United States Politics Thread 47

[Raphael]

At the risk of sounding like malloc, here's something else, related, I found on Bluesky:

https://bsky.app/profile/castirony.bsky ... lrz6nwmk2r

This is why I’m still fairly pessimistic on the future of American politics even given fairly good poll numbers.

The old economic reality has been destroyed, and the median American voter is just going to keep ping-ponging back and forth between parties as each tries and fails to bring it back.

[malloc]

The old economic reality has been destroyed, and the median American voter is just going to keep ping-ponging back and forth between parties as each tries and fails to bring it back.

Sure but one must wonder why the old economy has been destroyed. The technology to make things affordably still exists and indeed automation has only advanced over the years. Logically this should translate to increasing abundance and thus affordability. Yet somehow we are faced instead with ever-soaring prices.

[Raphael]

The old economic reality has been destroyed, and the median American voter is just going to keep ping-ponging back and forth between parties as each tries and fails to bring it back.

Sure but one must wonder why the old economy has been destroyed. The technology to make things affordably still exists and indeed automation has only advanced over the years. Logically this should translate to increasing abundance and thus affordability. Yet somehow we are faced instead with ever-soaring prices.

Developments in economic policy and the structure of the economy. In other words, looting the rest of us got easier and ever easier for the super-rich.

[zompist]

The old economic reality has been destroyed, and the median American voter is just going to keep ping-ponging back and forth between parties as each tries and fails to bring it back.

Sure but one must wonder why the old economy has been destroyed. The technology to make things affordably still exists and indeed automation has only advanced over the years. Logically this should translate to increasing abundance and thus affordability. Yet somehow we are faced instead with ever-soaring prices.

Developments in economic policy and the structure of the economy. In other words, looting the rest of us got easier and ever easier for the super-rich.

You are both, I'm afraid, inventing a fantasy rosy past.

You don't want to live in a time of generally falling prices. This is what we call a "depression." It means business has ground to a halt: no one want to invest. No one wants to spend, either, because your money becomes more valuable if you simply hold onto it. Huge numbers of jobs are lost.

Inflation is not some sort of conspiracy of the rich. As Adam Smith noted 250 years ago, the rich like periods of recession or depression. They have money and can weather the crisis by doing nothing. And the pressure to raise wages disappears.

Economists believes that a small amount of inflation is good. The Fed is mandated to intervene if inflation goes above 2%. It's worth noting that ordinary people, though they hate rising prices, also hate stagnant wages.

It's not the case that prices are always rising or that some golden age of manufacturing let people buy great products at low prices. The realisty was that you could buy pretty good products at high prices.

Apple Macintosh (1984): original price $2495, about $7500 in current money. 128K RAM. Compare the MacBook Neo at $599, with 8,000,000K RAM.

First commercial microwave: the Radarange (1947): $2,000, or $29,000 in current money. 340 kg. You can buy a microwave today at $140; it weighs 15 kg.

Lasalle, the car Archie Bunker recalled fondly (1927): $4,700, or $87,000 in current money. It looks like the Chinese BYD will be available in Canada for $25,000, or US$18,250.

Mobile phones: Motorola DynaTac (1983), $3,995, or $14,000 in today's money. You can get a Samsung Galaxy for as little as $200.

Refrigerators: GE offered one in 1965 for $258, or $2730 in today's money. You can get one at Best Buy for $500.

How about non-technical things? Harvard tuition was $1520 for the 1961-62 school year, or $16,800 today. Score one for The Past: tuition next year is $57,328.

Price of eggs in 1965: $0.53 per dozen, or $5.61 today. It's on sale at Jewel for $3.99.

LOTR plus the Hobbit: $3.80 when I got mine in 1970, or $33 today; it's $25.17 on Amazon.

You could quibble on some of these, as prices for new products tend to go down. But the comparison still tends to go against The Past. A microwave cost about $425 in 1980, $1800 in today's money.

How about incomes? The median family income in 1960 was $5600, or $63,000 in today's money. Today it's $84,000. (Note that medians avoid the distortions caused by income inequality. Medians are the number where half the population earns less, half earns more.)

