In a 10:31 AM comment on the post “Transportation and Generational Analysis Part 1.", Peter G points out that he and Jim Bacon have birthdays that are only three weeks apart. While both were born near the Atlantic Coast of North America, they have far different experiences and current perspectives.
We are too busy to flesh out this thought but here is a draft thesis and a question for generational difference advocates:
Thesis: Global economic reality will trump generational stereotypes.
The emerging reality is for Collapse. Collapse driven by those at the top of the Ziggurat wasting Natural Capital to:
• Pay the total cost of contemporary ‘driven-by-technology-to-a-frenzy’ society, and
• Subsidize the full cost of dysfunctional settlement patterns.
Genetic proclivities (aka, genetic hardwiring) will erase many of the “generational” differences that have seemed important to data miners.
The drive to survive will wipe out most of the nice distinctions between generations and the technology / innovation with which they are comfortable -- vehicles, communicaitons, appliances, recreation, employment...
The absolute necessity of a secure source of potable water and edible foodstuffs will be of primary concern. Having access to a warm shower and a heated bathroom will be luxuries.
All the techno ‘stuff’ will be out of reach of the vast majority and this will spell DOOM to generational differences. Why?
There are close to 6.5-billion humans on the planet. They all want something to drink, something to eat, a warm shower and a heated bathroom.
Most of those on the planet do not have these things. They are becoming less and less willing to allow five percent of the population to consume 25 percent of the resources so that the Fortunate Five Percent at the top of the Ziggurat can enjoy the luxuries of Mass OverConsumption.
One, as yet, unappreciated consequence of the headlong rush to create Friedman’s Flat Earth is that ‘everyone’ can see what is going on all across the Globe. The 'have nots' are learning they can attack those who are consuming more than their share and in the process depriving them of enough to eat, drink and the basic rudiments of creature comforts.
In the past decade it has become clear that the ‘have-nots’ can attack the ‘have-more-than-their-shares’ directly and indirectly. They can even do it remotely via the communications grid ...
(Excuse us while we reboot our computer and restart the air traffic control system, the North East Power Grid, the Wilson Bridge lift span and....)
The attacks will become ever more brutal once it is clear that there are not enough resources to allow “everyone” a chance to float up in the ‘growth and prosperity tide’ that for the last 200 years was thought to “rises all boats.”
One can see the realization dawning in China, India and Indonesia. Many think they can bring the ‘big-wasters’ to their knees economically. Some who are more desperate, believe they can take a shortcut to haven – and 77 virgins – by accelerating the process via self-sacrifice.
So the generational generalizations will erode.
The three forces can will drive real change are aging of the population, immigration and the fact that humans now know how to NOT to bring more new humans into undesirable conditions (aka, voluntary population control based an understanding that the church with the most souls does NOT win because it cannot deliver happy and safe adherents while they are alive.)
In a consumer driven economy with instantanious Global communications: Consumption levels (note the price of gas); The attractiveness of places to immigrate to get rich; and, Birth rates can turn on a dime from the perspective of a 'gereation' two.
One question: How does anyone identify the start and end of a homogenous “generation?”
The Greatest Generation fought in World War II. The Baby boomers are their children. What about those of us born in the late 30s? Too young to fight in WW II and coming of age in the 50s when world had already changed to become the home of Boomers?
This ‘inner generation” is experiencing what the Boomers will experience but is a few years ahead of them. There are not so many of them that they will drive Social Security broke – unless the Really Great Depression drives down Social Security receipts...
Perhaps answer is in Gladwell’s new book Outliers: The Story of Success. By the way, Chapter One of that book demonstrates how a Balanced Community can trump lard in the diet vis a vis health and happiness.
EMR
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Save Virginia From Any Federal Auto Bailout
Virginians need to be concerned about what the federal government will do to screw up the economy - like Hoover and FDR did. Bad ideas come from both sides of the aisles and in and out of state. This is a critique of some wrong-headed ones coming out of our Commonwealth. I'm sure there are many more here and across the country.
The federal government is supposed to regulate commerce – set standards – for commerce across state lines. It isn’t the federal government’s job to provide “a helping hand to businesses in need.” States can do as they please. But, it isn’t in the Constitution for the U.S. Congress “to create solutions that will both help industry stay afloat and protect taxpayer investment.”
See James Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist papers for original intent. See 20th Century Federal Court (including SCOTUS) decisions for contempt of intent and writing legislation from the bench.
