In a way, American culture has nationalized a perspective that was popularized during the Obama administration and one that I hated to no end.
If you think back to those thrilling days of yesteryear (when we were introduced to “funemployment” and a dystopian “new normal”), almost everything that happened to Obama was “unexpected” or “unique” because, as we were told by the media had never happened to any other president and that was why we should simultaneously cut Obama some slack and be thankful we had such a uniquely qualified man who was better than us in every way to fail at handling it.
That perspective permeated the Obama years and continues today as the media looks back in wistful and fawning nostalgia to the Age of Obama.
But it was stupid. It was the combination of contemporary arrogance with a total rejection of history (it wasn’t that people didn’t know history, they just chose to ignore it) because in every case, similar things HAD happened to prior presidents – and often just a few years back in the Bush administration.
For some reason, some Americans have come to believe that whatever happens to us is the worst ever in history, it’s never happened before, we are uniquely damaged by those event and America just sucks.
That’s just moronic. It seems to me that there are those who work hard to make the issues we face SEEM worse because we want to be special and believe that somehow we are hurt more than any other population at any other time in history.
That’s just total crap. It’s like the college campus snowflake culture has blanketed America.
I’ve written before that we are undeniably the healthiest, most prosperous, most free and most mobile world that has ever existed (and those things are distributed more widely than ever before) and as such we are the best equipped population in the history of the world to understand, avoid and manage disasters of Malthusian proportions.
There has never been a better time to be alive and to be in America.
I once wrote and editorial titled “Consumers of Unhapiness” where I proposed that:
“The perpetually aggrieved are essentially consumers of unhappiness – it is as essential to them as food, clothing and shelter are to the rest of us. I was taught that the world was filled with beauty and it is natural to seek good feeling and pleasure – not necessarily to be hedonistic, but to be happy. Even the Declaration of Independence lists the “Pursuit of Happiness” right up there with life and liberty and yet these snowflakes pursue unhappiness. They have created this Hobbesian universe where pain, oppression and discord rule the day – but isn’t this what progressivism teaches? That there is only envy, rich people are only rich because they are stealing from the poor, earth’s climate is doomed due to capitalists willing allow factories to belch smoke into the air and deadly chemicals into the rivers for nothing other than naked profit and everybody hates everybody else?
There does seem to be a proclivity for certain people to seek out pleasure through negative experiences.”
America’s true uniqueness rests in our ability to overcome obstacles.
America needs to buckle our chinstraps and get on with it.
-
No comments on On the latest “new normal”
-
The number one single today in 1958:
Today in 1963, the producers of CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew told Bob Dylan he couldn’t perform his “Talking John Birch Society Blues” because it mocked the U.S. military.
So he didn’t. He walked out of rehearsals and didn’t appear on the show.
The number one album today in 1973 was Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy,” which probably didn’t make Zeppelin mad mad mad or sad sad sad:
-
Michael Smith:
In a way, America is getting a taste of life under a centrally planned, collectivist economy and government. Over the past few weeks:
• People are only allowed to do the things a very few “experts” sanctioned by the state think are proper.
• Voluminous regulations are created covering every aspect of daily life and then arbitrarily and capaciously enforced.
• Those in and of the state exempt themselves from the regulations enforced on the people.
• The people bear the burden of the mistakes of the state and its experts, the state and the experts never are held accountable.
• Fear is used both as a motivator and a control.
• Enforcement is often militaristic and excessive (Meal Team 6 rolling out in an MRAP with body armor and AR-15’s shutting down a small bar in Texas).
• The state has assumed control over the economy.
• The only sectors of our economy allowed to operate are those the state deems “necessary”.
• Only allowing “approved” businesses to operate has fragmented and upset supply chains calibrated by price, supply and demand and created shortages and de facto rationing.
• The idea that the state can pay everybody regardless of their output and productivity is considered effective economic policy (remember the old Soviet saying – “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”).
• The state has redirected industrial capacity (a de facto nationalization of industry) to products it deems important (the fact that the actual need for ventilators was far less than that forecast by the state is interesting).
• The entire nation is subjected to be held to the same restrictions as state favored/protected minorities.
• Crimes against the individual are minimized while crimes against the state are maximized.
• There is no goal other than that the state establishes and any disagreement with those goals is considered disloyalty.
• Those non-compliant with state edicts are shamed by other citizens for their disloyalty.
• Neighbors and family members are encouraged to report others not following the proper state approved behaviors.
