You cherry-pick numbers of race disparity well. Black families have been here for 400 years, and new Hispanic families have only been here for one or two generations. Many Hispanics work construction, restaurants, and open their businesses. They work hard, and I am sure they will reach the American dream. I am a white whose parents came to the US in 1950, and I feel like a foreigner.
Your statistics are misleading. Talk about the earnings and holding so the top 10%. The top 1% owns 42.3T, 90-99% owns 50.53 T, 50-90% 37.25 T, Bottom 50% 3.03T. Total is 134.08 T. (2) The major inequality is in corporate equities and mutual funds.
The Top 1% own 27T in corp. Equities and mutual funds and 7T in private business. The top 10% own 14.6T in corp. equities and mutual funds and 4T in private businesses. (3) The median income of the top 10% is about 200K/yr( 4)
If you look at the results long and hard, you will see Corporate Equities and mutual funds, and businesses create the most wealth disparity. The top 10% holds about 70% of the wealth and 90% of corporate equities and mutual funds, and about 90% of the businesses. The top 1% owns about 50% of the corporate equities and mutual funds and 70% private businesses.
Yes, about 98% of the top 10% of the money earners are white (5). But by attacking whites and not class, you are playing into the hands of corporatists or the rich whites. You are attacking about 90% of white people. The Elites have been dividing the people for ages so they could maintain power. Take off those race goggles and look at numbers that show the disparity of class, don’t be a fool of the elites.
II'm not sure why you think I'm cherry-picking numbers or that I might be a "fool of the elites." The conversation that Glenn Loury had with David Kaiser was focused on race. My email to Professor Loury was in response to that conversation.
The numbers you posted seem to be right, but where do you want to draw the line when deciding who the elites are and who they're manipulating? Federal Reserve data shows that about 69% of America's wealth is held by people 55 and over as of Q2 of this year. Federal Reserve data also shows that college graduates control about 72% of America's wealth. The upper 20% of the income distribution control just over 70% of America's wealth as well. Whites control 84% of America's wealth.
You can verify all the numbers above at this Federal Reserve web site:
I don't necessarily see evil or gross manipulation in these numbers. I see the outcomes of complex political, legal, and economic systems instead. The dissection of differences in wealth accumulation by different demographic groups is complicated. That's the point I was trying to make.
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
Still thinking about writing something, but since I already decided I wouldn't post it?
Here's the thing: I get REAL TIRED of the "beat up on white-boy" game. Not because it affects me personally. I'm retired and have a nursing-home fund of four years if the stock market doesn't tank. (Which I actually expect it WILL, but i digress.)
My comment is to supplement what NROL34 Odin is saying. The problem with this GAME I'm talkin' about, what-i-call The Narrative, is that it makes people delusional. (Or, rather, moreso than usual. ;)
I've posted this so many times that my fingers are bleeding. One looks at all the numbers and ignores the salient FACTS. The BOTTOM HALF owns 2% of the wealth. Like You said, M. Roscoe, the educated own 70%. I SUSPECT that a LOTTA the BOTTOM HALF that owns 2% do NOT have a college degree. ICBW, haha.
There's elites, and then there's elites. Businesses work against their own self-interests with this fantasy that people with a college degree are worth more than a person with common-sense. But that's life. High school grades? SAT? College degree? IQ? GREAT MEASURES, to an EXTENT. GENERALLY (italics, recall) measures ability to deal with abstract concepts. Why not? It's what separates us from apes, right?
Weeeel, there's just a teensy-tiny problem with all-a that mumbo-jumbo: Talking about HUMAN BEINGS and, at the same time, using numbers? There's just not much of a relation there, is there?
The "white-boy" game and The Narrative? ANY-a that stuff have anything to do with real live HUMAN BEINGS? Nup. Because if it DID, then the difference between what the races percentages breaks down to just doesn't come up in a conversation at all. I looked yesterday but couldn't find it. I THINK Professor Loury pointed out a situation where a guy sleeping under a rug and ten cents, where a guy living in a cardboard box had a buck twenty. IOW, TEN TIMES AS MUCH. See?
The percentages dont' really signify. The problem in this country is we got too many jumped up educated people looking DOWN on poor people of ALL races. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50364458-the-tyranny-of-merit "The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?"
This may seem to be a digression, but it actually isn't. I'm EXACTLY 50% Fundmentalist Atheist. That's how I grew up first 22 years or so. That leaves me 50% Religio-Spiritual. Now there are scientists, with PhDs and a LOTTA POWER, who believe that some people believe in blatant falsehoods (religion). And that, for the good of mankind, these beliefs should be excised from the human race. I understand that view, but I would VEHEMENTLY beg to differ. There's elites, and then there's elites.
The Wokeism Religion. Their not anti-racist but a bunch of radicals, according to Prof. McW. Just finished "Minds Wide Shut" which confirmed my view. What we're dealing with is, in essence, a very left-wing FUNDAMENTALIST religion. Beliefs opposite, but it's nature, power, and ALL-a that is nearly identical to Christian fundamentalists. Wokeianity will destroy the institutions Democracy runs on, apparently because it's something fun to do. I don't get it, myself. And the elites the Tablet article refers to. They'll do just fine.
