What would you want to be able to buy from Atari…

[Lord Mushroom]

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

Sure they do. It benefits everyone who supplied those investments.  If I buy plant and equipment, other people benefited from those orders. Plus, I'm now far more productive and can ship more widgets which would be counted by GDP.

You were the one who questioned the validity of GDP due to it including investments, not me. What I meant by no short term benefit was that the money spent on investments could have been spent on consumption or government spending, which would have given people a higher material standard that year. Whereas investments enable a higher material standard in the future.

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

But that isn't really the purpose of GDP.

It has many purposes.

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

To give you an idea of just how dumb GDP is for our own internal purposes, the great recession started in the 4th quarter of 2007. But nobody even knew we were in it until the summer/fall of 2008.  We lived through the worst recession since the great depression for 6-9 months without even knowing it.

While a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters with a decreasing GDP, the government was well aware of the severity of the situation from the start. And if there was any doubt, monthly GDP figures would show the severity of the situation. 

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

In any event, you don't need GDP to tell you this.  We already know Uganda is poorer than the US.  That's only relative anyway. It's not precise for us

But if you want to know roughly how much richer the U.S. is, it is much more practical and accurate to look at GDP per capita than to rely on anecdotal evidence or your own observations.

 

Ideally, GDP figures would be more accurate. But when you look at public figures of GDP per capita, and how rich people are in those countries, you see that the figures are pretty accurate.

 

And what is the alternative to using GDP figures? Knowing less about how the economy is doing. Not an improvement.

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

The GDP could tell us useful things. But everyone has a lot of incentives to BS everyone and no incentives to be honest.

The GDP is usually calculated by objective buraeucrats, and countries who lie about their GDP can´t misrepresent it much before their people discover it, and it backfires. So even those who want to give false figures, present figures that are close to the truth.

[christo930]

47 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

The public debt is the fund borrowed by a nation’s government. Governments borrow from people, banks, organizations, and other countries. It is an aggregation of all internal and external debt liabilities pertaining to a nation.

I know what public debt is.  That chart said debt held by the public. That's not the same thing and that chart didn't come from the page you linked, or at least I didn't see it there.  The US has a ton of debt held outside the US.   But still, even if what they meant was simply the public debt to GDP, it is not really any better. Most of this debt was not to invest, but to spend money.  Plus, did you even look at the chart? We're over 100% of GDP.  Only WW2 competes.

 

53 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

When the government borrows in its own currency, and spends it domestically, the government spending just replaces private spending and investment. Nothing is added to the GDP.

Uh, wrong.  The US government is borrowing (Dollars) from sources all over the world in its own currency because the special status of the Dollar.  Every dime spent ads to GDP.  Your assertion that all savings come from the domestic pool is wrong and it assumes the money would have either been invested or spent.

 

57 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

And the lower your debt is relative to your current ability to pay, the less likely you are to have difficulties repaying the loan due to unfortunate events.

The failing banks prove otherwise.  Assets can rise or fall in value, debt does not. You can lose your income. Plus, debt to GDP right now is 125%. We're in the worst position we've been in since ww2.

[christo930]

28 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

You were the one who questioned the validity of GDP due to it including investments, not me

NO I DID NOT.  Either I didn't explain it well or you didn't understand it well. I would not have said that.  What I did do is say that GDP does not distinguish between investment and spending.  I believe I said it doesn't differentiate between hookers and blow and plant and equipment. We obviously want more of people buying plant and equipment than hookers and blow.

 

31 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

While a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters with a decreasing GDP, the government was well aware of the severity of the situation from the start. And if there was any doubt, monthly GDP figures would show the severity of the situation. 

We had regime flunkies on TV debating if there was going to be a crash or a soft landing in the future. We were already in it and didn't know it because it takes quite a few months of adjustments to the old data. 

 

33 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

And what is the alternative to using GDP figures? Knowing less about how the economy is doing. Not an improvement.

