One of the most interesting features of post-2007 America is that despite the plummeting incomes and labor force participation across the board, many of the aesthetics and aspirations of the remnants of the middle class remain absolutely the same.
In fact, if you go through the millions of lifestyle-design-and-architecture blogs which have rushed into the void left behind by the closures of many glossy magazines in the genre, it’s as if nothing has changed in terms of the imagery and expectations of the formerly upwardly mobile classes, even though they are no longer upwardly mobile in real terms. The participation rate chart from the BLS is down and to the right.
Despite the substantial drop in wealth and work among the vast majority of the population, the images on television and in magazines become more hysterically aspirational. Part of the reason for this is because economic elites believe and teach that promoting an optimistic social mood is more important than promoting a sound currency and sound economic policy. A robust ‘consumer’ is seen as critical to spurring the popular conception of economic growth, even though production and saving must precede consumption for it to be a sustainable process.
Given that new business formation is at a historic low, but aspirational hysteria around ‘startups’ is at an all-time high, there is clearly some disconnect there between fantasy and reality.
What’s interesting about the increasing ‘virtualization’ of culture is that the physical world of reality tends to be neglected in favor of the world of screen-images. 69% of adults over 20 are overweight or obese, with a little more than half of that being obese, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from all the photos and advertisements showing a population of toned and tight Übermenschen wearing spandex workout gear, greased for the camera.
This means that a majority of the country suffers from a serious major health issue, along with all the other related health issues that flow down from being fat.
Incomes apart from those in the top segments have declined or have not kept up with price increases:
This is rather what you would expect with a small portion of the society being the beneficiary of a fully paper-money financial system and a state ideology that limits broad access to property rights, because the entire point of a paper money financial system is to violate property rights and make it more challenging for ordinary people to accumulate savings and avoid taxation.
This data (which is of questionable reliability, especially when ‘inflation-adjusted,’ particularly considering that the definition of ‘inflation’ is always being ‘hedonically adjusted’ by a government council, with important sectors being excluded from the calculation) is reflected by broader social mood
Because academic, governmental, and banking economists tend to be heavily Keynesian, they lack the conceptual framework to respond to this state of affairs in an effective way. They see ‘inequality’ and presume that that is itself the problem, because of ideological prior beliefs that they have redefined as wise ‘economic science.’ Having misidentified the problem, they proceed to follow up with improper treatments, usually designed to redistribute from the higher segments to the lower ones, with special efforts spent on raising up the lower half through some measure of ‘enrichment’ and welfare.
It is very hard for Americans to break out of their intellectual framework because doctrinaire nostalgia for the disastrous era of the New Deal is pervasive and unquestionable. It is next to pointless to even try to convince the average ‘far-right’ American that the New Deal was misguided, because the political faction that opposed the New Deal was suppressed, marginalized, and kept far away from the education system.
All this being said, our goal isn’t to fix America, in large part because the problem can’t be fixed. The progressive leadership class has an unshakable faith in its beliefs and ways, and is no more amenable to persuasion than any other entrenched leadership class in a declining state is. In fact, the more that their policies tend to fail, the more fervently that they cling to their beliefs, in the face of any evidence that contradicts the ideology.
Instead, you produce something that can compete with the US — only strong competition can force it to evolve or fail. It’s important to stop thinking in terms of how you will help a country ruled by barely-updated 1930s doctrine to repair itself. They’re never going to do it. The prominent beliefs are never going to change until circumstances force it to change. When the negative characteristics of a culture begin to dominate all the positive ones, that culture often finds itself flailing at an environment that no longer supports its habitual behavior. This is the situation that the un-reformable Americans find themselves in.
If we can learn anything from history, an attempt to reform would probably be the worst thing for America, because nation-states, due to the way that they are structured (reliant on fixed institutions of ever-metastasizing growth), a mere slowdown in the rate of growth is sufficient to implode most of its critical institutions, in part owing to the ironic lack of flexibility inherent in an ‘elastic’ monetary system requiring ever-exponentially-rising issuances of new debts to support older debts.
