8 ms·

It’s Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses

52 points by RickJWagner 7y ago

RickJWagner 7y ago
Kind of surprising, an attack on Hollywood from The Atlantic. (They tend to be sympathetic to left-side politics.) I guess it's mostly just the picture that depicts Hollywood. The text is as expected.
- simonh 7y ago
  This is an article by a Democrat, in a left leaning publication, about things Democrats have got wrong politically recently and what they need to do to correct on to the right track. Seen that way, Illustrating it with a fallen Hollywood icon seems particularly thematically appropriate.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
seren 7y ago
As European, which only discovered aboug legacy preferences [0] recently, I am still not sure how to reconcile it with my belief that meritocracy was a cornerstone American value, and how this case is fundamentally different. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences
- smt88 7y ago
  Meritocracy is a spoken value, but it's never been a reality. I'm sure that's true in every country. In fact, upward mobility is much better in places like France and the UK[1]. Most people like me, who pay attention to history and current social issues, see the American dream and the myth of meritocracy as a way to keep the poor from seeing that the system is rigged against them and becoming restless. 1. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/americans-overestimate-social-mobility-in-their-country https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...
  - turk73 7y ago
    Despite the citation, I remain skeptical. How is it possible that countries with such high tax rates would have that level of upward mobility? Just when you're getting going, the rug is getting pulled out from under you. Not that it isn't the case in the states, too, mind you. Just to a slightly lesser degree. Meritocracy? GTFO! Companies do nothing but virtue signal these days.
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      “Just when you're getting going, the rug is getting pulled out from under you.” What do you mean with that?
      - lovich 7y ago
        He means you can't turn into a billionaire without paying into society so obviously no meritocracy. /s I don't actually want to put words into the other posters mouth. There is, however, a sizeable number of people in America who act like the only the that matters is the rules around getting rich and that having social services that allow anyone to take a gamble on entrepreneurship don't count as helping a meritocracy get in place
    - EliRivers 7y ago
      I understand that you once we consider US health insurance payments by employers and employees to be a tax (in many EU states, it is explicitly a tax), the US does actually have a comparably high tax rate to many EU countries with that significantly higher mobility. Which might suggest that the high tax rate isn't inherently linked to upward mobility, or at least that it's much more complicated; that taxing high-earners isn't inherently anti-mobility.
      - mises 7y ago
        Americans don't consider a large, essential expenditure to he a tax because it's not. Food and rent are not taxes either.
refurb 7y ago
For a guy that did little to make Chicago a better place during his 2 terms as mayor, he may want to spend more time on self-reflection rather than pointing his finger at others. https://theintercept.com/2019/05/20/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanuel-failures/ https://theintercept.com/2019/05/20/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanu...
- notfromhere 7y ago
  Eh, given the absolute shitshow he was handed, he didn't do an awful job. No mayor could fix all of Chicago's long-term structural problems in two terms.
aerodog 7y ago
Rahm Emanuel oversaw with Obama the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history. And now he's chiding elites.
- ChrisLomont 7y ago
  If by upward transfer, you mean elites gained the larger percentage, then also include that immediately previous to Obama the same elites saw the largest percentage losses under the Bush financial collapse. The gains as the economy improved restored some of those losses. Also under Obama the middle class gained significant wealth, through reduction in unemployment, restoring of stock values (i.e., pensions and 401ks), and wage increases (the largest year over year median wage increase on record was under the Obama admin).
  - chris_mc 7y ago
    >under Obama the middle class gained significant wealth https://www.huffpost.com/entry/middle-class-charts_n_6507506 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/middle-class-charts_n_6507506 Check out these charts and tell me you're not full of shit. Edit: it took me 30 seconds of googling to find this, next time research your position before you make a fool of yourself.
    - ChrisLomont 7y ago
      Your article is dated 2015. You're ignoring a decent amount of historical growth. Here's a pretty decent chart to let you know how good your news sources are https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exactly-are-we-reading/#iLightbox[gallery138]/0 https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exa... Here's historical wage growth reports from BLS. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/earnings-and-wages.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/earnings-and-wages.htm Here's 75 consecutive months of growth under Obama, a record: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/december-jobs-report/512366/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/decembe... Here's wage growth charts https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth Here's median householdincome from FRED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N Here's income data from Census, which you can download in Excel and analyze yourself. Again same conclusions. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... As you can see, all of these paint a much rosier picture than HuffPo. And places like BLS and FRED and Census are vastly more trustworthy for data, since you remove opinion piece writers trying to get eyeballs. >Edit: it took me 30 seconds of googling to find this, next time research your position before you make a fool of yourself. Indeed.
