If we can outlast it, the core stupidity of the republican party should die out within the next 10-20 years due to age and what not. Hopefully
I wouldn't be so certain of that. Conservatives (especially in the midwest) seem to be almost as good about passing on their politics as they are about passing on their religion. Plus, there do seem to be a lot of College Republicans / libertarian types.
White people have fewer kids and don't immigrate as much.
Right, but there are just plain a lot of white people. They're not growing as fast as the minorities, obviously, but this is still basically a country of white people. Even given the growth rates of the minority groups, urbanization, etc. I feel like 'the GOP dies within 10-20 years' as being very optimistic.
I never said the GOP dies, I said crazy dies out as the current, old republicans die or have to leave office due to health. Leaving room for more Progressive, younger generations to come up. Hopefully, at least.
What does a "moderate Republican" look like? The core assumptions of their party are built on empirically weak foundations:
Fiscal Assumptions
-The rich create new wealth by hiring the middle- and lower-class, and by investing. ... It's been shown repeatedly that tax cuts for the wealthy have little to no stimulative effect.
-Market forces will regulate behavior and police bad actors. ... The past three years beg to differ.
-Government taxation (but not subsidies, for some reason) interfere with market equilibriums. ... While taxation does introduce dead weight loss in supply-demand curves, we as a society have consciously made the tradeoff between efficiency and equity, as the saying goes.
...Actually, I'm not willing to invest anymore energy and list the social and foreign policy assumptions of the GOP. Just pretend I did and that I thoroughly debunked them. :P
But getting back to the point: without those "core" pillars of GOP faith, what reason is there left to have an (R) next to your name?
If we can outlast it, the core stupidity of the republican party should die out within the next 10-20 years due to age and what not. Hopefully
I wouldn't be so certain of that. Conservatives (especially in the midwest) seem to be almost as good about passing on their politics as they are about passing on their religion. Plus, there do seem to be a lot of College Republicans / libertarian types.
White people have fewer kids and don't immigrate as much.
Right, but there are just plain a lot of white people. They're not growing as fast as the minorities, obviously, but this is still basically a country of white people. Even given the growth rates of the minority groups, urbanization, etc. I feel like 'the GOP dies within 10-20 years' as being very optimistic.
I never said the GOP dies, I said crazy dies out as the current, old republicans die or have to leave office due to health. Leaving room for more Progressive, younger generations to come up. Hopefully, at least.
I did not mean to double post, but since i cant find a way to delete this post I'm just leaving it alone
The younger generations are decidedly less emphatic than before (been given everything they wanted and been told that they are creation's center all their life) . Why would they be supporting policies that relies on caring for others?
What does a "moderate Republican" look like? The core assumptions of their party are built on empirically weak foundations:
Fiscal Assumptions
-The rich create new wealth by hiring the middle- and lower-class, and by investing. ... It's been shown repeatedly that tax cuts for the wealthy have little to no stimulative effect.
-Market forces will regulate behavior and police bad actors. ... The past three years beg to differ.
-Government taxation (but not subsidies, for some reason) interfere with market equilibriums. ... While taxation does introduce dead weight loss in supply-demand curves, we as a society have consciously made the tradeoff between efficiency and equity, as the saying goes.
...Actually, I'm not willing to invest anymore energy and list the social and foreign policy assumptions of the GOP. Just pretend I did and that I thoroughly debunked them. :P
But getting back to the point: without those "core" pillars of GOP faith, what reason is there left to have an (R) next to your name?
Yes, but the GOP can drop the crazy (which are the points you mentioned) and go back to real conservatism. Taxes should be held as low as possible (come on, no one likes paying taxes, we just know why it is necessary and it beat the alternatives.), so some politicians need to actively fight for lower taxes within reasonable limits. I have no problems with politicians being against government spending, as long as they realize that it is for necessary reasons and have its uses to promote prosperity (and this is not 100% evil).
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Well, if the Pubs get back into office, I get the feeling they'd repeat a lot of policies that King George II did and remove or reduce more EPA policies and do things like drill for oil up north, I can kinda see climate change nailing us really fucking hard and pretty much killing a good majority of the people on the planet, so it won't matter. The Dems won't ever play the same kind of game, or grow a spine, and just continue to get pushed over while they sit in the background and mumble like Milton from Office Space.
Short term gains > everything, as we've been seeing is the policy in the last decade or so. That will continue to be the motto, and will end up with us being really hurt by something at some point.
Or, as been mentioned, mega corporations finally start to take over everything as it seems they want to do, and get rid of their puppets in the government and assume full control. We could have nation-states devoted to these corporations.
-Much heavier urbanization in general, less focus on suburbs
-China has become the dominant world economy
-Heavily socialist sentiments after 8 years of GOP rule, combined with a new reactionary far-right (sound familiar?)
-Current huge class divide calcifies into very distinguishable voting blocs, mobility is almost nonexistent
-Resources growing thin, China begins skirmishes/occupations in unstable Middle Eastern countries. They won't say it's for freedom.
Honestly, I know I've been studying PoliSci for only two years now and that's close to nothing, but such a future has been brought up by many of my professors and speakers I've listened to. There's two things that need to be highlighted in this list, though. A culture mixed with extreme nihilism and extreme rage, and severe climate change.
