Cultural Marxists annihilates aristocratic and hierarchic thought in Western Academia, then the Western elite forget how to do pursue culture, then justifying annihilation by the same Marxists.
I agree that Solana's proposal is just kitschful thinking and likely to fail. You also put your finger on important trends amplifying America's long-standing egalitarian fervor, and you're probably right about how to counteract its excesses.
But I don't think any story about populist resentment is complete without considering social media. Newspapers, radio and television brought us closer to the glamorous, the powerful, and the fabulously wealthy. But social media pushes the illusion even further, promoting the feeling that we are their peers in every respect and causing some to believe they're part of the same Dunbar group. As de Tocqueville wrote in 1835:
>When all conditions are unequal, there is no inequality great enough to offend the eye, whereas the smallest dissimilarity appears shocking in the midst of general uniformity; the sight of it becomes more intolerable as uniformity is more complete. It is therefore natural that the love of equality grows constantly with equality itself; in satisfying it, one develops it.
That's true whether the equality of conditions is real or imaginary. When social media closes the perceived distance between us and the billionaires, it feeds the appetite for more.
Sandal also raised a related point in "Tyranny of Merit": that in a meritocracy, the wealthy, successful, and rich lose any obligation or understanding of their accomplishments as partially flowing from public goods. The notion that everyone's deserts are exclusively due to their own merits breeds arrogance in the successful, and the absence of any value besides success creates a sense of humiliation in the economically immobile. Sandal also does a wonderful job pointing out how Obama's moralizing language of merit - around going to college, around doing the "smart" thing - helped create the very conditions for Trump.
Really interesting two essays! But I think you're too accepting of a dismissive casting of a wealth tax. It's as fundamentally human as possible: tit for tat. There are lots of confounders, so it's not really possible to give a tight, confident estimate in the amount, but it is definitely true that the elite have stolen trillions of dollars from the rest of us over the last ~50 years. Both in the UK and the US policy shifted explicitly in a pro-capital, anti-labor direction starting with Thatcher and Reagan. Since then the elite have captured round to 100% of the gains from increased productivity. The median man in the US didn't get an raise in hourly wage for 40+ years (late 1970s to late 2010s). The median woman got a raise only because of gains in rights and respect.
Yes there's globalization and technological change. But it's deeply unserious to claim that the massive upward redistribution over that period isn't meaningfully driven by political and regulatory capture by right wing ideologues/wannabe oligarchs. In other words, the elites not just rhetorically but literally have stolen an ungodly amount from the rest of us. Why shouldn't we take it back? And change the rules to it's not so easy to steal in the first place?
I kind of get your intuition about fairness here and I know we're not going to agree about market economies, but … "stealing"?
Take Amazon, one of those highly productive companies. They have created tens of thousands of very high-paying jobs, well above the median of 40-50 years ago in real terms. Beyond that, they pay their truckers and warehouse employees competitive wages. I don't think Amazon truckers deserve to be paid more than Coca-Cola’s truckers for winning the employer lottery.
Building wealth in a free economy requires great moral virtue.
Failing to realize this animates everyone from nihilistic leftists who hate achievement to those who nominally support capitalism yet claim that successful industrialists owe "society" more than the products and jobs they created. I don't want people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk wasting their precious time trying to emulate Locke and Jefferson. But it is the modern heirs of the latter who have failed us all by refusing to acknowledge the ethical rectitude of the capitalist system and those who succeed within it.
Cultural Marxists annihilates aristocratic and hierarchic thought in Western Academia, then the Western elite forget how to do pursue culture, then justifying annihilation by the same Marxists.
An inventive “plan”, if we can call it like this, making evident that Marcuse was right and Marx was wrong
but I'm not "justifying it".
Never thought it about you!
I agree that Solana's proposal is just kitschful thinking and likely to fail. You also put your finger on important trends amplifying America's long-standing egalitarian fervor, and you're probably right about how to counteract its excesses.
But I don't think any story about populist resentment is complete without considering social media. Newspapers, radio and television brought us closer to the glamorous, the powerful, and the fabulously wealthy. But social media pushes the illusion even further, promoting the feeling that we are their peers in every respect and causing some to believe they're part of the same Dunbar group. As de Tocqueville wrote in 1835:
>When all conditions are unequal, there is no inequality great enough to offend the eye, whereas the smallest dissimilarity appears shocking in the midst of general uniformity; the sight of it becomes more intolerable as uniformity is more complete. It is therefore natural that the love of equality grows constantly with equality itself; in satisfying it, one develops it.
That's true whether the equality of conditions is real or imaginary. When social media closes the perceived distance between us and the billionaires, it feeds the appetite for more.
What do you think about UATX?
Sandal also raised a related point in "Tyranny of Merit": that in a meritocracy, the wealthy, successful, and rich lose any obligation or understanding of their accomplishments as partially flowing from public goods. The notion that everyone's deserts are exclusively due to their own merits breeds arrogance in the successful, and the absence of any value besides success creates a sense of humiliation in the economically immobile. Sandal also does a wonderful job pointing out how Obama's moralizing language of merit - around going to college, around doing the "smart" thing - helped create the very conditions for Trump.
Maybe I am out of the loop, what is UATX?
Really interesting two essays! But I think you're too accepting of a dismissive casting of a wealth tax. It's as fundamentally human as possible: tit for tat. There are lots of confounders, so it's not really possible to give a tight, confident estimate in the amount, but it is definitely true that the elite have stolen trillions of dollars from the rest of us over the last ~50 years. Both in the UK and the US policy shifted explicitly in a pro-capital, anti-labor direction starting with Thatcher and Reagan. Since then the elite have captured round to 100% of the gains from increased productivity. The median man in the US didn't get an raise in hourly wage for 40+ years (late 1970s to late 2010s). The median woman got a raise only because of gains in rights and respect.
Yes there's globalization and technological change. But it's deeply unserious to claim that the massive upward redistribution over that period isn't meaningfully driven by political and regulatory capture by right wing ideologues/wannabe oligarchs. In other words, the elites not just rhetorically but literally have stolen an ungodly amount from the rest of us. Why shouldn't we take it back? And change the rules to it's not so easy to steal in the first place?
I kind of get your intuition about fairness here and I know we're not going to agree about market economies, but … "stealing"?
Take Amazon, one of those highly productive companies. They have created tens of thousands of very high-paying jobs, well above the median of 40-50 years ago in real terms. Beyond that, they pay their truckers and warehouse employees competitive wages. I don't think Amazon truckers deserve to be paid more than Coca-Cola’s truckers for winning the employer lottery.
Building wealth in a free economy requires great moral virtue.
Failing to realize this animates everyone from nihilistic leftists who hate achievement to those who nominally support capitalism yet claim that successful industrialists owe "society" more than the products and jobs they created. I don't want people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk wasting their precious time trying to emulate Locke and Jefferson. But it is the modern heirs of the latter who have failed us all by refusing to acknowledge the ethical rectitude of the capitalist system and those who succeed within it.