Bill Clinton mentioned AGAIN! He’s behind nearly every bad deregulatory decision whose chickens are only now coming home to roost - Glass-Steagall, Telecommunications Act, Ocean Shipping Reform, and now this.
The DOD also builds gyms, orders toilets, builds ATM’s, buys uniforms, food etc. not as much money but worth a closer look. . Guessing that many services have fewer or only 1-2 bidders also.
I am loath to criticize Matt Stoller, being a huge fan, but I have to take issue with the phrase “Milton Friedman and the baby boomer mode of thinking about economics.” I know it was a toss-off, but it insinuates a mistaken view I hear a lot lately. Specifically, it blames the Baby Boomers for sins committed by the generation before them.
One of the great and largely untold stories of the twentieth century is the deadly hatred that their immediate elders held for the boomers. That generation is sometimes called the Silent Generation or the Traditionalists, but I call them the Dick Cheney Generation. They were too young to really remember the Great Depression (or gain the humility it inflicted on their elders), and their earliest memories are of America saving the world from Nazism (the source of their jingoism). They came to power young because of the enormous opportunity opened to them by the economic needs of the boomer generation. But they always looked with anger and contempt on the spoiled, disobedient brats they considered the boomers to be.
Here's how that worked. My father (cusp of the Greatest and the Silent) came out of grad school with a so-so record, but waltzed straight into a tenure track job at a fabulously desirable university, because the Baby Boomers were just hitting college and professors were desperately needed. Twenty years later, my sister and her husband (smack in the middle of the Baby Boom) came out of grad school and could count on their hands the total number of academic openings in their fields in the whole country (sessional jobs included). The boom was waning, enrollments dropping, and the universities now had an excess of tenured faculty still in their prime. The boomers were pretty much shut out of academics.
Here's the key point: the same happened through all the institutions of our society; the positions of power were filled by Traditionalists, and they are still holding them (Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden). Yes, the Baby Boomers had enormous impact on our culture, but it was largely due to their economic clout as consumers. Music, food, clothes, lifestyle, these were driven by the boomers. But the rise of neoliberalism? No. That all belongs to the Dick Cheney Generation. The boomers were largely shut out of power: political, corporate, and academic.
A caveat about my thinking. I vigorously dispute the extension of the Boomers to 1964; the big cultural shift happened with the kids born around 1959, 1960. Douglas Coupland, who wrote Generation X about his generation, was born in 1961, and so was Barack Obama. Both are Gen Xers.
This 2020 graphic is the best I have ever found showing the cultures of the generations:
Let’s not just blame our ignorant and self-serving generals — it is our comprehensively bought and paid for congress and White House who have allowed these generals access to unlimited and unaccountable funds. The Pentagon budget INCREASED after ending our “official” combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan this past year.
Fifty percent No-Bid procurement has become an ATM for those with political sinecures, while Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin’s craven $260M Pine Island SPAC is an exemplar of how those riding the executive branch Revolving Door profit even more than the congress. How can we possibly shame these greed-heads when it is they who make the rules?
I think this misses some facts that distinguish defense contracting from an ordinary market. Namely: (a) the DOD is itself a monopoly purchaser of U.S. arms (i.e., a "monopsonist"), and could dictate any terms it wanted regardless of the concentration of the defense industry; (b) there is no consumer "free market price" of weapons systems that can be consulted; and (c) The DOD, like all government agencies has no economic incentives to be smart and will therefore always be inefficient, political, and dumb in all its economic decision-making.
So the real issue is how the DOD could be smart enough to know how much weapons should cost and how to get the most "bang for the buck" on defense spending. It has to figure that out before it can make contractors deliver on its wishes.
I felt then in the 80`s it was bad to drop our Monopoly laws. Point to also, 1982 Reagans speech on new rule "New day for business" which in my book open leverage buy-outs lead to how we ship job- business over sea`s. To even counting on materials from China that we could get on our own. Yes and Clinton didnt help things on other many levels, NaFa and dropping banking rules, which lead to 2008 bust.
Yes we need to restructure badly.
Other major point, in 2010 IMF put global poverty level at $1.25 an hour. Where here in the USA at that time $10 an hour was on many levels basic pay for skilled labor again at that time. How much could one buy before taxes for $400 a wk. in the USA?
Just how, are we going to compete now, at 15 or 25-30 an hour?
It`s going to take great minds on fixing it and yeah bravery on making the call. For I cann`t see where there isn`t going to be lose or pain. Like back to 2011-12 banker statement on. "Well, if you go after us, we`ll show you economic collapse - depression.
Short on fixing it, "will" it take time and hard times. Whom`s going to step up for that call?
Bill Clinton mentioned AGAIN! He’s behind nearly every bad deregulatory decision whose chickens are only now coming home to roost - Glass-Steagall, Telecommunications Act, Ocean Shipping Reform, and now this.
The DOD also builds gyms, orders toilets, builds ATM’s, buys uniforms, food etc. not as much money but worth a closer look. . Guessing that many services have fewer or only 1-2 bidders also.
