EPTA working class kid today is better off than it was in the 60's, access to tertiary education is rising and social mobility is still good overall. And women are definitely better off by a large margin. This kind of crazy pessimism is absolutely toxic and a self-fulfilling prophecy.
European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 484
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
A working class kid today is better off than it was in the 60's, access to tertiary education is rising and social mobility is still good overall. And women are definitely better off by a large margin. This kind of crazy pessimism is absolutely toxic and a self-fulfilling prophecy. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On June 14 2016 04:44 oneofthem wrote: you say some reasonable things but mix in some incredible statements like "liberalism has never worked" in there. like really? Yeah, read Polanyi, liberalism is inherently flawed. D. Graeber last book also shows that in a sense : a society that is increasingly liberal is, paradoxically, more and more oriented toward social control, least productive economically and scientifically. A working class kid today is better off than it was in the 60's, access to tertiary education is rising and social mobility is still good overall. And women are definitely better off by a large margin. This kind of crazy pessimism is absolutely toxic and a self-fulfilling prophecy. This has nothing to do with liberalism tho... It's the effect of two things : the socialist like policies that were put in place after the second world war, like public school, social safety net, etc, and the development of technology that permit higher diffusion of many goods and services. Now this is all entirely economic, from a social and a political standpoint the situation is not better : the capacity of a man/woman to have its own familly is more difficult now than before, time stayed in the home of the parents is also longer, the global efficiency of diploma to get a stable and well paid job is less than it was a few years ago, etc. You're just picking the indicator that goes with your own vision of the world. Again, this vision cannot even explain why people changed their behavior : if it's better, why would they vote more and more against ? | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
On June 14 2016 04:59 Nyxisto wrote: The world isn't going to shit. In almost any metric be it public health, literacy, violence, safety and also income we're developing into a positive direction and at a pretty rapid pace. This kind of pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the map of problems there's local issues that are getting worse or are unsatisfyingly dealt with like income inequality, which also is a relative problem, not an absolute one. A working class kid today is better off than it was in the 60's, access to tertiary education is rising and social mobility is still good overall. And women are definitely better off by a large margin. This kind of crazy pessimism is absolutely toxic and a self-fulfilling prophecy. The worst part is that this thinking is now extremely prevalent. If you stick your head to any discussion between "normal people" they are all in a state of terrible suffering and their lives are falling apart. They will usually tell you about their tragic poverty and social inequality from a computer in their newly built house, where they got by one of the three cars their family has ... The real suffering is for most of them only the thought that there are some people who have more than them and that's absolutely inacceptable and unfair. Even more astonishing is the refugee thing in my country, where there are absolutely none of them, like even those we got "assigned" by some fair-share quota, they just left. If you wanted to see a migrant, you would have to wait on some transit corridor hoping to catch one while he passes the fastest way to Germany. Yet every online newspaper discussion is, down to bottom, about refugees and how we are threatened and how everything is going to hell. Then there are the people who are honestly convinced that Europe is falling apart, that there is no future for them, not to mention their children, because the system is completely collapsing. I see people who are afraid of going outside, because the streets are no longer safe, I see people who are dead convinced that their property is about to be confiscated and given to the refugees ... for almost any horror you can think of, there is someone who believes that it is actually happening. I have no idea how this happened, but it's a fairly recent and extremely potent trend. I have also no idea, how those people can even be argued with, when their entire worldview is based on false perception of reality. You can't just tell them that all the horrors they are experiencing are completely made up. I am almost starting to believe that the government actually does drug everyone in some secret scheme, because I refuse to believe that such a vast amount of people is so stupid just by themselves ... | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On June 14 2016 05:00 WhiteDog wrote: Yeah, read Polanyi, liberalism is inherently flawed. D. Graeber last book also shows that in a sense : a society that is increasingly liberal is, paradoxically, more and more oriented toward social control, least productive economically and scientifically. This has nothing to do with liberalism tho... It's the effect of two things : the socialist like policies that were put in place after the second world war, like public school, social safety net, etc, and the development of technology that permit higher diffusion of many goods and services. Now this is all entirely economic, from a social and a political standpoint the situation is not better : the capacity of a man/woman to have its own familly is more difficult now than before, time stayed in the home of the parents is also longer, the global efficiency of diploma to get a stable and well paid job is less than it was a few years ago, etc. You're just picking the indicator that goes with your own vision of the world. Again, this vision cannot even explain why people changed their behavior : if it's better, why would they vote more and more against ? so what is 'liberal' nowadays would also exclude public schools and social safety nets? i'll be clear that i am merely defending certain uses of market mechanism in the economy, and some degree of migration and asylum etc. literally no one is saying we need to destroy public institutions. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
