6 ms·

Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America

38 points by ehudla 8y ago

WhompingWindows 8y ago
Mirror? Site is down for me
- trentmb 8y ago
  Use the "web" link under the title.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20180602065458/https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america https://web.archive.org/web/20180602065458/https://www.inete...
brian_herman2 8y ago
I don't think they were ever not in control? Maybe this guy just helped them get more control???? I am sorry but american society has been money driven since inception. I don't even want to click this link because by the title it is clearly jailbait.
- auto 8y ago
  I think the word you're looking for is "clickbait". Jailbait is something quite different...
- bbddg 8y ago
  Right? Very weird framing. You used to have to own land to even vote in this country.
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    we used to give land away for free too
    - bbddg 8y ago
      If you were the right gender and race, sure.
  - justaman 8y ago
    The idea was that you had a literal financial stake in the country. A "producer".
    - bbddg 8y ago
      Who's more of a "producer," the person who owns the land or the person who works the land?
rayiner 8y ago
> “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty. > 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.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  I know a lot of people that I desperately wish had said no :(
- brightball 8y ago
  > “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty. "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.
  - pier25 8y ago
    I'm from Spain. Before the bubble bursted in 2008 people were signing 40 year mortgages. Medium class couples could barely afford having kids. A regular 3 bedroom apartment would go above 200k Euros easily, and of course you'd end up paying more than double that when taking interests into account. Banks profit from the nesting instinct.
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    Debt is by no means a clear cut evil; it’s referenced in the article at the federal level as a good, which allows governments to meet the civic needs of the people in times of hardship. At the individual level, it allows people to have what they want when they want it; you needn’t save 3 years to purchase a car, buy it now and save over the next 3 years. Or 30 years for a house. Debt is a tool - it’s good or bad depending on how it’s used. The temptation is that people often want to live beyond their means, and it’s that instinct that drives many negative outcomes, but also it’s tempered at least in the US by bankruptcy laws.
bovermyer 8y ago
Conspiracy theory? Check. 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.
- ehudla 8y ago
  The book that the article summarizes and criticisms of it are not hard to find, if you are interested. e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/20/nancy-maclean-responds-to-her-critics/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
- justaman 8y ago
  The article is very Marxist, using popular terms that attempt to stoke a recollection of occupy wall street and similar movements failed movements. 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.
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    I disagree about the swift overthrow; it’s easy to say that when you go from pure democracy to pure oligarchy with no transition, but by boiling the frog, and one day the change could seem natural or even welcome. It’s not easy to see the pieces of the puzzle for what it is until it’s fully assembled. 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.
jstewartmobile 8y ago
One remembers, for example, the trial, condemnation and execution of Prof. Dr. Scott Nearing at the University of Pennsylvania, a seminary that is highly typical, both in its staff and in its control. Nearing, I have no doubt, was wrong in his notions--honestly, perhaps, but still wrong. In so far as I heard them stated at the time, they seemed to me to be hollow and of no validity. He has since discharged them from the chautauquan stump, and at the usual hinds. They have been chiefly accepted and celebrated by men I regard as asses. But Nearing was not thrown out of the University of Pennsylvania, angrily and ignominiously, because he was honestly wrong, or because his errors made him incompetent to prepare sophomores for their examinations; he was thrown out because his efforts to get at the truth disturbed the security and equanimity of the rich ignoranti who happened to control the university, and because the academic slaves and satellites of these shopmen were restive under his competition for the attention of the student body. In three words, he was thrown out because he was not safe and sane and orthodox. Had his aberration gone in the other direction, had he defended child labor as ardently as he denounced it and denounced the minimum wage as ardently as he defended it, then he would have been quite secure in his post, for all of his cavorting in the newspapers, as Chancellor Day was at Syracuse. 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."
justaman 8y ago
I tend to disagree when someone speaks of the 1% as being money driven. After a certain point, you can buy basically anything and more money won't change that. Influence may be the next level for these people. 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.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > I tend to disagree when someone speaks of the 1% as being money driven. After a certain point, you can buy basically anything and more money won't change that. Influence may be the next level for these people. 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.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  "Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." - A. Smith, 1776
- arcticbull 8y ago
  You’re conflating two things that just happened to occur at the same time: elimination of unions and tightening of the labor market. Unions provide consistency for when the market sours, and I guarantee you those salaries and perks are going away as soon as the market for labor sours. Unions are the only way labor can push back against capital. It may not seem that way because times are good but they won’t aways be especially because: 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.

