Re: Re: Atlas shrugged

[Gar Lipow <lipowg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rob.

Our current "peak" does not begin to match that of the sixties (at least
here in the U.S -- which incidentally is still miles ahead of you
Aussies in the scum sweepstakes). Among the reasons -- people have to
work a hell of a lot harder for survival than was required in sixties.

This includes colleges which tend to be centers for activism in the U.S.
Not only, as Michael P. pointed out, do most students have to work damn
hard outside of college to earn money for their education. But, thanks
to the "anti-grade inflation" movmement of the seventies and eighties,
students have to take more and harder classes to graduate.


Rob Schaap wrote:
>
> G'day Gar,
>
> > Also there is one other point. In the U.S, anyway the increase in the
> > ratio of seniors to others is projected to occur alongside a drop in
> > the ratio of children to population -- so that the total "dependency"
> > ratio is projected to be a only a tiny bit higher than at present...
>
> I agree with all this - 65 ain't what it used to be, tendentious ageism is
> implicit in mosr public communication on this stuff, and there are a lot less
> kids per capita than there used to be anyway.
>
> On which last point, I heard myself speculating the other day (I often don't
> know what I'm thinking until I either write it down or take cups unto
> loquacity) that a big determinant in bouts of widespread 'western'
> resistance/activism to the establishment might coincide with troughs in
> parenthood.  In the sixties, the boomers had got to twenty, but the diffusion
> of the pill, a degree of female emancipation and something of a break with
> religion (at least amongst the formally educated classes) had combined to push
> back the average age of the first-time parent by a fair way (or so I imagine -
> is there a handy stat on this?).  Now, of course, we have a lot of that, but
> also loud anti-child movements; a culture of fanatical consumerism (chronic,
> acute and terminal); and - in an age of job insecurity, sustained real estate
> inflation, and lapsing health/education infrastructure/ public play venues -
> lots of economic disincentives to spawn.  So we're freer to be the irascible
> and uppity bunch we are, in fact, becoming.
>
> I find I have certainly become a far quieter, more pliable and less dignified
> lackey since first the loinfruit bounced into consideration, anyway.
>
> Which is probably why I've been waxing abstractly rebellious on lists like
> this ...
>
> Waddyareckon?
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.