On June 14 2016 05:00 WhiteDog wrote: Now this is all entirely economic, from a social and a political standpoint the situation is not better : the capacity of a man/woman to have its own familly is more difficult now than before, time stayed in the home of the parents is also longer, the global efficiency of diploma to get a stable and well paid job is less than it was a few years ago, etc. But that's exactly what's not happening. Most of these problems are inside people's heads, not in the world around them. The only reason why people consider it more difficult to have own family is that they are willing to sacrifice less for it - even though the sacrifice required is actually smaller. Most people somehow internalized the idea that you need a specific amount of money and things to have family, even though they didn't have any of this when they were children. Achieving the standard of living from before 30 years would require almost no work, but people now for some reason need much more. And everything else goes along very similar lines. Honestly, the only thing needed to solve these "social issues" is for most of Europeans to pull their heads from their asses and realize that are already doing quite well and no dramatic change is needed at all. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On June 14 2016 05:17 opisska wrote: But that's exactly what's not happening. Most of these problems are inside people's heads, not in the world around them. The only reason why people consider it more difficult to have own family is that they are willing to sacrifice less for it - even though the sacrifice required is actually smaller. Most people somehow internalized the idea that you need a specific amount of money and things to have family, even though they didn't have any of this when they were children. Achieving the standard of living from before 30 years would require almost no work, but people now for some reason need much more. And everything else goes along very similar lines. Honestly, the only thing needed to solve these "social issues" is for most of Europeans to pull their heads from their asses and realize that are already doing quite well and no dramatic change is needed at all. You're living in a fairy tail if you actually believe that today is easier for a young couple, in term of housing or even global living condition. Freaking killing me, poverty is rising even in germany ? How many unemployed in europe ? Open your eyes ? On June 14 2016 05:12 oneofthem wrote: so what is 'liberal' nowadays would also exclude public schools and social safety nets? i'll be clear that i am merely defending certain uses of market mechanism in the economy, and some degree of migration and asylum etc. literally no one is saying we need to destroy public institutions. Then you're not entirely liberal, of course when I say liberal I mean in the theorical sense. But it's a fact that, in europe, what you are talking about (public institutions) are slowly losing their grounds. The school system is worse now than it was ten years ago in terms of inequalities in many european countries (France is one good exemple), the social safety net is overall worse due to successive budgetary cut and the global unemployment create huge tension, both from a budgetary standpoint and a political standpoint. Funnily enough, the IMF released a study a few days ago about the negative effects of "neoliberalism" : even they more or less see that the global competition is not really positive for a big part of the population. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On June 14 2016 05:00 WhiteDog wrote: Yeah, read Polanyi, liberalism is inherently flawed. D. Graeber last book also shows that in a sense : a society that is increasingly liberal is, paradoxically, more and more oriented toward social control, least productive economically and scientifically. This has nothing to do with liberalism tho... It's the effect of two things : the socialist like policies that were put in place after the second world war, like public school, social safety net, etc, and the development of technology that permit higher diffusion of many goods and services. Now this is all entirely economic, from a social and a political standpoint the situation is not better : the capacity of a man/woman to have its own familly is more difficult now than before, time stayed in the home of the parents is also longer, the global efficiency of diploma to get a stable and well paid job is less than it was a few years ago, etc. You're just picking the indicator that goes with your own vision of the world. Again, this vision cannot even explain why people changed their behavior : if it's better, why would they vote more and more against ? I use liberalism broadly as in 'European ordoliberal/mixed economy' framework, I wasn't advocating laissez-faire stuff. Within that public schooling and social healthcare are all workable and should be. Very few Europeans arguing against those policies. And it hasn't all gotten worse in the workplace either. Working hours are actually significantly down in Europe, staying at home is largely owed due to longer education and I wouldn't consider it to be bad. This also means that you start a family later but we're all living longer so I don't think that's necessarily a bad sign either. Workplace safety is much better, harmful manual labour has been reduced etc.. Relative inequality clearly is a problem that we've failed to deal with. But it's one of the very few things that have unambiguously changed for the worse over the last few decades. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
