Increasing Number Of Indicators Point To Society Destabilizing

[Rikurzhen]

The far right "never seem to understand that unintended consequences always undermine their airy-fairy plans." The destruction of the middle class began with the Reagan years.

No, it started in the mid-60s, during the Johnson Administration.

 

[Silhouette]

You seem to be railing against women working and being educated, specifically citing their economic empowerment as the root cause of the drop in marriage rates. Are you then arguing that liberals support women working and being educated while conservatives oppose this?

Since when is working at home and raising kids not work? I know a bunch of young women who are loudly complaining that the OP has a definite point. They LONG to not be expected to work in the conventional sense. They WANT to stay home and do dishes, raise kids, sew, keep a garden etc. But because of the economics stated in the OP, they can't. Both parents have to work and the kids suffer as a result. Don't even ge me started on the childcare expense while the woman works roundabout.. It's cheaper to stay home when you add up gas, childcare and the hassels.

Woman's lib is fine. But what you get from these uber feminists is an attachment of a stigma to stay at home mothers and wives. They're seen as lower class women. And nothing could be further from the truth. It's not an exaggeration to say that mothers/wives and teachers are our nation's most valuable assets in the workforce.... A nation grows how its children do. Latch-key nations don't do so well..

 

[occupied]

The far right "never seem to understand that unintended consequences always undermine their airy-fairy plans." The destruction of the middle class began with the Reagan years.

No, it started in the mid-60s, during the Johnson Administration.

It started with Reagan when it was decided that the government would not protect a single American job in their rush to adopt magical "free market" principals as a road map to prosperity, for the elite anyway.

 

[The Rabbi]

It seems that way to you because you're stupid. I'm not kidding either. That really is the reason.

Well then explain it to me. Economic empowerment of women is cited as the reason for the drop in marriage rates and the lower earning potential of some men. And liberals are blamed for causing the economic empowerment of women.

Liberals most definitely support women working, their education, and their economic empowerment. The question is......do conservatives? Its a simple question. And yet its completely confounded both the OP and yourself.

Please try again.

See, this is why you are stupid. You cannot read a simple paragraph and draw appropriate conclusions.

So you still won't answer my question on whether or not conservatives support women working, being educated, and being economically empowered.

A liberal could answer that question....directly and clearly. You can't. And that speaks volumes.

There is no point in answering your alleged question. You wouldnt understand the answer. That's because you're stupid. We've proven this already.

 

[Rikurzhen]

The far right "never seem to understand that unintended consequences always undermine their airy-fairy plans." The destruction of the middle class began with the Reagan years.

No, it started in the mid-60s, during the Johnson Administration.

It started with Reagan when it was decided that the government would not protect a single American job in their rush to adopt magical "free market" principals as a road map to prosperity, for the elite anyway.

The data shows otherwise. Normal people understand that causes precede effects. You can't have effects showing up int he late 60s early 70s and then pinning the cause on events that happened in the mid-80s.

 

[candycorn]

"Tiny Tim" just hates women...plain and simple.

 

[JakeStarkey]

The far right "never seem to understand that unintended consequences always undermine their airy-fairy plans." The destruction of the middle class began with the Reagan years.

No, it started in the mid-60s, during the Johnson Administration.

It started with Reagan when it was decided that the government would not protect a single American job in their rush to adopt magical "free market" principals as a road map to prosperity, for the elite anyway.

The data shows otherwise. Normal people understand that causes precede effects. You can't have effects showing up int he late 60s early 70s and then pinning the cause on events that happened in the mid-80s.

The data clearly refutes you. Look at the middle class purchasing power from 1980 to 2010. The Reagans and Bushs could have restrained that yet did not.

 

[Rikurzhen]

You seem to be railing against women working and being educated, specifically citing their economic empowerment as the root cause of the drop in marriage rates. Are you then arguing that liberals support women working and being educated while conservatives oppose this?

