Politics

Big_Easy said:
Were either of them ever elected?
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Every $1 I ever made came from somebody else, in voluntary exchange for their perceived value of my wares. This is a moral system of exchange.

Comic Jimmy Carr made a brilliant point about Socialism:
Capitalism is a terrible system, apart from all the f*ing others. ...Communism is a great idea...wrong species. The thing about Capitalism is that leans into what we are; we're quite self-interested. It works.
[Communism is defined as] from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. Yeah, it just doesn't scale. All of you are Communists...with your family. If you've got kids, you're a f*ing Communist at home. To each according to their needs; you take care of them, of course, you do. Things get wider in your local community, you might be a Socialist. Try and help everyone out. And then you get up to the nation-state level, and you go, yeah, f*k those guys.

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Hogpatrol said:
The "cart analogy" often attributed or linked to Mike Rowe in discussions on socialism describes a society as a group of people pulling a heavy cart, where a growing number of people eventually decide to stop pulling and climb inside to ride.
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This is related to the Ringelmann Effect (the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases). In a series of experiments with a group of equally strong men in a rope pulling exercise, 8 men pulled with the strength of 5, 5 men with the strength of 3, and 3 men with the strength of 2.

Our own American example of Thanksgiving utterly proved it. Originally, the colonists were socialists who pooled all their crops into a communal bin. Once they nearly starved, they decreed that everyone must grow their own food. Their bounty was so large the next year, they gave thanks(giving).

Capitalism is the most "democratic" economic system: $1 = 1 "vote" for goods and services. Now, what the market decides to pay X for is more of a philosophical/cultural/spiritual matter. That sports figures make more than K-12 teachers is not the fault of Capitalism itself, rather, it points to an issue with human nature. Capitalism is merely a mirror to ourselves.

However, Corporate Capitalism is different, and uses the power of the State for its own benefit. I disagree with the concept of corporate "limited liability". It's a recipe for the sociopathic externalization of costs and risks. Corporations don't care because they don't have to; there is no causal pain for their mistakes. Fines? Phoooey, just pass them off to customers as costs.

If a corporation is de facto your agent, then you the shareholder should be partly responsible for the actions of your agent.

Same with politics, an exercise in power through the threat of armed violence. I.e., no more secret ballot. Public (and paper only) ballots. To vote for politicians should be to share responsibility for their actions.

Forcing personal responsibility for corporations and politicians would very quickly clean up 80% of our mess. (The remaining 20% will somehow always exist; humans are not the proper building blocks for Utopias.)
 
Since we are renaming lakes now I have a suggestion :sneaky:

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Wheels said:
Is this one redder. ;)

Should be a good game in another month.

View attachment 788482
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Yes looking forward to watching it on TV. Also looking forward to UT v A&M game. Very conflicted on that one. I wear my UT shirt and A&M cap. Wife is only a UT grad.
 
Pheroze said:
Could it get better? Yes, wanting a better world did not start in 1990. Making it better did not start recently, and people have always known it can be better.
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True, but that's my point as well. I fight for a better world. A better one for the median American that is. I believe what's good for the goose is good for the gander, not the top 0.1%. And that better world doesn't happen with tax cuts for the rich, and massive deficit spending. Check out figure C.


I suppose a better saying would be, the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor. The bottom decile didn't get a raise for 35 years. I'd be pissed off too if I didn't get a raise for the majority of my working life. The Reagan and Bush admins weren't very kind to them. Like Trump said, the American people tend to do better under democrat administrations.
Pheroze said:
Another big difference between those who endorse state regulations and those who oppose it, is the fundamental belief in the goodness in people. Those who want more rules, more controls, who are focused on the extreme wealth of a few people, tend to believe the worst in people in my experience. That’s why the controls are necessary.
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That's not true. Right-wingers love to control folks and impose their will. What a woman can do with her own body, what plants I can grow in my own backyard, what drugs I can ingest, when and where I can buy alcohol, who you can love, who you can marry, what you can do in your own bedroom, etc. @rookhawk is on the right and he was just mentioning that more cops would be better for him. Police, prisons, "tough-on-crime" commercials are already popping up in my state for Republican candidates. Is that believing in the "goodness" of people? No. If the right believes in the good of folks so much...why support mass incarceration?
Pheroze said:
One generation trying to plan a utopia for all others is hubris is the extreme.
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I have no illusions of planting a utopia. I understand incremental progress. But we are clearly backsliding on the economic front. And it's only a matter of time before that debt catches up with us. Assuming that the country will survive it is a pretty big gamble.
 
