The weakness of Murray's work is his idealism, its total disregard of the economic infrastructure of his findings. He ignores Hegel's dialectics and ignores Marx's materialism, that class is consequence of the social mode of production and the new American class structure grows out of America's new methods of production.
Five or six thousand coal miners produce all America's coal, a few thousand farmers produce mountains of soybeans, corn and wheat that feed half of the world, a few dozen nuclear power plants generate much of America's electricity. Modern factories (and I know a few in Israel) are ghostly: large floors full of silent machines and nowhere a man to be seen. Simply put, there is no need for nor use for uneducated males. The economy can employ technically educated people, and not too many of them neither. There is unemployment among mathematicians too.
Murray describes what the surplus males do: Sunshine Club. They work and strive less than former American generations, they spend time in games and meaningless sex. Men will not marry.
All in all, America's GNP and military might will grow (without need for the White male proletariat). But the solution is obvious - America will be the New Rome. To keep the suprlus proletariat busy and maintain social stability, they will be give PANEM ET CIRCUS, social security and free TV. Maybe foreign low-tech wars to maintain their male self esteem.
Thanks to our abominable, beastly, heinous, vile enemies that give us no pause, we in Israel are free of America's social problems.
19 comments:
Murray claims in the book ("Coming Apart") that the degradation of values is occurring among the white working class, i.e. the blue-collar or aspirationally blue-collar, since so many of them can't find jobs. The phenomenon has not so much reached the white middle class, but it's coming for the reasons you outlined below, technological progress has obviated the need for most human manual labor. Anyway, since American Jews are under-represented in blue-collar domains, it is not surprising that you would not have noticed much degradation among them at the present time.
Doesn't this new book by Murray as well as your own analysis that technological progress reduces opportunities for employment suggest that we would all be better off with a lower birthrate and immigration restriction? Even middle-class jobs requiring higher education may fall to the axe of technology in the future (see the posts at http://econfuture.wordpress.com). Wouldn't it be better to have fewer degraded, potentially violent if aroused, bodies around living pointless lives of "bread and circuses?"
Here is a link to Murray's summary of the book at The New Criterion, "Belmont and Fishtown":
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Belmont---Fishtown-7250
we would all be better off with a lower birthrate and immigration restriction
(1) I dont comment on immigration issues of America. Not my business.
(2) Lower birthrate: No. It will produce an old, decadent, fearful society. A healthy society needs a wide base of children.
Well, you have commented on American immigration issues in the past, but I don't blame you for demurring now because of the flack you've taken recently from the Jew-haters.
A lower birthrate will only temporarily produce an old-weighted society. The ultimate goal is a reduced population. Who would want to live a purposeless, semi-impoverished life dependent entirely on government handouts with no realistic hope of any accomplishment? That's the life to which most of those "wide base of children" will have to look forward.
Who would want to live a purposeless, semi-impoverished life dependent entirely on government handouts..?
Who? Everybody. The life of a neo-Roman prole is not so bad. Morning circus, then collect the bread, then look for some excitement like politics or sex.
Men aren't getting married because marriage is a bad deal now - women are so rotten and awful that it makes no sense to commit to spending a lifetime with one of them.
But anyway, you should me up with one of your daughters the next time I'm in your neighborhood.
"The life of a neo-Roman prole is not so bad."
Murray's point is that such a life is bad and goes hand-in-hand with the decline of morals and behavior among those who live it. And don't underestimate the shame that will be attached to that lifestyle even if 90% of the country is reduced to it. The Roman lower orders were supported by taxes from a great empire of legal and social inferiors living in the provinces. The American welfare deadbeats of the future will be supported by a small and bitter group of American citizen taxpayers who will despise how their money is being used.
Niebla, Give me a call when you are in Kever City. It has been a long time I had met a Rootless Cosmopolitan Running Dog; the very same person would be branded a Natio-Zionist Clerical Imperialist. BTW, next we are celebrating an Anti-Apartheid Week, this week we are having the apartheid jamboree so next week we'll have somethig to protest against. If you feel as having some roots, I can arrange for you a large ficus tree.
There are a lot of factors going on aside from the declining job prospects of working class whites - you have a general decline in morality and the shame attached to out-of-wedlock childbirth, you have the increased job prospects of women, you have the welfare system that made men superfluous, etc. It's a very complex brew of cause and effect, but there's no doubt the direction is downhill and ultimately unsustainable.
K
Reminds me of "334" by Thomas Disch
K
That is not Murray's conclusion. America's GNP and military might are largely generated by a few hundred thousand technically capable individuals, so the rest of the population is basically irrelevant. I had observed that a long time ago, specifically with regards to the American African population. Half of the blogosphere I read (Steve Sailer for example) consist in analysing the criminality of Africans, their social habits, the burden they are on America. Yet Africans produce almost nothing and add very little to the GNP, and the burden they are supposed to be, in concrete monetary terms, is minor. All the payments (presents) transferred to the Africans for their work-free life are less than half percent of American budget, it is almost meaningless. It may be very offensive for a middle class person forced to work and pay taxes, morally offensive, but in monetary terms is nothing. America is so rich and productive that can support in a meaningless existence all its African population and most of its uneducated white males masses too.
