economic problem

[Athena]

Right now some of the big guys are saying our economy will never return to what it was. Some are saying the problem is the masses don't have enough education, and for our economy to improve they must return to college and make themselves more job ready for our economy. Others are saying we must stop sending our jobs over seas, and need take steps to encourage our industry to stay in the states.

 

There are some high tech. jobs that require a degree a physics or biology, but really how many of these jobs are in your neighborhood? There are not many of these jobs in Oregon. In fact most of Oregon has no high tech industry. Its economy was built on timber, agriculture, and fishing. I just don't believe more and more education is going to make a difference, but it diminishes the unemployment rate and then will leave thousands with student loans they can not repay, therefore bad credit, and higher interest, and higher car insurance rates making matters worse. This is not the path to a better economy.

 

When I listen to shows explaining the economic boom and bust, they talk about deregulation and out of control investing in derivatives. There were warnings that things were not as they seemed and that we were headed for a major problem and needed to regulate things like derivatives, but those in power chose to ignore the warnings. However, what has not been mentioned is the flood of women into the work force, and the resulting sky rocketing cost of living that has made in necessary for families to have two incomes.

 

The first thing communist did when they took control of the USSR was "liberate women". They ran a propaganda campaign saying women who stayed at home were unproductive citizens, destroying the self esteem and perceived value of full time homemakers. In the US we said "just a housewife" with the same effect of turning women from being full time homemakers, into the work force.

 

We know at first the USSR economy boomed with the influx of women into the work force, and than it took a dive as the divorce and abortion rates soared. Increasingly women and children fell below the level poverty, and we all cheered when their economy went belly up. We pat ourselves on the back because of the superiority of capitalism. Will now we are are talking a double dip "recession" and if our economy will ever return to what it was. We can add to the story, increasingly women and children are involved in crime, both as victims and perpetrators. Now the governor of Oregon expressed concern that Oregon is spending more on incarcerating people, than on educating them. This surely is not good for the economy, but is a real drain on tax payers.

 

So now what? It takes two incomes to provide for a family and we do not have the industry to provide full employment. Until rather recently, women were full time homemakers, and everyone sat at the dinner table together, but our values have changed a lot since then. If our economy does not recover, what will happen to our values?

Edited June 16, 2011 by Athena

[Marat]

Values quickly accommodate to the demands of the dominant form of production in society. The oldest forms of human community recognized special roles for each type of individual, and no role was denigrated. Being a mother, a housewife, a homemaker, a servant, a serf, a duke, or a merchant were all acceptable roles, since there was less of a general concept of universal personhood than we have today. A serf felt fulfilled in the role he was born into and would have felt foolish if he had been asked to ride a horse into battle, which was the proper role only of someone born into the lesser nobilty of the knighthood. The goal of life was to fulfill the role that fate and birth had assigned you, not to explore your full potential and embark on free self-development.

 

But this value system fits best with feudalism, and as the market economy developed, a nascent capitalism demanded that individuals become fungible, able to be mobilized for any and all uses that capitalism might require them for. This required in turn a loss of a sense of stable roles and of the validity of all the interlocking roles in society, and the beehive model of society had to give way to the universal liberty of equal persons, who each had the same right to become plumbers, carpenters, floor sweepers, or lawyers as capitalist productivity might require.

 

The last stage of development of this abandonment of role-specific humanness occurred in recent years, from about 1970 to today, when capitalism told women that they had to think of themselves as inferior unless they went out into the world of work and imitated male values of competitiveness, ambition, and money-making, rather than seeking meaning in being nurturers at home and forming the center of emotional security for a whole family of people. Somehow it was unquestioned that money-making was more meaningful than helping and loving people. Now women assume that they are 'liberated' only if they become imitation males, with all the historical faults of competitiveness, money-grubbing, aggressiveness which the male role required. Has women's liberation been tricked into playing right into the hands of capitalists and their demand for a larger work force to depress wages? If the economy goes into a long downturn, does that mean that capitalism, now no longer requiring such a large reserve army of workers to hire and fire as needed, will try to convince women that a new stay-at-home role is what their liberation is all about?

[bob000555]

The first thing communist did when they took control of the USSR was "liberate women". They ran a propaganda campaign saying women who stayed at home were unproductive citizens, destroying the self esteem and perceived value of full time homemakers. In the US we said "just a housewife" with the same effect of turning women from being full time homemakers, into the work force.