POINT of all this? Wokeianity clouds people vision of what Reality actually IS. Takes Your eyes off the ball, INDEED. Article by McKinsey says in five years, AI will cause 87M people to lose there jobs. But GREAT NEWS! 92M NEW jobs will be created!! I'm not convinced about the five years. But it's a sick joke to think that the 87M people are gonna find themselves employable. Yah, I know clerical are gonna be hurting. But when jobs for CPAs are gonna be declining? Who's NEXT on the chopping block? The jobs that will be in DEMAND? Data Scientists and other computer nerd-like people. ADVANCED degrees, no DOUBT.
You see, I edited bad book about this stuff. But learned that Machine Learning is having computers teach themselves how to think better without human intervention. Using "neural networks" that a few people are convinced emulate the human brain. Could even be true. But if this stuff really IS gonna go on "improving" exponentially, then the educated elites are gonna be a much SMALLER group but richer. Sam Altman, who believes humans are just neural networks with energy going through them? He thinks it'd be MURDER to turn off the electric to one of these things. But he may end up being right that individuals with net worth of TRILLIONS will come outta this.
Finally, if You wanna sleep well at night, do NOT go into the subject of Transhumanism. Eugenics (or as they call it nowadays "Genetic Engineering"). CRISPR technology to edit genes already created. For MEDICAL purposes. Riiiight. Just recently they've identified 1300 genes that effect intelligence. Each one doesn't amount to a pimple on a gnat's arse. But if You take the 1300 and put them in a FORMULA You get a NUMBER. FAR-left scientist who made discovery is finding out that progressives do NOT wanna hear ANY-a this. That individual people have different levels of intelligence? CANNOT BE, right? Because, if this common-sense notion was to take hold, then Kendi and all the quotas he has in mind are based on a great deal of NON-intelligence, right?
Same with Musk's Neuralink. Will be GREAT ADVANCEMENT in medical fields. Help quadriplegics to walk. But they say, right there on their website, that they expect eventually it'll be used for people who don't have a medical condition. Musk, who is 100% opposed to AI? Wants to give people the leg up by implanting a computer chip inside a person's brain, connected to all the info on the Internet working in nanoseconds? Of course, may never happen. I'm just glad I'm 66 and not likely to see a new SPECIES of human being.
Done. See if this even fits. Back to READING and LEARNING. Eric Hoffer on mass movements. Too bad written in 51.
I could be wrong, but I think your concerns about "elites" is a proxy for the concerns that many of us have about the fading American Dream - the idea that each generation will do as well or better financially than their parents. Raj Chetty at Harvard and a team of researchers have done extensive work on this:
One of the defining features of the “American Dream” is the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents. We assess whether the U.S. is living up to this ideal by estimating rates of “absolute income mobility” – the fraction of children who earn more than their parents – since 1940.
We measure absolute mobility by comparing children’s household incomes at age 30 (adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index) with their parents’ household incomes at age 30. We find that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Absolute income mobility has fallen across the entire income distribution, with the largest declines for families in the middle class. These findings are unaffected by using alternative price indices to adjust for inflation, accounting for taxes and transfers, measuring income at later ages, and adjusting for changes in household size.
The work of Chetty and his team shows that the odds of achieving the American Dream went from an almost sure thing to those no better than a coin flip in just over 40 years (two generations). Some will think this was intentional. I tend to think it was "accidental" in the sense that our policy makers don't always understand how their ideas will play out over extended periods of time.
Thanks for the reply. Your information is excellent, and I could not quantify the stagnation and the losses in economic opportunity the late Boomers, and the nation has seen. This is another view of the problem of our government and the system created that harms all of us.
Intentionality vs. accidental. Conspiracy theories like JFK assassination, 9/11, and the computers show things that happen in synchronicity. Jung came up with the term synchronicity. Could it be a function of; chance, collective consciousness (God's will), or conspiracy (man's will) . I have to read more on Jung and this topic to educate myself. I don't know; I'm limited with time and this feeble brain.
As humans, we are all limited by the amount of information we can take in with our senses and mortality. I hear that someday eyes may be created that see more than light, perhaps x rays or very low-frequency sounds. Perhaps neural implants will assist in gathering information in other ways. What would that do to human consciousness? The Techno-human, transhumanism. Internet of bodies, health, and freedom. These are the next Justice issues. Is it right to create a better man than what God created? God wanted us to participate in creation as evidenced by; God giving Adam the ability to name creatures God was creating. Is man hastening evolution evil or good? These are the questions we all must answer.
I gotta say I let the Boomers and Gen=Xers off to easily. SOMEBODY taught these kids to go $100K in college debt in order to "follow their PASSIONS." That's GREAT if You can turn Your passion into a living wage. But, better still, have a PASSION for MAKING A LIVING. Too many kids that didn't work out that way.
