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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28225 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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American Elites

https://www.rmgresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Elite-One-Percent.pdf

I found this recent Rasmussen presentation, it focuses on subsections of the elite. It was funded by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a libertarian thinktank. One might consider them elite heretics or counter-elites (and sure enough they have a slide at the end saying ‘oh there are some elites who are good and trustworthy'). Us non-Gold Circle normies only get the slides, so it's a little unclear what they mean.

Anyway, they define elite as postgrad urbanite with 150K per year income. They further split elites into those who went to 12 top colleges and the ‘politically obsessed’ (definition unclear but I imagine it means they spend a certain number of hours reading/watching/discussing political media). For instance, I imagine we would be considered ‘politically obsessed’.

As you might expect, the elite are the ones who approve of Biden and Congress. They trust the government to do the right thing. I imagine that even if they don’t think the government’s doing a great job they’re friends with high ranking officials and feel a certain amity for them. In my experience, their brother might be an ambassador, they might have an AI regulator over for lunch. Even if they’ve been astonished by the stupid questions journalists ask them, they’ve still got fairly positive impressions of the prestige press and read at least two or three newspapers.

Elites are also much more likely to say ‘there’s too much individual freedom in the US’ than voters, especially the politically obsessed elites. Likewise, they favour strict restrictions on private usage of gas, vehicles, meat and electricity. It’s bizarre that 55% oppose non-essential air travel since this class is the most likely to go on overseas holidays, I don’t understand how this works. Anyway, they want restrictions on everything except border security, which they couldn’t care less about. Plebs hold the opposite beliefs.

I was most surprised by how 29% of the elite thinks that China is an ally, compared to 9% of ordinary voters. I would’ve thought the elites were the hawks! Maybe some of them have commercial interests in China or they want to work with China on climate change or they’re ethnically Chinese, anyway this is really odd to me. The hawk faction may be in control but the doves haven’t been totally eviscerated. Does anyone have any explanations or observations on this matter?

35% of the elite would rather cheat than lose a close election, rising to 69% of the ‘politically obsessed’. Only 7% of pleb voters would cheat. That seems like an underestimate to me – who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll? Wouldn’t people be embarrassed (or tactical) and lie – they’re cheats after all! Again, I don’t know the exact definition of cheat but I imagine many more would do something subversive like hold back successful COVID vaccine results until after the election or engage in various procedural manipulations. Edit for an example of what I mean for 'non-cheating' manipulation: https://twitter.com/stevenmackeyman/status/1764876192648499220

I think it’s clear that these are the people with actual power and influence, the ones who set the agenda, the key actors in tech, media, government and law. They create outcomes, or lack thereof. Just about every judge would be elite by this definition, along with nearly all AI workers (OK maybe not the work-from-home guys in the Colorado mountains). All lobbyists, the heads of most NGOs, the most important lawyers – everyone except the right-wing politicians who seem unable to achieve any of their goals.

It’s not like it’s hard to close the US border. The US is a global power after all. The US seems to think it can defend Ukraine’s borders against the Russian army from the other side of the world and secure Taiwan’s borders against the PLA, it must be at least 1000x easier to defend the US border against stateless, unarmed mobs. They just don’t care, indeed their energy seems to swing the other way – see the recent US-Texas standoff over barbed wire and the border. The survey said not one respondent cared about the border as a priority, presumably some think immigration is quite a good thing and want more, illegal or otherwise.

On other fronts, we observe these creeping changes – everyone seems to need a college degree if they want to do anything. That’s not the will of the majority but it is what the elite want. You can see these articles that go ‘relax nobody’s coming to take your gas stove’, how they struck down the federal bill. But the state legislation in New York and other cities is proceeding, it’s clear that this is the path that the US is on. Likewise, the disputes over the 2020 election. I'm suspicious but can't prove that the election was rigged, or that Epstein didn't kill himself. Nevertheless, US democracy doesn't seem in very good shape if its elites are so willing to win by fraud.

You know, if you’d asked me in 2010, I’d have said the republicans would be the optimates…

It’s not like it’s hard to close the US border. The US is a global power after all. The US seems to think it can defend Ukraine’s borders against the Russian army from the other side of the world and secure Taiwan’s borders against the PLA, it must be at least 1000x easier to defend the US border against stateless, unarmed mobs. They just don’t care, indeed their energy seems to swing the other way – see the recent US-Texas standoff over barbed wire and the border. The survey said not one respondent cared about the border as a priority, presumably some think immigration is quite a good thing and want more, illegal or otherwise.

If there’s one thing the recent standoff proves, it’s that securing the border is actually really easy if you have the political will- illegal crossings went to California and Arizona instead of Texas once it became clear Texas wasn’t backing down.

Elites are also much more likely to say ‘there’s too much individual freedom in the US’ than voters, especially the politically obsessed elites. Likewise, they favour strict restrictions on private usage of gas, vehicles, meat and electricity. It’s bizarre that 55% oppose non-essential air travel since this class is the most likely to go on overseas holidays, I don’t understand how this works.

They also, presumably, are mostly not vegetarians who don’t own cars.

Don't have any substantive response, but had to laugh about the CUP. "Cry 'Liberty!' and unleash the dogs of prosperity!"

What animal does represent prosperity? Worker bees? Ants? All too communal for libertarians, I would think. But lone wolves are not symbols of prosperity, either.

The whale and the unicorn come to mind.

Dragons. Smaug napping on his heap of gold comes to mind.

Beavers? They build and maintain their own environment-sculpting infrastructure.

And their communality is of the right-wing-approved nuclear-family type. Though, I must point out that libertarianism isn't disapproving of communality in general, just of the non-voluntary versions. "We want to go live in a commune/beehive" is fine; "we're going to make you go live in a commune/beehive" is not. Libertarian types are suspicious of the effectiveness of voluntary communes but that's independent of their morality.

Beavers are a pretty good fit. They claim and defend territory, they build, and they live in nuclear families, eschewing larger collectives.

The cat?

Probably the pig, chicken, or cow. The Chinese would add fish.

The Chickens of Prosperity could indeed be fearsome!

