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The Real Class War

• jstewartmobile 7y ago
  If more of our pundits were as sharp as this kid, I'd have less anxiety over the future of our republic. Instead, we have Maddows and Kristols and Matthews and Schapiros--venal persons, who make camps in Siberia seem like maybe not such a bad idea.
• clairity 7y ago
  > "What is remarkable about today’s oligarchy is not its ruthlessness but its pettiness and purposelessness." yup. the 0.1% is really good at hoarding capital, but to what end? none, apparently. a startlingly coherent summary and critique of the many socioeconomic ills that we tend to discuss opportunistically here. we non-0.1-percenters need to hone in on undoing the systemic changes since the 70's that has led to this gross and aimless inequity.
  • mdorazio 7y ago
    Honestly, this is what gets me. Say what you will about the man, but few people complain that Elon Musk is a billionaire because clearly he's repeatedly investing his wealth in actually trying to advance humanity in meaningful ways. Similar story with Bill Gates and his foundation. But wtf is the average billionaire (of which there are thousands) or hundred-millionaire (of which there are tens of thousands) doing with their money aside from trying to acquire more money? You would think such people would be into building a positive legacy, but it's just not happening that way.
    • chii 7y ago
      Or they are just quietly building businesses, rather than make flashy headlines. You don't need to "advance humanity" - just creating a service or product to satisfy since other human's needs is a good enough goal.
      • TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
        Advancing humanity should be a requirement for access to that kind of money. It's a hugely privileged position to be in, and the idea that it comes with exactly zero responsibility to Rest of World is nonsensical.
        • kortilla 7y ago
          Why? The service and/or product provided by their business is providing significant value to society (lest they wouldn’t be collecting profit). Is the reward for creating a successful business really more responsibility to just give back instead of using it to create more business?
          • pjc50 7y ago
            > The service and/or product provided by their business is providing significant value to society (lest they wouldn’t be collecting profit). This is assuming the conclusion. They could just be collecting a monopoly rent or a land-rent or an IP rent; for example, when Martin Shkreli raised the price of insulin dramatically he wasn't "providing more value to society", he was extracting that value, potentially at the cost of human lives. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/shkrelis-former-company-is-now-losing-money-even-with-the-5000-price-hike/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/shkrelis-former-...
            • chii 7y ago
              There's a lot of confounding issues here in relation to the insulin problem: the fact that medical patents are poorly structured - insulin is hard to make, and making it via a biological mechanism means the "molecule" is slightly different, and so the FDA needs time and money to assess it. This creates a defacto monopoly, and thus, said monopoly can raise their prices. The fix isn't to force billionaires to give out their wealth for free - but instead to fix monopoly laws, as well as to stream line the way approvals can be made for generic molecules made via biological means (like the way generic drugs are today). In fact, an insulin factory _should_ be easy for a billionaire to fund and if the relevant regulations are better, there'd be more insulin sellers as there's profit to be made (seeing as Shkreli has raised the price).
    • hapless 7y ago
      Bill Gates also used his wealth to advance the interests of one of the country's most notorious sex traffickers. There's no reason for _anyone_ to have that much money, or individual influence over public policy.
    • dade_ 7y ago
      Those that inherit it, ruthlessly protect it or try to. After all, they have no idea how to create wealth or even manage it. They have a family office for that: https://qz.com/1412024/how-to-invest-like-a-billionaire-tips-from-family-offices/ https://qz.com/1412024/how-to-invest-like-a-billionaire-tips...
• tranced 7y ago
  Recently, I have a friend group who all graduated from Stanford, with relatively upper middle class(but not suburb/NY upper middle class) roots, and you might even describe as "woke" who belonged to a fb messenger group called "Anti Asian Asian Group". I felt like I had to call them out on it. Though they made the group as a play on "anti social social club" and to counter conservative sentiments their upper class counterparts might've had, I too thought it might've just been punching down on working/middle class Asians who had traditional values and almost can't help but have those values. I guess that's the real class war; when people punch down on those who almost don't have the opportunity to decide who to become. Not that people completely lack agency in this country but I think a lot of people forget how much your environment can shape individuals and their values.
  • neonate 7y ago
    > those who almost don't have the opportunity to decide who to become That's an interesting phrase. Can you say what you mean by it?
    • barry-cotter 7y ago
      It’s a reference to the sociological concept of marked versus unmarked identities. If you think of an American you probably think first of a white man of Christian heritage. If you think of a Chinese person you picture someone of Han ethnicity, not Miao or Manchu. If you think of a nurse you picture a woman. All of the people who fit that identity but are different from the unmarked version are marked by their difference from the unmarked version that springs to mind unbidden when the concept is named.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  • knolax 7y ago
    What a bizarre world these people live in where identity is both arbitrary and inescapable.
• kingkawn 7y ago
  I disagree that the working class is not going to radicalize itself. They too are out here on the internet, talking to each other and culturally evolving at an unprecedented rate, like everyone else. For the first time they have the power to publish and think in public uncoupled from professional barrier. Better believe it’s being used, and that they will assert their awareness.
  • petermcneeley 7y ago
    That window might be closing with the current attempts to censor the internet.
  • larnmar 7y ago
    The election of Donald Trump could be seen as the result of the radicalisation of the working class.
    • Pigo 7y ago
      I'm sure a lot of people agree with you, but I still see putting a war-hawk like Hillary in the oval office as a radical concept.
    • akhilcacharya 7y ago
      It's not the working class, it's exclusively the white working class.
    • aphextim 7y ago
      I think it's more likely due to the echo chamber of the media/pollsters and big cities who didn't count of all the 'fly over' areas actually coming together. I remember working a temp job at a polling call center and although I was just doing grunt work of calling people, it was clearly obvious they were doing polls to hear what they wanted. There was only 1 survey out of maybe 200 that was what I would consider unbiased and didn't have any leading questions or pre-picked answers. You would screen out people in the beginning of the survey that were obviously not interested in whoever candidate you were calling in regards to, and more often than not the survey itself would have leading questions to get the answers they want so they can take the results and be like, "See our Candidate is winning!!!" - yet they only called people and did the survey with those who were already willing to vote for said candidate. Polls are literally circle jerking people who were voting democrat and those regarding republican candidate were always negative. It also could be that the particular call center I was working out of only had contracts with Democratic parties/PACS but from my time there it was clear that polls are a racket.