Since when is working at home and raising kids not work? I know a bunch of young women who are loudly complaining that the OP has a definite point. They LONG to not be expected to work in the conventional sense. They WANT to stay home and do dishes, raise kids, sew, keep a garden etc. But because of the economics stated in the OP, they can't. Both parents have to work and the kids suffer as a result. Don't even ge me started on the childcare expense while the woman works roundabout.. It's cheaper to stay home when you add up gas, childcare and the hassels.

Woman's lib is fine. But what you get from these uber feminists is an attachment of a stigma to stay at home mothers and wives. They're seen as lower class women. And nothing could be further from the truth. It's not an exaggeration to say that mothers/wives and teachers are our nation's most valuable assets in the workforce.... A nation grows how its children do. Latch-key nations don't do so well..

There's a fantastic natural experiment taking place in Canada right now. Alberta is experiencing labor shortages. What happens when labor is scarce? Wages increase. What happens when men earn a lot of women? More men work and women start dropping out of the workforce and focus more on the family. Alberta has the highest proportion of men working and women not working, along with

Here's what's happened in Alberta:

Ms. Carvey found refuge from that panic in the manner of any driven Type-A professional: She made a list of the pros and cons of staying home. The pros won out, and she became part of an enigmatic exodus in Alberta.

The working women of the province are disappearing, just as the province's superheated economy is becoming increasingly short-handed. Unemployment has fallen to unimaginably low levels, and help-wanted signs plaster the windows of retail businesses throughout the province. Businesses are scouring Alberta, indeed the entire country, for workers, going so far as to launch recruiting drives in prisons.

And while that desperate search goes on, women such as Ms. Carvey are turning away from work to become not-so-desperate housewives. Ten years ago, Alberta had nearly the highest proportion of working women (or women looking for work) with daycare-age children and a spouse, second only to Prince Edward Island.

In the ensuing decade, those numbers changed dramatically as large numbers of working mothers moved into the work force. Quebec, close to the bottom of the pack, rose to near the top, a change largely coinciding with its introduction of inexpensive and near-universal daycare. But the change was not limited to Quebec: Every Canadian province saw substantial increases in the number of working women with children under 6.

In every province, that is, except Alberta, where that number has been declining steadily this decade. Ten years ago, nearly seven in 10 women in this group were working, or looking for work -- above the national average. Now, it's closer to six in 10, and well below the nationwide average. Statistics Canada has documented this decline, but doesn't have a definitive explanation for it. Differences in daycare -- Alberta has among the lowest public funding in the country -- are likely part of the explanation. The introduction of a flat tax rate and a doubling of spousal deductions in 2001 certainly eased the financial burden on single-income families.

And some researchers believe that conservative social attitudes, and the resulting workplace expectations for women, are to blame.

…

Prosperity has, at a minimum, arrived at the same time as working mothers were dropping out of the work force. Statscan analyst Vincent Ferrao said it is possible that it might be more than mere coincidence: The rising wealth of Alberta could be enabling some women to stay at home without undue financial hardship. "Wages have been increasing quite rapidly," he said. "Is it possible you only need one person working?"

That hypothesis certainly lines up with Ms. Carvey's experience. Ms. Carvey and her husband, Darby Parker, had the relatively unusual luxury of being free from the financial worries of moving to a single income. Her salary of $70,000, while substantial, was lower than the six-figure compensation her spouse brought home from his oil-patch job. With a small mortgage, a modest home and a six-year-old car, the couple had avoided an overhang of debt.

…

And here emerges another paradox: Alberta's prosperity might have given some families the means to live on a single income. But the fact that they are doing so is dampening future growth, as the province's businesses run short of workers. If Alberta women (again those with children under 6) were working at the same rate as their Quebec counterparts, there would be close to another 17,000 female employees on the market -- a godsend in a province running short of everything from oil-patch executives to coffee-house clerks.

