Implementing Democracy 1.01 in Iran
 

It seems that many Iranian opposition activists are currently spurning invitations from the White House.

Leading Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji is sitting on something many people would only dream of: a personal invitation to the White House today to meet with top U.S. officials overseeing the United States policy toward Iran, including the National Security Council’s Elliot Abrams and State Department’s Iran nuclear negotiator Nicholas Burns. It's even been dangled before him that President Bush may drop by the afternoon meeting of Iranian opposition activists. But Iran's most famous former political prisoner, who arrived in Washington earlier this week for a month long U.S. tour after six years in Iranian prison says, while tempted, he's not going to accept the invitation. And he’s not the only Iranian pro-democracy activist choosing not to go: among the others are former Iranian Revolutionary Guard founder-turned-dissident Mohsen Sazegara; student leaders Akbar Atri and Ali Afshary; Iranian American human rights activist Ramin Ahmadi; and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah. Their demurrals hint at the complexity of the relationship between those Iranians seeking democracy and regime change and the American administration that says it has the same goals there.

“Democracy is not machinery that can be exported,” Ganji told me, through a translator, at a ceremony Monday night where he was the recipient of a press freedom award. “Democracy needs social infrastructure. Another precondition of democracy is to live in urban areas. Another precondition is a division between the public and private sectors. Another precondition is the separation of government from civic society, and the separation of religion and state. Another is tolerance.”

“Can you make a society that is urban, tolerant, democratic with $75 million?” Ganji asked, referring to the money the Bush administration has sought this year from Congress to promote dissident forces in Iran. “You could not even do that with $75 billion,” he concluded.

Neocons United: Please Take Note of what Mr.Ganji said...

Good stuff, it's not our job to install democracy and it's certainly not a good use of our money. Put the $75 million into bringing our lagging technology sector up to standards.

Unusually enough I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with 9th.

More likely the $75Million would fund terrorists who sieze it.

Ironic part is that Iran does have a democracy. A democracy where religious cleric could still veto some decisions. A democracy that reformers (clearly the majority of Iranians) were working to improve. What put the final nail into that reform movement coffin? Goerge Jr's Axis of Evil speech. After than, even the Iranian president Rafsanjani who was elected by a massive majority of reform minded Iranian, even he had to go along with the clerics extremist position. Polls on Iranian street demonstrated that after George Jr essentially announced the list of countries American intended to attack, then the majority (reformers) suddenly joined ranks with extremists. America had announced intentions to attack Iran.

Rubish.

It can't b a democratic state 'cos it's not a capitalistic state

To succeed as America has, you need political freedom -- making sacred the things listed in the First Amendment, and the Second to keep the First in fullest force -- capital, and secure property rights. Property/money must not be subjected to arbitrary confiscation or property will not be improved and money will not be invested, but instead hoarded and concealed. A social climate highly conducive to investment makes the wealth of a nation. So I'm with JayMcGee.

Tw would like to spin it that we're just going to invade Iran at our earliest convenience out of sheer imperialism, in accordance with Communist scripture, it may be supposed. While this is not so, to the objective observer at any rate, just how long and why are we supposed to put up with presently irreplaceable (and even if somehow replaced, still immensely valuable in any term, short or long) resources by unfriendlies?

Iran's democracy is unconvincing, and will remain so as long as it can be shortcircuited by its oligarchy. Checks and balances are not in their proper order here.

How should success be defined? What makes the US more successful than Japan for instance? Economically speaking I'd say Japan may have the upper hand. Ummm...military? China clearly has more soldiers. Nuclear weapons? No one knows who has them anymore do they? Cultural success? I'd say there's many 'nations' who work together in unity at least as well as the US if not better.

What do you think makes the US so superior?

You can accuse me of US bashing or whatever you like, but from the outside looking in, there's a country in severe crisis due to a huge number of actions and reactions by the government, not only of today but of the past.

I just don't understand what makes the people of the US so proud of what has been done by the government/people. I'd really like to get some idea of why there is this psyche in most of the american's I've ever met in real life, or interacted with online that the rest of the world looks up to you so much.

Being an American doesn't make you superior to anyone in any way, and yet that is the impression given constantly.

I'd just like to know why that is.

Please explain.

