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A large proportion of those masses (Republican voters) fervently support the very policies that have been driving inequality for decades. They don't really unde

A large proportion of those masses (Republican voters) fervently support the very policies that have been driving inequality for decades. They don't really understand that, of course, but the worse things get, the more they flock to right-wing populist nonsense, accelerating their own financial ruin. I'm not sure how to fix it. It's clearly too late to educate them properly about how economies function.

WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
Loss aversion among the oligarch & owner classes will always result in fascism eventually, as enemies are created within or without to satisfy the will to power, which is itself the will to live: I am that I am. All of this has happened before, and unless we end it, all of this will happen again, assuming we have the opportunity to even try again. The violence of this loss aversion turned inwards is what destroys societies and makes them vulnerable to foreign invasion through more concrete material means of productions. In short: wealth inequality is fundamentally destructive to civilizations.
rayiner 6y ago
I used to believe this, but then I realized why ordinary Republicans for the most part don’t care so much about rising inequality: they don’t live in places where it’s that noticeable. In DC or New York or San Francisco inequality is always in your face. Public housing down the block from co-ops that even Facebook engineers can’t afford. But for the most part, republicans don’t live there. My Maryland county is pretty red—Clinton was the first Democrat to win it (barely) since JFK. There are some very rich people here, but you can really only tell by their boats. The waterfront houses are mostly owned by retired middle class people. (We bought ours from a young couple: a disabled vet and a nurse.) The nicer waterfront houses are as likely to be owned by a guy with a successful contracting business as a business executive. The public schools are excellent and you can buy a 3BR house zoned for the best high school in the area for 3-4 times the median income. You could make $1 million/year (and some people do) but other than on a boat there is nowhere extravagant to spend that money. There’s no restaurant in the entire county that the vast majority of people couldn’t afford to go to for at least a special occasion. And like I said, we do have some old money yacht racing types. Go a bit further out where the rich people are farmers with their wealth tied up in land, and the society is even flatter. The vast majority of Republican America is like that.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > The vast majority of Republican America is like that. I don't think that's really true. If you take suburbs/exurbs out of the equation (which polling shows turning quickly away from Republicans due to Trump revulsion, though not necessarily into the arms of the Democrats), many Republican strongholds are (a) places where voting patterns fall nearly entirely along racial lines (i.e. the Deep South), and (b) places that have seen a demise in opportunity, like the Rust Belt, where pretty much any young person with talent and ambition gets out as soon as they are able. You may not see a ton of inequality in some of these "hollowed out" areas, but people certainly know it exists.
- tptacek 6y ago
  This probably doesn't describe Ohio well.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I’m not familiar with Ohio. It describes parts of Georgia and Missouri I’m familiar with (outside Atlanta and Kansas City).

WealthVsSurvive 6y ago

Loss aversion among the oligarch & owner classes will always result in fascism eventually, as enemies are created within or without to satisfy the will to power, which is itself the will to live: I am that I am. All of this has happened before, and unless we end it, all of this will happen again, assuming we have the opportunity to even try again. The violence of this loss aversion turned inwards is what destroys societies and makes them vulnerable to foreign invasion through more concrete material means of productions. In short: wealth inequality is fundamentally destructive to civilizations.

rayiner 6y ago

I used to believe this, but then I realized why ordinary Republicans for the most part don’t care so much about rising inequality: they don’t live in places where it’s that noticeable. In DC or New York or San Francisco inequality is always in your face. Public housing down the block from co-ops that even Facebook engineers can’t afford. But for the most part, republicans don’t live there. My Maryland county is pretty red—Clinton was the first Democrat to win it (barely) since JFK. There are some very rich people here, but you can really only tell by their boats. The waterfront houses are mostly owned by retired middle class people. (We bought ours from a young couple: a disabled vet and a nurse.) The nicer waterfront houses are as likely to be owned by a guy with a successful contracting business as a business executive. The public schools are excellent and you can buy a 3BR house zoned for the best high school in the area for 3-4 times the median income. You could make $1 million/year (and some people do) but other than on a boat there is nowhere extravagant to spend that money. There’s no restaurant in the entire county that the vast majority of people couldn’t afford to go to for at least a special occasion. And like I said, we do have some old money yacht racing types. Go a bit further out where the rich people are farmers with their wealth tied up in land, and the society is even flatter. The vast majority of Republican America is like that.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> The vast majority of Republican America is like that. I don't think that's really true. If you take suburbs/exurbs out of the equation (which polling shows turning quickly away from Republicans due to Trump revulsion, though not necessarily into the arms of the Democrats), many Republican strongholds are (a) places where voting patterns fall nearly entirely along racial lines (i.e. the Deep South), and (b) places that have seen a demise in opportunity, like the Rust Belt, where pretty much any young person with talent and ambition gets out as soon as they are able. You may not see a ton of inequality in some of these "hollowed out" areas, but people certainly know it exists.
tptacek 6y ago
This probably doesn't describe Ohio well.
- rayiner 6y ago
  I’m not familiar with Ohio. It describes parts of Georgia and Missouri I’m familiar with (outside Atlanta and Kansas City).