How many “first things” did the communists do exactly? Every time conservatives want to bemoan some change they call it “the first thing the [communist or Nazis] did.” In just the past year, I’ve heard “The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was ban smoking,” “The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was ‘go after’ the guns,” “The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was install universal health care,” and now “The first thing communist did when they took control of the USSR was ‘liberate women’.” [sic] The only thing I can possibly think of to explain the phenomenon of the multitude of “first things” is the seeping of Glenn-Beckian rhetoric and its requisite disregard for truth into the mainstream.

[Saryctos]

Right now some of the big guys are saying our economy will never return to what it was. Some are saying the problem is the masses don't have enough education, and for our economy to improve they must return to college and make themselves more job ready for our economy. Others are saying we must stop sending our jobs over seas, and need take steps to encourage our industry to stay in the states.

 

There are some high tech. jobs that require a degree a physics or biology, but really how many of these jobs are in your neighborhood?

 

In South-East Michigan there are many jobs available to an educated population, so many that there is an influx of foreign skilled workers to fill the gap in US educated employees. The unemployment problems are mostly an education problem. You have thousands of line workers looking for employment with no educational background that are driving up the unemployment numbers, and then you have companies still unable to fill their openings in engineering and computer skills related jobs.

[Athena]

Values quickly accommodate to the demands of the dominant form of production in society. The oldest forms of human community recognized special roles for each type of individual, and no role was denigrated. Being a mother, a housewife, a homemaker, a servant, a serf, a duke, or a merchant were all acceptable roles, since there was less of a general concept of universal personhood than we have today. A serf felt fulfilled in the role he was born into and would have felt foolish if he had been asked to ride a horse into battle, which was the proper role only of someone born into the lesser nobilty of the knighthood. The goal of life was to fulfill the role that fate and birth had assigned you, not to explore your full potential and embark on free self-development.

 

But this value system fits best with feudalism, and as the market economy developed, a nascent capitalism demanded that individuals become fungible, able to be mobilized for any and all uses that capitalism might require them for. This required in turn a loss of a sense of stable roles and of the validity of all the interlocking roles in society, and the beehive model of society had to give way to the universal liberty of equal persons, who each had the same right to become plumbers, carpenters, floor sweepers, or lawyers as capitalist productivity might require.

 

The last stage of development of this abandonment of role-specific humanness occurred in recent years, from about 1970 to today, when capitalism told women that they had to think of themselves as inferior unless they went out into the world of work and imitated male values of competitiveness, ambition, and money-making, rather than seeking meaning in being nurturers at home and forming the center of emotional security for a whole family of people. Somehow it was unquestioned that money-making was more meaningful than helping and loving people. Now women assume that they are 'liberated' only if they become imitation males, with all the historical faults of competitiveness, money-grubbing, aggressiveness which the male role required. Has women's liberation been tricked into playing right into the hands of capitalists and their demand for a larger work force to depress wages? If the economy goes into a long downturn, does that mean that capitalism, now no longer requiring such a large reserve army of workers to hire and fire as needed, will try to convince women that a new stay-at-home role is what their liberation is all about?

 

 

I so admire your knowledge and your ability to articulate yourself. However, like income taxes, it was the communist who were the first to liberated women.

 

In South-East Michigan there are many jobs available to an educated population, so many that there is an influx of foreign skilled workers to fill the gap in US educated employees. The unemployment problems are mostly an education problem. You have thousands of line workers looking for employment with no educational background that are driving up the unemployment numbers, and then you have companies still unable to fill their openings in engineering and computer skills related jobs.

 

Maybe I should send my family to Michigan. What education is most likely to get a good income? Seriously, I have no concept of the reality of which you speak. I know when I visited my mother in Arizona, there were huge, high tech facilities that were very exciting. Such industry creates a whole different psychological reality. The few places we have, are are not that visible and are shutting down. We have a college and a university capable of training people for the jobs, and there are so many students, the parking lots can not handle all the cars. Students get free bus passes and many ride the bus. We have the colleges and a beautiful community, but not the jobs, and I live in one of the larger cities. Most of Oregon is still rural and isolated.