As far as Boomers being "Me Generation" and beggaring their great grandkids with so many TRILLIONS of govt. debt? Got be them that started the "tradition" right? Not likely to be them who ends it, either. But all that is long conversation that isn't really my specialty, so there is that.
I'm a boomer, and my engineering degree (BSEE) cost about $14.000 dollars. Schools raised prices. A lot of my wealth, about half came from inheritance. I lost $300.000 of my 401K, in 2000 in the tech crunch. I had 10 cents on the dollar and built up my account again, investing in China. At the same time, I had to change careers to become an RN. YOU FORGET INHERITANCE IN THE CALCULATIONS. Some of the wealth accumulation comes from inheritance.
The past 40 years sucked with frozen wages, NAFTA, changing to a service economy. It is not the boomers that created the debt. It was the foreign wars and the country building from Bush through Trump. The Vietnam war was paid for by Social Security money. SO DON'T PLAY THE VICTIM. Right now I am living like a pauper so I could pass wealth on to my millennial son.
Biden and Trump created trillions in debt, paying off Boeing for a plane that wanted to crash itself, airlines that did not fly, cruise ships that did not sail and franchise restaurants and retailers that had no sales. I got a 1000 dollar check, which was about five cents on the dollar to what the elites got.
Check out the Bayh/Dole act of 1980, where the Government provides research billions of dollars, in grants, from the NIH. Fauchi gives companies and universities billions each year for Pharma. American taxpayers get no royalties on drugs patented and developed. Pharma then charges the US, the highest prices in the world for drugs. These drugs are licensed for manufacture as generics in other countries. Molnupiravir, the cure for HepC, AIDS and others are examples of such drugs. The taxpayer pays 8 billion a year for AIDS drugs to be given in Africa. Fauchi pushes drugs and withholds others. Medical Literature is based on what drugs the NIH advocates. You only write papers if you get money. Money is behind making repurposed drugs like Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine from being successful. There is very little profit in curing bacterial infections and virus infections. There is more profit in curing chronic diseases like high cholesterol or diabetes.
Fauchi may have seen an opportunity to develop new antivirals and vaccines at the cost of the taxpayer. Is Fauchi a devil or an angel? Could the monies paid by the American Taxpayer for Pharma research be recompense for colonial ambitions?
Ivermectin (Stops glycosylation of the virus) and Hydroxychloroquine (a Zn ionophore, mitigates immune response, inhibits glycosylation, inhibits RNA replication)
Fauchi has power that people do not realize. The Bayh/Dole act created the machinery for making the best pharmaceuticals, at the cost of the American Taxpayer, and it has corrupted the medical system.
Years of giving that money to corporations have bankrupted the American people. Tax breaks for the wealthy to offshore money, treating China as a developing country with favored trading status, exporting jobs, hiding money, and now ruining our Government. Has anyone taken China off these trading statuses?m Maybe the hostilities with China are not real, just like climate change and living in the Hamptons, Martha's Vinyard, or Maura Lago. Words vs. behaviors create distrust..
It is not the boomers; it is not a system of racial inequity, it is the system of corruption. GET YOUR AGE, RACE, GENDER, CULTURAL GLASSES OFF. LOOK AT REALITY. It is the elite corrupting our Government.
"IP Advocate: Beyond misuse and misinterpretation, what is the worst you have seen?"
"Dr. Barnett: It comes down to money. Nowhere does it say that Bayh-Dole was intended to earn big bucks for universities. Yet many universities and corporations in the system skip right for the money, any way they can get it. Ironically, apart from some rare, substantial transactions over the nearly 30 years of Bayh-Dole, universities haven't got all that much of the money, and have done even worse at the other stuff, such as dealing with software and data.
"The problems also show up with university inventors. I've seen money-driven behavior with federal funding that wouldn't do so well if it surfaced in the press. It isn't that money driven behaviors are themselves bad. It's just that within a university, in the conduct of science and other public interested research, it's the public interested part that gets squeezed out. Who advocates for the public interest in the push and pull between inventors and administrators over Bayh-Dole inventions?"
Got one other to read first thing tomorrow. Then will think on this some.
I'm at the end of a long day. Let's see... 14 hours at computer. But I don't need a study of this kind to tell me the obvious. IOW, I agree completely. Didn't have good instincts on the exact numbers. Dunno when the study was done but I've seen this for a decade or two without really even looking into it.
PART of it, to me anyway, is that the Millenials and Gen-Zers expected the world to be handed to them on a platter, and got a bad attitude when it didn't. Sure, over-generalization but answers some questions anyway. But Boomers and GEn-Xers? AFAIK, had a lot to do with raising a large number of kids that didn't have much respect for authority of any kind other than themselves.