Furthermore, it’s just bad business. Legislators will make presumptions like this one for the Automobile industry; “the most important piece of any recovery package to be considered by Congress is that the company in question be required to provide a viable restructuring plan. This plan must clearly demonstrate how a business would return to profitability in the long term.”
As if members of Congress will recognize which plans are viable. How can the Congress, which is incapable of running its own budgets in the black, know which plan demonstrates long term profitability? Who are these automotive industry experts serving as Congressional representatives and senators? What justifies any presumption of competence about what is best for business among politicians of every stripe?
Congress should stay out of the business of picking winners and losers in business – and dumping money on them. Even if Congress requires ‘a plan’ before they start throwing money.
Yet, elected politicians think “Another option that should be considered, either prior to or in conjunction with federal loans, is a program of private financing with federal guarantees. There is no doubt that shaky credit markets have adversely impacted the availability of credit, particularly for firms that are struggling for survival. However, Congress can create a program whereby the federal government provides insurance on private investment for businesses in need. This insurance would be funded by the participants with a modest FDIC-like fee and would cover up to 50 percent of the losses of new investment in the case of a default. Such a program would help to unlock large amounts of private financing, while simultaneously protecting taxpayers.”
Huh? How does paying 50 per cent of losses help taxpayers? That is the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac model of putting full faith and guarantee of the U.S. treasury behind bad loans. This is precisely what started the financial bubble. It’s bursting created a financial crisis. So, let’s do it all over again for another industry. Sheer genius.
Finally, another way to throw money is through tax policy. Like, “Legislation allowing a $10,000 tax deduction on the purchase of a new car would certainly benefit the auto industry. So too would a bill that allows the deduction of the state and local sales taxes on new car purchases from federal income tax. Initiatives like these can easily be extended beyond the auto industry to help any number of ailing businesses, with little or no taxpayer exposure.”
This is way to get bigger campaign contributions from car dealerships and automotive suppliers. And it is a crock for tax policy. Only people who pay $10k in taxes could benefit. Ah, these are the same people who can give significant tax contributions.
If over half of Virginia’s families earn under $52k a year ( 2004: median family of four), they don’t pay $10k in federal taxes. So, the lower financial half of Virginia gets little to nothing. Thanks, Congress.
And, can the taxpayer use the $10k deduction to buy a Toyota? Consider that Toyota and one of the Big 3 U.S. manufacturers both sold about 9 million cars last year. Toyota made billions in profits and the Big 3 firm made billions in losses. Increased sales may not go to the companies with the structural problems in their business model, nor may they help. It’s feel good politics for telling voters you gave them a $10k knock off the price of a new car.
The better tax policy is to just cut corporate taxes. To the bone. How much could that help a GM with over $60 billion in liabilities?
Cut income taxes. That capital will create jobs for people who will buy cars. Cut spending so the Fed borrows less – and there is more money to loan in the economy.
What are these “any number of other ailing businesses who will get tax breaks from the Feds?” This is how the tax code grew to thousands of pages. Special deals for special interests. How political –politics as usual. How anti-Constitutional. What an open door to more corruption in government.
The good news is that the legislation introduced for these ideas will die under other party chairmanship of committees – unless there are the right Liberal co-sponsors.
Sound economic policy isn’t so complicated. Spend less than you take in. Cut the sham corporate taxes. Cut individual taxes.
Good governance isn’t so difficult to understand. Don’t use the Federal treasury as an un-Constitutional piggy bank. Don’t give pork to special interests.
If one believes that “without a doubt, the federal government has a duty to assist in the country’s economic recovery,” then the answer is to not be such a big part of the problem. No bail outs. No buying votes and support for behavior modification. No backing up bad loans. No selective tax reductions for special interests.
The federal government is supposed to regulate commerce – set standards – for commerce across state lines. It isn’t the federal government’s job to provide “a helping hand to businesses in need.” States can do as they please. But, it isn’t in the Constitution for the U.S. Congress “to create solutions that will both help industry stay afloat and protect taxpayer investment.”
See James Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist papers for original intent. See 20th Century Federal Court (including SCOTUS) decisions for contempt of intent and writing legislation from the bench.
Furthermore, it’s just bad business. Legislators will make presumptions like this one for the Automobile industry; “the most important piece of any recovery package to be considered by Congress is that the company in question be required to provide a viable restructuring plan. This plan must clearly demonstrate how a business would return to profitability in the long term.”
