I recall reading research (which I can’t seem to find now) that showed how prior to WW2 the political and social discourse in America was about how to build a stronger country and democracy, and how after the war that shifted to how to build a stronger economy - which dominates our conversations and goals to this day.
I wonder if this shift in the nature of our discussion is a factor. We’ve moved from social norms to market norms, which has brought with it less cooperation.
where there was a concerted PR effort after World War 2 to associate Democracy with Capitalism, (as a push back against some of the more social policies of Roosevelt.
It is extremely problematic to claim that cooperation declined in America after the 1960s without even mentioning civil rights. Americans are certainly cooperating more insofar that it’s no longer literally illegal for gay people to have a relationship, or that black families on vacation no longer need a book indicating which gas stations and hotels will actually serve them.
The fact that white people are meaner to each other - particularly liberal v. conservative - than they used to be is in fact directly (albeit not solely) related to this, as with the polarization in formal political parties. Seeing the decline after the 1960s is really not a mystery if you think about how American society drastically changed due to Democrat-led legislation passed in 1964 and 1965, right when the graphs started nosediving.
> Democrat-led legislation passed in 1964 and 1965
Fun fact: a greater percentage of Republican representatives (76.4%) and senators (81.8%) voted in favor of the Civil Rights act of 1964 than Democrat representatives (60.4%) and senators (68.66%).
The same is true of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: 80% of Republican representatives and 93.75% of Republican senators voted in favor, vs 75.4% of Democrat representatives and 69.1% of Democrat senators.
I could understand the complaint if people were using demonrat or democRAT, but not just democrat. The Democratic Party members refer to themselves as democrats. How often does the average person hear the word democratic versus democrat? I don't understand how using the more commonly used word related to a party is some rhetorical war or epithet when people outside of the Democratic Party rarely ever hear democrats use the words "Democratic Party" or "Democratic representative". If they don't want to be referred to as the democrat party, they need to stop referring to themselves as democrats. Until then, people are going to use "democrat party" as the shortened form of "the party of the democrats".
This isn't a complaint. This is a statement of fact. It's called the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party. The correct adjective to use when referring to its members is Democratic.
Why is this important in a larger context? Because there's a faction of this country who doesn't like to acknowledge that the US is a democracy. A faction who feels justified in maintaining existing anti-democratic structures in order to retain power while not being able to win the popular vote. That same faction wants to divorce the concept of democracy itself from the Democratic Party.
This rhetorical war didn't happen by accident, just like referring to the estate tax as a death tax didn't happen by accident. Especially in print, where there's no confusion between (small-d) democratic and (capital D) Democratic, I refuse to cede ground on this.
Lastly, you should call people like they like to be called. I am a Democratic voter, not a Democrat voter. More importantly, I'm a democratic voter.
Again, I link you to the wikipedia page on the subject:
Democrat Party. You are a Democrat voter. Not an insult, just a statement. I'm saying it only because you appear so offended by it. I'm from California and no one cares dude. This is why we keep losing with the working class and regular people. Because we have our heads stuck in our asses over some terminology instead of focusing on issues that affect poor people.
And yet here you are deep in the comment section of a buried HN post. Apparently you do care. If it doesn’t matter, then just use the right word. I just vouched for your comment btw.
Appreciate it. But really, we need to focus on shit that matters. There's no need to browbeat people into using words we prefer. We want to make actual progress. Is the world any better if people use the right words, but continue to do bad things?
I’m not trying to wage a war here. I just don’t the push back on this. I know it’s a trivial issue, but it’s important to me because it’s part of a larger conversation.
Taking a step back: when someone corrects me on a terminology mistake, my response is “oh, I didn’t realize that. I’ll try to use the right terminology going forward.” Not to argue that it doesn’t matter. Again, if it doesn’t matter, then just move along with your day.
To answer your question: no. Of course actions are more important than words.
You are literally calling the Democratic Party's extensive use of Democrats over Democratic <whatever> a rhetorical war by the GOP. Sounds like you are trying to wage a war here to me.
> Taking a step back: when someone corrects me on a terminology mistake
Here's the problem. You did not just stop at correcting their mistake. You stated "Democrat Party" is part of a rhetorical war by the GOP. You were trying to shame someone and slander another party for the Democratic Party's own use of Democrats as the primary means of identification. The GOP is not making the Democratic Party go around referring to their members as Democrats. It certainly is not preventing Democrats from using Democratic <whatever> in their communications which the average person is exposed to.
When I see someone misuse the word, I cannot know if it was a harmless mistake, or whether they are intentionally engaging in the war, but I assume it was a harmless mistake.
