourcing in healthcare with people seeking procedures overseas.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

There are very few jobs that can't be sent overseas or contracted through an overseas company with their employees stateside (or fill in whatever country you live in). Very very few. I'm sure there are some that can't be easily shipped overseas, but we're even seeing some outsourcing in healthcare with people seeking procedures overseas.

That probably explains why we have so many lawyers -- it's one of the few jobs left in America that can't be outsourced.

 

[Angus Forbes]

Why blame the upper-middle class? To me, these are the doctor, dentist, lawyer, senior engineer, university professor, and so on, rather than the CEO. It seems to be the nature of bare-knuckle capitalism to chew people up and spit them out, rather than the nature of the upper-middle class.

 

[Angus Forbes]

That probably explains why we have so many lawyers -- it's one of the few jobs left in America that can't be outsourced.

But indeed it can. IBM, for example, outsources a lot of its patent work to India.

 

[Undertow]

But indeed it can. IBM, for example, outsources a lot of its patent work to India.

I was just going to say, "Never say never."

With advances in technology, I'm surprised there aren't more people in other countries offering their services.

Why couldn't someone in, say, India study American law, followed by New York law, and obtain a bar certification through some stupid head hunter corporation? Once they've obtained their bar, they could advertise online and offer things like "legal advice", etc. They may not be able to appear at a court in NY, but they could probably arrange for a company rep to show up for them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Why blame the upper-middle class? To me, these are the doctor, dentist, lawyer, senior engineer, university professor, and so on, rather than the CEO. It seems to be the nature of bare-knuckle capitalism to chew people up and spit them out, rather than the nature of the upper-middle class.

What class of people embraced the fraudulent religion of Friedmanism in the '80s more vigorously than any other? They might not have sat on the boards of directors that made the decisions -- at least not all of them -- but they were certainly happy to reap the benefits when it came time to reckon their portfolios. These were the sacred Shareholders for whose benefit the working class was disemboweled on the Friedmanite altar, and the blood is thick on their hands.

 

[Undertow]

I still think the problem isn't so much capitalism as it is corporatism. I'm not saying one doesn't beget the other, or that "the market" is somehow infallible, but I would choose it over socialism.

Well...at least in this country. I wouldn't trust this government with a wooden nickel. Both houses of Congress would pretend to fight over it while they sat in back rooms smoking cigars and deciding how best to raise the price on wood commodities.

To me, capitalism equals: I have a widget, you have some cheese. You trade me the cheese for the widget, we both walk away happy.

God, if only life were so simple! I'll go back to my lovely theories and fantasies now. :nerd:

 

[William Stratford]

I still think the problem isn't so much capitalism as it is corporatism. I'm not saying one doesn't beget the other, or that "the market" is somehow infallible, but I would choose it over socialism.

Well...at least in this country. I wouldn't trust this government with a wooden nickel. Both houses of Congress would pretend to fight over it while they sat in back rooms smoking cigars and deciding how best to raise the price on wood commodities.

To me, capitalism equals: I have a widget, you have some cheese. You trade me the cheese for the widget, we both walk away happy.

God, if only life were so simple! I'll go back to my lovely theories and fantasies now. :nerd:

The problem is neither capitalism nor corporatism per se, but rather consumerism which demands that we must have the latest thing only to then discard it 6 months later whilst demanding the new latest thing. It is an attitude that carries across all of our lives so that we increasingly treat people the same way.

 

[Undertow]

I agree in as much as consumerism will eventually kill us all. Or make us want to kill each other.

It's a poison that seems to prevail in nearly every aspect of Western Culture.

 

[John in Covina]

What we lack is the concept of loyalty in business. Business can demand all sorts of things from their employees but don't have to be loyal to them at all. Back in the old days a business was like a family and did a lot to help their employees, now we see that by competition for jobs and by gov't regulation the employer's position is back to being the adversary.

Employees do not respect the concept of working for a living many today spend their work time surfing the web for a better job or Christmas shopping while their work gets done in a most haphazard manner. It's like the Transmission repair guy that screws you on the repairs because he knows by the time you come back with a failure in the tranny he fixed he's long gone screwing someone else at another tranny shop.

We are being feed the idea that it is imperitive that you get what you can while the getting is good and that co-operation for the mutual good is the fools dream. Plata Y Plomo.