I am loath to criticize Matt Stoller, being a huge fan, but I have to take issue with the phrase “Milton Friedman and the baby boomer mode of thinking about economics.” I know it was a toss-off, but it insinuates a mistaken view I hear a lot lately. Specifically, it blames the Baby Boomers for sins committed by the generation before them.
One of the great and largely untold stories of the twentieth century is the deadly hatred that their immediate elders held for the boomers. That generation is sometimes called the Silent Generation or the Traditionalists, but I call them the Dick Cheney Generation. They were too young to really remember the Great Depression (or gain the humility it inflicted on their elders), and their earliest memories are of America saving the world from Nazism (the source of their jingoism). They came to power young because of the enormous opportunity opened to them by the economic needs of the boomer generation. But they always looked with anger and contempt on the spoiled, disobedient brats they considered the boomers to be.
Here's how that worked. My father (cusp of the Greatest and the Silent) came out of grad school with a so-so record, but waltzed straight into a tenure track job at a fabulously desirable university, because the Baby Boomers were just hitting college and professors were desperately needed. Twenty years later, my sister and her husband (smack in the middle of the Baby Boom) came out of grad school and could count on their hands the total number of academic openings in their fields in the whole country (sessional jobs included). The boom was waning, enrollments dropping, and the universities now had an excess of tenured faculty still in their prime. The boomers were pretty much shut out of academics.
Here's the key point: the same happened through all the institutions of our society; the positions of power were filled by Traditionalists, and they are still holding them (Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden). Yes, the Baby Boomers had enormous impact on our culture, but it was largely due to their economic clout as consumers. Music, food, clothes, lifestyle, these were driven by the boomers. But the rise of neoliberalism? No. That all belongs to the Dick Cheney Generation. The boomers were largely shut out of power: political, corporate, and academic.
A caveat about my thinking. I vigorously dispute the extension of the Boomers to 1964; the big cultural shift happened with the kids born around 1959, 1960. Douglas Coupland, who wrote Generation X about his generation, was born in 1961, and so was Barack Obama. Both are Gen Xers.
This 2020 graphic is the best I have ever found showing the cultures of the generations:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/briefing/nobel-prize-chemistry-eddie-van-halen-hurricane-delta.html
(The graphic won't insert, but it is from the Times' Morning Briefing October 7, 2020 called "The Gray Revolt Against Trump.")
Let’s not just blame our ignorant and self-serving generals — it is our comprehensively bought and paid for congress and White House who have allowed these generals access to unlimited and unaccountable funds. The Pentagon budget INCREASED after ending our “official” combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan this past year.
Fifty percent No-Bid procurement has become an ATM for those with political sinecures, while Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin’s craven $260M Pine Island SPAC is an exemplar of how those riding the executive branch Revolving Door profit even more than the congress. How can we possibly shame these greed-heads when it is they who make the rules?
Sounds like one Biden administration executive order might have been actually a good one. Amazing.
Outstanding - thank you !! Monopolies are bad and -- everywhere...
I think this misses some facts that distinguish defense contracting from an ordinary market. Namely: (a) the DOD is itself a monopoly purchaser of U.S. arms (i.e., a "monopsonist"), and could dictate any terms it wanted regardless of the concentration of the defense industry; (b) there is no consumer "free market price" of weapons systems that can be consulted; and (c) The DOD, like all government agencies has no economic incentives to be smart and will therefore always be inefficient, political, and dumb in all its economic decision-making.
So the real issue is how the DOD could be smart enough to know how much weapons should cost and how to get the most "bang for the buck" on defense spending. It has to figure that out before it can make contractors deliver on its wishes.
I felt then in the 80`s it was bad to drop our Monopoly laws. Point to also, 1982 Reagans speech on new rule "New day for business" which in my book open leverage buy-outs lead to how we ship job- business over sea`s. To even counting on materials from China that we could get on our own. Yes and Clinton didnt help things on other many levels, NaFa and dropping banking rules, which lead to 2008 bust.
Yes we need to restructure badly.
Other major point, in 2010 IMF put global poverty level at $1.25 an hour. Where here in the USA at that time $10 an hour was on many levels basic pay for skilled labor again at that time. How much could one buy before taxes for $400 a wk. in the USA?
Just how, are we going to compete now, at 15 or 25-30 an hour?
It`s going to take great minds on fixing it and yeah bravery on making the call. For I cann`t see where there isn`t going to be lose or pain. Like back to 2011-12 banker statement on. "Well, if you go after us, we`ll show you economic collapse - depression.
Short on fixing it, "will" it take time and hard times. Whom`s going to step up for that call?
any idea on how this major plant closing in St. Louis figures in? Could be an issue in Missouri.
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/gkn-aerospace-to-close-st-louis-county-plant-by-2023/
Did you know that the Jeep was designed by a car company that had just six employees, the American Bantam Car Company? Ford just mass produced it.