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Ben Stein's Diary
America Unglued
It’s official — the young will not be better off than their parents and grandparents.
Tuesday
Long, long ago, I used to go out
with a girl who was an authentic Rockefeller. Her great-grandfather
was John D. Rockefeller. She had no romantic interest in me, nor I
in her, but we hung out.
Aside from this woman, I do not know anyone of my generation who is not better off than his great grandparents. Most of the people I know who are millionaires and billionaires (to use Mr. Obama’s favorite phrase) had ancestors who were just working stiffs or farmers or salesmen. Even among the upper middle class, their ancestors rarely — never — were as well off as they were.
Why? Why are we who are now in our sixties, seventies, and eighties so much better off than our forebears?
I humbly offer a few reasons:
1.) We tend to have more education. That means we have a more sophisticated, more powerful machinery inside our skulls, and thus more human capital hitched onto us. It is the same as if we were farmers and owned a powerful tractor instead of a mule.
2.) The society in general has more sophisticated machinery available to all of us, whether in factory, office, shop, or bureaucracy we have machines that allow us to produce more widgets per unit of our time. These would range from immense excavating tools to i-Pads.
3.) The society is (or was until recently) more efficiently organized and operated under better laws that allow people to “be all they can be,” to coin an Army recruiting slogan. When humans were locked in the same jobs as their parents, their skills in other areas lay fallow. Now, people can try their skills wherever they wish and where they are most capable.
There probably are other reasons, such as compound interest, which allows families to grow rich and pass on those riches to their children and grandchildren.
This is a big factor in many lives.
The problem that I see happening, and which has been scaring me for some time now, is that much of this is going into reverse.
Young people now are acquiring far less education than they used to. Immense numbers never finish high school. Many of those who do graduate from high school and go on learn next to nothing in college. (My favorite recent example: a college freshman at a lecture I attended who thought Pearl Harbor was a jewelry store.) This has to take its toll.
Today’s data about scores on the SATs, showing that in some areas they were the lowest they have ever been, are terrifying. Yes, it is largely because so many brown and black people are taking the SATs and we welcome that. But that venture is giving us a window into just how poorly these persons are acquainted with basic education, not to mention higher education. Getting these fine people up to a meaningful level of education will be extremely difficult for many reasons. Keeping the white ones at a high level of achievement also turns out to be extremely challenging.
The advances in computing power and communications which give us so much pleasure are not showing up as meaningful gains in productivity. We do not know why, but it’s happening — or not happening.
The rules of society, especially rules in finance and corporate law, which are meant to increase overall wealth and efficiency, have allowed wholesale looting of the savers and investors of America. This has been a catastrophe for many families. Deregulation has much to recommend it, but when it allows the financial sector to take as much of the nation’s savings as it does, then deregulation acts to intensify class divisions and essentially to rob from the middle class.
On the other side of the coin, excessive environmental regulation hinders the development of resources needed for growth.
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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drudge ette obama| 9.26.12 @ 6:35AM
One set of my great grandparents came from Ireland. My great grandmother could not read when she came to America. Together, my great grandparents raised three boys - all 1st generation Americans. My great grandfather was an estate gardener in a coastal town in Massachusetts. Two of the boys became dentists, the other a policeman. And this was prior to and during the Depression. The boys didn't marry until they could support a family and help their aging, immigrant parents who had become American citizens.
Fast forward 100 or so years. I cringe at their offsprings' offspring's offspring and wonder whether the best has passed already. Today, these hardworking people's descendants have put off college, work at service jobs, get plastic surgery and tattoos, focus on themselves too much, use expensive mobile devices to amend their Facebook accounts with mindless notations of their uneventful lives.
Perhaps we need to fall to the bottom to call to arms whatever strengths we, and they, may have that now are dormant.
Aristocat| 9.26.12 @ 7:18AM
Ben: Obama has submitted a budget every year, and it has gotten zero votes, not even one Democrat vote...It's the Senate which has not submitted a budget and that's because they prefer to operate under Nancy Pelosi's 2009 budget, and Boehner goes along with them.
Aristocat| 9.26.12 @ 7:20AM
To reform the educational system, we just need to give the money directly to the students...say $10,000.00 per year per student to attend any school or job training they wish...You would see an immediate upgrade of performance and learning...
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 7:28PM
Contest on Friday.
Occam's Tool| 9.26.12 @ 2:28PM
Yeah, let's blame the CUT in taxes, as things were much better under Carter than Reagan....
Ben, you have a continuing flaw. Other than killing people, government does not tend to do things well. Therefore, other than armies, etc., the sphere of government should be limited, and that INCLUDES taxes.
Your continuous desire to take money away from the industrious classes is moronic at best, evil at worst.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 7:28PM
Contest on Friday.
KyMouse| 9.26.12 @ 12:40PM
God bless 'em, DEO -- those were great generations of Americans.
My father's father, who was born in 1877, spent his childhood with his family in a former slave cabin in western Kentucky; as a young man, he hoed corn for 50 cents a day to buy law books. A self-taught attorney, he founded what soon became one of the top law firms in the region.