At no point have I accused anyone in this thread of malfeasance. I have not attempted to shame anyone. I simply let jwond know that they had used the wrong word, and as a courtesy, I let them know of the on-going rhetorical war.
Again, if I misused a word, I'd want to know. If my misuse was often used as insult (even if by others but not by me), I'd especially want to know.
This is no longer a productive conversation, so this is my final reply.
> The correct adjective to use when referring to its members is Democratic.
The correct noun to use to refer to the members of the Democratic Party is Democrats. It's plastered all over their website and the host name of their site.
> A faction who feels justified in maintaining existing anti-democratic structures in order to retain power while not being able to win the popular vote.
Since when was winning the popular vote ever the criteria to "retain power" on the federal level? The Electoral College ensures the popular vote is not directly correlated with winning the presidency. The Senate was also designed to give additional power to states which were not as populous as other states.
> That same faction wants to divorce the concept of democracy itself from the Democratic Party.
How does calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party" do that? A democrat is someone who supports democracy. There is no divorcing of the concept of democracy when using "Democrat Party" in place of Democratic Party.
> Again, I link you to the wikipedia page on the subject
I'm sorry I cannot take that Wikipedia article seriously.
Grammar does not even come into play. Nouns are commonly used attributively: water pipe, city streets, television station, Democrat party.
Democrat rhyming with autocrat, plutocrat, and bureaucrat? Well democratic rhymes with autocratic, plutocratic, and bureaucratic so it is pointless to argue that.
As for using "Democrat Party" for the emphasis on "rat", I guess Democrats should stop denigrating themselves and call themselves something other than Democrats.
> This rhetorical war didn't happen by accident.
And again, Democrats is the Democratic Party's primary identity to the average person. The only group which started this "rhetorical war" of using "Democrat Party" are the Democrats by way of using Democrats as their primary means of identification.
Until Democrats change their own habits and start using Democratic <whatever> in place of Democrats, Democrat is how the average person will identify the Democratic Party.
> Lastly, you should call people like they like to be called.
I did not see anyone addressing you specifically as Democrat. If you are a member of the Democratic Party, I suggest you take it up with them. They identify their members as Democrats.
I'd say "Democrat-led" is fine, just as "programmer-led" would be fine. "I am a Democrat"/"I am a programmer"; "I am in the Democratic party"/"I am in a programmers' union".
Sorry, I meant my question more as is it really a thing that the average person is aware of and cares about. I consider myself pretty educated and I've never heard of this little underground war on the terminology, and I can't see many people caring except hypervigilant Twitter users. Like ask 95% of the population and they'll probably not see a difference between the words. It just seems like a silly thing to care about.
Anyone who watches Fox News is exposed to it, and the first time someone corrects them, they're liable to double-down. So, no, I don't think it's a fringe thing at all.
They literally call themselves democrats. That's their primary identity to the average person. "Democratic Party" and "Democratic representative" are rarely uttered outside the circle of democrats even by democrats. Democrat party is just a shortened form of party of the democrats. Why would any normal person refer to it to anything other than the democrat party when "democrat" is word most associated with the party? The democrats set themselves up as the democrat party.
I am aware of that, thanks, but the fact that the Democratic president was the one who led passage of the Civil Rights Act, while his 1964 Republican opponent’s campaign focused on opposition to the Civil Rights Act, means that civil rights legislation was in fact “Democrat-led.” It is also relevant that most of the Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act had become Republican by the 80s.
No, I don't think that I will--originally used the -ic suffix but removed it to make an unambiguous reference to the party rather than the more general notion of democracy.
The parties switched since then, so that point is moot. The Democratic party back then, which is the deep south for the most part, is the modern day Republican party. The deep south overwhelmingly voted against the Civil Right Act.
The Civil Rights Act is what drove racist dixiecrats into the Republican party which it cynically used to its advantage[1] to start winning elections and to eventually destroy the New Deal coalition[2]. You cannot compare today's parties to the pre-Civil Rights Act ideology of the parties. Today's Republican party bears no relation to the party of Lincoln. As a microcosm of this, Strom Thurmond[3] was a Democratic politician until 2003 before switching to the Republican party.
> The Civil Rights Act is what drove racist dixiecrats into the Republican party
No, Johnson’s embrace of the Civil Rights Act led to them being disaffected, as they had by integrationist and civil rights moves by Democrats before (“Dixiecrat” specifically refers to a rebellion over Truman’s integration moves a couple decades before, which led to a temporary third party defection.)
What led them into Republican arms was the Republicans subsequently leveraging that disaffection by adopting appeal to White racism as a campaign tactic in the Southern Strategy, as they had not in previous instances where the Democratic Party had alienated it's White racist faction.
