by D.J. Rippert
Author’s Note: This is the second installment of Understanding America’s Broken Economy. The first installment can be found here.
The Anti-Luddite Pledge. I have worked in technology for the past 31 years. In that time I have met tens of thousands of “technology people”. They are generally very mathematical, precise and quantitative in their approach to problem solving – with one huge exception – The Anti-Luddite Pledge. The Anti-Luddite Pledge holds that technology will always create more new opportunities for employment than it erases old opportunities for employment. I see no reason whatsoever to believe this to be true. In fact, I see several reasons to believe that idea is fundamentally wrong.
Obama’s pseudo-gaffe. On June 15, 2011 President Obama stated in an interview that ATM machines and airport kiosks were examples of technologies that took jobs away from people. You can view the video of his remarks here. Needless to say, the Anti-Luddite Pledge crowd came out in force to pillory the president for his remarks. The vast majority of the comments in the blogosphere were ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) chattering. However, there were some reasoned responses, such as the Economist’s take. But even the best retorts missed some key points. First, nobody seems to debate that airline kiosk technology replaces people. All the debate was about ATMs. Second, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the number of bank tellers in the United States is rising. So, Obama must be wrong. Not so quick. According to the BLS, in 1985 there were 485,000 bank tellers in the United States, in 2008 there were 600,500. In 23 years the number of bank tellers grew by 24%. Unfortunately for the Anti-Obama crowd, the US population grew by 27% over that same period. Moreover, the BLS predicts that the number of bank tellers will grow by a total of only 6.2% over the 10 years from 2008 to 2018. The US population is expected to increase by 10% over that same period. Even the jobs created in making and repairing ATMs can’t make up the difference – especially if the manufacture of ATMs is done in China.
Stabbed by the sharp end of an exponential curve. Please take a close look at the graphic I have embedded with this blog post. I intentionally used a “vanilla” curve without any labels on the axes. We can debate the shape of the curve that represents technology change. We can debate the shape of the curve that represents societal change. Can we really debate whether the curve of technology change will eventually “break through” the curve of society’s ability to absorb change? I don’t think so. In fact, I suspect that the two curves have already crossed and are diverging from one another at a growing rate.
Out of the mouths of fiends oft-times come gems.
“On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.”
– Theodore Kaczynski (aka “The Unabomber”)
In summary: The problem is not technology. The problem is society’s ability to absorb the economic impact of technological change. There are two curves – technological change and the ability of society to absorb the impact of that change. I believe that the two curves are destined to cross. In fact, I theorize that they already have crossed.
Next up, globalization and economic upheaval.
makes you wonder what the purpose of technology is eh?
It’s like a deal with the devil. In exchange for making your life better…the guy who previously made a living doing what the replacement technology took over… now has become “surplus”.
DJ sez this is a problem with us learning how to accommodate technology?
this is worse gloom and doom that Jim B’s fiscal version…
LarryG:
I’ll get into possible answers later in the series. For now – there are three possibilities:
Vastly improved education and job skill building that keeps the majority of American workers above the “automation line”.
Perpetual wealth transfers in line with Kaczynski’s thoughts on what a soft-hearted liberal would do.
Chaos as the elite consume such a high proportion of the country’s wealth that the ever-growing underclass (inevitably) engages in violent revolution.
Everyone loves the education answer. I am not so sure. It takes decades to accomplish and that exponential curve eventually gets so steep that only a very small percentage of the population will ever have the raw intelligence to stay above the “automation line”.
We need to try the education route. Societal change takes time and we need to “buy” some time. Tax off-shoring of jobs, enforce our borders, increase the funding for education at all levels.
This is a complex topic. No one action will provide a cure.
Automation based on the silicon chip is proving to be one of the greatest disinflationary developments in human history. We are increasingly able to provide abundant levels of goods and services with fewer and fewer workers. What the internal combustion engine did to agricultural labor, the silicon chip is doing to manufacturing and services. And just as total agricultural production has increased but slipped as percentage of GDP, the same mechanism is working against manufacturing and the low-skill consumer service industry (Best Buy, anyone?)
The question becomes, what do we do with all of that surplus labor? We can provide them first-world levels of goods and services, but how can they make the money needed to consume those goods?
