That food looks very delicious.

That made me hungry.

nothing new or controversial, doesnt propose any specific change, how exactly is this going to be "wildfire"

well i guess the idea that it was intentionally orchestrated by some shadowy illuminati is controversial (i.e. retarded) but none of the actual facts are new or interesting

i haven't finished it but so far it just sounds like he's complaining while simultaneously plugging how healthy his life is.

whatever *eats a giant twice-fried twinkie while fiddling with my ipad on my custom built scooter*

I don't put that much that thought into much, especially overweight strangers on the street.

i'd look fucking baller in one of those scooters yo

bolded key phrases in an article about intellectual decline
ironing

Who wants to start the Fight Club

but in all seriousness, yeah most of it is kind of old. Anyone who needs to see this wont, nor will it affect their behaviors.

freakIN SHEEPLE OPEN UR EYES AMERICA WELCOME 2 OSAMA-OOPS I MEAN OBAMAS AMERICA!!!!!! STOP DRINKING THE KOOLAID

tldr;drop the fork fatty

take of ur f*****ing tinfoil hat nerdvirgin lOL!!!!!!!!!!

america is a sinking ship cos all the fat people are too heavy and will make it capsize

ignore the "climate change" fanatics, it's not that sea levels are rising it's that the weight of all the fatties is making the land sink. arent you glad we're all too smart to become fat?

basically.

Could not make it past all the bold in order to care about the article.

What makes the existence of misinformed or stupid people in this age different from any other?

http://i.imgur.com/kPfjP.jpg

He's a man that enjoys his cheese. Nothing wrong with that.

But cheese is healthy !

I believe that is a woman. I want to believe it isn't.

These kind of articles always crack me up...basically an adolescent hipster crying about cOLD problems, as if doing so makes them stand out as some kind of fucking visionary. HURRRR everything's going to shit and I see it and I'm in the minority I'm so smart HUGALAGHUAGLAGHUALG!!!11!!!one!!111POOTIS!!!!! He gets extra points for appealing to "The People" after railing on about how they are mindless drones and whatnot.

Now this isn't to say that the general thrust of the rant is invalid. Indeed, we are propped up upon many unsustainable systems, and there is genuine danger not far away. But this ball has been in motion for generations, *at least* since the end of the second world war. The most acute sources of recent recession(s) have been ongoing for over 30 years, since at least Reagan. This decline was gradual, and any recovery will be gradual. The cry for quick-fixes backed by moral absolutes only contributes to societal degradation by allowing the ignorant to trade the pabulum of complacency for the rush of intolerant fanaticism (the dependency upon which eventually becomes its own form of complacency).

Civilizational slides like these are inevitable, because people will gravitate toward comfort and convenience (maybe it's a leftover instinct from the struggle to simplify the constraints of surviving in the wild). This is not some 'new' phenomenon brought about by an Evil Force which must be vanquished in true Epic Legend style. You do not need to conspire against the willfully ignorant. Now, we can scream all we want about how people have somehow magically gotten dumb and decadent, but we can validate this attitude only by virtue of our own all-too-recent epiphany on human nature.

All in all, this article smacks more of butthurt than of true insight.

tl;dr -- What Salamancer said in #17

I think the entire premise that we're on a decline is hogwash. How do you even measure that? What makes the phrase "America is declining" anything other than pure opinion?

Don't make me get out my economics graphs. You won't like my economics graphs. You will beg for mercy.

ECONOMICS GRAPHS PLEASE

I guess it depends on what people mean by 'decline'. Personally, I don't think we are on the verge of total annihilation and collapse "just liek Rome [nevermind that it took centuries before it could even be perceived as 'collapsed' from a modern historical perspective]".

Even so, it is a given that there are things we can improve upon; there are some older venerated qualities we could bring back (while leaving the ones which no longer apply dead in the past).

In a way, I sort of miss that can-do, even-if-we-get-blowed-up-next-week attitude so prevalent in the Cold War.

chaingun/Sal

What are your feelings on:

1) The artificial bubble we are seeing now that has followed the Mortgage-backed-security burst and .COM burst? Is there any more money in middle-income-America left to be stripped of?