Yes, at the time of the Civil Right Act, the Republicans were still the more reliable backers of equality and the Democrats, while they had a pro-equality faction, still had a large and powerful overtly White racist faction. That changed after the Civil Rights Act, when the Democrats embraced equality and the Republicans took the political opportunity that opened by embracing the racists.
Agreed. I was typing late at night and over-simplified.
The important point in the big picture is that capitalists and business interests got white labor to split between the parties, and so now neither party represents labor adequately. I'd argue that laborers no more belong in the Republican Party than non-white conservatives belong in the Democratic Party.
The parties were not as polarized back then and in particular the Southern Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans were both powerful factions in their party. Strom Thurmond being the most notable example of the former, pre-1964: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republ...
Most of the actual "law" governing these areas, though, has been made by court decisions rather than statute. Those court decisions have been driven by activist judges who were Democrats. If we were actually living under the legal regime established by the statutes you refer to, without all that has been added on by court decisions, I think the state of cooperation would be better than it is.
Case law is not supposed to make new laws. It's only supposed to apply existing law to the facts of particular cases. That has to be done because no written statute can specify how it would apply to all possible combinations of facts. But there's still a difference between applying a statute to particular facts, and making new law that goes beyond anything the statute says or implies. I am certainly not the only one to believe that many court decisions since the passage of landmark civil rights laws in the 1960s have done the latter, not the former.
For example, there's is no written definition of murder in Michigan. Look it up if you don't believe me. I can't cite a link, because there's nothing to cite. The penalties are in statutes, but the actual definition isn't. It's illegal because it's just assumed that it is and courts have made the definition through case law.
It's become less necessary to cite over time for obvious reasons, but court decisions from England from before 1776 are still valid opinions to cite in American courts as the source of law as well.
I know they do, but they're not supposed to. That's the point I was making. See below.
> there's is no written definition of murder in Michigan
Yes, that's true of many common law crimes in many States. And where those common law crimes existed before any of the US States were formed, those States often continue to accept the common law definitions of the crimes, as developed over centuries of Anglo-American case law. That's not what I am saying is a problem.
What I am saying is a problem is when there is a statute that makes specific law, but courts then "interpret" things into the statute that were never there and never intended to be there by the legislature that passed the statute.
The 'switch places' narrative is absurdly simplistic. Taken at face value, it would suggest FDR and his New Deal should be viewed as a modern Republican.
If by 'meaner to each other' consider that after said policies were introduced IN THE 1960's, the amount of crime and violence increased massively in all groups, but most poignantly among African Americans wherein the murder rate today is considerably higher than back in the 'nice days' (peaking in 1992).
Everyone talks about 'rights' in the 1960's while at the same time there was a massive upheaval in crime.
Imagine if you lived in a plain, boring world, and then protests started to happen, and all rates of measured crime went up by 300-800% in your neighbourhood. Having the basis of comparison to know 'what it felt like before' you might be inclined to think the world is in disarray.
Imagine if you remembered a time when many inner cities were not 'no go zones' full of extreme crime and poverty - and that those were just 'normal' neighbourhoods, imagine seeing that precipitous decline in real time. It'd be hard not to recognize that 'something' was wrong.
Crime increased partly because we massively expanded both the definition of crime and the powers necessary to find and prosecute it. There is a role for the breakdown of community in this, of course, but, surprise, that was a product of institutionalized racism and bigotry also.
Scholarship at the time attributed it to a spontaneous breakdown of the (black) family, without mentioning how the botched implementation of integration, the moral and structural blight of "urban renewal," the canary song of the exodus of middle class manufacturing jobs, and the ever-present threat of a government crackdown on your efforts to be self-sufficient contributed to an atmosphere of hopelessness (which apparently only matters to politicians and public servants when you're hopped up on Vicodin in your double-wide) in which organized crime, and the unorganized crime that generally follows, becomes a valid option.
At humongous reputational risk, may I ask “so how did the Asians do it”?
I acknowledge all of the well-articulated points you made about Black culture and challenges.
But FOB and first-gen Asians had to work with racism (with obvious visual cues), and little/no social capital, and a radical break with native culture, and a non-Indo-European native language to boot.
Was the very strong attitude against drugs and tiger moms the cause? Would an opium war and water buffalo moms help? Did the homeland of Asia itself provide support that Africa either was too long ago or too poor/screwed up to provide. (Before you bring up colonialism, remember the Asian experience.)
For many Asians being FOB was an advantage. They had not been subjected to centuries of discrimination. I believe that immigrants coming from Africa do better in the US, on average, because they usually come from the educated elite of their home country.
