Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Some musing on trade, cheap labor and automation.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

And just in case it hadn't already been shared, TNC's First White President.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

Bike is around $2000 and $80/month for the subscription to the classes, but people do like it. In fact a former Cali LT poster is a big fan and is on FB if you want to ask. I like spinning other than the going to the class, and running the risk of getting a bike, so this does seem like a good thing.

OTOH, 30 years ago I bought a Nordik Track. Best decision ever. Slap a TV in front of it, almost as good a workout as running.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

PB/FB cross-post: Why does Steve Bannon wear all his shirts at once?

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

Ouch $ wise. But thanks.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This comment's about all you need to know on causation:

Here is what happened. Industrialization of the huge population of S.E Asia caused a global imbalance in economic rent (the return on capital) and wages. The developed economies had high wages and low rents, while the emerging markets had low wages and high rents. Free trade and globalization allowed the reallocation of domestic capital to the emerging markets. In consequence, the developed economies suffered slow growth, stagnant wages, rising inequality and poor productivity as investment in domestic productive capacity declined.

Most likely the damage is long term. The loss of manufacturing to the temporary global imbalance in factor prices will be permanent. In the future, it is likely gravity effects will dominate forming large industrial hubs centered in Asia. The developed economies will be sidelined into services that tend to feature low productivity growth. Even apart from the loss of domestic employment opportunities, the unnecessary loss in technological and industrial capacity is incalculable.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

TNC:

Trump’s legacy will be exposing the patina of decency for what it is and revealing just how much a demagogue can get away with. It does not take much to imagine another politician, wiser in the ways of Washington and better schooled in the methodology of governance—and now liberated from the pretense of antiracist civility—doing a much more effective job than Trump.

John 13:18 (updated):

This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight decipher the name of the beast, for it is the name of a man. That name is... Pence.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The Irish confuse me. A culture whose people were greeted with "Need Not Apply" a mere 100 years ago so embracing bigotry? (They do. Let's not pretend they don't. The Kennedys are an exception, and God only knows what they said behind closed doors. Lord knows Joe was about as strident an anti-Semite as ever walked.)

This generalizes, but not a ton. Exhibit A: Boston (the rest of it)

Does Jameson's so effectively obliterate the moderate to long term memory?

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

I bought myself a really sweet mountain bike as a self-present* following a settlement a couple years ago. I think of it fondly now and again while watching Ozark on my phone while working out on some machine at the air conditioned gym.

______
* Like self love, except not daily.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

I used to have one and really liked it.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

That is really funny. Thanks for not putting down "when icky isn't busy ogling young girls at the gym."

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Huh. Sebby thinks my Irish family are all bigots. Somehow, though, we didn't all help elect Trump like him.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

He's trying to show that none of them are brown.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If you're suggesting the stalwart "Irish Democrat" won't pull the lever for HRC in one moment and let loose a torrent of bigoted invective the next, your Irish bona fides are suspect.

Half of those voters don't even know why they vote for Democrats anymore. Tammany Hall trained, their forebears' loyalty bought off cheaply long ago, and tradition still a big thing among them, they'd vote "Judas Hitler" to office if you slapped a D next to the name.

I venerate the Kennedys as much as I do the Lord. You know that measure.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

It's free to go outside.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

I'm advised one's libido declines in middle age. They need to redo this study in five years, after the effects of yoga pants on 20 year olds can be factored into the equation.

And let's be fair -- age has very little to do with it. 18, 25, 37, 45, 50? If those things are painted on the right canvass, it's all good.

These are good times to be an ass man. Damn good times. I might go as far as "a golden age."

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This is difficult to square with the widely perceived recent growth in rents (i.e., tech oligarchy) in developed countries.

Except that's exactly the opposite of what happened. Chinese money came here.

Don't think that really happened either, but I'm not going to go look for the data.

The notion that billions of people can be raised out of poverty into industrialized economies in Asia and the whole world will be permanently poorer for it is rather strange.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You're talking about a people who were killing each other over Catholicism vs. Protestantism within our lifetime.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I think he's focusing on the pre-recent.

Again, I believe he's looking back further.

