https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/11/middl...s-liberal/

Kotkin on the real split in America.

"Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

We’ve seen this fight before. The current conflict fundamentally reprises the end of the French feudal era, where the Third Estate, made up of the commoners, challenged the hegemony of the First Estate and Second, made up of the church and aristocracy.

These dynamics are unsettling our politics to the core. Both the gentry left, funded largely by Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and the libertarian right, have been slow to recognize that they are, in de Tocqueville’s term, “sitting on a volcano ready to explode.” The middle class everywhere in the world, notes a recent OECD report, is under assault, and shrinking in most places while prospects for upward mobility for the working class also declines.

The anger of the Third Estate, both the growing property-less Serf class as well as the beleaguered Yeomanry, has produced the growth of populist, parties both right and left in Europe....


Together these two classes have waxed while the Third Estate has declined. This essentially reversed the enormous gains made by the middle and even the working class over the past 50 years. The top 1% in America captured just 4.9 percent of total U.S. income growth in 1945-1973, but since then the country’s richest classes has gobbled up an astonishing 58.7% of all new wealth in the U.S., and 41.8 percent of total income growth during 2009-2015 alone.

In this period, the Oligarchy has benefited from the financialization of the economy and the refusal of the political class in both parties to maintain competitive markets...."

(09-13-2019 04:36 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/11/middl...s-liberal/

Kotkin on the real split in America.

"Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

We’ve seen this fight before. The current conflict fundamentally reprises the end of the French feudal era, where the Third Estate, made up of the commoners, challenged the hegemony of the First Estate and Second, made up of the church and aristocracy.

These dynamics are unsettling our politics to the core. Both the gentry left, funded largely by Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and the libertarian right, have been slow to recognize that they are, in de Tocqueville’s term, “sitting on a volcano ready to explode.” The middle class everywhere in the world, notes a recent OECD report, is under assault, and shrinking in most places while prospects for upward mobility for the working class also declines.

The anger of the Third Estate, both the growing property-less Serf class as well as the beleaguered Yeomanry, has produced the growth of populist, parties both right and left in Europe....


Together these two classes have waxed while the Third Estate has declined. This essentially reversed the enormous gains made by the middle and even the working class over the past 50 years. The top 1% in America captured just 4.9 percent of total U.S. income growth in 1945-1973, but since then the country’s richest classes has gobbled up an astonishing 58.7% of all new wealth in the U.S., and 41.8 percent of total income growth during 2009-2015 alone.

In this period, the Oligarchy has benefited from the financialization of the economy and the refusal of the political class in both parties to maintain competitive markets...."

It is actually a lot simpler than that. Ask a Cuban defector how Socialism works. Ask one what happens to them if they go out in the Caribbean and get caught bringing home a lobster to eat.

I'm glad trump fixed it all.

Zeehan explains it pretty well. Toward the end of WWII we got our allies together at Bretton Woods and bribed up an alliance to win the Cold War. We let everybody export to us to build their economies back up, and we protected their trade routes by being world policeman, in exchange for their agreement not to go communist. So we end up with the largest trade deficit in the world, even though we participate in world trade less than anyone else. Basically, we just don't export very much. We consume everything we can make, and more. We have moved a lot of production offshore, because conditions there were more conducive to earning a higher ROI. A lot of this was on purpose, we swapped trade for security.

Now, when you have a trade deficit, you have to attract the money back as foreign investment, or else you just drain the wealth out of your economy. See Argentina, last 100 years. Now that investment comes back through the financial centers. So our producers lose money because we let production go overseas, while our financial sector makes that ,money back.

The problem with this approach is the it lost its usefulness the day the Berlin Wall fell, and we weren't prepared for what to do next. We still aren't, and have now gone 30 years with an outmoded paradigm. Ross Perot said something in 1992 that I had been saying for several years by then, "In the post-Cold-War era, economic power will be more important than military power." Perot had some interesting ideas about how to make our economy as dominant as our military had been. Some were a bit goofy, and some frankly borderline fascist, like emulating Japan's MITI, but all were interesting.