ChrisLomont 7y ago
>a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt, and a massive public effort to prop up auto executives who were building cars that weren’t selling. The bailouts were loans to banks, with stable banks forced to take them to avoid signalling, and the loans were paid off with interest to the benefit of the taxpayer. The toxic debt was debt the middle class treating their houses like casinos, taking on debt, then defaulting. If we hold the elites accountable, do we also hold those lying on loan forms (mostly middle class) accountable? The auto bailouts were designed to save middle class jobs, and these were a financial loss to taxpayers when these were defaulted. So here taxpayers did pay to keep middle class jobs. Note that taxpayers did not pay for either bailout, but the did pay or benefit on the gains or losses. The money was from the Fed, with the taxpayer on the hook for the deltas, not the initial amount. Actual accounting on the bailouts [1] Maybe the middle class should hold themselves accountable. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/ https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/
- mises 7y ago
  Taxpayers still pay for fed expenditures, albeit indirectly. Expansionary fiscal policy -> inflation, and inflation is probably the biggest single tax on any one.
  - notfromhere 7y ago
    Inflation is a macro benefit to taxpayers.
    - mises 7y ago
      Not necessarily. That has been the traditional economic opinion, but it has been challaneged as of late. Employers don't always raise wages, harder to save for retirement (unless you want to take higher risk in the stock market, your money shrinks in real value).
      - ChrisLomont 7y ago
        You don't need much risk in the stock market. Index funds have outpaced inflation since forever. It's easier to save for retirement since most people spend a lot of their life with fixed payment debt (mortgage, car, school, etc), and all of these become cheaper to service due to inflation. Thus the majority of the middle class has access to and uses debt, and has access to assets that outplace inflation. The counter to inflation is deflation, which has, due to deflationary spirals, been devastating to economies. There is not an inflationary spiral. This is why all central banks target small inflation.
dasKrokodil 7y ago
>But $1 trillion and 5,000 lives and 16 years later, the public had been told that those WMDs had not existed after all. 5,000? More like 500,000...
- docker_up 7y ago
  He only cares about the non-Iraqis, I guess.
strikelaserclaw 7y ago
America has an unbalanced system which rewards a small group exponentially (regardless of what that is), this is a feature built into the core of the system and the american psyche. Changing this requires a fundamental revolution to the system. Most of american life follows the Pareto principle on crack. E.g small number of people capture absurd amounts of value generated, small number of colleges create most of the elites... presidents, businessmen, scientists etc...
mindcrash 7y ago
American Elites should be held accountable? Oh yes, you got that right. But I'd like to change it around a bit. ALL elites in the world are responsible for the shit happening right now. And yes, WE WILL hold each and every one of you accountable for the futures you are currently destroying. No matter what your political beliefs are, or how "good" you pretend to be. All of you. Like winter, justice will be coming. I don't know when and I don't know how -- but it will be coming. COUNT ON IT.
shireboy 7y ago
Ignoring his terrible record and taking his argument at face value, I think he's right on some counts, but misses three important points: * "The Elite" includes not just bankers and B-list actresses. It also includes most of Hollywood and many athletes, many media pundits, the Clintons, himself, and other politicians who make millions in "speaking engagements", book deals, etc., get cush healthcare and retirement, advocate and legislate wasteful policy, then lecture us on how evil we are for wanting to keep our hard-earned money to invest, share and spend as we see fit. * Disagreeing with someone is not automatically racist or sexist. Sure, those evils exist today and should be confronted, but having nuanced, principled opposition to "Elite" talking points should not get you banned from social media or doxed. We throw around ___ist words and hyperbole way too much in an effort to bypass rational debate. * A person having money or status is not a problem in itself. When those people start looking down their noses at me (a middle class libertarian), insinuating I am ___ist because I don't like a healthcare program they made, and creating a culture where people are maligned for their beliefs, it does begin to raise concerns. I think much of the nationalism we see is a reaction to those points. He's correct in the broader problem, but shortsighted in his application.

