The younger generation will look back at the current age, despite the inequalities, and see it as far preferable to the life of dhimmitude. Just a few decades away now in the UK and Europe.
The vast, destabilizing inequalities you note are very real, but are bound up, historically and inextricably, with globalization and mass immigration. Offshoring, outsourcing, and importing a vast class of cheap workers has resulted in exploding asset prices- especially for housing- and reduced buying power for reduced wages. Much like the last Gilded Age era of economic turmoil and labor violence, this one won’t end until these issues are addressed. Fortunately, even the Biden administration noticed this to a degree, and Trump’s whole economic plan is centered on curtailing the disastrous effects of liberalized free trade.
Immigration and global trade have been such important engines of prosperity for America that it's hard to see curtailing them as a solution to inequality other than to make all Americans less well-off. But we have a real life "experiment" unfolding, and we will see the results.
Nothing in economics is good for everyone at the same time to the same degree. The current system is good for people who profit from having a heavily financialized economy where banking is our biggest industry. This system replaced the previous one where working class people could own homes and a man could support a family on a single wage. That period coincided with strong immigration restrictions. Reshoring manufacturing is a strategic initiative as much as an economic one, but hopefully it will have the effect of balancing out some of the baleful trends of the last forty years.
"Trump’s whole economic plan is centered on curtailing the disastrous effects of liberalized free trade."
You mean his huge Import Tax program--also known as tariffs--that illegally collect money from the American citizenry? Not only is Trump/GOP greenlighting a new wave consumer inflation; but they're ceding control of the global trading network to China.
I much prefer reform, but I don't think we'll get to choose. Perhaps if we had a different kind of leadership, one that listened or had any empathy, but we don't. Maybe no country gets to choose whether to have a revolution or not...the tipping points seem invisible without our 20/20 hindsight. I lived in NYC in the mid to late 1980s and the widening wealth gap was obviously disastrous, or maybe just more visible than it had been to me previously. The late 80s was a time of big political upheavals which might, oddly enough, have postponed our own economic revolution. Hard to say.
I was living at the Devonshire (10th and University Place) at the time of Occupy. It was electrifying — the nightly protests at Washington Square Park — the police on horseback with the crowd chanting “The whole world is watching.” Foolishly, I had thought maybe the 1%, 0.5% and 0.1% will finally reveal they are human with some measure of concern for their fellow humankind. As someone who has gone from nothing to the 0.5%. I agree with your assessment — this won’t end well. The money walls at Disneyland will become more brick and mortar walls around whole communities with private police forces. The norm will become more like the exclusive Ocean Reef Club in the Keys where I stayed and played in a member/guest — complete with everything — no need to leave the compound for anything. The current and growing stratification of services like concierge doctors, private police, and private fire departments will seal our fate (my son-in-law’s family lost everything in the Palisades fire in LA and when I first learned about private fire departments!). The only wild card is how effective technological advances in controlling the population will be. Unfortunately, it looks as if we are hurtling toward a Phillip K. Dick world. I wish I knew how to stop it.
Thanks CM for the comment. I know there are many countries where private security is a must for anyone with affluence, not just the ultra-wealthy. I wonder if that's where we are headed.
Join groups like Patriotic Millionaires. Network with other people of means who are willing to apply at least some of their wealth and ability to at least help put the brakes on the increasing excesses of the current Gilded Age.
Our previous two Gilded Ages resulted in mostly bloodless course corrections. If causality is leading history to repeat itself, then talented people of means are an essential input to reproduce an optimal, nonviolent outcome.
Alternately, you can get yourself a Mar-a-Lago membership, better concierge services, and party likes it's 1985.
Philanthropy is important, but at this point it’s merely a finger in the dam. We do not have the political will to course correct. There are wealthy people who care and are working for a better world for all. Those that don’t are driving the train right now and partying like it’s 1985.
What do you consider the two previous gilded ages, one before Teddy Roosevelt and one after? I think of that as a single gilded age. The antebellum South can be described as a gilded age, but it did not end peacefully.
You say "Mayor Bloomberg dismantled the encampment" as though he sent in a bunch of guys in hard hats to take down physical infrastructure, when what he really did was send in cops to make mass arrests.