Now, comparative advantage says that we should let China build our cheap electronics, and Thailand sew up our Nikes, and we should concentrate on doing what we do best. Germany does that, and they've done okay, although they may not be able to carry all of Europe economically the way we have carried them militarily. Rather than focusing on China, I would go with an approach that makes us more competitive in the rest of the world--compete with Germany rather than China.

But we haven't learned a new paradigm yet. So we have a large hunk of our military pinned down in the Mideast, defending what is now China's vital oil supply chain, while China is beating us financially in much of south Asia, Africa, and now even Latin America, not to mention threatening our allies around the South China Sea. We have leverage against China, but we're not using it, I think because too many of our national security types are in love with the power trip of being the cop on the block.

Let them eat cake. Oh wait, that should read great, we get to eat cake...

(09-14-2019 01:21 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Zeehan explains it pretty well. Toward the end of WWII we got our allies together at Bretton Woods and bribed up an alliance to win the Cold War. We let everybody export to us to build their economies back up, and we protected their trade routes by being world policeman, in exchange for their agreement not to go communist. So we end up with the largest trade deficit in the world, even though we participate in world trade less than anyone else. Basically, we just don't export very much. We consume everything we can make, and more. We have moved a lot of production offshore, because conditions there were more conducive to earning a higher ROI. A lot of this was on purpose, we swapped trade for security.

Now, when you have a trade deficit, you have to attract the money back as foreign investment, or else you just drain the wealth out of your economy. See Argentina, last 100 years. Now that investment comes back through the financial centers. So our producers lose money because we let production go overseas, while our financial sector makes that ,money back.

The problem with this approach is the it lost its usefulness the day the Berlin Wall fell, and we weren't prepared for what to do next. We still aren't, and have now gone 30 years with an outmoded paradigm. Ross Perot said something in 1992 that I had been saying for several years by then, "In the post-Cold-War era, economic power will be more important than military power." Perot had some interesting ideas about how to make our economy as dominant as our military had been. Some were a bit goofy, and some frankly borderline fascist, like emulating Japan's MITI, but all were interesting.

Now, comparative advantage says that we should let China build our cheap electronics, and Thailand sew up our Nikes, and we should concentrate on doing what we do best. Germany does that, and they've done okay, although they may not be able to carry all of Europe economically the way we have carried them militarily. Rather than focusing on China, I would go with an approach that makes us more competitive in the rest of the world--compete with Germany rather than China.

But we haven't learned a new paradigm yet. So we have a large hunk of our military pinned down in the Mideast, defending what is now China's vital oil supply chain, while China is beating us financially in much of south Asia, Africa, and now even Latin America, not to mention threatening our allies around the South China Sea. We have leverage against China, but we're not using it, I think because too many of our national security types are in love with the power trip of being the cop on the block.

The only attempt I've seen in my adult lifetime at leveraging whatever advantage we may have against China has come from Trump and his tariffs. I know that's very basic so please expound on what leverage you feel we have.

