MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
As for pent-up demand
I've definitely seen the argument that the Baby Boom isn't a real high-fertility period, just catch-up from delayed fertility during the Depression and WW2, with the high measured TFR coming from overlapping generations having kids at the same time. (Because of the way TFR is measured, this leads to a measured TFR that is higher than the experienced fertility of either cohort).
Elon Musk kind of shows this too.
I thought Elon only had two children per woman, which is not going to solve anyone's fertility problems.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Part of what Nineteen Eighty-Four shows is that the Party spends far more time monitoring its own members than it does monitoring the proles. You don't see the internal politics of the Inner Party "on-screen" (O'Brien is the only Inner Party member we see, and for the first two thirds of the book he is putting on an act to entrap Winston Smith - in particular we know that the telescreen was still recording while "turned off"), so you don't know how the Inner Party monitor each other. But a large part of the book is about how the Inner Party manage the Outer Party (through constant surveillance and loyalty testing) vs the proles (with bread and circuses on one hand and exaggerated foreign and domestic threats on the other).
"The Book" (in-universe title "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism") purports to be written by Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the clandestine opposition, but Winston Smith gets it from O'Brien so we don't know who actually wrote it. It functions as an author tract describing the nature of the Party regime, although it is of dubious reliability as a factual description of Oceanian politics. "The Book" says that ambitious, able and demonstrably loyal (with a subtle hint that part of demonstrable loyalty is being an unprincipled sadist) Outer Party members can join the Inner Party by competitive examination, but that most ambitious Outer Party members get wiped out by the Thought Police. Most, but not all, Inner Party members are children of Inner Party members, although this isn't official policy and the authors of "The Book" think that it isn't unofficial Party policy either, just normal nepotism. "The Book" also says nothing about the internal politics of the Inner Party, and is ambiguous about whether Big Brother is actually real (Stalin's dictatorship) or not (Breznhevian oligarchy).
The formal organisation of both main US parties is almost exactly the same - the DNC and RNC are both federations of state parties, the state parties in each state are organised in approximately the same way because of the requirements of state electoral laws, the independent Congressional committees work in the same way etc.
This Tanner Greer post makes the opposite of your argument - Greer is a conservative but he is partially relying on academic research by dissident leftist Jo Freeman. The thesis, which I think is correct, is that the formal leadership of the GOP (including the President when applicable, Congressional leadership, the RNC Chair etc.) matters more than it does in the Dems because the influence of "the Groups" - organised interest groups which are de facto part of the party constitution but operate entirely outside its formal structures - provides an alternative power base in Dem politics which the GOP doesn't have.
My take is that GOP elites see the GOP as the place where America's natural ruling elite come together to justify their existence to the sovereign voters, whereas Dem elites see the Democratic Party as a coalition of disadvantaged groups working together to secure their respective fair shares of the pie. I think this goes all the way back the the Civil War, and predates the GOP being consistently to the right of the Democrats. I'm not sure how much Trump changes this story.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
The nail house phenomenon suggests that relocating the elderly is the one thing that, somewhat bizarrely, Red China won't manage to do.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Animal Farm and 1984 are not novels; they are documentaries.
Animal Farm was a documentary. Nineteen eighty-four was not - it was a warning, and one that has so far been effective in preventing the thing warned about. The USSR never managed to achieve the level of social control you see in Oceania, and not for want of trying.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
I was taught that "Master + firstname" originated as a way for middle-class teachers (and private tutors) to address upper-class schoolboys that respected both of the opposed social class and authority gradients. But I think this is BS - actual practice at English public schools was to use surnames with no honorific regardless of Daddy's title*. (Brothers were distinguished with suffixes like "Major" and "Minor" though the exact details varied by school).
Interestingly, "Mister" is this trope - it is a corruption of "Master" used (at least as early as the Tudor period) as a respectful form of address by peasants speaking to minor gentry who didn't have a higher title like "Esquire".