52 points by RickJWagner 7y ago

Kind of surprising, an attack on Hollywood from The Atlantic. (They tend to be sympathetic to left-side politics.) I guess it's mostly just the picture that depicts Hollywood. The text is as expected.

simonh 7y ago
This is an article by a Democrat, in a left leaning publication, about things Democrats have got wrong politically recently and what they need to do to correct on to the right track. Seen that way, Illustrating it with a fallen Hollywood icon seems particularly thematically appropriate.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

seren 7y ago

As European, which only discovered aboug legacy preferences [0] recently, I am still not sure how to reconcile it with my belief that meritocracy was a cornerstone American value, and how this case is fundamentally different. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

smt88 7y ago
Meritocracy is a spoken value, but it's never been a reality. I'm sure that's true in every country. In fact, upward mobility is much better in places like France and the UK[1]. Most people like me, who pay attention to history and current social issues, see the American dream and the myth of meritocracy as a way to keep the poor from seeing that the system is rigged against them and becoming restless. 1. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/americans-overestimate-social-mobility-in-their-country https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...
- turk73 7y ago
  Despite the citation, I remain skeptical. How is it possible that countries with such high tax rates would have that level of upward mobility? Just when you're getting going, the rug is getting pulled out from under you. Not that it isn't the case in the states, too, mind you. Just to a slightly lesser degree. Meritocracy? GTFO! Companies do nothing but virtue signal these days.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    “Just when you're getting going, the rug is getting pulled out from under you.” What do you mean with that?
    - lovich 7y ago
      He means you can't turn into a billionaire without paying into society so obviously no meritocracy. /s I don't actually want to put words into the other posters mouth. There is, however, a sizeable number of people in America who act like the only the that matters is the rules around getting rich and that having social services that allow anyone to take a gamble on entrepreneurship don't count as helping a meritocracy get in place
  - EliRivers 7y ago
    I understand that you once we consider US health insurance payments by employers and employees to be a tax (in many EU states, it is explicitly a tax), the US does actually have a comparably high tax rate to many EU countries with that significantly higher mobility. Which might suggest that the high tax rate isn't inherently linked to upward mobility, or at least that it's much more complicated; that taxing high-earners isn't inherently anti-mobility.
    - mises 7y ago
      Americans don't consider a large, essential expenditure to he a tax because it's not. Food and rent are not taxes either.

refurb 7y ago

For a guy that did little to make Chicago a better place during his 2 terms as mayor, he may want to spend more time on self-reflection rather than pointing his finger at others. https://theintercept.com/2019/05/20/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanuel-failures/ https://theintercept.com/2019/05/20/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanu...

notfromhere 7y ago
Eh, given the absolute shitshow he was handed, he didn't do an awful job. No mayor could fix all of Chicago's long-term structural problems in two terms.

aerodog 7y ago

Rahm Emanuel oversaw with Obama the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history. And now he's chiding elites.

ChrisLomont 7y ago
If by upward transfer, you mean elites gained the larger percentage, then also include that immediately previous to Obama the same elites saw the largest percentage losses under the Bush financial collapse. The gains as the economy improved restored some of those losses. Also under Obama the middle class gained significant wealth, through reduction in unemployment, restoring of stock values (i.e., pensions and 401ks), and wage increases (the largest year over year median wage increase on record was under the Obama admin).
- chris_mc 7y ago
  >under Obama the middle class gained significant wealth https://www.huffpost.com/entry/middle-class-charts_n_6507506 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/middle-class-charts_n_6507506 Check out these charts and tell me you're not full of shit. Edit: it took me 30 seconds of googling to find this, next time research your position before you make a fool of yourself.
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    Your article is dated 2015. You're ignoring a decent amount of historical growth. Here's a pretty decent chart to let you know how good your news sources are https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exactly-are-we-reading/#iLightbox[gallery138]/0 https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exa... Here's historical wage growth reports from BLS. https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/earnings-and-wages.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/earnings-and-wages.htm Here's 75 consecutive months of growth under Obama, a record: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/december-jobs-report/512366/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/decembe... Here's wage growth charts https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth Here's median householdincome from FRED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N Here's income data from Census, which you can download in Excel and analyze yourself. Again same conclusions. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... As you can see, all of these paint a much rosier picture than HuffPo. And places like BLS and FRED and Census are vastly more trustworthy for data, since you remove opinion piece writers trying to get eyeballs. >Edit: it took me 30 seconds of googling to find this, next time research your position before you make a fool of yourself. Indeed.