You've gotten a lot of high-light responses so let me tack on this one - I like playing 'map games.' Mostly by paradox interactive. This may or may not ring a bell for you or anyone else reading this.

In map games by paradox interactive, 'people' or 'pops' or whatever they might be are a resource. The more you have the better off you are. I used to be the kind of person who could see 'people' or 'pops' or whatever as interchangeable, and even though I've since grown up, it's still perfectly cromulent to me that my peers still see things the way I used to.

I'm increasingly growing toward the mindset that unless you have (quite literally) one guy in charge able to say "no thanks" that this is just what people do. They abstract.

I've also noticed that "numbers go up" people apparently view society as some sort of RTS or Civilization style game in which higher stats means better society. They correctly point out that our uncontrolled Southern border actually increases GDP. They don't much care about per capita GPD or second order effects of uncontrolled immigration or seemingly anything else. More people means bigger numbers.

So Canada is 23% 1st generation immigrant, employment and housing markets be damned. And longer term issues about how this will make a stable society with meaningful national identity and who would fight to defend this economic zone are not addressed.

So others have written the obvious reactions to this poll (including pointing out that the stats are massaged). But to go a bit lateral: a common take I hear from the dissident right is that the West declined into tyranny as the franchise expanded. I often see tweet threads from @KulakRevolt implying that the cause of modern ills is that people without a fixed interest in the system started getting a say in its regulation. In other words, they side with the Grandees in the Putney Debates.

What the hell happened to European civilization? Getting rid of Aristocracy was a fatal mistake. Whether its democracy or communism the landless have no business in the governance of the land. (link)

This idea sounds plausible on its own, but it co-exists in the DR with a ravenous hatred of "elites" and "globalists". How does that make any sense? For all its faults, this poll does expose a fundamental truth: ideas like racial/gender quotas and open borders are coming from the top of society, the "aristocrats", not the middle. If you were to limit the franchise to the modern equivalent of the Second Estate, a far-left social and economic planning program would be implemented by Thursday.

This is an interesting analysis of the dissident right, but keep in mind that this poll wasn't created by or for the dissident right -- the authors of it have never heard of them and would hate them if they had.

There's the mainstream right, that wants low taxes, libertarian policy, and military might. That's the "GOP Establishment," or as their enemies call them, "RINOs." There's the nationalist right, that wants more manufacturing and less foreign wars. That's the "Trumpist" right, or as their enemies call them, "MAGA Republicans." Then, and only then, there's the dissident right, that wants actual racism. That's the extremely-online version that doesn't exist among conservatives in person. Maybe at those weird right-wing parties in New York, but if you think "people at New York parties" are representative of the right, I'm prepared to offer you a sweetheart deal for the Brooklyn Bridge. I disagree with him on how far he takes it, but I agree with @HlynkaCG totally that the identitarian right in this sense is more of a sect of dissident blue tribers than anything truly red tribe. And I say this as a born and raised red triber from Jesusland (and, if I'm being honest, a pretty hardcore nationalist rightist despite my misgivings about Trump personally).

This poll was created by the mainstream right, with occasional nods to concerns of the nationalist right. The dissident right isn't even on their radar.

Slightly more subtle than that. The meme driving this study is "the elites screwing you over are schoolteachers in Manhattan, not the multimillionaire CEO who times your toilet breaks." This is a meme that the GOPe uses to keep the mainstream right and the nationalist right in the same tent - Oliver Anthony and his supporters in the country are perfectly happy hating both sneering Manhattanites and arsehole bosses, so to get him to vote for the bosses' candidate requires advanced lying skills. (Getting Oliver Anthony to vote for the Manhattanites' candidate would also require advanced lying skills, which the Dem establishment don't have.)

My multimillionaire CEO isn't timing my toilet breaks, so the other group is a much greater problem. Timed toilet breaks are also a much easier thing for an individual to solve: if you don't want your toilet breaks timed, don't work for Bezos or McMillon.

Unless you live in NY yourself, ordinary middle-class Manhattanites are not the people screwing you over either. It sounds like the people who are screwing you over mostly live in places like Fairfax County VA, Palo Alto, and the deep blue tony suburbs of your State capital. According to Rasmussen's somewhat curious definition, none of those people are elite.

If you don't want to be bothered by Manhattan schoolteachers sneering at you, stop reading their tweets.

According to Rasmussen's somewhat curious definition, none of those people are elite.

What's your definition of elite?

If you don't want to be bothered by Manhattan schoolteachers sneering at you, stop reading their tweets.

Wait, you think it's the schoolteachers' tweets that people have a problem with?

This idea sounds plausible on its own

Does it? That seems like it doesn't pass the smell test to me. The correlation between things like personal liberty + economic prosperity and how aristocratic a given society was/is seems quite negative. If nothing else, contrast the US or Britain (no/vestigial aristocracy) with the Russian Empire (deeply aristocratic and reactionary, also bringing up the rear in terms of economic development and personal liberty). Nor would we expect aristocratic societies to do well on this front - landowning elites are primarily concern with the extraction of land rents and the preservation of their privileges. A merchant class threatens their power base and letting a peasant sue his lord undermines their elite status.

it co-exists in the DR with a ravenous hatred of "elites" and "globalists". How does that make any sense?

They see themselves as temporarily embarrassed dukes.

It's pretty funny that Kulak is using a kitschy art station work from 2019 to show how gloriovs France was 200 years ago. It's simulacrum on simulacrum.

And how can we tell it was glorious? The state's jackbooted thugs wore cool hats!

If you were to limit the franchise to the modern equivalent of the Second Estate, a far-left social and economic planning program would be implemented by Thursday.

And if you had limited the franchise to the modern equivalent of what the founders meant by "white men" with the naturalization act of 1792, a far-right social and economic planning program would be implemented by Wednesday.

