patrick.net

sbh says

It begs the question whether we should even listen to idiot racists who think any president is responsible for 40 year demographic trends, and the aging of population cohorts.

This is highly offensive.

It should read "It leads to the question whether we should even listen to idiot racists who think ..." - the rest of the sentence is correct as-is.

"Begs the question" means someone actually asked the question, and that the answer given has failed to address the question.

Oilwelldoctor says

But what to do with the excess people displaced in our modern world?

This is a difficult question. We just can't have a leisure welfare state since after 30-40 years of that we'd have way too many mouths to feed for free.

The key fix I see is to keep much more of what people spend on their personal consumption going to the actual service providers, instead of the trillions each year leaking out to China, landlords, and corporations. All that money is leaving the paycheck economy and not coming back into it as wages.

The main reason we have two-income households is that it in the 1970-80s we had an "arms race" where married working couples could buy a better house than just one income, so now it takes two incomes to be the top bidder.
Over time though this just reset the base price valuation of housing, since due to supply limitations the price is set at what the top bidder is able to borrow from the bank.

Housing and healthcare each are a two trillion per year industries but very little of that is actual 'consumption'

shows what's been going on. Blue and red are housing and health care expenditures, green is food.

Now food, we consume. You buy a steak at the store for $10, there was a long line of workers necessary to get that to you, each taking their cut of that $10. And when you leave the store, the steak is no longer there.

You pay $2,000 per month for an apartment though, and that same dynamic is no longer present. Most of that money is instantly bled off into the rent-seeking economy.

The apartment would have been there whether or not the renter paid the rent that month; the renter is really buying the right to keep the #2 bidder from taking over his lease.

I.e. other than wear and tear, there's no actual consumption going on!

Same thing with a $1,000 hospital visit. Relatively few high-skilled rent-seekers protected by guildism, taking their rents.

We could have a sustainable middle class economy again if we fixed these three things: our $500B/yr trade deficit, and the $2T/yr expenses in housing and healthcare.

Then we could move to a 20hr workweek, so people have a bit more leisure and the freedom to work part time jobs.

Never going to happen though. Corporate America has us by the balls, and ~40% of the electorate we call conservatives is boosting for more capture of our economy by the "job creators"

sbh says

HEY NIGGER, FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You're confused again. HydroCabron isn't a nigro, he's a pendejo. Get your terminology straight.

sbh says

Methinks you miss the dynamic at work here.

yeah i was trying to figure out who was calling whom a nigro.

It's interesting to observe how even on forums, certain cliques form. Kind of an us against them dynamic.