There's a lot to deplore about modern capitalism— but mostly because it no longer distributes productivity gains to everyone, but only to the 10%. Plus, you know, the idiocies of modern finance, such as throwing trillions of dollars at fads. But we should try to get our facts right and not contribute to false nostalgia.

[Raphael]

Thank you for taking the time to research that.

I'm not mainly talking about inflation, more simply about people struggling and feeling squeezed, which has many components. And note that in a recent post, I wrote

Since the start of the decade, there have been several interruptions of major parts of supply chains. You can't really avoid inflation when people want to buy more stuff than the amount of stuff that's around.

That said, the complaint here is not about people hating inflation, but about people having impossible expectations about what can be done about it. Smart policies can sometimes slow inflation down, but they usually can't revert it. Really competent leadership might, with a bit of luck, make sure that the difference between next year's prices and this year's prices is smaller than the difference between this year's prices and last year's prices. But even the best leadership generally can't bring last year's prices back.

[malloc]

You don't want to live in a time of generally falling prices. This is what we call a "depression." It means business has ground to a halt: no one want to invest. No one wants to spend, either, because your money becomes more valuable if you simply hold onto it. Huge numbers of jobs are lost.

Not sure about you, but most of my spending is unavoidable for legal or practical reasons. I can hardly refuse to pay rent this month on the assumption that it will cost less next month because that will just get me evicted and effectively blacklisted from renting. Less still can I avoid buying food for any length of time without starving to death. Having said that, I am also rather poor by American standards so my experience may not be typical.

How do you explain the discrepancy between the rosy economy you describe and the negative perceptions that people generally have of the economy these days? Would you say that people are simply wrong, steeped in nostalgia for a past that never existed?

[zompist]

How do you explain the discrepancy between the rosy economy you describe and the negative perceptions that people generally have of the economy these days? Would you say that people are simply wrong, steeped in nostalgia for a past that never existed?

The "rosy economy" I described? I gave facts, facts you can look up and verify. How do you explain the discrepancy between your perception that things are getting more expensive all the time, and the fact that the inflation-adjusted price of most things is lower than it was a generation ago?

Also, I've told you before, but it never registers. I am poor by US standards. Stop thinking the modern world affects only you.

My post was not meant as a summary of everything in the economy. I mentioned college as something that's much pricier than before.

Median rent in the US was about $108 in 1970, which is $950 today. It's estimated to be $1400 today. However, that's not much more than the $1260 we'd expect based on the rise in wages. Rent is extremely variable by region; you would have a heart attack if you moved to New York or San Francisco.

Another thing that people forget is how easy it is today to get credit. To a large extent that's why the country can keep spending and growing despite plutocracy: people have, in effect, thousands or tens of thousands more than just their income.

Your rent is probably way cheaper than mine. On the other hand, mine is shared by 2 people. The standard way to save money on rent is to get roommates, or live with a family member. Please don't bother to explain why you Just Can't Do what millions of other people routinely do. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a hassle, just be aware that whatever those reasons are, they're costing you money.

[malloc]

The "rosy economy" I described? I gave facts, facts you can look up and verify. How do you explain the discrepancy between your perception that things are getting more expensive all the time, and the fact that the inflation-adjusted price of most things is lower than it was a generation ago?

It's not just me who feels like the economy has gotten tighter over the years. It feels like practically everyone on both sides of the political spectrum agree that the economy sucks if nothing else. You are highlighting what sounds like quite an interesting phenomenon, that vast swaths of the population are suffering from economic dysmorphia, mistakenly imagining themselves as struggling when they're actually prospering. This dysmorphia has drastically shaped the political landscape over the past decade, propelling populists and socialists to electoral victory and especially driving the explosive growth of the far right. I have no idea why myself and many others feel so pinched and would be genuinely fascinated to hear your hypotheses on this phenomenon.