Basically, from my studies on climate change, it seems worse than predicted due to feed back loops and rising economies in nations like China and India that are polluting on top of what is already being done.
As well, a lot of modern culture teaches people to think about the individual, but not from a personal freedom perspective, rather it is about caring only for yourself and not thinking about the implications of your actions or how people effect one another globally. This is a major reason why, I think, voting is so low, and as is awareness of wars, climate change, and other such events.
In turn, the most dominate cultures of the world are producing a youth that not only doesn't know or understand the world's problems, but thinks it doesn't effect them and they don't care. At the other end of modern society, you have those who are aware and are getting angrier as things get worse. These are people from all ends of the political/social spectrum. They know something is wrong, but because we are in quite a painful time and the other half of society doesn't care, they can't help but fall into desperate acts ranging from protests and riots to terrorism.
The younger generation is not that bad. They volunteer in record numbers. Entry into the Peace Corps has become extremely competitive. They don't donate much money, but they also mostly don't have that much money.
They're more socially liberal, especially in matters of gender and race. They aren't particularly conservative, and they oppose the war by a large majority, probably because they actually know someone in it from high school.
Most of the things thrown against them are bullshit cultural stuff that are the modern equivalent of "kids these days and their demon rock n' roll." I'm sure a group that's communicating on an internet message board would agree that using texting, Facebook and Google a lot are indicators of exactly nothing.
It's like busting on people in the 1920s for using the telephone.
A GOP whose objective was just to keep the libs from getting us to a 200% debt-to-GDP ratio sounds kind of appealing, but the present incarnation just comes with way too much social, geopolitical and elitist protectionist baggage to be taken seriously, imho.
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
The younger generation is not that bad. They volunteer in record numbers. Entry into the Peace Corps has become extremely competitive.
That's because they don't have jobs to do anything. A lot of jobless people I know are volunteering for everything and anything that will provide them with a warm meal and place to stay, even if that means going to another country to do it.
Basically, from my studies on climate change, it seems worse than predicted due to feed back loops and rising economies in nations like China and India that are polluting on top of what is already being done.
Jeffrey Sachs has a concise rundown of exactly how fucked we are from a plain old natural resource (as opposed to a somewhat more academic / intangible 'we're hurting the Earth') perspective here.
tl;dr: India and China are still very much third-world economies, but by their sheer population (and pop. density) alone, if they even reach "second-world" status, it will create enormous strains on an already taxed global food and resource supply.
The younger generation is not that bad. They volunteer in record numbers. Entry into the Peace Corps has become extremely competitive. They don't donate much money, but they also mostly don't have that much money.
They're more socially liberal, especially in matters of gender and race. They aren't particularly conservative, and they oppose the war by a large majority, probably because they actually know someone in it from high school.
Most of the things thrown against them are bullshit cultural stuff that are the modern equivalent of "kids these days and their demon rock n' roll." I'm sure a group that's communicating on an internet message board would agree that using texting, Facebook and Google a lot are indicators of exactly nothing.
It's like busting on people in the 1920s for using the telephone.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
I don't think enough people (of any age group) care enough to educate themselves as to what the reality of, well reality, is in the US. So crazies in positions of power will continue to push their luck more and more until the system simply ceases to function at all. What happens after that is not something I can even guess at.
I agree that the youth aren't useless (I'm still an undergrad). While they do volunteer in superb numbers and are against wars, for equal rights, and taking care of the climate, I don't think its for the right reasons.
Volunteering has become an easier way to get experience in a super competitive job market, and taking a stance on social/political issues seems more out of an act of self interest. The problem with that is many of the most educated of our youth who can do something are well off enough- even in this economy- to take a stand, but not do anything other than volunteer here and there for the experience only. I'm not saying I have any real numbers, but experiencing college life in a city (Chicago) makes me realize that education isn't enough to make my generation a bright future, they need to care way more than they actually do.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
You keep making references to how terrible and apathetic 'kids these days' are. Do you have some kind of empirical evidence to confirm that this is in fact a widespread phenomenon?
In 20 years the US will have 9% unemployment (still), no social safety net, Republican supermajority every election, and national Arizona style immigration laws. The median income will drop by 10,000 a year but the average wealth of each billionaire will be 50% higher.
I'm relatively convinced that the existence of Fox News has permanently poisoned our democratic process beyond repair, because the truth no longer has any sway on the public.
The younger generation is not that bad. They volunteer in record numbers. Entry into the Peace Corps has become extremely competitive. They don't donate much money, but they also mostly don't have that much money.
They're more socially liberal, especially in matters of gender and race. They aren't particularly conservative, and they oppose the war by a large majority, probably because they actually know someone in it from high school.
Most of the things thrown against them are bullshit cultural stuff that are the modern equivalent of "kids these days and their demon rock n' roll." I'm sure a group that's communicating on an internet message board would agree that using texting, Facebook and Google a lot are indicators of exactly nothing.
It's like busting on people in the 1920s for using the telephone.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
So, in other words, you coached kids? Did our fathers and grandfathers pick the smallest kids for dodgeball, or did they nail them in the balls and laugh about it?