If you're liberal, meaning if you believe that the most important thing for an economy is to facilitate free and unregulated trading (with the underlying idea that the economy is some kind of natural mecanism that works better without any kind of regulation from the state) and create growth, then even if you can accept socialist policies to a certain extent, the law of the market will always have the primacy and, crisis after crisis, you will slowly let down the socialist policies in order to permit the natural cycle of the market to function at its best. It's this mecanism that lead to end of all the "pillars" of europe before the first world war, as described by Polanyi, and it's the same that is happening now. It's true that ordoliberalism is, somewhat, better than liberalism as it usually accept the importance of conventions, institutions, in regards to the functionning of the market : they are still liberal in the sense that they see most socialists policies as a weight on the economy and value "competitivity" above all - which is why ordoliberal, facing the european crisis, didn't flinch a little when they asked most european countries in disarray to cut pensions or state services. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
On June 14 2016 05:21 WhiteDog wrote: You're living in a fairy tail if you actually believe that today is easier for a young couple, in term of housing or even global living condition. Freaking killing me, poverty is rising even in germany ? How many unemployed in europe ? Open your eyes ? No, you believe in a horror narrative that is not true. For example: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Housing_price_statistics_-_house_price_index housing prices corrected by inflation are declining in Europe for 9 years already, so do prices of rent. This does only show that housing gets cheaper relative to other goods and doesn't even take into account that the general buying strength is steadily increasing. Look up virtually every consumer economic statistics there is, we are getting richer by the hour in almost any concievable metrics. Yes, things aren't that bright in countries that we hit hard by the recession and I am not arguing that Greek people are now better off than ten years ago... but if you want to talk central Europe - Germany, Benelux, Austria and even the always complaining Czech Republic, the numbers are there. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On June 14 2016 05:33 opisska wrote: No, you believe in a horror narrative that is not true. For example: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Housing_price_statistics_-_house_price_index housing prices corrected by inflation are declining in Europe for 9 years already, so do prices of rent. This does only show that housing gets cheaper relative to other goods and doesn't even take into account that the general buying strength is steadily increasing. Look up virtually every consumer economic statistics there is, we are getting richer by the hour in almost any concievable metrics. Yes, things aren't that bright in countries that we hit hard by the recession and I am not arguing that Greek people are now better off than ten years ago... but if you want to talk central Europe - Germany, Benelux, Austria and even the always complaining Czech Republic, the numbers are there. 1. You point is about Europe, like it's actually satisfactory to understand the real problems (there are places that are depleted of workers and where housing is not a problem at all, there are places where they build too much houses for no reasons - hum spain, the average tend to actually erase those differences) ; 2. 51% of the europeans are owners of their houses (it's an average with huge variation from one country to another), with of course way different situation than non owners (mostly due to the downfall of interest rate since the crisis) but - of course ? - poorest household have less chance to own their house and more chances to rent one ; 3. According to the Global Homelessness Report, there is a global increase in homelessness (50 % in France since 2001 alone ?), similar trend in Germany https://www.homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/#europe. Even the europe union agree with this as they agree that homhelessness levels have risen recently in most parts of Europe., adding that the profile of the homeless population has been changing and now includes more young people and children, migrants, Roma and other disadvantaged minorities, women and families are increasingly at-risk of homelessness. The overall purchasing power is evaluated through the revenu, divided by the inflation (or price index). The price index (inflation) is "a normalized average (typically a weighted average) of price relatives for a given class of goods or services in a given region, during a given interval of time" (wiki) : it's the average evolution of the price of a set of goods that are, supposedly, representative of the average spending of an individual / household. To enforce my point, let's say that it's the AVERAGE of AN AVERAGE. It's a very unsatisfactory simplification that, when followed too simply, does little to actually enlight reality. More than anything, the evolution of prices is not homogeneous in a society : some goods usually drop (mostly technology) and some usually rise (usually energy and housing). Now, the result is that the actual evolution of the purchasing power as evaluated by most national institutions is a very simplified number, much like the price index. The french national statistics institute (called the INSEE) has a nice tool to actually try to understand the effect of the heterogeneous evolution of price on purchasing power : in reality, the effet of the inflation is very different from one household to another, most notably in regards to their revenu, and the actual "felt" price index vary a lot in regard to your average consumption. This is the normal evolution of inflation since 2000 (in blue) and the evolution of housing prices - rent (in yellow) in the same period : ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9UyH1Wf.jpg) This is even worse for some secondary spending like energy or gaz but let's forget about it (below is gaz) : ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/P5fIOmR.png) Now if we want to see the effect of the heterogeneous evolution of price specifically on low income household, we need to take into consideration their actual consumption. Here is a paper that shows this consumption (it's in french). Using those data, I can now modelize the effective inflation felt by low income household, here is the result I have in France, since 2000 (in deep blue average inflation, and in light blue effective inflation for low income household, first decile) : ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XhKhzCa.png) I hope you see now how your indicators on the average effect of housing price are pointless. For obvious reasons, I only talked about France here, would be too long for others (more so that I don't know the actual consumption and don't have the tool to repeat the same argument). It's pretty clear that what your indicator shows is the global tendancy, forgetting about the fact that there are clear winners and losers. My curve is not perfect tho, it's not the exact same category of spending as the INSEE, but see how 0.5 % difference in inflation felt each years on average between the average and the bottom 10 % of the scale of revenu lead to a difference of something like 15 pts in actual inflation felt after more than a decade... | ||
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Xialos
Canada508 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On June 14 2016 05:27 WhiteDog wrote: If you're liberal, meaning if you believe that the most important thing for an economy is to facilitate free and unregulated trading (with the underlying idea that the economy is some kind of natural mecanism that works better without any kind of regulation from the state) and create growth, then even if you can accept socialist policies to a certain extent, the law of the market will always have the primacy and, crisis after crisis, you will slowly let down the socialist policies in order to permit the natural cycle of the market to function at its best. It's this mecanism that lead to end of all the "pillars" of europe before the first world war, as described by Polanyi, and it's the same that is happening now.. I don't believe in any ideological purity tests, clearly there are structural problems in many institutions and organisations we have in Europe, that doesn't mean that we should do away with the system. The prosperity as well as individual and communal freedom that we've generated under our current mode of production is simply unmatched. More importantly, there is no viable alternative on the left and definitely not on the right. State based planned stuff does not work, and the anarcho-left really hasn't any clear solutions to present either. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
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Velr
Switzerland10776 Posts
Because true socialism so far has only shown us that it, sooner or later, will be exploited by the "ruling class" and you end up with despotism. | ||
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xM(Z
Romania5281 Posts
On June 14 2016 00:25 opisska wrote: I am saying that the EU has send you 20 bilion euro in 2007-2013 in structural fonds alone, that's purely taxpayer money, not including any investment by private or semi-state companies. I couldn't find hard numbers on the period before accession, but judging from my country's experience, it will be in a similar ballpark. That's almost a year worth of budget of my country, to put it in perspective how much money that is. When I visited Romania for the first time in 2002, we talked with people in the countryside and most of them were living in serious poverty which would be like the bottom 5% in Czech Republic, able to sustain themselves only by gardening and hunting, because the wages were not enough to even put food on the table. Nowadays, Romania is a pretty solid, if mildly poorer, middle Europe. Your GDP per capita is now about twice as much as in early 90ties. You aren't where you are now because of your ingenious national qualities, or your vast natural resources (which would be unearned anyway, so I don't see the point in mentioning them), you are where you are, because the richer part of Europe has held your hand to get there. Yeah, the same to a slightly lesser extend can be said for us. But I am not the one having troubles accepting that I have received. you are saying things for the sake of saying things; it's to superficial for your argument to have any weight i.r.l. - first, you'd need to compare a 2016 Romania with 20bill EU funds, with a 2016 Romania without those funds but you can't and you know you can't so instead you make the comparison between the end of the communist era and the EU era; that's facetious at best and it makes your whole li'l speech go in one ear and out the other. - second, you'd need to follow the money and see what they're for, how are they getting approved by EU and why 'cause you're not just handed bags of cash for no reason. for reference + Show Spoiler +. those are funds put at our disposal but the amount of them actually spent by us is about 60%. so, 19bill allocated, only 11.3bill spent and with a 12.3bill contribution to the EU budget, your argument starts looking like shit now. - third, you'd need to take into account other laws, regulations and taxes imposed by the EU(those definitely bankrupt some firms/associations here); the IMF loans, the debt gained, the control of our monetary currency to set our buying power, the amount of penalties we payed on a bad loan taken(from the EU),the amount of money we spent on W-EU goods(instead of let's say, cheaper chinese, russian or ukrainian goods) etc. then and maybe then(and i'm pretty sure i'm missing some there), even if i were to give you the benefit of the doubt on your initial comparison, you'd be able to have a more informed overall view; else you're just shouting - you took the money so stfu!. i'm not buying it dude. @oneofthem - you're explaining statistics to people making them happen. i've nothing more to say here. if they, the ones making your statistics true tell you that they can't do it any longer, you should at least try and give a shit about the whys. | ||