• tristram_shandy 7y ago
  Amusing - it's immediately obvious that Harvard's political philosophy degrees, or at least Julius Krein's, seem to be given out based on word count and not much to do with political philosophy. It's regrettable to see an Ivy League education wasted on a man that would go on to declare himself an alt-right nationalist, and start his own 'zine to provide his readership his own shallow intellectual veneer over their bigotry. This thin critique of modern capital is a well-worn trope by the far-right, appropriating and misusing class analysis is not a new trick. The amusement is immediate: this blowhard should learn the definition of working class, as it would be taught in any political science program, or even the first paragraph of Wikipedia: the working class is everyone who works through labour for subsistence. Specifically, the working class is not able to survive without working, and cannot subsist through their ownership of capital property and the profits thereof. You are working class, your manager is working class, his manager is working class, and often the CEO of smaller companies is working class. Of course, Krein has no real class analysis, as always: these ghouls simply wish to divide the working class by the color of their collars and their skin, their gender and their sexuality, their political orientation and their creed, and convince the engineer, the mechanic, and the farmer that they are at war with each other and occupy different classes and in doing so, prevent them from ever realizing class consciousness.
  • anigbrowl 7y ago
    While Krein used to support Trump, he decisively abandoned him after Charlottesville and calling him alt-right now doesn't seem founded in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein To be frank, I think your sort of self-satisfied academic left rhetoric is a large part of the problem, and so you are so in love with it that you've fundamentally misunderstood the writer's argument, which is a great deal closer to your position than you seem to realize.
    • tristram_shandy 7y ago
      Maybe you should have a little more faith in the last two hundred years of our intellectual reasoning than in the Strasserism that Krein is attempting to hypnotize us into with his relatively boring screed crying that seems to cry that billionaires should give more money to the millionaires, or something, and those Marxists got it wrong because uh... nevermind, he just namedrops and hopes you'll believe he read Marx or has some kind of intellectual authority. He obviously has not. Maybe instead of going to class he was reading pseudo-intellectual alt-right gibberish. People like Krein present you some of the failures of capitalism, of which there are legion, but instead of faulting the system itself, they handwave about neoliberalism and the elite (they'll tell you they really mean you know who when they're drunk) -- they never have a sincere analysis of class. He's purposefully vague about what he actually wants for a reason, and dances around the truth. This kind of content is posted to HN explicitly to recruit engineers and other STEM types (let's be real here, younger mostly white tech workers) who have seen the firsthand the contradictions of late capitalism, but who won't have the same academic left background knowledge or ideological maturity to see how thin Krein's critique truly is -- giving people a kernel of truth gets them to swallow the bigger lie, especially if it's dressed up with footnotes, has a high word count, and sounds smart.
• anigbrowl 7y ago
  Theorists of capitalism long argued that it and it alone could efficiently distribute resources across an economy (though not, oddly, within a firm). This might be true in an economy whose rules about contrantracts, commerce, and property relations were fixed and predictable, but most economic simulations overlook or sidestep the fact that the most powerful economic incumbents can and do adjust the legal conditions to maximize their own gain.
  • Synaesthesia 7y ago
    Adam Smith had recognised that in “Wealth of Nations”. He goes on to conclude that “the mercantile system” allows the “merchants and manufacturers” to pervert legislation towards their “sole end and purpose” – production for profit – and away from the legitimate “sole end and purpose” of production – to satisfy human needs. He also points out that the interests of these manufacturers, have been “peculiarly attended to” by the government.
  • kiterunner2346 7y ago
    Capitalism can't do that without redistribution in the form of severe taxation of the wealthy. That's why we need to revive estate taxes and inheritance taxes: in their absence, great dynasties of incredible wealth are formed and then sit idle for decades or even centuries, protecting themselves in trust fund fortresses to no particular end than their own existence.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• pjc50 7y ago
  Well this pulls no punches: > Conservative donor gatherings are somehow even more pathetic. Most of the attendees are there only because they are not smart enough to recognize that the Democratic Party offers a far more effective reputation laundering service. The rest are probably too senile to know where they are at all. There is often a special irony to these events: an uninspiring ideologue is usually on hand to repeat a decades-old speech decrying Communism—recounting the horrors experienced in countries ruled by a self-dealing, incompetent nomen­klatura and marked by a decaying industrial base, crumbling infrastructure, poor education system, a demoralized populace, low confi­dence in public institutions, falling life expectancy, repeated foreign policy failures, a vast and arbitrary carceral system, constant surveillance, and even massive power outages in major cities. Imagine that.
  • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    The last several screenfuls all all a very bitter rant. I find it hard to take seriously something written like this.
    • isthispermanent 7y ago
      It does get a little screechy during the last 500-1000 words. First section is on point though.
• iddan 7y ago
  Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hmr8YLNzoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hmr8YLNzoQ
• roenxi 7y ago
  What a fantastic article; this might be the high point for my 2019 Hacker News reading. What clarity of vision. It is remarkable reflecting after an article like that on the complete inability of the US political system to organise itself to reward work done rather than access to the super-elite social circles. I'd love to know if this Julius fellow has a take on what mechanisms the 0.1% are using to drive the growing wage gap. I already have an opinion; I just think if he has one it will be more insightful.
  • kortilla 7y ago
    > political system to organise itself to reward work done How do you decide which work is valuable and which work isn’t?
    • BuckRogers 7y ago
      > How do you decide which work is valuable and which work isn’t? By viewing the profits generated. As profits are nothing more than unpaid wages.
      • _carl_jung 7y ago
        I invent (at the cost of $500) a programming tool that improves your output by 50%. This enables you to earn $5000 more per year than previously. You purchase that software for $1000, providing me a profit of $500. Who's wages are unpaid?
        • theohofpleasure 7y ago
          It's a company which makes the profit. If you started a company and sold the tool for $500 and the company paid you $500 then there is no more profit for the company. If the company paid you $250, only then can they claim to have made $250 profit. Hence, profits are nothing more than unpaid wages.
          • _carl_jung 7y ago
• neonate 7y ago
  I read it, though not closely, and am still unclear what is the "real class war". The educated-but-alienated professional elite against the oligarchs? I'm just guessing. Also, he kind of loses it in the final paragraphs, which weakened my impression of the rest.
  • nl 7y ago
    >I read it, though not closely, and am still unclear what is the "real class war" The real class war is between the 0.1 percent and (at most) the 10 percent—or, more precisely, between elites primarily dependent on capital gains and those primarily dependent on profes­sional labor. It's pretty clearly defined. It's the group that makes their money primarily from investment returns vs those who make their money primarily from wages/salaries/payments for skills.
    • neonate 7y ago
      Ok, so I guessed right. Thanks, I missed that bit.
    • raxxorrax 7y ago
      That would bring us back to the proletariat again. Although today these workers do indeed have production capital, which is expressed through their knowledge and education in many cases.
