Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America
ineteconomics.org
ineteconomics.org
Very few sources, and none of them independently confirmed? Check.
Call to action with a sense of urgency? Check.
The only thing that this article inspires is a rolling of the eyes.
I'm very much a liberal and it would be easy for me to accept some of the things described here, but it just trips way too many red flags as far as empirical reporting is concerned.
If a true oligarchy were to come into power it would be likely to be overthrown in the west now more than ever. I posit that the best interest of the 1% is not to position itself in this manner. If the 1% truly is based in the objectivist-selfish philosophy then this would be very obvious. Without a middle class, the upper class has no buffer between itself and the poorest class. I think history states that this would be a society primed for revolution.
Your argument re middle class disappearing is addressed in the write up; the argue by strengthening law enforcement and government that they can hold the populace at bay by force. There are many past and present examples of authoritarians retaining control by force, but it’s not as elegant a solution as convincing people it’s what they wanted all along imo.
> Does that sound like your kindergarten teacher? It did to Buchanan.
My primary recollection of K-6 was teachers shrieking "Just Say No!" Or policing what we said, what we did off school time, what we wore, implementing zero tolerance policies that punished victims, etc. Teachers don't have much power over adults, so it's easy to forget, but its a field that attracts power tripping authoritarians and conformists.
"The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender." - Proverbs 22:7
You look at society today and various debt levels across the board...there's a lot of truth to it. The requirement to continue making payments on various debts is one of the biggest factors that forces people into jobs that they may not want.
Lots of wisdom there.
Banks profit from the nesting instinct.
https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-an...
Good times or bad, times of plenty, times of hardship, war or peace, ... government goes deeper in debt. When there is a tiny bit of debt relief, it's ... essentially accidental ... (nevertheless great respect for Bill Clinton, who proposed the budget made it happen, however it was not his intention. He could have spent the money though, and he didn't. Which is more than can be said of many others. On net however, Bill Clinton was like every other president: the government spent way more than it brought in)
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/267205/
[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/id/43140915
[3] https://mises.org/library/short-history-us-credit-defaults
[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_debt_crise...
It also attracts people who don't need much money for one reason or another, and believe they can make the world a more just place by helping kids develop the tools they need to function in society. (Not a teacher, but I know some excellent ones.)
The article mentions Scott Walker(I'm from Wisconsin. My grandfather was a union worker, I am not). I am largely against anyone bank rolling a political candidate. By eliminating the collective bargaining rights, Wisconsin became a prime competitor for manufacturing in the midwest. Free market competition allows for greater which in where one works. In the same way that we saw ping pong tables at software companies, we are seeing more attractive manufacturers pull ahead based on higher salaries that collective bargaining attempted to offer.
The class-ist mindset of this article is not a good thing for anyone. Elevating the 1% to the status of enemy will only sew further instability in an already precarious time.
Money's still useful to the rich for "keeping score," even after they can buy "basically everything." If they're competitive (any they probably are), they gain satisfaction knowing they're richer than the other guy, or the most successful businessperson in their field, etc.
- A. Smith, 1776
Either way wanting humans involved in the manufacturing chain is backwards and inefficient, and flies in the face of the inevitable automated future of manufacture. We desperately need to stop trying to recreate the jobs of 50 years ago and retrain people for the jobs we want moving forward. Manufacturing jobs just aren’t good jobs. If we can get people elsewhere to do them, my god, what an opportunity to get ahead for everyone here.
Now consider the case of the professors of economics, near and far, who have not been thrown out. Who will say that the lesson of the Nearing debacle has been lost upon them? Who will say that the potency of the wealthy men who command our universities--or most of them--has not stuck in their minds? And who will say that, with this sticking remembered, their arguments against Nearing's so-called ideas are as worthy of confidence and respect as they would be if they were quite free to go over to Nearing's side without damage? Who, indeed, will give them full credit, even when they are right, so long as they are hamstrung, nose-ringed, and tied up in gilded pens?
It seems to me that these considerations are enough to cast a glow of suspicion over the whole of American political economy, at least in so far as it comes from college economists. And, in the main, it has that source, for, barring a few brilliant journalists, all our economists of any repute are professors. Many of them are able men, and most of them are undoubtedly honest men, as honesty goes in the world, but over practically every one of them there stands a board of trustees with its legs in the stock-market and its eyes on the established order, and that board is ever alert for heresy in the science of its being, and has ready means of punishing it, and a hearty enthusiasm for the business. Not every professor, perhaps, may be sent straight to the block, as Nearing was, but there are plenty of pillories and guardhouses on the way, and every last pedagogue must be well aware of it.
From H.L. Mencken's 1922 essay, "The Dismal Science" in "Prejudices, Third Series."