Increasingly we will see the need to prop up demand for productive and efficient sectors through mechanisms that act like transfer payments (direct transfers, government employment, or consumption subsidies). They do not need the labor, but they need the customers.
Less productive and scalable enterprises (education, healthcare, etc.) will likely be squeezed, but there are only so many patients you can assign to each surgeon, or students you can cram into a classroom.
Byurokrat:
“The question becomes, what do we do with all of that surplus labor? We can provide them first-world levels of goods and services, but how can they make the money needed to consume those goods?”.
Yep, that’s the question. It’s also an increasing cause of the wealth gap.
One thing for sure – off-shoring the jobs we have and allowing illegal immigrants to take some of the other jobs we have only makes things worse.
The three headless horsemen of the collapse of demand for American labor – automation, globalization and illegal immigration. With those three zombie trends running amok in America it’s no wonder that we have jobless recoveries.
From a callous business perspective, I’m not sure that offshoring and immigrant labor are huge reduction in global demand. They still consume, and as their incomes increase (which you are certainly seeing in China), the increase the quantity and quality of the goods and services they consume. You can only offshore so much before labor-cost competitiveness becomes a wash.
It’s also the case that using lower-cost labor is simply a business decision along the production curve; low-cost transport and cheap labor make our iPhones cheaper, and increase Apple’s margins. It’s a win-win from the corporate perspective.
And keeping Americans above the “automation line” is a noble goal, but hard to do with the increasing cost of higher ed, and decreased investment in K-12 education. It’s one thing to say we need to be more valuable than machines, it’s another things to build the labor pool capable of meeting that goal.
How do we pay for the education of all those high-value-add workers? Redistribution of profits from performing sectors to subsidies for worker education? Laudable, but I just don’t see a political pathway for that to be a likely outcome.
“Redistribution of profits from performing sectors to subsidies for worker education? Laudable, but I just don’t see a political pathway for that to be a likely outcome.”.
I’m afraid that I don’t see much of a choice.
I think the US is on the path to a wealth tax like the one they have in France. The essential proposition is that high net worth people (not high income, high net worth) must pay a certain percent of their net worth in taxes every year. You can make that payment by having a high income and paying income taxes. However, if you have a high net worth but don’t have a high income then you cash out some of your net worth and write a check. The tax focuses on the idle rich which, in my opinion, is a decent idea to consider.
Candidly, I am sick and tired of the Boomer generation having wrecked the United States now sitting on their asses in early or semi-retirement while paying very low taxes. I know way too many people between 55 and 65 years old who have a mound of money but generate very little income. It was these very people who benefitted the most from the ridiculous run up in the deficit. Now they sit on their plush butts and try to pawn the problem they created off on their children. They need to either get back to work and pay their share of taxes or pay their share of taxes anyway.
On the Boomer generation, we are of like mind. As a 28 year old swimming in student loan debt, I can’t help but feel the Boomers pulled up the ladder to prosperity behind themselves.
I see the transfer from productive sectors to less-productive sectors and the under-utilized labor/consumer base as a new sort of social contract, composed of X tenets:
1) Businesses are free to generate profits within certain bounds (minimizing negative externalities), will continue to have the ability to hire/fire labor as needed, and will be subject to a continually lax regulatory environment. Corporate earnings will be lightly taxed.
2) Idle wealth, financial/speculation, and high-income earners (all beneficiaries of the highly-productive sectors) will be taxed in order to provide a consumption base for their goods, and to finance/subsidize education at an internationally competitive level.
It’s hard to see what other sustainable arrangement exists. Any thoughts?
Nope. That’s the arrangement I see too. The only real addition would be for the tax advantages of charitable contributions to be capped at a low level (no more Bill Gates and Warren Buffet building their own NGOs) and inheritances taxed at 50 – 75% for the next 20 years or so. I really like the inheritance tax idea. The Boomers raided the cookie jar and now it’s time to give it back.
As a 53 year old Boomer – please accept my apologies on behalf of my whole disgraceful generation. Never have so few hurt so many for so long.
I am quite serious. I am embarrassed to be part of the generation that wreaked America.
“but there are only so many patients you can assign to each surgeon, or students you can cram into a classroom.”.
Maybe.
Laser eye surgery seems to let one surgeon perform a whole lot of operations.
