How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The first half of the song is more or less something that just about every working person can empathize with. We have to work harder for less and our representative government doesn’t represent us, let alone work for us. Brilliant, I agree.
Then it’s all downhill after that. Without missing a beat, it launches into the usual vicious demagoguery and tired North vs South rhetoric. The Rich Men Irrespective of Richmond _do not give a shit about you, me, or miners_ as long as the money flows. Here, we’re just peddling their usual indirection: it’s not the generations gross inequality of wealth and power or the exploitation, no it’s this welfare queen that’s holding you down. Despite, you know, said straw man having no power and being on the bottom end of a callous, engineered system that makes it almost impossible to crawl out from. Violently reacting to the symptoms while not looking at the cause.
As long we’re buying this trash, the dwindling middle class are shitting on the poor, our attention will be drawn from the folks that propagate this misery. Same as it’s been for the entirety of human civilization.
Every time a Republican celebrity or politician posts this song and a working class stiff likes or retweets it, a useful idiot is born.
That might be true but I hope with some time and self reflection you’ll recover.
Oh, and the guy's voice is awesome.
And yet here we are with food and housing out of control, and the only people suffering are the poor and middle class. That song speaks to a lot of people.
The money printer went mostly to the top who bought real-estate and other property. Some of it went to regular people and a lot of that went to pay down debt.
Money printing doesn't equal inflation. Inflation happens when producers decide to raise prices. That could be for many reasons. Record profits suggests it wasn't the cost of their inputs.
Food prices didn’t skyrocket from an excess of demand, and they didn’t purely skyrocket because of corporate greed.
They went up because the cost of production went up. Because oil went up so transport went up. Because grain supply chains were disrupted by the war. Every step of production has become more expensive. All of it was supply side driven. Not consumption driven.
Almost all of the inflation in 2021 was supply side driven, but we needed to get away from the zero interest rate trap of the last decade so the fed wasn’t going to let a good opportunity go to waste.
I'm partial to this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB9n0XA8dks
Full disclosure: I grew up in Appalachia so this is my type of music and I'm sure many/most people don't feel this way but I feel for the plight of my people even if they are idiots sometime. Christopher doesn't consider himself appalachian though. He's from piedmont.
It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true.
https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9
> From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card.
> Soft drinks
> Candy
> Cookies
> Snack crackers
> Ice cream
> Seafood such as lobster and shellfish
> Steaks
> Bakery cakes
I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to purchase crab legs. A very take-a-deep-breath-and-count-to-ten moment.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/snap-is-effective-and-efficien...
I'm not totally opposed to welfare benefits especially when it comes to food and housing. I'm not opposed to having healthy food as an option - in fact I would rather those foods be the only option. But crab legs at nearly $30/lbs is abusive compared to wild-caught salmon at half that price, or free range chicken at a third of that price.
Stop trolling for outrage.
Why not just feed everyone on food stamps a vitamin slurry?
Also, how are you so arrogant to assume your opinions on food should dictate what people should eat?
1. A bunch of the stuff on that list is literally garbage junk food.
2. The issue isn't "what people eat," it's "what taxpayer should pay for." I think what he's saying is that the government shouldn't be paying for unnecessary luxuries for people who can't afford them. If you're on food stamps, they should be good for healthy but modest food.
There are obviously complicated systems at grocery stores designed to check for food stamp eligibility (like they have to determine what food is subject to sales tax). It would be very good PR for the program if the government had a list of foods that were ineligible to be purchased due to their high-end/luxury nature.
3. I don't know what the typical food stamp benefit is, but my intuition is that if you used it to buy crab legs you'd run out of food before the next benefit period, because they're expensive per calorie. That then implies that this person who was using them to buy crab legs doesn't actually need the benefits.
Food stamps (SNAP) aren't paid out of your taxes. That's not how the federal government works. Your taxes don't pay for other people's food. Taxes are a debt, an obligation to pay. The money you use to pay those taxes comes from the government (and bank credit) in the first place.
He's not confused: you are. You're letting some weird technical point block your understanding to a surprising and unbelievable degree.
We can pretend the world works one way and be mad about how people are taking advantage of the system, or we can understand how it actually works and maybe, just maybe, change it for the better.
Make better to have the money spent on luxury food items than killing people in foreign countries.
Also, for the folks calling this a conservative talking point, Marx and Engels weren't exactly well-disposed towards the lumpenproletariat... Someone who is chronically unemployed by definition is not working class.
The problem is the person’s employer is allowed to pay too low a wage. That should be the focus rather than the government for wasting their taxes.
The problem is and always has been that the government is greedy and takes income tax, a tax that disproportionately affects the lower economic rungs, for no reason other than to line their own pockets. Alongside the black box that is the federal reserve, that is.
