From the Daily Beast: Donald Trump, Luigi Mangione and the Political Power of Raging Against the Machine by Jason Chukwuma, 16 December 2024.
The gist, from below the title: "A sharp shift in culture has led many to misinterpret the political moment, mistaking a wholesale rejection of entrenched power for a clash of ideologies."
Worth the read.
4 comments:
This is kind of what got me thinking about the "2-3 generations who the only policy they have ever known is the trickle-down economics scam" thing. 50ish years of things getting worse (or, at least, not better) no matter which of the two parties is in office...of course they want to try a third option.
It would be better to live in a society where rule of law held wealthy people accountable for e.g. setting healthcare policies that kill 1000s of people just so that they can make some more money. But if we're not in that society (and if we just voted to move further away from it), then maybe vigilante accountability is better than nothing.
I guess maybe that is what the end of civilization looks like. (Or, maybe we can still turn it around. But I have to say, it's not looking good.)
But, you can at least kind of understand why people might be thinking that way (especially if they don't have good information and historical understanding and analytic capability and etc).
It is not looking good at all. I agree. By the way, Keynes once said "... workers, though unconsciously, are instinctively more reasonable economists than the classical school". I think that is often true today (for the 'whatever' school), as workers are immersed in the economy.
When I first got interested in the economy, and soon after, it was said that the economy slowed in the mid 1970s. You can still find graphs showing average labor productivity for different time periods, high before the mid-70s and about half as high after (except in the latter 1990s and PERHAPS except after covid).
Today it is more common to see an average growth rate for 1950-2000 or so, thus making the mid-70s slowdown disappear.
Scott Sumner does say "I am not denying that growth in US living standards slowed after 1973" -- so that's something.
Anyway, from 1974 to 2024 is fifty years. And I say Long-term slowing of economic growth is indistinguishable from the decline of civilization.
There was a(n at least seemingly) similar-looking thing in the '30s, and FDR(?) was able to turn it around. I think there's still a chance. But even in the best case, it's gonna get worse before it gets better.
https://newarthurianeconomics.blogspot.com/2014/01/fdr-faces-debt.html
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