Years Where Something Happened
May. 9th, 2012 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorOver the last few years, I've had a sneaking suspicion that somethings have happened in key years that changed the course of history. The first (and, perhaps, the second) involve the Baby Boom.
First, here's the boom in a graph (from this site):
What can we infer from this graph? A few things should be obvious. First, once the GIs began returning from WWII, family building began in true earnest. Second, something I didn't notice until now, Truman's administration (lasting until 1953) doesn't appear to be the political equivalent of wine and candlelight. Look at that sharp dip after his re-election in 1948 that only picked up again after Eisenhower was elected in 1952. Huh.
What got me was the plateau and fall after 1957, the peak of the boom. Several other things happened in that time, but happened just at 1957. What kind of things?
How about Sputnik, the Russian satellite that beat us to beyond the skies and started the space race? That, it was drilled into our tiny little brains in grade school, was a Big Deal. All our teachers insisted it was so. There was also the stand-off between the US Army and the Arkansas National Guard over the racial integration of Central High School that hit the news—less than two weeks earlier. That must have been a one-two punch for television news viewers across the country.
Those events, though, were late '57; to affect the birth rate that year, we would have to find events from the previous year. I'm wondering if the stage for those two events had been set earlier in the rumor mill, perhaps generating some unease before they actually hit the scene and ripped the social fabric. That certainly would do the trick. There's also President Eisenhower's health. He suffered serious health problems during his term, but without crawling through the periodicals of the day, I doubt I could blame that.
Whatever the cause, the boom in births peaked in 1957 as the nation scaled back its procreative activity, hitting the bottom a year after I myself was born. (Oh, and a humorous aside: Malcolm Gladwell notes that 1963 was probably the worst year to be born in modern history.)
1957 isn't the only date on my eye. Something happened in 1980 as well. That one might be more easily discovered. His name is Ronald Regan. Duh.
Beyond the political, though, we should remember that something conspired to put him in office. I'm not talking here about literal conspiracy, of people skulking about and plotting; I'm referring instead to a shift in the zeitgeist. How is it that just seven short years after Nixon's fuck up the country decides another Republican would do the trick? More to my initial point, once he attained that office there seems to have been a deluge of pent-up shifts to opinion that have lasting impact today.
Complexmeme incidentally hit on a few numbers that caught my attention. First, we seem to be living not just in an era with increasing income disparity, but one where that income and the power inherent in it concentrates on the older: "The gerontocracy begins at the top. The 111th Congress was the oldest since the end of the Second World War, and the average age of its members has been rising steadily since 1981." (Emphasis mine. It will continue.) And it gets worse.
Let's remember that these "older, tenured professors" of course were born before 1963, probably even before 1957. Hey, they would have to retire to let the younger teach, wouldn't they? Continuing:
So as our educations have decreased in efficacy, the employers who take us on after graduation have been robbing us of even paid labor. Why pay anything? The trick, I guess, is for grads to go for those professions that traditionally pay better. Right?
And just as pay decreased, we the job hopefuls hitting the working markets after 1980 or so were expected to do more than the previous year's employees. This is confirmed by Kash over at The Angry Bear. Kash notes:
"Classical economic theory." What a crock of shit. According to Steve Keen in his book Debunking Economics, that marginal productivity theory was flawed in its premises, to its very core. It is empirically invalid. It is worthless. The only factor that decides wages is the market of participants; where there are more workers, those workers will get less. They will compete against each other to drive down the compensation all will eventually scramble to grab. Hey, I've noted this before.
Does that mean that all employers will do to their workers what their competition does? Not necessarily. Ah, but if the entire economic profession turns more conservative, it will creep into the zeitgeist that screwing your workers in order to enrich yourself is not so very bad. This was noted in a Planet Money podcast years ago (#129: "Adam Smith and the Not So Invisible Hand?"*), on the day economist Paul Samuelson died. They found some audio of Mr. Samuelson relevant here. A self-described "incurable centrist," he is asked in an interview, "Do you feel there was simply an ideological shift towards free-market fundamentalism . . . that got us inevitably onto this track?" He answers immediately, "Since 1980, yes." He goes on to note that even the economics profession takes a free-market turn that year, a turn that led to our current economic catastrophe.