…

If the future prosperity of Canada hinges on convincing women like Ms. Carvey to stay in the work force, or at least to return quickly, it might just be time to start sweating. The proud mother of Cadence, now 15 months old, says she might not ever go back to work. "That career used to define me. Now, I'm not so sure."​

 

[Rikurzhen]

"Tiny Tim" just hates women...plain and simple.

 

[Skylar]

There is no point in answering your alleged question. You wouldnt understand the answer. That's because you're stupid. We've proven this already.

[/quote]

More avoidance and insults. But no actual answer. A liberal could answer that question in a heart beat. Honestly, openly and thoroughly.

Do conservatives support women working, being educated and being economically empowered?

Its such a simple question. And yet in this entire thread its confounded and set running every conservative to see it. Which again, speaks volumes.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Alberta is experiencing labor shortages. The mean annual household income for 2012 in Alberta was $94,450. Meanwhile, in Ontario, the big leagues in Canada in terms of finance, government, industry, media, in other words a mecca for high paying jobs, the mean household income was $74,890. Mean household income in Alberta was 26% higher.

 

[Rikurzhen]

There is no point in answering your alleged question. You wouldnt understand the answer. That's because you're stupid. We've proven this already.

More avoidance and insults. But no actual answer. A liberal could answer that question in a heart beat. Honestly, openly and thoroughly.

Do conservatives support women working, being educated and being economically empowered?

Its such a simple question. And yet in this entire thread its confounded and set running every conservative to see it. Which again, speaks volumes.

Conservatives are Pro-Choice. They want to give women the choice that liberals want to deny women. Look at what happens when women are given a choice, they quite often take advantage of that choice by focusing on family rather than career at the sacrifice of family. Look at the trap even female physicians run into, they dedicate years of their lives to study, put off relationships and family and then find out that they'd have made a wiser economic decision by studying less, getting on with life sooner, and getting married and be no worse off.

Liberals are like the Pied Piper leading women and men down a path towards bad outcomes.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Well, at least I'll give you credit for understanding what the term "Conservative" is supposed to mean.

Why do the trends you've mentioned imply that "society is destabilizing"?

 

[Skylar]

There is no point in answering your alleged question. You wouldnt understand the answer. That's because you're stupid. We've proven this already.

More avoidance and insults. But no actual answer. A liberal could answer that question in a heart beat. Honestly, openly and thoroughly.

Do conservatives support women working, being educated and being economically empowered?

Its such a simple question. And yet in this entire thread its confounded and set running every conservative to see it. Which again, speaks volumes.

Conservatives are Pro-Choice. They want to give women the choice that liberals want to deny women. Look at what happens when women are given a choice, they quite often take advantage of that choice by focusing on family rather than career at the sacrifice of family. Look at the trap even female physicians run into, they dedicate years of their lives to study, put off relationships and family and then find out that they'd have made a wiser economic decision by studying less, getting on with life sooner, and getting married and be no worse off.

Liberals are like the Pied Piper leading women and men down a path towards bad outcomes.

So do conservatives support women working, being educated and being financially empowered? This would be the sixth(?) time I've asked this question. And I've seen a lot of soft shoeing. But nothing approaching a direct answer.

Which is kinda odd. A liberal could answer that in a second. But apparently, not a conservative.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

There is no point in answering your alleged question. You wouldnt understand the answer. That's because you're stupid. We've proven this already.

More avoidance and insults. But no actual answer. A liberal could answer that question in a heart beat. Honestly, openly and thoroughly.

Do conservatives support women working, being educated and being economically empowered?

Its such a simple question. And yet in this entire thread its confounded and set running every conservative to see it. Which again, speaks volumes.

Conservatives are Pro-Choice. They want to give women the choice that liberals want to deny women. Look at what happens when women are given a choice, they quite often take advantage of that choice by focusing on family rather than career at the sacrifice of family. Look at the trap even female physicians run into, they dedicate years of their lives to study, put off relationships and family and then find out that they'd have made a wiser economic decision by studying less, getting on with life sooner, and getting married and be no worse off.

