Comments by "L.W. Paradis" (@l.w.paradis2108) on "How Reagan's NEOLIBERALISM destroyed the middle class: Thom Hartmann" video.

Reagan was the first to tax SOCIAL SECURITY benefits. HOW could that go unnoticed??
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@jamesanthony5257 Exactly. In-state tuition was what people earned by working full time over the summer. One summer paid for a year.
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@worrell3831 It is SO unfair. There's a reason why wealth is so unevenly distributed. And back in your grandfather's day, a solid program in high school was plenty good enough for a job that could support a family. If you took good classes and took school seriously, you were fine. People could start real life at 18.
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@toowiseforyou I know. And we had a better economy back then as well. Two people working for minimum wage could afford a decent apartment in any city they wanted, absolutely any city, and they could put themselves through night school with zero debt. They could start out in life together like that. That's called freedom.
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There were always tax incentives for offshoring jobs, which is astounding when you consider that anyone who offshores uses specific resources, like defense of the global shipping system by our military, that domestic producers do not need. When you find that not just a handful, but MANY companies that offshore also spend more on lobbying Congress than they pay in taxes, then you know something is deeply wrong. And when you realize that everyone already knows this and no one does anything, they are demoralized, then you know something is, at present, unfixable.
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What do you think is the global manufacturing labor force? Just curious. Do you imagine it has not grown as population has grown, even though it has certainly declined as a percentage of population?
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That's correct. Appliances have to have a lot of plastic parts because it is so expensive to ship solid steel and other metals. Of course you have to get new ones every decade instead of once a generation at most. This has harmed the environment as well.
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Yes he did. You didn't listen long enough. Of course that the way China treats its labor force is part of the reason the cost of goods from China is lower despite the long transit, and despite how expensive oil has been during almost all of this 40-year period. But their macroeconomic policies definitely work to protect their manufacturing.
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Impossible. They were by far the quickest and most nimble in finding ways to benefit from trade and tax policies before anyone else realized what was happening. That is how they found a niche, then gained the power to influence policies to favor them further. The new boss is much like the old boss. At this point, repatriating manufacturing would certainly be inflationary, you are absolutely right, although the cost of oil should incentivize that by cutting down on supply chain costs, and pollution for that matter. An analysis of why it does not make enough of a difference would be . . . fascinating.
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@mikebigbeard3156 Yes, true. Or just remove the incentives to go abroad. Let them hire their own security for the high seas. They don't pay their fair share for the one that has their back.
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@Sky-Soldier You know it's administrations that propose such bills, guide them to passage, and sign them? Oops, "chess." Sorry.
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@Sky-Soldier Greenspan Commission, appointed by the administration, was authorized to make recommendations, in 1981. And he did. Greenspan was "a life-long libertarian Republican," according to Greenspan himself.
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Why? He makes bank this way. The easy way. That's called profit maximization. The joke is on us, no?
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OH REALLY? I would trade places in a heartbeat. In 1970, two minimum wage workers sharing an apartment could meet the rent in just about every major city. That was freedom to travel. A summer job paid for a year of in-state tuition at a public university, every last one, Michigan, Virginia, Texas, UC-Berkeley, you name it . . . In 1990, places like Minneapolis were still affordable. Took them longer to deteriorate.
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@LordLewsTheDragon All but the part about racial disparities is false or tendentious. And you're cooking the books, too. The total number of people who go to college today, which includes community college, is 40%. You also seem to assume that they want to go, as opposed to having to go because there are no good jobs for them. (You think there is a sudden passion for majoring in business, the top major for three decades now? Or is it demonstration of docility?) Jim Crow ended in the 1960s, and in 1970, the mass incarceration had not yet begun (or, in some cases, resumed). You seem to think the size of an apartment indicates more freedom than the ability to leave school debt-free, join with a friend, or get married, and take off to live wherever you wanted -- New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, it didn't matter. It was up to you. Why is that a fair tradeoff? I don't see what's so great about having a space that's bigger, but you're stuck there, with fewer people than ever before. You also seem to think that technology has not contributed to a dystopia where you yourself can't move very freely unless you are very wealthy, but a mob can follow you around the globe and destroy your reputation and your prospects, in perpetuity, and the state and private conglomerates can find out anything they want about you, without a warrant -- or worse yet, use a computer program to profile you and manipulate you without your knowledge or consent, so that it is not even you who anyone is interacting with, it is their two-dimensional construct of you, providing them with just enough information to get you to do what they want. I'm omitting the ease with which a person receives death threats now, and the number of guns per person. Those have too many causes to unravel, but the trend is not wonderful. Also, look into the use of militarized SWAT teams. Those used to be used rarely. I would like to compare our infant mortality and maternal mortality of today with that of Sweden or France 30 to 50 years ago, and to compare trend lines as well, and then to see what it is by race and class. That would be instructive. Is the huge increase in autism, ADHD, and even childhood bipolar disorder real? Gender dysphoria, too? The increase in diagnosis certainly is, but that could be part of the medicalization of childhood -- many psychiatrists sincerely believe so. Then there is also the issue of healthy lifespan; end of life has become a nightmare for far too many. The bare numbers hide more than they inform.