• A surveillance/police state has been created to spy on and enforce regulations.
• Federalism has given way to a Balkanization of the individual states with the state governors treating them more as regional administrative districts run by a dictator than independent government entities responsible to the people.Folks, like Ayn Rand or not, we are living among the pages of Rand’s opus, Atlas Shrugged.
I expect the “Anti-Dog Eat Dog” and the “Equalization of Opportunity” Acts to be proposed any day now. We are being run by Wesley Mouch and Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute. The true Fascism of Fabian socialism has washed up on our shores and we are letting it in.
I think we will beat it back due to GOP governors in the Southeast (Ron DeSantis), the South (Brian Kemp, Bill Lee), Midwest (Kristi Noem) and the West/Southwest (Greg Abbott). The coastal states in the Northeast, along the Great Lakes and the West coast are going to push Fabian socialism to the limits and they are so significant to our national economy that every state will feel the hurt.
That presumably includes Wisconsin.
Take our current situation and then imagine what would happen if the Electoral College were abolished in favor of a national popular vote.
“Who is John Galt?” seems an appropriate question these days.
-
Mark Zart posted this on the Reopen Wisconsin Facebook page:
I got an email from State Senator Howard Marklein. I’m including an excerpt of it here and it includes a quote from Evers and what he thinks about the citizens of Wisconsin.
“In addition to the court case, I also sent a letter to Governor Evers on Thursday, May 7, 2020 to implore him to proceed with a regional, phased plan to re-open Wisconsin right away. I am becoming increasingly worried about the Main Street businesses in our communities that were deemed non-essential and closed in March. I am concerned about the people who have delayed medical care. I am anxious about the large employers who are holding it together – for now. I fear for the farmers who are dumping milk, euthanizing animals and contemplating their futures.
I told the Governor that the business-people and citizens I represent are smart. They understand the risks. They have devised detailed plans to re-open their businesses and go about their lives, while protecting vulnerable populations. I have attached my letter for your review.
I was prompted to write this letter after hearing the Governor’s comments during his press briefing on Monday, May 4, 2020. Steve Prestegard from the Platteville Journal asked the Governor a very good question. He asked the Governor how he is going to respond “if the population of the state is indicating with their feet that they’re really NOT in favor of Safer-At-Home.”
The Governor answered: “I don’t believe that.”
Governor Evers does not believe that the majority of people in Wisconsin want to re-open our state. He is not listening to you.”
-
The number one British single today in 1958 was a cover of a song written in 1923:
The number one British album today in 1963 was the Beatles’ “Please Please Me,” which was number one for 30 weeks:
-
You may remember a couple weeks ago I noted the first known meeting of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Today in 1963, upon the advice of George Harrison, Decca Records signed the Rolling Stones to a contract.
Four years to the day later, Stones Keith Richard, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones celebrated by … getting arrested for drug possession.
I noted the 54th anniversary May 2 of WLS in Chicago going to Top 40. Today in 1982, WABC in New York (also owned by ABC, as one could conclude from their call letters) played its last record, which was …
Four years later, the number one song in America was, well, inspired by, though not based on, a popular movie of the day:
-
The number one single today in 1964 was performed by the oldest number one artist to date:
The number one single today in 1970:
The number one British single today in 1981:
-
The Wisconsin football team is known for its running backs and offensive linemen.
The Badgers are not known for their quarterbacks, perhaps because of what they are known for instead. (Nor are they known for their wide receivers, even though their pass-catchers include such NFL players as Al Toon, Nick Toon, Tony Simmons, Lee Evans, Chris Chambers and Brandon Williams, plus tight end Owen Daniels.)The other thing the Badgers are known for is players that come out of nowhere to become star players, such as walk-on J.J. Watt. In fact, the Badgers have produced far more players on Watt’s level than they have succeeded with recruits highly rated by self-proclaimed recruiting experts.
24/7 Sports decided to spend time …
Looking back at how the top 10 highest-rated quarterbacks in program history fared during their careers at the University of Wisconsin.
Going over the list, there were three big outliers among the group. John Stocco (2002), Scott Tolzien (2006), and Alex Hornibrook (2015) were definite misses by recruiting industry standards.
Stocco checked in as the 22nd highest-rated quarterback in UW history. A low three-star prospect, Stocco was the No. 26 ranked pro-style quarterback in the class of 2002, per the 247sports composite. Stocco was a three-year starter for the Badgers and went 29-7 during his career, which saw him throw for 7,227 yards and 44 touchdowns.