[zompist]

The "rosy economy" I described? I gave facts, facts you can look up and verify. How do you explain the discrepancy between your perception that things are getting more expensive all the time, and the fact that the inflation-adjusted price of most things is lower than it was a generation ago?

It's not just me who feels like the economy has gotten tighter over the years. It feels like practically everyone on both sides of the political spectrum agree that the economy sucks if nothing else. You are highlighting what sounds like quite an interesting phenomenon, that vast swaths of the population are suffering from economic dysmorphia, mistakenly imagining themselves as struggling when they're actually prospering. This dysmorphia has drastically shaped the political landscape over the past decade, propelling populists and socialists to electoral victory and especially driving the explosive growth of the far right. I have no idea why myself and many others feel so pinched and would be genuinely fascinated to hear your hypotheses on this phenomenon.

Well, you didn't answer the question. But you're also, as usual, drawing conclusions without any basis in fact. Are people "imagining themselves as struggling when they're actually prospering"? That's your interpretation, likely as wrong as the other statement that "the economy has gotten tighter over the years".

I have a whole page on what went wrong with US capitalism, with measurable figures, so that would be the place to start. (It's 14 years old, but the change it described has not been reversed.)

Are people struggling? Generally using emotive terms like that gets us nowhere; you have to pick something that can be measured and tracked over time. Unemployment, for instance. No matter what people felt in 2019-2020, this marker of economic pain was more than halved. Over the same period the poverty rate went from 16% to 12%.

I mentioned debt; consumer and business debt as a portion of GDP nearly doubled from 1980 to 2006. Since then it's gone down, though not to 1980 levels.

I looked at job tenure, and was rather surprised to find that the average job tenure in the US has been 5 years for the last 40 years. It feels like jobs are more precarious, but long tenures were not the norm.

There really is a tendency to view the past with rose-colored glasses. A lot of this is pure illusion: prices were not low when you account for inflation; product quality was not as high; poverty rates were higher; median income really is up, though less than it should be due to plutocracy. When we look back at what was supposed to be an ideal epoch for workers, we're almost always looking only at while male workers; it was far from ideal for POC or women.

Sociologically, people compare themselves to what they can see, and that includes images from the media. In 1960s the dominant US corporation was General Motors, and its CEO was paid $520,000 a year. That'd be $6 million today; compare Elon Musk's obscene compensation of $100 billion.

Also, again, none of this means that there isn't stuff to be angry about. The GOP's assault on law, science, the economy, our allies, and our ecosphere is a huge crisis. All I'm trying to do is keep attention from being focused on false nostalgia and minor points.

[malloc]

Well, you didn't answer the question. But you're also, as usual, drawing conclusions without any basis in fact. Are people "imagining themselves as struggling when they're actually prospering"? That's your interpretation, likely as wrong as the other statement that "the economy has gotten tighter over the years".

Based on everything I have read and watched online over the past decade, yes, many people feel deep in their bones that they're struggling in the current economy. Socialists and fascists alike are winning elections on economic discontent, something that would have been inconceivable not that long ago. Social media abounds in people lamenting the state of the economy and even questioning the value of work or economic growth. Meanwhile you are arguing that the average person is better off now than in the past. Clearly there is quite a discrepancy between what you consider the objective state of the economy and what people perceive.

[zompist]

Meanwhile you are arguing that the average person is better off now than in the past.

When you can't accurately summarize something you read two minutes ago, I'm doubting whether you can report what other people are feeling.

Hint: I did not make a single pronouncement on whether "the average person is better off". In fact I pointed you to a long article documenting how the nation lost its way in measurable ways in the Reagan years.

Clearly there is quite a discrepancy between what you consider the objective state of the economy and what people perceive.

Yes, the difference is that I'm not presenting "what I consider" to be the facts. They are the facts, to the extent that I could find them. You just don't like them.

