US debt to GDP ratio is >120%. By IMF definition that's an economic death spiral. The death spiral becomes irreversible by 2028 because by then the interest on the loans for all that money we've been printing for decades to prop up the fake economy will only cover the interest, no longer the principal, which will continue to accrue interest, meaning it can never be paid down and the US will be insolvent (cease to exist) by 2042. That road we've been kicking the can down for decades -- this is the end of it. Social Security will be insolvent in a decade. Medicare -- don't ask. Historically about this time 1 or all of 3 things happen: 1) Global Depression/Massive Austerity 2) World War 3) A new monetary system and all the things that go with that, most notably a new world order and loss of civil liberties and rights in exchange for security, housing, food (indentured servitude). The economy is quantifiably worse than it has ever been. Money in the economy is contracting (disappearing) at the highest rate in history (look up the M2 Real.) It just takes a while for the trickle of trickle down economics to make it all the way back to the spout. All those jobs they keep revising down after the fact turned out to be government jobs, so the only thing growing is actually the government, and the only economic growth is coming from fiscal (government) spending that has been slowly making it's way into the economy after years. It's pretty nuts. We're literally borrowing money from China to send to Ukraine and Gaza. Those illegal immigrants--I mean "refugees" are costing each taxpayer over $9,000 a year. Kids are born today owing the government over $100,000. Their kids, right now it'll be $250,000. Dark Age onset type stuff we're witnessing if you've ever read a book about how the Dark Ages (Bronze age, Fall of the Roman Empire) happened. You know that "This is Fine" meme. Yeah, that. Even Apple's growth rate is the slowest it's been in 5 years. Wall Street and Big Tech have been hoarding money and are pouring it all into the AI revolution so the robots can take over and restore order when the Technological Singularity happens by 2028 thanks to the billionaires Accelerationism plans. Good times if you like dystopian sci-fi movies. Next 20 years are going be a real hoot. I've always wanted a battle van. And thank Elon we'll finally have one that can be solar powered. Eat your heart out Mad Max. See you in the wasteland, cowboys.
Let's take it one sub-section at a time, starting with Part D:
The most insane "free give away" of younger tax-payer money, which the first decade of beneficiaries effectively contributed <10% of received benefit (prescription drug subsidization, but only if you're retired/disabled).
I am ALL FOR SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE SOLUTION — I dropped out of a US medical school over a decade ago (realizing the system then was broken, most-obvious-then with the passage of medical student / resident ~80hr/week MAX scheduling (ha ha ha)). Obamacare was doomed before it even passed, and I personally paid the IRS "fine" for the few years required.
Your wall of text is absolutely spot-on, breath-taking!, and yet I recommend to many to embellish their lives in facts, starting with the greatest book [1] on Modern US Retireeism's Upper Crust [certainly there are numerous more impoverished Boomers]; those that did from the "I got Mine!" Generation absolutely are detached from the reality of modern US Decline [opportunies aren't there, folks, for massive segments of population].
Some common examples I see in my part-time philanthropy work (medical focused, for underserved populations within US):
Rich, Well.Meaning Donor: "Yes, but I'd rather donate mother `internationally` because there is SO MUCH OPPORTUNITY FOR US CITIZENs to work and they `just aren't` working."
Donor coordinator (not wealhty; work is matching tax-writeoffs with approved local charities): "That is JUST NOT THE CASE, Friend [2]. I am happy to discuss the complexities of any of a variety of hindrances which keep the majority of Americans impoverished, renting, and unable to develop their own Generational Wealth — pick any topic"
Rich Phil./Legal Tax Avoider: "Why doesn't anybody want to be a non-traveling nurse anymore?!" [==contract nurses that rotate positions and are very. well. paid |VS| full-time staff nurse]
D.C: "Because working staff at a hospital doesn't pay very well, for all the emotional and physical BS that nurses have to deal with -- and the hospital gets gutted by some MBA/JD that works quickly to make each Fiscal Quarter more profitable, to the ultimate doom of the healthcare of patients and well-being of employees. By being short-term traveling contract, only, the MBA/JDs [at first] appear to be saving money [i.e. more shareholder value!] until ultimately the cost of mismanagement/lawsuits from overworked staff and misunderstood wards ends up destroying the entire healthcare system."
Rich Donor, less gratuitously: "???" "But USA has `best healthcare in the world!` ... `wait times` ... `yada` ..."
Me: "...if you can AFFORD IT."
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[1] book "A Generation of Sociopaths" A+
[2] e.g: RAM (Rural Access Medical?) started out as an international charity started by a US Physician... who then realized that underserved/uninsured US Citizens oftentimes face 3rd-world-like health crisis, particularly in rural Appalachia (for just one 5M+ example!).