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
You keep making references to how terrible and apathetic 'kids these days' are. Do you have some kind of empirical evidence to confirm that this is in fact a widespread phenomenon?
Have I said I did? No, I base my opinion on my own observations. And I have yet to observe the opposite behavior.
EDIT: Are there empirical evidence that kids today are the opposite of what I am seeing for altrusitic reasons?
The younger generation is not that bad. They volunteer in record numbers. Entry into the Peace Corps has become extremely competitive. They don't donate much money, but they also mostly don't have that much money.
They're more socially liberal, especially in matters of gender and race. They aren't particularly conservative, and they oppose the war by a large majority, probably because they actually know someone in it from high school.
Most of the things thrown against them are bullshit cultural stuff that are the modern equivalent of "kids these days and their demon rock n' roll." I'm sure a group that's communicating on an internet message board would agree that using texting, Facebook and Google a lot are indicators of exactly nothing.
It's like busting on people in the 1920s for using the telephone.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
So, in other words, you coached kids? Did our fathers and grandfathers pick the smallest kids for dodgeball, or did they nail them in the balls and laugh about it?
I figure any attempt to predict this far out is pretty futile.
Everyone is terrible at predicting how political events unfold. No one predicted any of the major events in the latter half of last century, up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so definitively claiming things like 'China will be the next superpower' seems more than a little premature. My prediction is that something big will happen that no one has predicted, will look incredibly ineveitable in hindsight and have people asking 'How did no one see this coming?' Because that's basically been how events have played out over the last few decades.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
You keep making references to how terrible and apathetic 'kids these days' are. Do you have some kind of empirical evidence to confirm that this is in fact a widespread phenomenon?
Have I said I did? No, I base my opinion on my own observations. And I have yet to observe the opposite behavior.
EDIT: Are there empirical evidence that kids today are the opposite of what I am seeing for altrusitic reasons?
I didn't make any kind of claim about what all kids (in the U.S., presumably) are like, so I don't feel any onus to prove they're any better or worse than people aged 10-24 at any other point in time. Generally speaking, when you make a bold claim like that, the burden of proof is on you. You're citing very narrow, anecdotal evidence and extrapolating it to an entire generation of American youth.
I have, in the South, no less. When I taught high school, I taught an elective, so I had special ed kids in the class. There were a couple of exceptions here and there, but for the most part, the kids did their best to include these students and could be borderline familial at times. And this was rich/poor, black/white. I must admit, I was surprised, but it gave me some hope for the future.
I figure any attempt to predict this far out is pretty futile.
Everyone is terrible at predicting how political events unfold. No one predicted any of the major events in the latter half of last century, up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so definitively claiming things like 'China will be the next superpower' seems more than a little premature. My prediction is that something big will happen that no one has predicted, will look incredibly ineveitable in hindsight and have people asking 'How did no one see this coming?' Because that's basically been how events have played out over the last few decades.
While I agree that prediction that far out is a losing game, that doesn't mean that you can't look at an 8-9% year-on-year growth rate for the past, what, decade or two, and not presume that China will through sheer population become the world's largest economy. The recession slowed growth in the West to a crawl; India and China basically shrugged it off and lost a percentage point or two of potential growth.
Quite. The discussion has been about "kids today," which implies "versus kids of past generations." You responded that the kids you coach [i.e. kids today] are jerks. My point is, haven't kids, particularly in sports or PE classes, always been jerks? Accepting that point, you must concede that youth civility is no worse now than in the past, and, hence, is not a signpost to Doom in and of itself.
The younger generation is not that bad. They volunteer in record numbers. Entry into the Peace Corps has become extremely competitive. They don't donate much money, but they also mostly don't have that much money.
They're more socially liberal, especially in matters of gender and race. They aren't particularly conservative, and they oppose the war by a large majority, probably because they actually know someone in it from high school.
Most of the things thrown against them are bullshit cultural stuff that are the modern equivalent of "kids these days and their demon rock n' roll." I'm sure a group that's communicating on an internet message board would agree that using texting, Facebook and Google a lot are indicators of exactly nothing.
It's like busting on people in the 1920s for using the telephone.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
So, in other words, you coached kids? Did our fathers and grandfathers pick the smallest kids for dodgeball, or did they nail them in the balls and laugh about it?
I'm sorry, is there a point here?
Kids are kids. Which is to say, "kids are raging dicks." This is a matter of emotional maturity and cognitive development, not a reflection of some special character within today's young people.
Every generation has gone through a raging dickbag stage. That we see it in today's teenagers is normal, not indicative of a downward swing in humanity.
I figure any attempt to predict this far out is pretty futile.
Everyone is terrible at predicting how political events unfold. No one predicted any of the major events in the latter half of last century, up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so definitively claiming things like 'China will be the next superpower' seems more than a little premature. My prediction is that something big will happen that no one has predicted, will look incredibly ineveitable in hindsight and have people asking 'How did no one see this coming?' Because that's basically been how events have played out over the last few decades.