 

So in your mind, not only are bad numbers better than no numbers, but that I have to personally design and implement a "better system" before any criticism of the existing system is valid?  This is INSANE. 

 

Frankly, what we should do is fix the existing system.  But every incentive the government has is to keep cooking the books.

36 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

The GDP is usually calculated by objective buraeucrats, and countries who lie about their GDP can´t misrepresent it much before their people discover it, and it backfires. So even those who want to give false figures, present figures that are close to the truth.

.We've been doing it for decades.  Go ask the average American WTF a hedonic adjustment is. Better yet, ask them what the 6 categories of unemployment are.  Or god forbid, what the GDP is made up of. The average American probably doesn't know what GDP even stands for, let alone the 4 major categories. 

 

[christo930]

2 hours ago, Keatah said:

Jurys' out on the reliability, I had a few go bad, mostly they'd develop a single dead line or a dead line and crap below it. Something in the demux driver chips I'd hazard a guess.. Then there's recapping, I have a few older Samsung displays due for recap soon. They work and all, but now take time to "warm-up" like the old tube sets.

That hasn't been my experience.  I've found the most common failure point is the LED lights..  They are driven too hard and fade and start drawing too much power which causes the set to go into protection mode and shut down.  Good luck finding new replacements.  Occasionally you can find used replacements, but it's a crap shoot. You're just as likely to get the wrong part or one with the same problem.  They have so little resale value it's not really worth it even if you could get them quickly and easily.  The lack of parts is a major issue. So is the lack of schematics.

 

 

[Keatah]

There's likely environmental factors at play, too. Tube TVs were much much more tolerating in that way.

 

I'm fairly sure that those Ionic Thunderstorm Breeze electrostatic air cleaners will hasten the demise of the seal around the glass pannels. Some seals turn to a jelly if used in the same room with them. The cleaners also tend to make your manuals and paperwork age much faster. After all, they put out a stream of reactive O3 molecules. They're injurious and deadly to air plants, too, by the way.

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, christo930 said:

I know what public debt is.  That chart said debt held by the public.

It is the same thing formulated differently. Scroll down to about halfway of this page, where it says "Breaking Down The Debt", and hover the mouse where it says "debt held by the public".

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/

 

12 hours ago, christo930 said:

Plus, did you even look at the chart? We're over 100% of GDP.  Only WW2 competes.

I never said the debt wasn´t high. And I am happy to see you find debt to GDP to be useful after all.

 

12 hours ago, christo930 said:

The US government is borrowing (Dollars) from sources all over the world in its own currency because the special status of the Dollar.  Every dime spent ads to GDP.  Your assertion that all savings come from the domestic pool is wrong and it assumes the money would have either been invested or spent.

While foreigners hold a lot of dollars, those dollars would have been spent in the U.S. if the government hadn´t borrowed them.

 

The foreigners would either have bought American products and imported them to their country, invested it by starting or expanding a company in the U.S., put the money in an American bank which would have lent it to people or businesses who would have spent or invested it or bought a financial investment (stocks for example) from Americans giving them money which they would spend/invest directly or indirectly. 

 

12 hours ago, christo930 said:

The failing banks prove otherwise.  Assets can rise or fall in value, debt does not. You can lose your income. Plus, debt to GDP right now is 125%. We're in the worst position we've been in since ww2.

You are contradicting yourself here. First you say debt to GDP doesn´t matter, and then you say it matters.

 

No matter how low your debt is to your income and assets, you can end up failing to repay it. But the lower the debt is to your current ability to pay, the more unlucky/incompetent you have to be to not be able to repay it.

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, christo930 said:

NO I DID NOT.  Either I didn't explain it well or you didn't understand it well. I would not have said that.  What I did do is say that GDP does not distinguish between investment and spending.  I believe I said it doesn't differentiate between hookers and blow and plant and equipment. We obviously want more of people buying plant and equipment than hookers and blow.