I think the real result of the Occupy movement is the way the public discourse has been manipulated to focus on seemingly every axis of inequality other than monetary. The Democrats are all about battling sexism, racism, and discrimination against sexual minorities to the point where it's almost like they don't know about working class people falling into poverty. The Republicans are divided: the position of the old school GOP is that if you're struggling financially, it's your own fault, while the MAGA populists blame immigrants.
This is obviously only going to work as a stopgap measure. In the long run, as impoverishment spreads, people will figure out where the blame belongs. But I don't think these guys are thinking that far ahead. Saul Alinsky once said "I could talk a businessman on Friday into backing a revolution on Saturday that would get him double his money back on Sunday even though he would be certain to be executed on Monday."
Joan, I agree that it's a lack of perspective. 2008 was a very long time ago. I think that our gilded age will end economically through financial crisis and a lot will turn on who is in power at the time and whether they are democratic (small d).
In recent times, the democratic party's aversion to dealing with wealth inequality has become so extreme that the movers and shakers within the democratic coalition have begun to enact nominally anti-racist, anti-sexist policies defined by identitarian favoritism that actively discriminate against men and white people.
This has been more pronounced in some arenas than in others, but if you want to see what it looks like when this phenomenon goes beyond think-pieces about how men and white people are bad and should be ashamed of themselves and crosses over into blatant, pronounced, institutionalized discrimination, look to nonprofits that rely on support from wealthy liberal donors:
With a democratic coalition that offers this, is it any wonder than so many people are turning to a right wing that scapegoats immigrants and appears oddly comfortable with the fringe elements in its coalition that embrace a sort of fanatical masculinism and white identitarianism?
You can only go so far in trying to shame people into voting against their own self interest.
Thanks for your article. If MLK had lived, it's likely he would have really pressed his point about fighting inequality among all peoples. "Woke" turned out to be a powerful gift to bigotry.
Eh. I sorta think discrimination against tiny numbers of white men aspiring to success in the entertainment industry is something the average white guy could tolerate or at least shrug off as "the kind of crazy **** Hollywood gets up to" if only his own buying power weren't dissolving into thin air at the same time.
That's probably true, but also we shouldn't forget how much corporate America and the Biden Administration went all in on uncritical support of DEI back around 2020 - 2023 (honestly not a bad way to break up the left-leaning solidarity that briefly arose amidst the protests after George Floyd's death; identitarianism and cancel culture were already wrecking the left for years before 2020, so why not push things a little further, especially if you can cast yourselves as righteous civil rights heroes in the process?).
Apparently the methodology on this study is flawed (and that was called out by The Daily Wire, of all outlets), but it's also clear that hiring and promotion decisions based on race and gender were happening frequently throughout the economy:
It would be interesting if we could get some good statistics on the question, but apparently there's little or no political will to make that happen (although frankly I'm surprised the Republicans haven't tried; maybe they're just not statistically savvy enough, or maybe their anti-DEI crusade is basically just a politically expedient way to gain favor with a significant chunk of the populace so they can more easily ram through their economic agenda?).
Hell, Biden himself said that he would choose a woman of color for The Supreme Court, and it's clear that Kamala Harris's race and gender played a role in his decision to make her Vice President.
Combine this stuff with the identitarian turn that so much of academia and basically all left-of-center media outlets took during the 2010s, along with the extremist activist types on twitter and inhabiting various social milieus (that yes, admittedly, most white men were not directly exposed to outside of the internet; I'm personally an outlier in this regard; you might not believe some of the things I've seen with these people), and it's not like the message to white men is unclear here at all: "your concerns are secondary at best, and you need to shut up and take a back seat. If you speak up about this or have a problem with it, then you're a racist or a sexist who hasn't examined your own privilege, which we've decided is inherent to the body you were born in, maybe you're even a nazi; a bad person who may as well join the basket of deplorables." For that matter, it's clear that even a great many non-white people and women don't like this approach either.
I guess my overall point is that it's neither morally right nor electorally wise to simultaneously abandon any sort of vision for improving material conditions for the general populace while also going out of your way to shame, scold, chastise, demonize and make it clear that you intend to systemically discriminate against vast swathes of the population based on their immutable characteristics as much as you're allowed to, even (or maybe even especially) if you've underhandedly developed a whole mystifying new system of convoluted rhetoric to justify what you're doing and call it progress.