The opposite occurs for some Asians minorites who were poor and uneducated in their home countries, they don't do anywhere near as well as the Asians who come from a privileged background.
It would seem that discrimination only affects non-immigrants then? Or do wealth and education allow you to succeed in spite of discrimination? Or does the US actually have a problem with discrimination against poor, uneducated people regardless of race?
Poverty is a multiplier for racial discrimination. At some level of "poor", a white person's circumstances can certainly be materially as bad as a (wealthier) black person's. But, as a comparison: no one is going to arrest Michio Kaku or Carl Sagan for breaking into his own house because he forgot his key.
1) There are a lot less of them. Tight-knit, insular communities with fewer members to look after benefit from a "guerilla effect" wherein their slow-building success is harder to identify and stamp out. Considering how universities treated Jews in the early 20th century, I don't doubt that greater steps would have been taken to "box out" the higher education ambitions of Asian immigrants if the degree to which they would fill Ivies and UC schools today was known in the 70s and 80s
1b) Smaller communities foreign to American values (or at least conditioned by circumstance to value frugality) would have been insulated somewhat from the very American pressure to engage in ostentatious displays of wealth, that long-time Americans would not have been.
2) Save for one infamous exception, their successful neighborhoods and businesses weren't razed by government order (Sorry, George). Tulsa is of course the example du jour, but the much more banal "municipality running an overpass or freeway directly through the black quarter" played out dozens of times across the country as the ISHS was constructed, and there are many instances of the aforementioned "urban renewal" initiatives deeming perfectly stable black neighborhoods "blighted" in preparation for leveling them (and the businesses they contained). In comparison, most Chinatowns, Koreatowns, and Japantowns still exist in some form.
3) A significant portion of the black population didn't "start from zero," but from less than zero. The sharecropping system and mass incarceration in the South meant that the ability of many black men and families to build personal wealth was heavily curtailed by a debt regime structured specifically to keep them from investing in property, businesses, and even their own education. This is still ongoing via contemporary debt, for which black Americans broadly face worse terms (a situation which lenders are unable to explain, despite settling or losing a number of massive discrimination lawsuits).
4) The Asian experience of racism and colonialism is fundamentally different from the black experience because it didn't involve a generations-long campaign of dehumanization, which was necessary to justify race-based slavery in a Christian country. This means that anti-Asian racism is generally rooted in xenophobia and echoed in American culture socially rather than institutionally; anti-black racism, however, is deeply rooted both in social customs and policy and is aimed at directly controlling the movement and agency of black Americans.
All that said... There is a group of black Americans that don't suffer from much of the baggage that families who have been here since before the Civil War contend with. In many ways, the experience of African and Caribbean immigrants in America is more akin to that of Asian immigrants. Coincidentally, their educational outcomes are also phenomenal, and by some measures better than that of Asian immigrants. (It should also be noted here that Asian immigrants are not a monolith and that the experiences of immigrants of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Pacific Islander, or other descent are not necessarily the same, re: experiences with colonialism, time in country, etc.)
That and wars happening at the same time and also in the near past that uh, also killed a lot of people.
It’s not really the same thing, but US and European governments have lawfully sent more of their own innocent citizens to the grave in this century than any criminals ever. Then again the commenter was trying to equivocate opposition to civil rights as a law and order issue.
Of course, there are many confounding factors - I'm not hinting otherwise.
What I am pointing out - is the near total social decay that broke out in many areas, and the otherwise obvious malaise introduced in many places throughout America that for some reason, people want to totally ignore over when it suits their agenda.
There's a generational divide between people who actually remember what Manhattan was like before it was 'cleaned up' (by hook or by crook, even that is controversial).
> cooperating more insofar that it’s no longer literally illegal for gay people to have a relationship, or that black families on vacation no longer need a book indicating which gas stations and hotels will actually serve them.
This is very much aligned with free market (capitalist) thinking. It's only modern politics which have combined fiscal liberalism (free market) with social conservatism (state or locally enforced prejudice)
People (specifically, the people who ran our public discourse) used to agree that having a persecuted underclass was acceptable. Now, some people do and some people don't, and as is common among groups who disagree about a fundamental aspect of how society should operate, there is some tension.
It's easy to tie every pillar of modern conservatism to racism through personal association and the letter and spirit of the evolution of policy. Meanwhile, the most fundamental criticism of leftist intent by the right - that progressives want to destroy the country through a totalitarian Communist revolution - is, frankly, batshit.
This is basically "the decline of America, in charts" and it's pretty depressing to read. A lot of the information here confirms that things started broadly going south at the end of the 1970s and never really recovered. Also interesting is looking at the longer-range charts and seeing how much World War II really unified America on many different fronts.