And … I saw a software package beat the bejesus out of the two best Jeopardy players of all time. I wonder why that software package (or one like it) won’t be teaching my kids algebra in a few years.
” I wonder why that software package (or one like it) won’t be teaching my kids algebra in a few years.”
Because pedagogy is a complex, high-order cognitive skillset. Regurgitating the basics of algebra is simple enough; teaching a kid how to learn those and other skillsets is something beyond any software package I’ve ever heard of. It’ll take a lot more tech than a word-association machine that can beat Ken Jennings on a quiz show to bring the economies of scale of automation to K-12.
excellent discussion!
re: ” keeps the majority of American workers above the “automation line”.
is that something you coined or did you borrow it from elsewhere? I’ve never heard it in those terms before but it perfectly describes the issue IMHO.
“Perpetual wealth transfers in line with Kaczynski’s thoughts on what a soft-hearted liberal would do.”
from who? that’s clearly unsustainable unless you’re going to have the wealthy working to keep the poor from being poor and I don’t know of any place on earth that “works” that way even in the so-called “socialist” countries.
“Chaos as the elite consume such a high proportion of the country’s wealth that the ever-growing underclass (inevitably) engages in violent revolution.”
you mean like the chaos we see in places like Yemen or Haiti?
we already have urban enclaves like that right now, right?
Re: Above the automation line, dreamed it up in my fertile imagination.
Re: Urban enclaves like that now – maybe not quite to the Yemen level but there are plenty of parts of Detroit where I wouldn’t venture without a loaded weapon handy. Now that the 99 week unemployment benefits are running out and the upcoming budget bomb threatens to cut all government programs – watch out!
There’s a reason I bought a farm in rural Maryland where we grow food and all my neighbors have guns and know how to use them. Anybody who thinks I’m paranoid just hasn’t read enough history.
Don raises really important issues here. Are automation and globalization behind the secular stagnation in American jobs and incomes? I am open to his argument, though I am not yet convinced. I look forward to to see how he builds upon it in forthcoming posts.
Here are some key questions that I will have top of mind as I read Don’s posts.
(1) Since the time of Ned Ludd some 240 years ago, people have been worrying that technology/automation was destroying more jobs than it was creating. Fortunately, the Luddites have always been proven wrong. That’s not to say that the Luddites aren’t right this time and the “anti-Luddites” are wrong. Perhaps as we near the Singularity, technology is accelerating at such a wicked rate that the neo-Luddites finally have finally gotten it right. But given their miserable track record over the past two centuries, I would suggest that the burden of proof is on the neo-Luddites to demonstrate that their fears are founded.
(2) Perhaps that proof exists. One place I would look for it is in U.S. productivity figures. Has labor productivity (economic output per worker) been increasing more rapidly since 2000 or less rapidly than in previous periods of American economic history? If the hyper-efficiency of automation is destroying more jobs, then we would expect that hyper-efficiency to show up in the productivity numbers. Does it? I don’t know. If the U.S. has shown a sharp and sustained increase in productivity in recent years, I could be persuaded that the Luddite fears are valid.
(3) Another place that I would look is the rate of job creation and job destruction. A dynamic market-based economy continually destroys old jobs and creates new ones. Job growth results when job creation exceeds job destruction. The automation and outsourcing theories would predict an increased rate of job destruction. Is that, in fact, what we’re seeing? I don’t know. But we should find out.
An alternative hypothesis is that job and wage stagnation results not from excessive job destruction but faltering job creation. If the numbers show a fall-off in job creation, that would suggest different causes. I would look to (a) the wind-down effects of excessive consumer debt, especially mortgage debt, (b) the macro-economic damage of federal indebtedness now exceeding 100% of the GDP, and (c) the impact of excessive regulation and uncertainty regarding taxes and other government policy.
Jim:
All points well taken. As you know, my worries revolve around the shape of two curves and the speed of change. The first curve is the impact of technological innovation. The price performance of chips create a exponential growth curve around Moore’s Law. However, software doesn’t follow that same curve and the software is critical for automation. I’ve never seen a well thought out curve for the growth of total automation (infrastructure, software, adoption). However, I suspect is has a shape that is a muted version of Moore’s Law. I also suspect that the line for societal change in the United States is a line and a line with a low vertical slope. Regardless of actual data – if these curve shapes are right – they must eventually cross.
