NP - Germany Won't Budge on Austerity: Economic Suicide is Character Building

[alice malice]

Maybe we are more aware of what's going down and maybe we are also
more Homo-empathic now. If so, we are now more concerned about more
people, people we've never met but people we, nevertheless, feel
anxiety for. Perhaps this concern is now global and includes not only
our species but all living creatures, and the planet.
http://empathiccivilization.com/humannature

Also,

In an economy, like the economy in the US, in Germany...smart people,
you guys out there, live and work in and around the Knowledge Economy.
Pynchon's book, Bleeding Edge, another novel about work, provides a
quick look at why and how the knowledge economy causes so much
anxiety, or paranoia.

There is a growing research suggesting that some of the new jobs that have
been created over the past two decades are fundamentally different from the
ones that have been lost (Morris & Western 1999). The new jobs tend to favor
educated workers over those with less education and skills. Data on returns to
education suggest a very divergent pattern of reward for those with educational
credentials and those without. Over the period 1975 –1999, earnings differences
increased markedly among workers with different levels of educational attainment
(Cheeseman Day & Newburger 2002). More education translates into higher earn-
ings, but this payoff is most pronounced at the highest educational
levels. Figure 2
shows that differences in wages and educational attainment were fairly constant
between 1975 and 1985, but the average earnings for those holding advanced de-
grees grew markedly from 1985 to 1993 and then remained constant, whereas
less-educated workers have seen their wages either decline or stagnate.

https://web.stanford.edu/group/song/papers/powell_snellman.pdf





On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 4:22 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> is there some explanation beyond out and out greed. sure there's some of
> that, but why are people feraful? have we all succumbed to the hovering
> unease about the state of the world, subconsciously over-protective of what
> we've got due to climate change, terrorists, zombies, societal collapse. I
> have to say, not having alot of anything, and not particularly wanting, am
> very uneasy. who isn't? the question is how will such attitudes alter
> society. does it even in a sinister way bring about or bring closer most of
> what we fear. we can all point at capitalism, technology, politics, big
> themed things
>
> fwiw, there are a number of very wealthy folks who plan to give all their
> money away to charity. I used to work for one. so some of those 1% havent
> lost the ladder. there's always exceptions
>
>
> rich
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 9:05 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Most peeps with high paying jobs are scared, just like any other sane
>> being today. The ladder is slippery, 1% have long ago pulled up the ladder
>> behind them. "I've got mine, Jack!" Is their motto.  No wonder that no one
>> has gotten a raise lately. This US economy is FLAT!  But EURO is doing far
>> worse.  Except Germany.  They've got theirs, Jack!  Conservatives are always
>> focused on the immediate gain, and are afraid of disruption of that gain.
>> Fear is their Foundation.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l