Video - Ricky Gervais funny bit about Humpty Dumpty
NYTimes | The fury in British cities follows huge social protests this year in Greece, where violence also flared, and in Spain, where tens of thousands have camped out from Madrid to Barcelona. Other nations, including Portugal, have seen a diffuse anger rooted in a shared conviction: things can’t go on like this. This European malaise is no stranger to a United States of high unemployment, economic bafflement, ideological radicalization and political pettiness.
Numbers tell part of the story. Youth unemployment in the 27-nation European Union stands at just over 20 percent, ranging as high as 45.7 percent in Spain. In Britain youth unemployment has risen from 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008 to 20 percent. About one in every five young Europeans and young Americans is wondering how to get any sort of working life on track. Britain’s NEETS (not in education, employment or training) meet U.S. boomerang kids in the anxiety of waiting.
The anxiety grows when governments are slashing benefits and pushing back retirement ages in an attempt to deal with spiraling deficits. A working gerontocracy hardly helps the young. Brits from Tottenham to Teesside have watched the most patrician cabinet since Macmillan cutting everything from libraries to youth counseling services. Theirs is a “No Future” revolt.
A feeling has grown in Western societies that uncontrollable forces are at work shrinking possibility. History has never seen a global power shift as radical as the current one that managed to be peaceful.
The united Europe of today is built on the ashes of successive empires — from the Roman to the British — that ended in one form or other of violent convulsion. Now the American quasi-imperium, and more generally the dominion of the West, is ending, not rapidly but steadily.
Growth, jobs, expansion, excitement — and, yes, possibility — lie in the great non-Western arc from China through India to South Africa and Brazil. Go South! Go East! That’s the dictum of the age but not always practicable in Peckham or Peoria. The world has been turned upside-down. What we are witnessing is how shaken Western societies are by such inversion.
As new powers emerge, globalization has altered the relationship between capital and labor in the former’s favor. Many more cheap workers have become available outside the West as technology has eliminated distance. Returns on capital have proved higher relative to wages. That’s the story of the post-cold-war period. The gap between rich and poor has become a gulf.
The only people who walked away unscathed from the great financial binge that preceded this mess were its main architects and greatest beneficiaries: bankers, financiers and hedge-fund honchos.
This, too, is fueling a time of outrage that has left Western politicians chasing shadows.
Numbers tell part of the story. Youth unemployment in the 27-nation European Union stands at just over 20 percent, ranging as high as 45.7 percent in Spain. In Britain youth unemployment has risen from 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008 to 20 percent. About one in every five young Europeans and young Americans is wondering how to get any sort of working life on track. Britain’s NEETS (not in education, employment or training) meet U.S. boomerang kids in the anxiety of waiting.
The anxiety grows when governments are slashing benefits and pushing back retirement ages in an attempt to deal with spiraling deficits. A working gerontocracy hardly helps the young. Brits from Tottenham to Teesside have watched the most patrician cabinet since Macmillan cutting everything from libraries to youth counseling services. Theirs is a “No Future” revolt.
A feeling has grown in Western societies that uncontrollable forces are at work shrinking possibility. History has never seen a global power shift as radical as the current one that managed to be peaceful.
The united Europe of today is built on the ashes of successive empires — from the Roman to the British — that ended in one form or other of violent convulsion. Now the American quasi-imperium, and more generally the dominion of the West, is ending, not rapidly but steadily.
Growth, jobs, expansion, excitement — and, yes, possibility — lie in the great non-Western arc from China through India to South Africa and Brazil. Go South! Go East! That’s the dictum of the age but not always practicable in Peckham or Peoria. The world has been turned upside-down. What we are witnessing is how shaken Western societies are by such inversion.
As new powers emerge, globalization has altered the relationship between capital and labor in the former’s favor. Many more cheap workers have become available outside the West as technology has eliminated distance. Returns on capital have proved higher relative to wages. That’s the story of the post-cold-war period. The gap between rich and poor has become a gulf.
The only people who walked away unscathed from the great financial binge that preceded this mess were its main architects and greatest beneficiaries: bankers, financiers and hedge-fund honchos.
This, too, is fueling a time of outrage that has left Western politicians chasing shadows.
5 comments:
@UncleJohn re Wealth losing its value after the ruler dies, hmm...., I hadn't heard of that, however, I'm well aware of the civilizational importance of the ancient practice of jubilee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_%28biblical%29
Which is what should have happened when the banks went broke.
Now that Roubini has said it, it will be increasingly permissible in mainstream evidence - Nouriel 'Dr. Doom' Roubini: ‘Karl Marx Was Right’"Karl Marx had it right," Roubini said in an interview with wsj.com.
"At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you
can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having
an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that
markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational...is a
self-destructive process."The pyramid of capitalism is intrinsically, cyclically, and predictably unsustainable.
Now that Roubini has said it, it will be increasingly permissible in mainstream evidence - Nouriel 'Dr. Doom' Roubini: ‘Karl Marx Was Right’
"Karl Marx had it right," Roubini said in an interview with wsj.com. "At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational...is a self-destructive process."
The pyramid of capitalism is intrinsically, cyclically, and predictably unsustainable.
This is not critisism. I am picking up on a few, to stimulate myself whilst I look at the screen. I think one needs to level the playing field, if this phrase is too ominous, I'll use another sentence: A level playing field, say a baseball field has laws that I would imagine 99% of the people understand. Unfortunately, getting anywhere near law that the whole playing field, and stadium an analogous statement to represent the world itself is shrouded in 'World domination is bad, they try to control us, they are aliens, they are reptiles, they set up 9/11, etc etc etc etc.'
Whilst the East are more likely to believe in Mohammed than the West according to my television, and the West are more likely to believe in Jesus according to my television, for one thing I cannot see the moral ground being comprensible nor integrable, so we are not in a good position to set the Utopia into action as doing so now would still attract anarchy from a distant land who doesn't understand the workings.
For one, I am sure of the Chinese culture so much that they wouldn't disrespect the elderly as we would say that our governments are gentocracy. I am quite certain younger people have as many ridiculous ideas as older people, I would just further the point and note that different social classes will have varying ideas on such a thing as justice, some will say throw the transgressors all in a room, lock them up and throw away the key, cushy jails, four wall jails.
To my more debatable points, I do think that global trade isn't all that great, it sounds great to me sometimes, that I can ship a good 6000 miles away, but I feel sometimes the good would be better suited to serving a local need, rather than across seas and through borders.
Two things I'd like to go on about next to finalise the outro are: Honchos and economic bafflement.
I need honchos in the police and in the army protecting the country. I have to wonder the need of a PM if we already have Minister of Education, foreign policy and so on leading the front in their field. Just a question... Is the PM just a face? What if there were good ministers but a PM sabotaging good work? OK I am not saying the world is massively wrong to me personally, but if we, you, me never face up to the issues that we have, we will never solve them. All I can really close with, is I have some issues about poverty in the UK, the seemingly low interest in self sufficient trade and entrepreneurial spirit. I cannot rely on the government to do everything, I must make wave of change myself too.
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