(09-14-2019 07:06 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  

(09-14-2019 01:21 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Zeehan explains it pretty well. Toward the end of WWII we got our allies together at Bretton Woods and bribed up an alliance to win the Cold War. We let everybody export to us to build their economies back up, and we protected their trade routes by being world policeman, in exchange for their agreement not to go communist. So we end up with the largest trade deficit in the world, even though we participate in world trade less than anyone else. Basically, we just don't export very much. We consume everything we can make, and more. We have moved a lot of production offshore, because conditions there were more conducive to earning a higher ROI. A lot of this was on purpose, we swapped trade for security.
Now, when you have a trade deficit, you have to attract the money back as foreign investment, or else you just drain the wealth out of your economy. See Argentina, last 100 years. Now that investment comes back through the financial centers. So our producers lose money because we let production go overseas, while our financial sector makes that ,money back.
The problem with this approach is the it lost its usefulness the day the Berlin Wall fell, and we weren't prepared for what to do next. We still aren't, and have now gone 30 years with an outmoded paradigm. Ross Perot said something in 1992 that I had been saying for several years by then, "In the post-Cold-War era, economic power will be more important than military power." Perot had some interesting ideas about how to make our economy as dominant as our military had been. Some were a bit goofy, and some frankly borderline fascist, like emulating Japan's MITI, but all were interesting.
Now, comparative advantage says that we should let China build our cheap electronics, and Thailand sew up our Nikes, and we should concentrate on doing what we do best. Germany does that, and they've done okay, although they may not be able to carry all of Europe economically the way we have carried them militarily. Rather than focusing on China, I would go with an approach that makes us more competitive in the rest of the world--compete with Germany rather than China.
But we haven't learned a new paradigm yet. So we have a large hunk of our military pinned down in the Mideast, defending what is now China's vital oil supply chain, while China is beating us financially in much of south Asia, Africa, and now even Latin America, not to mention threatening our allies around the South China Sea. We have leverage against China, but we're not using it, I think because too many of our national security types are in love with the power trip of being the cop on the block.

The only attempt I've seen in my adult lifetime at leveraging whatever advantage we may have against China has come from Trump and his tariffs. I know that's very basic so please expound on what leverage you feel we have.

We pull out of the Mideast, and all of a sudden China is totally reliant on a highly vulnerable supply chain. 2/3 of China's oil imports come from the Mideast. Until somebody figures out how to run pipelines over the Himalayas, that means a long sea transit through the Straits of Hormuz, around India, and through the Straits of Malacca or somehow otherwise through the Indonesian archipelago. Iran, India, Indonesia (three stable countries with whom China has excellent relations--not) could totally shut down China. They basically have two options:
1) Send their navy to protect their oil from possible efforts by the three I's or pirates to steal or destroy it. They don't really have enough navy to do that (we do) and using what navy they do have in that role pretty much ensures that they can't keep expanding outward in the South China Sea for a long, long time..
2) Invade Siberia and take Russia's extensive oil and gas resources.

I suppose a third option would be to go big-time into alternatives, but their economy crashes and they starve long before that gets established.

So why do we stay hunkered down in the Mideast? My guess is that our strategic planners don't want us to have to deal with the instability that would result when China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan all have to go get oil in the Mideast and convoy it home for protection. It's not like they historically get along so well with each other.

The other thing is that the Chinese banking system is incredibly over-leveraged. They take whatever money they make from exports and loan it out to businesses that can keep people employed. Not make a profit, or even generate sales, or even make a profit--just put people to work so they don't complain about their lot.

China is three cultures who don't get along. The Han in the north are militaristic and power-mad, but have no economy. The economic power is in the Yangtze River valley. The south including Hong Kong is subtropical and gets along with the rest of the country about as well as the US south got along with the rest of the country in about 1855--or maybe they feel it's more like 1870. The only way it can hold together is to combine the stick of an oppressive and all-powerful military regime with the carrot of cash.

China is pumping cash into the economy at the rate of the Obama stimulus program about every six weeks or so. It's shovel-ready stuff, or they make it shovel-ready, but with no economic payback. You've seen photos of the cities they have built with no inhabitants, right? That's symbolic of the problem. There's no way those loans ever get repaid. It's a Ponzi-type scheme that they can sustain only so long as they keep bringing massive amounts of money in. And if it falls apart, there goes the country.

That is Zeihan's analysis condensed, and I tend to agree.

(09-13-2019 04:36 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/11/middl...s-liberal/

Kotkin on the real split in America.

"Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

I completely disagree.

The real split in America is urban versus rural.