Oh, I'm with you. That's why I don't think the people who promote and enact these policies care about either doing the right thing or winning elections, no matter how much they go on about those goals for the cameras. What they care about is keeping our attention focused on issues of racism, sexism, culture war stuff, etc., so that we never achieve enough solidarity to effectively combat their efforts to get all the wealth of society flowing into their pockets and those of their backers and allies, even at the cost of impoverishing the rest of us.
Not that racism, sexism, culture war stuff, etc., aren't real issues. They know that only a few of us are going to fall for bogus issues like lizard-man theories or the kind of panics over harmless amusements (Comic books! Marijuana! Rock and roll music!) that got the Greatest Generation freaking out in the 1950s. But convincing young white men who can't find a job that will pay enough to let them move out of their parents' house to blame women and POC instead of private equity firms that buy up moderately profitable businesses and basically gut them for a one-time shot of cash, eliminating thousands of jobs in the process, that's something they think they can sell.
It's not the "MAGA populists" who blame immigrants; it's the working poor whose wages and opportunities are suppressed by the Biden immigrant flood who do. MAGA "populists" (per your lazy insult) blame Democrats for the flood of "illegal immigrants" and illegal criminal immigrants that are taxing our community safety resources, our schools, our medical system, and our social programs in a scam to import votes. Also, there is no condemnation on people who struggle and then get back on their feet with a hand up. But there is a resentment to allow immigrants with no pressure for cultural and values conformity to be allowed to live on handout for decades without forcing able-minded/bodied people to become self-sufficient.
My great grandparents were immigrants circa 1880 from Eastern Europe. Almost all of us are here because of immigration. I think it's good to keep that in mind.
Of course, my great-grandparents were children when they immigrated from Ireland, and NO one I know is advocating for no immigration. But the strategy of mass unvetted immigrants being allowed to cross our borders and disappear into the country is a policy of lunatics.... or extreme evil. It is meant to terrorize citizens, make our institutions unstable, and show allegiance to Woke ideology. Now that the delusion of Woke as "progress" has been completely unmasked.. sane people need to mock it and its foundations so as to bury it in history books, as that is it's only proper resting place.
Undocumented immigrants receive almost no support, so there goes your argument. MAGA refuses to accept that fact. I’m married to a European and when he was immigrating here, I had to sign multiple statements affirming that I would be responsible for supporting him and that my family would not be eligible for any sort of welfare beyond emergency medical care even if we otherwise qualified.
No, you’re just an ignorant person and instead of learning the truth — which is pretty easy to do because this information is easily available — you’re choosing to voluntarily remain ignorant because you prefer bias and hated.
One factor you failed to mention is that while the degree of income inequality that approaches what we have now has always evoked protests, they were usually such that the class distinctions were readily apparent--the union movement, anarchists, etc. This manifestation is extremely unusual, possibly even unique, in that those on the wrong end CHOSE to perpetuate a society not only accepted the inequality but actually exacerbated it. In fact. middle class violence, which always preceded true revolutions, has been directed not at the elites, but at the protesters. This is not prescription for revolution as much as it is for a police state--to which, alas, we are moving ever and ever closer.
I agree that the current political alignment does not square with and even goes against economic interest. The political overlay may make this gilded age unique in how it plays out. And not at all in a good way.
A better parallel, sad to say, is 1930s Germany, although there as well the economy for ordinary Germans was in a shambles. But the Wiemar Republic bore similarity to the Biden administration and was kicked out for much the same reasons. What is different is that the urban working class and rural voters were in such bad shape that Hitler could almost not help but do better, while Trump's voters are starting from a much higher floor. We'll know in a year whether that matters. I hate to sound even vaguely optimistic, but it might.