* Though children of Dukes and royalty use Daddy's title as a surname instead of the family name. So Prince William was "Wales" at Eton rather than "Mountbatten-Windsor".
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
My wife and I live on a single salary and our 4 children sleep in the same room together. We are a respectable middle class family.
In a first-world country, even one with a housing shortage like the UK, 4 children sharing a bedroom is not compatible with the normie version of middle class respectability. In the UK, anything more than 2 same-sex children sharing would attract the attention of curtain-twitchers and social workers.
That said, I agree with your underlying argument.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
I actually don't believe this proves much as the number would imply. Yes, TFR was 2.1, but the country was also far more rural at the time and mechanization hadn't quite replaced the child as unit of labor on farms yet.
Also infant mortality was higher then, so TFR 2.1 was sub-replacement. I can't find the source now, but someone published estimates of infant-mortality-adjusted TFR for the US going back as long as the data existed and, assuming their numbers were correct, adjusted TFR was higher during the post-WW2 baby boom that at any other time in history.
"What caused the Baby Boom?" seems to be an under-asked question among people who care about fertility.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
But they have kulak privilege!
Seriously - the liquidation of the kulaks was a classic example of the elite dividing the plebs into "oppressed" and "privileged" groups for the purpose of robbing the "privileged" while appearing to be on the side of the "oppressed" - what Yarvin would call a high-low alliance against the middle.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Agreed. That is why I don't think them enjoying the material standard of living of an eques should be scandalous.
The idea that successful politicians should live a lower-middle class lifestyle is pernicious - both because it creates a political economy of junketing, and because it means only people who love political power enough to take a large paycut will go into politics.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Both Tesla and SpaceX bulls are entirely upfront about the fact that you cannot make a bull case for the core businesses of Tesla and SpaceX justify the market cap. The bull case is explicitly that Musk will pivot to a business that doesn't exist yet and make the pivot work because he's Musk.
Stories that have run for Tesla in the past include:
- Tesla are so far ahead in the learning curve for large Li-ion batteries that they can pivot to being an energy company (while maintaining the profit margins of a tech company)
- Tesla are so far ahead in self-driving tech that they will be a near-monopoly supplier of self-driving software to the rest of the automotive sector
- Tesla will pivot to robotics.
- Tesla will merge with xAI and pivot to AI.
The current story for SpaceX is orbital datacentres, which at least has something to do with the existing assets, but is a lot further from actually existing than Autopilot or Tesla Robotics.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
I agree. If a group of transactivists were going up against a group of Republican politicians on a knowledge test of female anatomy and physiology, I would bet on the transactivists. They know exactly what a woman (in the ordinary English sense of the word) is - they just don't know what the word "woman" means.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Yes - everyone knows it's the Catholic. This was conventional wisdom in Protestant countries from the Reformation through to the 1960's. I don't think the reversed version is more accurate.
Perhaps we should exclude the Catholic and the pink-haired SJW and hire only normie-Americans from good families like Edward Snowden and Reality Winner.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
There is a reason why the Normans adopted "Earl" (a corruption of the Norse "Jarl") in place of a direct translation of the Norman-French "Comte" when conquering a country with a substantial Anglo-Saxon population familiar with vulgar Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. I would hate for @BurdemsomeCount to end up as an example of why they did this, but I think that post qualifies.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
Donald Trump was (probably - it is hard to be sure given how much he lies about his financial status) a billionaire when he announced he was going to fight against elites on behalf of the common man. I find his claim about as plausible as Warren's, but the target audience eat it up in both cases.
FWIW, the anti-super-rich lefties I see have stopped talking about "the 1%" and now talk about "the billionaires" which is a much smaller group. Too many upper-middle-class lefties are worried about the leopards eating their faces, I suppose.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
British usage assumes a pyramidal society, so there are more working class people than middle-class people and more lower middle than upper middle. To be considered upper class you traditionally needed to have a social network that includes hereditary peers, so upper-middle class stretches a long way up the income scale. A big 4/MBB/Magic Circle partner would definitely be considered upper-middle class, not upper (unless they were upper for family reasons).