This is classic social psych bullshit in a right-wing wrapper. There are two lying-with-statistics tricks going on here:

  1. Non-standard terminology. The definition of "elite 1%" excludes the vast majority of elites who live in rich suburbs. They define elite 1% as meeting all 3 of postgraduate degree (this covers 14% of the population), household income over $150k (trivial for a two-income PMC couple in a HCOL city - two schoolteachers with masters degrees would probably qualify) and living in a zip code with a population density over 10k/square mile (only a few % of the population - looking at zipatlas.com these zip codes are mostly downtown districts, prisons and campuses with their own zip codes, NYC, and dense inner suburbs of LA.) So the most restrictive condition is the population density one, which is not a measure of eliteness - it is a proxy for alignment with the tribe Rasmussen wants to bash.

  2. Garden of forking paths. The authors switch between "the elite 1%", "elite 1% graduates of a semi-arbitrary list of 12 schools" and "politically obsessed members of the elite 1%" as needed to make the point they are making. We don't know how many other cuts of the data they ran before they chose those ones.

Rasmussen are saying that they have surveyed the elite and found that they are out of touch with America. What they have actually done is surveyed the subset of the PMC that chooses to live in the densest 2% of zip codes, and their interns played with crosstabs until they found some subsets of that group who are, indeed, profoundly out of touch with America. This is about as meaningful as doing some vox pops with stoners in downtown Portland.

See this Arnold Kling post and comments for more details.

I think it’s clear that these are the people with actual power and influence, the ones who set the agenda, the key actors in tech, media, government and law. They create outcomes, or lack thereof. Just about every judge would be elite by this definition, along with nearly all AI workers (OK maybe not the work-from-home guys in the Colorado mountains). All lobbyists, the heads of most NGOs, the most important lawyers – everyone except the right-wing politicians who seem unable to achieve any of their goals.

Apart from Manhattanites, quite the opposite. Who has more power and influence - the residents of DC or the government officials who commute in from the burbs? The people of Anaheim and Inglewood or the people of Beverley Hills? 90210 is by the definition used in this study a non-elite zip code.

Well, do the suburbs have great political power in the USA? Compared to the cities?

All civilizations concentrate around their cities, they're the most valuable real estate for a reason. The central Parisian has more influence on politics than a distant suburbanite in the banlieues, their rioting potential alone is significant. We observe that inner-city progressives have more influence on politics than their numbers or wealth alone would suggest, they have heightened access to the commanding heights of a country, the urban core where politics is done. Proximity is power.

And Manhattan is one hell of an exception to make, is New York not the most famous and important city in the US? Isn't it the quintessential American city?

In most US cities the important thing to remember about downtown is that no one lives there- there might be a few trendy high rise apartments charging above the median income in rent for a one bedroom, but aside from a few young, wealthy hipsters the people who work in those downtown office parks commute in from suburbs, blue collar ones in the case of the janitors and security guards, nice HOA ruled ones in the case of the managers and lawyers and accountants. This means no one really cares if downtowns go to shit; there’s very little additional political influence to be had by actually living there. The suburbs typically rule the inner city, not the other way around, and not-downtown inner city neighborhoods are generally quite crappy and distinctly ‘ruled’ not ‘rulers’. Indeed, ‘the inner city’ is an American euphemism for a crappy neighborhood.

And Manhattan is one hell of an exception to make, is New York not the most famous and important city in the US? Isn't it the quintessential American city?

NYC is the exception to every rule about America and is not, generally, very popular elsewhere in the country. It’s definitely the biggest and wealthiest metropole but using it as some kind of benchmark about the modern U.S. is questionable.

The people of Anaheim and Inglewood or the people of Beverley Hills?

The people of Beverley Hills are mostly rich Iranian Jewish dentists and dermatologists, the people of Anaheim are more likely to run the city.

More broadly I don’t disagree that the study is awful and clearly hacked to produce a specific result.

But it is important to delineate what we’re saying when we talk about ‘the elite’. There are New York Times opinion columnists on $130k a year who have more ‘political and cultural’ (and perhaps even economic) power than many billionaires. There are mid level bureaucrats in the State Department who have more power than foreign or even domestic lobbyists and their clients who have spent nine or perhaps even ten figures trying to make things happen. It took thirty years and billions of dollars for Silicon Valley to acquire lobbying power equivalent to those of legacy industries.

It is true that people with great political influence can usually parlay it into wealth (as the Obamas and Clintons did), and it is true that people with great wealth can buy some political influence (as Soros, the Kochs and others have). But the relationship isn’t clear, linear or guaranteed. A single academic in a top education faculty that produces teachers who will go on to work at elite private schools may well have more influence on the next generation of American elites than every billionaire on the top 20 combined.

Musk certainly has more influence compared to a single academic

Musk is the richest or second richest man in the world and spent tens of billions on media influence.

Your point?

He’s unusual even for billionaires, and I’m not sure your point is correct, Musk’s impact is immediately visible, the unknown academic’s might take decades to understand.

I don't think this is a useful kind of analysis, even if the survey wasn't online. It's still asking vague questions that different groups of people will take 10 seconds to answer and interpret in very different ways, and treating them like obvious truth. From this pdf, we find ... 68% of elite ivy league graduates support banning private air conditioning and non-essential travel to fight climate change? I just do not believe that, there's clearly something wrong with the poll. Even if there weren't, consider: For the 'freedom' vs 'government control' question, they plausibly just read it as "do you support conservative-coded views or liberal-coded views" and answered the one that was more liberal. And, you know, that's not an incorrect interpretation of the poll - you don't ask questions like "Does the united states provide too much individual freedom, too much government control, or both?" if you're trying to discern truth, the framing of that is heavily conservative, "government control" one side of a Russell conguation and "individual freedom" is on the other side of one. 90% (!) of ivy league graduate elites support "strict" rationing of "gas, meat, and electricity", when they probably just support carbon taxes in practice.

The whole presentation, along with the report, is on the discourse level of a political TV ad.

35% of the elite would rather cheat than lose a close election, rising to 69% of the ‘politically obsessed’. Only 7% of pleb voters would cheat. That seems like an underestimate to me – who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll? Wouldn’t people be embarrassed (or tactical) and lie – they’re cheats after all

... Okay, this just isn't true. Come on. "who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll" - yes! that is a great question! You noticed something was off, which is good, and then somehow used that to infer that outgroup = bad. I know a fair number of "politically-obsessed" "elites", and even in private they don't talk like that at all! The answer is just "people who are lying or trolling on the poll".