But then think of the people who also can't afford these things, but are paying into the system rather than taking from it. They'd rightly feel shafted by people buying luxury items on their dime.
The perspective of a well-off person who can easily afford to pay into the system and afford most of their chosen luxuries is probably not the right one to take in this case.
The point of food stamps is not to give people a taste of luxury, it's to keep them alive and healthy by giving them access to food so they don't go hungry.
Just give people the resources to buy what they need.
It certainly wouldn't be "cruel and punitive." After all, as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. It would be valuable insofar as it would undercut one of the most biting criticisms of the program.
> Just give people the resources to buy what they need.
Exactly. People need good nutritious food; not expensive luxury food.
Living their lives with dignity doesn't mean buying luxury items with benefits that many who don't get benefits can't afford.
A lot of people support social programs to keep people from going hungry or being homeless, because those are serious problems. There's a lot less support for taking those programs farther, to providing free or subsidized luxuries. And taking them that far, frankly, is a short-sighted own-goal, because it serves to undermine support for the whole endeavor.
As for perception, the Republican dogma is starving the beast. "Welfare queens" are just an excuse: any remotely plausible reason will be used to defund social programs, crab legs or no.
And that misses an important part of the picture.
> Personally, I'm happy if there's 9 people using EBT to get what they need without trouble for every crab leg lady.
Are you a well-off software engineer, who would have no problem buying all the crab legs you want, even if your taxes were higher?
If you are, you might not be able to see certain things from your lofty perch, and therefore may need to put in a little more effort to understand some important dynamics.
As you’re someone from the Bay Area, you genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about, especially in regards to Appalachia. You make a large enough salary to survive, possibly even thrive in an area on the complete opposite side of the USA. The people here are lucky for $40,000 annual salaries. $80,000 and you’re sitting pretty. My father’s never made more than $35,000. I‘ve lived here my whole life and seen the damage welfare does to a community. People have kids just to maximize welfare, they waste their money on the vices they explore now that they don’t need to work, the community is lost.
So sure, allowing “treats” isn’t a big deal on paper, but when 65 million, or 1/5th of Americans, are on welfare with 42 million of them getting food stamps, AND you consider the predatory behavior of food companies alongside the general distain the government holds for the health of its people, and you end up with a system that promotes short term pleasure and “feel-goods” rather than actually attempting to improve yourself to where you can contribute like an actual human being.
You need to re-examine your biases then because Jeffrey Epstein is (or was) very real. If QAnon are the only ones talking about the problem of pedophilia in politics then you should be more like QAnon in this regard.
Anthony claims he is center, but center in US means right-wing everywhere else.
Until Anthony makes a song about the Rich Men south of Richmond, lets wait and see about the class thing.
He did make a recent video called "Moving Forward" where he talked about how there used to be a sense of community and that people now are very disconnected from each other. He talks about how you need to help your neighbor even if they are different than you. And that we need positivity and not hate. It's a great message.
His message about diversity is excellent and I'm glad he is pushing that. I think he probably realized he attracted the wrong crowd.
So? This can also be said: "The US leads the world in individual freedoms" or whatever. This unspoken implication that "everywhere else" is better is interesting; quite common assumption but not actually a point that gets discussed... we're just to assume it for the purpose of engaging in the discussion, right?
Historically, those supporting the king were on his right, and those opposing him on his left. Really basically, during the restoration, the far-right was composed of anti-Republicans (old nobles mostly), the right wanted to increase the cens, the left wanted to expand the right to vote by lowering the cens (tax to be allowed a vote in the congress), and the far-left, 'radicaux' as they called themselves, wanted a 'radical' republic, without a king.
With time this shifted, and the 'radicaux' are now center, center-right, but the idea of left-wing/right-wing is the same. Right-wing is in large part the party of old money (and to be fair small business owners who value stability, which is really fair from tel, even if it means power calcification).
I met really left-wing people in the Appalachians, fighting against a pipeline and for owners/managers of a company that caused a huge spill to be prosecuted (from what I understand, the company polluted 3 towns that had to rely on bottled water for weeks, then the company was dissolved and a new one with the same mission and same executive was created after a few months. Gotta love LLCs man.) but those weren't democrats.
Some voted Democrat by default, most didn't care and were realist and knew no place exist for left-wing discourse in the US outside of internet forums. One of them told my brother how he tried to unionize when working for a coal mine company. In France, owners and managers trying to pull the same shite would have been put in jail. But well, it's cultural, what can you do. I respect that.
Kings typically didn't allow their opposition a seat at the table.