While I agree that prediction that far out is a losing game, that doesn't mean that you can't look at an 8-9% year-on-year growth rate for the past, what, decade or two, and not presume that China will through sheer population become the world's largest economy. The recession slowed growth in the West to a crawl; India and China basically shrugged it off and lost a percentage point or two of potential growth.
Or it could completely backfire on them as they balkanize into hundreds of tiny feuding states once the growth slows or is shown to be faked/whatever. I guarentee most of the predictions being made are wrong in some capacity, if only because they have a track record of being terribly wrong. Again, Berlin Wall, 9-11, World War II all look crazy likely in hindsight, but no one saw them coming at the time.
I figure something like that is going to happen soon and throw out a bunch of our preconceptions of the world. Again.
-Much heavier urbanization in general, less focus on suburbs
-China has become the dominant world economy
-Heavily socialist sentiments after 8 years of GOP rule, combined with a new reactionary far-right (sound familiar?)
-Current huge class divide calcifies into very distinguishable voting blocs, mobility is almost nonexistent
-Resources growing thin, China begins skirmishes/occupations in unstable Middle Eastern countries. They won't say it's for freedom.
Yeah, pretty much, although I'd suggest that China will also be more interventionist in Africa, since they've been making some serious economic investments in African nations and will have an interest in keeping that region stable.
Short term: The US doesn't default but forced austerity steered by the Tea Party-beholden GOP kicks the economy into another recession and a spike in unemployment above and beyond where it is now. Obama loses to Romney in 2012 after Romney fends off an early Teaper surge from Bachmann, and the GOP retains the House and narrows the gap in the Senate.
The Republican almost-majority continues to use the filibuster to bludgeon the Senate Democrats into going along with more austerity for the poor and more tax cuts for the wealthy. This makes the economy worse for all but the folks at the very top. Crumbling infrastructure, rising gas prices, continued foreclosures, and widespread unemployment spikes a re-urbanization trend. Since it's not planned for in the slightest, this population shift from suburban to urban strains urban social services and infrastructure to or beyond the breaking point, leading to incredibly high urban unemployment rates and more than a few city governments defaulting or cutting back services to the bare minimum. Calls to bail out the first major city to default cause a mini-crisis and after much debate the Teapers win their last major victory by defeating a bailout plan.
Fringe movements on the right and to a lesser extent the left gain popularity but fail to achieve much more than depressing voter turn out and committing scattered terrorist attacks. The economy continues to decline, leading to a populist backlash against Republican austerity that has more than a slight tinge of class warfare. Groups on both the right and left try and take advantage of this, and to be massively biased I'm expecting a leftist neo-Socialist coalition to win a major electoral victory by 2020. Or, less positively, a right-wing populist/socialist/Dominionist movement that combines class warfare and culture warfare.
Quite. The discussion has been about "kids today," which implies "versus kids of past generations." You responded that the kids you coach [i.e. kids today] are jerks. My point is, haven't kids, particularly in sports or PE classes, always been jerks? Accepting that point, you must concede that youth civility is no worse now than in the past, and, hence, is not a signpost to Doom in and of itself.
Ok, I wasn't trying to be snarky. I didn't get your point.
And no, my point wasn't that "my "kids were jerks, picking on the weak kid in PE class is a form of trying to establish/re-inforce social hierarchy, not a sign of lacking empathy. Kids have never been angels and never will.
My point was that the kids I coached most recently showed a complete lack of empathy and willingness to care for others, even their teammates. Anything that wasn't a direct personal benefit was not only resisted, but actively opposed and ignored. And that is not behavior I saw as a kid, or saw from kids years ago (not on this level anyways).
And that kind of lack of empathy would drive someone to the political right, not the political left unless there are major changes in the parties' messages over the next decade.
I figure any attempt to predict this far out is pretty futile.
Everyone is terrible at predicting how political events unfold. No one predicted any of the major events in the latter half of last century, up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so definitively claiming things like 'China will be the next superpower' seems more than a little premature. My prediction is that something big will happen that no one has predicted, will look incredibly ineveitable in hindsight and have people asking 'How did no one see this coming?' Because that's basically been how events have played out over the last few decades.
While I agree that prediction that far out is a losing game, that doesn't mean that you can't look at an 8-9% year-on-year growth rate for the past, what, decade or two, and not presume that China will through sheer population become the world's largest economy. The recession slowed growth in the West to a crawl; India and China basically shrugged it off and lost a percentage point or two of potential growth.
Or it could completely backfire on them as they balkanize into hundreds of tiny feuding states once the growth slows or is shown to be faked/whatever. I guarentee most of the predictions being made are wrong in some capacity, if only because they have a track record of being terribly wrong. Again, Berlin Wall, 9-11, World War II all look crazy likely in hindsight, but no one saw them coming at the time.
History has a habit of putting events that occurred decades ago into much better perspective, simply by virtue of introducing new information / letting you put together and synthesize narratives from disparate bits of information. The disclaimer I would add about economic predictions is that any time an economist or financial analyst or banker or whatever makes a prediction, it comes with the tacit invocation of the principle of ceteris paribus ("all other things being equal" or "all other variables remaining constant"). When someone says the yield on the 10-year T-note will be 3.00%, you could say he is tacitly implying that the U.S. government will not default on its Treasury obligations and/or not be obliterate by a rogue asteroid.