My father, one uncle and one cousin followed in his footsteps -- but now there are none of us the firm: We grandkids have gone into journalism, social work, and the theatre, as well as business fields. We're middle class, but no longer "upper," for the most part. Better off than most people, but still down a peg or two from the heights to which our grandfather rose.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 7:29PM
Contest on Friday.
Alan Obama Fan Brooks | 9.26.12 @ 4:41PM
"It's official -- the young will not be better off than their parents and grandparents."
You are hopelessly behind: the above has been known since early 2007.
Pecos Pete| 9.26.12 @ 6:50AM
Another four years of Jarrett Obama, and government unions, will ensure that all of our families will be worse off than any time in the past. They will attack the Constitution starting with gun control and free speech. There will be federal control of schools, businesses and your vehicle and home. The federal debt will accelerate and bankrupt states will be bailed out by the feds. Inflation will raise the cost of everything. Your future will include gasoline cost rising to above $6 per gallon and your home electric expense will increase by at least 30% along with the pleasure of brown-outs and in some cases black-outs. Rationing of medical care is already happening and will get worse as ObamaCare infiltrates hospitals and doctors' offices.
We will become the Union of Soviet States. Class warfare will be the norm. And Congress will sit idly watching the castration of their obligations and rights.
A horrible future.
chuck| 9.26.12 @ 7:37AM
Or, the states will start to fight back. Some governor with balls, maybe Rick Perry?, will just throw the Feds out, declare that the 10th amendment gives him the power to do it, and allow the people of Texas to control their own lives.
Well, we can all hope, anyway.
chuck| 9.26.12 @ 7:56AM
Unfortunately, here in GA, we have a governor whose only cojones are those that are slapping his chin.
Von Mises Jr| 9.26.12 @ 9:19AM
Chuck, you are so right. Bob McDonnell told Obama to take his NDAA a stick it where the sun don't shine. Nikki Haley has told him both regarding Boeing and immigration to take a flying "Fluke" at a rolling donut. Jan Brewer stuck her finger in Obama's face and showed she is more of a man than little barry.
Then you have so-called conservatives such as Chris Christie who is about to pass Agenda21 and is still courting a Foreclosure Bill. Apparently the press thinks yelling at a teacher makes him a conservative.
Time to move to VA, SC, AZ, TX or TN. Northeast liberals make fun of Southerners and fly-over states. Perhaps real men and bold women scare the snot out of them.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 7:29PM
Contest on Friday.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 9:20AM
One bullet coulda prevented WWII.
I'm just sayin.
Occam's Razor.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 10:18AM
Could you explain what it is you're just sayin'?
WRTolkas| 9.26.12 @ 11:21AM
If someone's mother had held a bullet, or a coin, between her knees while....
Is that what TLP meant?
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 2:26PM
Something like that.
Wink, wink.
Frank Drackman| 9.26.12 @ 12:05PM
He's sayin if someone had killed Hitler, WW 2 wouldn't have happened.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 12:13PM
Geoffrey Householder beat him to that idea by about 70 years.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 12:14PM
Geoffrey Household. Sorry for the error.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 2:24PM
Idiot.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 2:52PM
That's me all right. Takes one to know one.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 5:52PM
Sorry.
Appleby| 9.26.12 @ 1:12PM
All that would have meant was that in one particular timestream, World War II would have been prevented. See Larry Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" for further details. Also you might google "terroristic threats, making of" while you're at it. Just sayin'...
Occam's Tool| 9.26.12 @ 2:34PM
Had a bullet killed Adolf Hitler, there would have been no WWII. That's an interesting point raised about how small changes in history can result in major changes. Had FDR been assassinated by the bullet that hit Cermak, for example, George Marshall would NOT have been the greatest Chief of Staff in US history. That's FOR EXAMPLE. Or had Hitler been killed by one of many assassination attempts, how might history have changed.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 3:29PM
What if when Hitler was assassinated, the German people, in anger over the murder of a duly-elected leader, elected, say, Hermann Goering or Martin Bormann or Joseph Goebbels?
Are you so sure that there would have been no World War II? Suppose Stalin decided to invade Poland, as he did in our world after Hitler started the fracas.
I don't think it's so clear-cut that a killing of Hitler would have avoided World War II. Plus, there was still the Japanese, at war in China, and flexing their imperialist muscles in the Pacific.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 7:33PM
Not only would there have been No WWII.
But, the British Empire would have remained, mostly intact.
Think about it.
DRA2012| 9.26.12 @ 9:16PM
Sorry, TLP, that is not so. I saw a documentary the BBC produced discussing the roots of the Nazi takeover of Germany. Like many Anglo-Saxons, the Brits didn't quite understand how their brother Germanics (remember, Anglia and Saxony are German states) went off the rail so badly. After the war, the British Intelligence Services had access to all OKW (German High Command) historical records (which they shared with the Beebs).
After analysing the records, they found that starting the DAY after the signing of the Versailles Treaty, the German general staff started working on the timetable to rebuild their military-industrial complex, then the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, and the Luftwaffe, DESPITE all of the provisions in the treaty. They engaged in huge plan of deception (such as developing the FW200 Condor as a long-ranged four-engined passenger plane that curiously appeared to have bomb-bay doors) to make this possible. EVERY soldier in the 150,000 man German National "Police" force actually graduated from the equivalent of OCS.