    • Nasrudith 7y ago
      I would say that capital gains and professional are more variables than hard coded aspects as the lines may be drawn differently in a context. With an actual warrior elite vs merchantdom you can subsitute "spoils" vs "profits". Both blocs depend upon both skill and capital in that case and find themselves in tension. Feudal societies distrust merchants and often consider them beneath even peasantry - but the merchants in turn may force respect and have undeniable advantages for funding the warrior elites. Similarly take the Antebellum US with the Southern Slaveholder "Aristocrats" vs the Industrialists. Both are capital dependent and rely upon lower classes although the later are far more skill demanding than the previous who make a virtue of idleness to those who can afford it. Even Soviets and other "nominal Communists" totalitarians who furiously insist that they aren't fascists due to the least relevant distinctions have similar factional elite branches despite their capital being social.
• TomMckenny 7y ago
  It makes sense that the top 10% to 2% become more active as blame and anger are re-routed toward them. For example, many people think the "elite" are the educated but not necessarily the wealthy. So for many, adjunct faculty are called "elites" while the Koch brothers are not. Likewise, discussions of wealth inequality are becoming conflated with income inequality. Yet the professional class has only marginal voting power and comparatively little to contribute to political funding, so it's not surprising that the astute ones are concerned.
  • barry-cotter 7y ago
    > Yet the professional class has only marginal voting power and comparatively little to contribute to political funding, so it's not surprising that the astute ones are concerned. Likelihood of voting is highly correlated with education. I wouldn’t be surprised if the top ten percent are three or four times more likely to vote than the bottom decile. Money is also far less important in politics than many think. If money won elections Michael Bloomberg would have been president long ago, Eric Cantor would still be a Congressman, rather than having been beaten by Dave Brat[1]. Joe Crowley would still be a Congressman rather than having been beaten by AOC[2]. > Add up all US spending on candidates, PACs, lobbying, think tanks, and advocacy organizations – liberal and conservative combined – and we’re still $2 billion short of what we spend on almonds each year. In fact, we’re still less than Elon Musk’s personal fortune; Musk could personally fund the entire US political ecosystem on both sides for a whole two-year election cycle. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brat In his challenge of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for the Republican nomination, Brat was outspent by Cantor 40 to 1: Cantor spent over $5 million, while Brat raised $200,000 and did not spend all of it. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez She was outspent by a margin of 18 to 1 ($1.5 million to $83,000)
    • kaibee 7y ago
      I think this is a somewhat recent (6-7~ years ish?) development. In the early 2000's, money was much more important than it is now.
• tjpnz 7y ago
  >Since at least 2016, the divide between the “working class” and the “elite” has been considered a defining issue in American (and Western) politics. I watch a bit of US news (CNN et cetera) when travelling and almost never hear it defined in those terms. Based on what I've seen the debate is almost entirely framed in terms of the "middle class" and the elites.
  • frockington1 7y ago
    In America the middle class defines almost everybody. Nobody want to be "upper class" because then you'll be the target of envy, and nobody wants to be "lower class" because of insecurity. For Americans, the phrase "upper middle class" means "Upper class but not multi million house"
  • mrguyorama 7y ago
    Always remember that here in American, nobody is poor, they are merely a Temporarily embarrassed millionaire
• singularity2001 7y ago
  What is often forgotten is the hyperdeflation of technology. All your gadges would be worth many millions in pre 2000 dollars. Your car is probably better in many ways than a million dollar car from 1980.
  • maxerickson 7y ago
    The value attained by owning a car hasn't changed all that much. They are clearly safer and more convenient, but cars in 1980 made it from A to B most of the time too.
    • helen___keller 7y ago
      If anything, the value of a car is lower than ever in history because decades of sprawl (and recently ride-sharing apps) have contributed to unprecedented traffic nearly everywhere
  • polytely 7y ago
    Everything is way more accessible than pre-2000's, but I would argue that the overall quality of the user-experience is probably worse. If you buy a TV today, you get amazing image quality, but you also have to live with the fact that the TV spies on you and that the software it runs on will discontinue in 5 years. (this of course doesn't matter because it's been designed to break before that point). I would gladly take an old CRT over a modern smart-tv.
    • frockington1 7y ago
      Nothing is stopping you from doing that. That's the beauty of capitalism, buy whatever tv you want. And I'll sit with my 57 inch 4k tv and stream Star Wars. Capitalism allows you to allocate your resources however you want, it's great
    • ryan93 7y ago
      No you wouldn’t take CRT.
    • 7y ago
• dlkf 7y ago
  Most places with high per-capita GDP (Canada, Scandinavia, England, Germany etc) have found that they can make meaningful, consistent, incremental progress on a lot of the problems Krein is trying to address through introducing a public system in sectors like healthcare, education, and child care - probably literally the only tack Krein would never agree to. The problem isn't "billionaires" or "capitalism." I would probably rather billionaires lock up their money in Vangaurd stock - where its allocation is at least beholden to market forces - than spent it on misguided vanity projects. The problem is that market failure is a real thing. Every other country on the planet seems to have realized this.
  • frockington1 7y ago
    I would rather live in a country where an individual can save and invest to become a billionaire. Look at America vs Canada, Scandinavia, England, and Germany the last decade. Where is the growth and innovation in those countries? Why do brilliant people flock to America to start their start up? I want to live in a country with opportunity, not one of equality. Thankfully with an American or EU passport you can choose where you want to live with relative ease.
    • rustyboy 7y ago
      That's a false dichotomy. There is no reason that you can't have the opportunity to be a billionaire, while making sure that no one goes homeless or dies from a preventable disease. People love to point to FANNG but the reality is America did this for the boomers, union membership was over 30% and we still had super wealthy people. CEO to average employee income was around 80:1, now it's closer to 250:1. When 3 people own 50% of all wealth in America (1) it's not insane to say that we have a serious problem. I don't want everyone in America guaranteed a six figure salary but come on there's got to be a better balance. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-finds/#411bc28f3cf8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-ric...
      • frockington1 7y ago
• arkh 7y ago
  > Indeed the conspicuous embrace of “elite values” by journalists and academics is often little more than an aspi­rational attempt to remain connected to an economically distant elite—just as educated millennials’ conspicuous consumption of “ex­periences” often serves as a necessary distraction from the grim reality that most will never be able to own a home. > An entire “creative class” ideology was constructed to explain this phenomenon, but its intensity simply concealed the desperation of second-tier elites to assuage their status anxiety. The author doesn't pull any punch sent the bourgeoisie way.
  • Daishiman 7y ago
    It's refreshing really.
    • WilliamEdward 7y ago
      Agreed. Although, on a website made by a company that funds the bourgeoisie, i'd imagine most people here are frustrated.
      • sangnoir 7y ago
        > Although, on a website made by a company that funds the bourgeoisie ...in the hope that their venture,by some miracle, is the winning ticket to join the elite - usually by being "blessed" by an elite via a 6- or (preferbly) 9-figure acquisition
• HashThis 7y ago
  The US has healthy capitalism, and a separate theft by crony capitalism. GDP growth is stolen away from workers to investors. Crony capitalism has completely spread across the pharma industry, medical, banking, and so much more. US congress men and women sell out on the key areas where crony capitalists need their laws changed.