This isn't to say that people's feelings are completely wrong. But I think it's possible that you, like a good deal of the country, have been propagandized. There's been a decades-long campaign to the effect that foreigners are swamping the country, good white people are disparaged for no reason, people are sinking morally, scientists and other "elites" are forcing nonsense on the public, and other nations are somehow taking advantage of us, taxes are too high, religion is being repressed, "regulation" hobbles business, etc., etc. You personally probably dismiss these talking points, and yet you seem to have picked up the general feeling of despair and distrust of institutions.

So when you think about something like rising prices, you don't think to do research, you don't ask if prices really were lower and quality higher in some golden age, you just assume it.

[Raphael]

Unrelated to the current discussion:

OK, I'm feeling a bit cranky and combative right now. So I've decided to post something that will make people across the political spectrum hate me. Right-wingers will see me as an elitist, and left-wingers will see me as a (transferred) jingoist.

I think this fits better in this thread than in any other. It's not about current political events, and it's not just about the United States, but it is about cultural stuff and a particular political discussion in a number of countries, including the USA.

Ever since back when George W. Bush was President of the United States, some of the more annoying or worse-than-annoying right-wingers in some English-speaking countries have loved to talk about what they call "The Anglosphere", that is, the world's wealthy English-speaking countries, and how great these countries supposedly are, and how, together, these countries should form an awesome alliance of superiority. Yuk.

Or really "yuk"? Here's the thing: I think with a few qualifiers, these people do kind of have a point - just not the point they think they have. That is, there really are some things that are great about some of the world's major English-speaking countries. It's just that those are mainly the very things that the "Anglosphere" crowd usually hates about those countries.

I am, of course, mainly talking about cultural output. Before you groan, no, I don't mean all those mindless Hollywood blockbusters. I mean the stuff that's a bit more off the beaten track, but not that difficult to find if you know where to look.

For instance, the better parts of the mid-budget, middling-levels-of-commercial-success stuff that Hollywood used to churn out, though the lines-must-go-up executives seems to have sabotaged it more recently. A whole lot of British TV shows. The somewhat-less-famous-than-the-most-famous popular music.

And books. Books, books, books. The most successful ones are, of course, the more popular novels, and yes, many of them are pretty good. But I myself am more into popular non-fiction, and it's there that especially the British shine.

More seriously, all the scientific and scholarly work that informs all those great popular non-fiction books. Lots of brilliant, insightful, and sometimes truly world-changing things there.

Yes, the rest of the world has done some cool stuff in these directions, too, but they usually can't hit the same sweet spot that balances insights, wit, and accessibility as well. The other cultural sphere that I'm fairly familiar with, the German-speaking countries, usually produces things that are either stupid or boring, because until fairly recently there was near-universal agreement here that everything has to be either stupid or boring, and anything that doesn't want to be stupid has to prove its non-stupid-ness by being as boring as possible.

I mean, all that stuff is a big part of the reason why I've spent so much time hanging out here on the ZBB over the years.

But the snag, and it's a really, really big snag, is that most of the stuff in question was and is produced by the less repulsive ones of the people of these countries, and those are exactly the people whom the boosters of the "Anglosphere" concept hate with a burning passion. You can argue that this stuff really is something great about the "Anglosphere" - but if it was up to the very people who talk a lot about how much they love the "Anglosphere", this stuff wouldn't exist. In the USA, they've already to a large extent shut down the production of new things in that vein, and they might still succeed at shutting it down completely. And they might do the same in the UK in the not-too-distant-future.

And then there are the bad and horrible things in the English-speaking countries, too - genocide, discrimination, oppression, imperialism. But those are mostly local variants of things common across the world. The good parts are closer to being unique.

So, long story short, the Anglosphere would, perhaps, really be almost as great as its proponents say it is - if only it wasn't for those proponents themselves.

[zompist]

Yes, the rest of the world has done some cool stuff in these directions, too, but they usually can't hit the same sweet spot that balances insights, wit, and accessibility as well. The other cultural sphere that I'm fairly familiar with, the German-speaking countries, usually produces things that are either stupid or boring, because until fairly recently there was near-universal agreement here that everything has to be either stupid or boring, and anything that doesn't want to be stupid has to prove its non-stupid-ness by being as boring as possible.

