From the Generation Zero movie Web site…
The current economic crisis is not a failure of capitalism, but a failure of culture. Generation Zero explores the cultural roots of the global financial meltdown – beginning with the narcissism of the 1960’s, spreading like a virus through the self-indulgent 90’s, and exploding across the world in the present economic cataclysm.
Generation Zero goes beneath the shallow media headlines and talking head sound bites to get to the source of today’s economic nightmare. With a cutting edge style and haunting imagery, this must see documentary will change everything you thought you knew about Wall Street and Washington.
Featuring experts, authors, and pundits from across the political spectrum, Generation Zero exposes the little told story of how the mindset of the baby boomers sowed the seeds of economic disaster that will be reaped by coming generations.
This is who the hippi pot smoking radicals of the 60's loved. They are the "Me Generation". All they care about was "Me". That is why they will leave the next generation nothing but a big mess to clean up. Next year is when the first baby booomers turn 62. It's time to tell them they don't get everything they want no matter how much it will cost the next generation. They are robing the future generations so they can get what they want now. And the youth of today are helping these progressive leaches by voting for them. The youth better wake up and stop believing the left wing when they demonize businesses and capitalism. Those hippies couldn't make utopia happen then and they can't make it happen know. But now it will be the youth that will pay for the liberal generation zeros experament..
Interesting blog you’ve got here, Chris. To understand the arguments put forth by the “Generation Zero” documentary, it is crucial to distinguish between the actual Baby Boom Generation (born 1942-1954) vs. Generation Jones (1954-1965). GenJones was originally lumped in with the Boomers, but is now generally seen by experts as a separate generation. Understanding the differences between these two generations is central to comprehending this documentary.
ReplyDeleteThe post-WWII demographic boom in births is one thing, the cultural generations born during that era is another. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. And most analysts now see generations as getting shorter (usually 10-15 years now), partly because of the acceleration of culture. Many experts now believe it breaks down more or less this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978
Generation Y/Millennials: 1979-1993
Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten lots of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term. In fact, the Associated Press' annual Trend Report chose the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009. Here's a page with a good overview of recent media interest in GenJones: http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html
What ever happened to that freak of nature djtyg on Bruces blog? He is such a mental case. He used to think everyone was out to get him like a paranoid schizo. He never could handle the stress of debate. Or maybe he realized Bruce is just an idiot with a blog.
ReplyDeleteSimon Johnson from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Peter Boone from the London School of Economics predict that the world is close to inflating its final economic bubble. After this bubble bursts, the world will plunge into a long and lasting depression that we haven't seen in many centuries. The end is near, they claim, because interest rates are near zero all around the world and cutting interest rates was our best weapon to fend off collapse.
ReplyDeleteAccording to them, the US financial system has tripled in size over the last three decades, and each time it has gotten into trouble, the Federal Reserve would jump in and slash interest rates down to revive it. The problem is that the crises appear to be getting worse and worse, their impact is increasingly global, and interest rates around the world has been slashed already to zero. The economy is not reviving, the debt is piling up, and many countries around the world are on final trajectories to economic collapse.
According to these economists, what brought us to this failure is that the state has corrupted the free market system. Banks and capitalist institutions have been protected from risk-taking and failure by the government through subsidies and bailouts, and the government regulators who were entrusted to protect the people from these risks and failures have not done so. This has led to these banking and financial institutions to make an utter mess of things, the government to bail them out, this encourages riskier behavior and rewards failure, interest rates are cut to revive things, debt is taken on, the the cycle restarts again, each time getting worse and worse.
The only hope is for governments to begin to live within their means (no more debt), for governments to quit playing games with the market, for the regulators to do a better job, and for some bankers to be punished with failure. But, this isn't likely to happen.
Last election the second biggest contributor to the Democratic Party was Wall street, and they know that they own Obama and the Democrats and that they won't let them fail. They own the regulators and won't ever face real regulation or opening up. The other big owner of the Democratic party is the labor unions, in particular the labor union for the government workers, and they won't let government live within its means or quit playing games with the market.
So, if this analysis is correct, there is a major bubble going to burst soon, and it'll be a big one. Our only hope is that Republicans, real Republicans, conservative and libertarian Republicans, win control of every single government institution and jam through brutal austerity measures. That kind of change may indeed give us some hope for the future.
I've gotta see this when it comes out!
ReplyDeleteIt is a positive trend that conservatives are now hip to the crony capitalism that we were previously blind to.
Cathy, very interesting comment. The US Government has become Enron, what is the name of that movie "The Smartest Guys in the Room", or something like that? They thought they could manipulate the monetary system, but no country has ever been able to do that. Our founding fathers tried to warn us, but our "leaders" thought they were smarter than the average bear. One thing is for sure, this isn't the administration that will be cutting spending. No matter what the warnings, it's not in their makeup. Liberalism is a mental disorder, and part of the symptoms is they can't stop spending other people's money.
ReplyDeleteJust an aside to you and Silverfiddle, I just got "The 5000 Year Leap" from the library, looking forward to reading it.
LOL ... apparently the Hypocrats aren't self destructing NEARLY fast enough for the regressives. This is toooo funny:
ReplyDeleteDemocrats Eating Their Own, Razorback Edition
by The MaryHunter
MoveOn.org is pissed. Pissed at Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. From a recent email campaign:
She promised to filibuster any health care bill that included a public option after taking more than $866,000 from insurance and HMO interests. She's the #1 recipient of campaign contributions from Big Oil in the last year, and now she's sponsoring a bill to roll back the Clean Air Act. And she accepted more than $1.3 million over her career from Wall Street banks and financial interests, and then voted to kill legislation that would've allowed struggling homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages and stay in their homes.