I will address your points about consumer and mortgage debt in future posts. However, I see that as more a symptom than a root cause. I believe that Bill Clinton fully understood that he could goose the economy by making credit more available (some would say too available). Bush did roughly the same thing by pegging interest rates to near zero and making the overly abundant credit too cheap. Unable to copy either of those tricks, Obama goosed money into the system through deficits (although W gave that a pretty good press himself).
These actions temporarily eased the pain of the fundamental change in the level of demand for American labor. People with stagnant incomes could improve their standard of living by borrowing, then borrowing cheap, then by no longer paying income taxes or working for jobs financed by deficit spending.
My suspicion is that even if you peel away the easy credit, cheap credit and deficits you’ll still have a structural problem with the economy where economic growth has become detached from job growth.
Appologies in advance if this has been answered elsewhere.
On 1) Is what is being debated here a pure Luddite fallocy or something more like, for lack of a better term, “Luddite-lite” — where the impact of technology isn’t quantatitive (i.e. the same number of jobs stays roughly the same) but rather qualitative (i.e. machinist become burger flippers)? A lower bar, to be sure, but maybe just as relevent.
On 2) If DJ’s theory is correct would we necessarily see a sustained spike in overall productivity during the past decade or could it be confinde to certain fields (previously high productivity workers becoming even highter, or STEM fields, for instance)? One could invision scenerios where larger numbers of low productivity workers move into non-tradeables which have a lower marginal product of labor but where they are more protected from the fierce competetion of higher productivity workers. This might muffle an aggrigate productivity effect.
re: the cost of education…
It’s a giant racket.
You do not need to go into deep debt to get a good education in a field that needs workers.
We CHOOSE to go after the high-priced “spreads”.
this is more about people’s financial illiteracy and inability or refusal to deal with economic realities.
We should NOT be encouraging young people to go for 4 years of traditional schooling if it means 20, 30 40K in debt.
I do not know what the heck is wrong with people now days.
In days gone by – the WAY to EARN a college education was :
1. – excel in high school and go for “real” scholarships
2. – make up the money difference with a JOB… even if it meant reducing credits to make room to earn some money.
we’ve turned into a nation of idiots on this issue IMHO.
Jesus H. KeeeeRIST – we’ve got KIDS that are 30K in debt moving back into their parents homes (that are often underwater) and we are complaining about the “hollowing out” of America.
We’re “hollowing out” alright…. between our ears….
You MUST ADAPT to the times. If you refuse to do this – it’s NOT someone else’s fault.
All the whining that we are doing must be enormously amusing to the young foreign folks who are coming here to use our Universities and take the jobs that we refuse to get ourselves educated for.
We’ve become a nation of Facebook fools.
LarryG –
Do you want to become a millionaire? Or, a multi-millionaire? I’ll tell you how. In India there is a whole layer of the educational system that does not exist in the United States. It is a single, full time year of intense education between college and your first job. These intermediate schools teach only subjects where they have contracted demand for jobs from serious companies. They accept only students with college degrees. They then beat the living crap out of these students with practical, skill based education.
Who wins?
The corporations who guaranteed the hiring spots get students that have the right skills and the motivation to get through the intermediate schools.
The kids with degrees that didn’t get them jobs (or, at least, not very good jobs) get jobs that pay well.
The schools pick the smartest kids with “the wrongest degrees” and make a tidy profit by re-educating the educated.
The state gets a more productive workforce and people who have jobs sufficient to pay off those onerous student loans.
So, you ready to start the Fredicksburg Institute.
I hadn’t heard that about Indian education, but it makes total sense. That’s where the logic of technology and free markets will take you unless you have deeply entrenched educational interests to stop you.
India enterprises are doing some path-breaking in for-profit medicine, too, showing how to drive down the cost without sacrificing patient outcomes.
All I am saying is that if an American kid is FOCUSED on getting an education that nets him a job… he/she does not have to go into hock up to their eyeballs to do so.
and for some reason… we’ve adopted the attitude that we “have no choice” but to borrow money hand over fist to get an “education”.
It’s like we’ve all taken a stupid pill.
