
How Baby Boomers Broke America - johnny313
http://time.com/5280446/baby-boomer-generation-america-steve-brill/
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patrickg_zill
My view:

1\. Remove the popular election of senators, replaced with the original case
of each state legislature appointing its own 2 senators. Decentralizes the
money aspect, makes it more likely that senators will focus on what benefits
their state.

2\. Federal Reserve is a big problem - there is no reason for US Dollars to
have interest rates, any interest rates, attached to them. Leave off all the
other theories etc. concerning the role of the Federal Reserve (which is a
weird non-government agency that even Congress has limited oversight over).
Just, don't attach interest to each dollar issued.

How much interest would $100 issued by the Fed 100 years ago in 1918, have
thrown off in the last century?

Even Aristotle spoke against interest on money...

~~~
Gibbon1
In the US since 1980 neoliberals broke the banking system in the US in the
name of 'efficiency'. Efficiency to a neoliberal means efficiently being able
to extract rents.

So before 1980 if you graphed the US banking system you would see a tree
structure. With the Fed on the top, leading to the regional reserve banks, the
member banks. Then down to local banks. This meant that the flow of bank
capital was more or less evenly distributed country wide.

What happened was the banking system was flattened by removing limits on
regional competition. Before 1980 it was illegal for banks to loan money
outside their region. Once those restrictions were removed that lead to wildly
uneven banking capital distribution. And then during the 2008 shadow banking
crisis the Feds removed the wall separating investment banks from retail
banks.

------
RickJWagner
I guess the world feels different to people in different places.

I'm a young Boomer / Old Gen Xer, and to me things are pretty good right now.
Jobs are available, 401k balances are good, etc. My own kids are in college or
headed to college, and the same is true for most of my friends (across the
economic spectrum).

I read about how disastrous things seem to this author, but I haven't seen it.
My business travels have taken me to both coasts and I live in the middle, I
don't see the widespread misery described. I see opportunity for all stripes
of people being offered and taken.

To be sure, I do think life will be tougher for our kids. The same economic
opportunities I had have changed, but there seem to be new ones springing up.

I think it's just life going on. Good luck to next generations....

~~~
dwoot
Your experience is very anecdotal as is what I'm about to share.

For comparisons, we always need a reference point. I believe your reference
point is where you currently reside in America. And the misery described in
the article may not be as bad as you think given that as your reference.

I probably don't travel within the U.S. as much as you do, but I've traveled
to a lot of places, mostly large coastal cities, so I don't know what it's
like for those in more rural and less developed parts of America, like the
South. However, I've traveled abroad a little bit or have known people that
have been to some very different places: Japan, China, Switzerland, Denmark,
Australia, Finland, Argentina, Brazil, etc. If you've been to San Francisco
recently, our transportation infrastructure is functional, but old, dirty, and
not very timely at all. Some of the stations are filled with homeless and the
mentally-ill alike. We don't have enough public restrooms, so they defecate on
the streets. I don't know how long it takes to repair roads in your town, but
road projects here take a very long time to complete and seem to be done only
during daytime hours which is the least convenient for commuters. Compare this
to Japan where the streets are clean, people don't walk and people receive
apologies for a train that departs early by seconds:
[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42009839](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-42009839).

I bring all this up, because I feel like we only compare ourselves to
ourselves. We seem to have this idea that America is still the best at most of
the things that we do. I feel like American ingenuity is lost. What is America
producing that we and the rest of the world want? Some of our software that
can only exist because we have some great infrastructure in place that allow
people to kickstart a business easily and perhaps our entertainment, but I
don't see much else.

I'm an Asian-American in my 30s, born and bred in San Francisco. I actually
grew up in the inner-city. What that entails is a run-down and under-funded
school system made up of all minorities with the exceptions being a few
teachers that dared step foot in an urban school in an undesirable part of
town.

Have you ever asked yourself or took a look at how the friends in your circle
came to be? I ask this only because our social circles are cultivated. We all
make choices along the way that shape those that we are surrounded by either
by choice of school, employment, geography, or other things. I always say to
people when we watch sports, "we're watching the same game, but we can come
away with completely different interpretations of what transpired or what is
actually happening".

Major cities like San Francisco and New York are made up of transplants. I do
software in San Francisco. It's funny when people tell me that San Francisco
is "diverse" or when they ask, "where are all the SF natives?". It may be
diverse because you see a lot of people of different colors, but in San
Francisco, most people of the same color hang out with those that share their
skin color. That alone could be telling of how highly cultivated our social
circles are. Transplants working in tech in San Francisco are usually of a few
backgrounds: white or Asian and highly educated. It is devoid of any
significant representation from Hispanic/Latino-Americans or Black/African-
Americans and I should also mention other Asian-Americans from backgrounds not
Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, like Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian. People
hardly ever ask me why, but being somebody that went to school with all of the
above minorities, I have a fairly good idea, as some of them are formerly
friends of mine that whose lives I can peer into on social media. I'm able to
infer what their lives are like based on the questions they ask and the things
that they think or have discussions about. I can also infer what their socio-
economic status is based on these things. What I know, think, and care about
compared to them are completely different. I was fortunate enough to attend
one of the top universities in the nation. We lead completely different lives
and my income is probably several multiples of theirs. That said, despite
being in one of the wealthiest nations, we are a country that sees the least
economic mobility between generations, save for a few. I introspect my life
from time to time and I can glean from my own observations that my social
circle is made up of more and more successful people. Some would call it
diverse on the basis of ethnic background/color of someone's skin, but if the
basis was upbringing and environment, it's probably not very diverse.

While I'm Asian-American and on the outside I may look like my fellow Asian-
Americans in tech, very few people understand that I know many Asian-Americans
that have dropped out of school and working dead-end jobs with no ladder. I
consider myself very lucky and fortunate.

When you or I travel, we don't visit areas of despair or less desirable parts
of town do we? I know I don't, so do we really get the complete picture?