Big_Easy said:
@rookhawk is on the right
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I know this would be unfathomable to you, but most of this forum's members are a lot more nuanced than "right" or "left" and far more interested in getting it "correct" than identifying with a wing of the uniparty. I like ideas, not parties.

While one of my kids is named after our 40th president that is definitely "Right", another one of my kids is named after a socialist president who happened to create the modern conservation movement so I guess that would be tit for tat. In more recent eras, the last substantial political donation I made was to Bobby Kennedy because I believe his domestic agenda to end regulatory capture of our agencies and restore a physically healthy society is a top concern. I also prefer diplomacy to interventionism. Until about four seconds ago RFKjr would have been considered a conservative democrat or as they are now called, Nazis.

If you believe "Right wing" means stop complaining and go do something productive for yourself and your fellow man, then I guess I'll be right wing.

They probably didn't cover it in the modern UCF curriculum below:

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Big_Easy said:
True, but at the same time. Here we are on our flickering screens none the less.

By the way, why TX049?
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I'll start from your closing remark. I'm not sure if the question posed here is for the sentence before, questioning the name, or addressing why I think that's a concerning disruption. If you're asking why I'm choosing to respond, I enjoy trying to understand how other people think, see a problem, and arrive at a specific solution. Not in a disparaging or demeaning context, but in a genuine "how did this person arrive here?" curiosity. I'll engage because that's the value proposition I see. Fundamentally we likely disagree on many things, but I will still buy you a beer if you’re ever in DFW because disagreement is more interesting than agreement. If that's the origin for 'why', it's the best explanation I can offer. The reason why my response grew to the length it did is because the flight delay grew to the length that it did. It's possible I would still be writing this evening if it had been cancelled…

If the question is about the name, it's a requirement with a Texas driver's license to remind people at every opportunity of that fact. The choice in numbers was a consequence of others choosing names, growing tired of it, and a subtle, secondary nod to Texas.

As for the disruption, regret is a powerful depressant. This thread has touched on mental health--including the relationship with screens--and I can't imagine the realization of regret for time spent on a screen instead of "in the real world" (for lack of a better term) would be anything other than near-cataclysmic for society. Of course, that would be predicated on the event coming to pass and doing so in a large, general manner all at once affecting large numbers of people--a possibility that is coincidentally enabled be interconnectedness. Think of it as a population level identity crisis. I will pivot back to this at some point.
Big_Easy said:
I think there is that debate going on, but it's just not on this thread.
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Fair. My point was more the intensity and visibility of the debate which I would venture it's less than the magazine cover debate I was referencing. I would say, "hold this thought a second."
Big_Easy said:
If there is ever a question as to your luck, or the Ovarian lottery. Ask yourself; how lucky would you have been to be born in the DRC under the reign of King Leopold II, versus the USA in the 1990s?
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This is a different approach to the same conclusion about recognizing the fortune for where and when I was born.
Big_Easy said:
Correct. It has always been that way, but it has greatly accelerated in the past 50 years. To the detriment of the median American worker.
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Big_Easy said:
Yes, because it doesn't have to be, and didn't use to be that way. We can return to such times if we choose to. But even if we don't. People could stop falsly blaming the ones winning less.
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Glad my assumptions on your underlying point were correct and I appreciate the follow up. The issue here is that "because it doesn't have to be, and didn't use to be that way" is not addressing the manner in which it is malicious. As an extreme example, I would make the same point to argue in favor of slavery. The argument is anti-progressive in that sense. The conclusion about "blaming the ones winning less" is fine, but I don't think that's your main point and is presumably more directed toward others in this thread. If it is your main point, the argument would then translate "because the winners are annoying" which is valid, but from my experience with youth sports is something I'm not sure society has the means to correct. The issue remains: why do you think wealth concentration is problematic?
Big_Easy said:
Depends upon what time period you're looking at. From 2007-2022 it was going down for the bottom 20%.
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Agree that it depends. I should have said the trend is overwhelmingly in that direction (which then: past performance does not... etc.). The sentence was flawed, but was meant as a transition to the next point which was the more interesting question I wanted you to answer. The issue is how and when you slice the pie based on when you determine the origin "story" is. It's also complicated because wealth increased despite wage depression during (some of) the same period you're showing. It all goes back to how you choose to measure and the metric you are using. So I agree it's not as straightforward as presented.
Big_Easy said:
Small businesses in my experience tend to treat their employees better than larger ones. More like human beings rather than an employee ID number. I therefore cut them more slack.
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In retrospect, I should have left out the reference to small business. The intent was to try to get a definition of a big business by pointing out why it's important to define, but I unintentionally defined it as "not small business" in the process (and the number I was referencing would be using SBA guidelines as the underlying differentiator). I'm fine if your point is that small businesses treat employees better based on your experience. It's still undefined what constitutes a "big business.”
Big_Easy said:
No, not always. But many times when the economy grows it grows unevenly. VERY unevenly. See the prior sources I cited about a 24% increase for the median vs 1100% increase for CEOs. The right talk about "a rising tide lifts all boats," but the tide doesn't rise the same for every socioeconomic level. That's the fallacy in their logic.
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As said earlier, glad my assumption about your underlying argument was correct. I disregarded responding directly to this earlier because I'm more interested to learn how you reached the conclusions you did, but I will offer a counter to the premise you made below.

