Dating: How's your luck? - Page 1018

Social dynamics are dictated by simple economics. How much leeway individuals have in social mobility, sexual freedom, etc. depends on whether such lifestyles are sustainable and if the economy can absorb the externalities. Classically, this is why liberal sensibilities filtered down from the upper classes to the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie to the working class, and so forth. Ditto for why looser code of conducts are the norm in modernized societies.

Specifically for the U.S. (our home), we are in the midst of a massive asset bubble facilitated by credit, artificially low interest rates, and QE thanks to the Fed. This has masked that most of the key indicators of a healthy economy (productivity, median household income, wage increases, etc.) have stagnated or gone down. Most of this debt has gone in corporate borrowing, used for stock buybacks and the ilk. Hence why the Dow and NASDAQ keep hitting record highs despite underwhelming and contradictory evidence e.g. two years ago, Microsoft had +65% rise in market cap despite droppig 27% in LTM net income since 2013.

Meanwhile fixed costs like college tuition and house prices continue to rise unabated. The labor force participation rate has been in a slow decline for decades - the male LFPR in particular has cratered since the 60's, and continues to spiral downwards - and combined with the endangered middle class, the lack of payroll taxes will push SS and Medicare to the point of insolvency in the next two decades. Finally, we've been at sub-replacement levels for total fertility rate since the early 90's IIRC. It didn't affect Generation X to any noticeable extent, but next decade will be the point when those missing children should be joining the labor force. You know, the one that's still in freefall. All of this portents another economic crisis.

And that imminent crash is everything. Marriage is first and foremost an economic arrangement meant to provide both parties with a stable environment that can support their basis needs. We have abandoned that schema in the last 40 years due to the cheery optimism that everyone will be able to be financially independent. Sybaritic attitudes are a novelty that can only be indulged when we have the prerequisite money. This counts doubly for women, as their entrance into the labor market allowed them to delay marriage and child-bearing in favor of promiscuity and fun.

Well, the gravy train is almost out of coal. 40 years of shitty policies and blind-leading-the-blind syndrome is catching up to us. This is why the American upper-class, despite espousing sexual freedom with the most fervor, divorces at a fraction of the rest of the populace. They instinctively understand that if you can't gather and preserve financial assets across generations, you will always be at the mercy of the tides. All our current libertine morals depend upon a robust middle class with upwards mobility, a condition that is eroding away day by day.

In terms of history, sexual decadence has been one of the primary indicators of incoming decline. Similar licenses were taken in ancient Rome near the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; the bureaucracy of Heian Japan sunk into self-indulgence prior to evisceration by the eastern warlords; the decade prior to the Great Depression was infamous for revelry. Ditto for China, various Muslim kingdoms, etc.