As if members of Congress will recognize which plans are viable. How can the Congress, which is incapable of running its own budgets in the black, know which plan demonstrates long term profitability? Who are these automotive industry experts serving as Congressional representatives and senators? What justifies any presumption of competence about what is best for business among politicians of every stripe?
Congress should stay out of the business of picking winners and losers in business – and dumping money on them. Even if Congress requires ‘a plan’ before they start throwing money.
Yet, elected politicians think “Another option that should be considered, either prior to or in conjunction with federal loans, is a program of private financing with federal guarantees. There is no doubt that shaky credit markets have adversely impacted the availability of credit, particularly for firms that are struggling for survival. However, Congress can create a program whereby the federal government provides insurance on private investment for businesses in need. This insurance would be funded by the participants with a modest FDIC-like fee and would cover up to 50 percent of the losses of new investment in the case of a default. Such a program would help to unlock large amounts of private financing, while simultaneously protecting taxpayers.”
Huh? How does paying 50 per cent of losses help taxpayers? That is the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac model of putting full faith and guarantee of the U.S. treasury behind bad loans. This is precisely what started the financial bubble. It’s bursting created a financial crisis. So, let’s do it all over again for another industry. Sheer genius.
Finally, another way to throw money is through tax policy. Like, “Legislation allowing a $10,000 tax deduction on the purchase of a new car would certainly benefit the auto industry. So too would a bill that allows the deduction of the state and local sales taxes on new car purchases from federal income tax. Initiatives like these can easily be extended beyond the auto industry to help any number of ailing businesses, with little or no taxpayer exposure.”
This is way to get bigger campaign contributions from car dealerships and automotive suppliers. And it is a crock for tax policy. Only people who pay $10k in taxes could benefit. Ah, these are the same people who can give significant tax contributions.
If over half of Virginia’s families earn under $52k a year ( 2004: median family of four), they don’t pay $10k in federal taxes. So, the lower financial half of Virginia gets little to nothing. Thanks, Congress.
And, can the taxpayer use the $10k deduction to buy a Toyota? Consider that Toyota and one of the Big 3 U.S. manufacturers both sold about 9 million cars last year. Toyota made billions in profits and the Big 3 firm made billions in losses. Increased sales may not go to the companies with the structural problems in their business model, nor may they help. It’s feel good politics for telling voters you gave them a $10k knock off the price of a new car.
The better tax policy is to just cut corporate taxes. To the bone. How much could that help a GM with over $60 billion in liabilities?
Cut income taxes. That capital will create jobs for people who will buy cars. Cut spending so the Fed borrows less – and there is more money to loan in the economy.
What are these “any number of other ailing businesses who will get tax breaks from the Feds?” This is how the tax code grew to thousands of pages. Special deals for special interests. How political –politics as usual. How anti-Constitutional. What an open door to more corruption in government.
The good news is that the legislation introduced for these ideas will die under other party chairmanship of committees – unless there are the right Liberal co-sponsors.
Sound economic policy isn’t so complicated. Spend less than you take in. Cut the sham corporate taxes. Cut individual taxes.
Good governance isn’t so difficult to understand. Don’t use the Federal treasury as an un-Constitutional piggy bank. Don’t give pork to special interests.
If one believes that “without a doubt, the federal government has a duty to assist in the country’s economic recovery,” then the answer is to not be such a big part of the problem. No bail outs. No buying votes and support for behavior modification. No backing up bad loans. No selective tax reductions for special interests.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Who Will Report the News?
It's one of Jim's topics, I know, but this post from a former Richmond Times-Dispatch employee, lays out the topic in sobering detail. Snip:
The RTD may or may not be dead -- that's sometimes very hard to tell. But I take responsibility for taking part in its demise, because I am a former subscriber.
Little did I know that, as a Richmond.com columnist, I might also be part of the effort to keep the print paper alive:
Happy to be of service. But there's more than a grain of truth here. many locals I know read Richmond.com. The RTD? Eh, not so much. If they subscribe at all, it's more from a sense of habit than a need for information. And that habit is an increasingly easy one to kick.
So here's the thing: here's why they're even trying to keep the RTD going, despite its inevitable funeral, despite that it's dead already and they keep kicking the corpse around: because they have to. As bad as the situation is, the paper is still bringing in revenue -- just not a profit. Online advertising is nowhere near replacing the revenue that print advertising brings in. Sure, they'll keep reducing the staff as circulation drops lower and lower; they'll redesign the look not to make a better product, but to cut page count, and thereby newsprint costs. They'll save money where they can, but revenue will continue to fall . . . because the core product, the newspaper, has been replaced by news on television and the Internet.