Regarding CEO compensation, the data you provided earlier from EPI has significant missing context and a seriously flawed methodology underlying the numbers. These numbers were intended to provide a partisan talking point, and not intended as numbers for later researchers to use as foundational data points.

To start, the data EPI uses cherry picks 350 CEOs instead of using the thousands of data points for publicly traded firms available as a result of disclosures (not even addressing the missing data from private firms). Instead of trying to account for outliers, the research is based off that data set. CEO compensation today is complex, but a significant portion includes stock bonuses which the data is conveniently framed capture as it encompasses one of the most significant bull runs in history (stock prices nearly doubled in the period he looks at), and this framing was intentional for that purpose.

This data is then compared to the data of "non-supervisory workers" using data that, 20 years prior, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (who publish the data he is citing) noted that the "non-supervisor worker" is inaccurate and incomplete and should not be used (relating to source and methodology of data collection). There was a move to actually stop distinguishing the two because the data point was that bad, but BLS chose to instead continue publishing it with an asterisk (probably because there was a cost associate with formatting for new data and a lack of funding for BLS). In short, the comparison data used was considered flawed 20 years earlier. Even with that understanding, it's effectively trying to compare the top 10% of CEOs for publicly traded firms against the bottom 80% of workers across public and private firms. That's slicing the pie intentionally to arrive to a specific conclusion. The correct comparison would be CEO pay relative to worker pay at the same firm over time.

Worse still for the authors concerning pay and productivity, if you use the numbers recommended by BLS--and recommended across multiple administrations--you'll find that pay and productivity track one another significantly better than the gross divergence suggested by EPI.

Other arguments about CEO compensation generally fail to capture changes to IRS reporting over similar periods which resulted in changes to compensation structure and packages and how they may or may not be captured. At the same time, executive compensation packages are enormously complex. We probably agree that private jet usage as a perk--even when accounted under IRS rules appropriately--exceeds the monetary value assigned, but the missed value is subjective and difficult to quantify. The IRS approach is sensible in my opinion, but I yield that numbers do not capture compensation and this cuts both ways.

There are plenty of papers which show CEO pay is modeled by firm size relatively accurately (the abstract for Xavier Gabaix paper "Why has CEO Pay Increased So Much?" is literally "A tractable model of CEO pay. An upshot: the six-fold rise in CEO pay between 1980 and 2003 can be fully attributed to the six-fold increase in market capitalization of large companies during that period"). I was trying to interrelate issues which is partly why I was hoping you would arrive at a more concrete definition of big business, but I was likewise trying to arrive at "what is the problem with big business." You answered that already which ties into what follows.

I am going to circle back to earlier in the interest of time. I would honestly prefer to break out the below into a new post, but I’m not sure if forum decorum. I would like to invite input on the below from others, but I don't expect people to read--much less care--about long exchanges between two people. So this may get lost in the noise.
Big_Easy said:
I think there is that debate going on, but it's just not on this thread.
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I think this debate has merit as a component of the larger debate which is the one I think most warrants it: the national mood. There have already been posts addressing the rate of mental illness increasing in society. I dislike blanket statements, but I will admit I agree with @rookhawk's underlying premise that our generation is lazier on average than other generations. There is evidence which supports this grossly uncomfortable truth, both anecdotal and academic, but the problem is laziness is a symptom of an underlying issue and itself not the issue.

