economics: good news

Just think of how many votes those food stamps and free phones are buying. That's what it's all about.

ge.

bably

You can see exactly that in that BLS data, where spending quanta cause wiggles up, which drift back down, followed by another pulse.

The jobs-response time to Obama's shovel-ready jobs should've been a few months at most.

I think we could start recovering very quickly if we stopped flogging employment, industry, and employers. Less than a year. But that's not going to happen--we've got nothing but back-breaking free-lunch schemes as far as the eye can see.

The page I'm on in my current book describes it perfectly. It's deja vu, backwards

can

Yep. I'm torn between trying to fix it, or just weathering it.

James

e:

ct

Nor after,

ange.

Creating real jobs in new technology areas? Think about mobile phones.

robably

Why would you think that?

The downward drift is the sub-prime mortgage crisis continuing to screw up the US economy - and the world economy ...

There weren't many of them.

That's what Hoover thought back in 1929. Happily, the rest of the world has noticed that he was wrong, even if you haven't.

e-lunch

For which you should be grateful. They've worked, veven if you can't bear to admit it.

Not as backward as the author or the reader.

ou can

As Hoover demonstrated from 1929 to 1933.

How would John Larkin know?

Since your cures aren't exactly state of the art, we'd all feel safer if you elected to weather it. You've no doubt saved any number of people from sailing off the edge of the earth, but they probably should have chosen great circle courses.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Best example of how we get snowed with unemployment numbers was on the news yesterday: Unemployment down a fraction of a percent in California. Yay! Payroll number didn't grow but is down by 4800. Say WHAT?!

The answer to that is visible right here in town. Lots of people living with their parents, haven't worked in two, three years now. They simply gave up.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

A slight drop in median income can hardly explain an explosion of the number of food stamp recipients by 14 million.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Too many of them have degrees in history, sociology, political science, English, human ecology, psychology, journalism, art, music, and law.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

English,

Some yes. But most that I got to know worked in production, as company electricians, welders, and so on. It's sad.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

English,

Add "Black" and "Women's Studies".

[snip]

living

simply

That is actually a good precedent for a new standard of living, which involves more efficient use of living space and other resources, through

intentional communities and sharing, and a realization of a life with much more leisure time so it can actually be enjoyed. So many people own and live in houses with much more space than they really need, especially when spouses split up and children leave them with "empty nests" that still require time and expense for maintenance, heating, cleaning, etc.

It is an anachronism to believe that higher GDP equates to more jobs, because individual workers are more productive due to automation and robotics. And the only jobs that are essential for our long term comfort and security are those that improve the infrastructure and provide for our basic needs. We really do not need to be buying ever more extreme computer games and more powerful cell phones and faster cars and other toys which promote aggressive behavior and social isolation and disconnectedness from our natural origins.

It is socially and physically unhealthy for people to work long, hard hours and commute long distances in stressful traffic conditions in their quest for individual wealth as measured by their material possessions or personal aggrandizement. The workplace does provide an opportunity for interpersonal interaction, but that function would be better served by recreational activities such as team sports and community projects.

Paul

English,

My youngest was on line for a PhD in biology - evolutionary, population based biology. When it came about that Oklahoma State had

*one* post for an associate and 700 applicants, she cut her losses and took a Masters.

So even STEM is seeing the effects, although had she known enough enzyme chemistry, she might have been better off. She's fine, though.

I tired to get her to target agribusiness, but it didn't happen.

--
Les Cargill

Ok, agree with much of what you are saying. However, this living together is rather unintentional and in many case increases the stress level in all involved people greatly. Parents with a newborn cramming into the husband's former bedroom (when he was a kid), the baby starts screaming every three hours at night, the now rather aged parents aren't used to this anymore, grandpa is ready to go up the walls, grandma is getting closer to a nervous breakdown, and so on.

The other issue is that most of these people have no job whatsoever. They hang out at their parents house with nothing to do, playing video games all day long or something like that. That is most definitely not healthy.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Yes, when this living arrangement is a move of desperation and not a conscious decision, it creates stress and dysfunction. But if it can be done as a lifestyle choice, and proper arrangements were made to accommodate everyone's needs, it could benefit all. Some parents may welcome having their children and grandchildren living with them, and if they have a lot of extra space, it need not cause major problems. It is probably healthier for young children to be cared for by family members rather than day care, and it would be more flexible to allow the parent to search for work or be able to survive comfortably with a part-time or minimum wage job, or start up a small business.