It's incredible the extent to which Gen X/Y/Millenials are not fighting back over being fleeced by Boomers. We’ve paid 12.4 percent of our earnings to Social Security the whole time we've worked — half taken through the “FICA” tax on our paycheck and half through the payroll tax. What is more, the Medicare tax at 3.1%.
In contrast, the Boomers entered the workforce in the late 1960s, paid only 6.5 percent of their earnings to Social Security and nothing to Medicare. For about half of their working years, the Boomers paid 10 percent or less to Social Security and less than 1.25 percent to Medicare. Only from 1990 on, when the Boomers had earned paychecks for a quarter‐ century, did they start paying 12.4 percent to Social Security and 2.9 percent to Medicare — the same percentage we Gen‑X/ Yers have paid our whole lives. Yet, Boomers are reaping the full rewards, rewards we will likely never see.
It's an absolute fucking joke and the final trick played by a generation that took solid foundation built on sweat and sacrifice, partied on them for 30 years, left their trash behind and sold what remained for parts. Every-time my conservative, gubmnt hating father lauds the wonders of Medicare and how wonderful his free healthcare is I want to kick him squarely in the balls.
Power has been consolidated. The things that could be done - protest (OWS), mild insurrection (Floyd protests), actual insurrection (Jan 6th), primary (AOC) - have been tried. It turns out that it's difficult to get anything done when the top 20% of us in terms of wealth are somewhere on the scale between "Zero backbone" and "Actively running interference for Boomers".
On the note of "selling": after certain Boomer family members were complaining about the cousin in NYC who won't renovate and get that sweet ABnBux cashflow from her brownstone, I pointed out that our family had let go of 8 figures worth of property in my lifetime (for about 6 figures in cash), and that they had no right to pin our landed gentry hopes on her. Like water off a duck's back; I don't even think they understood what I was trying to say, repeatedly misinterpreting, "It shouldn't be all on her," to mean, "We could swoop in and finance it if only she'd let us." No, I meant, "You squandered your portions of the pie Boomering around in the 90s and early 2000s; leave her be."
Both of my best local friends are Boomers [technically; I am literally half the elder's age]. One of them literally says to me, fairly recently "there is no scientific evidence of global climate change being caused by humans." [1] He allows no further discussion/exploration [guilt much?].
My other older friend at least will read technical information on specific subjects; but his wife poopoos and moral inquisition on "fairness" (a bad word in Her house).
[1] youtube.com/watch?v=mK5TbGvvluk - a 4:49s clip by ClimateTown (Rollie Williams) citing every oil, insurance, and national agency which refutes this (spoiler alert: it's ALL OF THEM accepting global warming).
I go through this every time I have to ask for a refund and tell a business I just want a refund so we can part ways instead of filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and with the FTC.
This. Salesforce, is a great example of this. I can't tell you the number of companies that exist just building a simple application that does the one thing customers bought these bloated app suites to do that they liked and became burdened with the developers ecosystem or constant enhancements they make just to justify their dev teams existence. Adobe and Microsoft are also notorious for this, as well as just about every cloud company.
Been dealing with this since my 40s. And good luck hiding it on your resume, most application forms these days require dates and even addresses. I am also discriminated against based on location. Some companies won't even interview you unless you are local, even for remote jobs, even if you're willing to relocate.
Yes, but be careful. If you have an interview and the offer comes too easily, due to internal referral or whatever, it should raise a red flag. You may be stepping into a big pile of crap (based on personal experience where this happened a couple of times.)
I don’t remember filling in an allocation for google, where I have my current job. Maybe it came after the offer? I don’t think applications are very common in tech anymore, you just get an interview set up with a recruiter and the paper work only comes if they want to hire you.
On this note, the invention of the printing press led to The Reformation with the first printing of the Bible, which up until that point had been duplicated by monks by hand, and The Word controlled and interpreted by the Church, who wielded their power like modern governments and institutions deciding what is or is not mis- or disinformation.
I would say instead it's a PEOPLE problem, not a technology problem.
To quote Neil Postman, politics are downstream from technology, because the technology (medium) controls the message. Just look at BigTech interfering with the messages by labeling them "disinfo." If one wants to say BUSINESS POLITICS, then that's probably more accurate, but we haven't solved the Google, MS, DuckDuckGo, Meta interfering with search results problem so I don't think we can trust BigTech to not exploit users even more for their personal data, or trust them not to design AI so it inherently abuses it's power for BigTech's own ends, and they hold all the cards and have been guiding things in the interest of technocracy.