Eeeewwww. So, MoveOn wants to support her progressive new opponent in the primaries: Bill Halter, lieutenant governor of Arkansas. Their pitch:
Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln is one of the worst Democrats in Washington. But she's raised enormous sums from corporate interests and has $5 million in the bank--so Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, who's challenging her in the Democratic primary, needs overwhelming support from grassroots progressives across the country to wage an effective campaign.
In an environment where liberal progressives in Congress are being lead to the slaughter come November, MoveOn's brilliant thinking types want to place on the Arkansas ticket a liberal progressive candidate. Mmmm. Sounds good. In fact, maybe this is an instance for a little mischief. Are you willing to send a few bucks to Bill Halter, to try and sneak a fabulously crushable liberal Democrat on the ballot in the Razorback State?
But wait - there's already a fabulously crushable liberal Democrat on the ballot in the Razorback State.
For incumbent Democratic Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln, the opponents are interchangeable at this point in her bid for reelection in Arkansas. New Rasmussen Reports polling in the state finds her stuck in the mid-30s against any of five Republican opponents.
Her GOP rivals, including Congressman John Boozman who is expected to enter the race on Saturday, all earn roughly 50% of the vote against the two-term Democrat.
Something tells me that a "real progressive" Democrat would poll in the, ohidunno, mid-teens?
John, how can you be so wrong all the time. The reason Lincoln is doing so poorly is due to her opposition to the public option, which polls very well in AR. She is a corporatist Democrat and the people of AR want a REAL Democrat.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thepoliticalcarnival.net/2009/09/poll-itics-arkansas-is-pro-public.html
Whatever,Bruce. You are just a fringe loudmouth.
ReplyDeleteWalter Williams addresses a theme we've been discussing recently.
ReplyDeletehttp://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2010/03/02/who_poses_the_greater_threat
LOL ... sure Bruce, sounds good to me. I love that the Hypocrats are eating their own. Maybe there is no room for a third party, but I hear the Hypocrats are starting up a fourth party, the kaffeeklatch party? Sounds vaguely German to me, like when they used to meet in the back room of the pub. So now the 20% of regressive lieberals will have someone to vote for, while the remaining 80% can vote for someone who doesn't suffer from the mental illness of liberalism.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the Tea Party's started when Bush was in office, and it sure wasn't due to his "conservative" spend-thrift agenda. You folks refuse to see the writing on the wall, but you might get the message loud and clear in November. Meanwhile, keep running those radical leftists! Like Al said, and I paraphrase, keep pushing left til it HURTS! LOL
By the way Bruce, what have I been wrong about yet? I told you that the Hypocrat Government Takeover of Health Care bill was going to be a big windfall to big insurance, big pharma, trial lawyers and unions. It was as plain as the nose on my face. Was I wrong about that? Looks like they are going to spend my tax dollars, and force kids, to buy insurance from .... Big Insurance! And Obama killed the chance to re-import lower-cost prescription drugs, which was a real slap in the face in general to America and the free market, but specifically to the elderly who were hoping to close the so-called "donut hole". Trial lawyers remain untouched, and the unions got their sweetheart deal. So FAILk, I'm interested to know, what did I get wrong? BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA
Paul, that article is right on. Once again, a waste of knowledge on people like Bruce Fealk who are so entrenched in their collectivist group-think ideology that they will never see reality, even after it runs them over and leaves them for dead.
ReplyDeleteThat Walter Williams is great. I'm going to have to check out Dr. Sowell's new book that Mr. Williams referenced, Intellectuals and Society. I didn't realize he had a new one.
Bill Gates is the world's richest person, but what kind of power does he have over you? Can he force your kid to go to a school you do not want him to attend? Can he deny you the right to braid hair in your home for a living? It turns out that a local politician, who might deny us the right to earn a living and dictates which school our kid attends, has far greater power over our lives than any rich person. Rich people can gain power over us, but to do so, they must get permission from our elected representatives at the federal, state or local levels. For example, I might wish to purchase sugar from a Caribbean producer, but America's sugar lobby pays congressmen hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to impose sugar import tariffs and quotas, forcing me and every other American to purchase their more expensive sugar.
ReplyDeletePoliticians love pitting us against the rich. All by themselves, the rich have absolutely no power over us. To rip us off, they need the might of Congress to rig the economic game. It's a slick political sleight-of-hand where politicians and their allies amongst the intellectuals, talking heads and the news media get us caught up in the politics of envy as part of their agenda for greater control over our lives.
The sugar lobby is just one example among thousands. Just ask yourself: Who were the major recipients of the billions of taxpayer bailout dollars, the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)? The top recipients of TARP handouts included companies such as Citibank, AIG, Goldman Sachs and General Motors. Their top management are paid tens of millions dollars to run companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy, were it not for billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Politicians preach the politics of envy whilst reaching into the ordinary man's pockets, through the IRS, and handing it over to their favorite rich people and others who make large contributions to their election efforts.
The bottom line is that it is politicians first and their supporters amongst intellectuals who pose the greatest threat to liberty. Dr. Thomas Sowell amply demonstrates this in his brand-new book, "Intellectuals and Society," in which he points out that: "Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the twentieth century was without his intellectual supporters, not simply in his own country, but also in foreign democracies ... Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had their admirers, defenders and apologists among the intelligentsia in Western democratic nations, despite the fact that these dictators each ended up killing people of their own country on a scale unprecedented even by despotic regimes that preceded them."
While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant's primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite.
We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine's warning that "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Anon I took off your post because here is the article posted the same thing. Thank you both for posting it.
ReplyDelete