2) The numbers vary, but bottom line, there are a shitload of baby boomers retiring everyday. How do you think this will effect how healthcare and home care are distributed?

here's the thing, the big corporations NEED American life the way it is, so they are the ones fighting to keep us buying, keep us working and keeping our heads down.

Sure they control everything, but they like how it is, and they have the billions of dollars to keep it that way. So you will continue to enjoy the high life for a long time, until there is no more earth left to rape or we figure out how to recycle everything at a cellular level.

You think the super rich want North American to fail? hell no, they can't afford it.

People give too much credit to the competency of large organizations to carry out massive, detailed agendas.

Even the best large organizations are a blubbering mass of humanity slowly lurching towards little milestones, trying to figure out what the hell they are doing all along the way. At the end of the year they look back and wonder how the hell they accomplished anything. Join one that you hold up as some kind of well oiled machine and I'm sure you'll have the same disillusioning experience.

The government as a whole is no different.

Characterizing public education as a government run program to stop critical thinking?? People rail on public schools all the time but I'm trying to remember a time when we WEREN'T encouraged to think critically. Critical thinking certainly wasn't suppressed. This doesn't mean the majority of kids will develop it, but if there's an agenda to stop critical thinking they sure have an interesting way of going about it in making education accessible to all. And who is 'they'? Does this guy actually think that all of these individual teachers are in on some vast agenda to stupify our kids? It sounds like his exposure to public schools is through "shocking" anecdotes of what they allegedly teach in schools.

As for the nutrition situation- I tend to believe the junk people are pushed to eat is less of an intended opiate for the masses and more the coincidental result of select corporate interests winning out over time versus proper nutrition. Carbs are cheap to produce and can feed a lot of people for less, and US farmers produce a ton of them. HFCS (our favorite sugar) is cheap and exists as a defacto subsidy to our corn farmers. More inherent profits in these foods leads to more $$, which leads to more lobbying power for companies producing these foods to ensure their dominance.

Now, while large organizations like the government lack the competency to carry out sinister plans, that is not the case with smaller orgs. So a group like the federal reserve bank, or individual companies CEO's and lobbyists can exert influence on the blabbering idiots in the government to lurch towards their desired result. But they are still idiots and are just trying to secure their own personal interests.

tl;dr people are idiots, have always been idiots, and will continue to be idiots

#26 What bubble are you suggesting exists? I'd say gold is a bubble right now but not one that's large enough to threaten a serious chunk of GDP.

You already see how an aging population is affecting the economy - health care costs go up. Eventually, as a large swath of workers age out of the labor force and continue to live, they'll put a larger burden on social security and medicare taxes. The thing is, we'll be seeing all that unfurl in slow motion - over the course of several years - and that sort of thing is eminently fixable. It'll go down one of two ways - increasing tax rates on the young, working population or lower benefits for the retired population. Depends on who's in power and has a better political structure.

Higher tax rates or lower benefits to support an aging population are about as far from armageddon as you can get. Let's not blow this out of proportion. The USA currently enjoys the lowest marginal tax rates in practically a hundred years, certainly since the Great Depression. There is no clear evidence that increasing, say, the capital gains tax or the top marginal rates will slow down economic growth at all.

I'd say student loans are a massive bubble, it's basically the only thing that is propping up consumer credit at this point. And they can't be discharged through bankruptcy....that's downright scary and is going to continue to be a drain on the economy. I didn't know we legalized slavery!

When you bring interests rates artificially low you are basically assured of creating bubbles somewhere.
Seems like the stock market's run since 2008 and student loans are the only beneficiary's so far, neither seem sustainable.

This new generation is going to take a lot more time to buy houses and other large purchases if they do at all. Combined with boomers downsizing as they retire I think it's going to cause huge problems. We're going to need a lot of immigrants to increase the workforce to support them...but then dey tek er jerbs.