Can't remember when. Long ago. Person who ONLY writes on race complained that she was getting shuffled to side where she works, because she's fifty. Said she might hafta tgake up ageism but didn't. Yah, ALL generations think they know everything and their parents are idiots. But most grow OUTTA that in their 20s, right? Or maybe that isn't the way the world works now, but I'mn a dreamer. I think of how it should/could work.
My comment to the article was that I thought it a fairly strange society that the young know everything there IS to know. And these are the generations that "know" it's better to be "non-binary" when it comes to males and females. Hmph. Mebbe You can smell that I'm not impressed, but don't claim to be "on the right side of history." Wouldn't WANNA be, if that's what it takes.
Like I said. Too tired.., I get up around 2 or 3am so my days PAST done. TY for reply, M. Roscoe. :)
I would not use societal constructs. The standard for the elites should be drawn at 10%. NOTHING ELSE IS REAL. The median of Age, Religion, and Race are all skewed by the elite whales in the country. Also, the data the government gets is the data they know about. Holdings elites have in other countries and are not known. Many of the Elites do not want anyone to know what property and income they really have. I would look at the tax codes of the 1960's, and 1970's, when the US dealt equitably with elites. Reagan did something to the tax codes to remove the "fairness in tax codes." I have not yet had time to research what it was.
You quote the upper 20%. IT IS THE UPPER 10% of the income of the wealthy; when semiconductor manufacturing moved offshore, my wife and I, who were semiconductor engineers, became registered nurses. We had to study and break ass constantly to make ends meet; I would much instead study biology, pharmaceuticals than what the Technocracy is doing to society. They are clouding your vision by using emotionality in looking at societal constructs. They don't care about you or me; they want power. Looking at anything else but the wealth they have gets your eye off the ball.
Wages have been frozen for 40 years, we have been in managed decline as job opportunities have dried up with NAFTA. The US changed from a manufacturing society to a service society.
Semiconductors have a large capital load; the labor load is meaningless compared to the bottom line. High capital load - a plasma etch machine would cost $500,000. Labor load, an operator would get $25.00 per hour(52,000 + 25,000 medical) $75,000/yr to work two plasma etchers. Equipment would have to be replaced every five years, so on straight-line depreciation over five years; therefore, two plasma etchers would be $200,000. The worker's wages were insignificant to the cost of the equipment. A mold injection press at an auto plant may cost $125,000, and an operator making $25.00 per hour would run it. Auto manufacture could be offshored. Why move semiconductors offshore? It was to hide money offshore and not repatriate it. A security risk, sure, if the supply chain is cut. Object-oriented manufacturing (where a person makes something but has no idea about what the product is for) is considered safe. I knew of one manufacturer making the head of Javalin (FGM-148) missiles in China rather than Pittsburg. The head requires very fast real lime Optical. Recognition
FROM THE MID-1950s TILL 2000s, the US was tops in making semiconductors. It changed for several reasons, but the major reason is that semiconductors are highly profitable, and money and ownership could be hidden offshore. Would you trust bastards like these?
They don't care about race, but why are they funding Social Justice Causes with philanthropy? Politicians who have power and want money and Elites who want power are in synchronicity. The government looks inept, and you can't trust it. The elites are out for themselves and you can't trust them. The established media and established social media can't be trusted. TRUST IS NECESSARY FOR SOUND FINANCE AND A SOUND SOCIETY. There is evil in what you are looking at. You are going after people like myself instead of the very wealthy.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT EVIL IS? I have been looking at evil. Radically Evil, (Kant), Banality of Evil (Arendt), and Pure Evil, which Scientific American says is a myth. Marcuse and the use of repressive tolerance is pure evil. The intentional repression of another's view with no listening to logic is destructive to the ego and spirit. Defining evil, I would say, is having pleasure, schadenfreude in destroying the ego or someone else's spirit I have seen evil as a psychiatric nurse working in a state hospital. Evil there was the product of a sick mind. Borderlines were the worst to take trust and betray it. If God were omnipotent and good, why did he put evil in the world? My answer is so that man can understand what good is. As you fight monsters, beware not to become a monster yourself. That is why I retired. If you lose money, you lose nothing. If you lose health, you lose something. If you lose character, you lose everything.
You cherry-pick numbers of race disparity well. Black families have been here for 400 years, and new Hispanic families have only been here for one or two generations. Many Hispanics work construction, restaurants, and open their businesses. They work hard, and I am sure they will reach the American dream. I am a white whose parents came to the US in 1950, and I feel like a foreigner.
Your statistics are misleading. Talk about the earnings and holding so the top 10%. The top 1% owns 42.3T, 90-99% owns 50.53 T, 50-90% 37.25 T, Bottom 50% 3.03T. Total is 134.08 T. (2) The major inequality is in corporate equities and mutual funds.
The Top 1% own 27T in corp. Equities and mutual funds and 7T in private business. The top 10% own 14.6T in corp. equities and mutual funds and 4T in private businesses. (3) The median income of the top 10% is about 200K/yr( 4)
If you look at the results long and hard, you will see Corporate Equities and mutual funds, and businesses create the most wealth disparity. The top 10% holds about 70% of the wealth and 90% of corporate equities and mutual funds, and about 90% of the businesses. The top 1% owns about 50% of the corporate equities and mutual funds and 70% private businesses.