To the generals, Hitler was just a convenient politician. They (mistakenly) thought they could easily control the "little Austrian Corporal". If he had died while in prison for the "Beer Hall Putsch", they would have just found another mouthpiece.
Bill8472| 9.27.12 @ 11:39AM
Suppose Hitler had been assassinated by a non-German? Don't you think they'd have considered that an act of war?
RCV| 9.26.12 @ 11:43AM
You are really pond scum, TLP. And if TAS doesn't take your post down as demented and inciteful, they've stop editing.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 12:10PM
RCV,
Should we rewrite history too, so no one will ever read that Hitlers own generals wanted him dead. Valkyrie ring a bell? Tim didn't threaten anybody. He made a comment. I'll rephrase Tim's comment to something you can accept.
"One legitimate birth certificate could have stopped this from happening." How's that? Better?
Alej| 9.26.12 @ 12:30PM
They're pretty liberal with their editing. Witness the space crap like you and pimp and others take up on the site.
Occam's Tool| 9.26.12 @ 2:45PM
RCV: no direct threat was made to anyone problematic. Remember the assassination movie about Bush? No one prosecuted for that, either. As a guy who has DONE Tarasoff warnings regarding terroristic threats, it has to be fairly specific.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 5:56PM
Exactly.
Don't forget the Picture of President Bush, on that Moron's Show, on Comedy Central, with the CROSSHAIRS over President Bush's face, and the words: SHOOTERS WANTED.
Remember that, RCV, you Piece of Sh*t?
Appleby| 9.26.12 @ 7:04AM
America has had a tradition of mocking and jeering at educated people -- "Geeks" are still stuffed in lockers and beaten up and bullied in every school in America, just as they were when I was in school. There's a wry joke among Mensa woman (we are outnumbered 5-1 by men) "Dumb men like dumb women. Smart men like dumb women." Women whose motto is GottaGettaMan are careful to hide any intelligence or education they may have, lest Prince Charming kick them out of bed. (One of my engagements was broken by the Last Straw of my correctly diagnosing a problem with his car, after he had told me that "Girls don't know anything about cars" when the garage told him that one Girl did, anyway.) Now that sex is expected immediately upon his expressing any interest in her, the only thing she has to hide is her brains. My parents didn't graduate from high school, but Mama attended Great Books groups among the neighbourhood stay at home Moms, and Daddy was well educated in a Prairie school and went on to educate himself despite his dyslexia. My neighbourhood graffiti proves that the local boys can't even correctly spell four letter words.
chuck| 9.26.12 @ 7:40AM
Real men love strong, intelligent women. A confident man is not afraid of a woman like this.
I'm married to one, she keeps me on my toes, and I love her for it.
Jrk| 9.26.12 @ 7:54AM
Dittos Chuck.
Appleby| 9.26.12 @ 9:06AM
Good for you both. Daddy used to get annoyed with Mama when she put her intelligence down, and bark (a la Archie Bunker) "Your kids are smart, woman! Dumb women don't have smart kids!" She finally stepped out and took the GED at the age of 50 and got the second-highest score in Alabama history.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 10:15AM
One problem in our society is the debilitating practice, ongoing for quite a long time, of equating the number of degrees that one has with that person's intelligence.
Occam's Tool| 9.26.12 @ 2:43PM
Appleby:
My wife had a 32 on her ACT, and had two CONCURRENT FULL RIDE academic scholarships at University of Alabama. I had a 33 on mine, and grabbed my MD at age 25.
Brilliant men go for Brilliant women.
Yeah, I got stuffed into lockers, too as a kid. As an adult, I learned to simply enjoy knives and project psychosis, and the problem stopped. Growing into 50 inch shoulders and an 18 inch neck helped, as well.
But I love smart chicks. Some of my other girlfriends have been an SAT 1400 plus bodybuilder, a couple of women MDs, a corporate lawyer, etc. But none were as smart as She who must be obeyed.
Dodd2| 9.26.12 @ 7:34AM
Yes, SAT scores are dropping and remember, 100 points was added to them just a few years ago, I guess to make up for, as you put it, all the blacks and brown taking the test.
Stephie| 9.26.12 @ 8:31AM
Dumbing down the system.
Alej| 9.26.12 @ 9:46AM
Socially as well as academically, you pour dirty water into clean water, what do you expect to get ?
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 10:17AM
...And yet it's still taboo to accept the findings of the book The Bell Curve. Mustn't allow that kind of conclusion to have any influence on our policies.
C. Vernon Crisler | 9.26.12 @ 11:52AM
Differential IQ scores among races are probably not going to go away for a while. However, researchers have noticed suprising improvements. For instance it was found that when blacks moved to the North they got IQ-smarter than blacks who stayed in the South. This shows that no race is stuck forever at the dumb and dumber levels.
The main question is how to improve things. Should we just write people off as the early 20th century racialists did, or should we change the conditions that cause lower levels of intelligence?
Alej| 9.26.12 @ 12:34PM
"For instance it was found that when blacks moved to the North they got IQ-smarter than blacks who stayed in the South. "
So Joe Jones, Mississippi black, moves to Chicago and his IQ goes up fifteen points ? ? ?
Maybe relative to his new environment.
C. Vernon Crisler | 9.26.12 @ 12:55PM
Of course, IQ theorists are referring to averages, not to individuals.