 

[Angus Forbes]

What class of people embraced the fraudulent religion of Friedmanism in the '80s more vigorously than any other? They might not have sat on the boards of directors that made the decisions -- at least not all of them -- but they were certainly happy to reap the benefits when it came time to reckon their portfolios. These were the sacred Shareholders for whose benefit the working class was disemboweled on the Friedmanite altar, and the blood is thick on their hands.

Not saying that you're wrong, but another way to look at this is to follow how the CEO is compensated -- mainly through stock options. You sit on my Board, and I sit on yours. You agree to eviscerate my company to make the stock price spike so that my options really pay off, and I do the same for you. Yes, old Doc Simpson makes a few thousand when the stock price goes up, but CEO Sam Palmisano at IBM makes literally tens of millions. The pensions and mutual funds that own most of the stock anyway are fat, dumb, and happy while this goes on. What do they care? I can't make them vote my few shares otherwise.

Also, a lot of jobs really have been lost through mechanization, automation, and computerization, not just outsourcing. This was foreseen years ago by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book "The Affluent Society." Really, it's not a pretty picture for any of us outside the very exclusive, top one-tenth-of-one-percent club, who will survive any future depressions quite well, thank you.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What we lack is the concept of loyalty in business. Business can demand all sorts of things from their employees but don't have to be loyal to them at all. Back in the old days a business was like a family and did a lot to help their employees...

Aaron Feurstein, the Mensch of Malden Mills

Note that he was not a member of the modern generation of bottom-line-uber-alles entrepreneurs.

 

[Undertow]

Also, a lot of jobs really have been lost through mechanization, automation, and computerization, as well as outsourcing. This was foreseen years ago by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book "The Affluent Society." Really, it's not a pretty picture for any of us outside the very exclusive, top one-tenth-of-one-percent club, who will survive any future depressions quite well, thank you.

I think this is one of my greatest concerns in this society. Theoretical economists would claim the Luddite fallacy is, more or less, strong and alive today. Yet, I don't think economists could have forseen an all encompassing mechanization of almost all things. They would argue that a skilled worker should find training in a new industry, or a different industry, or go into a different line of work altogether. Or at the least, go into learning how to fix the machines that have stolen the work.

Yet, when all forms of industry are mechanized, it means we all end up in a different service sector altogether...like customer service. And even that's becoming nearly all automated.

It's a puzzler, really. I've been stewing on it for some time.

 

[Angus Forbes]

What I think that I know is the following: When at least one person is better off from a change, and nobody is worse off, we have a Pareto improvement. A classical economist who is not a political hack would say that mechanization, outsourcing, etc, are Pareto improvements only when the people on the short end of the stick are compensated for their loss. Clearly, we have forgotten the "compensated" part, without which mechanization, etc, are by no means necessarily Pareto improvements.

 

[William Stratford]

What we lack is the concept of loyalty in business.

Indeed, that be consumerism again. We've had it hammered into us for so long that we should procure/use/discard/procure-anew, that we now treat pretty much everything like that; homes, relationships, jobs, property.... People have forgotten how to receive something and become part of it, holding in trust and in time passing it on to the next generation. Instead we are all becoming a species of users. The real irony is that pretty much the only jobs we are left with now are called "service" jobs, when we have forgotten how to actually 'serve' anything.

Even the military "services" have become all about getting a career, or a 'free' education for when you leave...

A depression would simply be all of this grinding to a halt, which is what we need because I do not see a mass ressurgence of genuine service happening until the tap (erm, "faucet"?) is turned off for a while. But that is going to hurt. A LOT!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/t...facturing-in-the-us-a-try.html?pagewanted=all

Google Tries Something Retro: Made in the U.S.A.

 

[DanielJones]

Interesting. Makes me wonder how many other companies are seeing the light and are coming home to roost? One can only hope that it will last and that they will take care of their people. Treat it more like a family business instead of a blind corporation.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[Flicka]

Back in the old days a business was like a family and did a lot to help their employees

This does not reflect the full experience of the working class in, say, 1910-40. I could point you to any number of historical studies that show a much, much more complicated and less pleasant view of working conditions in the "good old days". Same goes for the people I've met (including family of myself and friends).

Personally, I don't think any single person should be dependent on the good or ill will of their employer. There should be laws and regulations that ensure that an employer treats his or her employees fairly. It shouldn't, IMO, be a relationship based on gratia but on the fair exchange of efforts. But I agree on consumerism being a thing of evil. Like I've said before, we're a society eating cake and wondering why we're still hungry.

 

[Feraud]

Very true. There wouldn't have been a need for the labor movements if businesses treated employees like family.