Yes, about 98% of the top 10% of the money earners are white (5). But by attacking whites and not class, you are playing into the hands of corporatists or the rich whites. You are attacking about 90% of white people. The Elites have been dividing the people for ages so they could maintain power. Take off those race goggles and look at numbers that show the disparity of class, don’t be a fool of the elites.
(1) https://readingterminalmarket.org/1st-black-owned-bakery-in-rtm/
(2) https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/
(3) https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/compare/chart/
(4) https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/how-much-you-need-to-be-in-top-10-percent-by-state/
(5) https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/
II'm not sure why you think I'm cherry-picking numbers or that I might be a "fool of the elites." The conversation that Glenn Loury had with David Kaiser was focused on race. My email to Professor Loury was in response to that conversation.
The numbers you posted seem to be right, but where do you want to draw the line when deciding who the elites are and who they're manipulating? Federal Reserve data shows that about 69% of America's wealth is held by people 55 and over as of Q2 of this year. Federal Reserve data also shows that college graduates control about 72% of America's wealth. The upper 20% of the income distribution control just over 70% of America's wealth as well. Whites control 84% of America's wealth.
You can verify all the numbers above at this Federal Reserve web site:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:127;series:Net%20worth;demographic:race;population:all;units:shares
I don't necessarily see evil or gross manipulation in these numbers. I see the outcomes of complex political, legal, and economic systems instead. The dissection of differences in wealth accumulation by different demographic groups is complicated. That's the point I was trying to make.
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. I don’t read what I type before I post, so errors are expected.
Still thinking about writing something, but since I already decided I wouldn't post it?
Here's the thing: I get REAL TIRED of the "beat up on white-boy" game. Not because it affects me personally. I'm retired and have a nursing-home fund of four years if the stock market doesn't tank. (Which I actually expect it WILL, but i digress.)
My comment is to supplement what NROL34 Odin is saying. The problem with this GAME I'm talkin' about, what-i-call The Narrative, is that it makes people delusional. (Or, rather, moreso than usual. ;)
I've posted this so many times that my fingers are bleeding. One looks at all the numbers and ignores the salient FACTS. The BOTTOM HALF owns 2% of the wealth. Like You said, M. Roscoe, the educated own 70%. I SUSPECT that a LOTTA the BOTTOM HALF that owns 2% do NOT have a college degree. ICBW, haha.
There's elites, and then there's elites. Businesses work against their own self-interests with this fantasy that people with a college degree are worth more than a person with common-sense. But that's life. High school grades? SAT? College degree? IQ? GREAT MEASURES, to an EXTENT. GENERALLY (italics, recall) measures ability to deal with abstract concepts. Why not? It's what separates us from apes, right?
Weeeel, there's just a teensy-tiny problem with all-a that mumbo-jumbo: Talking about HUMAN BEINGS and, at the same time, using numbers? There's just not much of a relation there, is there?
The "white-boy" game and The Narrative? ANY-a that stuff have anything to do with real live HUMAN BEINGS? Nup. Because if it DID, then the difference between what the races percentages breaks down to just doesn't come up in a conversation at all. I looked yesterday but couldn't find it. I THINK Professor Loury pointed out a situation where a guy sleeping under a rug and ten cents, where a guy living in a cardboard box had a buck twenty. IOW, TEN TIMES AS MUCH. See?
The percentages dont' really signify. The problem in this country is we got too many jumped up educated people looking DOWN on poor people of ALL races. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50364458-the-tyranny-of-merit "The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?"
This may seem to be a digression, but it actually isn't. I'm EXACTLY 50% Fundmentalist Atheist. That's how I grew up first 22 years or so. That leaves me 50% Religio-Spiritual. Now there are scientists, with PhDs and a LOTTA POWER, who believe that some people believe in blatant falsehoods (religion). And that, for the good of mankind, these beliefs should be excised from the human race. I understand that view, but I would VEHEMENTLY beg to differ. There's elites, and then there's elites.
10% isn't a bad cutoff. But I'd say there's another definition that's a little more fine-grained. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/authority-blob-roundtable Ah well... Link doesn't work. The top million or so? Coincidently, or mebbe NOT, their all woke. Wesley Yang calls them "The Successor Regime." As Professor McWhorter observed, people who think it's fun to build themselves up by getting people fired? Another example where some deserve it, and some DON'T: https://level.medium.com/the-self-infantilisation-of-black-people-b064ac516982
The Wokeism Religion. Their not anti-racist but a bunch of radicals, according to Prof. McW. Just finished "Minds Wide Shut" which confirmed my view. What we're dealing with is, in essence, a very left-wing FUNDAMENTALIST religion. Beliefs opposite, but it's nature, power, and ALL-a that is nearly identical to Christian fundamentalists. Wokeianity will destroy the institutions Democracy runs on, apparently because it's something fun to do. I don't get it, myself. And the elites the Tablet article refers to. They'll do just fine.