I stated earlier I think we diverge when it comes to attitudes. I'm more optimistic while you're more pessimistic. Positive and negative. I think I recall someone saying they feel you have a myopic view of the world, so I don't believe I am alone in this thinking. We've had similar lived experiences on a generational level (not speaking personal) and we're obviously only two data points, but we diverge on (at least some) of our views even if we find common ground on what is (or perhaps is not) an issue. If you look at the world and see all big business as exploiting employees, based on my own mistake in using SBA guidelines to frame the argument, we're talking about half the population seemingly repressed. That's going to weigh on a person.

I asked you why wealth concentration is an issue. This wasn't meant as a "gotcha" but as a curiosity. I'll give you an answer I believe is true: when the distance between the top and bottom expands at an accelerated rate, it's difficult for the bottom to see a way to the top. You made a statement somewhere back referencing the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" on the American Right. Consider how that statement works in principle. On a truly "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" it means nothing because they believe they will find a path to prosperity so you aren't even addressing them in the first place, but as a pejorative, it only works if the one saying it believes that path doesn't exist.

I wanted to address differences across generations and why we need to be careful about subjective realities. Laziness is not the issue. It's fine to tell an individual to stop being lazy, but how do you tell a population that? You believe the American value proposition changed and I don't think you're alone. Human beings are driven by incentives. I think it's naive to call a generation lazy without at least understanding why they would behave that way in the first place. At the same time, it's equally naive for millenials to pretend we've had it worse than any other generation and use that as an excuse. What makes sense to me is to acknowledge the motivating factors--whether perception or reality--changed. There is no person here that I believe can tell me with a straight face they put the same level of effort into all tasks equally. Rewards, in all various forms and structures, are what motivates. Anyone with employees knows this. If someone has a myopic view of the world, do you fault them for not wanting to participate?

Screens are a component of the mental health crisis in my opinion, but the crisis is broader than that and I'm not proposing screens are a singular cause. It's difficult to differentiate whether screens are a symptom of the disease or the disease itself. And this is more to my point: did screens lead to laziness or did laziness lead to screens? We can extend this argument further as well. If people are less motivated and work less, does a wealth gap with those remain motivated begin to appear as natural consequence? Does this create a feedback loop?

So I offer this challenge (and to everyone): how do you help people from a happiness perspective? How do you fight against apathy as a society? How do you make people care?

Unfortunately, I'm short on time right now to complete the response to the rest. For your age question, as it's short to answer, split the difference of the numbers and round down.
 
Big_Easy said:
True, but that's my point as well. I fight for a better world. A better one for the median American that is. I believe what's good for the goose is good for the gander, not the top 0.1%. And that better world doesn't happen with tax cuts for the rich, and massive deficit spending. Check out figure C.


I suppose a better saying would be, the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor. The bottom decile didn't get a raise for 35 years. I'd be pissed off too if I didn't get a raise for the majority of my working life. The Reagan and Bush admins weren't very kind to them. Like Trump said, the American people tend to do better under democrat administrations.

That's not true. Right-wingers love to control folks and impose their will. What a woman can do with her own body, what plants I can grow in my own backyard, what drugs I can ingest, when and where I can buy alcohol, who you can love, who you can marry, what you can do in your own bedroom, etc. @rookhawk is on the right and he was just mentioning that more cops would be better for him. Police, prisons, "tough-on-crime" commercials are already popping up in my state for Republican candidates. Is that believing in the "goodness" of people? No. If the right believes in the good of folks so much...why support mass incarceration?

I have no illusions of planting a utopia. I understand incremental progress. But we are clearly backsliding on the economic front. And it's only a matter of time before that debt catches up with us. Assuming that the country will survive it is a pretty big gamble.
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Mass incarceration is a Liberal talking point. I don’t remember voting for or supporting mass incarceration. I do support following the laws and not picking and choosing among them. Are we just to ignore it when people break drug laws or any law? If lots of people go to jail for breaking laws, so be it. Perhaps they should get the message and change their behavior? Oh but I digress, because they make lots of bad choices, they are poor and it’s not their fault (really?) so we should just let them slide on drug laws and live like a bunch of idiots without being productive? No.