Ok. You are right in that GDP doesn´t say how the money is used, it just says how much money is used in total (how big the economy is). I am just saying that is useful in itself. If you want to know how the money is used, there is of course statistics on that too.

 

13 hours ago, christo930 said:

We had regime flunkies on TV debating if there was going to be a crash or a soft landing in the future. We were already in it and didn't know it because it takes quite a few months of adjustments to the old data. 

It would of course have been a great advantage if you could know future GDP levels in advance, but that is of course too much to ask. Monthly preliminary GDP figures, and quarterly final GDP figures, are important tools for policymakers.

 

14 hours ago, christo930 said:

So in your mind, not only are bad numbers better than no numbers, but that I have to personally design and implement a "better system" before any criticism of the existing system is valid?  This is INSANE. 

No, good, but not perfect, numbers are better than no numbers.

 

I wasn´t asking you for an alternative to using GDP, I was asking myself what would happen if we didn´t use it, and then I answered.

 

14 hours ago, christo930 said:

We've been doing it for decades.

If they had been manipulating the GDP figures considerably for decades, it would have been at a level everyone could see was wrong.

[zzip]

16 hours ago, Keatah said:

Jurys' out on the reliability, I had a few go bad, mostly they'd develop a single dead line or a dead line and crap below it. Something in the demux driver chips I'd hazard a guess.. Then there's recapping, I have a few older Samsung displays due for recap soon. They work and all, but now take time to "warm-up" like the old tube sets.

 

But I'm with you on the resolution. I'm all 1080p currently and may eventually upgrade to a new resolution in time. But it isn't a priority. There's only so much time I'm going to spend looking at the details in a scene anyway. At least I was right on saying (in 2015) that resolution would be the one property they continue to advance in the years ahead - along with refresh rate and color vividness.

Maybe I've just been lucky with my flat panels then?   Still though, there wasn't really a planned obsolescence happening in the SD CRT days, the NTSC standard held for decades.   I remember the tube-based TVs needed service fairly frequently until maybe around the 70s or 80s when they were mostly solid-state.   But now they just seem to up the resolution every few years to entice you to buy new ones and throw out perfectly functioning screens

[zzip]

14 hours ago, Keatah said:

I'm fairly sure that those Ionic Thunderstorm Breeze electrostatic air cleaners will hasten the demise of the seal around the glass pannels. Some seals turn to a jelly if used in the same room with them. The cleaners also tend to make your manuals and paperwork age much faster. After all, they put out a stream of reactive O3 molecules. They're injurious and deadly to air plants, too, by the way.

O3 is bad for your lungs too and is normally considered air pollution at ground level.  O3 is an unstable form of oxygen,  it will quickly break down into O2 and the extra molecule will oxidize anything it can in the vicinity.

 

15 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

But if you want to know roughly how much richer the U.S. is, it is much more practical and accurate to look at GDP per capita than to rely on anecdotal evidence or your own observations.

 

Ideally, GDP figures would be more accurate. But when you look at public figures of GDP per capita, and how rich people are in those countries, you see that the figures are pretty accurate.

 

And what is the alternative to using GDP figures? Knowing less about how the economy is doing. Not an improvement.

Problem with GDP or GDP per captia is there's a lot it doesn't measure.   Too much weight is put on it for economic health, and not enough on other metrics. For instance, a young professional today may wonder how they are able pull a high 5 or low 6 figure salary and not be able to afford a house, when their grandfather who worked blue collar job or even at gas station was easily able to afford one.   A lot of people feel their standards of living slipping compared to their parents or grandparents and hence they don't believe the bureaucrats and politicians tell them the economy is doing well and we're not just the richest people on the planet, we're the richest who ever lived.

[Lord Mushroom]

30 minutes ago, zzip said:

a young professional today may wonder how they are able pull a high 5 or low 6 figure salary and not be able to afford a house, when their grandfather who worked blue collar job or even at gas station was easily able to afford one.   A lot of people feel their standards of living slipping compared to their parents or grandparents and hence they don't believe the bureaucrats and politicians tell them the economy is doing well and we're not just the richest people on the planet, we're the richest who ever lived.