Apologize if this runs too long. I think we need to reform but not through curbing or cutting back the 1%. Assuming that all the 1% are supremely arrogant is itself an arrogant assumption of the 99%. I think Trump should form an added optional government department that would only be supported by tax payers who okayed a certain proportion of their taxes donated to the Department of Compassion. The Department of Compassion would be staffed by volunteers and all the money would go to income inequality solutions that would be administered partly with the require support of other governmental departments. Studies would be commissioned at elite nonpartisan universities to study the best career opportunities for students whose career choices have or will be erased by AI. A research unit set up to help people who aren't working to find work they would like to do that would will fund them. Positions such as river protectors or fund for cleaning up all the oceans of all plastic and submerged shipping containers. And the Department of Compassion using the best nonpartisan universities' brightest minds would figure out to how to have a nonpartisan Fund for Ocean Cleanup be set up and fully funded. Doesn't it seem somehow unfair that brilliant minds can figure how to create successful low cost airlines like JetBlue or put a man on the moon or create a compassionate retail (your guess on that one) but these same brilliant minds are not or are never being asked to figure out nonpartisan solutions for how to make Social Security permanently solvent. Also establish a Fund for Putting All Non Citizen Immigrants on a Path to Citizenship. If an immigrant is already working full-time in U.S. and has good recommendations from his employers, craft a program so that he is she becomes a citizen within a year. All this would be provisional. Any criminal activity and they are deported. This would be for people not citizens who are already here in the U.S. Set up a fund to research how to set help or effective nonpartisan efforts to help poor inner city neighborhoods receive aid to help the whole neighborhood better itself and be self-sustaining. Another department would be what I would call the Durga Department (Durga is the Indian goddess who rights all wrongs notice all the male gods sometimes right wrongs but in most cultures it seems be the women who take the lead) the Department for Righting Wrongs. It seems that a lot of times honest people turn to a life of crime because they have been wronged in some way. Notice being wronged can be used to justify or enable crime on a large scale. But if the wrong were corrected case by case, then a major catalyst for the wrong person to embrace crime as a solution will have been eliminated. This department would be a voluntarily funded, nonpartisan large investigatory unit that would have legal standing and whose findings would be legally upheld. Also set up a Department of Three Jobs into One. So someone who works one job to send money home to his parents, one job for savings, and one job for checking or living expenses research what is the best job to fund all three. Somebody might hear me talking or read one my posts and say I must be the stupidest person on planet Earth to be so totally unaware of human nature. I say yes, I am fully aware of human nature and I want to nonpartisanly change it. And I think when the 1% or any of the 1% realize that Compassion is a valid "can be made effective" spiritual way to effect temporal change or reduction of income inequality, than small effective reform can begin to start happening.
Thinking about this post. My response is more wishful thinking but wishful thinking has to start before anything actually gets started. Your own Robin Hood project is a great example of something the 1% could do and there are foundations set up and other personal projects but many not enough to a big enough difference. Also the 99% might never be impress going along with the popular idea that no good deed must go unpunished. There has to be hope because without a little everyone is stuck. If politically more people could move towards the middle there could be a better chance of some sort of small redemption for either side. Otherwise we are staring into face of complete oblivion.
I’d prefer reform, but even the best case may include some violence. In the years between WWI and the New Deal, we had both the Battle of Blair Mountain and Gen. McArthur smashing the Bonus Army.
I’m re-reading a biography on Vaclav Havel — the Velvet Revolution took 20 years and two stints in the clink. How he avoided death is still unclear to me — luck for sure had something to do with it. One takeaway is that strategic engagement is a necessary evil to be combined with outright resistance. But, as in any era, courage is a rare commodity.
I don't believe gross inequality is inevitable or some kind of natural state of humanity. But it seems to need things to get pretty bad for the 99% to wake up and take action. A good example is the 1945 landslide victory for democratic socialism in the UK, which came out of the devastation of war. I just hope we don't need a similar cataclysm for us to find a road back to that.
Besides the billionaires at the inaugural and the Bezos wedding, I find it hard to think of a more telling statement of the grotesque flaunting of ultra-wealth. Thank you for this article, David. I appreciate your insights.
Thanks for the article.
The younger generation will look back at the current age, despite the inequalities, and see it as far preferable to the life of dhimmitude. Just a few decades away now in the UK and Europe.
A New English Civil War Has Started
Violence Is Coming - Prof David Betz
https://hellish2050.substack.com/p/a-new-english-civil-war-has-started
The vast, destabilizing inequalities you note are very real, but are bound up, historically and inextricably, with globalization and mass immigration. Offshoring, outsourcing, and importing a vast class of cheap workers has resulted in exploding asset prices- especially for housing- and reduced buying power for reduced wages. Much like the last Gilded Age era of economic turmoil and labor violence, this one won’t end until these issues are addressed. Fortunately, even the Biden administration noticed this to a degree, and Trump’s whole economic plan is centered on curtailing the disastrous effects of liberalized free trade.