Liberals quit enforcing immigration laws. Look back at speeches from Biden and other Democrats. They all supported enforcing border laws until they didn’t in the name of a power grab, our culture be damned. Many supported giving illegal immigrants a cell phone, prepaid debit cards and free housing in hotels and even schools. Why? To flood our country to get eventual voters and to skew the US Census for distribution of Congressional seats.

I have no tolerance for drugs. I have little tolerance for alcohol. Liberals largely don’t want to enforce drug laws. Liberals don’t want to enforce laws and regulations relating to health care for illegal immigrants. I have a client who is a pediatric dentist. He has been forced to provide care for illegal immigrant children and accept illegal payments from his state government that come from the federal government that are supposed to be for citizens. When a citizen child needs care, the government doesn’t pay. Why should the government pay for care for illegals? This is just wrong AND illegal.
 
Big_Easy said:
Well I did list several successes that the government helped to create. They benefit some more than others. But the greater point is such that, ones success is not entirely their own, sometimes not even the majority. Many of these guys have consumed so much propaganda, some of it their own, that they actually believe it now in lieu of actual data. How successful would @Red Leg be if the federal government wasn't spending almost $2 Trillion a year on the military? Everyone has their own sacred cows I suppose. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."

Now think of your response as if it were 2008. Your comment here is only minimally true for the past 18 years of American history, not the last 250. One half-white president gets elected and suddenly the country is different? Especially not after the magnitude of hate we saw in the wake of his election.
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Ridiculous. A person’s success is definitely much more a majority result of their work and choices and opportunities they see and take. Your belief that it is more random ignores their work and good choices. My father always said you could take everything he worked for away and drop him off in any city in America and he would have a job by the end of the next day and start working his way back up the chain. Slackers don’t have that attitude or work ethic.
 
Big_Easy said:
True, but that's my point as well. I fight for a better world. A better one for the median American that is. I believe what's good for the goose is good for the gander, not the top 0.1%. And that better world doesn't happen with tax cuts for the rich, and massive deficit spending. Check out figure C.


I suppose a better saying would be, the rich get richer, and the poor stay poor. The bottom decile didn't get a raise for 35 years. I'd be pissed off too if I didn't get a raise for the majority of my working life. The Reagan and Bush admins weren't very kind to them. Like Trump said, the American people tend to do better under democrat administrations.

That's not true. Right-wingers love to control folks and impose their will. What a woman can do with her own body, what plants I can grow in my own backyard, what drugs I can ingest, when and where I can buy alcohol, who you can love, who you can marry, what you can do in your own bedroom, etc. @rookhawk is on the right and he was just mentioning that more cops would be better for him. Police, prisons, "tough-on-crime" commercials are already popping up in my state for Republican candidates. Is that believing in the "goodness" of people? No. If the right believes in the good of folks so much...why support mass incarceration?

I have no illusions of planting a utopia. I understand incremental progress. But we are clearly backsliding on the economic front. And it's only a matter of time before that debt catches up with us. Assuming that the country will survive it is a pretty big gamble.
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Thank you for proving my point that low-wage jobs are only a starting point, won’t provide a living and that’s the reason people should work hard and get promoted upward from such jobs to be able to be successful.
 
TX049 said:
I'll start from your closing remark. I'm not sure if the question posed here is for the sentence before, questioning the name, or addressing why I think that's a concerning disruption. If you're asking why I'm choosing to respond, I enjoy trying to understand how other people think, see a problem, and arrive at a specific solution. Not in a disparaging or demeaning context, but in a genuine "how did this person arrive here?" curiosity. I'll engage because that's the value proposition I see. Fundamentally we likely disagree on many things, but I will still buy you a beer if you’re ever in DFW because disagreement is more interesting than agreement. If that's the origin for 'why', it's the best explanation I can offer. The reason why my response grew to the length it did is because the flight delay grew to the length that it did. It's possible I would still be writing this evening if it had been cancelled…

If the question is about the name, it's a requirement with a Texas driver's license to remind people at every opportunity of that fact. The choice in numbers was a consequence of others choosing names, growing tired of it, and a subtle, secondary nod to Texas.