Housing prices have gone up much more than inflation, but housing prices are included in inflation. That means that the average product/service apart from housing has gone less up in price than inflation. 

 

Young people these days have a higher standard of living overall than their (grand-)parents. They drink expensive coffee, have the latest phones, huge TVs, travel the world, have a ton of clothes, drive nice cars and so on. Not everyone has that standard, but there are also others who live in luxury.

 

Here is U.S. GDP per capita adjusted for inflation:

[+x=usr(1536)]

19 hours ago, christo930 said:

I wasn't trying to misquote you.  I highlighted what I though was your main point.  My apologies. I didn't want to over-quote.

The explanation is appreciated.  From the other side of the screen it looked like cherry-picking due to the quoted portion of the reply being heavily-condensed, but I understand what your intention was now.  It's all good, and thanks for the clarification 

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Young people these days have a higher standard of living overall than their (grand-)parents. They drink expensive coffee, have the latest phones, huge TVs, travel the world, have a ton of clothes, drive nice cars and so on. Not everyone has that standard, but there are also others who live in luxury.

let's unpack-

 

"They drink expensive coffee" - 50 years ago it was common for people to smoke a pack of cigarettes or more a day.   That's far less common these days, but to me it seems the fancy coffee is just trading one vice for another, so I'd call this a wash.

 

"have the latest phones",  most people don't pay for the phones out of pocket, they roll the charge into their monthly bill.   Most have dumped landlines.    Our parents paid for a landline only with a monthly equipment charge on top of that.   Modern smartphones are a lot more versatile, sure..  But they don't seem more of a strain on the budget than the landlines of my parents day,   And then there's more and more people asking whether the smartphone + social media is doing more harm than good for society-   (something that doesn't figure into standard of living calculations at all)

 

"huge TVs" - In the 70s, large console TVs were commonplace,  they were both a TV and a piece of furniture.  In today's dollars they would easilty cost over $3,000, yet it seemed that every middle class family had one or more of them.   The screen size was smaller because it wasn't practical to produce CRTs in the size of screens today.   So today's big TVs are better in terms of utility,  but in terms of status-  while you can still buy $3,000+ TVs, the vast majority sell for far less.   So the large-screen phenomenon isn't due to people earning more, it was due to our ability to shrink and cost-reduce electronics,  something that won't go on forever.

 

"travel the world" - I think only the most well off are able to do frequent travelling. 

 

"have a ton of clothes" - but they had nicer clothes back in the day.  Maybe your wardrobe was smaller,  but it was higher quality.    An issue with modern life is we are flooded with cheap crap,  and then pretend that quantity is better than quality.    If that was true, then people would aspire to be like the people seen on "Hoarders" rather than "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous".   And that just doesn't happen.   People are happier with less clutter, people are also happier when they dress nicer.   Yet modern society pushes us away from that for some reason.

 

"drive nice cars" - this is hard to quantify back then people drove much larger cars made out of more solid materials that wer more stylish-- or at least had more iconic styles.   Maybe they weren't practical because of the fuel consumed and today's cars have more amenities that weren't even imaginable back then.   But I have a feeling if they built cars the way the used to, they would now be unaffordable to most people.

 

but housing is a real issue-  you can't live in a phone, or a cup of coffee or a large TV.   It goes up faster than the rate of inflation and that makes it harder and harder to get your first home.    It's a fact that you used to be able to afford a brand new house on a relatively low wage job, and now you can't, so that's a loss in living standards that isn't made up for by the other things.

[+GoldLeader]

Yeah but,

 

Those thinking about remembering the validity of The  GDP,  the US Dollar, the Recession, the Govt., the assets, the expensive coffee, the flat panels, the better made, the bigger cars, the housing market, the travel, the clothes, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the LED Lights, The Hookers & Blow;

 

Should also remember...