Immigration and global trade have been such important engines of prosperity for America that it's hard to see curtailing them as a solution to inequality other than to make all Americans less well-off. But we have a real life "experiment" unfolding, and we will see the results.
Nothing in economics is good for everyone at the same time to the same degree. The current system is good for people who profit from having a heavily financialized economy where banking is our biggest industry. This system replaced the previous one where working class people could own homes and a man could support a family on a single wage. That period coincided with strong immigration restrictions. Reshoring manufacturing is a strategic initiative as much as an economic one, but hopefully it will have the effect of balancing out some of the baleful trends of the last forty years.
Not for the first time, we will have to respectfully agree to disagree!
"Trump’s whole economic plan is centered on curtailing the disastrous effects of liberalized free trade."
You mean his huge Import Tax program--also known as tariffs--that illegally collect money from the American citizenry? Not only is Trump/GOP greenlighting a new wave consumer inflation; but they're ceding control of the global trading network to China.
That wedding really did feel like some kind of middle finger. Great post!
I much prefer reform, but I don't think we'll get to choose. Perhaps if we had a different kind of leadership, one that listened or had any empathy, but we don't. Maybe no country gets to choose whether to have a revolution or not...the tipping points seem invisible without our 20/20 hindsight. I lived in NYC in the mid to late 1980s and the widening wealth gap was obviously disastrous, or maybe just more visible than it had been to me previously. The late 80s was a time of big political upheavals which might, oddly enough, have postponed our own economic revolution. Hard to say.
Thanks for the comment Jennifer.
I was living at the Devonshire (10th and University Place) at the time of Occupy. It was electrifying — the nightly protests at Washington Square Park — the police on horseback with the crowd chanting “The whole world is watching.” Foolishly, I had thought maybe the 1%, 0.5% and 0.1% will finally reveal they are human with some measure of concern for their fellow humankind. As someone who has gone from nothing to the 0.5%. I agree with your assessment — this won’t end well. The money walls at Disneyland will become more brick and mortar walls around whole communities with private police forces. The norm will become more like the exclusive Ocean Reef Club in the Keys where I stayed and played in a member/guest — complete with everything — no need to leave the compound for anything. The current and growing stratification of services like concierge doctors, private police, and private fire departments will seal our fate (my son-in-law’s family lost everything in the Palisades fire in LA and when I first learned about private fire departments!). The only wild card is how effective technological advances in controlling the population will be. Unfortunately, it looks as if we are hurtling toward a Phillip K. Dick world. I wish I knew how to stop it.
Thanks CM for the comment. I know there are many countries where private security is a must for anyone with affluence, not just the ultra-wealthy. I wonder if that's where we are headed.
Join groups like Patriotic Millionaires. Network with other people of means who are willing to apply at least some of their wealth and ability to at least help put the brakes on the increasing excesses of the current Gilded Age.
Our previous two Gilded Ages resulted in mostly bloodless course corrections. If causality is leading history to repeat itself, then talented people of means are an essential input to reproduce an optimal, nonviolent outcome.
Alternately, you can get yourself a Mar-a-Lago membership, better concierge services, and party likes it's 1985.
Philanthropy is important, but at this point it’s merely a finger in the dam. We do not have the political will to course correct. There are wealthy people who care and are working for a better world for all. Those that don’t are driving the train right now and partying like it’s 1985.
What do you consider the two previous gilded ages, one before Teddy Roosevelt and one after? I think of that as a single gilded age. The antebellum South can be described as a gilded age, but it did not end peacefully.
Show some respect: that's Gilded Age.
In my myopic world view, I'm going with Robber Barons; followed by pre-Black Friday.
You say "Mayor Bloomberg dismantled the encampment" as though he sent in a bunch of guys in hard hats to take down physical infrastructure, when what he really did was send in cops to make mass arrests.
I think the real result of the Occupy movement is the way the public discourse has been manipulated to focus on seemingly every axis of inequality other than monetary. The Democrats are all about battling sexism, racism, and discrimination against sexual minorities to the point where it's almost like they don't know about working class people falling into poverty. The Republicans are divided: the position of the old school GOP is that if you're struggling financially, it's your own fault, while the MAGA populists blame immigrants.