Long I arrived to the conclusion that all these complaining about Africans is like my dear mother's complaining with her friends about the servants, their lowly behaviour and immoral love affairs. Talking about that tickles the joy-neurons in their brains and puts them in a good mood. People likes to talk about Africans and comment about them.
J, I don't know where you get the conclusion that a few hundred thousand people are responsible for all of America's success. Are the "1%" that the idiots blather about (1%, BTW, is a not so hidden code word for "Jewish bankers"). At one time, at least, America was known for its broad middle class - we are not like a Brasil or Mexico or Russia with a handful of oligarchs and the rest living in favelas, or at least it wasn't that way when I was growing up.
K
Today, Sir, is not like when you were growing up.
The means of production have changed. No more dirty factories nor dangerous mines, full of people shoveling and screwing in metal forms. No more thousands of small family farms with a tractor turning the dirt in the dusty fields.
Factories are empty. I certify that that is true, I have seen large unmanned factories. You have two guys in front the computer and five secretaries at the entrance desk and one babe to proclaim the boss's rank.
Middle class, should it exist, is restaurant owners, gas stations, and other similar service kind of businesses.
The productive economy is operated
by a few thousand people, 1 to 5% and it does not include government employees nor the military.
Israel's complex and large water supply system is operate from a control center with 2 - 3 operators, and a maintainance team.
The legal department is larger that the whole engineering division and of course they are much better paid.
> No more thousands of small family farms with a tractor turning the dirt in the dusty fields.
There are still, what, some 1 M tractors, 300 M cars, 150 M other vehicles, endless numbers of other heavy machines... which is how many M of mechanics, all doing real work.
Accountants...
Sure, there is a ton of work that's fake, or predictably fruitless.
Things like Fannie Mae and its friends the banks really are somewhat corrupted. I would guess that their antics take a huge bite out of the produce of the top 1%, though the 1%'s net production may still be much higher than others'.
So I would go with what K's saying. I would suggest that bread and circuses peaked in the last decade. Bread and circuses are exactly what's endangered. Our decline will be a vicious cycle because of attenuated access to means of production, such as cars. It's this vicious looping, or ramification, that explains why even rather limited differences in IQ/C exert large effects on prosperity.
I can't see how the US would continue to exceed Chinese econo-military power for long. At the end of the day they have 1.2 B Euros and/or NEAsians and we have 0.2. Sure, they have a future demographic problem -- but we ourselves are saddled with 100 M Blacks and Mestizos, whose demography is sharply dysgenic. The cost of having them around will go way up in the future.
> All the payments (presents) transferred to the Africans for their work-free life are less than half percent of American budget, it is almost meaningless.
I'm pretty sure it costs $0.5 M to educate three kids for 13+ years. Here are some expenditures per pupil, admittedly in a pricey state: http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/ppx.aspx
For $1 M you can cover six kids -- and in say ~25% of cases (over the whole US population of kids), the return is zero.
Maybe the net transfer isn't that large when you only look at the free food, free income, free or semi-free housing, etc.
What about Medicare etc, because Blacks probably don't pay into it nearly what they get out of it. And it is gargantuan overall, because it isn't only for the poor.
You are exaggerating. Africans are about 10% of American population. How much they cost for America? Include food, housing, jails, social workers, lawyers, health insurance and all, and it is not all that significant. American can shoulder the burden.
But any cent spent on parasytic population reduces the willingness of the other 90% to pay taxes at all. The problem is how the existence of a parasytic minority affect the working majority.
Now, consider this discussion in the context of South Africa, and you will understand the reasons for apartheid, and many other things as well.
Anon.
There is no question that people have a greater willingness to give (whether in the form of charity or government benefits) when they can identify with the beneficiaries. They think , "there but for the grace of God go I". Of course it does not help the identification process when the beneficiaries are racially different but I think that values are more important - if people perceive that their money is given to undeserving free loaders they will resent it. This is true whether the free loaders are black or haredim or whatever. In places such as Denmark which had (until recently) a high level of both racial and social homogeneity, there was more tolerance for high taxation because people perceived themselves as on both the giving and receiving side of government benefits. When you have one small group doing all the giving (the top 1% of US tax payers pay more than the bottom 90%, half of all Americans pay no federal income tax at all) and the rest doing the taking, it leads to resentment (on both sides - the recipients are not grateful but think of themselves as deserving even more). No group is willing to think of itself as parasites - this is something you call other people.
K
J, stop mouthing off about America, of which you know very little. The "cost" of blacks to the rest of us is FEAR. Fear based on the reality that any one of us on any given day ANYWHERE can find ourselves the victims of black on white violence. I have zero tolerance for those who don't live with this constant factor mouthing off in condescending fashion to Americans about how little blacks cost us.
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