Out of interest, I'd also quite like to know why UG keeps categorising tw as a 'communist'? Is it because he disagrees with current governmental policy and ideology?

America has many people who agree with Bush and many people who disagree with Bush. Are the people who disagree with Bush all communists then? Are they all anti-democracy? Isn't that something of a contradiction in terms?

Communism has long been gone practically everywhere in the world except for NKorea.

I believe only in the US people use it to describe the Boogey Man. "Daddy, could you look under the bed whether there´s no Communist?"

Democracy has many faces, doesn´t have to be an american. It all started in The Old World anyways.

Japan currently has the upper hand in some respects. They don't have the same anti-trust laws that keep us from copying their keiretsu system and their social system is geared toward success in a professional capacity above all else. We still have an edge in some respects but, unless we get our act together and kick our habit of rationizing personal failure, we're toast.

I don't think current has anything to do with it. His views on Vietnam coincide precisely with what was put out during the Vietnam era from Moscow and Peking (we didn't start writing it Beijing until well after the Vietnam war) in the Sixties, when the communists did a hell of a job of marketing their slavemaking to an audience of American dupes -- war of national liberation, my bilobate ass. Liberations don't drive a quarter million people out to sea on rafts, or from the North into the South when Indochina was partitioned. Compare what tw writes to what the Soviets used to put out -- my, he's faithful to the Sovs: invokes the same boogeymen, picks on Israel, et cetera. I don't know where he's ever disagreed with a view the Soviets held. This is what tells me the guy's a commie, and he doesn't deny it, either -- the nearest he came to any rebuttal was a limp citing of The Pentagon Papers once. Precisely once.

Not all of these would be communists, no -- tw is unusual only in his persistent riding of the wave of the past. However, they conspicuously lack an understanding of the best idea to come out of the neocon philosophy -- it isn't really a movement so much as an area of likemindedness -- that a democratic republic is going to prosper best in a world full of other democratic republics rather than various brands of dictatorships, autarchies, and class-ridden or caste-ridden societies. The ew, it's neocons set are terribly weak on democracy, being not committed enough to it to see it prevail. These are feeble successors to "The Greatest Generation." Whatever their manifold faults (which I stipulate, and move on), those people knew what to do about totalitarianism, though it took totalitarianism plus imperialism to put them into action removing them. The ews seek any excuse at all not to win, which I think very shortsighted of them. They need to remember what McArthur said about substitutes for victory. Allow me to add that the usual substitute for victory is to fight a larger, more ruinous war later on. I haven't seen much war myself -- just an expedition or two, with medals to show for it -- but this strikes me as a bad thing.

The reason I am committed to libertarian democracy is that I've been in contention directly against collectivist totalitarianism before, and in that time got around the world and had a look at some un-democracies. I concluded that they suck.

There are non-communists on this board who fight with me all the time. Understanding this, I don't call them a pack of commies, but instead, about everything else in The Devil's Dictionary. Usually I harp on their want of wisdom. No, tw is about the only communist I can say I know personally. Most of the rest of the people who find me hard to take seem left of center, but are not as toys-in-the-attic out-there as tw. I do not, however, trust these to be any good at keeping the Republic.

P.S.: Hippikos, consult the "Made Up Words" thread for a telling remark or two anent "anyways."

Mine is a 'class ridden' society. Do you think America should attempt to impose a Libertarian democracy on Britain? Also, did you ask the people living in those 'un-democracies' if they thought their way of doing things sucked? You do realise I hope, that there are a lot of people in the world who look at the way your country is run and have to suppress a shiver of disgust, before shaking it off and thanking all that's holy that they were born somewhere else? What makes you right and them wrong? By what right do you and your ilk decide what is right for the world? By what right to you seek to impose your vision onto the world? And finally, what you have described as the neo-cons' best idea, is a form of globalism which they seek because it is best for America. It is self-interest. How is American self-interest 'right' for the world? Or is it just right for America?

It's right for everybody on the planet to succeed and live well, Dana.

Most places, they don't. I call this a shame.