• jajag 7y ago
  Related article in the same issue: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/americas-drift-toward-feudalism/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/americas-drift-to...
• paulus_magnus2 7y ago
  The resentment of big capital is not entirely without a reason. Most money right now is "passively" deployed into pre-existing securities. This means it's used to extract existing value by market cornering / scarcity generation / rent seeking / monopolies / oliglopolies. On the other side there is new value / securities creation. This is what people like Elon Musk are doing. He took circa $50mln of his own money, added a couple of billion from investors. Added 1000 highly skilled jobs and result is $50bn company. Extractive capital alocation is offering much easier profits, but jobs working it are mostly the "bullshit" type. As a democracy we have control of the laws, we can "nudge" the big capital away from rent seeking into new value creation by changing the tax code.
  • hikarudo 7y ago
    How exactly does money "passively" deployed into pre-existing securities become "extractive"? If I invest some money in a passive index fund, what does that have to do with market cornering / scarcity generation / etc? What are "non-extractive" ways of investing money, aside from starting new companies?
    • helen___keller 7y ago
      Passive investments like index funds allow you to buy some ownership of a productive investment vehicle (public companies usually, or rental properties through REITs), an in exchange you collect rent on that vehicle in proportion to earnings and your share of ownership, for all eternity. It's extractive in that you are literally bidding up ownership of a rent-seeking vehicle, rather than creating any new value at all. In theory you might say bidding up asset values creates something like "potential energy" for productive investment: if an entrepreneur (or venture capitalist to-be) wants to liquidate stock to use as capital for starting a new company, inflated asset values would then contribute to a larger pool of capital for that entrepreneur. Still, I argue that's a stretch. The existence of extractive investment vehicles are the main motivation for capital to invest in new value, yet their continued existence for all eternity leads to an entrenchment of wealth that may threaten the entire system. This is what Marx is all about (although he seems to presuppose a revolution is the end result, rather than say a wealth tax like Bernie / Liz would promote).
• simonh 7y ago
  This is all driven by globalisation, and don't get me wrong I'm a globalist, but this is just a fact. First manual labour in manufacturing was outsourced abroad, then higher tier tech jobs in software and product engineering. Now big firms from former third world countries are muscling in on markets at every level of the economy, creating competition at every level of business. You can't add hundreds of millions of Chinese people to the global work force, now at every level of the global economy, without affecting the market for that labour. I said I'm a globalist, yes I am. My wife is Chinese, I've been going there regularly since 2001. When I first went private car ownership was near unheard of. It's a different country now, near-empty streets with a few donkey drawn carts are now choked with commuter traffic. The result has been a pause in income growth in the western world. We've benefited from cheap imported goods, but lost out in domestic growth. The upside is that hundreds of millions of people, not just in China but in plenty of other places too, have been elevated out of poverty. I've seen that for myself and it's done an incalculable amount of good, it's just that all the benefits haven't been evenly distributed. Could we in the west have benefited more if we'd had less globalisation? I really don't know. We have benefited I think, and we've had opportunities to invest and sell into those markets we wouldn't have otherwise had. I don't know, it's hard to evaluate what could have been as it's such a radically different shape for the world economy. Maybe we'd have ended up even worse off, who knows? But we might have been better off, I can't deny it. For the future, we can already see incomes in China have shot up. Low level manufacturing jobs are moving out of China, because Chinese labourers have more skills now and can command high enough wages in more upmarket jobs that they don't need the low end work any more. I suspect that's why the employment rate in the US and elsewhere, at the bottom end of the economy, is picking up. I hope that continues, and in future growth will be more balanced across the economic and wage spectrum.
  • danaris 7y ago
    > The result has been a pause in income growth in the western world. We've benefited from cheap imported goods, but lost out in domestic growth. Except that's not true. There's been growth; it's just all gone to the very wealthy in the West.
    • 7y ago
• helen___keller 7y ago
  A cogent and well-written article. My only possible contributions are the following: 1. The author perhaps underestimates the bottom 90%, who are written off as politically irrelevant (in terms of real power) near the start of the article. I do think there's a good reason for this, but we are only one true crisis away from that changing. For example, suppose India and Pakistan only were to have a nuclear engagement and the outcome was a small global "winter" for a few years from the dust and rubble kicked into the atmosphere. When crops and supply chains fail and famine kicks in, who is going hungry? That's about the point that true populist revolts happen. 2. The author discusses at length the phenomenon of "the 10%" elites who align themselves (in ideology) with the working class, perhaps blinded by not realizing that they are actually trying to support their own interests. But I think some underestimate how soon the developers and programmers of the world will crater from "elite 10%/5%/1%" to something resembling median salary. This is my own opinion, but it's clear to me that the tech industry (and it's associated venture capital scene) are in a state of irrational exuberance as the capitalist class is convinced that tech startups (or the word "tech" attached to non-tech startups) offers incredibly high ROI. This paradigm will end as easy opportunities and low hanging fruit dry. Maybe we're already there, but nobody has acknowledged it yet. When this happens (and is widely recognized), venture capital will flee to safer vehicles. Meanwhile, the big tech of the world will consolidate and cut costs to grow shareholder value. When this happens, we will all stop hopping jobs for 30% pay raises and instead we will start hopping jobs (post-layoff) for 30% pay cuts. And this will continue for decades.
  • isthispermanent 7y ago
    > But I think some underestimate how soon the developers and programmers of the world will crater from "elite 10%/5%/1%" to something resembling median salary. I generally agree with this. I think for the traditional programmer building apps and apis this begins to happen in 5-10 years. We'll essentially become mechanics. However, there is always the next front of technology that you can surf. For millennia those on the forefront of technological progress have done well relative to the rest of people. This was due to having skills that were relatively rare, access to equipment that was uncommon or both. Blacksmiths, photographers, car mechanics, stock traders, etc. Programming in certain verticals will be added to that list. But imo there is good news. Being able to create or deploy new technology in ways that creates or protects wealth will always be in demand. And the thing about programming is you are first-and-foremost a problem-solver. Couple that with technical math-based skills and you can bring immense value to most organizations. If you are a "programmer"--I really don't like that term, but whatever. My advice would be to be trained in multiple disciplines across multiple verticals. Know how to look at a business or social problem and deduce it to its fundamental inputs/outputs so that you can then construct a solution that turns those inputs/outputs into the desired result. Hand-wavy, but that really is the key to being valuable. Solve real problems.
