If you do happen to query him on future trends please do let us know what you have found.
arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of de Bivort Lawrence Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 5:29 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America Murray is actually quite pessimistic about the prospects of the two Americas he describes reconnecting. He does not in COMING APART see or forecast any coming paradise, Libertarian or otherwise. I've been thinking of trying to catch up with him and explore how he sees things evolving -- he lives fairly close-by. Cheers, Lawry On Jun 19, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Ray Harrell wrote: I wonder when Murray is going to write about how the Artistic Culture has survived in his Libertarian paradise? REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 3:08 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America Whatever is happening is a mix of things. Gloom does seem to have taken over -- a general feeling that even when you really try, you're not going to get anywhere, so why bother. Things afflicting the US economy, and parts of Canada as well, include the growing power of the 1%, the loss of jobs because of automation, the sending of jobs abroad where they can be done more cheaply, the purchase of products we used to make from foreign sources, and a general uncertainty about where things are going. The proportion of the labour force that has stopped looking for work has grown, as has unemployment among those who still want to work. And college degrees don't seem to matter much anymore. The old system of middle class propriety and sobriety is fading out, as is the middle class itself. However, something else that isn't given much attention as yet may be happening. In his "Coming Apart", Charles Murray refers to groups called something like "street corner gangs" that are increasingly present in Fishtown, where his poor whites of America live. These guys don't want steady jobs or responsibilities, but they will take advantage of whatever may come their way -- welfare, petty crime, or whatever -- and they are learning to stay afloat quite effectively in the increasingly depressed economy. Yet one has to wonder what would happen if their numbers grew. Might they move society away from it's present state of manageable disorder and more deeply toward chaos? Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: de Bivort Lawrence <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 12:12 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gloomy America Gloom is popular these days.... Not that there is not good reason for concern, more for some than others. It is when gloom and pessimism become a psychological condition and displace the natural abilities of a person or community to be proactive in resolving the reasons for concern that gloom-as-fad becomes dangerous, and perhaps fatal to the person or community. I see such self-defeating levels of gloom in some people and some communities in the US and Europe, and, to refer to some of the messages posted here, to Canada as well. To an interesting extent, the nature of this gloom is ironic: wealthy societies and their members falling into gloom because their levels of wealth have fallen, while in poorer parts of the world optimism reigns as people experience and expect relative progress, though the level of progress they may achieve will still be far below that thought of as the norm in the wealthy societies. Is there some karmic justice in this? Have the wealthy merely become spoiled, and in their ensuing gloom they guarantee their further fall toward the global median? I've always credited Canada with better political discourse, cleaner and less-selfish motives than the US, and better (foreign) policies. It saddens me to see Canada seemingly sink into the political and psychological norms of the US. I so much hope that I am overstating the case. Cheers, Lawry From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 7:45 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Gloomy America Worth reading, but brace yourselves, it's gloomy. Ed http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/us/many-american-workers-are-underemployed -and-underpaid.html?_r=1 <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/us/many-american-workers-are-underemploye d-and-underpaid.html?_r=1&hp> &hp Sample: Now, with the economy shaping up as the central issue of the presidential election, both President Obama and Mitt Romney have been relentlessly trying to make the case that their policies would bring prosperity back. The unease of voters is striking: in a <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/19/us/politics/20120419_poll_doc s.html?ref=politics> New York Times/CBS News poll in April, half of the respondents said they thought the next generation of Americans would be worse off, while only about a quarter said it would have a better future. And household wealth is dropping. The Federal Reserve <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/business/economy/family-net-worth-drops-t o-level-of-early-90s-fed-says.html?ref=binyaminappelbaum> reported last week that the economic crisis left the median American family in 2010 with no more wealth than in the early 1990s, wiping away two decades of gains. With stocks too risky for many small investors and savings accounts paying little interest, building up a nest egg is a challenge even for those who can afford to sock away some of their money. Expenses like putting a child through college - where tuition has been <http://trends.collegeboard.org/college_pricing> rising faster than inflation or wages - can be a daunting task. When Morgan Woodward, 21, began her freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley, three years ago, her parents paid about $9,000 a year in tuition and fees. Now <http://students.berkeley.edu/finaid/news/detail25.htm> they pay closer to $13,000, and they are bracing for the possibility of another jump next year. With their incomes flat, though, they recently borrowed money to pay for her final year, and to begin paying the tuition of their son, who plans to start college this fall. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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