I'm certainly not offended by any of this. I think you're right that English has seen a lot of great writing and pop culture.

I can't say anything about German literature except that I don't think any German writer since Günter Grass has received much attention here. Your call whether that's justified or not. (Curiously I just read a book of essays by a German-Japanese writer, Yoko Tawada, and I was struck that I didn't know a single one of the German writers she named. Not that I'm proud of this, it's just how it is. Maybe y'all need better PR.)

I'm aware of a few cultures that can or at least could compete with the Anglosphere: French, Japanese, and Chinese.

French is surprisingly good with pop culture-- movies and comics. When I was in college you still had to reckon with French novels, and the the deconstructionists (not my cup of thé, but inescapable). French scholarship is still top-notch.

The Japanese have produced an explosion of pop culture that's mesmerized The Youth all around the world. A budding Western cartoonist is more likely to be imitating anime than Peanuts or Jack Kirby. It's now the only culture that can get US teenagers to actually learn another language just so they can read or watch stuff in the original. Some of my favorite new bands are Japanese, too.

As for the Chinese, they're just getting started. I think we'll see a lot more Chinese stuff in the next decades. They have an immense cultural depth and they're learning from Japan how to make it accessible.

There's a lot of richness in Spanish literature, but here we get into the sad business of money. The cultures that export to the world are the ones with the money and distribution networks to do it.

[malloc]

This isn't to say that people's feelings are completely wrong. But I think it's possible that you, like a good deal of the country, have been propagandized. There's been a decades-long campaign to the effect that foreigners are swamping the country, good white people are disparaged for no reason, people are sinking morally, scientists and other "elites" are forcing nonsense on the public, and other nations are somehow taking advantage of us, taxes are too high, religion is being repressed, "regulation" hobbles business, etc., etc. You personally probably dismiss these talking points, and yet you seem to have picked up the general feeling of despair and distrust of institutions.

So in your opinion, the notion that the economy sucks for the average person is actually a right wing psyop. Reactionaries like the MAGA movement need to convince the average person that liberalism is fundamentally broken and contrary to their interests so they'll vote the reactionaries into power. Aside from appeals to racial and sectarian prejudices, they have also manufactured a narrative of economic malaise and declining living standards to erode support for liberal democratic institutions. Ironically enough, this narrative has also sparked a revival of socialism among people like me unaware of its origins.

[Torco]

I don't live in the us, but at least where I live the fact that the economy is worse for most people is obvious. home ownership is a distant dream for most people under 50, productivity is up but the purchasing power of wages is down, and the only good thing is that we have more little gadgets -where we pay more and more subscriptions. employment is every year more precarious, apps provide more and more of people's income, with the corresponding insecurity, etcetera etcetera. as i understand it, none of this is unique to chile, and seems to be happening all over.

though it may be in principle confusing, the fact that prices of stuff you need to live goes up as technology and productivity goes up, it isn't really confusing: the whole economy has been turning towards services: financialization, call centers, what have you. this has a twofold effect: on the one hand, fewer people making stuff people need to live means stuff people need to live is less available. most people are doing useless things, like working in call centers calling you to offer you a phone plan, or processing petabytes of data in order to figure out which logo for a certain points rewards program people like more, or working in blockchain startups, or making 700 different online payment system, even though paying for stuff online was a solved problem in 2009. or carrying out market research for each of those 700 payment systems in order to ascertain how to beat the other 699). but on the second hand, a lot of those services boil down to precisely how to increase inflation. a lot of data people, marketing people, researchers, software engineers and all the rest of it are spending most of the day most of the days figuring out how the companies they work for can get more money for the same, smaller, or worse products, which translates to how to make life more expensive. it's a double whammy: fewer people are making useful things, and more people are working at making those useful things more expensive (through the most byzantine schemes): it should surprise no one, then, that useful things are, in fact, more expensive.

the fascists and the libertarians -but i repeat myself- tune in this sensation of "things have gone to shit", whereas the proglibs don't, insisting that any criticism of the system is "populism". this does not make acknowledging the worsening of living conditions for the working class a right wing talking point. denying the collapse is precisely the reason why the proglibs keep losing, and will probably keep on losing as long as they're commited to the failing institutional framework. the left could offer alternatives, but there's a lot of neo-reaganite common sense that has to be dismantled before the left becomes anywhere near relevant.