POINT of all this? Wokeianity clouds people vision of what Reality actually IS. Takes Your eyes off the ball, INDEED. Article by McKinsey says in five years, AI will cause 87M people to lose there jobs. But GREAT NEWS! 92M NEW jobs will be created!! I'm not convinced about the five years. But it's a sick joke to think that the 87M people are gonna find themselves employable. Yah, I know clerical are gonna be hurting. But when jobs for CPAs are gonna be declining? Who's NEXT on the chopping block? The jobs that will be in DEMAND? Data Scientists and other computer nerd-like people. ADVANCED degrees, no DOUBT.
You see, I edited bad book about this stuff. But learned that Machine Learning is having computers teach themselves how to think better without human intervention. Using "neural networks" that a few people are convinced emulate the human brain. Could even be true. But if this stuff really IS gonna go on "improving" exponentially, then the educated elites are gonna be a much SMALLER group but richer. Sam Altman, who believes humans are just neural networks with energy going through them? He thinks it'd be MURDER to turn off the electric to one of these things. But he may end up being right that individuals with net worth of TRILLIONS will come outta this.
Finally, if You wanna sleep well at night, do NOT go into the subject of Transhumanism. Eugenics (or as they call it nowadays "Genetic Engineering"). CRISPR technology to edit genes already created. For MEDICAL purposes. Riiiight. Just recently they've identified 1300 genes that effect intelligence. Each one doesn't amount to a pimple on a gnat's arse. But if You take the 1300 and put them in a FORMULA You get a NUMBER. FAR-left scientist who made discovery is finding out that progressives do NOT wanna hear ANY-a this. That individual people have different levels of intelligence? CANNOT BE, right? Because, if this common-sense notion was to take hold, then Kendi and all the quotas he has in mind are based on a great deal of NON-intelligence, right?
Same with Musk's Neuralink. Will be GREAT ADVANCEMENT in medical fields. Help quadriplegics to walk. But they say, right there on their website, that they expect eventually it'll be used for people who don't have a medical condition. Musk, who is 100% opposed to AI? Wants to give people the leg up by implanting a computer chip inside a person's brain, connected to all the info on the Internet working in nanoseconds? Of course, may never happen. I'm just glad I'm 66 and not likely to see a new SPECIES of human being.
Done. See if this even fits. Back to READING and LEARNING. Eric Hoffer on mass movements. Too bad written in 51.
Here's a response to you and NROL34 Odin:
I could be wrong, but I think your concerns about "elites" is a proxy for the concerns that many of us have about the fading American Dream - the idea that each generation will do as well or better financially than their parents. Raj Chetty at Harvard and a team of researchers have done extensive work on this:
https://opportunityinsights.org/paper/the-fading-american-dream/
Here's an excerpt:
One of the defining features of the “American Dream” is the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents. We assess whether the U.S. is living up to this ideal by estimating rates of “absolute income mobility” – the fraction of children who earn more than their parents – since 1940.
We measure absolute mobility by comparing children’s household incomes at age 30 (adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index) with their parents’ household incomes at age 30. We find that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Absolute income mobility has fallen across the entire income distribution, with the largest declines for families in the middle class. These findings are unaffected by using alternative price indices to adjust for inflation, accounting for taxes and transfers, measuring income at later ages, and adjusting for changes in household size.
The work of Chetty and his team shows that the odds of achieving the American Dream went from an almost sure thing to those no better than a coin flip in just over 40 years (two generations). Some will think this was intentional. I tend to think it was "accidental" in the sense that our policy makers don't always understand how their ideas will play out over extended periods of time.
Thanks for the reply. Your information is excellent, and I could not quantify the stagnation and the losses in economic opportunity the late Boomers, and the nation has seen. This is another view of the problem of our government and the system created that harms all of us.
Intentionality vs. accidental. Conspiracy theories like JFK assassination, 9/11, and the computers show things that happen in synchronicity. Jung came up with the term synchronicity. Could it be a function of; chance, collective consciousness (God's will), or conspiracy (man's will) . I have to read more on Jung and this topic to educate myself. I don't know; I'm limited with time and this feeble brain.
As humans, we are all limited by the amount of information we can take in with our senses and mortality. I hear that someday eyes may be created that see more than light, perhaps x rays or very low-frequency sounds. Perhaps neural implants will assist in gathering information in other ways. What would that do to human consciousness? The Techno-human, transhumanism. Internet of bodies, health, and freedom. These are the next Justice issues. Is it right to create a better man than what God created? God wanted us to participate in creation as evidenced by; God giving Adam the ability to name creatures God was creating. Is man hastening evolution evil or good? These are the questions we all must answer.
