Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2023 2:00 am Here is some data on what has happened since Micron Technology was founded in 1978.

Under Ronald Reagan, who was in office from 1981 to 1989, there was a push to encourage small business formation, and the gap between the number of employees in small businesses versus large businesses widened to the widest gap on the chart in favor of small businesses. It remained approximately steady under George Bush. Once Clinton entered office in 1993, the gap completely closed and when Clinton left office more Americans worked for large businesses for the first time. Under the younger George Bush, once again, there was little change. When Obama entered office in 2009, once again, large businesses were favored and the gap widened even more in favor of large businesses to its widest gap on the chart in favor of large businesses.

Americans, in a generational reversal, are now more likely to work for a large employer than a small one, a shift that’s rippling through the economy.

By Theo Francis
Published April 6, 2017 at 10:45 a.m. ET



The United States has long held itself out as a nation driven by entrepreneurs and small businesses. Presidents and politicians still invoke that image, and for generations, it was largely accurate.

Today, the U.S. has become something different: a nation of employees working for large companies, often very large ones.

In the late 1970s, an American employee was more likely to work at a company with fewer than a hundred workers than one that employed 2,500 or more. Today, Americans are more likely to work for the larger firms.

More than a quarter of all U.S. employees worked at firms employing at least 10,000 people in 2014, the most recent year for which the Census Bureau has released comprehensive data.



Huge companies dominate American economic life well beyond employment. They ring up a disproportionate share of sales for goods and services, both to consumers and to other businesses.

Scale alone isn’t bad. It can bring substantial efficiencies. National cellular providers can spare customers the complexity and expense of roaming charges. At the same time, scale begets scale as big companies reinforce one another. Big retailers prefer big distributors. Big manufacturers need big suppliers.

Over time, economists say, nimble new companies should form to challenge sprawling incumbents. That isn’t happening as much these days. Young firms often fail or are absorbed by existing giants. The problem now is that business formation has slowed.

https://www.wsj.com/graphics/big-companies-get-bigger/

The Chicago school economist who warned years ago of America’s ‘business dynamism’ fading still sees ‘something broken in the background’

Story by Rachel Shin •4h

Ufuk Akcigit is a distinguished economist. He’s the Arnold C. Harberger professor of economics at the University of Chicago, one of the most influential departments in the discipline of the last century (the so-called “Chicago school”), and holds a PhD from MIT. The Turkish national has also won multiple awards for his research, including Germany’s Max Planck-Humboldt and Kiel Institute awards, as well as the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.

A pioneer in the field of Quantitative Economic Growth, Akcigit examines how market innovation and policy combine to optimize an economy’s expansion—or the opposite. Akcigit’s work on “business dynamism,” a hugely important metric that gauges an economy’s ability to sustain growth, has borne grim tidings for his adopted country of the United States. Simply put, he’s found that over time, the American economy has become a hostile environment for innovation.

In 2019, Akcigit and his co-author Sina T. Ates, of the Federal Reserve Board, released findings that pinned the blame for fading U.S. dynamism on “poor knowledge diffusion.” Four years later, he tells Fortune that the problems just haven’t gone away.

“For productivity to improve, we need to have ‘creative destruction’ and turnover,” Akcigit told Fortune. “Better firms should replace worse firms in the economy, and that turnover will push productivity forward.”

(Ates, a principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board, was unable to speak on the record due to his position. The researchers’ findings do not reflect the opinion of the Fed.)

Something’s broken

Business dynamism, measured by the rate of new firm creation in markets, is directly tied to innovation and productivity. In Akcigit’s field, researchers have known that it’s been declining in the U.S. since the 1980s, the cause of which has prompted various theories. This decline in dynamism is significant because it’s linked to a general slowing of productivity and creative momentum, which need to be strong for the U.S. to remain the world’s dominant economy in the long term.

The majority of U.S. markets have become more concentrated, and thus less competitive due to the slowing firm turnover rate, the co-authors argued. The result has been markets increasingly dominated by big players who don’t drive their sectors forward, and higher barriers for new businesses to enter markets. The dip in new entrants is a hit to the economy, as new entrepreneurs are the engines of growth under capitalism.

Suicide rates hit record, with biggest increase seen among older adults

Story by Jessica Hall •2h

Suicide rates in the U.S. rose to their highest level ever last year, with the oldest adults having the high rates of suicide among any age group, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Aug 12, 2023 12:01 pm

Suicide rates hit record, with biggest increase seen among older adults

Story by Jessica Hall •2h

Suicide rates in the U.S. rose to their highest level ever last year, with the oldest adults having the high rates of suicide among any age group, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ ... 4f7e&ei=16

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Jul 20, 2023 11:48 pm So I'm not Monday morning quarterbacking Abbott for his decision to transport the illegals in style to Martha's Vineyard or wherever he sent them or, for that matter, Trump for his promise to build a wall rather than use some other method to secure the border. It's what would be expected from any politician in present day America, as it appears to be the only politically expedient thing to do. How else could it be done in a country where everyone expects to be comfortable and, as Navigator observed in one of the write-ups on his site, "None Should Ever Die":

The contrast between the government response in the 1950’s and the response to the Covid epidemic today couldn’t be more drastic. During the Asian flu epidemic, people were told to use common sense (stay home if you are sick, cover your mouth when coughing, wash your hands), and that was about it. Today, as we all know, the government has shut down most of the economy, and quarantines are imposed for weeks if not months at a time.