• tvanantwerp 7y ago
  I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­quired for, wielding political power. I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything. Protests in DC are like rain; bring an umbrella, but no need to pay it much attention because it will blow over in no time. It's always insiders who make a career out of policy that ultimately shape it. Hill staff, think tank wonks, professional bureaucrats, etc--it's that professional Washingtonian class that really shapes the government's policy, because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day.
  • jbattle 7y ago
    > because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day Because someone is motivated enough to pay them every day to do that work
  • a3n 7y ago
    > because they are the ones that show up to do that work every day As I used to say back when I was a programmer, often in the context of fads like "quality is free," nothing gets done unless you do that thing on purpose.
  • viburnum 7y ago
    Gay people can get married in America, which was completely unthinkable a generation ago. 100% due to activists, many who risked their lives to make it happen.
    • ameister14 7y ago
      Activists, yes - but not really through marching. Money, judicial challenges and coordinated political action to promote marriage equality as a goal were the key. The debate was reframed, messaging was crafted carefully and the groups organizing and paying for it all were extremely organized and cohesive. The Proteus fund and specifically the CMC did a heck of a lot here.
• Wh1skey 7y ago
  The story of Rome’s fall is both complicated and relatively straightforward yet it eerily resembles America: The state became too big and chaotic; the influence of money and private interests corrupted public institutions; and social and economic inequalities became so large that citizens lost faith in the system altogether and gradually fell into the arms of tyrants and demagogues. If all of that sounds familiar, well, that’s because the parallels to our current political moment are striking. Edward Watts, a historian at the University of California San Diego, has just published a new book titled Mortal Republic that carefully lays out what went wrong in ancient Rome — and how the lessons of its decline might help save fledgling republics like the United States today.
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Not to mention they were all poisoned by lead, using it for sweeteners, pipes, and for their chalices and cups.
    • hnuser77 7y ago
      One could consider Americans poisoned by something, considering that 40% of the American population is obese (not just overweight) and sperm count has declined 50% in developed countries over the past few decades.
      • rapnie 7y ago
        Maybe poisoned by greed, the main ingredient of unbridled capitalism?
        • refurb 7y ago
          Are you arguing communist and socialist systems don’t have greed?
          • rapnie 7y ago
            They sure do, but they do not preach 'greed is good', so not as main ingredient I guess.
• excursionist 7y ago
  > But the Valley has never been particularly fertile for the salaried professionals and “engineers” hired by these companies, who even now generally make less than their counterparts on Wall Street or in Big Law. Kindergarten playroom office spaces and other exag­gerated perks often serve to distract employees from this harsh reali­ty. lol
  • oneepic 7y ago
    That line seems pretty dramatic, to say the least. Quite a bit of narrativizing is being done here.
  • Infinitesimus 7y ago
    It's always a bit funny and sad when statements like these happen. Most people seem to have _no_ idea how much money Engineers/Product Managers can make at certain companies.
    • yifanl 7y ago
      Seems like the author knows exactly how much they can make, he states that the median income is 81k/yr. Now you could argue that that's deliberately missing the long tail nature of this, but if anything, the theme of outliers of the industry just reinforces the point.
      • ahaferburg 7y ago
        That was the median for the entire US, not just the valley.
  • codingslave 7y ago
    How many SWEs make more than 350k? Probably less then 30k
• xwowsersx 7y ago
  > But it is precisely for these reasons that the working class is unlikely to be decisive in shaping politics for the foreseeable future. However one defines the working class, it has scarcely any political agency in the current system and no apparent means for acquiring any. At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. What's the basis for this sweeping claim?
  • helen___keller 7y ago
    While I don't really agree with the author on this point, I think the basis of the claim is implied to be the election of Trump. Trump prevailing in the primary (and the general even) could be seen as a referendum of the working class on establishment politics. And yet, what has changed? Trump hasn't brought back American industry as promised, nor has he made a trillion dollars infrastructure package as promised. He has succeeded in a tax plan (approved by establishment Republicans in the Senate), supreme Court picks (approved), etc. The authors argument would be that this illustrates that picking the occasional anti establishment candidate doesn't uproot necessary structural change which happens across a large number of both elected and nonelected organizations, and well-connected elites are implied to be the only ones in a position to affect such change.
    • xwowsersx 7y ago
      I hear you, but that's an argument that the person that the "working class" voted in has been ineffectual in bringing about the change they are looking for (debatable). That's not an argument that they are not decisive in shaping politics. If electing Trump is a referendum on "the elite" then his election proves the opposite, no?
      • helen___keller 7y ago
        I think I might agree with the author in a more limited context, that on an institution by institution basis there is a fair amount of power that is outside the reach of voting and hence outside the influence of the working class. An example here is the federal reserve. Interest rate decisions and quantitative easing decisions are vastly influential, and famously independent of the president. I don't subscribe to any conspiracy theories that the federal reserve is being controlled by the rich. However, I think there's no doubt that both the individuals at the top of the fed, and their professional circles, have no overlap with the working class, and in the long run this shows. For example, when the fed did their last interest rate increase near the end of 2018, the stock market essentially revolted, with a "huge" correction (to about august 2017 values). The federal reserve acquiesced to pressure and proceeded to take a much more dovish tone, following with 3 rate cuts the next year. There's another story there about a trade war, low inflation, and sustaining an expansion. But if you take a look at a long term graph of interest rates over time from 1980 to present, you see a trend of going down, down, down. It just so happens that interest rates going down also inflates asset values. I don't think it's a coincidence that the asset-owning class that populates the federal reserve often makes decision that benefit those who own assets.
• sodafountan 7y ago
  Virtually every problem listed in this article is solved if bitcoin continues its historic rise - and yet you mention bitcoin on hacker news and you're down-voted to oblivion, it really is unbelievable. The "Elites" are getting richer because capital is being used to accumulate more capital through dividends on stocks and revenue producing assets. The only reason money is being funneled into these assets is because they have the best return on investment, period. Money goes where it can get the best return. The script gets flipped if that asset is a hard, un-inflatable asset like bitcoin with a built in scarcity mechanism. Bitcoin doesn't have a dividend, if you're part of the 0.1 percent you can buy a ton of it, but in order to realize any gains you have to sell it and if you can't replenish it you'll have to go back to work to earn more. Of course all of that is in theory, a lot of the truly rich people in this world have income producing businesses and other assets aside from stocks but you could argue that that's a lot better than money simply producing more money. The world desperately needs bitcoin to succeed.
  • jacobush 7y ago
    Do you really think the elite would accept any threat to the status quo without a fight? Besides, even if you were to somehow succeed, the scarcity of bitcoin would just be the new elite. Bitcoin ownership is already incredibly concentrated. Meet your new boss, same as old boss.