I gotta say I let the Boomers and Gen=Xers off to easily. SOMEBODY taught these kids to go $100K in college debt in order to "follow their PASSIONS." That's GREAT if You can turn Your passion into a living wage. But, better still, have a PASSION for MAKING A LIVING. Too many kids that didn't work out that way.
As far as Boomers being "Me Generation" and beggaring their great grandkids with so many TRILLIONS of govt. debt? Got be them that started the "tradition" right? Not likely to be them who ends it, either. But all that is long conversation that isn't really my specialty, so there is that.
I'm a boomer, and my engineering degree (BSEE) cost about $14.000 dollars. Schools raised prices. A lot of my wealth, about half came from inheritance. I lost $300.000 of my 401K, in 2000 in the tech crunch. I had 10 cents on the dollar and built up my account again, investing in China. At the same time, I had to change careers to become an RN. YOU FORGET INHERITANCE IN THE CALCULATIONS. Some of the wealth accumulation comes from inheritance.
The past 40 years sucked with frozen wages, NAFTA, changing to a service economy. It is not the boomers that created the debt. It was the foreign wars and the country building from Bush through Trump. The Vietnam war was paid for by Social Security money. SO DON'T PLAY THE VICTIM. Right now I am living like a pauper so I could pass wealth on to my millennial son.
Biden and Trump created trillions in debt, paying off Boeing for a plane that wanted to crash itself, airlines that did not fly, cruise ships that did not sail and franchise restaurants and retailers that had no sales. I got a 1000 dollar check, which was about five cents on the dollar to what the elites got.
Check out the Bayh/Dole act of 1980, where the Government provides research billions of dollars, in grants, from the NIH. Fauchi gives companies and universities billions each year for Pharma. American taxpayers get no royalties on drugs patented and developed. Pharma then charges the US, the highest prices in the world for drugs. These drugs are licensed for manufacture as generics in other countries. Molnupiravir, the cure for HepC, AIDS and others are examples of such drugs. The taxpayer pays 8 billion a year for AIDS drugs to be given in Africa. Fauchi pushes drugs and withholds others. Medical Literature is based on what drugs the NIH advocates. You only write papers if you get money. Money is behind making repurposed drugs like Ivermectin, and Hydroxychloroquine from being successful. There is very little profit in curing bacterial infections and virus infections. There is more profit in curing chronic diseases like high cholesterol or diabetes.
Fauchi may have seen an opportunity to develop new antivirals and vaccines at the cost of the taxpayer. Is Fauchi a devil or an angel? Could the monies paid by the American Taxpayer for Pharma research be recompense for colonial ambitions?
Ivermectin (Stops glycosylation of the virus) and Hydroxychloroquine (a Zn ionophore, mitigates immune response, inhibits glycosylation, inhibits RNA replication)
Fauchi has power that people do not realize. The Bayh/Dole act created the machinery for making the best pharmaceuticals, at the cost of the American Taxpayer, and it has corrupted the medical system.
Years of giving that money to corporations have bankrupted the American people. Tax breaks for the wealthy to offshore money, treating China as a developing country with favored trading status, exporting jobs, hiding money, and now ruining our Government. Has anyone taken China off these trading statuses?m Maybe the hostilities with China are not real, just like climate change and living in the Hamptons, Martha's Vinyard, or Maura Lago. Words vs. behaviors create distrust..
It is not the boomers; it is not a system of racial inequity, it is the system of corruption. GET YOUR AGE, RACE, GENDER, CULTURAL GLASSES OFF. LOOK AT REALITY. It is the elite corrupting our Government.
Ah well... Got WAY distracted on another Substack. Read this from MIT student 2005 which was mebbe overly hopeful. Hindsight being 20/20:
http://web.mit.edu/lawclub/www/Bayh-Dole%20Act.pdf#:~:text=The%20Bayh-Dole%20Act%20has%20created%20opportunities%20for%20conflict,while%20simultaneously%20funding%20these%20faculty%20members%E2%80%99%20research.%20%2816%29
THIS one fascinated me, but couldn't find a DATE it was written:
http://ipadvocatefoundation.org/stories/120409/
Part I thought was MOST significant was:
"IP Advocate: Beyond misuse and misinterpretation, what is the worst you have seen?"
"Dr. Barnett: It comes down to money. Nowhere does it say that Bayh-Dole was intended to earn big bucks for universities. Yet many universities and corporations in the system skip right for the money, any way they can get it. Ironically, apart from some rare, substantial transactions over the nearly 30 years of Bayh-Dole, universities haven't got all that much of the money, and have done even worse at the other stuff, such as dealing with software and data.
"The problems also show up with university inventors. I've seen money-driven behavior with federal funding that wouldn't do so well if it surfaced in the press. It isn't that money driven behaviors are themselves bad. It's just that within a university, in the conduct of science and other public interested research, it's the public interested part that gets squeezed out. Who advocates for the public interest in the push and pull between inventors and administrators over Bayh-Dole inventions?"
Got one other to read first thing tomorrow. Then will think on this some.