I created an online fan forum for The X-Files back in 1993 on the Delphi vax-based network as the web was starting to emerge. I created ASCII art of logos and stuff since it was a text-based menu-driven system. Newscorp bought the company and their marketing managers started asking me to create ASCII art for them. It turned out my fan forum was the biggest on the service with 25,000 members (that was a lot back then.) This got the attention of executives who wanted to use this new digital medium to market their properties not just for FOX Broadcasting but TV Guide, Harper Collins, FOX Film, FX Cable Network, etc. They decided to create a web-based online service to do it and hired me away from my job as a lab researcher working on gene therapy and moved me to Los Angeles to create and run the official X-Files web site. They liked me because I knew the tech and what fans wanted. I basically invented what was then the TV/film marketing web site. All I really did was assess what marketing resources were available and figure out a way to put them online. I was literally the first person to put TV show trailers online Not film trailers, just TV. No one thought anyone cared enough about T shows to download a 1.4MB 320x240 TV spot over 14400bps. Crazy times. I spent $1000 on the video capture card to digitize tv spots on VHS tapes they sent me. This was when the Pentium 90 had just come out. They never followed through creating the web-based online service for Newscorp, but since I had created a web site and online community with millions of users I ended up managing all of the web sites for the television network (and coded most of them) and even worked on sites like FOX Sports when it first came out and became the goto guy on the FOX lot when it came to online content and understanding what the fans wanted out of web sites. I moved on to create and work on ecommerce sites during the dot com boom, later worked on the original Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2 and created the mod tools (the classic/good ones), worked for Sony Pictures Imageworks Interactive ultimately Sony PlayStation where I managed the production on all of the PS1 Classics available for digital download as well as some less notable stuff. That was my last full time job. Today I can't get a fulltime or even freelance job to save my life, despite nearly three decades of experience managing technology initiatives and software production that generated tens of millions in revenue. Entertainment is a different beast, you age out if you aren't an executive, and other industries don't seem to care about transferrable skills unless you're an individual contributor (programmer).
Technically I've been unemployed for 9 years. When I say I can't get a job to save my life, I mean that literally. Today I'm looking for a full time job as a manager of software product design and development or production in other industries and burning through my retirement savings.
I do some software design and development on the side to try and keep up with all the changing tech but nothing I can invest a lot of time in if it's not going to earn me a living wage. I taught myself technical analysis and watch a stock chart all day between sending out resumes and teach people online what I know about reading stock charts and how the markets actually work to try and keep people from losing money unnecessarily. It makes me feel useful and keeps me a active as a coach and mentor.
I'm still a fan of the show. It was innovative and we wouldn't have Vince Gilligan and Breaking Bad let alone mythologies and serials the way we do now if it wasn't for The X-Files.
You've had some awesome experiences. X-Files rules, and there's few things more satisfying than running a fan community like that. Running forums as a kid is also what got me into design and engineering, and greatly influenced my approach to networking and building relationships.
It sounds to me like you need to stop trying to conform to a market not optimized for your skill set, and instead start a company or consultancy which makes full use of it. Numerous possibilities come to mind based on the experiences you've listed, if you want to bounce around ideas drop me a line.
I did some consulting and tried starting my own company but I don't have the resources (co-founders, money, programming skills) and the market is dramatically different today.
Funding until 2020 was chasing the next big thing, (VR/AR/XR, Crypto, Metaverse, NFT, now AI) and after 2020 the US has been in an economic death spiral due to our debt to GDP ratio so there's a lot of competition for a lot less money and more and more the products are just infrastructure as markets are contracting. Even my peers who still have their own companies are fighting over or collaborating on/for scraps tossed to them by the giants like Amazon, Google or Microsoft.
It's a much longer nuanced discussion but the summary is if I had the resources I could create and build something great but we are no longer in an economy where large investment takes large risks to create a better/revolutionary version of Facebook or Twitter or the digital advertising industry that doesn't rely on antiquated or exploitive business models (sunken costs). That's not to say there aren't opportunities and I don't have killer revolutionary ideas, there's just a lot of barriers to entry. No one can afford the risk these days. It's something I've struggled with since before even Facebook existed.
Just a reminder they tried the same political hit on Elon at this exact time last year. This is pure party politics. They see him as a threat to their power.
This is what they were created to do. Their founder has created several Super PACs and has been an advisor for the Clintons. Their largest donor was George Soros. They are political in nature and always have been.
That's fine, but people should know what Media Matters is and not confuse them for some non-partisan non-profit.
Then there is this gem, also a stunt pulled by their founder:
> And a nonprofit group founded by the Democratic activist David Brock, which people familiar with the arrangements say secretly spent $200,000 on an unsuccessful effort to bring forward accusations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Trump before Election Day, is considering creating a fund to encourage victims to bring forward similar claims against Republican politicians.
Right there with you. In the process of extracting myself from all things MS. Even when they do something right they have to keep changing it until it's crap.