As for the disruption, regret is a powerful depressant. This thread has touched on mental health--including the relationship with screens--and I can't imagine the realization of regret for time spent on a screen instead of "in the real world" (for lack of a better term) would be anything other than near-cataclysmic for society. Of course, that would be predicated on the event coming to pass and doing so in a large, general manner all at once affecting large numbers of people--a possibility that is coincidentally enabled be interconnectedness. Think of it as a population level identity crisis. I will pivot back to this at some point.

Fair. My point was more the intensity and visibility of the debate which I would venture it's less than the magazine cover debate I was referencing. I would say, "hold this thought a second."

This is a different approach to the same conclusion about recognizing the fortune for where and when I was born.


Glad my assumptions on your underlying point were correct and I appreciate the follow up. The issue here is that "because it doesn't have to be, and didn't use to be that way" is not addressing the manner in which it is malicious. As an extreme example, I would make the same point to argue in favor of slavery. The argument is anti-progressive in that sense. The conclusion about "blaming the ones winning less" is fine, but I don't think that's your main point and is presumably more directed toward others in this thread. If it is your main point, the argument would then translate "because the winners are annoying" which is valid, but from my experience with youth sports is something I'm not sure society has the means to correct. The issue remains: why do you think wealth concentration is problematic?

Agree that it depends. I should have said the trend is overwhelmingly in that direction (which then: past performance does not... etc.). The sentence was flawed, but was meant as a transition to the next point which was the more interesting question I wanted you to answer. The issue is how and when you slice the pie based on when you determine the origin "story" is. It's also complicated because wealth increased despite wage depression during (some of) the same period you're showing. It all goes back to how you choose to measure and the metric you are using. So I agree it's not as straightforward as presented.

In retrospect, I should have left out the reference to small business. The intent was to try to get a definition of a big business by pointing out why it's important to define, but I unintentionally defined it as "not small business" in the process (and the number I was referencing would be using SBA guidelines as the underlying differentiator). I'm fine if your point is that small businesses treat employees better based on your experience. It's still undefined what constitutes a "big business.”

As said earlier, glad my assumption about your underlying argument was correct. I disregarded responding directly to this earlier because I'm more interested to learn how you reached the conclusions you did, but I will offer a counter to the premise you made below.

Regarding CEO compensation, the data you provided earlier from EPI has significant missing context and a seriously flawed methodology underlying the numbers. These numbers were intended to provide a partisan talking point, and not intended as numbers for later researchers to use as foundational data points.

To start, the data EPI uses cherry picks 350 CEOs instead of using the thousands of data points for publicly traded firms available as a result of disclosures (not even addressing the missing data from private firms). Instead of trying to account for outliers, the research is based off that data set. CEO compensation today is complex, but a significant portion includes stock bonuses which the data is conveniently framed capture as it encompasses one of the most significant bull runs in history (stock prices nearly doubled in the period he looks at), and this framing was intentional for that purpose.

This data is then compared to the data of "non-supervisory workers" using data that, 20 years prior, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (who publish the data he is citing) noted that the "non-supervisor worker" is inaccurate and incomplete and should not be used (relating to source and methodology of data collection). There was a move to actually stop distinguishing the two because the data point was that bad, but BLS chose to instead continue publishing it with an asterisk (probably because there was a cost associate with formatting for new data and a lack of funding for BLS). In short, the comparison data used was considered flawed 20 years earlier. Even with that understanding, it's effectively trying to compare the top 10% of CEOs for publicly traded firms against the bottom 80% of workers across public and private firms. That's slicing the pie intentionally to arrive to a specific conclusion. The correct comparison would be CEO pay relative to worker pay at the same firm over time.

Worse still for the authors concerning pay and productivity, if you use the numbers recommended by BLS--and recommended across multiple administrations--you'll find that pay and productivity track one another significantly better than the gross divergence suggested by EPI.

Other arguments about CEO compensation generally fail to capture changes to IRS reporting over similar periods which resulted in changes to compensation structure and packages and how they may or may not be captured. At the same time, executive compensation packages are enormously complex. We probably agree that private jet usage as a perk--even when accounted under IRS rules appropriately--exceeds the monetary value assigned, but the missed value is subjective and difficult to quantify. The IRS approach is sensible in my opinion, but I yield that numbers do not capture compensation and this cuts both ways.