 

How many "first things" did the communists do exactly? Every time conservatives want to bemoan some change they call it "the first thing the [communist or Nazis] did." In just the past year, I've heard "The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was ban smoking," "The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was 'go after' the guns," "The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was install universal health care," and now "The first thing communist did when they took control of the USSR was 'liberate women'." [sic] The only thing I can possibly think of to explain the phenomenon of the multitude of "first things" is the seeping of Glenn-Beckian rhetoric and its requisite disregard for truth into the mainstream.

 

How old are you? I remember when we used pictures of Russian women doing "men's work", in an effort to stop "women's liberation". There is nothing glamorous in those pictures. It took civilized man thousands of years to establish women and children, and then the elderly, as protected citizens, and women's liberation brought those protections to an end. Now the single mother and her children have the freedom and protection of a barbarian woman and her children. I am not sure this is best for humanity. If our economy continues to decline, we might want to rethink this progress?

 

In the meantime my copy of "Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment" is on my refrigerator door. If I get food stuck in my throat and go unconscious, I am dead, because I will not receive even CPR. My doctor didn't hesitate to check the "do not attempt Resuscitation" box. Hey, we can't afford medicare, so if we can't pay our own way, we better drop dead, right? We are suppose to be the richest nation in the world, but we are also the least caring of the young and old, and by God, we must prevent socialized medicine, because it is bad for capitalism and the economy.

 

While Germany was the first nation to have a national health plan, national pension plan and workers compensation. And it was the communist who came up with income taxes and "liberated" women. The communist liberation of women included child care. In the capitalist, and very rich US, if a single parent doesn't earn enough to pay for child care, oh well. The only thing we are going to if a parent fails to meet basic child care needs, is make the children wards of the state, and then garnish the parent's wages for child support payments. God bless America.

 

Hum, I should add to this that England had such a low standard of living, it tried to get industry to pay higher wages. Industry argued it couldn't pay higher wages, and remain competitive for world markets, so England raised taxes and began subsidizing industry, with things like government housing for the working poor. We know this is not good for capitalism, and are reluctant to give homeless families any assistance, while the jobs they need are going over seas, where labor is even cheaper. Disgusting isn't it. These poor ignorant people should do something about getting better education, so they can provide for their families. Oh, yes, higher education is more expensive in the US than anywhere else in the world. God bless America, the richest nation on earth.

Edited June 17, 2011 by Athena

[bob000555]

However, like income taxes, it was the communist who were the first to liberated women.

And it was the communist who came up with income taxes and "liberated" women.

You continue to spew "facts" that are patently and demonsterably untrue. The first recorded instance on an income tax was in China in the year 10CE during the reign of Wang Mang. The British instatuted their first inome tax in 1799 which was 19 years before Karl Marx was born and at least 40 years before comunism was even thought of.

http://earlyworldcoins.com/articles/wangmang

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/history/taxhis1.htm

Edited June 17, 2011 by bob000555

[Athena]

You continue to spew "facts" that are patently and demonsterably untrue. The first recorded instance on an income tax was in China in the year 10CE during the reign of Wang Mang. The British instatuted their first inome tax in 1799 which was 19 years before Karl Marx was born and at least 40 years before comunism was even thought of.

http://earlyworldcoi...ticles/wangmang

http://www.hmrc.gov....ory/taxhis1.htm

 

Well excuse me. Do you also want to make a case that the USSR was not the first to liberate women, because that is the important point to this thread. The point of this thread is that doubling the work force reduced wages and increased the cost of living. The average family has not benefited from this economic improvement, and if our economy continues to decline, we are in serious trouble.

 

The problem is not only an economic one, but also a moral one, and a social order problem as well. Increasingly our industrial society has organized us and this really became a New World Order change, when women were "liberated". Now what do you suppose will happen if we do not maintain the industry, and therefore, the industrial order, that has replaced family order? What if we can not remain focused on materialistic values, because we have to stop consuming? If we our economy continues to decline, what will happen to the family?

[bob000555]

Do you also want to make a case that the USSR was not the first to liberate women, because that is the important point to this thread.

Sure. But first a note on the academic study of history. You're making the claim that the USSR was the first country to liberate women and asking someone to prove you wrong. That's simply not how historians work. If you want to make a claim, you offer evidence. You don't simply amuse something happened because it sounds right. This results in laughable inanity like being wrong about era of the invention of the income tax by over 1800 years. "Truthiness" and "sounds right" are not forms of evidence.