The contrasting responses are due to a dramatic shift in the culture of the Health Care establishment, which, in turn, is mirroring a change in our national cultures. The change is in how we deal with death.

https://comingstorms.com/none-should-ever-die/

If Abbott had sent the illegals to the east coast in a bus without air conditioning or a boxcar and even one of them had arrived passed out or, perish the thought, dead, probably news outlets of every stripe would have descended on the scene and there would have been a national uproar. Abbott may have been labeled the next Derek Chauvin or something like that, snuffing the life out of an innocent fellow human by not providing air conditioning.

3-year-old dies aboard migrant bus headed from Texas to Chicago

Claire Thornton USA TODAY

A 3-year-old child who was riding a migrant bus from Texasbound for Chicago died in Illinois, officials said Friday.

The child's death is the first Texas has announced after Gov. Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star last year started shuttling thousands of migrants to cities including Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles.

The 3-year-old presented "health concerns" on board the bus that departed from Brownsville, Texas, according to the Texas Department of Emergency Management, and the bus pulled over and called 911.

The child received treatment from paramedics and later died at a hospital, according to Texas' emergency management agency. All passengers had their temperature taken and were asked whether they had any medical conditions before boarding, the agency said.

Texas elected officials speak out against Abbott's bus program
The 3-year-old child who died began showing symptoms of fever and diarrhea on the bus before losing consciousness, Rep, Joaquin Castro told the New York Times.

The Texas Democrat, whose office was briefed on the child's death, criticized Abbott's treatment of migrants in a statement posted to his office's website Friday.

“We are saddened and horrified, but not surprised, by the death of a 3-year-old child on a state-sponsored bus from Texas to Chicago," the statement says. "For months, Operation Lone Star has trafficked asylum-seekers across the country in squalid conditions. Governor Abbott’s barbaric practices are killing people."

Under Texas' bus program, the state says migrants give written consent and agree on the destinations where they are headed. Texas officials say the buses are stocked with food and water and that migrants are allowed to get off early.

At least four migrant children have died this year in federal custody, including an 8-year-old girl from Panama who died in May after arriving with a heart condition and sickle cell anemia. Last month, an independent report found that Border Patrol does not have protocols for assessing medical needs of children with preexisting conditions.

Greg Abbott Faces More Backlash as Migrant Child Dies on Bus: 'Barbaric'

Story by Thomas Kika •1h

Texas Governor Greg Abbott came under fire on Friday after a report emerged that a migrant child had died while being bused to Chicago.

The busing of migrants to major cities, particularly those run by Democratic governments, has become an increasingly common tactic of Abbott's in handling migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas. Abbott, a Republican, has said that the practice is meant to bring greater attention and concern to the issue of undocumented migrants to Democrats, whom he has accused of not treating the issue seriously enough. His opponents, however, have decried the practice as inhumane and likened it to human trafficking as a political stunt.

This practice came under renewed fire on Friday after Texas officials confirmed that a 3-year-old boy had died on one of the program's buses en route to Chicago, the Houston Chronicle reported. Few details about what happened to the boy are available, but the Texas Division of Emergency Management claimed that "no passenger presented with a fever or medical concerns" before the trip began.

"Once the child presented with health concerns, the bus pulled over and security personnel on board called 9-1-1 for emergency attention," the division said in its official statement. "After the ambulance arrived, the bilingual security personnel translated for the parents and the paramedics who were providing care for the child. The child was then taken to a local hospital to receive additional medical attention and was later pronounced deceased."

Reactions online to the child's death were swift, with various critics of Abbott taking to social media to condemn his treatment of migrants and the busing program specifically.

"Greg Abbott is already responsible for a child dying in his razor wire buoy stunt," Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday. "Now another child has died in his stunt to abduct and ship migrants out of state. He has blood on his hands. He shouldn't be sued, he should be prosecuted."

Ben Meiselas, co-founder of the left-wing political action committee, MeidasTouch, called the report sickening and condemned Abbott's program as "barbaric."

"Not sure how many migrants need to literally die on Greg Abbott's watch for us to treat what's happening at the Texas border as the national scandal that it should be," MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan posted to X.

America’s Fastest Growing City Is Embracing ‘Yellowstone’ Mania

Story by Shelly Hagan and Julie Fine • 2h

(Bloomberg) -- The leader of the fastest-growing US city is betting that Yellowstone mania and quality-of-life issues in bigger metros can help sustain the expansion even as corporate relocations slow from the peak of the pandemic era.

Mattie Parker, the mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, says a focus on crime, homelessness, parks and reliable infrastructure has positioned the city of 950,000 as an attractive alternative to Chicago, San Francisco and New York, which have struggled with perceptions of deteriorating safety in the aftermath of Covid-19.

The 39-year-old Republican, broadly considered to be a moderate in deep-red Texas, says that Fort Worth’s pitch to lure businesses highlights its roots (the city’s slogan is “Where the West Begins”) and small-town vibes, even if its stockyards are now more of a tourist draw than a genuine agricultural enterprise. The nostalgia for cattle ranching and cowboys generated by the hit television series Yellowstone and 1923 — created by Taylor Sheridan, who partly grew up in Fort Worth — are only adding to its allure.

“Fort Worth continues to be an incredibly unique city that is very proud of our Western heritage,” Parker said in an interview at City Hall, where a display case held shovels from groundbreaking ceremonies over the years. “And the timing couldn’t be better because of this fanfare and frenzy over Yellowstone and 1923.”