[zompist]

This isn't to say that people's feelings are completely wrong. But I think it's possible that you, like a good deal of the country, have been propagandized. There's been a decades-long campaign to the effect that foreigners are swamping the country, good white people are disparaged for no reason, people are sinking morally, scientists and other "elites" are forcing nonsense on the public, and other nations are somehow taking advantage of us, taxes are too high, religion is being repressed, "regulation" hobbles business, etc., etc. You personally probably dismiss these talking points, and yet you seem to have picked up the general feeling of despair and distrust of institutions.

So in your opinion, the notion that the economy sucks for the average person is actually a right wing psyop. Reactionaries like the MAGA movement need to convince the average person that liberalism is fundamentally broken and contrary to their interests so they'll vote the reactionaries into power. Aside from appeals to racial and sectarian prejudices, they have also manufactured a narrative of economic malaise and declining living standards to erode support for liberal democratic institutions.

OK, that actually is a pretty good summary. I'd add a few things though:

1. The right loves to trim the safety net and make things harder for poor people. They haven't done this as much as they'd like in the US, but it's their advice to other countries. Somehow there's always more money for the rich, but not more for health care.
2. The right and the left have cooperated to make housing and mass transit more expensive.

Ironically enough, this narrative has also sparked a revival of socialism among people like me unaware of its origins.

Plutocracy usually produces socialism and fascism as a response.

[Raphael]

Perhaps it's time for me to sound a bit like malloc again.

On Thursday there was a special election in the 11th Congressional District of New Jersey. The Democratic nominee, Analilia Mejia. won with 59.53 percent of the vote, while the Republican nominee, Joe Hathaway, got 40.01 percent of the vote. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_New_ ... l_election) That's good news, right? Well, not so fast.

In the most recent regular election of that district, back in 2024, the then Democratic nominee, Mikie Sherrill, had gotten 56.5 percent compared to 41.8 percent for then Republican nominee Joseph Belnome. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Unit ... istrict_11) (The seat had gotten vacant when Sherrill got herself elected Governor of the state.)

So that means a swing of roughly 2 or 3 percent towards the Democrats. And my impression is that that's a very meager swing compared to what we've seen in some other recent special elections. So, is that a reason to get worried? I'm seriously wondering.

Only very tangentially related trivia: while poking around Wikipedia articles that are more or less "adjacent" to the ones related to this topic, I noticed that the current Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey, Dale Caldwell, is the first man to hold that particular office since it was first established back in 2010. I guess that's the kind of first in politics that you don't see that often.

In some regards less serious, but in some other regards still deadly serious - courtesy of someone on Bluesky, here's the secret to the wisdom of Donald Trump's military strategy:

bafkreibq4fkggg7jr5olmydjmwwogbbi2hljbu2galmgtrjeqvfxmcxtzm.jpg (116.32 KiB) Viewed 1135 times

[WeepingElf]

That's a good one, Raphael! Thanks for sharing!

[Raphael]

That's a good one, Raphael! Thanks for sharing!

Thank you! I especially like the one in the bottom right corner.

[MacAnDàil]

Those are funny indeed. I chuckled most at 'In order to confuse your enemy, you must first confuse yourself'.

Not sure about you, but most of my spending is unavoidable for legal or practical reasons. I can hardly refuse to pay rent this month on the assumption that it will cost less next month because that will just get me evicted and effectively blacklisted from renting. Less still can I avoid buying food for any length of time without starving to death.

Surely it depe"nds on what food we buy. Fresh produce seems to be unreasonably dear in the US. Are there reduced aisles where items are reduced to half price or even 10c when the expiry date is coming up? You get that more in the UK than in France from my experience.