Okay. So, if we all do things the American way, everybody on the planet will succeed and live well?
Could you define success in this context please. And, if everybody deserves to succeed and live well, why does America have 12.7% of its population living in poverty? (the highest in the developed world)

Class-ridden is precisely the thing that holds you back as a society. Americans of English descent (and one side of my own family came here from south of Norwich in the seventeenth century) in considerable measure came to America to escape that restraint. Americans are breakers of restraints. The English will draw a line and stay behind it; for Americans, lines are things to cross. This makes America a bit disorderly, but it is also the key to our successes.

The more you turn towards libertarian ways and away from the welfare state, the more you will succeed, even unto having wealth like you did in the days of empire, and on a better moral basis to boot. In my view, there's nothing here to not like.

I don't look for you to turn into a full-on republic vice a constitutional monarchy because overall you'd rather be a monarchy, being in that habit. (The ones out of the habit moved over here.) Having hit upon a way to have a national symbol in the person of a Sovereign, and a constitution however unwritten it be, you've got a good thing going, really.

"By what right do you and your ilk decide what is right for the world?" Oh, the same right by which you did, for the same reasons, and quite frankly in the identical spirit: you are of our ilk thereby. The just plain English idea that limited government is good government (and that government is best that governs least) is the core idea that we Americans try and spread. It is presently most successful in the lands of English speech, but since all other inhabited lands are peopled by, well, people, we suspect they can do every bit as well, as long as the slavemakers can't spoil things. In too many countries the slavemakers do. What an abomination.

And in my viewthere's plenty to like and plenty to dislike.

The only right we had, was the right borne of power. We had the ships, the guns and the political will. That didn't make it right that we did what we did. Personally, I think we did a lot of damage and stunted a lot of cultures that had their own parallel path of development to follow. We also left behind several power-vacuums, a multitude of civil wars and innumerable grievances which continued to play out long after we retreated back behind our garden hedge:P

Also, whilst we may have spouted about our governance being 'for the good of the world' and whilst we may have claimed that we were 'civilising' the nations we took under our aegis, the reality was very different. In reality, we were acting entirely in self-interest, and didn't really believe the 'natives' could ever truly become civilised....not really proper people you see? What we in fact did, was tramp about the world, rape their resources, install ourselves as rulers and then redraw their maps and borders with gay abandon.

Yes, we used to have that attitude. Then we realised that without some kind of safeguards many of our people were lving in poverty. We also realised that without some kind of proscription against it, many employers were abusing their role and their workers were remaining poor. We also realised that, if left to private enterprise many of the things we needed as a nation were taking second place to the desire to make profit.

In short, we changed our minds and decided that government has a role and a duty to ensure that all our people are provided for at least with the basics of survival.

Hmmm... according statistics your present guvmint is the largest civil government, measured in budgetary terms, in history. Population has doubled since 1930, but government spending is 27 times higher than in 1930.

.......hang on a minute..... This one got past me.
In what way do you consider that we are being held back? I think we do quite well overall. We have our problems (as do you) we have some people out of work (as do you) we have arguments about immigration (as do you).

How's your national debt lookin these days? Lookin forward to the upcoming power struggle with China?

Britain is no longer an empire. Good. We don't need to be an Empire.. We're quite happy being able to more or less provide a reasonable standard of living to most of our citizens.

So, how are we 'held back'?

What I'm wondering is why anyone would think the US is a classless society. Of course, I mean in a socially hierarchical way and not in a way which would suggest that citizens of the US have no class. ;)

Oh, we arn't classless by any stretch of the imagination. The closest thing I would say to that is that we have very good mobility between classes.

That does not mean "be just like us". It is not the same thing.

That's ok. It's only when you start agreeing with UG that we order the electroshock and thorazine.:rolleyes:

The US is class oriented and becoming more so, but only if class is defined by money. There are more and more services being offered to the wealthy starting with the upper middle class, including special handling through airport security. This of course is acceptable in the private sector. It's when public services are affected that I begin to get annoyed.

9th and Rich, you both make very good points. In my country we still have the remnants of 'cultural' class distinctions that were a centuries in the making. That said, those distinctions have evaporated more over the last twenty years than in preivious centuries. What we have now, is something more akin to the American 'class system' which is based more on income than anything else.

There is still a cultural element though and this can be seen in your culture too. It is however a more modern cultural element. You have 'Trailer trash', we have 'Chavs'. These are our culturally lower class icons.

Out of interest, what areas are considered 'public service'?