Tolzien spent seven seasons in the NFL. A two-year starter, Tolzien went 21-5 and led Wisconsin to a Big Ten Championship and a Rose Bowl berth in 2010. That year, Tolzien had the most efficient season in school history, completing 72.9 percent of his passes for 2,459 yards and 16 touchdowns to just six interceptions.
Tolzien barely made the cut as a three-star prospect and was the No. 49 ranked pro-style quarterback in the 2006 class.
Hornibrook was a mid-three-star prospect and the No. 34 ranked pro-style quarterback in the 2015 class. His career didn’t finish at the way it started, but he could have been rated higher.
As a redshirt freshman, Hornibrook won the starting job by the start of Big Ten play in 2016. During his three seasons as a starter for the Badgers, Hornibrook went 26-6, including a 2-0 mark in bowl games, which includes the Orange Bowl win over Miami (FL). He threw for 5,438 yards and 47 touchdowns, but did have 33 interceptions.
Here’s how the top 10 quarterback recruits for Wisconsin in the 247sports composite era performed during their careers…
10. TYLER DONOVAN
Tyler Donovan is the only Wisconsin native to land a full scholarship from the Badgers as a quarterback in 247sports composite history.
The Arrowhead grad earned the starting job in 2007 and threw for 2,607 yards and 17 touchdowns. A dual-threat, Donovan also ran for 277 yards and five scores on the ground. That season, Donovan led UW to a 9-4 record and a berth in the Outback Bowl.
Donovan was the ninth-ranked dual-threat quarterback in the class of 2003.
9. DEACON HILL
Deacon Hill won’t arrive at Wisconsin until 2021. The Badgers got a very early commitment from the three-star quarterback last June. Hill had offers from Kansas State and Nevada before giving his pledge to Paul Chryst.
Like Graham Mertz before him, UW offered Hill before he was ever a full-time starter at the varsity level. Hill got the nod at Santa Barbara High School in 2019 and all he did was throw for 3,102 yards and 33 touchdowns to just seven interceptions.
8. JACK COAN
The story is still being written on Jack Coan, but his first season as a full-time starter was a successful one.
Coan completed 69.6 percent of his passes as a junior for 2,727 yards and 18 touchdowns to just five interceptions. Statistically, you could argue Coan had the third-best season in school history behind Russell Wilson in 2011 and Scott Tolzien in 2010. Coan led the Badgers to a 10-4 record, a Big Ten West title, and a Rose Bowl berth.
Coming out of Sayville High School in New York, Coan was the nation’s No. 16 ranked pro-style quarterback per 247sports. He had other offers from Michigan, Miami (FL), Nebraska, and West Virginia among others.
Not on this list are two transfers — Russell Wilson, the best UW quarterback based on his single season after transferring from North Carolina State (his UW quarterback rating: 191.8), and Randy Wright, whose transfer from Notre Dame prompted coach Dave McClain to change his offense from the option to a pro-style offense. The result in Wright’s case was four winning seasons (which had never before happened in Badger history), three bowl games and the program’s first bowl win. The Badgers spent the next decade trying to replace Wright. Also not on this list is Darrell Bevell, who transferred from Northern Arizona to UW, quarterbacking the Badgers to their first Rose Bowl win and their third bowl win in team history.
What is interesting is that three quarterbacks on this list will be on this team by the 2021 season. (Which might be “next season’ depending on what further havoc the coronavirus does to this country.) The Badgers usually (including most of the quarterbacks on this list) have had what is derisively called a “game manager” on this list — someone told to hand off the ball without fumbling and complete safe, short passes.
Matt Zemek of USA Today thinks the Badgers should modify their approach:
If you have followed the past few months of Badgers Wire analysis of Wisconsin football, you know that Super Bowl LIV conveyed a very important message to Paul Chryst and the program at large.
We have discussed all the merits of UW football — the consistency, the dependability, the steadiness, the toughness, the time-tested approach cultivated and sustained by Barry Alvarez for decades. The coaches change, but Wisconsin keeps winning. The Badgers continue to be the best of the Big Ten West. They continue to play in important January bowl games. The program is in a good place. It has remained in a good place for quite some time. The program is doing well.
Yet, if Wisconsin ever does want to make the jump from very good to great — from the upper reaches of college football’s second tier to the very top tier in the sport — we know what has to happen: The Badgers have to be able to throw, and hit, the deep ball with regularity. It is the one true gap (or absence, or deficiency, whichever word you prefer) in the larger identity and profile of Wisconsin football in this golden era for the program, which is now almost 30 years old, dating back to the 1994 Rose Bowl win over UCLA, which got the party started.