ChrisLomont 7y ago

>a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt, and a massive public effort to prop up auto executives who were building cars that weren’t selling. The bailouts were loans to banks, with stable banks forced to take them to avoid signalling, and the loans were paid off with interest to the benefit of the taxpayer. The toxic debt was debt the middle class treating their houses like casinos, taking on debt, then defaulting. If we hold the elites accountable, do we also hold those lying on loan forms (mostly middle class) accountable? The auto bailouts were designed to save middle class jobs, and these were a financial loss to taxpayers when these were defaulted. So here taxpayers did pay to keep middle class jobs. Note that taxpayers did not pay for either bailout, but the did pay or benefit on the gains or losses. The money was from the Fed, with the taxpayer on the hook for the deltas, not the initial amount. Actual accounting on the bailouts [1] Maybe the middle class should hold themselves accountable. [1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/ https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

mises 7y ago
Taxpayers still pay for fed expenditures, albeit indirectly. Expansionary fiscal policy -> inflation, and inflation is probably the biggest single tax on any one.
- notfromhere 7y ago
  Inflation is a macro benefit to taxpayers.
  - mises 7y ago
    Not necessarily. That has been the traditional economic opinion, but it has been challaneged as of late. Employers don't always raise wages, harder to save for retirement (unless you want to take higher risk in the stock market, your money shrinks in real value).
    - ChrisLomont 7y ago
      You don't need much risk in the stock market. Index funds have outpaced inflation since forever. It's easier to save for retirement since most people spend a lot of their life with fixed payment debt (mortgage, car, school, etc), and all of these become cheaper to service due to inflation. Thus the majority of the middle class has access to and uses debt, and has access to assets that outplace inflation. The counter to inflation is deflation, which has, due to deflationary spirals, been devastating to economies. There is not an inflationary spiral. This is why all central banks target small inflation.

dasKrokodil 7y ago

>But $1 trillion and 5,000 lives and 16 years later, the public had been told that those WMDs had not existed after all. 5,000? More like 500,000...

docker_up 7y ago
He only cares about the non-Iraqis, I guess.

strikelaserclaw 7y ago

America has an unbalanced system which rewards a small group exponentially (regardless of what that is), this is a feature built into the core of the system and the american psyche. Changing this requires a fundamental revolution to the system. Most of american life follows the Pareto principle on crack. E.g small number of people capture absurd amounts of value generated, small number of colleges create most of the elites... presidents, businessmen, scientists etc...

mindcrash 7y ago

American Elites should be held accountable? Oh yes, you got that right. But I'd like to change it around a bit. ALL elites in the world are responsible for the shit happening right now. And yes, WE WILL hold each and every one of you accountable for the futures you are currently destroying. No matter what your political beliefs are, or how "good" you pretend to be. All of you. Like winter, justice will be coming. I don't know when and I don't know how -- but it will be coming. COUNT ON IT.

shireboy 7y ago

Ignoring his terrible record and taking his argument at face value, I think he's right on some counts, but misses three important points: * "The Elite" includes not just bankers and B-list actresses. It also includes most of Hollywood and many athletes, many media pundits, the Clintons, himself, and other politicians who make millions in "speaking engagements", book deals, etc., get cush healthcare and retirement, advocate and legislate wasteful policy, then lecture us on how evil we are for wanting to keep our hard-earned money to invest, share and spend as we see fit. * Disagreeing with someone is not automatically racist or sexist. Sure, those evils exist today and should be confronted, but having nuanced, principled opposition to "Elite" talking points should not get you banned from social media or doxed. We throw around ___ist words and hyperbole way too much in an effort to bypass rational debate. * A person having money or status is not a problem in itself. When those people start looking down their noses at me (a middle class libertarian), insinuating I am ___ist because I don't like a healthcare program they made, and creating a culture where people are maligned for their beliefs, it does begin to raise concerns. I think much of the nationalism we see is a reaction to those points. He's correct in the broader problem, but shortsighted in his application.