This is obviously only going to work as a stopgap measure. In the long run, as impoverishment spreads, people will figure out where the blame belongs. But I don't think these guys are thinking that far ahead. Saul Alinsky once said "I could talk a businessman on Friday into backing a revolution on Saturday that would get him double his money back on Sunday even though he would be certain to be executed on Monday."
Joan, I agree that it's a lack of perspective. 2008 was a very long time ago. I think that our gilded age will end economically through financial crisis and a lot will turn on who is in power at the time and whether they are democratic (small d).
In recent times, the democratic party's aversion to dealing with wealth inequality has become so extreme that the movers and shakers within the democratic coalition have begun to enact nominally anti-racist, anti-sexist policies defined by identitarian favoritism that actively discriminate against men and white people.
This has been more pronounced in some arenas than in others, but if you want to see what it looks like when this phenomenon goes beyond think-pieces about how men and white people are bad and should be ashamed of themselves and crosses over into blatant, pronounced, institutionalized discrimination, look to nonprofits that rely on support from wealthy liberal donors:
https://open.substack.com/pub/cinematimshel/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
With a democratic coalition that offers this, is it any wonder than so many people are turning to a right wing that scapegoats immigrants and appears oddly comfortable with the fringe elements in its coalition that embrace a sort of fanatical masculinism and white identitarianism?
You can only go so far in trying to shame people into voting against their own self interest.
Thanks for your article. If MLK had lived, it's likely he would have really pressed his point about fighting inequality among all peoples. "Woke" turned out to be a powerful gift to bigotry.
Eh. I sorta think discrimination against tiny numbers of white men aspiring to success in the entertainment industry is something the average white guy could tolerate or at least shrug off as "the kind of crazy **** Hollywood gets up to" if only his own buying power weren't dissolving into thin air at the same time.
That's probably true, but also we shouldn't forget how much corporate America and the Biden Administration went all in on uncritical support of DEI back around 2020 - 2023 (honestly not a bad way to break up the left-leaning solidarity that briefly arose amidst the protests after George Floyd's death; identitarianism and cancel culture were already wrecking the left for years before 2020, so why not push things a little further, especially if you can cast yourselves as righteous civil rights heroes in the process?).
Apparently the methodology on this study is flawed (and that was called out by The Daily Wire, of all outlets), but it's also clear that hiring and promotion decisions based on race and gender were happening frequently throughout the economy:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/
It would be interesting if we could get some good statistics on the question, but apparently there's little or no political will to make that happen (although frankly I'm surprised the Republicans haven't tried; maybe they're just not statistically savvy enough, or maybe their anti-DEI crusade is basically just a politically expedient way to gain favor with a significant chunk of the populace so they can more easily ram through their economic agenda?).
Hell, Biden himself said that he would choose a woman of color for The Supreme Court, and it's clear that Kamala Harris's race and gender played a role in his decision to make her Vice President.
Combine this stuff with the identitarian turn that so much of academia and basically all left-of-center media outlets took during the 2010s, along with the extremist activist types on twitter and inhabiting various social milieus (that yes, admittedly, most white men were not directly exposed to outside of the internet; I'm personally an outlier in this regard; you might not believe some of the things I've seen with these people), and it's not like the message to white men is unclear here at all: "your concerns are secondary at best, and you need to shut up and take a back seat. If you speak up about this or have a problem with it, then you're a racist or a sexist who hasn't examined your own privilege, which we've decided is inherent to the body you were born in, maybe you're even a nazi; a bad person who may as well join the basket of deplorables." For that matter, it's clear that even a great many non-white people and women don't like this approach either.
I guess my overall point is that it's neither morally right nor electorally wise to simultaneously abandon any sort of vision for improving material conditions for the general populace while also going out of your way to shame, scold, chastise, demonize and make it clear that you intend to systemically discriminate against vast swathes of the population based on their immutable characteristics as much as you're allowed to, even (or maybe even especially) if you've underhandedly developed a whole mystifying new system of convoluted rhetoric to justify what you're doing and call it progress.