It works much better with a larger intentional community, with a dozen or more families of all ages. I have lived in such a community and it was a

wonderful experience, and I think it was very beneficial to residents of all ages, from newborns to senior citizens. There were conflicts, but part of the process is coming together for meetings and seeking consensus on issues, and there were many occasions where people could socialize and practice interpersonal relationship skills as well as group bonding activities. It may not be right for everyone, but if a larger portion of society would learn about such alternatives and try to accept them as more mainstream, it will have a profound effect.

That is a relatively modern problem. When I lived at Koinonia in the early

1970s, there were no video games and computers and social networking, and people amused themselves by taking (and teaching) classes, playing musical instruments, watching movies or TV shows together, card games, cooking, baking, gardening, pottery, reading, writing, meditating, sports, hiking, and relaxing in a rustic environment. There was always something to do, and there was a constant ebb and flow of new people, as it was set up as an institute of education where people could take courses (and offer them when they had special talents).

The trend toward greater isolation and alienation from close cooperation

with other people started just after WW2 with the great American love affair with the automobile, and the great (white) flight to the suburbs, supported by cheap gasoline and a surging economy in the Eisenhower days of the cold war. The cities were originally good places to live, where one could easily walk to local grocery stores and markets, and row houses were inexpensive and encouraged neighborly relations. Many neighborhoods were tightly knit based on cultural commonality and origins, where people were proud of their Polish or Greek or German heritage and offered glimpses into old world traditions.

But now the cities are IMHO a lost cause, and the trend of Yuppies moving back into isolated islands of elite renovated townhouses amid forests of

ghettos is not the answer any more than fleeing ever further into rural areas and creating pockets of suburban McMansions and dysfunctional neighborhoods based on conformity and competitive conspicuous consumption and material status symbols. Ultimately, perhaps, we will be able to solve the societal problems that create ghettos and support the culture of drug abuse, mental illness, hatred, and violence that makes the cities dangerous. Until anyone can feel safe walking anywhere, anytime, with no reasonable

fear of being bullied, mugged, or murdered, we have failed as a civilization.

The cure is major social engineering and a major makeover of the legal system and the very heart and soul of every citizen. Religion has failed. Education has failed. The war on drugs has failed. The only hope I see is establishing self-sustainable communities where people can enjoy life based not on materialism but on "agape" love for each other and our natural environment.

Paul

:

...

t

lks

e o

nglish,

Not areas in which John Larkin is remotely knowledgeable. The US does over-produce lawyers, but has a desperate need of more competent historians, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and journalists to sort out it's misfunctioning political system.

English, art and music are professions where the exceptionally good do exceptionally well, and the merely competent have to eke out a living as teachers. Nobody has yet worked out how to select out the potentially exceptionally good reliably enough to limit the production of discards to a level that the teaching profession can absorb. Psychological testing has a way to go yet.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

s f

The census figures break up the population into quintiles. All four of the lower quintiles ended up with lower money incomes. The lowest quintile just held it's own on equivalence adjusted income, but the next three up the distribution showed losses of 1.6%, 1.9% and 1.6%. You'd expect the food stamps recipients to be concentrated in the lowest two quintiles, mostly in the lowest quintile.

The "explosion" mostly took place in 2009, and these figures compare

2010 and 2011, so they mostly address the question of why the take up on food stamps is still rising, if rather more slowly.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

A question, if it's not too personal: Why did you leave this setting?

It is a healthier living but we must leave people the freedom to choose. That choice is the missing element in today's communal living arrangements. They are not voluntary arrangements but more like "Ok, ok, if you don't have a place anymore you can stay with us for a while" ... which then turns into pretty much "forever". People feel obligated to take in their relatives.

We need to make it easier again for people to hang out their shingle, start their own business, instead of creating ever more laws that stifle them. That's what I was hoping to come out of the last election but it didn't.

Communal living and society in general must continually develop coping mechanisms. Blaming it on "this dreaded new technology" or "we didn't have those things in the good old days" does not help. Look at the Amish, they show how to do it. Once their kids are grown up the parents usually tell them "Go ahead and try out the modern world if you want to, get a driver's license, check out cars, live in a town". I think they call that the "Rumspringa phase". Some kids love the outside world and decide to remain in it, others say "Nah!" and come back to the Amish way of living. In one word: Choice.