No. Just developed economies. The comment is focused on the US. If you read the whole thing, it opens with a bit about how developed economies should've employed some protectionism long ago. I only quoted a part of it.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

While this can be true in a relative sense - developed economies will certainly be less more rich than Asian economies than they used to be - it's again very hard to imagine Asian economies as the first developed economies in history to be entirely self-sufficient such that they won't import goods from, among other places, traditional developed economies.

Ultimately, what your (and most) gloomy predictions always leave out is the increased consumption of huge masses of people in newly developed economies.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

There are more yoga pants per square foot inside.

(Have you seen an Athleta catalog lately?)

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's a timing issue. Eventually, the growth in less developed economies benefits all. But for an interim period, like the one being suffered by low skill workers here, developed nations see some pretty wicked inequality while we wait for those middle classes to emerge as robust export markets.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

In other words, Asia caught up to the rest of the world?

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

Per square foot, sure, but there's plenty to look at on the lake and river paths on a nice day too. Plus you can get some added variety if you bike through the funkier parts of the city too.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

When did you last visit Boston, the 80s?

Folks have moved on. Urban Irish voters are mostly worried about gentrification (fuckin nau yawkahs) and absentee owners from China.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

The wife has this one. It's absolutely silent, she loves it, and it's way cheaper than the Peloton bikes. And she uses the Peloton app for classes through a subscription.

http://www.soletreadmills.com/exerci...ggJRoC8BDw_wcB

TM

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

I'm lazy and near sighted from watching too much Netflix on an iPhone.

Along these lines, whatever happened to Free the Nipple? We may quibble about the right way to effect many forms of social change, but I believe there was ironclad consensus on that one.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's been a while since I did that sudden descent into Logan, true. I may be painting the Irish with a broad brush. But if you've got them in the family, and you do, you also know -- they deserve it. They drive you nuts with the drama.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Kinda. Money that used to go to the lesser skilled here went there.

Next the cheap labor dollars go to Africa and South America?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

There is one other group every good blue state urban ethnic group now hates, too, by the way, and that is fucking midwestern voters - or, as they are described in Southie - Mohr-ons.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

Bilmore?

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

I was just wondering what happened to him. Anyone know anything?

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

He's off kayaking with Adder and a stack of Athleta catalogs.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

Let's be clear here, it was Sebby who was getting all aroused by catalogs, like some sort of luddite who can't operate the interwebs porn machine.

Re: Not that anyone reads this place
 

Say what you will about Ned Ludd and his followers, but at least they didn't use Twitter for pron.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJhvrqkW0AM6ubK.jpg

They're hanging men and women for wearin' o' the green.
 

Enh, he's just using hyperbole to make a semi-valid point about the potato eaters. My extended family in The Ancestral Homeland are about 60% bigoted and 40% some level of woke.*

Green Beer and Rank Hypocrisy.

*Term used to annoy Sebby.

Re: They're hanging men and women for wearin' o' the green.
 

I'm going to need a Venn diagram to understand that one better.

Re: They're hanging men and women for wearin' o' the green.
 

Percentage woke is highest in the cities and lowest in the 'burbs these days.

Poor Irish more woke than rich ones.

All Irish more woke than Brahmins, though.

Down by the river, down by the banks of the River Charles.
 

Haven't been to Fenway lately, eh?

See also the number of tributes to Bill Russell in Boston as compared to Ted Williams et al. (not that the Kid doesn't deserves them, just sayin').

Re: Down by the river, down by the banks of the River Charles.
 

Actually, I had a bad incident with a group from out of town I was entertaining last summer, where one of them was called the N word by some drunks on the street in Boston. From where we were at the time, though, I'd bet the assholes were most likely BU students rather than townies, but you don't know.

There are virulent new strains of racism out there today; some of those are closely related to the nasty strains of the past. I can say though that over the last couple decades in Boston, though, I think the Irish communities are way way way better than in the days of bussing and housing fights (or even the days when Massachusetts voted for Reagan, which is when I showed up in Boston) while, for example, the law firms have made exactly zero progress and may even be backsliding. Polite elite racism in my mind is worse in Boston, old ethnic racism has been cooled, in part just because the city is way more physically integrated today.

But how are you on the Russell versus Bird debate? (And we get to rename Yawkey Way to Big Papi Drive soon!)