In America, everyone except the underclass and the super-rich considers themselves middle-class. Americans don't generally use the term upper-middle class, but the term middle-class is used by both the people themselves and politicians appealing them to cover everyone from a plumber to a HENRY, and upper-middle class refers to the top echelon of that huge group. Paul Fussell's Class (published 1982 so somewhat out of date, but I am not aware of any book since which attempted to define upper-middle class in the US context) gives doctors, lawyers, small town real estate developers and middle-to-VP level managers at large companies as paradigmatically upper-middle class. Warren's $12 million accumulated over a successful career would be well within the achievable range for those professions, though probably above average.
The only time I have seen the words upper-middle class used seriously in an American political context was to describe the people on incomes of $250k-400k who might or might not benefit from Obama's partial extension of the Bush tax cuts, which is also close to but not in the top 1% and given the rising stock market since the Obama era seems consistent with a net worth reaching $3-12 million today.
The algorithm I use that works in any rich country:
- If you consider doctors the help, you are upper class
- If you consider doctors peers, you are upper-middle class
- If you consider doctors to be social superiors, you are middle-middle or below.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
I thought the late unlamented Iranian air defences were more Russian than Chinese.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
5d ago
"Close to, but not in, the top 1%" is precisely what upper middle class means.
Also, wealth tends to accumulate over time. So "upper middle class wealth" for a 76-year-old like Warren is a higher dollar amount than it would be for us.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
Nukes effectively deter a US invasion, which is a real risk if the neocons return to power, and Iran can see that the US would beat them in a conventional war if the US was willing to accept the cost of victory (i.e. a choice between a prolonged occupation and likely Iraq-style quagmire or a Houthi-on-Hormuz failed state).
The product of two small probabilities (the neocons returning to power, and them being dumb enough to launch a real regime change was against Iran) is even smaller, but I think it is high enough to be worth worrying about, and so did MAGA in 2024 given that "vote Trump so you don't have to fight in neocon Kamala's Iran war" was a winning message with military-age men, so it wouldn't surprise me if the mullahs do.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
The founding-era Senate mostly met in secret, with the need to ratify treaties being one of the reasons given.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
The Ukrainian drone industry is producing roughly the same amount of usable military power as the c. 80 billion dollars a year Russian defence budget. That is worth a trillion dollars or so on standard DCF assumptions.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
HELOCs are a bullet I am willing to swallow. Tax-free consumption out of unrealised capital gains on primary residences is the same mischief as tax-free consumption out of unrealised capital gains on founders' stock, and causes the same social problems in a more distributed way. Protect the middle class with a $100,000 lifetime exemption.
What are the organised interest groups in the GOP that wield the same level of power that unions, feminists, black urban political machines, or the Ford and Hewlett-funded NGO borgs wield among the Democrats? Alternatively, what are the "otherwise sovereign entities" you mention in your first post? In the Greer/Freeman model the state parties are part of the "formal leadership", not an alternative to it. These are kind of meant to be the same question - you clearly have a model of how power works in the GOP which is something other than "Registered Republicans nominate candidates and elect party bosses, and the electeds and bosses come together to run the GOP roughly according to the rulebook" and I would be interested in knowing what it is.
MAGA is the formal leadership of the GOP and has been for almost a decade, having taken control through the formal democratic processes of the party (in particular, the 2016 primary, which was a genuine act of internal party democracy).
Trump ran the campaigns he wanted to, just as Romney ran the campaign he wanted to. Someone made Biden run like a campus progressive in 2020 even though he is an old-school machine politician. The point I am trying to make is that there is no equivalent of that someone in the GOP.
The application of the Greer/Freeman model to the last decade is that the GOP went MAGA as a result of grassroots Republicans voting in primaries, whereas the Dems went woke-prog as a result of the machinations of the Groups. I think this is obviously correct.
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