Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

[shiny!]

Re: Persistence of Marriage?

I dont know about you guys but I can't wait to have children. A mini me? Sign me up! Someone I get to teach everything I have learned and more?

Sounds like a good investment to me.

They won't listen to you. Children are genetically programmed to believe everyone but their parents ;-)

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Persistence of Marriage?

Again, my personal experience does not show this. Our friends who never had children are not nearly as happy as those of us who do, especially as they reach the age when all their friends have grandchildren.

I dont know about you guys but I can't wait to have children. A mini me? Sign me up! Someone I get to teach everything I have learned and more?

Sounds like a good investment to me.

[jk]

Re: Persistence of Marriage?

Again, my personal experience does not show this. Our friends who never had children are not nearly as happy as those of us who do, especially as they reach the age when all their friends have grandchildren.

the people who have children get happier when those children move out on their own.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Persistence of Marriage?

ps, data also shows that people are happier when they don't have children, but nonetheless people keep doing so, even those who know the data, and clearly by choice. apparently there are other values involved, not just "happiness." perhaps you will consider the possibility the same is true in marriage- it's not just about sex. [though sex helps since orgasm releases oxytocin which reinforces emotional bonding.]

Again, my personal experience does not show this. Our friends who never had children are not nearly as happy as those of us who do, especially as they reach the age when all their friends have grandchildren.

[astonas]

Re: Persistence of Marriage?

... oxytocin which reinforces emotional bonding.]

don't forget serotonin. ;)

400530_461429480544735_446131802_n.jpg

[jk]

Re: Persistence of Marriage?

ps, data also shows that people are happier when they don't have children, but nonetheless people keep doing so, even those who know the data, and clearly by choice. apparently there are other values involved, not just "happiness." perhaps you will consider the possibility the same is true in marriage- it's not just about sex. [though sex helps since orgasm releases oxytocin which reinforces emotional bonding.]

[Polish_Silver]

Persistence of Marriage?

If there was validity to what you have written the institution of marriage wouldn't have survived as long as it has, across so many cultures, so many religions and so many generations. Humans just aren't that slow to learn...

Actually, marriage is only similiar among agricultural societies, in which women have very inferior legal and economic status. In pre-agricultural societies, people have sexual liberty throughout their lives. A good example of this is Bligh's account of Tahiti. Another is the Musuo people in China, were the land is inherited mother to daughter. Nobody knows, or cares, who a person's father is.

Humans are not very good at talking about problems and disappointments. Cognitive Dissonance.
Marriage survived because it was the only kind of deal women could make on an economic and legal level. And now that women are economically independent, and men are not trying to pass farm land on to their children, marriage is attenuating.

This problem is well established for relationships.
see abstract (pg 2), Coolidge effect Pg 22,
most of all, figure I, page 36.
(female desire declines markedly within the first year)

Wikipedia

Psychology Today explains that rhesus males lose interest in a single female. But if you put a new female in the cage, interest revives.

Terminology includes: Coolidge effect, incest imprinting, sexual boredom, habituation.

Books:
Sex at Dawn
Mating in captivity

related ideas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect

[jiimbergin]

Re: Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

I am betting less than 20% get married again.

Marriage is like a "bait and switch". You fall in love and sexual passions are strong. So, for the sake of public approval, you enter into a life time contract of cohabitation and sexual monogamy. But a few years into it, you find out the sexual passions aren't there any more. Many stay together because the companionship is valuable.

If young people were told about the truth about sexual feelings, the prestige of marriage would decrease greatly.

I am sorry if you have found this to be true in your life. I have found just the opposite. Passion grew between my late wife and myself. When she went home to the Lord after 46 1/2 years, I could not have loved her more. After almost 7 years, my current wife and I love each other more than the day we met. We have 6 children, all of whom have been married for around 20 years to the same spouse. And as far as I can see passion is still very much alive in their lives.

[shiny!]

Re: Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

I am betting less than 20% get married again.

Marriage is like a "bait and switch". You fall in love and sexual passions are strong. So, for the sake of public approval, you enter into a life time contract of cohabitation and sexual monogamy. But a few years into it, you find out the sexual passions aren't there any more. Many stay together because the companionship is valuable.

If young people were told about the truth about sexual feelings, the prestige of marriage would decrease greatly.

If young people were told the truth about sexual feelings, their hormones and inexperience about life wouldn't let them believe it. Young people know everything.

Sex plays a part in marriage, but good relationships are about so much more than sex. I live in a senior community. On my walks I see very old couples still holding hands and so much in love. I hope you can experience a relationship like that some day.

[GRG55]

Re: Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

...Marriage is like a "bait and switch". You fall in love and sexual passions are strong. So, for the sake of public approval, you enter into a life time contract of cohabitation and sexual monogamy. But a few years into it, you find out the sexual passions aren't there any more. Many stay together because the companionship is valuable.

If young people were told about the truth about sexual feelings, the prestige of marriage would decrease greatly.

If there was validity to what you have written the institution of marriage wouldn't have survived as long as it has, across so many cultures, so many religions and so many generations. Humans just aren't that slow to learn...

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

I am betting less than 20% get married again.