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@LordLewsTheDragon It's not about "feelings," or "dark places." My numbers were correct. You are wasting my time. Blocked. BTW, it's not hard to go back to a 1970s style of life, without giving up all of the advantages of modern tech and medicine. All you have to do is speak languages and move. I'm multilingual. I even know more than one alphabet (three, to be precise). And I can move. :) You? Not so much? :D
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@LordLewsTheDragon My family were immigrants. Each generation here did worse. But that's not the narrative monolingual monocultural anglophones ever (want to) hear. :D The world is changing.
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@Cakebattered A beautiful women's business suit -- jacket, slacks, skirt, and matching blouse -- has been over $1000 for years where I live -- for at least a decade. And it is probably made in Eastern Europe, by a Western European designer. Shoes that are beautiful and comfortable, $500. Let's not talk about purses. No one who cannot produce that outfit gets a $75k/year job. It does not happen.
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@talyahr3302 As the tent cities proliferate. When even a supreme narcissist like Trump notices and says something about solving it, and this kid doesn't get it, you have got to shake your head in disbelief. He's still telling people not to go to college if their parents are not rich. He's making it sound like a moral failure if you borrow for it and graduate into a recession. What a tool.
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I see that she is knowledgeable.
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@ralphpal Shows what you know. And what was more likely pre-2008. The middle class has finally been gutted over the last two years, in favor of a sliver of the upper-middle class, which does consist of millionaires now. A million is not a lot in Chicago, never mind New York.
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@xkaiokenx10 Exactly
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@radioguy8662 Well, what the "solution" is requires a dispassionate, non-ideological look at how the world actually works. How did China actually develop? How did manufacturing become a very small sector of the labor force in Western countries but not in Asia? How are we, in fact, furnishing a much larger global population and market with more manufactured goods? Economics always has many "moving parts," moving all at once. You never answered my question. I hope you weren't imputing bad arguments to me, simply because I asked a question. It was a real question, not a tendentious one. (An aside: even Adam Smith knew that under certain conditions free trade could cause serious harm to a society, even though it was better overall. But that's the rub, isn't it?)
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@radioguy8662 Wait a second. You teach this stuff at the university level, and you don't know the difference between A imputing bad arguments to B, and A giving bad arguments to B? And you don't know that Adam Smith examined the possible pitfalls of free trade as well, in order to avoid them and prevent them from undermining the basic principle? Did you go through grad school using computer quizzes and flash cards? What the h_ll is going on at universities today? Does getting a job their mean you get to spout Your Very Own Ideology, whatever that might be? Not to mention the math challenged bit: of COURSE the proportion of people involved in manufacturing can go down -- and be in a downward trajectory -- at the same time as the raw number of such people can rise. Guess what? That involves a growing world population, and more important, a growing market for manufactured goods. See how those fractions work? No more. A college teacher who doesn't know logic. Just yesterday I heard of a philosophy professor who never had calculus. At least he decided to plunge in and take the class with undergrads as classmates. Bravo to him. I admit I didn't read your entire post. Why should I?
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@radioguy8662 "I certainly wasn't giving you bad arguments. I'm a professor." 😂 "Oh, and I'm passionate!" Well, then. How very special. Excuse me, but adults were having a conversation about destroyed livelihoods.
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How much they like war is sometimes a difference.
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There are tax incentives for offshoring. These are arcane laws that I cannot give you in a soundbite. I can follow the argument when it is presented by an expert. Making things obscure (like how credit default swaps work) has always benefited a tiny professional-managerial class.
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@MrJedBuddy Not true. This isn't a forum conducive to explaining these laws. They are far from transparent.
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