Even if you thread the needle and pull it off (2 high-paying jobs in a household in time for kids), you'll find the infrastructure and community around those well-paying jobs aren't designed for kids and most others didn't thread the needle. It certainly feels like picking between where having kids is within reach versus where the "well-paying" jobs are.
There’s certainly a line of thinking that economics is the profession of telling the capital class what they want to hear such as austerity [1]. We can’t let capital fail because… well, ask that guy!
Or more: what ideology says I and my heirs deserve to continue to be wealthy and in control? Funny how we’re in a Social Darwinist moment as wealth inequality rises again. But I’m sure people couldn’t possibly be working backwards to justify their position. Certainly the wealthy, who fund research, wouldn’t twist a science as pure as economics like they did the soft science biology.
Meanwhile extreme poverty levels have been steadily diminishing and quality-of-life broadly improving. But you're concerned with some people having more money. That is to say, equality of outcome. No safety net would ever be enough for communist ideologues, because results and well-being don't matter. Only ideology, and punishment.
There's a reason would-be socialist states have back-tracked from central control of economy and allowed competition (Lenin did this so quickly in spite of his zeal it would make your head spin). They kept the authoritarianism though. Once those tendrils get in, they're tough to get out. Only a few countries shed that in the 20th century, one of them being South Korea; places that embraced Liberalism, because they had the good fortune to have leaders with sense.
Liberty qua Liberalism is good, and the checks-and-balances are meant to evolve over time. The alternatives are abject failures, and you'll propose nothing that hasn't been one.
What does that have to do with whether or not economists are serving a useful role day-to-day? For instance, most economists now agree most economists were wrong about the way to respond to 2008, and the austerity measures actually caused more pain for most people. Seems like exactly the sort of recent failure which should make us question their current advice. Especially if the current advice benefits the folks paying their salary.
Regardless, I stand by my derogatory comments about social Darwinists.
Because yours was just a thinly veiled comment on Capitalism, dressed up as one about Economists.
> the austerity measures actually caused more pain for most people
You're thinking of the Great Depression, not the Great Recession. Have you looked up just how much the U.S. government spent in that time? The bailouts, etc? This was not austerity.
My criticism is most definitely of economics as a field and is a common topic among economists today as they reckon with their failures post-2008. Economists do not all agree on everything.
I am most definitely thinking of the Great Recession which I lived through. I encourage you to research the low growth era that followed and what economists think now. You won't have to go far back because five years ago when the pandemic started there was a lot of writing about the failings of that era. In fact, the consensus seems to be we over-corrected this time, but still better than what we did in 2008. But yes, we made the investors who created the mess whole while making the American citizens eat the costs. It's a bit baffling to have something so widely written about dismissed so confidently by someone who doesn't seem to understand what we are even discussing.
The issue is some ability to fight. For instance, I don’t think the child of a US citizen should be deported without consent of their citizen parent or a ruling against that parent. I’d like some assurance my own child won’t be disappeared to another country without my consent.
If only custody and other issues could have been determined h a court, not ICE ignoring the court while it expedited a flight out of the country then said “sorry, too late”.
No one deserves that much more than others. No one believes they don't deserve what they have. People work backwards to justify why they need so much more power, control, and wealth than others. Worse for Zuck b/c his special shares.
The ambition/success feedback loop never stops, which is why the folks on top seem somehow less secure and content than the rest of us. Most of us figure out we probably won't be the #1 anything pretty early in our journey and stop fixating on comparison and focus on maximizing ourselves.
Most people have to make peace with not being №1, and in doing so, they actually get a shot at real contentment. But when you're at the top, the game never ends. There's always another metric to dominate, another threat to neutralize, another narrative to control.
He mostly had standard GOP appointees last time who weren't on board. This time he has staffed his administration with loyalists, which is why so many have so little experience. They are there to do what they're told.
This suit began under the last Trump administration. If there was a Google-friendly administration, it was Obama's.
What's disappointing to Google is that all of their kowtowing to the Biden administration's "content shaping" ended up worth nothing in the end. Harris would have rewarded them for that help, but Trump of course hates them for it because it was largely directed at him.
Totally anecdotal but to your point, the engineering jobs in my hometown followed the manufacturing jobs in leaving town in the 1990s after NAFTA.
Engineering seems to be returning as domestic manufacturing increases thanks to foreign auto companies setting up shop across the state, replacing what the US companies left behind.
Much of our economic disparity in this country remains regional. We have states full of poor White and Black people. Of course, I have never worked anywhere that "diverse" wasn't only about skin color and gender, which means kids in West Virginia and Alabama are treated like they grew up in Malibu. It's gotten worse where I live in recent years since those historically disadvantaged schools are also 50% English as a second language now with no new resources.
Do any tech companies have programs to hire out of historically disadvantaged regions of the US?
From an American's perspective, given how much Latin American migrant inflow we have, it'd be easy for us to say the same about Latin American cultures and not imagining how we could leave everything behind. Perhaps people's choices don't always reflect their desires and instead reflect the economic realities around them. "Getting out" is viewed as success where I was from because "staying behind" meant a worse life for those who didn't come from wealth.