Addendum, October 11, 2012: The Jazzbumpa at Angry Bear shows another graph that might prove relevant:
So, borrowing (and therefore the money supply) started a hockey-stick progression upward about 1980. This in turn would have filled the economy with cash, cash which those at the top would have, for the most part, kept for themselves. After tax reform under Reagan allowed those to keep even more, the rest of us had to borrow just to make the ends meet, further inflating the money supply. So just as wages fail to follow productivity up, the only way to get ahead (in the era of the yuppies and fashionable conspicuous consumption) is to borrow your way to the top. A damned vicious circle. (Addendum ends.)
1957, 1980, and now today. In my earlier post about the cresting wave of retiring baby boomers, I note that there should inevitably be improvements to labor conditions as labor shortfalls increase. I'm worried, though, that this Peak Oil-driven vortex of economic stagnation and contraction—exacerbated by the older and monied clinging madly to every scrap of wealth lest it slip through to the needy fingers of the young and less well paid—will delay if not halt this increase in bargaining power. Less economic activity might just be able to ride the cresting wave of older labor and ignore the gathering storm of youthful unrest brought by debt and a lack of even basic economic participatory opportunity. This scenario has historical precedents and it never ends well.
Maybe I shouldn't be so obsessed with simple numbers, simple dates. Convergences, after all, are what create storms, and even I could use some good sunny weather, if only in my mind.
*It seems the NPR archive is not easily found. I refuse to enrich private podcast caches with a link. You'll have to search it, but it is easily found. Seriously, NPR, what can't you fuck up?
First, here's the boom in a graph (from this site):
What can we infer from this graph? A few things should be obvious. First, once the GIs began returning from WWII, family building began in true earnest. Second, something I didn't notice until now, Truman's administration (lasting until 1953) doesn't appear to be the political equivalent of wine and candlelight. Look at that sharp dip after his re-election in 1948 that only picked up again after Eisenhower was elected in 1952. Huh.
What got me was the plateau and fall after 1957, the peak of the boom. Several other things happened in that time, but happened just at 1957. What kind of things?
How about Sputnik, the Russian satellite that beat us to beyond the skies and started the space race? That, it was drilled into our tiny little brains in grade school, was a Big Deal. All our teachers insisted it was so. There was also the stand-off between the US Army and the Arkansas National Guard over the racial integration of Central High School that hit the news—less than two weeks earlier. That must have been a one-two punch for television news viewers across the country.Those events, though, were late '57; to affect the birth rate that year, we would have to find events from the previous year. I'm wondering if the stage for those two events had been set earlier in the rumor mill, perhaps generating some unease before they actually hit the scene and ripped the social fabric. That certainly would do the trick. There's also President Eisenhower's health. He suffered serious health problems during his term, but without crawling through the periodicals of the day, I doubt I could blame that.
Whatever the cause, the boom in births peaked in 1957 as the nation scaled back its procreative activity, hitting the bottom a year after I myself was born. (Oh, and a humorous aside: Malcolm Gladwell notes that 1963 was probably the worst year to be born in modern history.)
1957 isn't the only date on my eye. Something happened in 1980 as well. That one might be more easily discovered. His name is Ronald Regan. Duh.
Beyond the political, though, we should remember that something conspired to put him in office. I'm not talking here about literal conspiracy, of people skulking about and plotting; I'm referring instead to a shift in the zeitgeist. How is it that just seven short years after Nixon's fuck up the country decides another Republican would do the trick? More to my initial point, once he attained that office there seems to have been a deluge of pent-up shifts to opinion that have lasting impact today.
Complexmeme incidentally hit on a few numbers that caught my attention. First, we seem to be living not just in an era with increasing income disparity, but one where that income and the power inherent in it concentrates on the older: "The gerontocracy begins at the top. The 111th Congress was the oldest since the end of the Second World War, and the average age of its members has been rising steadily since 1981." (Emphasis mine. It will continue.) And it gets worse.
From 1980 on, the price of attending a four-year college has risen by 128 percent. While the price has spiked, the quality has tanked. Students at college in 2003 did two-thirds the homework that students in 1961 did. In a survey published in 2011, 45 percent of students showed no improvement in "critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing" after two years of college. You did not read that incorrectly: That's no improvement. None. And how could the results be any different? Three decades ago, 43 percent of professors were adjuncts. Now, with colleges bloated by older, tenured professors who take up huge slices of academic budgets while teaching crumbs of courses, the vast majority of classes are taught by adjuncts.