I am pretty sure you could get a similar graft if you took a big bucket of yeast and dumped a bunch of sugar in. Right at the beginning you'd have massive expansion and productivity. Everyone is happy and getting along. Then as the sugar slowly disappears and everyone is fighting for resources, it seems like somehow no one is cooperating.
That's kind of the plot from 1945 to today as America has completely calcified itself, run down the unions and shut down its factories.
Based on historical trends, and according to the article, this isn't necessarily a decline but just a downward cycle.
"Social cooperation waxes and wanes in most complex societies, following a long cycle. This is a generic pattern in not only our own society but also in ancient and medieval empires"
Whether it is a decline or not depends on whether there are enough strong external enemies to destroy the US during the downturn.
Actually our civilization has not been around long enough to say that there are cycles. Sure there are events of similar nature that occur but to view it as a cycle is sort of reaching
The charts in question are income disparities (1% v other), membership rates in volunteer organizations, trust in US government, a “polarization index” two guys in Political Science came up with, filibustering since 1960, judicial confirmation rates and an Ngram on two terms. All basically Cold War era time series.
These charts have lead the commenter to declare “the decline of America”. This data basically defines for the commenter “the decline of America”. That seems to me an overly-expansive extrapolation from the data...
Is it too simplistic to ask if the difference in cooperation is the inevitable result of the Greatests being raised in squalor, contrasted against Boomers who were raised in the midst of plenty?
Serious question, wondering if that sort of extreme poverty in formative years followed by cannon fodder type war leads to the kind of people who are better able to team up?
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
—G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
I can say for sure that growing up in the Depression really shaped my grandparents’ viewpoints, tendency to use it up/wear it out/make it do/do without, and save their pennies to ensure their kids wouldn’t experience what they did.
That phrase is however not true looking at history. Hard times creat hard men, but those very often proceed to inflict hard times on other people - creating hard times for themselves too.
The historical atrocities and many cruel laws were acts of men who fancied themselves strong. And they were strong and able to acquire power. And they themselves were result of hard times.
I think of what happened to much of the anglosphere (including the US) after 1970s as a reversion to the historical mean.
The economic and social investment that went into the WWII war-effort and the postwar period created a bubble of prosperity that produced real improvements for pretty much everyone from 1945 to the 1970s. Unfortunately, this level of investment has not been sustained. Now the investment bubble is over, we're reverting to the kind of nasty, brutish, and uncertain life that has been the normal state of affairs for much of history.
The rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s (under Reagan in the US; Thatcher in the UK; Mulroney in Canada; etc) and the disinvestment that followed made the stagnation in living standards--and increasing socioeconomic insecurity--for the median person inevitable.
I don't see a way to turn things around, as the social disinvestment of the 1980s has eroded social ties to the point that no one is willing to pay for the kind of collective projects (infrastructure, education, a public commons) that would improve conditions for the median person. Far too many people find it comforting to blame the other for a declining society rather than understand that societal-level problems require societal-level solutions.
"The rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s (under Reagan in the US; Thatcher in the UK; Mulroney in Canada; etc) and the disinvestment that followed made the stagnation in living standards--and increasing socioeconomic insecurity--for the median person inevitable."
If you meant to say the total opposite of that, then maybe!
Inequality may be up, but material standards of living for everyone but the poorest are way, way up, and it's a little ridiculous because it's obvious and palpable for anyone who was alive at the time.
By almost conceivable material measure: the amount of travel, safety, life choices, entertainment, access to healthcare (we used to go in when we were sick, now we go in due to age related issues) - 'Heart Surgery' used to be a very scary thing, now it's literally 'outpatient' basis (my aunt got a 'heart stunt' home same day - this is like Science Fiction). Cars are faster, better safer, we have access to all the world's information (to know what 'Russia' was in the 1980's you had to go down to a library and check out a book to read about it).
Tthe notion you can go in this magical thing called a 'mobile phone' and have any number of super cheap gadgets delivered to you from literally all the way around the world - China - for just a few dollars, was unthinkable.
Walmart is the most benevolent thing imaginable for poor people: they can buy every material need under the sun for very little, something impossible before.
I have family members with 'regular government jobs' - not part of the elite, they live in a giant new home, new cars, every toy under the sun for their kids.
When I was young got fruit and candy in my stocking at Christmas, everyone I knew wore 'hand-me-downs', nobody took foreign vacations (we drive to Florida and stayed in motels), people did not have fancy sporting gear, 'long distance' calls on the telephone were very expensive.
Material prosperity has exploded, and it really strains credibility for people trying to argue otherwise.