Reminds me of all these older Americans talking about how "people don't want kids these days" when polling shows younger folks want just as many kids as their own parents but can't afford them.
Presumably at least _some_ are descendants from when a big chunk of the US was part of Mexico, so I would imagine the number is less than 100% (but probably close to it, the region wasn't very populated)
Not everyone, I was given the option to go to the US legally (L1 visa) and passed on it, the person that chose to go instead regretted it and came back.
I am from Uruguay though, which is the best Latin American country, so YMMV, if I was from Venezuela I'd move to the US 100%.
You could say the same about the US-born, so I think you missed my point since you're trying to draw distinctions between the US-born and Latin American-born based on, well, I'm not sure what honestly. Your response is a bit odd, but kind of proves my point about pathologizing the ills of America and romanticizing other cultures, even those which are decidedly "Western" as well.
Statistically the number of Latin American migrants that move to the US yearly is tiny compared to the internal migration and especially to the number of people in Latin America who didn't go anywhere, though. The fact the it's not 100% who don't move doesn't really disprove anything.
It seems you haven’t read the context here where Americans are being framed as lacking community values because some small percentage migrate internally for better economic opportunities. The people here who see Americans who have moved to big cities form smaller places are seeing the exception, not the rule, as was pointed out elsewhere with statistics.
You’re proving my point exactly: those characterizations, especially in the context of Latin American culture as a foil, reveal their own biases. Both are based on anecdotes and vibes, not reality. To me, it's all narcissism of minor differences. I find the need to paint whole cultures with such a broad brush weird, especially based on my experience with people from around the world: most people aren't so different.
> Both are based on anecdotes and vibes, not reality. To me, it's all narcissism of minor differences
I think most are thinking about a higher proportion of adults living at the same household as their parents in some countries when they say that. However in recent year the proportion in the US got a lot closer to Latin American countries. Then again it probably significantly varies by race, ethnic background etc. which doesn't invalidate the anecdotal evidence people might have.
> cultures with such a broad brush weird, especially
US is very heterogeneous but it works reasonably well in many other places besides a handful of outliers.
You’re coming across as disagreeing with me, but it’s unclear about what. Your response to the out-of-context bit at the bottom seems to agree with my central statement about the negative framing of American values in the OP, so I’m very confused what your point is.
We tend to be pushed towards immigration because of a lack of safety, of growth opportunities, and no hope that things will get any better.
With that in mind, if Latin America had safety, I suspect at least half of the immigrants wouldn't leave, especially the ones who are able to hold a middle class job.
Most of us would live in a lower standard of life if it allowed to stay close to friends and family. But not being able to walk down the street bears a heavy weight on our anxieties.
And the impoverished areas of America are also where gun crime and drug overdoses are the most common. Oh, and don't forget losing healthcare and education services as the area continues to decline. These things go together just like in Latin America.
Moving in response to this reality is not an American values problems. I find the instinct to blame Americans for their discontent while framing others in the same situation as victims quite odd.
Latin American tends to be unsafe (physically), but the money probably plays a bigger motivating factor. Remittances and ‘doing it for the family back home’ are common themes.
Depending on which country and which city, Latin American cities are not more dangerous than risky US cities. Many of our cities are reasonably safe. There are burglaries, muggings and robbery like in most big cities all over the world -- no more, and no less.
There are some "trouble" hot spots that are particularly dangerous, of course. The same can be said of the US.
Let me rephrase then: average Latin American cities in many countries are comparable to average US cities.
There are trouble hotspots (and countries) just as there are trouble hotspots in the US.
It's not true that Latin America as a whole is "unsafe". It's not Ciudad Juárez everywhere. I live in Buenos Aires and there's crime comparable to any big city (with better and worse periods, of course).
And large portions of the population (much more than in the US) live in areas that have violent crime and murder rates higher than the worse parts of Oakland. And that isn’t even counting Guatemala as it’s just ‘adjacent’.
Southern South America isn’t bad, but also doesn’t have many people in it.
The children of that immigrants are growing up and seem to have less concern about the cousins back in the old country - their home is the US as are all their friends. The people back in the old country are interesting but not really relevant.
> when polling shows younger folks want just as many kids as their own parents but can't afford them.
it isn't just that they can't afford them, it's that the standards for "good parenting" have increased. Simultaneously, both partners have less time for raising kids because of economic pressure
But the state doesn't subsidize childcare or offer universal pre-K, so the only real solution is to keep importing people from more "trad" cultures until the whole thing blows up
> From an American's perspective, given how much Latin American migrant inflow we have, it'd be easy for us to say the same about Latin American cultures and not imagining how we could leave everything behind.
If you'd wish to make that claim then you'd be awfully wrong.
To start off, you'd be basing your personal opinion on what would most charitably be described as survivorship bias. I mean, try to think about it. The observable sample you're trying to generalize is a tiny subset of a whole population which is the output of a social process subjected to a long sequence of socioeconomical filters.
It would make as much sense as to claim that the average American is excellent at American football by using NFL teams as your sample of the US population.
Pretty much. It should be considered rude to send AI output to others without fact checking and editing. Anyone asking a person for help isn’t looking for an answer straight from Google or ChatGPT.
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