 

It's not the Same "Atari"...

 

Now Rosen,  Ol Buddy

 

Where's my Jaguar mini that also plays 7800, 2600, 5200, A8, and Lynx through the card slot?

[Lord Mushroom]

1 hour ago, GoldLeader said:

Should also remember...

Yes, but I want to buy hookers and blow from Atari.

 

Ok, let´s continue the off topic discussion here:

 

[+GoldLeader]

13 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Yes, but I want to buy hookers and blow from Atari.

 

Ok, let´s continue the off topic discussion here:

 

 

Haha...

 

Or maybe here?

 

(Ya know,  I always thought this topic was locked but it's probably just that it withered away as the Banned OP began to slowly see reality...)

 

 

 

[christo930]

8 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

While foreigners hold a lot of dollars, those dollars would have been spent in the U.S. if the government hadn´t borrowed them.

This is just not true and for more than what we've discussed already.  The fed monetizes a lot of the debt.

 

8 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

You are contradicting yourself here. First you say debt to GDP doesn´t matter, and then you say it matters.

 

No matter how low your debt is to your income and assets, you can end up failing to repay it. But the lower the debt is to your current ability to pay, the more unlucky/incompetent you have to be to not be able to repay it.

No I'm not. I'm saying by YOUR metric, the US is still in trouble.

 

The US is not very productive compared to what it used to be. We run 70 billion Dollar a month trade deficits. The US used to run enormous trade surpluses.

[christo930]

4 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Young people these days have a higher standard of living overall than their (grand-)parents. They drink expensive coffee, have the latest phones, huge TVs, travel the world, have a ton of clothes, drive nice cars and so on. Not everyone has that standard, but there are also others who live in luxury.

Today's young people have it much worse off than my parents.  Having the latest phone is hardly a higher standard of living.  We've paid an ENORMOUS cost for those stupid phones.  I call them "personal tracking devices"  It is not uncommon for people to be speaking about something and then all of the sudden, ads start appearing related to the in-person conversation you were having. We have sold our privacy for digital trinkets.

 

My parents owned a home in their 20s with 2 kids already and owned 2 cars a bit later on, only with 4 kids. They did this on one salary.  My mother didn't even work until her youngest was in school.  She didn't "have to" work, she wanted to work.  They did not have a nickel in debt the day they got married.  Today's kids graduate school with a mortgage and no home.

 

To the extent that young people's lives are easier, it's a function of technology and not a higher standard of living. Nobody was telling them they will eat ze bugs and live in ze pod, will own nothing and "be happy"

 

It is amazing to me that you think drinking overpriced coffee from starbucks is an improvement in your standard of living, especially diet based.  Our parents ate a much better diet than we do.

 

WHY are millennials so depressed and anxious if they are so much better off?

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

Maybe I've just been lucky with my flat panels then?   Still though, there wasn't really a planned obsolescence happening in the SD CRT days, the NTSC standard held for decades.   I remember the tube-based TVs needed service fairly frequently until maybe around the 70s or 80s when they were mostly solid-state.   But now they just seem to up the resolution every few years to entice you to buy new ones and throw out perfectly functioning screens

Maybe.

 

I remember liking the few times the service man came over to swap tubes. I got to see inside the TV set. I got to look in his toolbox and sack of spare parts. Golden gems in there! And he'd give me the old tube to play with on top of it all. I even took one to elementary school first-grade for a show-n-tell. I remember saying something like, "these are tubes and they take electrizity from the air and draw pictures on the screen - like cartoons and movies and news."

 

I've been rather successful not falling into the upgrade trap. Especially these past 7-10 years. I also fail to keep up with the Jonses. Eventually I'll get a large 4K screen - but not because retiring and older one. But out of desire to equip another room with AV or something like that.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

[..]

And then there's more and more people asking whether the smartphone + social media is doing more harm than good for society-   (something that doesn't figure into standard of living calculations at all)

[..]