Now, all that aside, the "elite" do have a number of beliefs that are bad and are harming themselves and others by implementing them. But bad analysis doesn't get one any closer to fixing that.

68% of elite ivy league graduates support banning private air conditioning and non-essential travel to fight climate change? I just do not believe that, there's clearly something wrong with the poll.

i think this is a reasonable possibility. i've heard it claimed there is a strong social desirability bias when answering surveys and the 'correct' thing to do is to fight climate change. just because they answered positively in a survey doesn't mean they would actually support the policies if it came to a vote. the cheating question is very weird and I suspect somehow they worded the question without explicitly saying cheating and claimed they question meant cheating in their summary.

68% of elite ivy league graduates support banning private air conditioning and non-essential travel to fight climate change? I just do not believe that, there's clearly something wrong with the poll.

I just do not believe that XX% of elite ivy league graduates wanted me to be taken to a gulag, or, preferably, just die, because I didn't get vaccinated. They are my peers. They are my friends. They are my neighbors. And yet....

Good find on that PDF, I clearly didn't spend enough time (any time) looking for extra information, I assumed it was kept for those paying for the research.

Elites would surely distinguish between carbon taxes and 'strict rationing' though. Rationing isn't a market mechanism like taxes or an emissions trading scheme. The polling could be distorted in various ways but I don't see anyway to misinterpret that question.

I was most surprised by how 29% of the elite thinks that China is an ally, compared to 9% of ordinary voters. I would’ve thought the elites were the hawks! Maybe some of them have commercial interests in China or they want to work with China on climate change or they’re ethnically Chinese, anyway this is really odd to me. The hawk faction may be in control but the doves haven’t been totally eviscerated. Does anyone have any explanations or observations on this matter?

First here's a map of The Emerging US Mega Regions

The Northeast is the home of America's traditional ruling class. During WWII and after the Great Lakes region was getting rich and powerful. Unfortunately the Great Lakes region (GLR) is in road trip distance of DC and NYC. The North-easterners didn't like seeing them drive up in nice cars throwing money around. They saw them as uppity. So various federal policies were put in place to economically devastate the region.

One of them was encouraging companies to offshore the GLR manufacturing to China. China made sure the Northeast elites got rich off of the deal in various ways.

So the elites see China as a nation of obedient factory workers who know their place and pay tribute to the right people. Things like the 2022 visit to Taiwan by Pelosi were about sending a message to Xi Jinping to stay in line.

Of course that doesn't really line up with China's plans for itself. But admitting that destroying the GLR manufacturing base was a colossal fuck up is too much for most of the elite's egos to handle.

Hawks and Doves is probably the wrong way to think about it. The "Hawks" see China as an economic rival, there's no appetite for violence. The "Doves" are the ones more likely to use military force to keep China in line.

The China threat doesn't really make much sense. China hasn't had any real colonial amibitions throughout its history, and is on the other side of the pacific. China isn't really a threat. A growing China is a large market for American products and the elite don't want to lose that market.

The working class hates China because of wage dumping. The military industrial complex is using the China hate for a military build up that aims to protect the wage dumping that caused the recruits to hate China. Rust belters are joining the marines to take revenge on the Asians for dumping wages by defending a wage dumping chip factory on Taiwan.

A more nationalist policy of bringing industry home doesn't jive well with America as a financial empire. The US can't have real estate speculation as a cornerstone of its economy while being a manufacturing center. If rents for apartments are at extortion levels, there is no way fridges can be manufactured in a major American city. American workers cost a fortune as they require expensive housing, expensive medical care and a car for commuting. Manufacturing toasters is incompatible with an economy built on finance, real estate and insurance.

Manufacturing toasters is incompatible with an economy built on finance, real estate and insurance.

It is also incompatible with the level of affluence America enjoys in 2024. Chainsaw Al ended American toaster-making around 2000, by which time Sunbeam was an outlier as a surviving onshore manufacturer of low-tech products. The country which reaches 2000-America levels of affluence with a manufacturing-driven economy is Germany, and they don't make toasters.

China isn't really a threat. A growing China is a large market for American products and the elite don't want to lose that market.

The "China threat" is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan that either seizes control of TSMC or knocks it offline is catastrophic for the semiconductor supply chain that is a critical dependency for so much of the modern economy, including several of America's most successful companies. If American did make toasters, then they would have chips in, and the American toaster industry would be critically vulnerable to a chip shortage caused by a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

High-end chips are so hard to make that it looks like the world is too small to support a redundant supply chain for them. America is definitely too small to support even a single autarchic chip supply chain.

It doesn't make sense to spend hundreds of billions a year to defend a 30 billion dollar factory. While building a fab is exorbitantly expensive, building a navy to defend it is slower and more expensive.

The Navy isn't there to defend one 30-billion-dollar factory. It's there to defend all the 30-billion-dollar factories, and the capacity to make more of them. Among many other things of course.

The Navy isn't there to defend one 30-billion-dollar factory. It's there to defend all the 30-billion-dollar factories, and the capacity to make more of them. Among many other things of course.

The important thing about TSMC is the tradition, not the 30-billion-dollar fabs. The current saga about TSMC seeking exceptions to CHIPS Act Buy American requirements strongly suggests that if America spent 30 billion dollars on a 3nm fab built and run by Americans, they wouldn't end up with a working 3nm fab. And moving the tradition to a non-Chinese-speaking country is hard because of the language barrier - Paul Graham says you could definitely transfer the tradition that makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley by bringing over 10,000 people and you could probably do it with 500 people, but he is thinking about moving it to another English-speaking city. The other problem bringing the tradition to America (although not to a hungry middle-income country like Malaysia) is that America is still too proud to let in 500-10,000 Taiwanese and treat them like authority figures to be learned from - and a political culture dominated by MAGA populism and left-populism optimised as a foil to MAGA populism is even less able to do that.

Presumably, the thinking of the pro-manufacturing Americans is that the economy can go back to being built on making things as opposed to "number go up."