Quartermaster| 9.26.12 @ 1:27PM
True dat! I've known several Black Engineers, and they were not your typical black. The Bell Curve for blacks is significantly skewed left.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 12:38PM
Part of the thesis of The Bell Curve was that modification of IQ by a change in the environment was not substantial, and that the biggest single determinant of IQ is genetics.
C. Vernon Crisler | 9.26.12 @ 1:01PM
What made the Bell Curve controversial was its social recommendations. Only the far left questions the science involved.
The early IQ tests were flawed because they asked a lot of cultural questions. Most of us would do poorly on them nowadays because we don't know the culture of the early 1920s that well. Neither did blacks and foreigners.
Quartermaster| 9.26.12 @ 1:29PM
The cultural bias of IQ testing has been pretty much eliminated over the last 60 years. The loony left denies it, but they were never well connected to reality anyway.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 2:33PM
We tried to change the Conditions.
Then, The Muslim ripped up the Private School Vouchers for the Poor Minority Children in D.C. practically on his FIRST DAY ON THE JOB, in favour of Teachers Union Money.
Yet, these people will line up, around the block, for 4 More Years of this POS.
They are, where they are, of their own volition.
Is that Racist?
No.
THAT'S THE TRUTH.
gene| 9.26.12 @ 7:41AM
William Butler Yeats:
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
cuban pete| 9.26.12 @ 9:11AM
Yeats described the Left.
"monuments of unageing intellect..."
Sailing to Byzantium
PS
As Vince Lombardi once said, "The centre must hold."
Appleby| 9.26.12 @ 9:14AM
The last two lines of that poem have been posted on every bulletin board I ever had. The last few lines of "Ozymandias" have joined them now...
Paul McGrath| 9.26.12 @ 10:52AM
"The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Brilliant poem. Brilliant poet. The above lines perfectly describe American society.
gene| 9.26.12 @ 7:44AM
Pss.46
[10] Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
Joellen| 9.26.12 @ 7:53AM
Let's put all the cards on the table here. The parents - they are as lazy as their children they are rearing and they want the "government" to do their job. The teachers, they are as lazy as the students and the parents and they want the "government" to do their job. The unions, they are as corrupt and evil as the "government" and they want the "government" to keep the parents, the students, the teachers dumb and lazy so the union and the "government" can do their job on the people. GOT IT.
TLP| 9.26.12 @ 7:35PM
Contest on Friday.
Cobalt| 9.26.12 @ 8:32AM
"Why are we who are now in our sixties, seventies, and eighties so much better off than our forebears?"
Our parents, grandparents and other relatives wanted us to have it better than they did. They paid a heavy price so that we could have a better, more abundant life than they did. This is particularly true of 20th century immigrants.
Most of us grew up in an insular family with two parents. We had material things our parents never had, plus we had things money couldn't buy, like love, disipline, structure, rules, expectations, etc. Most of all, we had family members who set a good example of how we should conduct our lives.
Today, the family unit is being destroyed, along with the middle class.
Marx and Engels would be proud.
bubbaland| 9.26.12 @ 8:47AM
Ben,
I am an associate professor at a large university in the southeastern United States (enrollment of 28,000). The education system is beyond repair. I have freshmen students who do not know the meaning of the following words, "preclude," "coercion," and "synonymous." In one "graduate" level class half of the students never heard of Stalin. The system is broken and cannot be repaired as it is a reflection of our society's values. In short mediocrity is the goal. I venture to suggest that most Americans embrace mediocrity like a polar-tech fleece. For example, within my department I was criticized in my annual review for using a "complex vocabulary" in the classroom. I was told that if I am going to use such a vocabulary, then I need to write the words on the board and define them to the students. The "complex" vocabulary included the following words, "finite, affluent, autonomous." I am not making this up!
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 10:10AM
If your university has to do that kind of thing, it's not really a university-level place of learning.
No wonder the Western canon is no longer systematically taught. Maybe we need to protect it from these Philistines, and should withhold it for a generation or two, and then bring it out for the new young ones.
bubbaland| 9.26.12 @ 1:10PM
Gentlemen,
In reality my "university" is a high school on steroids. The worst students are the education majors, really stupid people. I know it is not nice to say but it is reality. Another drawback with our youth is that many of them are quitters. If things don't go there way they typically do not come to class or sit in the course with sullen expressions.
The administration is not concerned with quality education. A couple of years ago they sent a memo to my chair, listing those instructors that taught intro classes and frequencies of D/F that were earned by the students for each class . At that time 38% of my intro class earned a D/F. In so many words we were to told to dumb it down. High student enrollment at a public university is necessity just as Viagra is to an impotent lover. My university needs high student enrollment in order to score more tax payer dollars to cover the budget.
At this juncture in my career my maintain concern is to find employment at a private research university or nationally ranked public research university. The pay and benefits are better.
Bob K| 9.26.12 @ 10:28AM
You are right. For the most part the education system is beyond repair. Unfortunately the wreckage begins with the college elites in their College's of Education and works it's way down to the primary and high school levels.
Does your university have a College of Education? In most states primary and high school teachers are required to continue their education at these schools as a condition of employment and promotion. Virtually all of the Primary and High School teachers in my state end up with at least a Masters degree in Education centered around the subjects they teach.