This is why the use of Jack Coan and Graham Mertz in 2020 is such an interesting and important point of focus. We wrote about this point when explaining how Steve Spurrier used to juggle quarterbacks at Florida. We also wrote on a broader level about Wisconsin needing to have a Plan B when Plan A wasn’t entirely sufficient, chiefly against opponents such as Ohio State. Wisconsin could not hit the deep ball in second halves against the Buckeyes. The UW offense bogged down and wasn’t able to rescue itself with quick strikes against Ohio State.
How fitting it was, then, that in Super Bowl LIV, the Kansas City Chiefs — stymied by Ohio State’s Nick Bosa and the rest of the San Francisco 49ers — broke free from Bosa’s physical prowess by hitting the long pass. The Chiefs’ ability to finally hit deep balls ignited their fourth-quarter surge and led them to victory.
The 49ers had the most physically imposing team in the NFL this season. Green Bay Packer fans don’t need an explanation of that point. Much like the Nick Saban Alabama teams of the early 2010s, the 49ers were the team opponents simply couldn’t beat with smashmouth ball. The 49ers were the best embodiment of it, so opponents would not win by playing the same style. This is why Gus Malzahn of Auburn has had so much success against Saban: He hasn’t tried to beat Saban at his own game. One could say the same for Hugh Freeze when he coached at Ole Miss and beat Saban multiple times. They didn’t try to beat an opponent at that opponent’s foremost point of strength. They knew they had to use speed to counter Alabama’s brute strength. They knew they had to throw downfield to change the equation.
Yes, the Badgers do not have a Patrick Mahomes on their team. They once had Russell Wilson, but Russell Wilsons don’t grow on trees. To be sure, UW doesn’t have the superstar QB who makes it a lot easier to throw down the field. Nevertheless, against Nick Bosa of Ohio State and the rest of a fire-breathing defense, the Kansas City Chiefs changed the equation by hitting long passes.
Super Bowl LIV reminded Paul Chryst that if he really wants to beat Ohio State and take the next step as a program, completing deep passes has to be part of the picture.
The Badgers need to dig the long ball.
One wonders if, contrary to his claim, Zemek has ever watched UW football. At what point have the Badgers ever been a throwing team, let alone a team that dials long distance on a regular basis?
Why? Because the current approach has worked for sustained success. Since the 1993 season, the Badgers have had two losing seasons. The last time UW didn’t play in a bowl game was the 2001 season. They also have played in more Big Ten championship games than any other team, including even Ohio State. (UW’s six championship games are six more than Michigan, which must be making Bo Schembechler roll over in his grave.)
Being able to run the ball keeps the ball away from the other team’s offense. This more often than not works unless you’re facing a team that can score from anywhere (say, Ohio State), or stops the Badgers from running as they want (i.e. the four Big Ten championship losses), or if UW puts the ball on the ground or in the wrong hands too often (which is a formula for nearly team to lose).
Until the Badgers get a head coach from outside the current program, they will be a run-first and run-second program.
-
Robert E. Wright starts with a classic pop culture reference:
The phrase “to jump the shark” at first referenced the point at which a television program started to lose its moorings, and its audience. Specifically, it referred to the episode of Happy Days (1974-84, ABC) when “the Fonz” (played by Henry Winkler, now better known for his role as an acting teacher on HBO’s Barry) jumped over a shark tank on water skis. Ratings for the show did stay up after the episode because there were only 3 or 4 channels available back then. Many fans, including this then eight-year-old, however, became mere viewers after that episode.
Today, though, the phrase has expanded to include any turning point eventually ending in disaster.
Lots of folks, from politicians to used car salesmen, are trying to calm fears associated with the COVID-19 pandemic by harkening back to America’s glorious past. “We” can get through this, they say, because “we” successfully traversed worse travails. The problem with that analysis is the “we” has changed. Yes, America suffered invasion and the destruction of the national capital in 1814, a long, bloody Civil War, and so forth. But the Americans who preserved or prevailed then are all long gone, as are many of the nation’s most important institutions.
Yes, some people who lived through the Great Depression and World War II are still alive but they are hardly the same people they once were. And right now they should all be indoors wearing gloves and N95s, or those gas masks that we all bought after 9-11, a terrorist attack that most of those alive today survived. But did we really do a good job responding to 9-11? We lost a lot of civil liberties and treasure fighting unnecessary wars and still suffer through ridiculous rituals at airports that protect no one.