Let's remember that these "older, tenured professors" of course were born before 1963, probably even before 1957. Hey, they would have to retire to let the younger teach, wouldn't they? Continuing:
Once you're out of college, you'll have to intern. Again, no choice. The practice of not paying young people for their labor has become so ingrained in the everyday practice of American business that we've forgotten how bizarre and recent the development is. In the early 1980s, 3 percent of college grads had had an internship. By 2006, 84 percent had done at least one. Multiple internships are common. According to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, more than 75 percent of employers prefer students who have interned or had a similar working experience.
So as our educations have decreased in efficacy, the employers who take us on after graduation have been robbing us of even paid labor. Why pay anything? The trick, I guess, is for grads to go for those professions that traditionally pay better. Right?
But maybe you're an overachiever — instead of interning, you want to get a master's or a professional degree. . . . The cost of medical school has spiked over the past three decades. In 1981, average medical-school debt was less than $20,000. Today it is $158,000. Law-school tuition rose 317 percent between 1989 and 2009 while American laws schools wildly increased the number of lawyers they graduate. Naturally, a glut of lawyers decreases their value. So kids pay more for a worse education that leads to lesser prospects in order for the schools to prosper temporarily.
And just as pay decreased, we the job hopefuls hitting the working markets after 1980 or so were expected to do more than the previous year's employees. This is confirmed by Kash over at The Angry Bear. Kash notes:
Two things strike me particularly about this graph. The first is how closely the two series track each other between 1950 and 1980. During those 30 years labor productivity in the nonfarm business sector of the US economy rose by 92%; real hourly compensation paid to workers rose by a nearly identical 87%. Classical economic theory says that is exactly what we would expect – as workers become more valuable to firms by producing more output with every hour of labor, firms should compete with each other to employ them, driving up wages by an equal amount.
The second striking feature of this picture is, of course, how much the two series have diverged since the early 1980s. Output per hour of work in 2010 was 87% higher than in 1980, while real hourly compensation was only 38% higher.
"Classical economic theory." What a crock of shit. According to Steve Keen in his book Debunking Economics, that marginal productivity theory was flawed in its premises, to its very core. It is empirically invalid. It is worthless. The only factor that decides wages is the market of participants; where there are more workers, those workers will get less. They will compete against each other to drive down the compensation all will eventually scramble to grab. Hey, I've noted this before.
Does that mean that all employers will do to their workers what their competition does? Not necessarily. Ah, but if the entire economic profession turns more conservative, it will creep into the zeitgeist that screwing your workers in order to enrich yourself is not so very bad. This was noted in a Planet Money podcast years ago (#129: "Adam Smith and the Not So Invisible Hand?"*), on the day economist Paul Samuelson died. They found some audio of Mr. Samuelson relevant here. A self-described "incurable centrist," he is asked in an interview, "Do you feel there was simply an ideological shift towards free-market fundamentalism . . . that got us inevitably onto this track?" He answers immediately, "Since 1980, yes." He goes on to note that even the economics profession takes a free-market turn that year, a turn that led to our current economic catastrophe.
Addendum, October 11, 2012: The Jazzbumpa at Angry Bear shows another graph that might prove relevant:
So, borrowing (and therefore the money supply) started a hockey-stick progression upward about 1980. This in turn would have filled the economy with cash, cash which those at the top would have, for the most part, kept for themselves. After tax reform under Reagan allowed those to keep even more, the rest of us had to borrow just to make the ends meet, further inflating the money supply. So just as wages fail to follow productivity up, the only way to get ahead (in the era of the yuppies and fashionable conspicuous consumption) is to borrow your way to the top. A damned vicious circle. (Addendum ends.)
1957, 1980, and now today. In my earlier post about the cresting wave of retiring baby boomers, I note that there should inevitably be improvements to labor conditions as labor shortfalls increase. I'm worried, though, that this Peak Oil-driven vortex of economic stagnation and contraction—exacerbated by the older and monied clinging madly to every scrap of wealth lest it slip through to the needy fingers of the young and less well paid—will delay if not halt this increase in bargaining power. Less economic activity might just be able to ride the cresting wave of older labor and ignore the gathering storm of youthful unrest brought by debt and a lack of even basic economic participatory opportunity. This scenario has historical precedents and it never ends well.
Maybe I shouldn't be so obsessed with simple numbers, simple dates. Convergences, after all, are what create storms, and even I could use some good sunny weather, if only in my mind.
*It seems the NPR archive is not easily found. I refuse to enrich private podcast caches with a link. You'll have to search it, but it is easily found. Seriously, NPR, what can't you fuck up?