"neither morally right nor electorally wise"
Oh, I'm with you. That's why I don't think the people who promote and enact these policies care about either doing the right thing or winning elections, no matter how much they go on about those goals for the cameras. What they care about is keeping our attention focused on issues of racism, sexism, culture war stuff, etc., so that we never achieve enough solidarity to effectively combat their efforts to get all the wealth of society flowing into their pockets and those of their backers and allies, even at the cost of impoverishing the rest of us.
Not that racism, sexism, culture war stuff, etc., aren't real issues. They know that only a few of us are going to fall for bogus issues like lizard-man theories or the kind of panics over harmless amusements (Comic books! Marijuana! Rock and roll music!) that got the Greatest Generation freaking out in the 1950s. But convincing young white men who can't find a job that will pay enough to let them move out of their parents' house to blame women and POC instead of private equity firms that buy up moderately profitable businesses and basically gut them for a one-time shot of cash, eliminating thousands of jobs in the process, that's something they think they can sell.
It's not the "MAGA populists" who blame immigrants; it's the working poor whose wages and opportunities are suppressed by the Biden immigrant flood who do. MAGA "populists" (per your lazy insult) blame Democrats for the flood of "illegal immigrants" and illegal criminal immigrants that are taxing our community safety resources, our schools, our medical system, and our social programs in a scam to import votes. Also, there is no condemnation on people who struggle and then get back on their feet with a hand up. But there is a resentment to allow immigrants with no pressure for cultural and values conformity to be allowed to live on handout for decades without forcing able-minded/bodied people to become self-sufficient.
John,
My great grandparents were immigrants circa 1880 from Eastern Europe. Almost all of us are here because of immigration. I think it's good to keep that in mind.
Of course, my great-grandparents were children when they immigrated from Ireland, and NO one I know is advocating for no immigration. But the strategy of mass unvetted immigrants being allowed to cross our borders and disappear into the country is a policy of lunatics.... or extreme evil. It is meant to terrorize citizens, make our institutions unstable, and show allegiance to Woke ideology. Now that the delusion of Woke as "progress" has been completely unmasked.. sane people need to mock it and its foundations so as to bury it in history books, as that is it's only proper resting place.
Undocumented immigrants receive almost no support, so there goes your argument. MAGA refuses to accept that fact. I’m married to a European and when he was immigrating here, I had to sign multiple statements affirming that I would be responsible for supporting him and that my family would not be eligible for any sort of welfare beyond emergency medical care even if we otherwise qualified.
Thus, your argument is based in disinformation.
I think you have faulty resources or faulty intellect.. which one is it. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-are-the-net-costs-of-ille-MQVnmrKoSl2k8bdux.uJZg#0
No, you’re just an ignorant person and instead of learning the truth — which is pretty easy to do because this information is easily available — you’re choosing to voluntarily remain ignorant because you prefer bias and hated.
i am team reform
Reform or revolution? My rebel heart says "Viva la revolucion!!"
Reform: Whenever possible. And this really does feel like the "Let Them Eat Cake" chapter of our history....
One factor you failed to mention is that while the degree of income inequality that approaches what we have now has always evoked protests, they were usually such that the class distinctions were readily apparent--the union movement, anarchists, etc. This manifestation is extremely unusual, possibly even unique, in that those on the wrong end CHOSE to perpetuate a society not only accepted the inequality but actually exacerbated it. In fact. middle class violence, which always preceded true revolutions, has been directed not at the elites, but at the protesters. This is not prescription for revolution as much as it is for a police state--to which, alas, we are moving ever and ever closer.
I agree that the current political alignment does not square with and even goes against economic interest. The political overlay may make this gilded age unique in how it plays out. And not at all in a good way.
A better parallel, sad to say, is 1930s Germany, although there as well the economy for ordinary Germans was in a shambles. But the Wiemar Republic bore similarity to the Biden administration and was kicked out for much the same reasons. What is different is that the urban working class and rural voters were in such bad shape that Hitler could almost not help but do better, while Trump's voters are starting from a much higher floor. We'll know in a year whether that matters. I hate to sound even vaguely optimistic, but it might.
I much prefer reform. But I don't think we're going to get it. I'm unable to see any how any significant changes will happen without violence.
Kari, we both hope it’s reform. But hope is not a great strategy.
True. I have no ideas about how to change or impact what is happening. I’m aware that hope is not an answer, but prefer it to despair.
