I will try to reply at length later, but this is an especially bad week here (I'm putting in Troy-type hours, averaging about 18-19 hours a day, 7 days a week), so I can't now.
I will only provoke things a little bit by saying, and I tell my students this quite frequently, that this is the best time in human history to be young, and despite all its current idiocies (in and out of Washington) this country is the best place to be.
The only time and place in human history that is remotely comparable to the US of the last 25 years and (IMO) the next fifty was industrial Britain between 1750 and 1875. And I mean remotely: unlike us, the British were starting from a place of amazing badness (poverty, life expectancy, nutrition, environmental quality for 90 percent of the population that a tiny, tiny fraction of Americans today approach (by tiny, I mean on the order of 10,000 or so in a country of 300 million). And, unlike that of the world we live in, the technological change at the heart of the British "economic revolution" took multiple generations to develop: going from Watt/Bolton's improved steam engine and widespread adoption of the open hearth steel-making process was well over a hundred years, or
five generations of British workers. Today, however, the technological shifts of the information economy are changing at rate of close to five times
per generation. And history shows that paradigmatic technological change, economic wealth, and human quality of life are tied together like Siamese triplets.
Oh this makes for lots of stress as more skills and knowledge sets become obsolete faster.
But even with our effed up government, even with our effed up senses of entitlement, even with our completely effed up education system, this country offers opportunities most of the world cannot.
Don't believe me? Well, take your attention away from what the know-nothing "thought leaders" from CNN, FoxNews, NPR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Times, Newsweek, etc etc have been foisting up on you. Dig into the historical record. Look at how not just GDP, but life expectancy, human nutrition, medical care, childhood mortality rates, have been on a sustained upward trend that dwarfs ANY cyclical "downturns" during the lifetimes of anyone alive today. And that INCLUDES the "great recession" of 2007-2009 and, yes, it also includes the "Great Depression" of the 1930s.
Ignore the superficial mansions of the robber barons, and look closely at their quality of life of the top ten percent -- or the top one percent -- of the American population back during the era of Carnegie, Rockefeller. And you'll discover that it was a life that was more solitary, far more nasty, far more brutish, and a helluva lot shorter, than that of the bottom 10 percent of today's population living in South Texas, Appalachia, and Watts.
Shit, I wasn't going to go on, and here I've done so anyway.
I don't agree with Tex on why we are so rich and why the opportunities are so amazing today.
But it really bugs me when people tell me how rotten things are compared to 25 years ago or whatever. Because most people don't realize how recently it was that the "good old days" really sucked compared to today.
I was a young adult 25 years ago. I remember what it was like 45 years ago. And (enter condescending mode) I've studied professionally the economic life over the last 300 years or so.
And none of them were even close to the opportunities that Americans with their $7.65 minimum wage, their $3.50 loaves of whole wheat bread, their $30,000 hybrid cars, and their $150 for five minutes with a doctor have.
Not even close.
Yeah, 2007-2009 sucked the big one. Yeah, my life sucks (though in my case, its largely because I'm a serial fuck up). Yeah, its tough if you aren't educated or you're in a field that no one needs anymore.
But even with my fuck-up-ness, I'm far better off today and so are all of you and so are almost all Americans than my middle-class parents were 45 years ago. And the difference gets starker with every generation you go back.
And that's comparing to the past of the richest country in human history. Compare it to the rest of the world, and its history, and it should shame you that you're complaining about how poor you are compared to the disgustingly people who are even richer.
Go ahead. Keep complaining how much it sucks and how rough it is today if it makes you sleep better at night.
Go ahead and let those thought leaders and marketing bastards keep manipulating you into giving you more of your wealth in the name of soaking the rich and making life more fair and better like it used to be.
Go ahead.
Be wrong.
After all, being wrong is one part of the inalienable right of the pursuit of happiness you have and none of those thought leaders and marketing bastards won't even try to take away from you.
(Come to think of it, one of the great things about America is that you've always had few restrictions on how you go about fucking your own life up. I wonder if *that* is as well correlated with GDP growth as are growths in nutrition and life expectancy. Hmm.)
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)