Basically, if the trendlines continue as they have for the past 10-20 years, China will be the world's largest economy within the next 20 years (I forget what the actual date put out by Goldman Sachs was).
Quite. The discussion has been about "kids today," which implies "versus kids of past generations." You responded that the kids you coach [i.e. kids today] are jerks. My point is, haven't kids, particularly in sports or PE classes, always been jerks? Accepting that point, you must concede that youth civility is no worse now than in the past, and, hence, is not a signpost to Doom in and of itself.
Ok, I wasn't trying to be snarky. I didn't get your point.
And no, my point wasn't that "my "kids were jerks, picking on the weak kid in PE class is a form of trying to establish/re-inforce social hierarchy, not a sign of lacking empathy. Kids have never been angels and never will.
My point was that the kids I coached most recently showed a complete lack of empathy and willingness to care for others, even their teammates. Anything that wasn't a direct personal benefit was not only resisted, but actively opposed and ignored. And that is not behavior I saw as a kid, or saw from kids years ago (not on this level anyways).
And that kind of lack of empathy would drive someone to the political right, not the political left unless there are major changes in the parties' messages over the next decade.
It's pretty well documented that youthful confidence and sense of entitlement tend to combine into short-term Libertarianism in people that already fit the demographics for it (white, middle-to-upper class, generally male), but given the trends we constantly see in the 18-30 range, the evidence points to that be a passing phenomenon for your average individual. Most then stabilize and disperse into something less naive.
Combine that with the trend in the youth toward the left in social issues, and there's a reason that the youth vote is crucial to putting Dems in office.
Will the Democrat/Republican two-party system be replaced by Republican/Tea Party?
Democrats get replaced by a party that is even more right wing? There needs to be a liberal alternative, regardless of how well other parties do.
Will there be a new secession? Will it be along north/south lines, or urban/rural lines, or ethnic lines? Will it lead to a new American Civil War?
Along state lines, maybe, but that would be so far off and require lots of crazy things to happen. Any "civil war" would be small and localized I think, and wouldn't be called such. Maybe we'll see the rise of groups like Black Panthers again, though I doubt it will be black nationalism. Right wing militias I'm sure are gaining lots of strength.
Will companies become so powerful they become sovereign entities like in Shadowrun and are granted extraterritoriality and immunity from US laws?
Some corporations are virtually at this point already. If they go bankrupt, the government gives them billions of dollars. If other nations give these corporations problems, then the US exerts diplomatic, economic or military pressure to make the countries friendly to US corporations. Regulation is extremely lax, and huge lobying dollars insures that corporate powers have enormous political power in the US. If anything, it will swing the other way, with these companies being blamed for current (and soon to be future) economic problems and their powers being curtailed.
Will the austerity measures be taken to such a degree that the middle-class disappears and American society becomes a third-world-like super-rich and super-poor?
I don't think austerity has anything to do with this. I doubt the middle class can or will disapear but the gap between the rich and poor in huge already. "In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth. (wiki)" Those stats are 10 years old, before the recession. I'm sure those numbers are much, much worse today.
Will China just move in and buy everything and everyone?
No, China has its own money problems. And if the US goes down economically, then so does China.
Or
Will the Republican and Tea Party split, leading to the isolation of the insane fringe and the return of the Pubs to sanity?
Will the polarization of American society along party lines come to be seen as the silliness it really is?
Will the Murdoch empire collapse, and the rest of the US media look into their pants and rediscover their fucking testicles?
Will the US recover economically, fix up its education, healthcare and welfare systems, and return to being an enviable world leader?
The US system doesn't really encourage multiple political parties. I think it would be good, but I don't really expect it. Polarization will be seen as silliness if things inprove a great deal. If things get worse, then the polarization will only increase. Big US media is owned by big companies, Murdoch owned and others. Its up to the internet to do the real reporting now. The time of the US leading the world has come and gone. There are no more superpowers, we're back in an age of great powers. I don't know what that means for the US.
Or
Will the wars in the Middle East spread while Western involvement increases, leading to World War III?
Will terrorists gets nukes and kill everyone?
Mars or bust?
Will we suffer a global economic collapse and return to industrial-revolution society?
Will robots just move in and buy everything and everyone?
These are silly, but wars in the Middle East (and similarly, Central Asia, which also has muslims and oil and chaos) will continue. WW3 is meaningless to talk about in my mind, not in a nuclear world.
Political lines in the future (starting a few years ago) will become more formed around technology. Massive developments in of biotechnology, prosthetics and mind-machine interfaces will cause huge changes, as well as huge backlashes.
Quite. The discussion has been about "kids today," which implies "versus kids of past generations." You responded that the kids you coach [i.e. kids today] are jerks. My point is, haven't kids, particularly in sports or PE classes, always been jerks? Accepting that point, you must concede that youth civility is no worse now than in the past, and, hence, is not a signpost to Doom in and of itself.
Ok, I wasn't trying to be snarky. I didn't get your point.