{Taking time to consider my reply}

It works if you're a human, yes. America is chiefly inhabited by these.

What I'm saying is that we did it, and therefore so can you.


The government bureaucracies in charge of doing something about poverty have been known to redefine poverty upward. Thus they impress the gullible about how necessary they are. American poverty bears a surprising resemblance to Central and South American middle class.

Your thinking, Dana, is being very heavily colored by welfare-statism. The problem with the welfare state, and this is a problem that is sickening the entire EU economy, is that it raises the cost of employment far too much to allow the economic growth the EU's populations could actually accomplish given their head. It's basically the same effect as overtaxing, and often takes that exact form. The welfare state attempts to offer very extensive guarantees of some kind of economic maintenance. I have become suspicious of such guarantees, for guarantees suck the life out of opportunity. Guarantees are the stuff of totalitarianism. A free market, with as little as possible of the parasitic drag of taxation clinging to it, makes for unequal distributions of wealth, but there is a lot more wealth to go around in general, and everyone gets to cut their own piece of the pie, as their ability, fortune, and ethics allow. Bad ethics eventually lead to bad fortune, even in the freest of markets. For a nasty example of such, take drug trafficking: no ethics, and all takeovers are about as hostile as hostile is likely to get -- bang bang bang, bada-bing, bada-boom.

The free marketplace requires you to grow your skills, and it feels very good when you've got it mastered. Little by little if need be, every day that you do something better than you did, you're making yourself a better life. To set Marx on his head: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need -- and money is how the score is kept."

As long a we espouse property rights, their property rights, which I can only assume you can't fathom. The same way you can't fathom that there are a whole lot of people in the world that don't share your view of utopia...don't want you to impose it on them.
That's because the neocons can't make a buck off them. The neocons have several agendas, but concern for other peoples freedoms doesn't even make the list.
We only have classes if you're looking down. We have different levels of wealth, but do you really think poor people feel that wealthier people are an upper class? No, just wealthier. :headshake

You're quite missing my point that we want friendlies, not unfriendlies, owning those resources.

So we'll take it away from them and give it to someone we like. Property rights are only for "friendlies". :rolleyes:

I'd say you're missing a word or two there. How about "everybody deserves a fair opportunity to succeed and live well". Not everyone puts in the effort or is willing to put off gratification in order to succeed down the road. Education is here for those who want it, and every educated, ambitious, and reasonable person enjoys a decent level of success.

I was trying to point out to UG that this utopia he seeks to promote for the world, where "everybody succeeds and lives well" isn't realistic and doesn't exist even in his own country. The fact is, under any system, some people succeed and some people do not. Each country/culture has its own set of definitions for what constitutes success and the price of not succeeding differs from country to country.

UG claims that if we all do things the American way every human will 'succeed and live well'. That is patently not the case. It is entirely contrary to the way capitalism works. It is most certainly not a rationale for imposing American economic and democratic structures onto the rest of the world.

In the UK, not everybody succeeds and lives well. The worst of their poverty is usually alleviated by the welfare state, but the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is still a gulf. In America, not everybody succeeds and lives well. In France not everybody succeeds and lives well.....not in Russia, not in Sweden not anywhere.

Not everyone is in a position to take the first steps down that road. Some people have other commitments which take them out o fthe running. It's not always a case of a refusal to delay gratification. Sometimes it's a case of being mired in a situation whereby only selfishness would lead someone to follow that path, rather than get the job and deal with the financial responsibilities that they have in the now. This is not peculiar to the States, it's the case here as well.

I think there's also a lot to be said for facillitating second chances in life. Some people make stupid choices when they are young and then find themselves in situations they either cannot handle or which make them unhappy.

There are also plenty of people who work hard, contribute greatly but never get above the minimum wage. Those people, I feel should be given a better deal in life. They're the ones that keep the machinery working.

Everybody still believes in the fairy story of the paperpboy becoming a millionaire. In reality winning the lotterie has more chances.

Since the 1970s, wages, after adjusting for inflation, have been in decline for 80 percent of U.S. men on the lower end of the income scale. For 60% of the families its been a losing battle, the average household is in deeper debt then ever before.

Still the American Dream lives on, but for many it becomes a nightmare...