America’s currency and debt are in a similar position to post-shark Happy Days. Nobody really likes it anymore but decent alternatives hardly abound. Solid currencies like the Swiss franc are too small, leaving only the currencies of a deeply divided Europe or authoritarian China as serious competitors.
The level of the national debt in absolute, per capita, and percentage of GDP terms, which can be tracked here, frightens many. In round figures, the national debt is $24 trillion, or $72,000 per person (man, woman, child) or $192,000 per taxpayer. That is 110 percent of GDP, the highest since the World War II era. And that is just the money borrowed to fund operations. Other liabilities, like Social Security and Medicare, are estimated at $77 trillion.
But the real problem is the loss of what Bill White called America’s Fiscal Constitution, a set of borrowing and budget rules first developed by Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Treasury Secretary. The idea was that the federal government should keep a lot of “dry powder” so that it could borrow to fight wars, purchase territory, and respond to shocks. To do that, it had to run budget surpluses when peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice, and hence prosperity, prevailed. But basically since World War II, America has remained at war, some shooting, some cold, some necessary, but many, like the “wars” on drugs and poverty, concocted and counterproductive. Chronic deficits resulted.
Instead of imbibing the lessons of Richard Salsman’s The Political Economy of Public Debt, America’s policymakers and pundits ignore the national debt, or dismiss it with facile, and long since exploded, myths like “we owe it to ourselves” or “we can’t default on it because we can always print money to pay it.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many held that America might muddle along for decades more, unloved but the only serious TV show left on air. But the only thing more disappointing than the irrational response of many American governments to the pandemic has been the way that Americans have acquiesced to the suspension of their civil and economic liberties on very flimsy grounds.
At 40:30 of this video, leading epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski puts it clearly: “I think, people in the United States … are more docile than they should be. People should talk with their politicians and ask them to explain” the rationale for business shutdowns, shelter-in-place orders, and other medieval responses to what he, and many other epidemiologists not on the government payroll, believe is just another annual “pandemic” that kills those with weak immune systems. The government’s response is actually making matters worse by slowing herd immunity.
As I recently argued elsewhere, America’s educational system has not prepared us for the government power grab because it does not create enough Emersonian independent thinkers or, frankly, even adult thinkers. Due to the extreme Left bias of higher education, many of America’s college graduates remain intellectually infantilized to the point that they can do little more than Tweet ignorant hate at any idea that does not accord with Progressive mantras.
While some older Democrats, like the aforementioned Bill White, and Peter Schuck, author of Why Government Fails So Often, are rational beings worthy of the attention and respect of all thinking beings, many young progressives appear completely rigid between the ears. They want less economic activity to “save the planet” but cannot cheer death or the pain that lockdowns inflict upon the poor. While fewer miles traveled by automobile must warm their hearts by presumably cooling the planet, the thought of all the extra hot water needed to wash hands a dozen times a day must sting a bit, along with the fact that plastic straws and grocery bags are far safer during pandemics than purportedly “green” alternatives.
Strangest of all have been progressive calls for their archenemy, President Trump, to behave in a more authoritarian manner! The statist assumption that “only government can save us” is so deeply ingrained on the Left and Right that rational calls to vitiate the economic crisis with voluntarism have not gained traction.
And don’t even get me started on the Right’s economic nationalism. Pure lunacy, like calls for AUTARKY (no international flows, like pre-Perry Japan!), now attracts serious attention. And why not? Didn’t we all “learn” in college that some French and German philosophers were right about there being no truth, just power and rhetoric? Strangely, though, the descendants of the apostles of postmodernism have no trouble seeing the truth in destroying the economic lives of most Americans because some unrealistic models claimed between 10,000 and 100 million people would otherwise die.
Is America about to jump the shark? Maybe it already has. Or maybe, unlike the Fonz, it won’t even clear the tank, the victim of the weight of its own inane policies. All that is clear is that somebody is going to have to pay for this fiasco, and that somebody is “us.”
Inequality is the price we pay for civilization. Property rights, inheritance customs and unequal gains from technological innovation have long divided us into haves and have-nots. Because stability favors such disparities, it usually took powerful shocks to flatten them. The collapse of states wiped out elites. The World Wars slashed returns on capital and imposed heavy-handed regulation and confiscatory taxation. Communist regimes equalized by force and fiat.