There are plenty of papers which show CEO pay is modeled by firm size relatively accurately (the abstract for Xavier Gabaix paper "Why has CEO Pay Increased So Much?" is literally "A tractable model of CEO pay. An upshot: the six-fold rise in CEO pay between 1980 and 2003 can be fully attributed to the six-fold increase in market capitalization of large companies during that period"). I was trying to interrelate issues which is partly why I was hoping you would arrive at a more concrete definition of big business, but I was likewise trying to arrive at "what is the problem with big business." You answered that already which ties into what follows.

I am going to circle back to earlier in the interest of time. I would honestly prefer to break out the below into a new post, but I’m not sure if forum decorum. I would like to invite input on the below from others, but I don't expect people to read--much less care--about long exchanges between two people. So this may get lost in the noise.

I think this debate has merit as a component of the larger debate which is the one I think most warrants it: the national mood. There have already been posts addressing the rate of mental illness increasing in society. I dislike blanket statements, but I will admit I agree with @rookhawk's underlying premise that our generation is lazier on average than other generations. There is evidence which supports this grossly uncomfortable truth, both anecdotal and academic, but the problem is laziness is a symptom of an underlying issue and itself not the issue.

I stated earlier I think we diverge when it comes to attitudes. I'm more optimistic while you're more pessimistic. Positive and negative. I think I recall someone saying they feel you have a myopic view of the world, so I don't believe I am alone in this thinking. We've had similar lived experiences on a generational level (not speaking personal) and we're obviously only two data points, but we diverge on (at least some) of our views even if we find common ground on what is (or perhaps is not) an issue. If you look at the world and see all big business as exploiting employees, based on my own mistake in using SBA guidelines to frame the argument, we're talking about half the population seemingly repressed. That's going to weigh on a person.

I asked you why wealth concentration is an issue. This wasn't meant as a "gotcha" but as a curiosity. I'll give you an answer I believe is true: when the distance between the top and bottom expands at an accelerated rate, it's difficult for the bottom to see a way to the top. You made a statement somewhere back referencing the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" on the American Right. Consider how that statement works in principle. On a truly "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" it means nothing because they believe they will find a path to prosperity so you aren't even addressing them in the first place, but as a pejorative, it only works if the one saying it believes that path doesn't exist.

I wanted to address differences across generations and why we need to be careful about subjective realities. Laziness is not the issue. It's fine to tell an individual to stop being lazy, but how do you tell a population that? You believe the American value proposition changed and I don't think you're alone. Human beings are driven by incentives. I think it's naive to call a generation lazy without at least understanding why they would behave that way in the first place. At the same time, it's equally naive for millenials to pretend we've had it worse than any other generation and use that as an excuse. What makes sense to me is to acknowledge the motivating factors--whether perception or reality--changed. There is no person here that I believe can tell me with a straight face they put the same level of effort into all tasks equally. Rewards, in all various forms and structures, are what motivates. Anyone with employees knows this. If someone has a myopic view of the world, do you fault them for not wanting to participate?

Screens are a component of the mental health crisis in my opinion, but the crisis is broader than that and I'm not proposing screens are a singular cause. It's difficult to differentiate whether screens are a symptom of the disease or the disease itself. And this is more to my point: did screens lead to laziness or did laziness lead to screens? We can extend this argument further as well. If people are less motivated and work less, does a wealth gap with those remain motivated begin to appear as natural consequence? Does this create a feedback loop?

So I offer this challenge (and to everyone): how do you help people from a happiness perspective? How do you fight against apathy as a society? How do you make people care?

Unfortunately, I'm short on time right now to complete the response to the rest. For your age question, as it's short to answer, split the difference of the numbers and round down.
Click to expand...
Very well written.

If I may offer something of a bottom line view of the course of this "discussion," it is that the majority of respondents on this thread represent a far different attitude or world view from the one portrayed by Big Easy. I should note that I remain skeptical of the exact relationship between what he claims (multiple degrees, membership in "liberal" shooting organizations, etc) and his reality. That said, the social construct he espouses is common enough among many today, as evidenced by the success of grievance as a political and social change motivation. Politically, the democrat socialist movement is working hard to harness that envy rather than seek change based upon an actual political or economic understanding of Marx or history.