This makes lots of money for the colleges and universities who get these teachers as students, not to say for the PhDs who teach these classes but whatever is taught there does not trickle down to the kids back in the primary and high schools.
I suggest that no one gives a damn at your level either.
Anti-Statist| 9.26.12 @ 11:04AM
But they know how to yell "War Eagle", though. That's what's important.
C. Vernon Crisler | 9.26.12 @ 11:55AM
A few years ago I, an accounting major, once asked an English major what he thought of Tolstoy. He replied that he wasn't familiar with him.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 12:17PM
Ask a Comparative Lit. major. English Lit. majors are best at English literature.
C. Vernon Crisler | 9.26.12 @ 1:03PM
One would think an English major would know the author of some of the greatest novels ever written.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 1:09PM
True. As an English Lit. major myself, I was thoroughly familiar with much of Russian literature, just because it is so good. But I'll also admit that I didn't get much exposure in my English Lit. studies to Dostoevsky, and I still haven't read all of The Brothers Karamozov.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 1:11PM
Karamazov. My error.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 1:21PM
Please permit me to put in a plug for Vasily Grossman, who wrote a well-known essay on Treblinka as a journalist with the Red Army in Stalingrad and during the movement against the Wehrmacht after that, including the "liberation" of the West.
Grossman is very good. Not Tolstoy, but very good.
Life and Fate and Everything Flows are great works from the era of the Communist blight period on Russian literary creativity.
Occam's Tool| 9.26.12 @ 2:47PM
So is the Black Book of Russian Jewry, also co-written by him.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 3:06PM
With the interesting and puzzling Ilya Ehrenburg.
THKrupp| 9.26.12 @ 3:09PM
I would also add to anyone's list of Russian Lit to read "The Master and Margarita" probably one of the best books I have ever read.
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 3:32PM
I've had it for a couple of years, but the blurbs I've read about it have put me off. But people who've read it tell me it's great.
THKrupp| 9.26.12 @ 3:44PM
Its not in the same vein as say War and Peace...Its more like 100 years of solitude. Its very good. There are several sub plots going on. The hardest part is that there is a lot of tongue in cheek humor that Americans probably wouldnt get due to the time frame and culture that it was written in. Its very subtle humor.
Occam's Tool| 9.26.12 @ 2:51PM
yup. Especially since a college bio major like myself was reading Tolstoy's short stories, in Russian, at age 14 or 15, in high school---public high school. I took Russian because it was hard. Can't read it now, of course.
Bob K| 9.26.12 @ 9:05AM
Ben,
You complain about the "wholesale looting of the savers and investors of America." You complain that "rules in finance and corporate law" have allowed this to happen yet over the years you have said nothing about prosecuting and jailing the thieves who have profited from these conditions.
You yourself are a member of this incestuous financial class of governmental and Wall Street brigands and you have been since your birth! And now here you are putting the blame for this on the people. Like Pogo you blame "Us."
It's all coming down now and it is frightening you. Soon you will be like Pogo's "Us" and you and the people who flyover "Us" in the U.S. will be brought to earth by your own machinations!
--------------------------------------
"Then the God's of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four--
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more. ............. "
Kipling-1919.
.......................................................
Derek Leaberry| 9.26.12 @ 9:07AM
The nation may be morally and fiscally bankrupt but the youth of today are so sensitive, socially liberal and have adorned their bodies with lovely tattoos, piercings and rings that things are bound to go right.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 9:33AM
Ben,
I agree that our education system is a total mess, but it alone is not why todays kids will not do as well as they're parents. The welfare system is to blame as well as our poor education system, but there is still another culprit. Corprate America. Overall for the last 35 years wages have pretty much been stagnant. Increases in wages have not even come close to keeping up with inflation. Lets all remember that when our government puts out inflation repoerts they don't count food or energy products, like gasoline or heating oil. Well, what are the largest takers of the middle class income after your mortgage payment???
Corporations are making ever larger profits, but wages for middle class Americans aren't keeping up.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 9:39AM
Remeber back in the 60's when the government and corporate America said mom needed to leave home and get a job so we wouldn't have to bring in all those immigrants? Keep in mind what dad made paid all the bills and still had money left over to put in the savings account. Look at us now, both mom and dad work and they can barely manage to make ends meet.
Where I grew up in Pasadena Texas we had the best school in the country in the 60's and 70's. Then some wise politician decided that since all those oil and chemical plants were on Port of Houston Property they no longer had to pay any school district property taxes. Kaboom! The school districts along our 30 mile ship channel lost the majority of their income. Thanks corporate America. Corporate America has failed us as much as anything else, maybe more. So Ben, next time your talking to your rich buddies or Mr.
Romney, you might whisper to them that its time corporate America got back to supporting America and Americans.
Derek Leaberry| 9.26.12 @ 11:51AM
There is documentation that the National Association of Manufacturers planned the two-parent workforce in the late 50s. It would seem part of the reason was to lower wages on manufacturing workers.
Slacker| 9.26.12 @ 11:55AM
Corporations can’t bear the cost of loose monetary policy. Annual raises cannot possibly keep up with real inflation.
