The Trap sounds like a ultra-super fantastic book.

Well done.

“to change the soul”…

ALL the groups are facing a hard truth that is so often ignored as well – moving is necessary for economic progress many times, but it’s expensive as hell and in our unsure economy, a tough bet. I finally had to do it as the place I lived has been in an economic malaise since 9/11 – fortunately my new company paid for it.

We lack mental and physical and economic mobility. And there’s a lot of anger – but also a lot of resignation.

As promised, I’m back…

GordonM @ 118

Late to the party again.

Daniel – you touched on this back @ 79 (fellowship in Sweden), but I’d like to know how your conception changed between starting and finishing this book, and in particular, what did you learn that surprised you?

[I think this topic is extremely important, as I’ve become more and more convinced that in practical terms, all other types of justice flow from economic justice. So thanks for writing the book, and thanks to Rick for the awesome review.]

The most gratifying thing about the time I spent writing the book was that so much hard data came out about the problems I was writing about. For example, I had a hunch that middle class neighborhoods were disappearing from our major metro areas. Then Brookings put out this report (http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20060622_middleclass.htm)

Similarly, I felt like I belonged to a service-oriented, liberal-minded generation–but I had a nagging fear this was just the circles I run in. Then Pew put out a survey of young voters (18-29) showing just that. (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/434/trends-in-political-values-and-core-attitudes-1987-2007)

The other big eye opener was researching the history of the conservative movement and reading their chief ideologists (Milton Friedman, Friedrich August von Hayek, William F. Buckley). I was amazed at how clearly thought out their reconquista of our nation truly was. I came across the most damning quotes (”Economics are the method, but the object is to change the soul” – Margaret Thatcher; Dickensian London was a “golden age” – Milton Friedman). It’s all there in the historical record.

It’s the Foundations that first sold us down the river.

Norman Dodd was there.

http://www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html

The other area of youth culture where I can see concern about “selling out” is the alternative music community and their fans. There is incredible resistance to bands signing to “major labels’, to non-commercial radio stations playing “commercial pop ‘mainstream’ music”, etc. Maybe Howie Klein, who was an executive of major music company with a “shadow” alternative label would like to speak to how the majors had to deal with this problem with bands, fans and radio stations. Or Donita Sparks could talk about it from the side of a band.

It really is a politically charged issue in the punk/alternative music community, and has been since the late 1970’s.

Okay, scrap the “almost.”

Republicans have been conducting a criminal conspiracy against everything we hold dear, in pursuit of establishing a permanent Republican control over everything, for the few, by the few and of the few.

Sounds to me like a Communist plot, or any other type of monopolistic, conservative, totalitarian plot. Seize control, censor dissent, monopolize a society at all levels: economic, political, social, the media, entertainment, education.

Monopolistic totalitarians always crush the spirit and vitality of any society in which they rise.

Will our democratic and freedom-loving society be risilient enough to withstand this assault by a bunch of conervative monopolistic totalitarians? Time will tell.

The damage done to our country has been extensive. The patient is in ICU, on life support. With the conservative monopolistic totalitarians calling for even more “bleeding” of the patient, a conservative-styled Dr. Death, no matter what their claims of being pro-life.

PLovering @ 96

Yep, me too.

Present reading: “The Small House At Allington”

Have you read The Way We Live Now? My all-time favorite. Love the Palliser novels too. And He Knew He Was Right. I’ve got along review of it on Amazon.

I’ve read The Way We Live Now, but not He Knew He Was Right. I will make amends forthwith. And I thank you for the enjoyable review.

How Trollope writes such intricate and enjoyable novels at such leisurely pace is truly amazing. His treatment of genders is key IMHO. His male characters are mostly Victorian classic, leaving females to provide the visceral experience. And the comedy … Walla!

We should recall that most public Universities west of the Appalachians were based on the land-grant programs in which a certain % of the value of public land granted to settlers was to be used for financing public schools and Universities.

In California another deal was that the railroads were given 100 yard right-of-ways and any commercial activities along these would be taxed to support the public Universities.

It seems that, over the decades people have forgotten that the land they live on was granted as part of this long-term bargain. Of course, most of the folks living on this land or using it commercially paid someone else who got it, in essence, for next to nothing. But imagine if there had been a price paid for it…the cost would be much higher. So paying a minimal amount in taxes to support education, especially by those that became incredibly wealthy corporations, seems pefectly acceptable.

The same corporations that want to hold college students to usurious interest rates because of a “contract” (and got Bush to revise the bankruptcy laws to allow perpetual indebtedness)…are trying to renege on their “contracts” made when they got these land-grants.