Ownership and capital has not been spread evenly - the financial surpluses of globalisation has gone into the pockets of the 1%, but the productive surpluses have mostly gone into the pockets of the 85%. The 'losers' of the economy of those who lost their jobs due to globalisation and can't afford to participate in the game.
The other way of looking at things is that, prior to neoliberalism, one full-time middle class income could pay for a house and support a family of four.
After neoliberalism, getting a house and two kids takes two working adults, and often jobs that involve much more than 40 hours a week. The situation for millennials and younger is even worse, as most of them have been frozen out of the housing market in regions where there are good jobs.
We all have cell phones now, but are we really better off if we (collectively) have so little time outside of work that we (collectively) don't get to see our kids grow up anymore, or if we can't afford houses anymore?
The other, other, thing to look at is that household wages have stagnated since the 1980s in comparison to GDP (see eg: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=bOfK) while unavoidable costs (e.g. housing, education, healthcare, communications) have exploded. There are lots more fancy toys available now than in the 1980s, but the median person has a smaller percentage of discretionary income to spend on them. I'm not convinced that taking away choice is a net positive.
Housing prices have more to do with zoning rather than a lack of income. Housing prices have skyrocketed in real terms just because there's more people and not more houses.
"We all have cell phones now, but are we really better off"
???
Are you saying that people don't want cellphones, but chose spend a fortune on them anyhow?
Many people are literally choosing materiality over 'seeing their children' more often, there is no doubt about this. If you don't want to live in NY, SF, LA there are suburbs all over America which are very affordable, if you give up all the extras you can definitely spend more time with your kids.
1) If there are 2x more workers, because women have entered the workforce, all other things being equal obviously homes will be 2x as much.
There is a fixed supply of land (homes increase with the size of the population)
It's not the 'home' is the 'real estate' i.e. cost of accessing that property.
2) Interest rates are insanely low. Go ahead and overlay the graphs that you referenced with historical interest rates.
Most Americans are 'home owners' and they are actually massively financialized - they have more leverage than ever over renters due to very low interest rates.
3) Actual homes have increased a lot in material value over 50 years. Have you been in a home built in 1950? Ratty windows, often no HVAC, they were much smaller.
Conan O'Brien's father was a Doctor, mother a Yale Lawyer and he often talks about how small and cramped his home was.
If you want to 'raise 4 kids on one income' - you can absolutely do that, but you'll have to live at a lower standard of living and give up a lot of things which those 'advanced jobs' have made available.
4) In 1960 about 7% of people went to college, now it's about 28%. Literally a 400% increase (!), and even more going to some kind of post-high school training. This is good.
There is a limited supply of 'choice jobs' and yes, entry to 'top schools' is going up radically, but the average is misleading, many state schools are not expensive. You can absolutely get a solid education at a decent rate, and the opportunity is considerably greater than 50 years ago.
What has changed is that Uni is not 'access to the elite' as it once was. But the education is just as good.
5) Healthcare - our services are considerably better than they were before across the board.
We used to retire at 65 and die at 68, now we retire at 65 and die at 85 - and we slowly die and retire tons of healtchare.
In 1960 people 'just died' and we didn't do that much about it (ask your parents) because there wasn't much we could do. Now we can and it's expensive.
Most healthcare spending used to be on intervention, illness etc. now it's almost all related to getting old. So yes, healthcare is getting expensive because we are older and breaking down all the time.
And yes, even accounting for that, we do spend more on Healthcare (from 7% to 11% of GDP over that time in Canada for example) and that's no unreasonable.
We spend a lot less $ for the same amount of material goods as we did in 1970, for example, the amount on basic groceries is about 1/2 and we eat out in restaurants a lot more.
The demand for groceries like most things is finite, but the demand for healthcare is infinite - there are always new, better procedures that we all want that are 'in development' and only when 'billions more' are spent will they come to fruition.
Imagine if there were massive productivity gains in home appliances, food, anything physical - and prices dropped i.e. full on deflation in those sectors? What would we end up spending that share of our income on? Healthcare and Housing in particular.
That's exactly what's happening: the surpluses are immense, our cup runneth over with goods, services, choice, opportunity.
There are some people 'left out' of the system (the bottom 20%) which is not good - and - the 1% are gaining increasingly more financial power, not so good, but otherwise we live in a time of incredibly high standards of living, easily the highest in history.
From the outside looking in, there's nothing strange about it at all.
In stark contrast to every other developed country, America has built into a very individualist society. In so many aspects of life it comes down to "me before us". Healthcare, education, work, welfare and so much more. With everyone scrambling hard to make ends meet, violence and anger are always just under the surface.