The government inflated away America’s wealth. Typical corporations, like the rest of us, are just along for the ride.
Americans countered to inflation by sending their women to work and having smaller families. After that played out we outsourced consumer goods. Finally we compensated for inflation with debt.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 12:16PM
"Typical corporations, like the rest of us, are just along for the ride."
Not hardly, individuals have no lobby. Corporations along for the ride like the rest of us? I paid more taxes than GE did. We need to get the corporations out of Washington and get them out of politics too. I'm a life long conservative, but I'm also a realist. Corporations own our government and make sure everything is donefor them and their profit margins.
My taxes have gone up and up and up because of all these little fee's the government sticks us with. Hell, we the public still pay for every telephone or power pole put up because of a law written a hundred years ago. I don't see AT&T or the local power comp[any hurting so why are taxpayers still paying for their power poles. Thats just one example, there are more to be sure. Solyndra???
Slacker| 9.26.12 @ 2:15PM
When wages don’t keep up with inflation, I guess there are two options; blame the employers or blame the inflation. I mostly blame the inflation.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 5:19PM
Slacker,
When inflation hits costs go up. When costs go up manufacturers raise their prices accordingly. lets say something cost a manufacturer $500.00 to make. He makes a 25% profit on it. Thats $500.00 divided by .50. The sell price is $1000.00. So lets say that the cost of the product goes up 10% due to inflation or whatever. $500.00 times 1.05 equal $525.00 divided by .50is a new sell price of $1050.00.
Did you catch how a mulitplier was used against the cost, but a divider was used for the mark up of the product?
If we take that $525 and mulitply it by 1.50 we get $787.50. Now, take $787.50 and divide it by $1050.00 and waht do you get , a 25% increase in profit versus a 10% cost increase. But no one at the factory got a 10% or even a 25% raise. Those factory workers costs went up too. Shouldn't they get a piece of the pie too? Why should the stock holders take the whole 25% increase they made. Maybe they should take 15% of it and give the other 10% to the employees so they can eat, pay their rent, send their kids to college.
To me its just right to pay people a fair wage. If I'm making millions, what do I care if my employees are making more too? I've worked for companies that the more commissions you made, the more they tried to steal them from you by turning the account int a "house" account or saying they've given that company to another branch of the company. I guess the companies are too stupid to figure that the more commission I make, the more they make.
Slacker| 9.26.12 @ 6:46PM
I’m sympathetic to what you are saying but we are not a labor force of factory workers. Most people do not work for a publicly traded company run by billionaires. Most companies can’t raise the prices of products and services and remain competitive.
Shadow stats say real inflation is over 9%. My company cannot give 9% cost of living adjustments –even if we fired all our corporate officers and distributed their salaries. We are fairly typical. The profit needed to pay people more just isn’t there.
Appleby| 9.26.12 @ 1:22PM
Actuallly, in my experience (having been there at the time and watching it unfold), the postwar policy was to cram women back into the home, so as to free up the jobs for the returning soldiers. Women were bribed with all kinds of "labour saving devices" for the home, that didn't save any labour but instead simply raised standards. A lot of the women who had joined the work force while the men were otherwise engaged found that they liked working and being independent and having their own money -- they were the vanguard of the original feminist movement. In our family, Mama went to work in a factory because her family of seven needed more food and shelter than Daddy's salary could provide, not to get Goodies (we didn't have those) or prove a point. All us older girls went to work as soon as we were old enough for working papers, and we paid for our own clothing, eyeglasses and dental care, for example, as well as our school supplies and field trips. All of us were out in the world and on our own by age 18.
Slacker| 9.26.12 @ 2:19PM
I’m referring mostly to the period after 1971.
THKrupp| 9.26.12 @ 4:02PM
What are working papers?
Bill8472| 9.26.12 @ 10:06AM
Not long ago, I was absolutely flabbergasted when I read in a couple of places that employers are hanging on to their boomer employees because they are the ones who have the best work ethic.
I couldn't believe it. Boomers have always worked as little as possible. It was our parents who wore themselves out, grinding away at their jobs. It was our fathers who died two years after they retired at 65 because they never went to the doctor as they developed their cancers, their aneurysms, their strokes, the accumulating nibbles on their powers that killed them, because they couldn't afford to take the time off the job to go to the doctor.
I just can't believe that boomers now have a reputation for being the hard workers in our society. Say it ain't so, Ben...
Lyneuss Fields | 9.26.12 @ 10:32AM
Alas, it's so scary that any freshman sitting in a college class could be in attendance who believed Pearl Harbor was a jewelry store. You make some good points Ben. Surely and obviously, there has been a lowering of the learning curve, and America's fiscal house is a wreck.
All the computerization and innovation will not help a society that has lost faith in its leaders, and yes this includes leaders on both sides of the isle. It's all about money and everybody can see it. And now comes the final points I'll make Bro.
With the advent of the internet—and yes this means Google—Americans who are capable, have analysis at their fingertips. We now understand the deceit and stink beginning with Mr. Reagan, or as I like to refer to the slug, Informant T10—Google that Ben!