Back in the 50’s, the ‘conformist’ 50’s there was a widespread middle American suspicion of the ‘Company Man’. Now everyone is a Company Man, or almost everybody.

To be a financial success today means that you are the employee of a major corporation or a company who sells to or represents major corporations.

Individualism is virtually dead. If your a ’success’ your a flak. Young people today don’t actually even understand what selling out means, at least in any pejorative sense. They are all hoping for a chance to sell out.

Sounds like you read my book! The Trap’s ideological plan of attack in the book is to hold up the conservative revolution’s results to the values it claimed to espouse.

As Barry Goldwater said, quoted by Goldwater scholar Rick Perlstein above, “The tide has been running against freedom…. In our vision of a good and decent future, free and peaceful, there must be room for the liberation of the energy and talent of the individual… Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our own time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”

But conservative economic policies, like linking healthcare to your job and financing college with debt, does the opposite of what they claimed. It created conformity, as the talented were corralled into corporate America.

Your point that young people today don’t see going corporate as “selling out” is an interesting one. I’ve been told by my peers (I’m 29) that the kids just a little younger than us, having been brought up in a country with no other option, don’t think of it as “selling out.” They just see it as growing up. That’s a sad change. I really think we’re at a point in this country where if we don’t start rolling the boulder back up the hill soon, it may be too late.

It was a similar moment when Buckley and Goldwater launched their counter-offensive. So we’ve got to take a page from their playbook and start fighting back for what we know is right. Again to quote Rick Perlstein quoting Barry Goldwater: “We must, and we shall, return to proven ways – not because they are old, but because they are true.”

Daniel, I’m concerned that your points about the quality of jobs and happiness are vague and idealistic. (But not your wish for affordable health care and higher education).

Would it be unfair to ask where the satisfying, fulfilling jobs could possibly be in large enough numbers for any truly large cohort of applicants? In other words, given current labor arrangements I can imagine only a slice of the children of the middle class switching careers if they could.

When I talk to older folks like my Uncle, who is 90, he says basically that it was always a struggle. I just sense a very idealistic tone here….saying that people weren’t meant to be cooped up in an office. Well, sure. But where is there a functioning economic system where this isn’t the case for people? And please don’t cite tiny Scandinavian countries subsidized by large natural resource revenues. I think that no matter what, most work is going to be fairly dull out there. But I’m certainly on board for more economic security for everyone.

No doubt there’s plenty of dull work there. But there are plenty of decent jobs out there too. My brother, for example, is a teacher. There are millions of these jobs available and millions will need to be filled in the coming years.

But the issue is how are the interesting and fulfilling jobs doled out. We’re turning back into a country where they’re only available to the children of great wealth or to those who are willing to sacrifice the trappings of a middle-class existence (see the stats on metro areas where teachers can’t buy homes in comment #53). I like my job. I make a middle-class income. But it doesn’t buy a middle-class lifestyle because of the problems I’m describing. (My local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, just ran an article on who is priced out of the area home-ownership market, and journalist was on the list.)

In a middle-class soceity–the kind we had between when your uncle was growing up and the one we have now–people have a lot more control over their lives.

When it comes to the distribution of wealth, you’re freer when it’s flatter.

GordonM @ 118

Late to the party again.

Daniel – you touched on this back @ 79 (fellowship in Sweden), but I’d like to know how your conception changed between starting and finishing this book, and in particular, what did you learn that surprised you?

[I think this topic is extremely important, as I’ve become more and more convinced that in practical terms, all other types of justice flow from economic justice. So thanks for writing the book, and thanks to Rick for the awesome review.]

The most gratifying thing about the time I spent writing the book was that so much hard data came out about the problems I was writing about. For example, I had a hunch that middle class neighborhoods were disappearing from our major metro areas. Then Brookings put out this report (http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20060622_middleclass.htm)

Similarly, I felt like I belonged to a service-oriented, liberal-minded generation–but I had a nagging fear this was just the circles I run in. Then Pew put out a survey of young voters (18-29) showing just that. (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/434/trends-in-political-values-and-core-attitudes-1987-2007)

The other big eye opener was researching the history of the conservative movement and reading their chief ideologists (Milton Friedman, Friedrich August von Hayek, William F. Buckley). I was amazed at how clearly thought out their reconquista of our nation truly was. I came across the most damning quotes (”Economics are the method, but the object is to change the soul” – Margaret Thatcher; Dickensian London was a “golden age” – Milton Friedman). It’s all there in the historical record.