38 points by ehudla 8y ago

WhompingWindows 8y ago

Mirror? Site is down for me

trentmb 8y ago
Use the "web" link under the title.
dredmorbius 8y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20180602065458/https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america https://web.archive.org/web/20180602065458/https://www.inete...

brian_herman2 8y ago

I don't think they were ever not in control? Maybe this guy just helped them get more control???? I am sorry but american society has been money driven since inception. I don't even want to click this link because by the title it is clearly jailbait.

auto 8y ago
I think the word you're looking for is "clickbait". Jailbait is something quite different...
bbddg 8y ago
Right? Very weird framing. You used to have to own land to even vote in this country.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  we used to give land away for free too
  - bbddg 8y ago
    If you were the right gender and race, sure.
- justaman 8y ago
  The idea was that you had a literal financial stake in the country. A "producer".
  - bbddg 8y ago
    Who's more of a "producer," the person who owns the land or the person who works the land?

rayiner 8y ago

> “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty. > 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.

gameswithgo 8y ago
I know a lot of people that I desperately wish had said no :(
brightball 8y ago
> “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty. "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.
- pier25 8y ago
  I'm from Spain. Before the bubble bursted in 2008 people were signing 40 year mortgages. Medium class couples could barely afford having kids. A regular 3 bedroom apartment would go above 200k Euros easily, and of course you'd end up paying more than double that when taking interests into account. Banks profit from the nesting instinct.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  Debt is by no means a clear cut evil; it’s referenced in the article at the federal level as a good, which allows governments to meet the civic needs of the people in times of hardship. At the individual level, it allows people to have what they want when they want it; you needn’t save 3 years to purchase a car, buy it now and save over the next 3 years. Or 30 years for a house. Debt is a tool - it’s good or bad depending on how it’s used. The temptation is that people often want to live beyond their means, and it’s that instinct that drives many negative outcomes, but also it’s tempered at least in the US by bankruptcy laws.

bovermyer 8y ago

Conspiracy theory? Check. 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.

ehudla 8y ago
The book that the article summarizes and criticisms of it are not hard to find, if you are interested. e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/20/nancy-maclean-responds-to-her-critics/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
justaman 8y ago
The article is very Marxist, using popular terms that attempt to stoke a recollection of occupy wall street and similar movements failed movements. 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.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  I disagree about the swift overthrow; it’s easy to say that when you go from pure democracy to pure oligarchy with no transition, but by boiling the frog, and one day the change could seem natural or even welcome. It’s not easy to see the pieces of the puzzle for what it is until it’s fully assembled. 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.

jstewartmobile 8y ago

One remembers, for example, the trial, condemnation and execution of Prof. Dr. Scott Nearing at the University of Pennsylvania, a seminary that is highly typical, both in its staff and in its control. Nearing, I have no doubt, was wrong in his notions--honestly, perhaps, but still wrong. In so far as I heard them stated at the time, they seemed to me to be hollow and of no validity. He has since discharged them from the chautauquan stump, and at the usual hinds. They have been chiefly accepted and celebrated by men I regard as asses. But Nearing was not thrown out of the University of Pennsylvania, angrily and ignominiously, because he was honestly wrong, or because his errors made him incompetent to prepare sophomores for their examinations; he was thrown out because his efforts to get at the truth disturbed the security and equanimity of the rich ignoranti who happened to control the university, and because the academic slaves and satellites of these shopmen were restive under his competition for the attention of the student body. In three words, he was thrown out because he was not safe and sane and orthodox. Had his aberration gone in the other direction, had he defended child labor as ardently as he denounced it and denounced the minimum wage as ardently as he defended it, then he would have been quite secure in his post, for all of his cavorting in the newspapers, as Chancellor Day was at Syracuse. 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."

justaman 8y ago

I tend to disagree when someone speaks of the 1% as being money driven. After a certain point, you can buy basically anything and more money won't change that. Influence may be the next level for these people. 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.

ardy42 8y ago
> I tend to disagree when someone speaks of the 1% as being money driven. After a certain point, you can buy basically anything and more money won't change that. Influence may be the next level for these people. 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.
dredmorbius 8y ago
"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." - A. Smith, 1776
arcticbull 8y ago
You’re conflating two things that just happened to occur at the same time: elimination of unions and tightening of the labor market. Unions provide consistency for when the market sours, and I guarantee you those salaries and perks are going away as soon as the market for labor sours. Unions are the only way labor can push back against capital. It may not seem that way because times are good but they won’t aways be especially because: 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.