And no, my point wasn't that "my "kids were jerks, picking on the weak kid in PE class is a form of trying to establish/re-inforce social hierarchy, not a sign of lacking empathy. Kids have never been angels and never will.
My point was that the kids I coached most recently showed a complete lack of empathy and willingness to care for others, even their teammates. Anything that wasn't a direct personal benefit was not only resisted, but actively opposed and ignored. And that is not behavior I saw as a kid, or saw from kids years ago (not on this level anyways).
And that kind of lack of empathy would drive someone to the political right, not the political left unless there are major changes in the parties' messages over the next decade.
Fair enough. This is the internet, so snark is presupposed. We've encountered opposite examples of high school empathy. It's just as likely that my batch was an anomaly as it is yours.
10 years from now, BROOD X will awaken. It is the most massive swarm the United States will ever face, and no continental states are expected to be immune.
Poll taxes become widespread again, unions become extinct, Roe v. Wade overturned (formally or informally), Democrats keep moving to the right of Ronald Reagan.
I figure it's important not to set myself up for disappointment.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
That sounds like every soccer team I played in before coming to the United States.
Is there any talk about china in the next 30 years with China's economy and culture clashing? The fact that they are very family oriented, and its a pyramid scheme like on the children to take care of parents when there older, and sometimes grandparents. Mix that with a low female population rate where most chinese now/in the future will attend schooling in america for college, and try to get married here and take them back. Is there a timeline for when this falls apart? I am betting less then 50 years, but I am not sure how fast this can happen, maybe 15-20 years before it starts leveling out or dropping to this, right?
Edit: @Elki / @Urcbub : Yeah, but you also have to realize that there is very different things here. You are going to have a clash at this basic level when someone is trying to build a career, and everyone else is trying to have fun.
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We continue with the same trade policy we've had for the next 20-30 years, and things continue to decline, with jobs finally coming back after we've reached full 3rd world status.
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The US army kicking ass all over the world- as the bad guys.
Tom Clancy meets Noam Chomsky.
What does a "moderate Republican" look like? The core assumptions of their party are built on empirically weak foundations:
Fiscal Assumptions
-The rich create new wealth by hiring the middle- and lower-class, and by investing. ... It's been shown repeatedly that tax cuts for the wealthy have little to no stimulative effect.
-Market forces will regulate behavior and police bad actors. ... The past three years beg to differ.
-Government taxation (but not subsidies, for some reason) interfere with market equilibriums. ... While taxation does introduce dead weight loss in supply-demand curves, we as a society have consciously made the tradeoff between efficiency and equity, as the saying goes.
...Actually, I'm not willing to invest anymore energy and list the social and foreign policy assumptions of the GOP. Just pretend I did and that I thoroughly debunked them. :P
But getting back to the point: without those "core" pillars of GOP faith, what reason is there left to have an (R) next to your name?
The younger generations are decidedly less emphatic than before (been given everything they wanted and been told that they are creation's center all their life) . Why would they be supporting policies that relies on caring for others?
Yes, but the GOP can drop the crazy (which are the points you mentioned) and go back to real conservatism. Taxes should be held as low as possible (come on, no one likes paying taxes, we just know why it is necessary and it beat the alternatives.), so some politicians need to actively fight for lower taxes within reasonable limits. I have no problems with politicians being against government spending, as long as they realize that it is for necessary reasons and have its uses to promote prosperity (and this is not 100% evil).
Short term gains > everything, as we've been seeing is the policy in the last decade or so. That will continue to be the motto, and will end up with us being really hurt by something at some point.
Or, as been mentioned, mega corporations finally start to take over everything as it seems they want to do, and get rid of their puppets in the government and assume full control. We could have nation-states devoted to these corporations.
Honestly, I know I've been studying PoliSci for only two years now and that's close to nothing, but such a future has been brought up by many of my professors and speakers I've listened to. There's two things that need to be highlighted in this list, though. A culture mixed with extreme nihilism and extreme rage, and severe climate change.
Basically, from my studies on climate change, it seems worse than predicted due to feed back loops and rising economies in nations like China and India that are polluting on top of what is already being done.
As well, a lot of modern culture teaches people to think about the individual, but not from a personal freedom perspective, rather it is about caring only for yourself and not thinking about the implications of your actions or how people effect one another globally. This is a major reason why, I think, voting is so low, and as is awareness of wars, climate change, and other such events.
In turn, the most dominate cultures of the world are producing a youth that not only doesn't know or understand the world's problems, but thinks it doesn't effect them and they don't care. At the other end of modern society, you have those who are aware and are getting angrier as things get worse. These are people from all ends of the political/social spectrum. They know something is wrong, but because we are in quite a painful time and the other half of society doesn't care, they can't help but fall into desperate acts ranging from protests and riots to terrorism.
PSN: ShinyRedKnight Xbox Live: ShinyRedKnight
They're more socially liberal, especially in matters of gender and race. They aren't particularly conservative, and they oppose the war by a large majority, probably because they actually know someone in it from high school.
Most of the things thrown against them are bullshit cultural stuff that are the modern equivalent of "kids these days and their demon rock n' roll." I'm sure a group that's communicating on an internet message board would agree that using texting, Facebook and Google a lot are indicators of exactly nothing.