People also now realize who the molesters really are. With Reagan and his supply-side ruse came massive amounts of cash transferred from the America's government to the rich. Instead of creating opportunity for those less fortunate, they have socked it away for themselves and their posterity. And nothing but occupation of their streets and a resulting civil war will change and/or eliminate their stink upon America's soil.
http://lyneussfields.blogspot......rowds.html
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 10:37AM
I don't think we are the point of a civil war with the rich, not yet anyway. We do need for them to demonstrate some patriotism and loyalty not only to the country, but also their fellow Americans. Lets hope Romney can help on that. One thing no one can deny is that he is a decent and giving man.
If we do have a civil war it should be to rid ourselves of the communist and socialist in this country.
Lyneuss Fields | 9.26.12 @ 12:32PM
This conflict is not against the wealthy. Many of America’s wealthy are admired for their ideas and achievement. It's the political manipulators and the users that must be squashed. Again, in this article which I assume you have read, Ben makes the point that many among us are illiterate or worse—too stupid to breath. So when you talk about socialism, I'm sure you understand what that word entails. But if not, let me now inform you. Socialism is government control of the tools of production (e.g., land, labor and technology). This of course would include America's public schools, post offices and fire departments. So is this socialism what you want to eliminate from America’s soil? Oh, I get it! You must be one of the freshmen boneheads Ben is talking about in his article above.
http://lyneussfields.blogspot......their.html
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 2:12PM
No Lyneuss,
I just beleive in a fair wage for a days work. In this country ten or even twelve dollars an hour isn't even close to a fair wage anymore. You are ignoring the fact that there is a cost to living. We don't have a bartering system in this country anymore. We all work for dollars(those of us that are willing to work). I make a nice wage as does my wife and still we sometimes struggle. We've have five kids, all of which have college degrees. We've never had a handout. Our youngest had cancer and died from it. So we know what it's like to have a huge hospital bill, and the cost of a funeral. It isn't easy. That said, just how do you expect a young couple to survive, pay their own bills even when they live within their means if neither of them have that BA in business? Jackass, there was a time when Americans looked out for Americans. There was a time that when a company laid off it was a bad sign and their stock fell. Now a company lays off, send the jobs to China and the stock goes up. Greed my friend, greed.
The fire department, socialist, really, that's your argument?
I have no beef with those who are rich or wealthy. I do have a beef with those who got that way not by work, but by sticking a knife in the back of a fellow American.
I voted for Reagan, Bush, Bush, Bush, Bush and McCain. But I'm still going to call it like I see it.
Lyneuss Fields | 9.26.12 @ 7:06PM
Wages haven't kept up with the inflation rate, but this is due to more complex reasons than blaming the wealthy per se. I also attended an accredited University in Northern Utah and graduated with a degree in economics (class of 1983). Upon graduation, jobs were scarce, and Reagan's deregulation was in full effect. When I finally found an opportunity in Southern Utah (St. George), on the first day of work I was told that because I was not a Mormon missionary, I could never be a manager (see my blog: The Mormon Money Machine). Therefore, it was religious persecution and individualism not the wealthy. I do agree with your statement about greed—as you call it.
I believe America needs a new paradigm within its free market society. Let me say that my idea of a free market is when economic resources—the tools of production for products and services—flow in the direction of those products and services which are demanded and away from those products and services which fall out of demand. So the question I ask is if capitalism (individualism and competition) is the only economic system which can exist in a free market society. Perhaps Americans should ask themselves this question: what about collective organization and cooperation, and could this economic system exist within America’s free market? But you might beware! Never speak of this to a greedy, individualistic, competitive capitalist.
http://lyneussfields.blogspot......ative.html
Houdini| 9.26.12 @ 10:53AM
Why don't ya'll go back to doing something that your're good at like crapping in public.
Bob K| 9.26.12 @ 12:23PM
Your analysis, which you doubtless got from the internet, is over simplified, intellectually lazy and historically and economically ignorant. Who are you trying to kid?
Point the finger: Blame Reagan! If that doesn't work, point the finger, blame Bush! If that doesn't work, change horses, point the finger, blame Obama!
Work on your own education first! Then work on your blog.
Seek| 9.26.12 @ 11:05AM
Hand-wringing pundits have been peddling this alarmism for at least 25 years. The current generation, they tell us, will be the first in our country's history to wind up less well-off than their parents. It makes for good copy, but not good social science.
Ben Stein version of this shibboleth lacks hard numbers, and worse, it gives short shrift to Hispanics and blacks (each underachieving relative to whites) making up a larger percentage of our nation's population than ever. They skew the numbers downward.
THKrupp| 9.26.12 @ 11:08AM
There are a lot of factors that go into this issue. The USA is no longer in the post WWII boom. The end of the cold war. The rise of the global economy. There is simply a lot more economic competition. An uneducated person can no longer expect to find a decent job in a factory. Even a person with a bachelors degree is going to find the going tough.
We also have a general cultural problem. We dont hold actual education in high esteem as several people above have mentioned. We value the piece of paper more than we value the actual education.
THKrupp| 9.26.12 @ 11:08AM
We also have a cultural issue where until very recently if you wanted something you just borrowed the money to buy it. Access to credit with strong financial markets is one of our nations greatest assets, but we have turned it into a liability. As a nation we have leveraged the future in exchange for what we want right now.
