Well said @sigmaalgebra:disqus

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” (which, erroneously, has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln by folk-lore but yet nonetheless is seemingly a fairly accurate assessment of how people behave in general towards “information” fed to them).

Whereas “Freedom of The Press” is supposed to guarantee that we get “The facts and nothing but the facts”, in reality, the definition of what is factual depends entirely upon “what the boss wants you/us to hear”! and he/they with the gold call those shots. You have only to compare any same current affairs issue or incident reporting as offered by Fox News versus CNN to know this is true because their respective divergent versions cannot both be true when they see things through such different lens.

Hence it is just not in the best interests of the those who really control our destiny to have “our country, media, leaders, citizens ……. up in arms, screaming, demonstrating, posting, etc. about this horrible situation”! To what “horrible situation are you referring” they would say: “We see no problem; look at the reports that we publish. All is hunky dory!”.

In addition, denial is a powerful defense mechanism – postulated by Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud – in which a person faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept typically rejects it, instead insisting that the “fact” is not/cannot be true despite what may be overwhelming probative evidence.

Hence it is comparatively easy to mislead a fearful public with seemingly plausible pablum when the alternative would require them to actually face up to the reality of the actual “horrible situation”. Clearly, facing up to what we are really experiencing, which is already giving us cause for concern and suspicion, would undoubtedly cause a major panic in the markets and amongst the populace whereas pablum, like smoking weed or winning the lottery or drinking too much (so I have been told 🙂 ), brings us momentary relief and we go about our distractions once again trusting we are in the good caring hands of our elected leaders. And there you have it.

BTW: You always make some very good observations whenever I see you comments whether on AVC or elsewhere.which is why I felt inclined to add my six pennyworth here.

Reminds me of the Grimm’s Fairy Tale about the “Emperor’s Magic Suit of Clothes”. You remember how it was the child who knew of no fear and had not been warned to not speak up at what he really saw which was that the Emperor was actually parading naked!

Dare I steal BRC’s (@JLM:disqus’s) thunder by audacious interjection in response to your question @susanrubinsky:disqus?

AI (Artificial Intelligence), Robotics, Automation advances all taken together guarantees fewer real value-producing quality jobs paying anything relatively close to reasonable middle-class level income for all ahead except those with related skills.

Mfg jobs dead! Will never return. Already have fully automated factories operating here and abroad ~ from raw materials input to finished consumable product output.

Therein lies your irreversible STRUCTURAL CHANGE.

Mantra of the ruling class may as well be “Who needs people? They want benefits: We want profits. Benefits take from our profits!”

What the ruling class seemingly fails to understand, or perhaps has such a short term plan that this wont matter to them, is that if you are not paying decent wages to enough consumers and if credit were no longer the mode by which most consumption is occurring as in today’s market, then there will inevitably come a time when there are no more consumers with funds capable of forming a market to buy those products. End of story!

The trend explanation explicitly defined makes it much clearer to me. Thank you!

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Hey, Sebastien, I am not particularly defensive about 2000 or 2007 being perfect comparisons or being exemplars we should try to reach. They are fair benchmarks as they are real, fairly current, and the data is authentic.

I don’t think a comparison to 1928 is particularly useful for a great number of reasons.

I do think there are a few of the comparisons — LFPR and E-to-P Ratio which are VERY comparable and useful as they are exposing a TREND.

I don’t care about the absolute numbers, I care far more about the trend.

“Captain, are we taking on water and are we in danger of sinking?”

“Are we recovering or sinking?”

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

I just do NOT get it on why our country, media, leaders, citizens are not up in arms, screaming, demonstrating, posting, etc. about this horrible situation.

Next, the most recent significant cause was the 2008 crash. But we did that deliberately. We knew very well just what the heck we were doing. We were working hard 24 x 7, business and government, to blow a financial asset bubble. Anyone with the basic information and any sense knew it was a bubble, a really bad, unstable bubble, would likely burst, and, then, would have the usual consequences — a ruined financial system, massive deflation, a big shutdown of the US economy, on the way to the second US Great Depression, that situation spreading to our trading partners (as we quit buying from them), to massive world Great Depression, new wars, nuke wars, WWIII, this time maybe 6 billion people killed, and we knew it, e.g., the CEO of Well Fargo as in his Frontline interview I’m sure we’ve all seen. Bernanke said “I am not going to be the Chair of the Fed that presides over the Second Great Depression” or some such. So, with his obscure euphemisms printed quite a lot of money — monatary stimulus.

So, the core idea was a case of social engineering: nice people live in nice neighborhoods, so take some poor people and, put them in nice neighborhoods and, then, presto, bingo, they, too, will become nice people, the cycle of poverty will be broken, and we will become a shining city on a hill with no old, biggie, ugly social problems. It’s a trilogy — White guilt will achieve redemption from the retribution from the old transgressions. BS.

But, we are not solving the problem. Bernanke did a lot, but we are still stuck-o and not solving the problem. So far we have gone 8 years, 2/3rds as long as we did the last time from 1920 to 1942. Then people were shooting at us, and we solved the problem in 90 days flat — everyone had at least onejob and 2-3 if they wanted one.

We can solve the problem in 90 days flat anytime we want to. Or we can just continue, have more lost decades, for however long, maybe until people are shooting at us again.

Anytime we want a solution, we can have one.

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I think that tech employment — essentially a net gain to the economy — is not the problem or the solution.

We allowed “good” jobs to be offshored. That is the reversible trend but not all of those jobs can be regained. Some of them can.

Trump is right on this. Big kudo to Trump? Setting the agenda to be discussed in the context of the election. He has made the country delve into these global trade agreements which are bad for workers.

We have to “teach to the test” with the test being getting a job and becoming a productive, taxpaying member of society. No more college educations that are not employment oriented.

We have a double whammy — a taker costs money while a maker contributes to tax revenue. Double win.

BRC’
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

Ahhh, no, we are not. Read why.

http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/5146-2/

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com