It's like busting on people in the 1920s for using the telephone.
That's because they don't have jobs to do anything. A lot of jobless people I know are volunteering for everything and anything that will provide them with a warm meal and place to stay, even if that means going to another country to do it.
Jeffrey Sachs has a concise rundown of exactly how fucked we are from a plain old natural resource (as opposed to a somewhat more academic / intangible 'we're hurting the Earth') perspective here.
tl;dr: India and China are still very much third-world economies, but by their sheer population (and pop. density) alone, if they even reach "second-world" status, it will create enormous strains on an already taxed global food and resource supply.
I have coached high school kids. Empathy was not high on the list, neither was teamwork. My most talented/experienced kids threw fits because we had to rely on untalented kids to win instead of taking the lesser talents under their wings and support them. The sense of "me, me, me" was very prevalent.
And as has been pointed out, volunteering is a way to gain contacts and have something to do instead of doing nothing (are there surveys on why people volunteer nowadays?). The friends I had who joined the peace corps (3) all did so because they had nothing else.
I don't think enough people (of any age group) care enough to educate themselves as to what the reality of, well reality, is in the US. So crazies in positions of power will continue to push their luck more and more until the system simply ceases to function at all. What happens after that is not something I can even guess at.
Volunteering has become an easier way to get experience in a super competitive job market, and taking a stance on social/political issues seems more out of an act of self interest. The problem with that is many of the most educated of our youth who can do something are well off enough- even in this economy- to take a stand, but not do anything other than volunteer here and there for the experience only. I'm not saying I have any real numbers, but experiencing college life in a city (Chicago) makes me realize that education isn't enough to make my generation a bright future, they need to care way more than they actually do.
PSN: ShinyRedKnight Xbox Live: ShinyRedKnight
You keep making references to how terrible and apathetic 'kids these days' are. Do you have some kind of empirical evidence to confirm that this is in fact a widespread phenomenon?
I'm relatively convinced that the existence of Fox News has permanently poisoned our democratic process beyond repair, because the truth no longer has any sway on the public.
So, in other words, you coached kids? Did our fathers and grandfathers pick the smallest kids for dodgeball, or did they nail them in the balls and laugh about it?
Have I said I did? No, I base my opinion on my own observations. And I have yet to observe the opposite behavior.
EDIT: Are there empirical evidence that kids today are the opposite of what I am seeing for altrusitic reasons?
I'm sorry, is there a point here?
Everyone is terrible at predicting how political events unfold. No one predicted any of the major events in the latter half of last century, up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so definitively claiming things like 'China will be the next superpower' seems more than a little premature. My prediction is that something big will happen that no one has predicted, will look incredibly ineveitable in hindsight and have people asking 'How did no one see this coming?' Because that's basically been how events have played out over the last few decades.
I didn't make any kind of claim about what all kids (in the U.S., presumably) are like, so I don't feel any onus to prove they're any better or worse than people aged 10-24 at any other point in time. Generally speaking, when you make a bold claim like that, the burden of proof is on you. You're citing very narrow, anecdotal evidence and extrapolating it to an entire generation of American youth.
I dunno if it's worth evaluating the younger generation by how they act during the first twelve years of their education.
Kids are fucking monsters till they graduate. The environment is generally kind of terrible and seems to encourage it.
That said, younger generations trend well with progressivism (ie, everyone's favourite 'approval of homosexuality by age group by state' graph.)
While I agree that prediction that far out is a losing game, that doesn't mean that you can't look at an 8-9% year-on-year growth rate for the past, what, decade or two, and not presume that China will through sheer population become the world's largest economy. The recession slowed growth in the West to a crawl; India and China basically shrugged it off and lost a percentage point or two of potential growth.
Quite. The discussion has been about "kids today," which implies "versus kids of past generations." You responded that the kids you coach [i.e. kids today] are jerks. My point is, haven't kids, particularly in sports or PE classes, always been jerks? Accepting that point, you must concede that youth civility is no worse now than in the past, and, hence, is not a signpost to Doom in and of itself.
Every generation has gone through a raging dickbag stage. That we see it in today's teenagers is normal, not indicative of a downward swing in humanity.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Or it could completely backfire on them as they balkanize into hundreds of tiny feuding states once the growth slows or is shown to be faked/whatever. I guarentee most of the predictions being made are wrong in some capacity, if only because they have a track record of being terribly wrong. Again, Berlin Wall, 9-11, World War II all look crazy likely in hindsight, but no one saw them coming at the time.
I figure something like that is going to happen soon and throw out a bunch of our preconceptions of the world. Again.
Yeah, pretty much, although I'd suggest that China will also be more interventionist in Africa, since they've been making some serious economic investments in African nations and will have an interest in keeping that region stable.
Short term: The US doesn't default but forced austerity steered by the Tea Party-beholden GOP kicks the economy into another recession and a spike in unemployment above and beyond where it is now. Obama loses to Romney in 2012 after Romney fends off an early Teaper surge from Bachmann, and the GOP retains the House and narrows the gap in the Senate.