Liberals are like the Pied Piper leading women and men down a path towards bad outcomes.

So do conservatives support women working, being educated and being financially empowered? This would be the sixth(?) time I've asked this question. And I've seen a lot of soft shoeing. But nothing approaching a direct answer.

Which is kinda odd. A liberal could answer that in a second. But apparently, not a conservative.

He's a "Conservative" in the actual definition of the term, not the new definition.

"Conserving" traditional values and families. The Burke sort.

At least that's what I gather. I could be wrong.

He's a racist, too.

 

[SmedlyButler]

Read this compilation of statistics from Bloomberg. Nothing is heading in the right direction. Hey, let's cheer Gay Marriage because that's all that's important.

Most of this can be laid at the feet of liberals. The solutions to reverse the indicators pretty much require we destroy the embedded liberal values we operate under.

Look at this starting fact:

A decline in wages of young men has resulted in fewer good candidates for women to choose as partners, University of Minnesota professor Steven Ruggles found in a paper on marriage, family and economic opportunity in the U.S. since 1850 to be presented this month at a Pennsylvania State University conference.

The proportion of men ages 25 to 29 able to support a family of four at the poverty line dropped from 78 percent in 1970 to 47 percent in 2012, according to Ruggles’s research. Even with the rise of dual-income households, this has had an effect, he said.

“The primary reason for the decline of marriage since 1975 is the decline of economic opportunity, especially for young men and especially compared with their fathers,” Ruggles said in an interview. “I project that marriage will continue to decline for at least 15 years, based on projections of the patterns of young adults.”
​

Women's economic empowerment creates a crowding out effect and depresses wages in the labor market. Women are hypergamous so this reduces the pool of men that they find marriageable. Women have traded away a stable marriage culture for a women must work culture. What falls out from this?

About 23 percent of men 25 years and older and 17 percent of women have never married, a recent Pew Research Center analysis finds. That gap is widening: in 1960, it stood at 10 percent of men and 8 percent of women.

When today’s young adults reach their mid-40s to mid-50s, a record high share -- 25 percent -- is likely to have never been married, according to Pew’s projections.

Age at first marriage has also climbed, Pew found. Men, who can reproduce longer, have long married later, yet economics is likely playing a role in delaying nuptials for both genders.

The findings “suggest that never-married women place a high premium on finding a spouse with a steady job,” the report states. “However, the changes in the labor market have contributed to a shrinking pool of available employed young men.”
​

Marriage is delayed, women's biological clicks start winding down, more women end up as spinsters and the birth rate declines.

Postponing marriage has contributed to a drop in the number of births in the U.S., which has fallen 8.3 percent to 3.96 million in 2013 from 4.32 million in 2007, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The number of births declined to a record 62.9 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.

“Most births still occur within marriage so the birth rate is expected to decline further as age at marriage increases,” said demographer Mark Mather, associate vice president for U.S. programs for the Population Reference Bureau in Washington.

Fewer marriages are leading to less home ownership, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
​

All of the factors listed in the article play off each other. Change one variable and it affects another variable, which in turn affects yet another variable, or multiple variables. You should read the article to get the full picture. These liberal reforms to how we construct society and now paying off and the outcomes are disastrous. That home that you have and plan on selling when you downsize, who is going to buy it if fewer young people are in the market because they're not marrying and starting families at the traditional rate?

Liberals never seem to understand that unintended consequences always undermine their airy-fairy plans.

First of all, ignoring your other points for now, is a falling birth rate a bad thing? I imagine there are lots of population scientists who would say no. About the only thing I remember from econ 101 is the "limited resources unlimited demand" catchphrase. It's still one of the basic tenets of any school of economy I would think. Human beings consume the Earths resources at an alarming rate. If there were fewer of us wouldn't we all be safer and more comfortable?