Sure… it would be NICE to be able to go to college – all expenses paid without having to “dirty” one’s hands doing some REAL work to earn some REAL money so that you appreciate even more when you graduate and can get a REAL job that allows you to afford a REAL car and save up towards a REAL house , etc.
We’re telling our kids that it’s “okay” to start life deep in depth because there is no other choice.
What a triple load of guano goop!
whatever happened to going after a 3.5 QCA and accepting a full scholarship to a lesser known college that you COULD AFFORD as opposed to believing that you had no choice but to hit yourself in the head with a hammer?
this little window into the current state of the country reveals a lot about what our problems are… and …it’s just downright inexplicable how people think now days…
I was a very successful high school student (salutatorian, 34 ACT score) that went to one of those lesser-known universities. I had some scholarship money in my first year, but full-ride scholarships are truly few and far between, with far more qualified students than scholarships. It was a luck-of-the-draw situation, and it didn’t work out in my favor. Same went for out-year grants.
Tuition nearly doubled in my four years there $6500/yr to $12250/yr). I lived off campus with roommates (cheaper than on-campus housing); working 30 hours per week at $8.50 was enough to pay for my living expenses (rent, ramen, and PBR) and books. Took out only enough to cover tuition, still graduated on-time, but with $27,000 in debt.
Hard work isn’t enough to cover $12k+ per year for tuition on top of living expenses. You can only work so much to and still make the grades in college, and taking a lighter courseload only increases your costs: tuition will rise more the longer you are in school, and you are missing out on gainfully employed years the later in your 20s that you get your degree.
It’s not the 80s anymore. College is goddamn expensive and unless your parents can contribute (mine could not, and did not leave me the option to live at home while in school), you have little choice but to take on enormous debts and working as many hours as possible.
Well, sometimes you just get lucky…. this popped up on one of my web sites just a few minutes ago.
Here is a fascinating article from The Atlantic on the jobs that died between 1983 and 2002 and the jobs that blossomed ….
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-fastest-dying-jobs-of-this-generation-and-what-replaced-them/257154/
and it’s info that is largely available to anyone contemplating obtaining an “education” – and ….largely ignored …especially by those headed to debt.
it’s becoming apparent that what a 4-yr degree is really about is not necessarily a job but one’s life “bona fides”, your “brand”, actual job, be damned.
I always get a kick out of reading about some guy or gals “success” story and their 4-yr degree was at some obscure out of the way (but totally legitimate) institution – where your very next question is “where is that located”?
Why do sons and daughters think the only way to get an “education” now days is 30K worth of debt?
go figure. You’d think their parents would be more practical especially after all this talk about passing enormous “debt” onto them from SS, Medicare, and the Fed Debt.
Perhaps we should call them the “sub-prime” generation.
but even worse than that – the kids being shoved down the debt hole are buying pig-in-a-poke diplomas that won’t get them squat in today’s job market – because they don’t seem to care what the jobs in demand are (and are not).
The main reason I am so hard on this issue is because we ourselves now days “blame” govt, outsourcing, illegals, the 1%, Bain Capital, etc, etc, etc
but we ourselves are a big part of the problem because we as we complain, we blithely ignore the clear realities that directly affect us.
It’s bad enough when you are 55 and out of work but when you are 25, have the wrong degree and in debt up to your eyeballs.. life’s prospects are even more dismal.
It’s a tough world out there these days. Kids need to know the truth when they head for college.
I missed “thebyurokrat” later response and should respond.
No one can sit in another’s shoes and I’ll not be so presumptions as to sit in yours….
but 12K a year that does not include room & board sounds pretty pricey to me. ( I know there are even bigger numbers).
I went to nighttime community college for several years at night right after my 40hr a week day work (as a apprentice/technician) and would get home at 10pm … My employer helped out with books but I had to pay tuition and travel expenses…
it took a while to get a 4 year degree but at the end I owed not a penny.
there has got to be cheaper ways to get a degree than 12K a year in tuition alone.
Am I so far out of it that there are essentially no options cheaper than 12K a year for college sans room & board?
even then.. if I was starting out again.. I’d have to swallow hard to sign up for a loan that I knew was going to take so much of my earnings that I’d have trouble paying for a car and a place to live.