Go to the poorest big city in the USA (Los Angeles or Miami) and the richest big city in the USA (Seattle, Boston, or Chicago). They're all overwhelmingly Democrat. White collar or blue collar doesn't matter, and even race barely matters. Boston and Minneapolis are overwhelmingly white, but they vote just as Democrat as the urban parts of non-white Detroit or Atlanta.

Go to a small town anywhere. Unless it's in the South's black belt or is predominantly a college town (i.e. gets urbanites to live there for 4 years), it votes Republican. White or blue collar, rich or poor, any region of the country. Redding CA or Midland TX, poor blue collar Decatur IL or rich white collar Findlay OH. All Republican thru and thru.

The suburbs are the battlegrounds.

(09-14-2019 04:46 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-13-2019 04:36 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/11/middl...s-liberal/

Kotkin on the real split in America.

"Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

I completely disagree.

The real split in America is urban versus rural.

Go to the poorest big city in the USA (Los Angeles or Miami) and the richest big city in the USA (Seattle, Boston, or Chicago). They're all overwhelmingly Democrat. White collar or blue collar doesn't matter, and even race barely matters. Boston and Minneapolis are overwhelmingly white, but they vote just as Democrat as the urban parts of non-white Detroit or Atlanta.

Go to a small town anywhere. Unless it's in the South's black belt or is predominantly a college town (i.e. gets urbanites to live there for 4 years), it votes Republican. White or blue collar, rich or poor, any region of the country. Redding CA or Midland TX, poor blue collar Decatur IL or rich white collar Findlay OH. All Republican thru and thru.

The suburbs are the battlegrounds.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016...polls.html

(09-14-2019 05:34 PM)Kronke Wrote:  

(09-14-2019 04:46 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-13-2019 04:36 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/11/middl...s-liberal/

Kotkin on the real split in America.

"Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

I completely disagree.

The real split in America is urban versus rural.

Go to the poorest big city in the USA (Los Angeles or Miami) and the richest big city in the USA (Seattle, Boston, or Chicago). They're all overwhelmingly Democrat. White collar or blue collar doesn't matter, and even race barely matters. Boston and Minneapolis are overwhelmingly white, but they vote just as Democrat as the urban parts of non-white Detroit or Atlanta.

Go to a small town anywhere. Unless it's in the South's black belt or is predominantly a college town (i.e. gets urbanites to live there for 4 years), it votes Republican. White or blue collar, rich or poor, any region of the country. Redding CA or Midland TX, poor blue collar Decatur IL or rich white collar Findlay OH. All Republican thru and thru.

The suburbs are the battlegrounds.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016...polls.html

Race is important, especially for African Americans. But it's is less important than rural vs urban.

(09-14-2019 05:40 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Race is important, especially for African Americans. But it's is less important than rural vs urban.

Debatable.





https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016...polls.html

For Dems:
Asian (65%) - White (37%) =28%
Hispanic (65%) - White (37%) =28%
Other (which is Indian & multiethnic) (56%) - White (37%) = 19%

Large Metro Core (67%) - very rural (32%) = 35%
Large Metro Core (67%) - rural but adjacent to a metro (34%) = 33%
Large Metro Core (67%) - small metro(40%) = 27%


In other words, other than the black-white divide, race is less important than the rural-urban divide.

This is especially true outside the South. The big Southern urban areas (Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte) are newer and less dense than Northern and even Western urban areas - they're huge but they're basically one giant suburb stretching to the horizon.

You're just omitting a significant portion of the equation for no good reason.

"Other than the black-white divide.." -- Okay, but why are you framing it that way?

(09-14-2019 04:46 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-13-2019 04:36 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/11/middl...s-liberal/

Kotkin on the real split in America.

"Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

I completely disagree.

The real split in America is urban versus rural.

Go to the poorest big city in the USA (Los Angeles or Miami) and the richest big city in the USA (Seattle, Boston, or Chicago). They're all overwhelmingly Democrat. White collar or blue collar doesn't matter, and even race barely matters. Boston and Minneapolis are overwhelmingly white, but they vote just as Democrat as the urban parts of non-white Detroit or Atlanta.