Without question they cause more harm then good, when kids are left unsupervised and play with social media incessantly. Been following the folks in our neighborhood now for some 14 years now, about how long the iphone has been in full swing.

 

And without question, without doubt, the kids that have had them since they were babies, are now mal-adjusted, don't have values, don't have empathy, are full of tics, are single-minded, spoiled, and lazy ass brats that make mom'n'dad do their homework and chores. It's what happens when the devices and their algorithms raise kids. One of them can't even get to bed by 1am because screaming and OCD and having to play this weird equality game - she gets one I have to get one and so on. And they're just not independent either. Dog can be locked up in the cage and barking for hours to be let out to go take a shit and the kid just sits there, too effen lazy to open the cage and let it out - gotta wait till mom and dad get home from work. Even to point where it sprays diarrhea all over. But tik'n'tokker commands their attention for hours on end. Never a post missed. Ever ever ever.

 

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

"huge TVs" - In the 70s, large console TVs were commonplace,  they were both a TV and a piece of furniture.  In today's dollars they would easilty cost over $3,000, yet it seemed that every middle class family had one or more of them.   The screen size was smaller because it wasn't practical to produce CRTs in the size of screens today.   So today's big TVs are better in terms of utility,  but in terms of status-  while you can still buy $3,000+ TVs, the vast majority sell for far less.   So the large-screen phenomenon isn't due to people earning more, it was due to our ability to shrink and cost-reduce electronics,  something that won't go on forever.

There was a certain warmth and hearth about the old console sets of yore. Totally missing from today's 5mm wall posters. I guess.

 

I never worry about the drive to miniaturize. The force of commerce and capitalism will likely always be here to push all that forward. Think back to the Pentium 4 era, the Northwood EE core, it ran at 3.4GHz. Just the CPU cost like $650 on intro. Well 20 years later today you can get an N95 4-core chip that runs at the same speed. Amazing ain't it? What's more is you also get an 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, "motherboard" and complete 11pro OS, and WiFi+BT, for $200. Fabulous! And by the time I post this now I bet the specs will be revised upward even more.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

"travel the world" - I think only the most well off are able to do frequent travelling. 

I think traveling the world is a bragging point. It's also something people are doing more and more this past decade. Going after experiences rather than rooms full of garbagejunk and cheap thrills of shopping the dollah store.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

"have a ton of clothes" - but they had nicer clothes back in the day.  Maybe your wardrobe was smaller,  but it was higher quality.

Absolutely. What do they call it now.. Clickbait Fashion? Where you get something from Shein (or any other internet company) that's designed to be very stylish and progressive and all that. But it comes with a wear life of 5x or something. Usable for 5 events/outings, then it looks like trash. Very cheap. Designed to be disposable. Some outfits are not even made to be worn beyond a photo session even.

 

It's made that way so they can sell you stuff over and over again. Keep up with the latest trends. Keep the consume-dispose cycle going. Anything to keep it churning. Motion is Life!

 

To their credit they make no promises or illusions of long-term durability. It's this --->>||<<--- far away from a subscription/streaming wardrobe.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

    An issue with modern life is we are flooded with cheap crap,  and then pretend that quantity is better than quality.    If that was true, then people would aspire to be like the people seen on "Hoarders" rather than "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous".   And that just doesn't happen.   People are happier with less clutter, people are also happier when they dress nicer.   Yet modern society pushes us away from that for some reason.

I *AM* like Hoarders. Still got piles of shit to throw away. But.. I.. Just.. Can't..

 

I don't think modern society is pushing us away from anything. "That" is just e-commerce and advertising at work, both of which should be very small elements of a well-balanced community man. Small to the point of having them there just to be aware of their negative effects upon the psyche.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

"drive nice cars" - this is hard to quantify back then people drove much larger cars made out of more solid materials that wer more stylish-- or at least had more iconic styles.   Maybe they weren't practical because of the fuel consumed and today's cars have more amenities that weren't even imaginable back then.   But I have a feeling if they built cars the way the used to, they would now be unaffordable to most people.