The RTD may or may not be dead -- that's sometimes very hard to tell. But I take responsibility for taking part in its demise, because I am a former subscriber.
Little did I know that, as a Richmond.com columnist, I might also be part of the effort to keep the print paper alive:
That's why the purchase of Richmond.com was considered a sound investment: a massive increase of page views and potentially an increase of ad revenue.
Happy to be of service. But there's more than a grain of truth here. many locals I know read Richmond.com. The RTD? Eh, not so much. If they subscribe at all, it's more from a sense of habit than a need for information. And that habit is an increasingly easy one to kick.
Transportation and Generational Analysis, Part 2
Where will the impetus for Fundamental Change in Virginia come from? One source is concern about climate change, and the resulting push to conserve energy. Another is the price of gasoline, which, though temporarily depressed, will shoot back up again as soon as the economy recovers. To those two, we can add a third: the age wave.We all know our society is aging. While we can make intelligent guesses about energy prices and climate change, we can predict with near certainty that the inexorable advance of Baby Boomers into their 70s and 80s will swamp America's existing institutions. Yet, as acutely aware as we are of the age wave's ramifications wave for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we have given little thought to its implications for transportation and land use.
It's inevitable: As Boomers get older, their cognitive processes will decline, their reaction times will slow, and increasing numbers they will be unable to drive. Unless technology reaches the point where drivers can punch a destination into a dashboard, turn over the driving to a computer and lean back to enjoy the ride, Virginia will find itself with unprecedented numbers of old Boomers living in social isolation, unable to care for themselves.
At the same time, there will be dearth of caregivers. As my Boomer Project compadre Matt Thornhill observed in a recent column in the Times-Dispatch, the front-line caregivers -- spouses and children -- are shrinking in numbers. More Baby Boomers than ever are foregoing marriage, and they're having fewer children. (See his Thanksgiving-inspired piece, "By 2028, Boomers Will Be Most Thankful for Friends.")
Meanwhile, as my other Boomer Project compadre, John W. Martin, writes in a follow-up column, "It takes a Village," the G.I. and Silent generations were willing to be sequestered in "geezer ghettoes" like nursing homes and extended care facilities. But Boomers reject that model of aging. They want to "age in place" -- to grow old in their own homes, remaining connected to family, friends and community.
In a survey that BP conducted earlier this year for the Older Dominion Partnership, 88 percent of Boomers responded that they want to live in their own home in their later years. For 70 percent, that holds true even if they become ill or disabled. If white-haired Boomers (or blue-haired, in the case of their wives) refuse to be warehoused in age-segregated communities, and they also have fewer family caregivers to look after them, what options do they have?
The only viable option is to stay independent as long as possible. Unfortunately, Virginia's auto-centric human settlement patterns make oldsters dependent upon others for transportation, not independent.
At some point, Virginians will wake up to the reality that the Age Wave bearing down on us is incompatible with scattered, low-density and auto-dependent human settlement patterns. People who think about the Age Wave are advocating ideas such as "universal design," adapting houses to the needs of the elderly and disabled, and "intergenerational living," in which oldsters provide free living quarters in their big, drafty buildings to young people in exchange for their personal assistance.
Ultimately, though, John writes, the solution resides not in retrofitting houses with grab bars in bathrooms and monitoring devices but in retrofitting communities to enable the elderly to walk, take the bus or ride the subway when they are too old to drive. To remain independent longer, old people need to live in mixed-use communities where important services, from grocery stores to libraries, are within short walking distance, streestscapes are pedestrian friendly and transportation alternatives are abundant. John envisions more urban "village" like those in Arlington, which has labored for decades to emancipate its residents from automobile dependency.
The Age Wave is coming, and Virginia communities are beginning to plan for it. The Older Dominion Partnership is emerging as a vehicle for the collection of data and dissemination of best practices. Under the ODP umbrella, task forces are examining vital age-related issues from medical care to community readiness. No group has yet focused on transportation and urban design, but John's column suggests that such a perspective may not be long in coming. Indeed, I will boldly (recklessly?) predict that Age Wave planning will soon join energy and environmental issues in the near future as an impetus for Fundamental Change.
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