It does not require a city to live like that. All it requires is to ditch the stupid zoning laws. Then you have all this in a small village as well. I did, in Vaals (Netehrlands), pop 5000 back then.

To me a city is something I do not wish to spend any extended period of time in if possible. I am ok in it but glad every time I can leave.

Religion has most definitely not failed. Not for me. Look at the Amish. They are deeply religious and among the most successful and healthy living communities that exist. And growing.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

                 ...  There were o

And wouldn't have, even if Romney had won. His side are all for less regulation on their kind of operation, but the the 99% would have stayed as regulated as ever, and - if anything - less well placed to make it into the 1%. The Republicans couldn't care less about small start-ups and single-owner businesses - they don't make big contributions to electoral spending.

n , s

Actually what it requires are high population densities. The Netherlands gets that more or less automatically. The US and Australia thought that four dwellings per acre was about right, and anything more was - ipso facto - a slum. City centre residential prices show that people now think differently, but there is still a lot of low density residential development around where people can keep to themselves.

e

Odd.

e

You are a member of a shrinking minority. Religion has a lot to offer to people who are comfortable in strait-jackets, but sadly rather more to people who get their thrills by constructing straight-jackets and tying other people up in them. There aren't many of these kinds of psychopaths around, but religion does suck them in.

But not very rich nor all that productive. Not the community that going to work out that earth grazing asteroids are a real - if low frequency - threat, nor put up an early warning system nor put together an asteroid deflection mission.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Arguably, such disciplines may be the only ones that can save us from self-destruction. I think we have passed the point where technology alone can solve our problems, which are ultimately how human beings can live together in peace.

The human mind is truly the "last frontier" and it will involve both technology and the humanities. We have become to a large extent slaves to and dependent upon our technology, rather than being freed from toil and

drudgery so we can explore our relationship with the natural world and our fellow travelers upon our "spaceship earth" as the supposed "crown of creation". We desperately need the humanities to do this, and it will require breaking free of the shackles of isolation and alienation that has become an unintended consequence of electronic entertainment and communication.

Paul

How many wars were started by technologists? How many mouths were fed by historians, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, and journalists? How many of the conveniences that we take for granted today were designed and produced by historians, sociologists, etc?

Rubbish. I do some writing and know a little about the music biz. Like professional athletes and actors, only a very tiny percentage of those that try, ever really succeed in converting talent into income. Even among those that succeed, often find that they can't do it for more than a few years. For the others, they teach, they write textbooks, and they work on the fringes providing support services.

Also, forget about psychological testing. That's been tried many times and failed. The high fashion method is now genetic testing for predisposition toward both beneficial and destructive tendencies. I can see this becoming a major issue for hiring and promotion.

Agreed if you assume that the status quo will be maintained forever. However, that's unlikely. Human intellectual progress has not improved much for the GUM (great unwashed masses) over the centuries. Certainly the intellectual capacity of notable individuals has improved over the years, but only at the price of specialization. The days of the Renaissance man, knowledgeable in all of science, humanities, religion, and animal husbandry are long gone. Today, it's the specialist, and it's becoming worse. There was a time in the

1960's when I fairly well knew the features and functions of most of the common tubes and transistors. Today, there are more new devices introduced in one month, than all those that I previously knew. In such a specialized world, I don't think there's going to be much time for the humanities. Perhaps as a hobby, but not as part of the job and social functions.

Do we live on the same planet? Is your water clean? Is your air clean? Do you have enough to eat? Do you have a roof over your head? If yes, then in what way have you become a slave to the technology that provides for your basic necessities without the need to pillage the neighboring villages, grow your own crops, or migrate with the seasons? Yes, you're dependent on agribusiness for your food, manufactured housing parts for your house, and various government agencies to keep your air and water clean. But, are you really their slave? Methinks not. And yes, we are getting farther and farther away from the miasmic quagmire from which originated, but is that really such a bad thing? Or are you proposing yet another "back to nature" revolution usually designed to push us back into the stone age?