They *DO* build them that way. Just cruise past an Audi/Mercedes stealership and look at the mid-range offerings. You're in the $80,000 category now. Same with most deluxe EVs, $60,000 and up. Way up. Not sure any of that is affordable for the masses.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

but housing is a real issue-  you can't live in a phone, or a cup of coffee or a large TV.   It goes up faster than the rate of inflation and that makes it harder and harder to get your first home.    It's a fact that you used to be able to afford a brand new house on a relatively low wage job, and now you can't, so that's a loss in living standards that isn't made up for by the other things.

Yes. Modern tech and capitalism generate the illusion of having higher living standards today. But it is just an illusion. And those modern conveniences are full of subscription enticements. Streaming, gig economy services using your phone as a portal, the expensive coffee, all that. You think you're getting that phone and its conveniences for free? Think again.

 

You're even paying for the privilege of doing more work (as companies push basic administrative tasks off on you like data entry) as you make use of their portal. If you fill out all the forms yourself, that's less for them to do. All companies want hands-off customers. Ticketbastard is already there. Ebay and HOA/rental portals are close.

 

If those that control capitalism and commerce can fool (you) into thinking you have a higher living standard than you actually do (and you're not upset about it) then good for them. At least it demonstrates rising to the top of the boiling cesspool is possible.

[Keatah]

51 minutes ago, christo930 said:

WHY are millennials so depressed and anxious if they are so much better off?

There have got to be hundreds of reasons.

 

And one is that they are being prodded and pulled in too many directions at the same time. Every company, every institution vying for that almighty dollah - and making vague promises to get it. At the sacrifice of anyone and every one's well-being.

 

Summertime is rolling around here. I bet I won't watch more than 30-40 hours of television from now till late August. And that means I'm not going to be streaming anything (not that I do anyways), sometimes at a friend's house. So long as it isn't my money. So no need to have subscriptions and their ensuing bills. Manderloin and ST Newworlds are just gonna hafta wait till my fat-ass is good and ready to "consume".

 

Millennials also spend a lot of time keep up with the Joneses. Average cost of new car means you get payments of $700-$800 now. So looking at the neighbors with two, three, of them, I'm like tch'yeah.. You can buy perfectly good, solid, brand-new transportation, for under $20,000. With warranty and services. You pay half, finance the rest at low interest.

 

And millennials are constantly being micromanaged by the economy. Especially a high-octane faster-than-instant economy fueled by e-commerce and everything being done by electronics. Not only are they in whirlwind financial maze, they are pulled and prodded by so many other forces it's just insane. I remember that dysfunctional household down the road (where they rinse garbage bins at 3am in the morning and attract all kinds of vermin by feeding the ohh-so-cute animals in the yard).. Well there was a blow-up when Mr. Musk bought out Twitter. The fear was the kid would no longer be able to receive updates from some obscure go-nowhere hiphopper "star". The week's moods and activities revolved around that. Eventually it all subsided. But the stress! OMG! Whatta rabbit hole to get trapped in!

[+x=usr(1536)]

12 minutes ago, Keatah said:

And one is that they are being prodded and pulled in too many directions at the same time. Every company, every institution vying for that almighty dollah - and making vague promises to get it. At the sacrifice of anyone and every one's well-being.

Which neatly feeds into:

13 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Well there was a blow-up when Mr. Musk bought out Twitter. The fear was the kid would no longer be able to receive updates from some obscure go-nowhere hiphopper "star". The week's moods and activities revolved around that. Eventually it all subsided. But the stress! OMG! Whatta rabbit hole to get trapped in!

These two items epitomise the reasons why I cannot stand the effing 'attention economy'.  Overstimulate, distract, and milk 'em dry are its foundations.  Kinda like Videodrome, but without City TV.

 

20-plus years of various forms of social media have demonstrated one thing very clearly: narcissism (along with everything that entails) is alive and well, and it's killing normalcy.