Either you get in and take yours for you, or you get left horribly behind.
Ben Harper said it best - "Everyone I know is in the fight of their lives."
In the more cooperative, pre-1960s era, there was basically no welfare, no Medicare, no federal student loan program, and by any metric, things were rougher and poverty was very rampant (around 30% Americans lived in poverty in 1950s). And yet, it was precisely at that time where civic society flourished, and it’s decline coincided precisely with the introduction of Great Society programs and Civil Rights.
Of course, reduction of poverty and civil rights were huge wins and unquestionable positives, but I believe it’s actually us making the society more prosperous and more just, that was what made us more individualistic and less civically engaged — because we don’t need each other as much anymore.
That's one way of framing it. The other way of framing it is that individual liberties are more valued than group securities in America. For example the individual liberty to own a firearm is (currently) more valued than the group security of not having firearm related deaths.
Group securities require giving up individual liberties.
Hard to say which way is "better" or "winning". America is divided on which way to move. One side optimizes for life over liberty, the other side optimizes for liberty over life.
You can see it happening right now with covid. One side cares more about preserving lives, the other side cares more about preserving liberties.
And yet, the same country that normalized globally that it should be a jailable offense to grow the wrong plant, or reshare information attached with a license.
For example the individual liberty to own a firearm is (currently) more valued than the group security of not having firearm related deaths.
It has been long argued over whether 2nd Amendment rights are individual or collective. In fact, proponents of gun control typically argue that 2A “right to bear arms” is in fact collective, and not individual, in order to justify gun control efforts. It was only in 2008 Heller decision that it was ultimately affirmed as individual right.
How many people die from guns excluding accidents, law enforcement, suicides, etc in US?
How many of them illegally owned guns or had committed a crime with them?
How poor the area was?
What is the impact of media on encouraging mass gun shootings?
It's established that publishing news of suicide encourages more copy cats and the participants are co-related in some way. News of young people committing suicide encourages other young people and so on.
I support improved gun control laws but how much of it will be solved by it at the cost of freedom?
1) when I look at the direction of politics in most European nations, I see a similar trend; perhaps not as far advanced in some cases, but all pointing in a similar direction
2) What you describe seems to be more or less another name for the problem, rather than a description of the cause.
Jon Meachum boils this down to two statistics in The Soul of America... "Only 17 percent of Americans trust the government (down from 77 percent in 1955), and average household income is $58,000, some $70,000 less than what a family of four needs for a middle-class life."
The US was a wildly more homogeneous place before the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act [0]. For all of the benefits draining the rest of the world of their most ambitious brings, it also destroys social solidarity, trust, and cooperation [1]. The upshot is that the study suggests this is hopefully a short term problem.
While I would not at all wish to return to ethnic homogeneity (to the extent that ever existed), there was a very real downturn in immigration into the U.S. from FDR until LBJ. FDR was quite opposed to allowing immigration in, perhaps at least in part due to the very high unemployment that he was trying to address. The tight restrictions stayed in place for several decades.
Some companies are larger today than in the 50s, which means that in some ways, we are more collaborative now.
Are we more altruistic? that's different.
Today, there are many easy ways to never meet your neighbors or your community at large. You can go home and turn on your TV, browse the Internet, or whatever. You can also be a part of an online community that is geographically sparse and never meet any of its members in real life.
If you never meet people in real life, how can you assist them if they need something? How can you display an altruistic behavior? Perhaps you may answer some questions for free, or upload a free tutorial to YouTube, but will you be able to do other good deeds that require a physical presence? no.
What is your motivation for being altruistic? In the 50s, organized religion indoctrinated people from a young age to believe that a deity would reward them if they were altruistic. Those beliefs are now in decline. People now have a different utility function in their heads: they don't want to go to heaven, they want to enjoy their lives according to humanist values.
I think it's the economic inequality he mentioned.
If the middle class was easier to achieve and sustain - even in rough times like right now - people would have the time and maybe desire to interact with society around them.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like a gold bug website, advocating for "hard" money (e.g. gold or bitcoin). I'm pretty sure the answer they want you to find is that in 1971 the US ended convertibility of the dollar to gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system. It's actually a pretty clever persuasive trick (ask a question designed to lead someone down a specific research path and "self-discover" your true message (a trick thats's coincidentally also used by QAnon: https://www.axios.com/qanon-video-game-cbbacb1e-969c-4f07-93...).
However, the argument of those graphs is pretty much correlation = causation. I'm not economist or historian, but I do know that a lot was going on starting in the 70s (recession followed by the rise of neoliberal economics, among others), that may offer a better causal explanation than gold.