And while China has never had colonial ambitions, we presently see the tinge of revanchism in their words and deeds. A different flavor, but one that still slides over the tongue in the same way.

Interesting idea. Reminds me a bit of the plot against Mercia in the UK, how the British government (which I'm sure is all London based) imposed crushing anti-development rules on the North, the traditional heartland of British manufacturing. Officially they wanted to spread out development to other regions, yet I somehow doubt they would've hit London with similar suppression. Sufficient stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

The 1956 West Midlands Plan even set Birmingham a 1960 target population far lower than its actual 1951 population — so people would have to leave, and industry shrink.

https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-plot-against-mercia/

pay tribute to the right people

I recall some of the US negotiators/influential people found young, attractive Chinese girls in their hotel rooms and in interview/later recounts of their lives they said something like 'oh yes I thought it was my natural charisma and charm'. As if balding, fat diplomats are known for their rizz.

crushing anti-development rules on the North

This is incorrect. Both conventional wisdom and the linked article say that the government imposed crushing anti-development restrictions on greater Birmingham (which is in the Midlands, not the North) in the false belief that this would benefit the North. These policies worked, in that Birmingham's economy was levelled down to the point where you can now lump the Midlands in with the North and not look like an obvious idiot. The 1950's governments also tried to level down London in the same way (again - click the link), but it only partially succeeded (they did ensure that the population of Greater London fell by 1.5 million between the 1951 census and the 1988 nadir) because office-based knowledge economies can work around building restrictions by repurposing existing space, whereas building-based economies can't. But the success story that is modern London doesn't kick off until Thatcher repeals these kinds of policies.

greater Birmingham (which is in the Midlands, not the North)

Loads of definitions of the North include Birmingham and parts of the Midlands, it's above the Severn-Wash Line for instance.

Anti-development restrictions in London weren't as severe as in Birmingham either, which is why 95% of the article talks about Birmingham and it mentions the South East in a single line. It specifically mentions how they banned office development in Birmingham for 20 years - they weren't permitting a knowledge economy or manufacturing. Click the link.

Both Unherd and some other edgier British columnists (eg j’accuse on Substack) like to focus on this but the most damning impact on British manufacturing wasn’t from this kind of top-down planning, bad as it was, but from inheritance tax policy from the 1949 reforms onward.

While all postwar European social democracies imposed increasingly steep inheritance taxes, almost all had substantial exemptions or special policies for family-owned businesses. Britain alone did not, and so the British equivalent of the German mittelstand businesses of 20-400 employees in (particularly) skilled manufacturing was essentially destroyed, over a generation, by punitive inheritance taxes that didn’t only end long-termist family ownership but also made for low valuations and extreme difficulty raising capital (since bankers knew what was on the horizon), and which inculcated a reverence for and emphasis upon extreme profit-taking that affects British business to this day.

imposed crushing anti-development rules on the North

Worth noting that this is the impact of most environmental regulations- encourage offshoring to countries that don't care means the middle class of your own country shrinks. I recall a similar claim made here in the past about [the wrong sorts of people getting rich] being a contributing factor in why nuclear power is illegal in all the countries that can afford to do it properly, as well.

Unfortunately for the US the Great Lakes region is not sufficiently geographically isolated from the Northeast, so it can't resist a full-scale military invasion even if its regional policymakers were able to see the writing on the wall once Nixon went to China and (totally coincidentally) created the EPA; it's also able to be blockaded by the Northeast since if the NE wanted to they could have a force attacking rebel shipping from the south bank of the St. Lawrence in a couple of days were they so motivated.

If they're deceiving us into thinking they're merely stupid when they're actually malign, they do a good job!

In Australia right now people are getting excited about 'green hydrogen' and 'green steel' to be produced with solar energy. This is to be done in the desert near the iron, where nobody wants to live. Our actual steel industry is at death's door, our car industry is dead, our plastics industry is shutting down due to high energy costs... and these geniuses want to:

  1. Compete with the North East Asian juggernaughts in steel
  2. With a whole new refining process
  3. In a country with one of the world's highest labour costs
  4. Despite our manufacturing sector shrinking in real time!

Despite our manufacturing sector shrinking in real time!

The cold civil war against the middle class was over in Western countries 20 years before the losers realized it was even being waged in the first place. The last holdout was arguably Germany, and idiotic environmental policies and politicians (or perhaps those bought and paid for by rich Americans; only France seems to treat environmental NGOs like the Fifth Columnists they are) brought their economy to an end once the US got the war they'd been agitating for (at Germany's direct expense with respect to energy costs, and at America's direct benefit through LNG exports).

I'm sure all that's totally a coincidence though.

The last ~150 years of history make a lot more sense to me when I consider that certain factions never wanted Germany to be a country, period.

North-easterners didn't like seeing them drive up in nice cars throwing money around. They saw them as uppity. So various federal policies were put in place to economically devastate the region.

That is a very bold claim.

Seriously. What a wild assertion to drop in like obvious fact.

As a dirty dozen but not politically obsessed elite, I unironically believe most voters are just uninformed and not really equipped to think about certain important issues like climate change or immigration. The typical voter can’t articulate what an externality is or reliably identify one in nature. The typical voter has empirically incorrect ideas about immigration and its connection to crime and the economy. I’m not in the politically obsessed “we should cheat at elections” camp but I do firmly believe the current US government is doing an outstanding job all things considered and people who disagree either have incoherent ideas about what’s going on or are politically motivated and think that because Trump isn’t president, the economy must be bad. I think Biden is old but I don’t care because the deep state is benign and competent, so I hope he and his crew win.

How old are you? I paid $5 for a bagel this morning (toasted and buttered) at the same coffee shop where it used to be $1.

It took a comically long time to arrive and was (obviously) cold and tough on arrival.

Our order was taken and delivered by a fat, ugly, comically short woman who did not speak intelligible english.

Things didn't used to be like this. A great crime has been perpetrated against you.

a great crime has been perpetrated against you

Is this quoting something? It sounds oddly familiar.

I don't remember where I picked it up and search isn't finding anything, apologies

It resembles "remember what they took from you".