    • sodafountan 7y ago
      You're always going to have people in life who have more than other people, life is inherently unfair, there's always going to be a 1%. You can put measures in place to ensure that the gap doesn't widen too greatly, but that's a different discussion. It's true that bitcoin creates a disparity in ownership, but you can't actually realize any gain unless you sell what you have. If I'm accumulating and holding bitcoin, that's good for me and everyone else who's accumulating and holding bitcoin because it keeps the price up. If I sell bitcoin at a profit, that's good for me but bad for most other people, but I also lose my position and the price goes down to allow others to enter into the market. There's no incentive to sell with dividend producing stocks and real-estate because they produce money, if you're strictly speaking about money begetting more money then that's the problem. The middle class can gain a strong foothold in bitcoin in its nascencey, the elites aren't willing to give up their income producing assets but if bitcoin continues to multiply by 5-10X every four years like many expect it to then that gives the middle class incredible leverage to move up the economic hierarchy like we've never seen before. I actually think this is how the next decade will play out, bitcoin will continue its historic rise and we'll see economic changes like we've never seen before. Bitcoin is going to restructure the way the economy works over the next decade or two. Millennials will be able to pay off their loans, they'll be able to buy houses and many will become the new "Elite" until something else comes along.
• kiterunner2346 7y ago
  Could someone write a tl;dr for this article so I can understand his point(s)?
  • lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The gap between the haves and have nots that will cause problems is between 0.1% and 90% to 99.9%, rather than the gap between 10% and 90%. I think. And there is a lot of misallocation of resources as people try to hold onto their percentile, or spend an inordinate amount of resources trying to climb to the next one. I think.
• raldi 7y ago
  Clickbait antidote: The real class war is between the 0.1 percent and (at most) the 10 percent—or, more precisely, between elites primarily dependent on capital gains and those primarily dependent on profes­sional labor.
  • buboard 7y ago
    I d say take the bait because the article is brilliant
• tristor 7y ago
  This article is interesting, partly due to the blatant political biases which are present but unrevealed, and partly due to the attempt to address those biases in closing segments. This line in particular was telling "the state—the only way to address the most important issues of the present". The author of this piece is a left-wing statist, and they interpret all of the data they reference through this lens. That does not mean that their conclusions are wrong in whole, as there's definitely some intriguing things in this article. Their ending statements are relatively on-point and don't align with any particular political leaning. A good read, but unfortunately didn't tell me anything I didn't already know just from watching the news and paying attention. Perhaps the most disappointing fact is that the author hinted at but failed to make the correct mental leap. This change in our society and economy is largely a result of globalism. Those in the top elites were able to improve their personal margins at the expense of the rest of the population by moving both production and knowledge work outside the bounds of the US, and in so doing increase the divide. The interaction of state-backed industrial interests in other countries and the anointing of new billionaires at their behest is not to be overlooked either. I don't see any immediate solutions, as anything direct action will result in chaos, and anything taken slowly will not produce a positive effect in my lifetime. Like many other people in the professional class, my focus is on my own self-reliance and ensuring that I am not beholden to society any more than I must.
  • hnuser77 7y ago
    The state is the entity that signed all the free trade treaties in the first place — that enabled the outsourcing and let the production be moved out of the country — and still has the power to set tariffs and industrial policy. So the author's argument is that the only way to fix these problems is through state power.
  • Miner49er 7y ago
    > The author of this piece is a left-wing statist How familiar are you with the author's work? I'm not familiar with it, but Wikipedia says they are a conservative and former Trump supporter. Most people seem to consider American Affairs a conservative journal, and the author is its editor.
• paulsutter 7y ago
  The top 0.1% consists mostly of top 1% folks having a windfall, and the top 1% is mostly top 10% folks having some good years. These aren’t really separate and distinct classes of people as is popularly imagined > The performance gap between the top 1 or 0.1 percent versus the top 10 percent is actually larger than the gap between those right at 10 percent and any part of the bottom 90 percent.
  • helen___keller 7y ago
    > The top 0.1% consists mostly of top 1% folks having a windfall, and the top 1% is mostly top 10% folks having some good years. These aren’t really separate and distinct classes of people as is popularly imagined They aren't "separate" in that we're not literally a feudal society. Sure, I can agree that an ordinary engineer has a chance of making it big on stock options and becoming a multi millionaire. But that's not common. It's like winning the lottery. You can't plan to join a startup that will make you a millionaire, especially if you aren't a software engineer or aren't living in silicon valley. And for everyone else, the gap between the 0.1% and the 1% and the 10% is widening.
    • bzbarsky 7y ago
      The key thing here is that most of these measures are measuring income, not wealth. The graphs in the article definitely show income. And what that means is that "top 0.1%" or "top 0.001%" is not the same group year to year. Especially given the way capital income is handled: in the year when you sell a bunch of stock, or sell a house, or whatever, you suddenly move much higher in the income distribution, but just for that one year. To make this concrete, let's look at the "top 1%" of the population in the sense that their income is consistently in the top 1% of incomes (let's ignore lifecycle effects for now, which throw extra wrenches into the works). These people buy houses, then sell them at some point. I really doubt they average more than 20 years between sales, so in any given year at least 5% of them are selling houses. Any such house sale is likely accompanied by significant capital gains (from inflation, if nothing else, though the real estate markets in various places have been helping, of course). In what fraction of cases are those capital gains enough to move you into the 0.1% for that one year? What fraction of 0.1% incomes are then due to "top 1%" people selling their house? If we were tracking lifetime cumulative incomes here, rather than annual incomes, we might be able to say something more useful. But a significant part of what we are seeing in the data is that income at the top has become more volatile, so when you get taxable events those taxable events are larger than they used to be. Now of course the gap between someone who consistently makes a "0.1%" income and someone who consistently makes a "10%" income has in fact been widening. But I'd really like to see some data on how big those classes of people are. Consistent "0.1%" income accrues to _much_ less than 0.1% of the population, from everything I've seen.
• hnuser77 7y ago
  >"Indeed the conspicuous embrace of 'elite values' by journalists and academics is often little more than an aspi­rational attempt to remain connected to an economically distant elite...they gave professionals greater scope to manage “postmaterial' concerns that suited their cultural sensibilities..." In other words, this potential class war is pacified by telling the upper-middle class that they are culturally superior in spite of their increasing economic precarity. Someone in this class who has to take out massive loans, move across the country, and spend $30,000 a year on rent with no hope of ever owning a home in order to have an insecure job in their field must be assured that living this way, combined with a mix of vague cultural markers, is tasteful and elite, and not an empty bag. There may also be a variety of well-funded social movements that pose zero threat to the economic position of the 0.1% to participate in as an activist.