Where the right wing/left wing thing actually came from was a seating arrangement in the French Parliament during the French Revolution (in this case it was the King who didn't have a seat at the table). It only made sense for a short time even then. It was soon superseded by another seating arrangement called the "The Mountain", named because the representatives clustered together in higher tiers of seats.
The terms "right wing" and "left wing" in modern times are essentially just intellectual laziness.
Any purported mapping that puts libertarians and Nazis in the same position on the spectrum is ridiculous on its face.
Then France had a 'real' assembly to draft new laws, and the monarch very much had a seat at the table, and vetoing right. He also declared war on his brother in law. Then he betrayed the army and that's when the clubs really organized from right-wing to left-wing, with the 'feulliants' on the right wanting to keep the king, and the girondin and jacobin on the left wanting to remove him. Sadly (for the king), letters were found that proved without the shadow of a doubt that the king betrayed the nation, and the 'feuillants' supported to keep the 1791 constitution (so a monarchy) and take Louis 16's son as the new king while placing the original under house arrest. They lost the arguments (a string of loosing battles and Austrian army closing in on Paris didn't help tbh). The left (girondin and Jacobin at the time), supported by the population won, and decided to behead the king and abolish monarchy. Then the new political power was a mess and like you said, no left or right, those on top were called 'La montagne', but most politic was still done in clubs.
My main reading on this in Jean-clement Martin, I don't have the reference on me right now but I can go look in 2-3days if you're interested.
Left-wing and right-wing started having a significance during the restoration, exactly as I said, with right-wing trying to limit the cens, left trying to expand it, left radicals trying to go toward a full republic and far-right trying to go toward a full monarchy.
Aren't libertarians left-wing? I mean, Joseph Déjacque was pretty left-wing, even by current standards. Unless you mean anarcho-capitalist or minarchists, and to be fair, those are much, much more closer to liberals than to nazis (although according to Chapoutot, liberals are pretty close to Nazi when you look at how modern management work).
> Aren't libertarians left-wing?
They're often described as "far right" in the United States, as are Nazis.
It's utterly ridiculous.
2 hours north of Richmond is Washington DC. The "rich men north of Richmond" are in DC.
The song has nothing to do with Confederates, and more to do with folk anthems like those made by Arlo and Woody Guthrie. Or at least it does at first, but then syphons the rage to other targets, which look an awful lot like standard republican talking points.
Grassroots popularity? Or a conservative media machine trying to deflect from the problems they helped make?
The insane response in particular by rolling stone about "Reagan era tropes" and other fearmongering with simultaneous "debunking" was what got me, as in it really seems to have struck a chord as dangerous wih a certain crowd.
Here is another version of the music video that illustrates the message (substitute "fudge" for "cookies")..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlL2sKWHaQ0
If the target of the song didn't change from an actual source of problems (the rich/economic elite) to conservative scapegoats (other poor/working class people) it would have resonated far more with me and actually could have been a song that might have had a chance of finding more common ground between people that typically disagree vehemently.
It's no surprise the entire song resonated with a lot of people, plenty of which I'm sure, as they always have, are okay allowing the the "rich men north of richmond" to turn them against themselves and others like them with that scapegoating
The reason for posting this is more to discuss mechanisms how this can happen. I have feeling that as with Barbenheimer meme there is something all these marketers are missing.
Happy to see it's possible to break through without "Going through the Orifices" as Steve Jobs would say.
The most impressive con I’ve seen is that an entire swath of this country has become convinced that the people with the worst policies for them are looking out for them.
There is no irony that the men north of Richmond are Republicans, that is in part deliberate. The irony here is that you interpreted a class struggle song in a way that allowed you to feel knowledgeable and superior to those who choose the “worst policies”.
Which means whatever is currently at the top of any list (eg obama or trump), the Attention Economy throws up (including HN) doesn't really means what people think it means. There are lots of people who are paying attention to something totally different, cause whats available on the buffet is endless. Meanwhile those who go viral (ala obama and trump) think they are having impact.
They're one of the biggest promoters of the cheeto too...
No, there's not, unless you confuse the Democratic Party (which was not historically even relatively “left” before the shift in question) with the “left” and the Republican Party (which was similarly not “right”) with the “right”, and also confuse “white racial issues, including those of the white working class in industrial states” with issues of “the working class”.
The left/right (or related liberal/conservative) split never really modelled US party politics well for most of history; US parties have been characterized more by coalitions of regional, racial, and ethnic factions than left-right ideology, with a left-right alignment (centered pretty far to the right by international standards) emerging as strongly aligned with the split between the major parties only fairly recently.
otherwise great song, tainted
The shape of this story over the last two weeks has me wondering if theres a "persecution Promotion" program available from some PR firm: "become a subversive hero for only $800k.." If there aint yet, there will be soon.