Debt: a socialo-communist illusion that people will have to pay for that always happen in history ... as long as money is not free since it burdens interests ... many people just forget that the huge debt accumulated means a huge interest to repay ... through taxes generations after generations: that's how wealth is scientifically transfered from the mass to the few for hundred of years without people being concious of that. If people are so more educated today, they must not being taught certain things in some fields "All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, as much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." - John Adams Or if you prefer something more actual, according to the author of a book's site (who is a professional accountant and auditing professor) a Top banker declared him: The banker said "If the American people ever copy a brochure exposing this secret and the masses of Americans learn the truth, they would hang the bankers for what we did to them - and they would vote to follow the US Constitution. " Then he laughed and said, the American people are too stupid to figure out what we have done to them. http://www.bankhonesty.com/jfk.shtml
Business for real entrepreneurs is being devasted by SOCIALIST CORPORATION MONOPOLY THAT IS MULTINATIONAL FIRMS. Many french firms have to fly elsewhere when they can (but many can't) because of unfair competition with these big monopolies. A french association of business men exists to denounce that but of course the medias only give the speak to the big firms. In france it has been demonstrated in legal court than these BIG FIRMS in Construction field at least had alliance to systematically pay administration people so that the small firms are never chosen whereas statistics show that only them make employment grow whereas employment by big firms only shrinks. In Europe Big Firms are abusively subventioned with public money (that is to say tax and debt governement which is no more than delayed tax) they fear no competitors since they make alliance, whereas small firms who take real risk has no subvention, high buraucratic procedures and HEAVY SOCIAL CHARGES . since it is nearly the double of what a engineer for example receive as net salary . But if you take vacancy and illness it can be even more more than the double of the net salary. Big firms have the same charges but thanks to subvention and when they have to liquidate some employees they receive again public money. So it is not astonishing that the economy is shrinking. European people live also on debt but the difference with US is that it is more governement debt than personal debt that's why we have a more apparent social protection than US which is a fake : we have to pay the social price elsewhere for unemployment and poverty which expands at a rate that seems unstoppable ! The real unemployment rate in france is more than double the official rate according to an internal inqury from a right wing government haha ! They also change administrative directives so that some people are not been counted as unemployed so you can perhaps even triple the official rate !
Do you speak for the present or the future because it depends on how you can interpret the shrinking of the light on the american eagle: http://www.greatseal.com/symbols/cloud.html
Today's baby-boomers were also once idealistic twenty-somethings that viewed the previous generation as f-ckups. Of course, they didn't take into account that they themselves had yet many years left to be hit over the head with and run over with the exploits of humankind and of their own generation. They still had to fall for the old scams, belive the old lies, find out things for themselves, learn from their own experience (if they learn). It's just human nature, as a twenty-something, living in the grownup world for the first time, feeling one's oats as one makes a modicum of success, to think one's own generation is more progressive and won't make the mistakes of others, but at the age of twenty-something, though making a way in the adult world, that's really barely only about 10 years older and wiser than a kid. So what can really be known so much first hand about life and what it can do to you in comparison to older generations when there's so many many years left ahead to get run over and scarred oneself? Form opinions then, surely they'll be much different from the opinions today.
Interesting thoughts OHLC. I see this, too. Many people now thinking they can't have families (there are other reasons besides economic, but it's important, too) or postponing until they are further along in life. Frightening, though, how those at the lowest economic rungs reproduce without a thought to the consequences, both personally and environmentally. Look at the developing world and overpopulation. What a mess. g
Both of my parents were born slightly before 1946, but I definitely consider them to be baby boomers. I doubt most people would consider someone born in 1964 to be a baby boomer. When Douglas Coupland wrote "Generation X," he was talking about people of my generation, usually the early children of the baby boomers, but he included people born in the sixties. If someone was a kid or early teen when they saw Star Wars in the theater, I consider them Gen X, but that's just me. People who went to the original Woodstock, now those are baby boomers. The boomers definitely have wealth, and the liquidation of their stock portfolios as they near retirement has a great deal to do with this bear market. The same thing will happen with Gen X around 2030 or so.
Quote from vitajex: I doubt most people would consider someone born in 1964 to be a baby boomer. The U.S. Census Bureau of the U.S. Commerce Department does, however: http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/1990data.html When Douglas Coupland wrote "Generation X," he was talking about people of my generation, usually the early children of the baby boomers, but he included people born in the sixties. With all due respect, who cares what Coupland was talking about? The guy's basically just a writer expressing his own personal opinion. The boomers definitely have wealth, and the liquidation of their stock portfolios as they near retirement has a great deal to do with this bear market. The same thing will happen with Gen X around 2030 or so. I think this bear market has much less to do with liquidation of stock holdings by those who are "near retirement" than with the paranoia induced by the dotcom bust in March of 2000, 9/11, and various financial accounting anomalies. It's my own personal belief that, with respect to Boomers and (early) retirement, many people have it dead wrong. I think a whole buttload of Boomers will forego retiring early and continue to work a lot longer than anyone ever anticipated (and that may have a lot to do with this bear market).
I was born in the early 60s, and I read Gen X long ago I thought he totally nailed what it meant to be at the tail end of the bb generation, in a way that no one else had ever come close. He gave name and mention to topics that a lot of people were dealing with daily, but did not conciously recognise, until they read it. http://www.scn.org/~jonny/genx.html here are a few i liked: Air Family: (page 111) Describes the false sense of community experienced among coworkers in an office environment. Legislated Nostalgia: (page 41) To force a body of people to have memories that do not actually possess: "How can I be a part of the 1960s generation when I don't even remember any of it?" Now Denial: (page 41) To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future. Poverty Jet Set: (page 6) A group of people given to chronic traveling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permanent residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people names Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent-flyer programs at parties. Tele-Parablizing: (page 120) Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots: "That's just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses." Ultra Short Term Nostalgia: (page 96) Homesickness for the extremely recent past: "God, things seemed so much better in the world last week." Veal-Fattening Pen: (page 20) Small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered disassemblable wall partitions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named for the pre-slaughter cubicles used by the cattle industry. Anti-Victim Device (AVD): (page 114) A small fashion accessory worn on an otherwise conservative outfit which announces to the world that one still has a spark of individuality burning inside: 1940s retro ties and earrings (on men), feminist buttons, noserings (women), and th e now almost completely extinct teeny weeny "rattail" haircut (both sexes). Consensus Terrorism: (page 21) The process that decides in-office attitudes and behavior
I am from this generation but I prefer the former: there was more honor, love of truth, compassion and less ambition. I have more interesting conversation with them than the present generation because they have the memory of history and so have a vision of today that present generation completely ignore for many: that's why history repeats the same error pattern because one new generation and old things some unimportant but also some important are forgotten.
Yeah, well they're human beings you know. They are aware that their child might die, so they have a couple few to carry on the family. Surely the poor have a right to a progeny? Also, they often require a lot of help in the manual labor most of them are engaged in, and, without the social security of the advanced nations, need someone to be able to care for them in old age. If you're really so concerned about the environment, I'm sure you would be better served (if you are AMerican) by checking your own out-of-control habits; they are assuredly having a bigger impact on the environment than anything a penniless, or a thousand penniless, Ethopians might do.