[christo930]

 

10 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Here is U.S. GDP per capita adjusted for inflation:

You cannot adjust for inflation if the inflation numbers are wrong.  The inflation numbers are wrong and have been wrong for a very long time. The Boskin commission made bad numbers even worse in the 1990s.

 

Check out this old video on the subject:

 

[zzip]

16 hours ago, Keatah said:

And without question, without doubt, the kids that have had them since they were babies, are now mal-adjusted, don't have values, don't have empathy, are full of tics, are single-minded, spoiled,

and depressed and anxious at rates we never were, almost afraid to function in the real world.

 

16 hours ago, Keatah said:

ne of them can't even get to bed by 1am because screaming and OCD and having to play this weird equality game - she gets one I have to get one and so on. And they're just not independent either. Dog can be locked up in the cage and barking for hours to be let out to go take a shit and the kid just sits there, too effen lazy to open the cage and let it out - gotta wait till mom and dad get home from work. Even to point where it sprays diarrhea all over. But tik'n'tokker commands their attention for hours on end. Never a post missed. Ever ever ever.

that hits way too close to home!

 

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

There was a certain warmth and hearth about the old console sets of yore. Totally missing from today's 5mm wall posters. I guess.

 

I never worry about the drive to miniaturize. The force of commerce and capitalism will likely always be here to push all that forward. Think back to the Pentium 4 era, the Northwood EE core, it ran at 3.4GHz. Just the CPU cost like $650 on intro. Well 20 years later today you can get an N95 4-core chip that runs at the same speed. Amazing ain't it? What's more is you also get an 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, "motherboard" and complete 11pro OS, and WiFi+BT, for $200. Fabulous! And by the time I post this now I bet the specs will be revised upward even more.

I'm not sure that I made my point very well.   I personally never liked console TVs all that much.   But every middle class family seemed to have them, even though you could buy standalone TV sets with screens as large as console TVs.   It was a sign that average families had enough disposable income to buy a much more expensive TV than they needed.  Probably a status symbol,  It was part of the decor, you would put your trinkets and doodads and family photos on top of it.   Today a TV is just a TV and there's nothing wrong with that.  But I don't think it proves a higher standard of living since they cost much less today.

 

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

I don't think modern society is pushing us away from anything. "That" is just e-commerce and advertising at work, both of which should be very small elements of a well-balanced community man. Small to the point of having them there just to be aware of their negative effects upon the psyche.

It's pushing us towards buying cheap junk and lots of it.  You get a quick dopamine hit from buying some new thing, then followed by being stressed and depressed from having so much clutter around and feeling powerless to do anything about it.

 

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

Absolutely. What do they call it now.. Clickbait Fashion? Where you get something from Shein (or any other internet company) that's designed to be very stylish and progressive and all that. But it comes with a wear life of 5x or something. Usable for 5 events/outings, then it looks like trash. Very cheap. Designed to be disposable. Some outfits are not even made to be worn beyond a photo session even.

 

It's made that way so they can sell you stuff over and over again. Keep up with the latest trends. Keep the consume-dispose cycle going. Anything to keep it churning. Motion is Life!

exactly yet more unnecessary waste.   And again, they'll probably brag about how environmentally friendly they are on their website.

 

But in general people dress like crap these days, especially post-pandemic.  Few take any pride in their appearance.   Some days I feel like I should wear a suit for the hell of it, maybe start a fashion trend.   More likely I'd get shunned for being dressed weird

[doctorclu]

Now that they own Bubsy and Accolade title rights...

 

BUBSY MERCHANDISE!!

 

 

[Cebus Capucinis]

On 5/5/2023 at 10:24 AM, doctorclu said:

Now that they own Bubsy and Accolade title rights...

 

BUBSY MERCHANDISE!!

 

 

I'm utterly stunned that you, of all people, would suggest such a thing!

[The Helper]

Jaguar Mini!