This is a political post. Be warned I will be expounding on what I think is happening in America.
In my last job, I worked with graduates of top universities. Many of the people I worked with were broken, and they were by definition the failures of their schools because they worked in the same place as me, who was hired because I could fog a mirror and I showed up. I also got the job done and solved all sorts of critical issues is irrelevant to their Totalitarian wage slavery plans. Too many managers smugly believe that if their keep their employees miserable on the "Pyramid of Needs" that this will save them money and increase their own bonuses. What ACTUALLY happens is they get a high turnover rate as employees leave for humane companies that value employees and the employer ends up wasting man hours on training and mistakes. I think this is a big part of the unintended consequences of offshoring labor. You end up with managers that openly deride American workers, workers who are unhappy in their jobs and trapped in wage slavery fearful of losing even that, and productivity ends up low because morale is so bad.
The solution to this is improve morale by valuing employees properly (and I DON'T MEAN lunch), pay them well enough so they stop quitting (full medical, equivalent pay to others, no lying HR), and punish managers who don't get this through their arrogant skulls (by firing them). This is what was needed at my last job, whose name shall be nameless for legal reasons. I suspect what I found at that hellhole is pretty common in profit obsessed corporations run by psychopaths. Really common. I've read the white papers on this. The numbers are quite frightening.
The school I went to had tenured professors, who taught students to trust in big govt, while claiming to be Liberal Arts school. This is ironic since Clinton, the president at the time, shed millions of govt jobs and cut funding to schools and universities while claiming the opposite. What funding got through went to BUILDINGS rather than classrooms and teachers. Instead of paying for quality, they paid for wage slaves, trapped in a sort of cult mentality that affects many teachers. This is still true today. The way schools are funded is ridiculous. And the upper levels are pleased as can be about it, since I suspect they get paid by the square foot, not the student. I really should investigate that. I know the funds are use-it-or-lose-it but building huge gyms when the classrooms are falling apart and the bathrooms haven't been updated since 1962? Not right.
Most socialist wannabes love citing the "success" of Scandinavian socialism but ignore the way it is paid for or that the populations are tiny. In Norway, they use oil money because its the main hard currency outside of bauxite-aluminum processing. The oil is running out, the revenues are falling, and Norway is getting poorer. Eventually folks will start leaving because their lifestyles under socialism are unaffordable/unpleasant. Denmark? Both oil money and investment banking in Derivatives. They've had a pretty severe crash early on when Iceland, where they owned about half that island nation's debt, defaulted. That's where the Derivatives crash was first felt, internationally. Ireland owned a lot too, also defaulted. Finland hates socialism and is trying to figure out what to do with its immigrants and quietly working to avoid turning into France or Germany, both of whom treat their Muslim immigrants as 2nd class citizens, like America does to Mexicans. The locals feel exploited by their tax rates, the immigrants ARE exploited by employers, and nobody wants to do anything about it because the Profits come from that cheap labor source. Immigrants want profit sharing and respect, but they're taking huge advantage of the socialism, particularly education and unemployment benefits, which increases the tax burden and they're an easy target for nationalists. History doesn't exactly repeat, but it does rhyme.
Greek socialism was built on derivatives debt, kept afloat by tourism and olives, their only real source of Hard Currency. Nations tend to use Fiat currency internally, and the agreed value is often very different externally, shown in import costs. Japan doesn't grow most of its food, and that food is imported and famously expensive because the Yen isn't worth much. Japan's debt payments are 300% of their GDP, so they keep raising the debt ceiling and sell their bonds to the elderly with a promise not to default. That won't end well. Japan's economy, which isn't socialist so much as indifferent to non-bribing capitalism (small business) has a real unemployment rate of approximately 48%. It may be the most dysfunctional First-world nation on Earth. I still like their anime. I just wish they'd admit the need for competition and allow their youth a chance instead of continually crushing hope for any kind of future. A really screwed up country. I worry we'll keep heading that way ourselves. We ARE following their pattern.
Canadian socialized medicine is actually nasty-bad, according to other diabetics who live there and have posted on the subject with years of complaints. They're treated like Lepers and expected to pay for all those supplies out of pocket, which is like telling a cancer patient to cover all their hospitalization costs and chemo treatments ($400K) with their retirement fund. Its economic suicide, or murder actually. This is what Canada thinks of people with treatable chronic illness. And its getting to my point.
Most people who believe in Socialism as the inevitable and necessary future are ignorant optimists. Socialism often turns unaffordable, and benefits end up cut back for all but the very special, which is rarely YOU. And to qualify as Very Special, you need to offer a serious return on their investment in your comfort or lifespan. Kinda like capitalism. Mature socialism is going to become indifferent to The Masses of Useless Eaters and provide minimum care and calories, based on what the nation can afford and enforce without too much effort. Govt jobs tend to be done by very strict rule-followers rather than problem solvers. Thus the ruins of Detroit, Katrina, and Sandy. The bureaucrats are following the law to protect their own jobs, not fixing the problem. The problem isn't their job, you see? The law is their job. Real socialism is going to be like real govt, indifferent to the problem, strict to the law, and your life or death is irrelevant to them, just like the Diabetics in Canada. I call this Indifferent Socialism.
This is a great means of managing population surplus against economics. Becoming a survivor in a dog-eat-human kind of world will be a lot more about your own ability to make the most of your share, and hide what you can scrounge from the lazier gits who are eternally hungry for what they don't deserve and haven't earned. People like modern chairwarmers in schools and universities. We've all seen them. The ones who do nothing at their job, just enough to prevent being fired, but have long since given up trying. They want to get their pension so they can do even less, and expect us to pay it. In my degree, the real ambition of my teachers was Scotch. Really. It was scotch. Most had multiple alimonies to pay because they kept cheating on their pregnant wife with the latest coed, then lost what little they had in the divorce, then married the coed who then got pregnant and stayed home while they went with the latest coed on the next field trip. See a pattern? I sure do. They couldn't keep any money with it being handed out to ex-wives so they drowned their sorrows in Scotch, the better quality the happier they were. Replace scotch with Pot and you've described probably half the unemployed and most of the underemployed in America today. I think the govt knows this and can't see much point in offering those useless eaters fancy benefits if what they want is Doritos and Twinkies because they've got the munchies.
The post oil world does come down to population management and rather than the very energy intensive Totalitarianism, Indifference is cheaper and affordable. Its not like elected officials keep their promises, right?
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