Angus Deaton:
From the Guardian article:
The results are clear. Real wages have stagnated since 1980 while productivity has more than doubled and the rich cream off the profits. The top 10% of US families now own 76% of wealth. The bottom 50% own just 1%.

NOW, explain to me AGAIN how 55% of Americans own their own homes?!! Because that is not possible.
There are no statistics regarding how mobile homes on rented lots are yet considered owned homes. In American, statistics say from 11 to 20% of homes are abandoned, which again, is impossible. Banks own homes which may or may not be occupied.
So what we have here is an obvious discrepancy to which no clarity has been focused.
I suggest that were mobile homes to be excluded from ‘home ownership’, the true figure would be less than 20%, of which less than 10% have no mortgage having achieved the American dream of TRUE home ownership. Which , of course, is only achievable by paying all taxes, assessments, fees, special costs, legal fees, attachments, etc., on each and every occasion that presents itself.

Comment no. 18 is a reply to your comment no. 15. I thought that I clicked Reply before I began typing, but plainly I didn’t. Mea culpa.

Further apropos no. 18, a corrigendum. “leave every mind-set … seem Pollyannaish” s/b “leave every mind-set … seeming Pollyannaish”. I made a late correction to the first part of the clause but neglected to make the corresponding correction to the second.

Thank you for your insight and your intellectual and spiritual generosity, old friend. In the many years since we first “met” at TOO, if there has been a comment of yours from which I haven’t profited by learning something of real value, I cannot recall it.

Apropos cynicism, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that events here in North America in the past twenty years (at a minimum) have gone south so precipitately as to leave every mind-set, except the most resolutely gloomy, seem Polyannaish. Indeed, I wonder whether you would agree with me that your homeland is even closer to complete collapse into post-Western barbarism and tyranny than the USA is. From what I see (admittedly a less than fully informed perspective), even the Quebeckers seem to be losing the will to continue fighting to maintain their cantankerous “otherness.” In that, they resemble the Irish, who, clinging to their Faith, bravely defied England for five hundred years, only to surrender abjectly to the Jews in rather less than fifty.

Some people appreciate folk music and poetry, some do not. Bill clearly doesn’t.

How you could say that Oliver Anthony’s song was written by the RNC is beyond me.

That’s why I explained it.

We are all blinded to a greater or lesser degree. In high school a teacher asked how I could be so cynical at such a young age. Answer: I practise a lot. There are always plenty of opportunities. I admit it has greatly reduced my being disappointed and levels of idealism over the years.

I mean how many people want to get involved with what’s happening in the local community and government? …

Not many. I did years ago, but became exasperated beating a dead horse. it sucks the life out of you.

I couldn’t decide whether to hit troll or disagree, so I decided to comment. IMHO, this is one of the better articles I’ve read on this site recently. How you could say that Oliver Anthony’s song was written by the RNC is beyond me.

Tying different times and topics together to make an important point is neither meandering nor mindless. I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, and one thing I know for sure is that this is not the same country of my youth. Today’s Millennials and Gen Xers, with eyes glued to their omnipresent smart phones, have no conception of how far down the rabbit hole this country has slid in the past 50 years. As an aging boomer, this essay really hit home.

Great comment.

The special appeal of leftist revolutionary movements to members of the aristocracy and especially to downwardly-mobile members of the aristocracy is the second most interesting sociological fact about it (the preeminence of Jews being the most). Naturally, these two facts are never discussed outside extremist discourse.

These are excellent points. When someone starts blabbering unironically about “the price of labor,” you can be sure it’s not a commie blabbering.

Yeah, the GOP can afford actual talent, so, you’re right, GOP poetry wouldn’t look like that.

The genius of Marxism/communism was in making people believe that after the violent overthrow of government and decapitation of the opposition leaders, that power would actually be returned to “the people”.

My clear sense for almost fifty years was that everyone who called himself a communist or Marxist but had (1) a certain degree of intelligence and, even more important, (2) prosperity and (3) a more or less secure position in society was cynically lying in order to gain both more wealth and the power of life and death over the great mass of his fellow humans, most of whom he despised. It was only in the last ten or fifteen years that I awoke to the possibility that the sort of grandly illusory utopianism—i.e., massive self-deception—you outline above might truly enter into the mix.