Go to a small town anywhere. Unless it's in the South's black belt or is predominantly a college town (i.e. gets urbanites to live there for 4 years), it votes Republican. White or blue collar, rich or poor, any region of the country. Redding CA or Midland TX, poor blue collar Decatur IL or rich white collar Findlay OH. All Republican thru and thru.

The suburbs are the battlegrounds.

More educated vs. less educated.

(09-15-2019 04:18 PM)Kronke Wrote:  You're just omitting a significant portion of the equation for no good reason.

"Other than the black-white divide.." -- Okay, but why are you framing it that way?

Because the Left tries to tell me that Asians & Hispanics & Polynesians & Indians vote different from the rest of America. But that's simply not true - they just happen to be more likely to live in big cities than whites & blacks.

The racial differences are tiny compared to the rural vs urban divide, even within hispanic & asian groups. There's as big a difference between urban hispanics & suburban hispanics as there is between urban whites & suburban whites.

Blacks are less than 30% of all racial minorities in the USA. There certainly is a big chasm between blacks & everyone else, but that doesn't mean that there is also a huge divide between whites & everyone else.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-882849.html

Cook Political Report basically makes CaptainBearcat's argument.

(09-15-2019 07:31 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://csnbbs.com/thread-882849.html

Cook Political Report basically makes CaptainBearcat's argument.

He originally said that it has little to do with race, and Cook makes a point to say that the suburbs the democrats are making gains in are the ones that surround metro areas that have a “disproportionate share of the nation's African-American, Latino, and Asian-American inhabitants. That diversity has helped to fuel the growth of majority-minority suburban districts. And, Democrats have been winning those suburban districts.”

(09-15-2019 05:21 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-15-2019 04:18 PM)Kronke Wrote:  You're just omitting a significant portion of the equation for no good reason.

"Other than the black-white divide.." -- Okay, but why are you framing it that way?

Because the Left tries to tell me that Asians & Hispanics & Polynesians & Indians vote different from the rest of America. But that's simply not true - they just happen to be more likely to live in big cities than whites & blacks.

The racial differences are tiny compared to the rural vs urban divide, even within hispanic & asian groups. There's as big a difference between urban hispanics & suburban hispanics as there is between urban whites & suburban whites.

Blacks are less than 30% of all racial minorities in the USA. There certainly is a big chasm between blacks & everyone else, but that doesn't mean that there is also a huge divide between whites & everyone else.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wha...te-voters/

(09-15-2019 08:23 PM)Kronke Wrote:  

(09-15-2019 07:31 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://csnbbs.com/thread-882849.html

Cook Political Report basically makes CaptainBearcat's argument.

He originally said that it has little to do with race, and Cook makes a point to say that the suburbs the democrats are making gains in are the ones that surround metro areas that have a “disproportionate share of the nation's African-American, Latino, and Asian-American inhabitants. That diversity has helped to fuel the growth of majority-minority suburban districts. And, Democrats have been winning those suburban districts.”

Its a similar argument that its rural/small town vs. big city. But the shift in the suburbs is almost all due to the minorities moving which differs from his take as you point out.

(09-15-2019 10:06 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(09-15-2019 08:23 PM)Kronke Wrote:  

(09-15-2019 07:31 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://csnbbs.com/thread-882849.html

Cook Political Report basically makes CaptainBearcat's argument.

He originally said that it has little to do with race, and Cook makes a point to say that the suburbs the democrats are making gains in are the ones that surround metro areas that have a “disproportionate share of the nation's African-American, Latino, and Asian-American inhabitants. That diversity has helped to fuel the growth of majority-minority suburban districts. And, Democrats have been winning those suburban districts.”

Its a similar argument that its rural/small town vs. big city. But the shift in the suburbs is almost all due to the minorities moving which differs from his take as you point out.

Guess that means that minorities with the means move out of the urban core?? Wonder why that is.........