I’m 40. If you denominate those prices in hours worked you should be much better off, unless you are facing a major and unusual skill issue.

Do you mind rephrasing your comment? I don't know what 'denominate those prices in hours worked' means or what my skills have to do with a $1 bagel now being $5

I think they meant "how much time, in work hours, did it take for you to get that $5 now vs. the past?" That said, I hear that wages in the US have never really kept up with inflation, so...

That said, I hear that wages in the US have never really kept up with inflation

Certainly reddit will tell you that.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

The typical voter has empirically incorrect ideas about immigration and its connection to crime and the economy.

The typical voter's view on immigration and the economic consequences of it are substantially more accurate than those of the elite. The American working class has actually collapsed, and immigration was one of the biggest forces contributing to that collapse (outsourcing being the second). While it might not be noticeable if you're living in elite enclave, illegal immigration (and regular immigration) have substantially immiserated vast swathes of the country. People don't think that the economy is bad simply because Trump isn't president, they think the economy is bad because the prices they pay for food and other basic necessities have increased out of pace with the compensation they're receiving to the point that it is having a noticeable impact on their quality of life despite what Paul Krugman is saying.

I do firmly believe the current US government is doing an outstanding job all things considered

Where exactly are they doing an outstanding job? They're losing the proxy war in Ukraine, public trust in government is at an all time low, family formation and other non-gamed metrics reflecting attainment of meaningful lifegoals are in the toilet and the nation's infrastructure has been neglected to an almost comical degree.

I don’t care because the deep state is benign and competent,

Have you read any of the leaked documents that came out of the deep state? I just can't believe that they're "benign and competent" when I've actually looked at the work they're doing, or the SMS messages they send to each other. At least the NSA got that cool control room inspired by Star Trek, I suppose...

This comment kind of perfectly encapsulates what I’m saying. Everything you’re saying about the state of the economy, for example, is just wrong and easily disprovable from tons of independent data sources.

  • -18

I’m going to step in right here before y’all recreate any more of the last thread on this topic. This is not a warning. It is a reminder to calibrate your expectations.

Tomato, the more dismissive you choose to be, the more data you need to provide. Even if it’s anecdotal.

Anyone who feels the urge to dogpile Tomato—remain polite. “Not being convinced” is not a crime.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

The data is either incomplete or wrongly, often willfully wrongly interpreted. I’m literally one of those people he’s talking about; Despite posting in this rarefied little forum full of PMC types, I’m roughly working class in lifestyle and lifetime earning capability.

Instead of going to get an advanced degree, I worked for a living and got married and started a family. I’m an extremely skilled worker with an extremely strong resume, and I’ve been working 40-60 hours a week for the last 15 odd years at decent and respectable enterprises. By all accounts I shouldn’t have to struggle this hard just to keep my head above water.

All I have to do is take a look at my refrigerator to tell you you’re wrong. From 2016 to 2020, if I had friends over I’d always have something special for entertaining; olives, cheeses, charcuterie, pate, maybe some nice liquor or craft beer, high quality meat, a wide variety of fresh fruits, maybe some fun desserts like sorbet or crème brûlée. You name it, it wasn’t extravagant but I always had something I could put together to entertain a few guests.

And that was all on one income, which was a good income but not spectacular by any means. And I managed to save a good amount of money. I could afford to take my wife out to a nice dinner in occasion, we could go on very modest vacations without worrying about it too much.

All that shit is gone now, my family had spaghetti for dinner twice last week. It’s brown bag lunch for me. I don’t keep liquor in the house anymore, too expensive. We’ve basically stopped eating beef because it’s too expensive. For the first time in my entire life I’ve been late on payments on a semi regular basis; I’m quite financially literate but there’s only so much you can do.

And that’s all with my wife working again.

What that people touting these great economic numbers don’t understand is that all the pain and hardship doesn’t end the second the numbers start to get better, the effects of economic stress have long tails that bleed into everything. Just because the earthquake stopped and the house is still standing doesn’t mean it is not still in the process of falling over.

I’m making more money than I ever had but my lifestyle has been severely downgraded since 2020, probably permanently, of which nearly none of the blame can be reasonably laid at the feet of Donald Trump or the republican party.

I live in a deep blue state, in a blue area. And every working class person I know hates the government and the Biden administration. What’s more interesting is my social circle is incredibly diverse.

of which nearly none of the blame can be reasonably laid at the feet of Donald Trump or the republican party.

Well Trump was the President who signed off on the first 2.2 trillion dollar CARES act in 2020, so if you believe the arguments that this contributed to inflation, then Trump at least is somewhat responsible. Biden then also signed a 1.9 trillion dollar rescue plan as well of course.

Sure, but two things were abundantly clear even to the political novice; trump wanted the vaccines approved asap and trump wanted the lockdowns lifted as soon as the vaccine became available to let the economy recover, even if it was just to save his own political skin.

If the CARES act was the only major spending bill related to COVID and we got more or less back to business as usual by fall 2020, it would have caused an inflationary period but the damage would have been limited and mitigated by a quick recovery.

There’s a big difference between taking 2000mg of Tylenol and taking 4000mg of Tylenol and four shots of whiskey.

The vast, disparate effects of what you might call the “lockdown political culture” deepened and accelerated this inflationary pressure by absolutely skull-fucking normal supply and demand. And that shit was 1000% on the heads of democrats.

All inflation is just too much money chasing too little goods. The absolutely psychotic extended lockdowns and the hair trigger response we had throughout the administrative state, which was in open rebellion against the Trump administration, caused a ton of problems both on the supply side and the demand side.

I saw this personally as I was privy to the cost increase in my industry which were largely a result of all these collective policies on both the federal level, and on the state and local level, all of which are heavily blue.

So my intuition is that trump might be responsible for like 15% of the inflation surrounding COVID, tops. And the super tight labor market that we had pre-COVID more than makes up for that, and the Trump administration can take at least partial credit for that.

How much of the good things in the economy are from borrowing from the future?

You can’t borrow real things from the future, and when people are discussing the economy being good they are talking about real consumption, investment, etc.