That's odd. I'm isolated, alienated, and probably a bit strange. Yet, I don't seem to be having any social issues. I've watched several generations of kids grow into everything from professional criminal to brilliant scientist, without any obvious correlation to their degree of isolation or alienation. You won't have much trouble finding slackers that are excessively immersed in artificial realities that have difficulties coping with the real world. However, if you watch them after they get fed up with how "fake" the artificial reality eventually becomes, they return to normal rather rapidly. I've seen it happen several times. A major dose of the humanities might help, but I don't see the situation as "desperate".

If you are looking for a problem to solve, I suggest you concentrate on the big one. The planet has too many people and needs at least a reduction in growth rate. Reducing populations has historically done in some rather brutal, anti social, and uncontrolled ways, none of which are morally, socially, politically, or technically acceptable. If you can solve that problem, all the other peripheral problems will magically solve themselves.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I wanted to stay, and the majority of the Koinonia community were in agreement, but unfortunately the organization was in the form of a director who had his own pompous visions of how it should be, and he in turn answered to a board of directors with little direct involvement with the community. So they embarked on a strategy to capitalize on the "new age" fad and tried to support themselves by offering trendy classes in crystal power and astrology and such, while they neglected their maintenance and infrastructure, and engaged in a self-destructive squabble among various

factions. By 1982 they were on the verge of bankruptcy, and the physical

plant was sold at auction in 1985 (for about $500,000) to a dentist who transformed it into a B&B:

and

everyone,

alternatives

choose.

while"

If there were more intentional communities, AND if people were conditioned to accept such a lifestyle as beneficial and preferable to our current paradigm of individualism, isolation, and cutthroat competition, this "burden" would not be foist upon relatives.

stifle

The "stifling laws" that the Republicans wanted to repeal were those that protect the environment and natural resources from exploitation by big business, and not so much those which affect individuals and small start-ups. Communities as I envision them will be ideal for such small businesses, and will contribute especially to local economies and self-sustainable lifestyles with little need for commuting and reliance upon distant resources and markets.

parents

to,

The Amish provide a good example of one successful community model. The fact that they maintain a way of life that has continued to be viable over

100+ years of major change in the mainstream world is a testament to the possibilities. It is but one of many models, and is certainly not for everyone, but their tradition of encouraging alternate experiences is essential to healthy intentional communities. I do not propose the IC as the only alternative, but it should be a major mainstream option rather than a fringe experience. I also envision a network of communities, each with their own expression of their ideas for a harmonious and fulfilling lifestyle. And they should welcome transfers in and out, with each other and with the more mainstream way of life, which will probably be gradually phased out as conditions change. But our present expectations of a traditional suburban home, often marginally inhabited by individuals and disconnected family members, are not realistic or healthy for most people.

The small village is certainly a viable option, and is often realized in the form of eco villages and transition towns. I lived in a similar size small town (Yellow Springs, OH), and I greatly enjoyed it. As a college town (Antioch College), it was vibrant and exciting, with a strong sense of community. In fact, Arthur Morgan, a president of Antioch college, was a

strong proponent of intentional communities, and some of his descendants are members of a community organization in Yellow Springs.

I have experienced some of the best and worst of what cities can offer. In the late 1960s I really enjoyed the brief time I spent in New York, and in

1970 I travelled cross-country and enjoyed some time in St Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle. A year later I explored Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, and Boston. But during that time I also experienced the more meaningful joys of the wilderness, backpacking in the Cascade mountains and the Appalachians, and embracing the emerging concepts of ecology, environmental stewardship, and community. Thoreau and Walden were major influences.

Amish.

I should have said mainstream religion. The Amish have a relatively pure and simple version of Christianity that is close to its true roots, and they

practice what they preach. I have much respect for them, and although I do not share their beliefs, they are a testament to what strong faith and interpersonal support can accomplish. The major religions have been tainted by the worldly desires for wealth and power as evidenced by obscenely ornate church buildings and accumulations of material possessions, and the replacement of true love of God with worship of saints and icons and intermediaries in the form of hierarchical church officials. After learning about and experiencing many such religions, I was surprised by the consistency and attempts at true Christianity that are expressed by Jehovah's Witnesses. Although I do not accept all of their beliefs, and I still consider myself an agnostic, I respect their quest for biblical truth, and their consistent moral and ethical expression and rejection of worldly worship of money and power.

Paul