We are a fully mature economy. Basically there isnt a lot of low hanging fruit out there any more. I have a brother that is a commercial lender. He told me that he had pretty much looked at the financials for every small- medium sized business in his area. He said that except for 1 or 2 people he made more money than all of them.
Then there is automation. We simply dont need people to do the many things that they did in the past. Humans are becoming obsolete. We still need people to work on machines or to run them but we are introducing technology that is taking the place of humans at a greater rate than jobs created by the new technology.
Unfortunately not all these issues have quick answers and some will only be solved with time.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 11:45AM
We buy Chinese products because we think they cost less. Do they really when you look at how much we pay in un-employment, welfare, medi-caid, food stamps, rent and utility vouchers for those who've lost their jobs. Thats not even looking at what it's done to the Social Security fund when U.S. companies lay off Americans so they can make the products they sell overseas. Since the early 80's our economy has been a tiger chasing it's tail. Well, it caight it's tail. It's time for American corporations and stockholders of those corporations to be American for a while. We can and have competed in this world and we win everytime. The move to produce goods in China is not because of cost as much as it is profit margins, and margins are up in manufacturing.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 11:50AM
Remember,
Nixon sent Bush to open up Chinese markets to American goods. It was Bush who started this new world order that sent our manufacturing jobs overseas, only to have those goods sent back to America for consumers to buy. Who came out on that deal? It wasn't middle class America. We need jobs in this country for those who are not college material. These are people who need to work with their hands, not their minds.
Frank Drackman| 9.26.12 @ 12:07PM
"Brown & Black People"???
Guess that's better than callin em "Mud People"
Frank "Pasty White" Drackman
David Thomas | 9.26.12 @ 12:14PM
An addendum to a birth certificate?
You are hereby informed that someone has used your imputed financial value to borrow money for their own use. It has been spent and is not recoverable. This may have been immoral, but was nevertheless quite legal because those that borrowed the money said so (made the laws). Payment on this debt will require your lifetime of labor. There is no way that you can escape this servitude. You have been, thus, taxed without representation since you failed to vote before you were born or achieved legal age with wisdom. Try to bear your lot with its ever-present pain with the knowledge that the "Greatest Generation" that left you with this dire financial legacy did do some admirable things. Those may have been necessary for their own survival and welfare but do redound to your benefit. Keep in mind that they had a really good time with your money.
Stkman| 9.26.12 @ 12:19PM
And every peeny of bailout money has gone to corporations and banks. And when it disapears all we here is from the government, the banks and corporations will be, "We can't find the money".
JimH| 9.26.12 @ 1:02PM
Just a quibble with item one, there are many more people with college degrees and higher now. I’m not sure how many of them are actually better educated than what was produced by most high schools several generations back.
Quartermaster| 9.26.12 @ 1:36PM
A good many of them have useless degrees that would have been laughe at as late as the early 60s. Womyn's Studies, or Black Studies, will qualify you for a job flipping burgers, perhaps, but little else.
OTOH, my son followed me in getting a STEM degree and is now making more than I am. he had no trouble getting a job right out of college.
Frankly, I have little sympathy for those who allowed themselves to be fooled into taking their useless programs. Either think through the consequences of what you are doing, or suffer the consequences.
Occam's Tool| 9.26.12 @ 2:49PM
I got my MD degree and make more than 300K a year. That's before taxes, but after all overhead.
Intelligent Design| 9.26.12 @ 3:30PM
"The society in general has more sophisticated machinery available to all of us, whether in factory, office, shop, or bureaucracy we have machines that allow us to produce more widgets per unit of our time. These would range from immense excavating tools to i-Pads."
Let's not forget that i-Pads and everything else Apple sells is made in China, employing at least 100,000 Chinese and zero Americans. I like AAPL :)
Jack London| 9.26.12 @ 4:44PM
Wow - this is the most left-leaning article I've seen in AmSpec. Well done Ben Stein.
oldeham| 9.26.12 @ 7:10PM
Ben – you are so right.
What are we leaving to our children.
1. Crushing debt, personal and national. Have you seen the figures on what a typical student with an undergraduate degree has, mush less a Masters or PHD?
2. A government that destroyed the underpinnings of sound fiscal policy.
3. A society that discourages personal fiscal responsibility.
4. A society that discourages personal integrity.
5. Living with a system that discourages personal effort.
6. Living with a system that believes in equality of results – not equality of opportunity.
7. A society that encourages, lying, cheating and scamming.
8. A tax structure that discourages saving and investment but encourages speculation.
9. An employment system that openly states that certain positions are 'reserved' for selected people based, not on ability, but their racial classification and/or ethnic heritage.
10. A public school system that indoctrinates students in WHAT to think, not HOW to think.
11. A society where certain groups fell entitled to special treatment for something that occurred 150 years ago.
And on and on.
Based on history – such societies are not sustainable.
That is what we are leaving to our children.
Jerseygal | 9.26.12 @ 7:37PM
I do agree here. I am rather in the middle, in that my parents were better off than I, yet I am better off than my adult children. The reversal had already begun.
gene| 9.26.12 @ 10:25PM
This advice should be unnecessary.
President Barack Obama should not visit Israel.
If he, does, I hope he does not visit Bethlehem.
If he does visit, he needs to stand up straight and tall.
Above all, he should not show poor posture.
No slouching.