If you have a bunch of physical resources you could use to build infrastructure which will provide a moderate amount of value per year over the coming decades, or in goods which will provide a large amount of value now but no further value in the future, that gives you the options of "invest in the future" vs "consume now". If the default action is "invest in the future", and you make the decision to consume now instead, I think that reasonably counts as "borrowing against the future".

On the object level of this thread, it's debatable whether allowing more immigration is borrowing against the future or investing in the future, and it probably depends to some extent on how generous you expect future entitlements to be, but "is our current policy borrowing against the future" is a real and meaningful question.

You absolutely can. This is easy to see in a world where other countries exist: any policy which in effect borrows from them, and pays for imports with the borrowed money, will do so. There's reason to think this is happening: the US government takes out debt to raise money, spends it on things, some of which spending will ultimately be used to buy imported things. The main question is to what extent is that happening.

At some later point in the future, we'll need to have the money to pay things back.

Of course, the question is how large this effect is. Per this website, it looks like our recent trade deficits is about a trillion dollars worth, give or take. It looks like US GDP is about 25 trillion, so that would look like about 4% of our economy from the last year was borrowed?

(I'm not an economist; someone who knows better, please help. I don't know how bad that is.)

I'll note that that's not just government debt or something. The US dollar being used as the world reserve currency would have a similar effect: people want dollars, leading to a net import of goods.

I'm not sure whether there's a way to do so if an economy were isolated; I think you'd be right in that case.

You could let in a bunch of immigrants who produce marginal value now working as fry cooks and uber drivers and later collect retirement benefits far in excess of their contributions in the form of social security and Medicaid. Or you could borrow money from abroad and use it to buy imported goods.

Oh, that's another good example of a way that could happen.

outstanding job all things considered

Really? Massive opiate epidemic, uncontrolled borders, failing/flailing Operation Prosperity Guardian, running 5-6% budget deficits during what we're assured is a booming economy... The US military is supposed to be gearing up to take on Russia and China but the army had to cut strength by some 10,000 men because they couldn't recruit. There's intense political division, two months ago there were state governors squaring off against the feds on border security. Three years ago there was some kind of coup/farce.

IMO the only good news coming out of the US stems from the private sector: SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI, Nvidia.

Minor correction: the state governors are still squaring off against the feds.

I wouldn’t shock me if a bunch of what you believe to be true is just hokum. The whole “everyone else is dumb and I’m smart” is tiresome.

Take for example the economy. Let’s say we believe the government numbers (there are real questions about for example the establishment survey v household). But then you peel back the onion a bit and you start seeing a bit of rot. You see a bunch of people who’ve depleted their savings and who have run up a bunch of credit card debt. Sure if there are no shocks they’ll be fine but they feel a whole lot more fragile. The effects of inflation seem long lived.

But hey! GDP is going up. Of course a decent chunk of that is almost definitional (government spending is part of GDP). Too bad government borrowing is going up way in excess of GDP. That suggests a debt spiral.

And then finally you are making a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. You really aren’t pointing to anything Biden did. Just he was in office and you like the economy.

Is he doing an outstanding job or was the economy in 2019 great and the Panasonic was weird but the fundamentals were reasonably strong and Biden has only fucked up things a bit?

the Panasonic was weird

Did you mean pandemic? I'm losing the thread here.

Yes! Sorry typo. Was in my phone.

I think that the PDF that you link is, unfortunately, nearly useless for drawing any conclusions. It just summarizes some alleged findings. We need to know the methodology of the poll and the exact questions asked. I haven't been able to find that information so far. The closest I have found after a very brief online search is this: https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Them-vs-Us_CTUP-Rasmussen-Study-FINAL.pdf.

Some points of interest (quotes are from the PDF I link to in my first paragraph):

This report is based upon two separate surveys of 1,000 Members of the Elites. They were conducted online by Scott Rasmussen on September 11-26, 2023, and September 14-29, 2023. RMG Research, Inc. conducted fieldwork for the survey.

What kind of online surveys? How did they find the participants? How did they secure the surveys from the kind of issues that often make online surveys nearly useless?

"To fight climate change, would you favor or oppose the strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity"

This is sample survey question, by the way. Note that it does not say "To fight climate change, do you favor or oppose the strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity". The subtle grammatical difference may affect responses because the elite are more likely to distinguish between "would" and "do" than the average American, for whom the two might basically mean the same thing in this context.

"How much would you personally be willing to pay each year in terms of taxes and higher costs to reduce climate change?"

Another sample question. The two choices are "$100 or Less" and "$500 or More". Obviously for the elite to pick "$500 or More" does not mean the same thing as it would for the average American to pick "$500 or More". Why they didn't provide choices as a fraction of income or wealth, I have no idea.

These are just three random things that jumped out at me after glancing over the PDF for a minute or so. If we had access to all of the actual survey questions and the responses, we might be able to find a hundred more possible issues.

Wow, that's concerning. Online surveys are garbage, didn't realize it was one of those.

Online polls open to self-selecting members of the public are garbage. But that's different from conducting a survey online by selecting people some other way and then giving them a link instead of a sheet of paper to fill out, which is how many surveys are conducted nowadays.

This survey could be useful, despite being an online survey, if they made sure to vet the participants to know that they are who they say they are and if they ran the survey in such a way as to make sure that a person could not take it multiple times. However, I haven't been able to find any more precise information about how exactly they conducted the survey, so far all we know it might have been an "everybody welcome" online poll where participants just told them what income level they had and they trusted it. I hope not, but I just don't have enough information to tell.

It sounds like those results are much more "the most partisan tip of lefties vs normie Republicans" than anything else, and doesn't say anything besides elites tending to be partisan lefties.

I was most surprised by how 29% of the elite thinks that China is an ally, compared to 9% of ordinary voters. I would’ve thought the elites were the hawks! Maybe some of them have commercial interests in China or they want to work with China on climate change or they’re ethnically Chinese, anyway this is really odd to me.

Obvious possibility is that a substantial amount of them are themselves twitter communist types who like the regime, although 29% sounds like a really high number for a demographic that I thought basically only existed online.