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iPlaY.NettleS
Australia4341 Posts
England, Sweden, Denmark, Holland off the top of my head huge increases past 5 years.Switzerland maybe since they're on negative rates? Which raises the point, if things are so good in Europe why negative rates in Denmark,Sweden,Switz, even the ECB! | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On June 14 2016 16:26 Velr wrote: I hope you mean social deomcracy or social capitalism. Because true socialism so far has only shown us that it, sooner or later, will be exploited by the "ruling class" and you end up with despotism. Yeah mixed economy with some part of production (the most important) socialized (banking, energy production ...) ; which was actually the case in a big part of europe during the thirty glorious. We also need to let go of productivism. On June 14 2016 18:33 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: I cannot agree with the blanket statement that house prices are declining in Europe. England, Sweden, Denmark, Holland off the top of my head huge increases past 5 years.Switzerland maybe since they're on negative rates? Which raises the point, if things are so good in Europe why negative rates in Denmark,Sweden,Switz, even the ECB! He did not exactly argue that they were declining, he argued that they were, on average, everywhere in europe, growing less than inflation in the last few years. It's somewhat true that they kinda crumbled in the years after the crisis, due to a lack of demand, like all prices, and since there was some kind of buble, the downfall of housing prices was bigger. But overall, as showed with my curve, rent increased way more than inflation in the last 15 years; and there are huge differences between urban area, not urban, etc. His comment has no value for the bottom 10 %, as I showed above : he is implying that inflation is not a problem for purchasing power, which is only true if you think the society is entirely made of average income people. It's not, inflation is not homogeneous, and the lowflation we've had for the last 10 years is a masked inequality. | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
On June 14 2016 19:31 WhiteDog wrote: Yeah mixed economy with some part of production (the most important) socialized (banking, energy production ...) ; which was actually the case in a big part of europe during the thirty glorious. We also need to let go of productivism. He did not exactly argue that they were declining, he argued that they were, on average, everywhere in europe, growing less than inflation in the last few years. It's somewhat true that they kinda crumbled in the years after the crisis, due to a lack of demand, like all prices, and since there was some kind of buble, the downfall of housing prices was bigger. But overall, as showed with my curve, rent increased way more than inflation in the last 15 years; and there are huge differences between urban area, not urban, etc. His comment has no value for the bottom 10 %, as I showed above : he is implying that inflation is not a problem for purchasing power, which is only true if you think the society is entirely made of average income people. It's not, inflation is not homogeneous, and the lowflation we've had for the last 10 years is a masked inequality. Actually, I can agree with you on that. But your statement, that I was responding to, was blanket. The real problem really might be the inequality and when talking about the 10%, I can see how you have a point. But the bottom 10% is just ... a tenth of the population, while a large amount of people is getting better and better off, yet the amount of complainers seems to be disproportionally large. So while the poorest citizens may face real problems with housing and establishing families, is it really a society-wide issue? Is it even a problem when not everyone can afford to have children? I understand what inequality means and that is has been widely proven to be detrimental to almost any society, but the data you shown should really be seen as that - a pointer about issues of inequality, than to show decline in living standards of all people. Also, as I side remark, I would like to mention, that you have yourself pointed out, that for example when it comes to homelessness, immigrants are a risk group, which however means that the homelessness values can't be taken at face value when it comes to the locals' situation, right? In general, any index that gets brought down by immigrants is not a very good argument for how the locals suffer from immigration ... | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6237 Posts
On June 14 2016 18:33 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: I cannot agree with the blanket statement that house prices are declining in Europe. England, Sweden, Denmark, Holland off the top of my head huge increases past 5 years.Switzerland maybe since they're on negative rates? Which raises the point, if things are so good in Europe why negative rates in Denmark,Sweden,Switz, even the ECB! Housing prices tanked massively in NL after the crisis. We had a huge bubble. Most of the recent increases is catch up growth. Inflation adjusted we're still below pre crisis peak. | ||
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iPlaY.NettleS
Australia4341 Posts
On June 14 2016 20:22 RvB wrote: Housing prices tanked massively in NL after the crisis. We had a huge bubble. Most of the recent increases is catch up growth. Inflation adjusted we're still below pre crisis peak. Ok thanks for the update.It seems the housing bubble has affected countries in the eurozone that still have their own currencies the most plus have high immigration.I know the housing bubble now in Sweden is especially bad, worse than Australia even. | ||
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