I'll hafta read over this a couple more times, M. Odin. Not saying I DISAGREE with much. Just 4am and I'm not "woke" yet. (Haha! ;)
I'm at the end of a long day. Let's see... 14 hours at computer. But I don't need a study of this kind to tell me the obvious. IOW, I agree completely. Didn't have good instincts on the exact numbers. Dunno when the study was done but I've seen this for a decade or two without really even looking into it.
PART of it, to me anyway, is that the Millenials and Gen-Zers expected the world to be handed to them on a platter, and got a bad attitude when it didn't. Sure, over-generalization but answers some questions anyway. But Boomers and GEn-Xers? AFAIK, had a lot to do with raising a large number of kids that didn't have much respect for authority of any kind other than themselves.
Can't remember when. Long ago. Person who ONLY writes on race complained that she was getting shuffled to side where she works, because she's fifty. Said she might hafta tgake up ageism but didn't. Yah, ALL generations think they know everything and their parents are idiots. But most grow OUTTA that in their 20s, right? Or maybe that isn't the way the world works now, but I'mn a dreamer. I think of how it should/could work.
My comment to the article was that I thought it a fairly strange society that the young know everything there IS to know. And these are the generations that "know" it's better to be "non-binary" when it comes to males and females. Hmph. Mebbe You can smell that I'm not impressed, but don't claim to be "on the right side of history." Wouldn't WANNA be, if that's what it takes.
Like I said. Too tired.., I get up around 2 or 3am so my days PAST done. TY for reply, M. Roscoe. :)
I would not use societal constructs. The standard for the elites should be drawn at 10%. NOTHING ELSE IS REAL. The median of Age, Religion, and Race are all skewed by the elite whales in the country. Also, the data the government gets is the data they know about. Holdings elites have in other countries and are not known. Many of the Elites do not want anyone to know what property and income they really have. I would look at the tax codes of the 1960's, and 1970's, when the US dealt equitably with elites. Reagan did something to the tax codes to remove the "fairness in tax codes." I have not yet had time to research what it was.
You quote the upper 20%. IT IS THE UPPER 10% of the income of the wealthy; when semiconductor manufacturing moved offshore, my wife and I, who were semiconductor engineers, became registered nurses. We had to study and break ass constantly to make ends meet; I would much instead study biology, pharmaceuticals than what the Technocracy is doing to society. They are clouding your vision by using emotionality in looking at societal constructs. They don't care about you or me; they want power. Looking at anything else but the wealth they have gets your eye off the ball.
Wages have been frozen for 40 years, we have been in managed decline as job opportunities have dried up with NAFTA. The US changed from a manufacturing society to a service society.
Semiconductors have a large capital load; the labor load is meaningless compared to the bottom line. High capital load - a plasma etch machine would cost $500,000. Labor load, an operator would get $25.00 per hour(52,000 + 25,000 medical) $75,000/yr to work two plasma etchers. Equipment would have to be replaced every five years, so on straight-line depreciation over five years; therefore, two plasma etchers would be $200,000. The worker's wages were insignificant to the cost of the equipment. A mold injection press at an auto plant may cost $125,000, and an operator making $25.00 per hour would run it. Auto manufacture could be offshored. Why move semiconductors offshore? It was to hide money offshore and not repatriate it. A security risk, sure, if the supply chain is cut. Object-oriented manufacturing (where a person makes something but has no idea about what the product is for) is considered safe. I knew of one manufacturer making the head of Javalin (FGM-148) missiles in China rather than Pittsburg. The head requires very fast real lime Optical. Recognition
FROM THE MID-1950s TILL 2000s, the US was tops in making semiconductors. It changed for several reasons, but the major reason is that semiconductors are highly profitable, and money and ownership could be hidden offshore. Would you trust bastards like these?
They don't care about race, but why are they funding Social Justice Causes with philanthropy? Politicians who have power and want money and Elites who want power are in synchronicity. The government looks inept, and you can't trust it. The elites are out for themselves and you can't trust them. The established media and established social media can't be trusted. TRUST IS NECESSARY FOR SOUND FINANCE AND A SOUND SOCIETY. There is evil in what you are looking at. You are going after people like myself instead of the very wealthy.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT EVIL IS? I have been looking at evil. Radically Evil, (Kant), Banality of Evil (Arendt), and Pure Evil, which Scientific American says is a myth. Marcuse and the use of repressive tolerance is pure evil. The intentional repression of another's view with no listening to logic is destructive to the ego and spirit. Defining evil, I would say, is having pleasure, schadenfreude in destroying the ego or someone else's spirit I have seen evil as a psychiatric nurse working in a state hospital. Evil there was the product of a sick mind. Borderlines were the worst to take trust and betray it. If God were omnipotent and good, why did he put evil in the world? My answer is so that man can understand what good is. As you fight monsters, beware not to become a monster yourself. That is why I retired. If you lose money, you lose nothing. If you lose health, you lose something. If you lose character, you lose everything.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychological-power-satan/