• candybar 7y ago
  This is a great article but I think it misses the counterpart to the professional class - moderately well-to-do small-business owners, millionaire next door types. I think these are heavily represented in the top 10%. They are not as well-educated, lean much more to the right than the professional class. Economically they identify more with the 0.1% and consider themselves capitalists, but culturally they identify more with the working class. These two groups seem diametrically opposed to each other, much more so that they are with the actual elite or with the actual working class.
• dragonwriter 7y ago
  > However one defines the working class, it has scarcely any political agency in the current system and no apparent means for acquiring any. Revolutions don't happen when people feel that they have political agency in the status quo system. And if people don't have actual agency, the outlets which provide the illusion of agency eventually fail.
  • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    That is my fear as well. I would say that the conventional outlets that provide the illusion of agency have in fact failed. That's why we got the rise of both Trump and Bernie. When people realize that neither unconventional approach gives them real political agency, look out.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• notananthem 7y ago
  IDK I have a hard time reading a conservative journal that voted for Trump describing wage gaps
• shevek_ 7y ago
  From 2018-2019, we saw teachers protests and strikes lead to massive concessions being gained in 7/9 states they occurred in, most of which were red states. The working class has a considerable amount of power when wielded correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_education_workers%27_strikes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_education_work... Eric Blanc's Red State Revolt is another great source on this https://www.versobooks.com/books/2955-red-state-revolt https://www.versobooks.com/books/2955-red-state-revolt
  • api 7y ago
    As it stands any broad based working class revolt in the US can be effectively nullified by bringing up a culture war issue like abortion, homosexuality, etc. and using it to split the electorate. This has been true for a long time. These issues evoke emotional responses that easily override any rational concern for one's economic well being. Whether intentional or not, the culture war continues to be the most effective tool in history for sidelining and fragmenting any struggle for economic equality. This is because culture war issues do not slice the electorate along the same lines as economic issues.
    • xxpor 7y ago
      AKA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusionism
    • blacksqr 7y ago
      HN 2019: downvoted for noting plainly observable phenomenon.
      • dang 7y ago
        Please don't break the site guidelines by posting like this. Vote totals fluctuate. When users see an unfairly downvoted comment, they often give corrective upvotes. Then the comment goes back to positive, but a post like yours here lingers on, orphaned and inaccurate. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• woodpanel 7y ago
  The whole talk is worth watching, but I'll just point to Lionel Shriver's segment, where she beautifully sums up, what most people – especially in the underclass – know already: https://youtu.be/ddBKQIomyYI?t=2200 https://youtu.be/ddBKQIomyYI?t=2200 Today's western progressivism is taken hostage by the elite. Disturbing as it is for itself, it is even more freightening what this might lead to. What happens if the bottom 50% effectively looses any political say, because their choices by whom to be represented become completely blurred. If you are like me and considered to yourself to be under-/working class, none of today's "leftist" ballot options are even remotely relatable, the more radical their representatives are, the more they reak of privilege.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    You can see this beginning in roughly 2011 when the Occupy Wallstreet protests start to fracture. This was when Starbucks began advocating for anti-racist policy (why? they make money selling permutations of coffee and milk) and a bunch of other corporations chimed in. The 99% movement quickly splintered off into anti-racist memes and whirled into Third Wave Feminism + needs for "inclusion" and "intersectionality" and whatever terms the Wallstreet-backed Left felt best to appease the working poor and working lower-middle class of academics and journalists (who are basically working poor now, but would not like to admit it). So when you say: >Today's western progressivism is taken hostage by the elite. I agree. In fact, there is likely evidence that it was manufactured by the elite. This discussion is heading to the territory of Hypernormalisation[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y], a film I recommend.
• tc 7y ago
  George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949): > The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again.
  • kazagistar 7y ago
    So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth. To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "high" from 1984 is absurd.
    • shigawire 7y ago
      Alternatively it can be seen as a lesson for the low to not allow the middle to use them as a weapon. If they want to avoid this same result they'd need to take over their own revolution, not be led by the middle.
      • lotsofpulp 7y ago
        "the low" are not a static entity. People will choose to behave differently once their status changes.
• lbacaj 7y ago
  Reading this thing is an incredible downer and it makes everything sound black and white. It is literally poo-pooing on everything. Life is never this black and white, although the thesis make for a good read it is still an inaccurate model of the real world. > Moreover, increasing numbers of engineers, even at the most prestigious companies, are hired on temporary contracts. When the artificial growth model stalls, employees can expect mass layoffs, “anti-hierarchy” propaganda not­withstanding. As an example, I dont find this to be true at all especially for great engineers. Our company is trying to move completely away from contractors.
  • JBiserkov 7y ago
    >Reading this thing is an incredible downer and it makes everything sound black Full stop.
  • ridewinter 7y ago
    This article is what Karl Popper would call historicism — the idea that history has fixed laws or trends that inevitably lead to certain outcomes. Here's an article on why he considered it false and even dangerous: https://fs.blog/2016/03/karl-popper-mistake-of-historicism/ https://fs.blog/2016/03/karl-popper-mistake-of-historicism/
• SchoolboyBlue 7y ago
  > The company I now work for started as a parking app. . . . We were growing sustainably as the result of having a superior product based on a great understanding of consumer needs. > But sustainable growth isn’t what VCs (or the execs that they install in the firms they have stakes in) are looking for. So we pivoted. > Without going into too much detail, we are now exclusively focused on getting acquired by a big tech firm. Meetings with low-level product managers at a few of the world’s largest com­panies dictate every decision about which projects we pursue. We’re no longer building a company. We’re not even building a product. We’re building a feature that we hope will end up getting included in an app owned by a mega-corporation. > When I talk to my friends and peers at other tech startups, they tell me that it’s pretty much the same story at their compa­nies. Everyone is building to the specifications set by Google or Amazon or Apple. This “competitive” industry, supposedly a shining example of the power of the free market, is really just a massive risk-free R&D department for the faang companies.40 ooph.
  • helpPeople 7y ago
    Sounds like automotive suppliers. It works though
  • Aperocky 7y ago
    As someone who works at those very companies, I have to say that the code itself isn’t worth that much - everything that’s not a utility package will definitely get rebuilt. Nor is the idea, the only value proposition is existing customers and potential patents for software startups.