 

Now, setting aside the problem of an absolute disregard for academic procedure, we come to the next problem with you claim the the USSR was the first to liberate women: you failed to state exactly what you mean by liberating women. This turns out to be a real problem because there are so many possible definitions for the phrase. In the context of this thread, the first employment of women seems germane. This of course, happened well before the epoch of communism. Even before the industrial revolution, during the putting-out system, women had a definite role. We use the word "distaff" to mean "of or relating to wives" because wives had exclusive responsibly for the spinning of fibers on distaffs.

 

Alternatively, in the context of this thread, you could mean the employment of women outside of the home. This, also, happened well before communism. During the early industrial revolution laborers in textile mills were mostly women with male overseers. By the early 1800's we had the Lowel System in the United States in which textile workers were almost exclusively women.

 

Getting farther outside the context of this thread, you could mean women's suffrage. In this case, you are right that the Bolsheviks made a big ado about their granting women the vote. You are however wrong about them being the first to do so; New Zealand was the first major country to grant women suffrage nearly 24 years earlier.

 

Your argument that the employment of women increased the cost of living is a perfectly valid one (see: "The Two Income Trap," Elizabeth Warren.) But this stuff about the communists being the first to do this or that is just ridiculous. Untruth in the furtherance of truth is still untruth. And even if the communists were the first to enact some policy, it wouldn't necessarily mean that that policy was "bad". Please take your Glen-Beckian logic elsewhere.

Edited June 20, 2011 by bob000555

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Let's not be hostile about this, please.

[Athena]

Thanks Cap'n Refsmmat, I am disappointed by how this thread is going. I expected more thought would be given to the effect of almost doubling the work force, and frankly, think it a bit strange that no wants to give this any thought. Oh well.

[Genecks]

I think the discussion of women in your thread-creation post was unnecessary, but we can make it a point of discussion. Well, I don't see a problem with women working. I think many women's work efforts relate to their reproductive ability. I don't have any statistics, but I'm going to assume that many women are willing to work very hard until their reproductive abilities expire. Afterward, they might become stay-at-home wives. Definitely, men have much less to worry about in that realm, so their financial desires are not so age-dependent in the reproductive sense. Not all women want to have kids, though. Yes, it's just more competition. Then again, not all women wanted to get married long ago; and many women still do not want to get married.

 

Sure, social viewpoints prior to the 1960s may have been able to suppress female entrance into the workforce, but wanting to support that is just some blatant oppression I'm not going to approve of. If I remember correctly, women were paid half the wage of men in early-American history: Another way of deterring them from working. Many times much less money. As such, women were not as great an economic problem in early-America.

 

---

 

Now, it often seems that the people who own realms of business are to blame in American economic issues. I've often told people that said business persons should be killed and/or sent to prison for treason against their own country: Bringing forth the economic destruction of America (aka economic warfare against their own country: aka treason).

 

Unfortunately, no one has really done this yet. I've yet to actually hear anyone on mainstream media ever mention this in the past few years. A serious disappointment I must say. The next democrat I hear say this on television gets a $20 donation from me.

 

But then again, it's difficult to say these people were committing treason, because a variety of economist say that free-trade, outsourcing, getting more for the least money, etc... is good. Well, I've been reading more into economics and free-trade, and it appears that the kind of specializations required by each country to make free-trade realistic would force people into particular vocations. However, this seems similar to communism; it's not communism. It's more more imperialistic propaganda of forcing everyone in a country to be a rice farmer in order to trade with the foreign country that produces beef. That's so unrealistic. Theoretically sane, but good luck as I have no interest in being a rice farmer.

 

So, I keep seeing that this whole free-trade idea America is pushing forward with government and business is not working for the majority of Americans. As such, the American people will continue to be screwed until they find a way to get money to trickle in their direction again.

 

In a lot of ways, though, I think we're screwed. Not everyone wants to be a cyborg. Economy is fueled by supply and demand. And the idea of getting everyone to buy an ipod is silly. It's not silly to consider that people still need energy to keep their homes lit, warm, and cool during the seasons. Nor is it silly to consider that people need to eat. These food and energy industries seem to be of the few things going strong in America at the moment.