35% of the elite would rather cheat than lose a close election, rising to 69% of the ‘politically obsessed’. Only 7% of pleb voters would cheat. That seems like an underestimate to me – who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll?

I've got to wonder how much of that is influenced by present circumstances. I think Trump is uniquely hated, and leftie elites are more willing to sacrifice other values like honesty to stop him. They're also aware Trump can possibly win given 2016 and don't live in delusion that they would never need to sacrifice their values since they'd never lose anyway. Meanwhile I'd be concerned that the plebs are mostly Republican and think they don't need to cheat to win because of course they're going to win anyways and if they don't win it's because the election was stolen by the other side. The "election steal" is a big part of Republican mentality, and it'd just be too incongruous for a Republican to admit they'd cheat, even if in reality they would if they somehow actually had the opportunity and it was truly necessary to get a R win.

it must be at least 1000x easier to defend the US border against stateless, unarmed mobs

A sizeable amount of that is reluctance to use lethal force, even passively. A key part of stopping Russians is killing them, which lefties can get behind in present circumstances. They do not get behind killing migrants who are seeking better lives. They don't even get behind letting migrants drown when the migrants choose to cross a river and encounter barbed wire they knew was there. Notably even Republicans somewhat agree with this, one of Abbott's key defenses of barbed wire is that by placing it, fewer migrants would try to cross in the first place, leading to less drownings in total, even if the wire itself causes an handful.

It’s bizarre that 55% oppose non-essential air travel since this class is the most likely to go on overseas holidays, I don’t understand how this works.

You misunderstand; they're against air travel for you, not for them, and open borders against you, not against them (which is part of why the only free trade agreement for migration of skilled labor are non-immigrant visa provisions with 3 countries: Canada, Mexico, and Australia). In the same way, an opposition to private gun rights is not an opposition to the concept of armed private security (including police) outside one's residence.

One might consider them elite heretics or counter-elites

They're probably grifters aiming to extract money from regional gentry in exchange for validating their feeling that Harvard journalism graduates are ruining America and the country could be saved if only they were allowed to dump toxic runoff in the creek.

Anyway, they define elite as postgrad urbanite with 150K per year income. They further split elites into those who went to 12 top colleges and the ‘politically obsessed’ (definition unclear but I imagine it means they spend a certain number of hours reading/watching/discussing political media). For instance, I imagine we would be considered ‘politically obsessed’.

This seems like a gerrymandered category. They've pretty much defined elite in a way that precludes anyone conservative from being included while sweeping up a lot of people who are mildly successful professionals. If your definition of "elite" captures an MIT graduate with a twitter problem but not Richard Uihlein, it's probably deficient.

This almost feels propaganda to me and poorly defined. I agree with the other comment that $150k isn’t elite. Maybe 20 years ago. It feels like propaganda because they keep quoting “1%” and then use “150k” those are definitely not the same thing today. Then link them to top 12 colleges. It’s not a unified coherent group the way they are defining. I mean I know pool guys making $150k a year.

I think they are trying to confuse PMC which stretches down to like someone from a directional state school background making 150k a year with legitimate elites.

I also think they are doing a disservice to the 1%. Things break down at that level and people get a lot more weird. Still a blue tilt in the top 1% but a lot of more nuanced views and many more Elon/Ken Griffin types.

The top 1-15% seem to have a strong blue tilt and read the NYT. The 1% in IQ get bored with the NYT and just skim headlines for events.

It's a composite measurement, there aren't that many high-earning pool guys with postgraduate degrees. 12 colleges are a subset of that.

Anyway, they define elite as postgrad urbanite with 150K per year income.

Really? In Manhattan those are called "poor people". More seriously, that's low enough to include a lot of people who are merely strivers and have not become elite, as well a large part of the urban PMC (e.g. Google NYC is full of such people) who will never be elite (as in either being or at least having significant part-ownership in a Senator or state legislature)

It's low enough to include people that aren't even strivers. While granting that it's still a good income, it's also an amount that you can make in jobs that you can more or less stumble into and stay at pretty comfortably without trying to rise much. I'm struggling to resist linking my old company's Glassdoor for doxing reasons, but it's not particularly prestigious and has plenty of pretty ordinary roles (both technical and non-technical) in that salary range. Having the postgrad degree is helpful, but not required.

I can't help but think they cherrypicked a group that fits their conception of who's causing the problems. I don't even necessarily disagree with the core claims, but the way they're getting there doesn't look honest or rigorous to me. A guy that got a master's degree and makes $200K at a software company is "elite", but the suburban guys that own car dealerships and pull down seven figures aren't? I'm not buying it, particularly if we're talking about who's more likely to have meaningful political influence.

150K personal income is pretty good, even in Manhattan (at least I assume they're talking personal income). That's higher than the household average in every county in America, nearly double the per capita average.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States

The report indicated that they were talking about 1% of the USA population.

150k is 91p for individual income. There's no way that 9% of Americans (30M people?) have personal ties to senators or have "ai regulators" over for dinner. It's hilariously broad.

150K urban postgrads, all three are needed.

The elites I know aren't American but I assure you that's the kind of thing that happens. They all know eachother. The AI regulator in question is one of those people who goes flying around the world to be in the room, making EU policy. He has one of those CVs that just goes on and on, founded this and that, on the board of x, y and z.

America is bigger and wealthier. There's a ton of $150K urban postgrads who aren't part of that scene.

Most people making 150k are probably urban college graduates. It's hard to make that kind of money with a high school diploma.

The elites I know aren't American but I assure you that's the kind of thing that happens.

I can assure you that the elite slice of the population is much less than 9%.

How broad is too broad to be considered "elite"? If you told me that 10% of a population were elites, that doesn't sound too weird to me.

Let me run a quick sanity check. Hmm, 30 seconds of Googling is telling me that in Medieval Europe the nobility were around 1-3% of the population (except in Castille where it was around 10% at certain times, but that seems to be an outlier). So perhaps 9% is too broad.

You can call it "elite" if you want since it's an arbitrary term. But the idea that your average CS graduate is hobnobbing with senators is laughable.

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