Ascribing the rest of those negative "unintended consequences" to Liberal plans gone amok is "airy fairy" social commentary at best. We liberals wish we had as much influence as you guys credit us with. The real driver behind most of the economic upheavals that really accelerated in the seventies is Globalization. American workers had to compete with developing countries whose workforce was paid pennies an hour. American housewives, in order that the American family could maintain a semblance of a middle class lifestyle, had to go to work. The families they were competing with in the Global marketplace had men, women and children in the workforce. Add conservative initiatives like the war on unions or the over empowerment of super-Multinational corporations and you have a toxic environment for the American worker.

 

[Flopper]

Society is going to be fine, different but fine. I feel a sort of optimism that the white protestant male hegemony foresees the end of their stranglehold on prosperity.

Destabilization makes change possible. If you're happy with the status quo, then you probably fear any destabilizing influences. Most of the great changes in this nation are the result of destabilizing influences.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Well, at least I'll give you credit for understanding what the term "Conservative" is supposed to mean.

Why do the trends you've mentioned imply that "society is destabilizing"?

American society is not self-perpetuating. The processes at work require us to reach outside of society in order to import stabilizing influences. Society is not stable, it's not self-perpetuating.

Take Social Security as one example. It started with a 159:1 ratio of workers to retirees and now we're down to 2.9:1 so for that ratio to hold we need to have a birthrate that is at least at replacement level AND those workers need to as productive as those who are retiring. We're failing at both. This means that we have to reach outside of society to find a solution. There are no longer any populations of first world workers with excess population that we can tap, instead we're importing workers from the third world. Most of these workers cannot match the productivity of retiring workers, which means that the effective ratio drops even further due to lower earnings.

These higher taxes on the workers means that we have increasing delays in initial family formation. Look at the data in the OP. When couples start their families later in life a consequence is smaller families, thereby making replacement population levels hard to achieve.

The band-aid that liberals put on one of their mistakes opens a wound elsewhere, then another band-aid is placed on that wound, which in turn results in a gangrenous limb and then liberals put a band-aid on that injury but now a band-aid doesn't solve the problem of gangrene.

Instead of a positive feedback loop improving outcomes, as in Alberta, where labor scarcity is resulting in higher labor force participation rates, driving up wages, lessening female participation in the workforce, lowering income inequality, and increasing time mothers spend on raising their children, our feedback loops make matters worse, more women in the workforce decreases wages for everyone, resulting in a smaller pool of men that women find attractive, lowering marriage rates, delaying age of marriage, leaving more people single and poor in that it takes more money to keep a household for one than two people contributing to one household, and because of the birth dearth and it's threat to retirement benefits, we have to import foreign workers but they're mostly low human capital workers and their negative externalities don't really solve the retirement benefit problem, they just push the problem a bit more into the future in that the low income workers now require subsidization in many areas of life.

 

[Skylar]

He's a "Conservative" in the actual definition of the term, not the new definition.

"Conserving" traditional values and families. The Burke sort.

At least that's what I gather. I could be wrong.

He's a racist, too.

Laughing.....whatever he is, my simple, direct question has sent him running. What about my question is so difficult? What about it requires such soft shoeing, such hemming and hawing? Its a question any liberal could answer in a second. Hell, even moderates could. Let me demonstrate:

Do you support women working, being educated and being economically empowered?

A: Yes.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

He's a "Conservative" in the actual definition of the term, not the new definition.

"Conserving" traditional values and families. The Burke sort.

At least that's what I gather. I could be wrong.

He's a racist, too.

Laughing.....whatever he is, my simple, direct question has sent him running. What about my question is so difficult? What about it requires such soft shoeing, such hemming and hawing? Its a question any liberal could answer in a second. Hell, even moderates could. Let me demonstrate:

Do you support women working, being educated and being economically empowered?

A: Yes.

Well, he doesn't want to lose the fake internet support he can get from other righties by making a statement that they can't justify agreeing with.