• aazaa 7y ago
  > But it is precisely for these reasons that the working class is unlikely to be decisive in shaping politics for the foreseeable future. ... This seems like an odd statement given that the American system of government was designed from its inception to insulate the ruling elites from the masses. The founders were terrified of mob rule. The term "democracy" was used at the time to mean something not far away from "mob rule." The people don't directly elect the president, the Electoral College does that. The people don't vote on any pending legislation. The House and Senate do that. The people don't set foreign policy - the executive and legislative branches do that. The people don't strike down any legislation - the courts do that, members of which at the top level are appointed for life. The full legislature is never up for re-election specifically to prevent a popular uprising. One wonders what the article has in mind here. The answer comes shortly: > ... In countries like France, the working class might still be able to veto certain policies through public demonstrations, but such actions seem unlikely in the United States, and even the most heroic efforts of this kind show little prospect of achieving systemic reforms. Even in France, that's an extra-governmental action. There's no mechanism to include popular dissent except for routinely scheduled elections in either France or the US. What's more troubling though is the ubiquitous disengagement from the parts of American government through which people can effect (small) changes: - jury duty - elections
• plutonorm 7y ago
  This is one of the best pieces I have ever read. Absolutely brilliant.
• monkeydreams 7y ago
  I would like to further understand the societal, political and economic forces in the context of the political outcomes described in this article. Has anyone got a couple of recommendations on where to start?
  • Invictus0 7y ago
    I was discussing this article with a friend and he recommended Paul Tucker's book Unelected Power.
• spyckie2 7y ago
  > This [billionaire] class has no idea what to do with its wealth, much less the power that results from it. It can only withdraw and extract, socially and economically, while the political justifications for its existence melt away. Would love to hear his perspective on Bill Gates. It's very interesting to think about this because most people pursue wealth for this very reason - to be freed from constraints of responsibility and to do whatever they want. However, it seems to be the opposite once you get too much wealth - you all of a sudden become (due to the closed economic and political system) extremely publically responsible. This is also the first generation of such public billionaires in an era where everyone with power has their lives projected on a live screen for people to see.
  • Discombulator 7y ago
    Bill Gates is in my view deserving of every praise for his civic engagement, as well as a few others (e.g., those who have agreed to the pledge to give away much of their wealth). But I don’t think this is common. Just from the public statements of many billionaires, it seems that many do not think they have any civic obbligation at all.
    • spyckie2 7y ago
      It's why I'm curious to see his opinions on this matter. The author pointed out the problem but didn't say much about the solution. I was wondering if his discourse on those who aren't the problem would yield insights.
• untangle 7y ago
  > The real class war is between the 0.1 percent and (at most) the 10 percent—or, more precisely, between elites primarily dependent on capital gains and those primarily dependent on profes­sional labor. There is a sharp contrast here, but I don't think it'll be the basis for a war – figuratively or otherwise. But this divide deserves more illumination.
• flipgimble 7y ago
  I found it informative to research the author and his background: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein For some reason my mental image of the messenger behind the article was that of a well studied and neutral academic throwing out firehouse citations. his points are thought provoking, but it reduces everything to purely economic competition by a delusional population with only the author to cut through the illusions.
  • silexia 7y ago
    His article shows why we need a wealth tax instead of an income tax... There is a huge difference between a hard working manager making $100k and an equally hard working owner with $10m in assets. I suggest dropping the income tax entirely, and tax wealth under $50k at 0%, $50k - $1m at 1%, $1m - 10m at 2%, $10m - $100m at 3%, $100m - $1b at 4%, and everything higher at 5%. This keeps even billionaires motivated to work hard to earn returns on their assets, without taking from the little guy who can't afford it.
    • friendelschudel 7y ago
      I keep hearing this idea from a variety of sources recently, and the idea is so absurd I don't even understand how it came to be. How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? The amount of bureaucracy and auditing and enforcement it would require would dwarf the insurance industry, and waste taxpayer dollars to the extent that it couldn't actually be profitable for the government.
      • sobani 7y ago
        The (US) government today has a tax on investment returns. Tallying up the buys and sells seems like to be a much more complicated than keeping track of the total wealth. The way you accomplish this is by asking everyone: "What's your total wealth?" and then doing random audits.
        • 7y ago
• gddvhy 7y ago
  Great article. Regarding the wealth accumulation, there is an interesting parallel with black holes: a single blob of wealth absorbs other wealth at the exponential rate: dw/dt=k*w, where k is the population growth dp/dt. The same blob of wealth has a Hawking radiation that evaporates this wealth, but at a constant rate: dw/dt=-e, where e is expenses to support ones lifestyle. Big blobs of wealth have about the same rate of evaporation, but absorb surrounding wealth much faster. Add to that the constraint: the total wealth is fixed and generally grows with the population size. In practice, all the small wealth bubbles (workers) evaporate quickly and the radiation gets absorbed by the big black holes. Eventually they become too big for this planet and collide: US vs China. This boom cycle of the wealth bubbles universe is always followed by the bust cycle: a war. The big bubbles explode and firm many small bubbles, that evaporate and so on. Nothing new here. In the black holes world, the force distributing the matter is gravity. In our world of wealth bubbles, this force is called greed. It is the driving force of the boom and bust cycle. Greed is one the few fundamental imperfections of the human mind and it takes eons fir the human mind to change. The previous driving force was cruelty, and it still is in some places. The next driving force will be
• cryptica 7y ago
  > Many industry observ­ers believe Schmidt contributed virtually nothing to the company, but he became a billionaire because of his superior grasp of business etiquette: “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it,” he once said. Jeffrey Epstein, erstwhile dinner companion of Schmidt, Bill Gates, and seemingly every other member of this class, had a slightly different policy. Funny. Obviously this is going overboard with the facts but it makes a good point.
• Ericson2314 7y ago
  This is the article of it's sort I've ever read since...? UBI now, please
• stebann 7y ago
  A well-written article about politics in US and its class conflict. I still think and insists that US citizens don't look enough to the rest of the world. Just observe what happened to South-America since 2000's. Popular Revolution and Popular Governments was the way out of the capitalist-neoliberal crisis, at the time when global "promises" were being risen by the elites. The struggle had its positives results because even when the dictatorships, imposed by Washington, tried to drown the working class and the professional class, they couldn't kill inequalities and the political structure that generated that inequalities. Those measures (dictatorships) were brought for preserving those inequalities and that structure. Now South-America is entering into a new crisis, the elite's reaction to the conquests for the People. US needs new leaders, grassroots political leaders. Many people believe that "change" comes from upper classes, but that happens when class struggle is in the stagnant state, when the conditions are uncertain for the majority. Building a new leadership and activism style for the affected classes will effectively replace the excuses and the fear, that Fear that was imposed by the elites.
• nnvvhh 7y ago
  From Zinn's A People's History of the United States: "One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country."
• JDiculous 7y ago
  > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. The problem here is that we don't have direct democracy. I've noticed that citizens in countries with direct democracy elements like Switzerland seem to feel significantly better represented by their governments. It blows my mind how little is spoken about direct democracy and concepts like delogative/liquid democracy. There's absolutely no reason we must confine ourselves to a representative democracy conceived in a time when direct democracy was literally impossible because messages were delivered on horseback.
• edisonjoao 7y ago
  so many type's of war ""