Yes, despair means surrender. And I have hope, which means find ways to help and to fight what’s wrong.
Apologize if this runs too long. I think we need to reform but not through curbing or cutting back the 1%. Assuming that all the 1% are supremely arrogant is itself an arrogant assumption of the 99%. I think Trump should form an added optional government department that would only be supported by tax payers who okayed a certain proportion of their taxes donated to the Department of Compassion. The Department of Compassion would be staffed by volunteers and all the money would go to income inequality solutions that would be administered partly with the require support of other governmental departments. Studies would be commissioned at elite nonpartisan universities to study the best career opportunities for students whose career choices have or will be erased by AI. A research unit set up to help people who aren't working to find work they would like to do that would will fund them. Positions such as river protectors or fund for cleaning up all the oceans of all plastic and submerged shipping containers. And the Department of Compassion using the best nonpartisan universities' brightest minds would figure out to how to have a nonpartisan Fund for Ocean Cleanup be set up and fully funded. Doesn't it seem somehow unfair that brilliant minds can figure how to create successful low cost airlines like JetBlue or put a man on the moon or create a compassionate retail (your guess on that one) but these same brilliant minds are not or are never being asked to figure out nonpartisan solutions for how to make Social Security permanently solvent. Also establish a Fund for Putting All Non Citizen Immigrants on a Path to Citizenship. If an immigrant is already working full-time in U.S. and has good recommendations from his employers, craft a program so that he is she becomes a citizen within a year. All this would be provisional. Any criminal activity and they are deported. This would be for people not citizens who are already here in the U.S. Set up a fund to research how to set help or effective nonpartisan efforts to help poor inner city neighborhoods receive aid to help the whole neighborhood better itself and be self-sustaining. Another department would be what I would call the Durga Department (Durga is the Indian goddess who rights all wrongs notice all the male gods sometimes right wrongs but in most cultures it seems be the women who take the lead) the Department for Righting Wrongs. It seems that a lot of times honest people turn to a life of crime because they have been wronged in some way. Notice being wronged can be used to justify or enable crime on a large scale. But if the wrong were corrected case by case, then a major catalyst for the wrong person to embrace crime as a solution will have been eliminated. This department would be a voluntarily funded, nonpartisan large investigatory unit that would have legal standing and whose findings would be legally upheld. Also set up a Department of Three Jobs into One. So someone who works one job to send money home to his parents, one job for savings, and one job for checking or living expenses research what is the best job to fund all three. Somebody might hear me talking or read one my posts and say I must be the stupidest person on planet Earth to be so totally unaware of human nature. I say yes, I am fully aware of human nature and I want to nonpartisanly change it. And I think when the 1% or any of the 1% realize that Compassion is a valid "can be made effective" spiritual way to effect temporal change or reduction of income inequality, than small effective reform can begin to start happening.
Thinking about this post. My response is more wishful thinking but wishful thinking has to start before anything actually gets started. Your own Robin Hood project is a great example of something the 1% could do and there are foundations set up and other personal projects but many not enough to a big enough difference. Also the 99% might never be impress going along with the popular idea that no good deed must go unpunished. There has to be hope because without a little everyone is stuck. If politically more people could move towards the middle there could be a better chance of some sort of small redemption for either side. Otherwise we are staring into face of complete oblivion.
I’d prefer reform, but even the best case may include some violence. In the years between WWI and the New Deal, we had both the Battle of Blair Mountain and Gen. McArthur smashing the Bonus Army.
I’m re-reading a biography on Vaclav Havel — the Velvet Revolution took 20 years and two stints in the clink. How he avoided death is still unclear to me — luck for sure had something to do with it. One takeaway is that strategic engagement is a necessary evil to be combined with outright resistance. But, as in any era, courage is a rare commodity.
A typically thought provoking esay, David.
I don't believe gross inequality is inevitable or some kind of natural state of humanity. But it seems to need things to get pretty bad for the 99% to wake up and take action. A good example is the 1945 landslide victory for democratic socialism in the UK, which came out of the devastation of war. I just hope we don't need a similar cataclysm for us to find a road back to that.
Thank you for writing this.
Besides the billionaires at the inaugural and the Bezos wedding, I find it hard to think of a more telling statement of the grotesque flaunting of ultra-wealth. Thank you for this article, David. I appreciate your insights.