Marriage is like a "bait and switch". You fall in love and sexual passions are strong. So, for the sake of public approval, you enter into a life time contract of cohabitation and sexual monogamy. But a few years into it, you find out the sexual passions aren't there any more. Many stay together because the companionship is valuable.

If young people were told about the truth about sexual feelings, the prestige of marriage would decrease greatly.

[lektrode]

Re: Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

Bubblicious news from Shanghai. Who are we to deny that all those empty apartments in all those ghost cities aren't an "investment" for a future great nation...

The Chinese are so desperate about the new property taxes they are divorcing in droves to avoid them
.....


uh huh.....


“It’s a practical attitude,” said Li Li, managing director of International Strategic Group, a real estate consultancy in Shanghai...

...“I told all of them to come here again for remarriage registration as soon as their transaction is finished,” the official told the newspaper...

sombody is _always_ being practical

i mean - given the right advice... well... 'legal' advice anyway - and there's plenty of that around
not would that make it right, but why stand on ceremony, on trivial matters like this, anyway....
really!

[GRG55]

Re: Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

The belief in a perpetual motion machine economy probably goes back almost as far as the belief in unicorns. :-)

I am sure your friend in Shenzen has lots of company. Inside and outside China.

Bubblicious news from Shanghai. Who are we to deny that all those empty apartments in all those ghost cities aren't an "investment" for a future great nation...

The Chinese are so desperate about the new property taxes they are divorcing in droves to avoid them

Reuters | 13/03/06 | Last Updated: 13/03/06 2:27 PM ET

SHANGHAI — At Shanghai’s Zhabei District marriage registration centre, officials divorced a record 53 couples in a single day this week – that’s about one every five minutes – as couples rushed to untie the knot to avoid tougher tax laws on home sales.

There were similar scenes in Wuhan, Nanjing and Ningbo as married couples opted for ‘quickie’, uncontested divorces – costing just a few yuan – that would allow them to split ownership of their properties and sell without having to pay capital gains tax of as much as 20%...

...Reckoning that primary residences owned for more than five years will remain tax exempt, some couples hope that divorcing and dividing up real estate assets will allow them to sell properties as individuals, and not pay tax. Once the sale is complete, they can remarry.

“It’s a practical attitude,” said Li Li, managing director of International Strategic Group, a real estate consultancy in Shanghai...

...“I told all of them to come here again for remarriage registration as soon as their transaction is finished,” the official told the newspaper...

[Polish_Silver]

Currency Wars

Touchring, when the US did the exact same thing China is doing today to England back in the mid to late 1920's which economy eventually emerged as the largest in the world?

1966 Alan Greenspan essay “Gold and Economic Freedom”

“When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve
created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More
disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold
to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it
was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal
Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would
fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid
the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates.

The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in
the process. The excess credit, which the Fed pumped into the economy, spilled over into the stock
market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up
the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the
speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching
and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed.
Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she
abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of
confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the
Great Depression of the 1930's.” (end)”

Very interesting parallel to today.

Similiar things:

1) Currencies and interest rates are correlated internationally.

2) Trade deficits/interest rates/gold outflows are important parts of national policy

3) High debt levels

4) Controversy over absolute and relative currency values

5) Britain was the has-been debtor of 1927, the US is the "has-been" debtor of 2013.

In the sense that, the global conditions no longer justify using the national currency as the world reserve currency.

Differences:

1) Britain was trying to strengthen the pound---get the value back up to the pre war value. However, since so much printing had happened, they needed rather high rates to do this. Britain was by this time a net debtor, but the debts were payable in gold, so a stronger pound would probably make the debt service easier.

2) The US was trying to help britain strengthen the pound, by weakening the dollar.

3) Today, each country wants to weaken it's own currency relative to others.

3) There is no national currency suitable to be a global reserve currency. The USD could easily take over the role from the pound, which happened unofficially around 1920, and officially with Bretton Woods.

The only viable reserve currency today is Gold. People are talking about Special drawing rights, but they have no taxation authority, military, or national identity behind them.

__________________________

Cheapening the currency is a "street fighters" way to improve balance of trade. It is a defacto wage cut.

Real economic strength comes from good governance, properly functioning markets, strong work ethics. This requires capital deepening, which requires savings. It's hard to motivate savings in a depreciating currency.

Plus, currency depreciating is a "race to the bottom". It confers only transient, relative advantage--zero sum game.

Good governance confers long term absolute advantages---productivity improvements.
But it is a lot harder to achieve than currency depreciation.

[touchring]

Re: Yes Virginia...It's a Bubble...

Touchring, when the US did the exact same thing China is doing today to England back in the mid to late 1920's which economy eventually emerged as the largest in the world?

The US is a different case from China.


China has a single party authoritarian government whereas the US is a 2-party semi-democracy.

China still has an on-going civil war (xinjiang and tibet) whereas the US is stable.

China has a rapidly aging and shrinking workforce (yes, China's workforce has started to shrink this year), whereas the US has a growing workforce, even till today.

China has a serious elite/brain drain, many wealthy Chinese have been transferring their wealth to places like Singapore, the UK and the US.

The US has many times more oil reserves and arable farm land per person than China - and we have not take into account of Canada. ;)