The site does contain in its membership a number of trust fund winners, but I do not know of any participating in this discussion. They tend to spend their time posting threads about their latest acquisition from Holland & Holland or the results of their full bag safari to Tanzania. Instead, those seriously participating here, tend to be self-motivating, successful individuals from a host of different walks of life. When I say successful, that does not mean a certain wealth threshold, but rather a life that has been successful in the pursuit of happiness. We have among us representative success stories as entrepreneurs, small business creators, tech savants, former military members, big oil, and the trades. While I suspect all would agree that luck played some role in their achievements, all would also be certain that they would have been successful one way or another regardless of the path they chose or which doors were open or closed to them.

I have no idea to what degree that sort of belief in self is woven into human DNA and how much is the product of environment. I suspect we are equally open to environmental imprinting with optimism and determination as we are pessimism and defeat. Big Easy likes to throw out "sundowner" insults when he can't or won't engage facts or the basis of beliefs with cogent argument. But, it is true many of us are indeed products of what Tom Brokaw so correctly named the Greatest Generation. We were born among men and women who as a result of the Depression and the Second World War had achieved so much at almost incalculable expense.

With the understanding that generalizations are just that, some are nevertheless true. For Boomers, immulating their parents' generation with respect to civic duty was impossible. But Boomers could and did measure their self-worth through external validation - specifically workplace achievements, titles, and material indicators of success. ALso, because there were so many in that generation, competitiveness went hand in hand in achieving that validation. Obviously, that tends to accentuate the positive attributes of what Wolfe called the "Me Generation," but Boomers acknowledged few barriers, just obstacles to overcome.

The others participating here are largely Gen X - the same as my own children and those of my peers. Again, I'll generalize but I think as generalizations go, most would agree it is fairly accurate. Gen X is characterized by self-reliance, adaptability, technological literacy during the transition to the digital age, and a pragmatic work-life balance. The last attribute seems most important.

Theirs are a set of lifestyle goals characterized more by good enough rather than all I can be. Achieving a role that provides a solid, comfortable lifestyle while preserving personal time, autonomy, and low stress is the ultimate win. It isn't a lack of drive. Rather, it's a deliberate choice to prioritize balance over the corporate ladder. Clearly there are exceptions to that generalization, but on the whole, I think it is both accurate and a healthy way to engage the pursuit of happiness.

I frankly do not comprehend Millennials at all. Certainly they have faced economic headwinds, but my parents survived the Great Depression and then the most cataclysmic war in human history. Whining about their fate in life was never the remotest consideration for them. Spend an hour on X and the levels of self-pity and envy are almost overwhelming. Then, imagine submerging oneself for months and years at a time in such a stew of self-inflicted propaganda fueled by algorithms brewing an environment of echo chambers. That digital feedback loop achieves a level of psychological capture and behavioral conditioning that mid-20th-century state propagandists could only have dreamed of creating.

As you can clearly see by this dialogue, such a mindset is likewise incomprehensible to most posting on this thread. Naturally, there are political forces standing by to take advantage of such conditioning.

I have absolutely nothing to offer in how to overcome such trajectory, but I genuinely fear its culmination.
 
spike.t said:
Opinion oil people please

www.bbc.com

Trump hails 'historic' deal for US to control 65bn barrels of Venezuela's oil

Venezuelan interim president says the unusual agreement will help revive her country's economy.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
Click to expand...

The company I worked for, Chevron, is one of the leading major oil companies operating in Venezuela. This is a more balanced article that outlines the way forward:

HOUSTON, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Chevron is about to finalize negotiations to migrate all its oil joint ventures in Venezuela ‌into the country's new energy framework, allowing the U.S. major more control over operations and key oilfield expansions, two sources close to the negotiations said.
The agreement, expected ⁠to be announced on Wednesday, will include a previously announced asset swap allowing the company's Petropiar heavy crude project, its largest in Venezuela, to expand to the neighboring Ayacucho 8 block. A second area in the vast Orinoco Belt also is involved in ‌the ⁠negotiations to expand a smaller project there, the source said.

It's important to note the term "migrate." I think this means changing the legal structure of the deal to make sure it complies with Venezuela's laws and constitution, and also to assure Chevron that they won't get the rug pulled out from under them. Chevron is a smart company and looks for win-win type deals with host countries. It's the only way to survive, long term. The vast amount of hydrocarbons in Venezuela are technically very challenging to produce. But given the right fiscal terms and the close proximity to the US, the incentive is there.
 
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