I'm not saying every American has a good chance of becoming a millionare, but it's perfectly possible to live comfortably. We are moving away from an industry focused on unskilled labor and trying to become one of businesses, skilled workers, and academics.
I take a rather strong view on this but it is coupled with an even stronger view of our parallel resposibility to provide an education that can take every student as far as they are willing to go. I cannot emphasize this enough, the single most important part of everyone's life before the age of 20-25 is becoming educated, and it is my generations fight to make it possible for every student to have the opportunity. Unfortunately we are still far from this, I absolutely admit it, and it's mostly because of the ignorence in our society about the times we live in and the irresposibility of many members of the older generation. Parents must never burden their children with responsibilities that stop them from persuing their education. I personally see this as an afront as serious as physical and emotional abuse, and it is certainly shameful. It may not be malicious, but if it exists the student should have the opportunity to escape it. The Japanese treat highschool very similarly to how we treat university, and students will sometimes travel and live on their own in order to attend the best highschool they can. We should make an effort to start some sort of subsidized housing programs around highschools for students comming from bad homes, and perhaps even a type of dormatory would be a good idea.

I know the typical response is "what do you think will happen if you put highschool students in a dormatory or give them their own appartment? You must be absolutely crazy to think that anything like that won't be completely destroyed on an annual basis". But that is assuming highschool students keep the same attitudes that they do now. They don't have a sense of responsibility because they arn't given any, I got to see the flip side of this while I was staying at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Over there, any student who fails out or is expelled for damage or misbehavior(it's alot easier than over here for this to happen) will probably be stuck selling noodles from a street cart for the rest of their life. Guess what? Dorms that are 15 years old are in perfect condition, there are no problems on campus and everyone treats their academics as a matter of life and death. Even if you think it sounds brutal I can tell you it really isn't. The students are happy and go about their business just like any American student does. There are coffee houses, lounges, and concerts held on campus for entertainment and it's all done at low expense because the students actually act like reasonable people. This is our generations fight now, and we need to increase advocacy programs that address this issue.

Basically, I agree with your post. But keep in mind some of the reasons the average household is deeper in debt.

Housing costs have soared, so people have larger mortgages. That doesn't mean most won't make the payments, just that their debt load is higher. Of course people like Lookout recommend not paying off the mortgage but put the money in investments instead.

Another reason can be education loans that don't get paid off until 15 or 20 years after graduation....just in time for their kids to go to school.

A big one is irresponsible use of credit cards. Not caring what the balance or interest is....just the minimum payment. The credit industry has sold these people on easy credit and they bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Don't deny yourself that trinket, just put it on the card.

A guy I work with has a 24 year old daughter living at home. During a recent clothing drive, she threw out a whole trash bag full of clothing and several pairs of shoes that still had price tags on them. Put it on the card.

Most people wouldn't believe what they could do without... wouldn't even consider doing without.
Yes, there are a lot of people going down the tubes because of the "restructuring" of the economy, but the numbers don't tell the whole story. :cool:

That's very true. But there are also a lot of people who aren't even close to that rung. I watched an interesting documentary recently. Thirty Days...on minimum wage. Have you seen it? It's bhy the same guy that made the one about McDonalds food. Well worth watching.

Just as in my country there is an 'underclass' in America. These people may be working or they may not, but they have a whole different set of problems to the ones you describe.

Sure, we have a fair amount of working homeless..... or barely keeping a roof and a couple meals a day, with 2 or 3 people in the household working.

A million people will give you a million different stories..... a million different reasons.....many of them heart wrenching.
At one time we tried throwing money at them but that just made things worse, trapping generations in the welfare ghettos. We need a better, way but when there are so many different circumstances, a government agency always seems hamstrung by red tape and unfair rules.
Historically, giving the first level bureaucrats flexibility leads to abuse of the system. :confused:

Not everyone wants to 'live the american way' UG. That's something you're going to have to accept.

I live in a country which has close ties the the US and similar lifestyles, and yet I would never want to 'live the american way' and I'll fight tooth and nail to retain my own culture. I think you'll find most other cultures in the world would be of a very similar school of thought.

Just another thought.

You must consider the distribution of wealth. There's only so much of it to go around, so if one person gets richer, another is going to get poorer. If you want the rest of the world to live the way America does, where do you think they're going to get the money to do so?