I now sometimes wonder whether my own evident immunity to this very peculiar form of misguided idealism, one wherein awareness of the unspeakable immorality of mass murder can be placed into something analogous to a medically induced coma for as long as need be, has blinded me to its presence elsewhere.

That was nothing new to Marxism.
All kinds of movements promised power to the people… but it turned out to be ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. A running theme throughout history.

But then, even if power were given to the people, what would happen? People would bicker and fight among themselves. Also, managing power is a lot of work, and most people don’t want to deal with it and want to do something else. So, even if people had power, they’d soon outsource it to professional politicians and a new ruling class that would come to hog much of it.

I mean how many people want to get involved with what’s happening in the local community and government? People just want to watch tv and listen to music and eat good. They don’t want to deal with the nitty-gritty of running a society.

The lyrics of Oliver Anthony may or may not be a lot of things to wide range of people and/or institutional groups of people, but “Rich Men North of Richmond” sure as hell did not dribble from the plume of some RNC poet. Careful who you call retardate.

Unfortunately, “the ID politics left” is a tool of the owners, not “the left”.

The genius of Marxism/communism was in making people believe that after the violent overthrow of government and decapitation of the opposition leaders, that power would actually be returned to “the people”. Perhaps the reason socialist/mutualist philosopher Proudhon – the Father of Anarchy -, from whom Marx stole many ideas, referred to Marx as “the tapeworm in socialism”.

Marxism per Marx-Engels, summarized by Lenin, was (1) French class struggle (2) English political economy and (3) German dialectics. Not fair to claim its economic goals as good without remembering the METHODS proposed for accomplishing them, which were immoral and even murderous. Still are.

As for dialectics, economy, and social progress, Marx stole his best ideas from others, per his own admission in a famous manuscript from 1844:

https://www.academia.edu/37921808/Notes_on_Money_and_Freedom_RS_

Note that to read the article, simply SCROLL DOWN; no sign-in is necessary. Thanks.

The economic left versus the ID politics left. That is the new dichotomy.

Increasingly it resembled the other economic ideology of communism in viewing humans as economic widgets with their money value, as once was true of slaves, being their only characteristic of worth.

Not true. Marxism argued that capitalism viewed humans that way, as mere economic units.
A communist future would allow the people to fulfill their true potentials not only as productive workers but as thinkers, artists, and creative folks.

Marx emphasized economics as the true source of power but wanted people to be more than economic units. He wanted the workers to share in the leisure and creativity as the hallmark of bourgeois life. His critique was that capitalism concentrates wealth, leisure, and freedom only among the upper class who, with their vast wealth, could lead lives apart from economics. In contrast, the workers had only economic considerations because it was all work and toil for them and little else.

Of course, how communism actually turned out is something else.

Even so, one reason why communist economies, at least post-Stalinist ones, were so inefficient was that workers had a good deal of leeway and leisure with 2 hr lunch breaks and near zero chance of being fired.

As this is being written a song flew to Billboard’s top for the first time without previous recordings by its singer. “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony is a revolutionary hymn to those trapped in today’s world of death of despair. Oddly it is being called right-wing despite evoking images like those of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression John Steinbeck wrote about in Grapes of Wrath and Woody Guthrie sang about with the words “some rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.”

Have you listened to the song or read its lyrics? Woodie Guthrie? Are you retarded? It reads as if it was written by the RNC. It would be no surprise at all to learn that it was. It is the most mediocre expression of Reaganesque talking points imaginable. He is complaining that taxes are too high and that fat chicks are getting food stamps. Here:

Livin’ in the new world / With an old soul / These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control / Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do / And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do / ‘Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end / ‘Cause of rich men north of Richmond.

I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere / Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare.

Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds / Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground / ‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down.

Yeah, man. We’re bein’ oppressed by those shadowy, nameless elites again. Those jerks are really givin’ it to us by refusing to cut their own taxes and giving poor people food stamps. The bastards!!!!

Come on, Ron. Surely you can do better than to publish this poorly written, verbose, meandering, mindless dreck.