The Republican almost-majority continues to use the filibuster to bludgeon the Senate Democrats into going along with more austerity for the poor and more tax cuts for the wealthy. This makes the economy worse for all but the folks at the very top. Crumbling infrastructure, rising gas prices, continued foreclosures, and widespread unemployment spikes a re-urbanization trend. Since it's not planned for in the slightest, this population shift from suburban to urban strains urban social services and infrastructure to or beyond the breaking point, leading to incredibly high urban unemployment rates and more than a few city governments defaulting or cutting back services to the bare minimum. Calls to bail out the first major city to default cause a mini-crisis and after much debate the Teapers win their last major victory by defeating a bailout plan.
Fringe movements on the right and to a lesser extent the left gain popularity but fail to achieve much more than depressing voter turn out and committing scattered terrorist attacks. The economy continues to decline, leading to a populist backlash against Republican austerity that has more than a slight tinge of class warfare. Groups on both the right and left try and take advantage of this, and to be massively biased I'm expecting a leftist neo-Socialist coalition to win a major electoral victory by 2020. Or, less positively, a right-wing populist/socialist/Dominionist movement that combines class warfare and culture warfare.
Ok, I wasn't trying to be snarky. I didn't get your point.
And no, my point wasn't that "my "kids were jerks, picking on the weak kid in PE class is a form of trying to establish/re-inforce social hierarchy, not a sign of lacking empathy. Kids have never been angels and never will.
My point was that the kids I coached most recently showed a complete lack of empathy and willingness to care for others, even their teammates. Anything that wasn't a direct personal benefit was not only resisted, but actively opposed and ignored. And that is not behavior I saw as a kid, or saw from kids years ago (not on this level anyways).
And that kind of lack of empathy would drive someone to the political right, not the political left unless there are major changes in the parties' messages over the next decade.
India gonna do something ca-razy
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
History has a habit of putting events that occurred decades ago into much better perspective, simply by virtue of introducing new information / letting you put together and synthesize narratives from disparate bits of information. The disclaimer I would add about economic predictions is that any time an economist or financial analyst or banker or whatever makes a prediction, it comes with the tacit invocation of the principle of ceteris paribus ("all other things being equal" or "all other variables remaining constant"). When someone says the yield on the 10-year T-note will be 3.00%, you could say he is tacitly implying that the U.S. government will not default on its Treasury obligations and/or not be obliterate by a rogue asteroid.
Basically, if the trendlines continue as they have for the past 10-20 years, China will be the world's largest economy within the next 20 years (I forget what the actual date put out by Goldman Sachs was).
If they did, it would only be because Pakistan forced their hand.
Combine that with the trend in the youth toward the left in social issues, and there's a reason that the youth vote is crucial to putting Dems in office.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Democrats get replaced by a party that is even more right wing? There needs to be a liberal alternative, regardless of how well other parties do.
Along state lines, maybe, but that would be so far off and require lots of crazy things to happen. Any "civil war" would be small and localized I think, and wouldn't be called such. Maybe we'll see the rise of groups like Black Panthers again, though I doubt it will be black nationalism. Right wing militias I'm sure are gaining lots of strength.
Some corporations are virtually at this point already. If they go bankrupt, the government gives them billions of dollars. If other nations give these corporations problems, then the US exerts diplomatic, economic or military pressure to make the countries friendly to US corporations. Regulation is extremely lax, and huge lobying dollars insures that corporate powers have enormous political power in the US. If anything, it will swing the other way, with these companies being blamed for current (and soon to be future) economic problems and their powers being curtailed.
I don't think austerity has anything to do with this. I doubt the middle class can or will disapear but the gap between the rich and poor in huge already. "In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth. (wiki)" Those stats are 10 years old, before the recession. I'm sure those numbers are much, much worse today.
No, China has its own money problems. And if the US goes down economically, then so does China.
Or
The US system doesn't really encourage multiple political parties. I think it would be good, but I don't really expect it. Polarization will be seen as silliness if things inprove a great deal. If things get worse, then the polarization will only increase. Big US media is owned by big companies, Murdoch owned and others. Its up to the internet to do the real reporting now. The time of the US leading the world has come and gone. There are no more superpowers, we're back in an age of great powers. I don't know what that means for the US.
Or
These are silly, but wars in the Middle East (and similarly, Central Asia, which also has muslims and oil and chaos) will continue. WW3 is meaningless to talk about in my mind, not in a nuclear world.
Political lines in the future (starting a few years ago) will become more formed around technology. Massive developments in of biotechnology, prosthetics and mind-machine interfaces will cause huge changes, as well as huge backlashes.
Fair enough. This is the internet, so snark is presupposed. We've encountered opposite examples of high school empathy. It's just as likely that my batch was an anomaly as it is yours.
10 years from now, BROOD X will awaken. It is the most massive swarm the United States will ever face, and no continental states are expected to be immune.
Be ready.
I figure it's important not to set myself up for disappointment.
That sounds like every soccer team I played in before coming to the United States.
Edit: @Elki / @Urcbub : Yeah, but you also have to realize that there is very different things here. You are going to have a clash at this basic level when someone is trying to build a career, and everyone else is trying to have fun.