Doesn't the simple fact that 90% of the worlds wealth is owned by 10% of the population tell you anything?

Woah woah woah, hold on there. That is a serious misconception. There is no great 'pie' out there that everyone gets a slice of and once its gone, that's it. I won't use the term 'creating wealth' because it's slightly misleading, wealth is not the same as money. A better term is buying power, new technologies create the illusion of everyone having more money by allowing what used to cost them $1 to be produced and sold for only $0.75. No new money minted, but people are now 25% richer. Very often, when a person gets very rich it's because they've done something like this, and personally pocketed 15 cents of the reduced cost. Do it on a large scale, and POOF!! 100 million dollars seems to spring from nowhere. But as you can see, no one is any poorer.

This isn't everything, I'm just trying to prove the point that people getting richer is not a sign that other people must be getting poorer.

Yeah, it tells me that 90% of the world needs to get its ass in gear and start producing a useful product that has some value.

I still stand by what I say here as not just the only reasonable way to eliminate poverty, but also one that has been proven to work. It's just that the whiners out there will tell you people can't do it or make excuses.

refer to the original for more detail.

Agreed. I accept that I over simplified my point, however, the fact still remains that this planet does not have the resources to keep every soul on it at the same level of comfort which we in western nations enjoy.

By trying to 'democratise/westernise' the whole world a whole new set of long term issues are being created as anyone with any environmental intelligence will tell you.

I would say we used to have very good mobility between classes. Now the mobility appears to be downward.

I have a personal theory that the size of the middle class in a healthy economy probably follows a sinusoidal pattern. People are not stupid, but most are lazy (used in the sense of not doing more work than they have to). We saw a boom in our middle class in the generation(s) following the great depression/WW2 because of this, children growing up knew that they didn't have much to fall back on if they failed to become self reliant, hence greater productivity and a larger population of successful people. Now we see a generation that has grown up with the belief that everything will be ok no matter what, they think that even if they don't do well in school and have to work minimum wage someone will be there to take them in and back them up. Hence, more students take more risk because of this illusionary safty net (moral for parents, make it very clear that you are taking the house key back after graduation). We will have a generation that lives in poorer conditions and their children will be more ambitious in order to escape from it.

It doesn't matter if we know history or not, we still repeat it. Humans are very simple animals.

That won't hold water because we are now more productive than ever and working more hours than we have since the early 20th century.:(

Really? You think that's true overall? Normally I'd jump to agree with you since I've spent the summer watching my father working himself into an early grave doing 26 12 hour shifts a month in an understaffed ER seeing 73 patients per shift. This is the exception, not the rule or even the average. Responsible, professional people are pulling more weight than they ever have, but they are getting fairly hard to find these days. A worker who puts in 8 hours a day 50 weeks a year (2 for vacation) is not getting any sympathy from me even if they put in 20 overtime hours a month because that level of work is just baseline normal. Life was less complicated back when the term 'cutting edge technology' refered to the transistor radio and work was also less complicated. Now it's harder, you need 4 years of university to get you where highschool used to. You need a Masters Degree to equal the college certificates of the last generation, but that's how it goes. No whining allowed.

If that were true, then baby boomers should be leaving a poorer American economy. Until recented perverted by George Jr voodoo economics, the baby boomers were finally eliminating massive American government and trade inbalances.

One curious fact: preceding the great depression, wealth began to concentrate among a few 'elite'. This never reoccurred in America (as the middle class grew in numbers and percentage) until recently. We are now witnessing again, a massive concentration of wealth among the few elites.

Whereas top management once earned 14 times the income of an average worker, today that number has climbed to something well over 300. Elitism has pushed massive wealth among the few. Incoming are now falling (inflation is higher than wage increases). And yet the super rich are increasing their percentage of the American pie.

Not necessarily. I don't think the crests and troughs would correspond to the retirement of the previous generation, but rather the peak years of production around an average age of 43. As the more efficient generation slowly leaves the workforce we will see a more gradual decline than would be intuitive because there isn't a perfect line between generations. The farther you go from the main 'bump' the less productive the workers, but it's a gradual decline in and of itself. We are just now entering a downstroke in the cycle, our economy has been good overall but it's heading downhill.

