bond_and_beyond wrote:Many thanks for your thoughts NJS, I find this discussion very interesting.
People living to even 'riper' old ages also bears a burden: never has the percentage of those suffering from a form of senility been higher in the UK. It is at about 1% of the total population.
1. I must admit that I find this argument a bit bizarre. Yes people live longer, which I would assume to generally be a good thing, and that creates new challenges. However that does not compare to living conditions of the past that gave a life expetancy miles away from what we see today.
2. Figures for child mortality rates are readily available from, guess who, UNICEF. I quote from their 2012 Child Mortality Report (available here:
http://www.unicef.org/videoaudio/PDFs/U ... b_0904.pdf):
"Since 1990 the global under-five mortality
rate has dropped 41 percent—from 87
(85, 89) deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990
to 51 (51, 55) in 2011. Eastern Asia, Northern
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean,
South-eastern Asia and Western Asia have
reduced their under-five mortality rate by
more than 50 percent."
Isn't this an amazing improvement? Yes there are still challenges, but things are
getting better year by year.
NJS wrote:
I repeat the beginning of this: the apparent rise in the standard of living of those places which, with reckless disregard of recent history, follow the 'lead' of the 'West', is built on extended credit - and time will tell whether the Asian and South American temperaments are better able to cope with keeping up debt repayments than: North Americans, Britons, Spaniards, Greeks, and Italians have proved themselves to be; especially considering much higher interest rates payable in e.g. Brazil. The last thing that the world's press put about concerning Africa (pushed into our unwilling faces), was that, if you live in a condo, with an electrifed fence and armed guards; awake in the night and hear someone in the bathroom, you don't check to see whether it might be your wife/girlfriend - you fetch the gun (that you borrowed from your Dad,) from under your pillow and blast away with four shots through the locked door and then (discovering your tragic mistake), you drag the body out and throw it down the stairs, cover it with towels, call security and blubber like a proper bubba in court about the pressures of living in the country and the terrible security threat posed by ... er ... um ...
3. But how has this gotten worse? Yes there are challenges to the economic system (to a large extent created by, in particular the West's, "borrow and spend" attitude), but again the amount of people lifted out of poverty over the last thirty years is astonishing (particularly in China). How this all will end is anyone's guess, but that there is less poverty now than thirty years ago I think is very clear based on all available data.
NJS wrote:
I am sure that you do have links to statistics to prove your points - but I rely upon my senses.
4. Well, I'm not sure that I do
I prefer hard data! In my view too much of the discussion regarding the economy, politics and the environment relies on sensibilities rather than facts.
NJS wrote:
Moreover, a second bank crash is about to hit the UK; mark my words. At least one bank is defaulting upon its immediate liabilities and shielding behind a stonewall of silence and (I expect, shortly), 'administrative error', to explain away secretly sequestrating customers' funds, presumably to shore up otherwise inadequate resources to meet its liabilities.
NJS
5. Yes, but again the consequences for the "every man" is nothing near that which affected Europe and the US after the crash of 1929 and the accompanying Great Depression. Those times were, I think almost anyone would agree, much harder on the average citizen that what we have seen following the 2008 crash.
BB[/quote]
Yes well, there is nothing as bracing as an exchange of frank views!
I have had to number your points, as dealing with multiple quotes is beyond me.
1. This is just a difference of a point of view. As a matter of natural necessity, we don't need to live longer than it takes for our children to reach maturity. I have seen many examples of people who would, I am sure, have taken their own lives had they not been robbed of the choice by brain damage of one kind or another and got to the stage of stuttering on in pointless, joyless existences and foul degradation. The general conspiracy of coercion towards 'healthy living' gives the impression that it is possible to live forever; when it is not - and long, crippled sunsets are miserable affairs.
2. Fair enough. I asked for that! The figures represent some improvement -but improvement on utter disaster.
3. ''How is it worse?'' I am quite sure that, in Brazil, a bursting credit bubble is (or was) completely avoidable. Mortgages for land purchase and hire purchase for new cars have recently become more widely available here. When we arrived, six years ago, most of the cars in this town were old bangers. It all suddenly changed because of the sudden availability of longer credit and now those with jobs have new cars. There is a similar situation in relation to land mortgages. Land prices in Europe soared owing to the availability of mortgages, based on two salaries, and all conspired to send the price of land up to levels (and at rates of increase) which were unreal and unsustainable. Defaults on loans then resulted in forced sales at bankruptcy rates of return and the loans were not wholly repaid. The banks effectively went bankrupt. In Brazil, six years ago, land prices were at about one twentieth of British prices for similar property and people (often extended families) bought property on short-term credit, using maybe six salaries to make total payment in say three to five years. As a result of the availability of longer-term mortgages, prices are increasing and, indeed, Rio de Janeiro now has prime property, which competes price-wise with similar property in central London or Manhattan. Probably, to some extent, the same ultimate outcome will unfold here against a background of heavy credit. However, in Brazil's favour are certain special factors: first, the country is generally prospering, owing to its many natural resources and its products; secondly, Brazil has more sense than to engage in wars, and thirdly, Brazilians seem to be handling the extended credit along the same lines that they handled short-term debt - in the extended family unit (grandparents, parents, parents' siblings and children) - so that they have a better chance of seeing the payments through than a nuclear family unit in Britain (Mum, Dad, two kids and a dog).
4. I did not mean 'sensibilities': I meant using my physical senses and what I have perceived in the world. I always suspect statistics as they can be manipulated to prove nearly anything.
5. I just do not know. However, it is clear enough that boomtime for the Great American Dream followed close on the heels of WWII: the 1950s and 1960s, through to the 1990s saw the USA on top of the world, in economic terms and in terms of military power. Now it's at the point where (unpopular) public spending cuts face (irresponsible) 'spend our way through' policies.
I think that those responsible were more held to account in 1929 than those responsible in 2008. Arguably, outside a communist state, the banks should have been left to go to the wall in 2008, as any failed commercial enterprise would go. The fact that the taxpayers (in the UK) footed the bill has given a short reprieve but I am far from convinced that the rot in the system has been gouged out and many of the same tired old faces are still in charge; when they should have been tried for various criminal activities.
NJS