 

Our health and science technologies are being more seen as social luxuries by our contemporary societies. They're not considered of the utmost importance for enlightenment and understanding of the universe. People are more concerned with figuring out how to provide power to a growing world population, such as investigating further control of nuclear resources.

 

In reference to outsourcing... yeah, I agree.

 

I think outsourcing caused a lot of these issues. But China and India have a lot more people. And those people are willing to work for less money. It's difficult to compete unless you're willing to work for less money, too.

Edited June 21, 2011 by Genecks

[Athena]

Genecks, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. We seriously need more of this thoughtful thinking if our democracy is to have any meaning. Part of the problem is so many things involved with economics are so taboo to speak of, we are not operating with essential information. The link talks about a lot of taboo things, such as an end to both capitalism and patriarchy. I didn't read the whole thing, because it so taboo, others won't read the whole thing, and discuss the points made. My only point here is so much is taboo, so we are really very poorly informed, and this makes democracy a sick joke.

 

http://www.marxisthu...revolution.html

 

While you are willing to consider economic matters, and make a really good point about capitalist industry destroying our nation, you miss a serious part of this discussion by underestimating the importance of doubling the work, by "liberating" (enslaving) women. One of things hoped for with the liberation of women, was a cheap work force, and double productivity. A cheap work force, because women more so them men, have been willing to work for other things besides money- such as because it is meaningful work, or the right thing to do. Teachers and nurses were cheap, because women were doing these meaningful jobs for moral reasons. I guess a benefit of greater equality is men taking these jobs too and is higher wages. I don't know which came first, more men in these fields, insisting on higher wages, or higher wages attracting men to these jobs? But I do know where I live, wages for mill jobs crashed when women entered the work force. It is a matter of demand and supply. If there are many jobs that need to be done and few workers, the workers will benefit from higher wages. If there are many people needing jobs and few jobs, the wages will drop. So in some areas, wages fell with the influx of women into the work force.

 

Again, supply and demand- households with two pay checks, had the money to buy houses. As more people had more money for housing, the cost of housing increased. Because the cost of living has increased, it now takes two pay checks to support a family, and this increases poverty, especially when the divorce rate increases.

 

Now we have the government step in with food stamps, assisted housing, welfare, possibly assistance with child care, and some medical care. The workers, through their taxes, are now paying for the needs of others, and people who can not afford to own a home, are paying taxes. And now we are in debt and we must cut back on this government spending, but if takes two paycheck to support a family and the divorce rate is high, and the need for assistance is increasing.

 

Hidden cost- we have realized an increase in divorce and abortion rates, and also the rate of women and children involved in crime and violence, both as victims and perpetrators. The Governor of Oregon, said we are now paying more to incarcerate people than we spend on education. Now this is really getting into taboo talk. We have social problems when our home lives are not what they were. Not that there were no problems in the past, but they were less apt to become social problems.

 

Parents expected their sons and daughters to care for them in old age. Traditionally the man paid for the care and the woman provided it. Now the woman is working for pay, so everyone has to pay for the care of the elderly, and no one wants to. If you know about nursing homes, you might know why Oregon has legal assisted suicide. Medicare doesn't pay for in-home care, so if people need care and can't pay for it, they must go into a nursing home, so medicare pays the cost. Remember this is work the woman did for free because it was her job to care for everyone and she wasn't paid of it. This is now a shared expense that has the nation up in arms. From child care to the care of the sick and elderly, all work that was done for free, someone has to pay for it and we don't want to.

 

Do you know houses were built without closet? People didn't have enough cloths to justify closets. Our lives were about relationships, more than about what we own. Today's family is about what the individuals own and what they do (usually something that cost money). Spending evenings at home as a family, instead of as individuals doing their own thing is almost unheard of. Eating dinner together and playing board games, is not what the average family is doing. We now think the pursuit of happiness begins with a good pay check, not with literacy that is possible because of a local library. We have a life style that is hard to maintain when there is a high unemployment rate.

Edited June 24, 2011 by Athena

[bob000555]

Are you impelling that the idea that women's entree into the workforce screwed up the economy is taboo? A best selling book was written on the topic eight years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Mothers/dp/0465090826

 

I would suggest that the reason you're not getting much discussion on the topic is quite the opposite of it being taboo: it's old news.

Edited June 24, 2011 by bob000555