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Notes -
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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