The greatest plagues also turned into levelers, by killing so many that labor became dear and land cheap. For a while, the rich became less rich and the poor less poor: Europe after the Black Death is the best-known example. Catastrophic pandemics joined systemic collapse, total war and transformative revolution — the four great horsemen of apocalyptic leveling.
Will the coronavirus crisis be such a leveler? It won’t act as a Malthusian check: mortality will mercifully be far too low to drive up wages. But progressives will seize on this crisis to push for redistributive reform, perhaps all the way to a Green New Deal. Failing that, misery and discontent might foment enough unrest to upend the status quo.
But not quite yet. Four great stabilizers stand in the way of democratic socialism or social collapse.
The most basic one is affluence: no society with a per capita GDP of more than a few thousand dollars has ever descended into breakdown or civil war. At some point, it seems, even the dispossessed have too much to lose, and well-endowed authorities are hard to dislodge.
The social safety net comes a close second. A century ago, shaken by the mobilizations and mutinies of World War One and the sudden threat of Bolshevism, European states ramped up investment in welfare schemes. America soon followed suit in order to survive the Great Depression. Revolution dropped off the menu. It turns out that welfare schemes don’t need to be Scandinavian-sized to keep the radicals at bay.
The torrent of seemingly free money created by central banks adds a third great stabilizer. By promising to bail out businesses and keep the unemployed afloat without reviving inflation, aggressive quantitative easing takes the shine off calls for punitive wealth taxes to foot the bill. This particular genie would seem hard to put back into the bottle: the Great Recession taught policymakers what was possible and at what low cost, just as the Great Depression had taught them what to avoid. We are now able to choose which bits of history to repeat.
Finally, science will act as a conservative force. This might seem odd, given our inclination to view it as a relentless driver of open-ended change. Yet technology is already widening existing inequalities, by separating the work-from-home crowd from exposed essential workers, and remotely taught students with reliable internet access from those without.
What is more, science has the potential to bail out the plutocracy even more reliably than any government or central bank could hope to do. The sooner labs and Big Pharma deliver effective treatments and vaccines, the sooner we can revert to some version of business as usual — with all the entrenched inequalities it entails. The odds are good. The SARS-CoV-2 genome was sequenced and made available just a month after the first reported cases in Wuhan. More than 1,000 drug trials are already underway. Nothing like this would have been possible even a decade ago.
This is not a coincidence. The great stabilizers have been creeping up on the great levelers. When pre-modern states fell, their elites were doomed. The United States is infinitely more resilient, and even if it wasn’t its richest would have other places to go. In the West, plausible revolutionary movements have gone the way of the dodo; and even if they hadn’t they would be blunted by mass affluence.
Nor are we in any meaningful way united against a shared threat. Notwithstanding the current surge in martial rhetoric — with Donald Trump posing as a ‘wartime president’ — our lived experiences are exactly the opposite of those fostered by total war. We are asked to stay home, not to venture out; we work less, not more; we are distancing, not thrown together in fox holes or armaments factories. The solidarity that shaped the Greatest Generation will remain a distant memory. And unlike in the aftermath of much more lethal pandemics, labor will be cheap: 30 million unemployment benefit claims will make sure of that. The four horsemen of leveling are set to continue their deep slumber.
In the past, the rich weathered a series of storms. The War of Independence was hard on wealthy loyalists. Slaveowners’ fortunes evaporated during the Civil War. The Great Depression delivered a double blow, first by wiping out investments and then through the ascent of unions and high taxes during the New Deal. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, capitalists were trapped, compelled to submit to unprecedented levels of regulation and taxation. Decades of relative equality followed.
Much has changed since. Deregulation, tax reform, financialization, globalization and automation have created potent means of both creating and concentrating wealth. As a result, the Great Recession failed to leave a lasting mark on the One Percent, and inequality stubbornly clung to the heights it had scaled. By acting in concert, the four great stabilizers promise more of the same.
The current crisis would have to spiral out of control to sap their strength — if, say the virus somehow foiled the efforts of the scientific community, or the economy slid into a drawn-out depression. If history is any guide, it would take a worst-case scenario for COVID-19 to bring about genuine leveling.
-
Today in 1954, the BBC banned Johnny Ray’s “Such a Night” after complaints about its “suggestiveness.”
The Brits had yet to see Elvis Presley or Jerry Lee Lewis.
The number one British single today in 1955:
Today in 1965, what would now be called a “video” was shot in London:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 