I’m not saying it is easy.. It’s not. It’s damned hard and if I was put in the same situation that young folks are put in today… perhaps…I’d end up with the same dilemma… but when you do taxes and you see (for example) a young women with 24K in debt and she’s working as an intern at a non-profit-museum… you know that she’s got a tough road ahead….
I’ve seen a ton of young people in their 20′s carrying significant college loans barely making it at a service sector job …and it leaves me wondering if I were that young again if I’d make that same choice and maybe I would but it just doesn’t feel right.
at any rate… my apologies to “thebyurokrat” for my less than warm views.
and I hope you continue to comment here at BR…. ..
No need to apologize. A lot of students have made poor decisions, including myself. However, public university tuition in my home state (not Virginia) is quite expensive, and the state economy never truly recovered after the 2001 recession, so state support for tuition fell precipitously during my undergraduate years. However, I’m one of the lucky ones that managed a scholarship at a good graduate program, and got a good job after receiving my master’s.
In my view, taking those loans to have well-paid professional employment at age 24 turned out to be a good bet. I’ve made much more with this path than I would have working through the hard slog of one or two classes per semester until I finished.
Not at all debt is bad debt, but all debt carries an element of risk.
Hey byurokrat:
You sound pretty bright to me. Drop me a line – DJRippert@GMail.Com. I know a lot of people from 3+ decades of work. Who knows? Maybe I know somebody who wants to hire somebody like you. Get some of those loans paid off.
Thanks for the offer. I am, lucky enough, one of those lucky millennials that has been gainfully (though who wouldn’t want more?) and professionally employed since graduation. I started my career just a few months before the fall 2008 crash, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have held onto my job (and been promoted) in the meantime. Others my age have not been so lucky, through no real fault of their own.
” please accept my apologies”
please provide a list of particulars with reference to the rape of American by boomers…
please provide a list of particulars with reference to the rape of American by boomers…
National debt
Consumerist society
Housing bubble
Disco
Jimmy Carter, including …
Stagflation
Iran Hostage Crisis
Global warming
Virtual extinction of bluefin tuna
War without end
Endless partisan politics and gridlock
Gas tax frozen for past 26 years = traffic fiasco
Tim Kaine
George Allen
Virtual extinction of Chesapeake Bay Menhaden
Bankrupt social security
Hyper-inflation of college tuition w/ no accountability
I forgot a few ….
Obesity epidemic
Wealth gap
Dead zones in Chesapeake Bay
Death of religion
Ex-urbia
Rise of the early retiree societal freeloaders
Last flight of space shuttle
Death of American manufacturing
I think you are experiencing confusing here. Proximity is not causation and demographics is not motives.
Boomers were not “created” to be termites of civilization.
The National Debt you can fairly attribute to GOP lawmakers who inherited a balanced budget (and a 5 trillion debt that was being slowly cut) from Clinton and they proceeded to play stupid games with “we have no choice because we were attacked” and “deficits don’t matter”.
The 5 trillion attributed to Obama is nothing more that the continued accumulated of the structural deficits already in place when he took office.
SS is very successful Heritage/CATO propaganda to convince the gullible that SS is “broke” when, in fact, it will continue to generate more than a trillion a year as far as the eye can see. A trillion a year is close to what all incomes taxes generate – 1.3 trillion. It is the ONLY program that was explicitly designed to automatically reduce spending to stay within it’s revenues.
SS can be fixed quite easily if the zealots will be quiet long enough to realize that the problem is one of Demographics…not boomers and relatively minor reforms (compared to other cuts in govt) can put it back to where it needs to be.
I also point out that the “boomer” problem is not just a US problem.
It’s happening virtually around the world with most industrialized countries INCLUDING Singapore AND Hong Kong.
so perhaps your rant should be against Boomers International!
there are some things you got correct, to be fair
Disco for sure
early retirees – right you are and courtesy of our GOP friends who believe
in a large and lavishly funded DOD of which you also have a life of luxury yourself living in DOD-land…
wealth gap – indeed all the govt workers that comprise the “mighty” NoVa economic engine … make far more than the average RoVa smuck.
then I do notice you’ve confused your favorite state Va – with the boomer plague .. or it plaque?
All in all.. I think the boomers just happened to show up in the wrong place at the wrong time – in number of course.