I don't agree with Turchin's thesis that the US is in trouble because it's producing too many elites who don't have places in upper society. If anything, America's elite problem is under-competition rather than over-competition.
American elites don't compete with each other in any meaningful way; they conspire with each other to exploit the public. Notice that nominally opposing businesses both funded California prop 22 to entrench the right of these elites to under-pay their workers. This kind of elite collusion is endemic across American society.
The reason American society is in danger is that decades of elite collusion, combined with the intentional use of cultural wedge issues as electoral levers, have left many Americans economically vulnerable and has misdirected their anger at minorities rather than at the people who have picked their pockets clean.
Vulnerable and angry people are prime targets for demagogues, and that's how the US wound up with Trump.
If you think the tone of Congressional or Presidential debates is undercompetitive in recent times, compared to several decades ago, you have a very different opinion than I do.
"Yes, Americans watch more TV, but is this really why they bowl together less? Yes, news media is reducing everything to five-second sound bites, but is this why we have the political gridlock?"
Media scholar, NYU professor Neil Postman examined the cultural impact of television in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
America was the most literate nation in the world in the 17th century. Between 1640 and 1700, the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was somewhere between 89 percent and 95 percent, quite probably the highest concentration of literate males to be found anywhere in the world at that time [1]. The male literacy rate in England did not exceed 40 percent.
For 250 years, books, town hall meetings, leaflets, and then newspapers, were how Americans exchanged civic ideas and conducted public discourse. When Lincoln debated Douglas in 1858, they took turns speaking for one hour each, then were each allowed an hour and a half to reply. Newspapers reported every point in detail.
From the 1950's onwards, the American news business moved from the typographical domain of newspapers, to the ephemeral world of television, with profound consequences. Marshal McLuhan cut to the chase with his aphorism, "the medium is the message". What he meant is that the UI and information dynamics of each media type determine what sorts of conversations and discourse can be communicated, and what is excluded.
Typographical media encouraged history, background, and timeless reflection of countervailing arguments and analyses.
Television changed that by chopping news into 30 second pieces, with no background understanding required, infrequent depth, and a change of topic after every 3 stories for a message from our sponsor, after which you'd return to something completely different.
News has become entertainment. Entertainment has become trivia and indulgences.
Because TV news omits historical background, precludes detailed argument, and butchers context, it changes the nature of public discourse, which determines the public officials we elect, the policies they enact, and the corporate consequences of the flow of money from consumer advertising, which is what television (and now online "news") exists to serve.
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[1] Hart, James D. The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950.
2013 article, so before the hyper partisan media induced fear and frenzy which really started in 2016, and has made media moguls fabulously wealthy while severely damaging the fabric of American society and enabled divide and rule confusion IMO
1992 didn't have former White House officials calling for current officials to be beheaded for disloyalty.
Unlike the ACA under Obama, the Republican response to Clinton's dead-on-arrival healthcare plan didn't involve establishment GOP figures calling for 'a second amendment solution.'
The current wave of senior GOP figures disputing the legitimacy of the election -- to the point of looking for ways for pro-Biden states with Republican state governments to dismiss the results and send pro-Trump electors to the electoral college -- is also unprecedented in modern history.
America is in dangerous territory and it is much worse than it was in the 1990s.
Just on English usage, the hyperbole of “far, far worse” isn’t justified by your three, count them three, examples. Remember you aren’t saying it’s “worse” or “far worse”, but “far, far worse”.
I don’t do politics, so I don’t know to what you are referring to on these points.
1. So more than one former government employee made serious threats against the lives of current government officials. That is a serious offense. What law suits or law enforcement interventions arose? I don’t keep up on these things.
2. What is a “second amendment solution”? Where was it written in a Republican document I can read? Did it involve guns of some sort?
3. Challenging the results of an election is “unprecedented in modern history”? I assume you mean in this way, whatever that is. And what precisely is that way? What is unprecedented?
Most importantly, what is the difference between “far, far worse” and, say, “far, far, far worse”? You didn’t say “far, far, far worse”, so I’m guessing that means you think it’s really not so bad...
I'm not going to post a detailed recap of the past 30 years of American political history in a HN comment.
All of your questions can be answered in a few minutes with sufficiently well crafted DDG/Google/Bing searches. If you are so far removed from US politics that you don't have the background knowledge to frame such queries, then it's unclear to me why you're replying at all.
Profit motivated fear mongering from news organizations is nothing new.
For example, in the late 19th century, American newspapers instigated a pointless war with Spain.
I wonder if this shift in the nature of our discussion is a factor. We’ve moved from social norms to market norms, which has brought with it less cooperation.