As baby boomers approached and past 43, American productivity increased massively. Throughout the late seventies and early eightys, there was near zero productivity growth. Starting maybe in the late 1980 and definitely by the early 1990s, the United States began a massive productivity increase.

Baby boomers born from 1945 to 1955 means baby boomers were 43 from 1988 through 1998. Curious. That is when American productivity returned to levels not seen since the 1950s and early 1960s. Baby boomers are the generation that had it easy.

Wait a minute though, I never said anything about productivity levels. I only said it was the middle class itself that followed the pattern.

I used to believe the same sort of thing. But you know what? Wealthy people still have an advantage. Wealthy families live in more affluent areas, because they can afford to pay more for their homes, and attend better schools, since those districts can afford to pay their teachers higher salaries, and can provide better and more computers, text books, etc. Or the kids go to private school. So they get a better grade- and high- school education. Then their parents can afford to send them to an expensive, high profile college, where they rub elbows with other kids of wealthy families. And they don't even have to be especially intelligent to get into those colleges (see George W. Bush). They come out of college with a competitive edge, having a top-notch alma mater and friends whose fathers are doctors, lawyers, and indian chiefs. They have connections, get the better, higher paying jobs, and the cycle continues.

The US is NOT a meritocracy!

Well said. I truly believe there aren't any meritocracies in the world. There are systems which claim to be meritocracies.....but that just justifies inequality by making those who don't succeed as well as those that do, responsible for that lack of success. Sometimes, all the hard work of a lifetime doesn't buy success.

But, if a society claims to be meritocratous, it allows the elite to take full possession of their success. It allows them to dismiss every good break and advantage that they had by birth and tell the factory worker who works 12 hour shifts to barely keep his family, that it's his own lack of ambition or foresight that keeps him down.

"Work hard and you can achieve whatever you want" A lie that has probably dashed more hopes than I care to think about. "Make your work valuable to others and you will be secure, make yourself indispensable to those higher up than you and you will have whatever you want" is a more useful maxim. A labouror who works 10 hours a day on a construction site might work hard, but because people who can do his job are as common as water he does not produce valuable labour. It is not how hard you work, but how valuable your labour is that determines success.

And what about those who do the jobs which aren't valued? Do they deserve to live badly? Are bricklayers worthless? Not everyone can be 'successful'. Does that mean they have no merit? Surely they are the grist to your mill?

OK. I then don't follow your point.

Meanwhile working hard is little rewarded. The concept was to work smarter; not harder. (Sometimes that means a dumb person is smart enough to hire a good lawyer or join a good union.)

Everything and everyone has a value. A bricklayer has value because even if there are 1000 of them that can do a particular job, one of them has to do it. The value of semi-skilled labour might get the guy a modest appartment and a vacation to Disney Land every 15 years if he isn't stupid with his credit cards. It all depends on what you count as 'living badly'. He wouldn't be living on minimum wage also, a buddy of mine is making $11.75/h carrying boxes off trucks into K-Mart so I doubt that anything but bottom of the barrel fresh-out'a-highschool positions pay that poorly. It is not really that hard to make ends meet with a bit of smarts and commitment, your life will just be boring as hell.

Of course, if we are talking about the jaw-droppingly idiotic weirdos who pack the freezers at the Walmart I shop at, yes they do deserve to live badly. (Think of the guys from Jackass blended with a porn-addicted 13yr/old and the social savvy of a cow)

tw, my original comment was back when someone made reference to the shrinking middle class in the US. The number of people was being taken as representative of other trends and the idea struck me as interesting.

Ooooops, Aliantha: you've accepted the idea that economics is a zero-sum game. Look around you; the evidence is that it is not. Speedread Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb for how far zero-sum economic ideas can lead a prediction astray.

Economics may be a zero-sum game on a solar system-wide scale, but this doesn't seem true of planetary-scale. We are nowhere near operating on a systemwide scale yet.

And it tells me that about ten percent of the population is good at wealth. Thing is, this kind of thing is learnable. It's not exactly a matter of luck.

It's got nothing to do with economics. It has to do with limited resources. This planet cannot sustain everyone at the same level of comfort that people in western societies enjoy. Hmmm...is it de ja vous or did I just say that?