The reason why it’s ironic is that the elastic monetary system, resting on ideas that hold that the quantity of money can be ‘insufficient’ to fuel economic growth, is supposed to be the flexible option, whereas hard-money systems are supposed to be a ‘straitjacket’ which prevents economic growth. The truth is actually inverted — a hard money system permits expansion and contraction in the economy depending on real conditions, whereas a pure paper-money system demands permanent expansion regardless of real conditions, which leads to routine collapses in activity owing to that predictably excessive enthusiasm.
Returning to the title of this post, the US is no longer young and upwardly mobile, but old and downwardly mobile, adopting many long term policies that will lead it to converge in terms of behaviors and political beliefs with the lukewarm-managed-market-Marxism of Western Europe. The response should not be to try to convince a large portion of its leadership to stop this path, which is its fate to pursue, but instead to persuade a sufficient portion of the better class of person to defect away from that order, and to make a new one which is competitive.
This is a viewpoint which most conservatives are not yet willing to take, because it involves shoving Uncle Sam down the stairs and not caring how many bones he breaks on the way down, or otherwise just letting the fellow navigate the stairs by himself, and not lifting a finger as he slips, rolls down a few flights, and collects bruises and knocks to his old noggin.
That would be a profound change in mental framework for most Americans, which most are not going to be willing to make, because changing habits and beliefs requires more energy than they can muster. Knowing that fact is to also know that the US will not desist from its doomed path, chosen decades ago.
is it a lack of energy or a lack of a new schelling point that keeps people from jumping ship?
Just need a quorum. More a lack of a new path. You only want the energetic anyway, so that qualifies those who would jump ship.
I can see where you’re coming from. It seems impossible. However I think you may not be completely right. Jump ship where, first off? Second off, you may be underestimating the conservative population and the population at large. All it takes is a minor shift in one area to throw off the entire balance across the rest of the situation. And if this is really the right way, then it shouldn’t take mich to convince people. I don’t agree with giving up on America. Maybe no Uncle Sam, but there may be room for a new “Sam.” I wouldn’t give up so quickly.
Giving up would be screwing off to China instead of staying here.
Not giving up on some of the American people is not the same as giving up on reforming the American government extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Thanks for replying to my other question. I was just thinking about the new business stats that you presented in this post and an older one. The chart starts in the late 70s, shortly after the floodgates from the third world were being opened into the United States. Do you think that the decline in business startups could in part be due to the increasingly diverse population that is either less likely to start businesses or at least less likely to officially report their businesses (e.g. lawn mowing services and food trucks that never file a tax return)?
I don’t want to argue that the status quo for economic policy is great, but I have a feeling that many of these economic doom statistics that come from places like zero hedge require a stratified analysis in order to be fully understood. When you separate income out by race over time, you still see a trend toward stagnation, but overall things look far less economically dire for whites (check out the obesity stats too). It may be that the yuppie optimism is not misplaced. In spite of the best efforts of the progressives, the United States still has a very free and productive economy, especially when compared to the rest of the world. If you are a yuppie who lives in a self-selected world that mostly white or white-presenting, you are probably doing well and so are the people around you.
If you count out dropping fertility and coarsening public mores, maybe a little.
Blah on a phone right now. Meant to include a link: http://www.henrydampier.com/2013/12/book-review-what-to-expect-when-no-ones-expecting-by-jonathan-last/
The white numbers should also be segmented out, Murray style.
Biz startup issue requires some more thinking. Decline in family orientation makes small biz startups a helluvalot harder. Small biz can only really compete with family bonds reducing many of the costs and transmitting market knowledge more efficiently.
Plenty of diverse groups dominate certain categories of small biz using clan networks. Ask someone who runs Dunkin Donuts franchises in the northeast.
I love the USA because it is my country, and I love my parents because they are my parents. All three are old, frail, a little senile, and not likely to live much longer. It’s our duty to give the USA a nice tombstone and move on with our lives.
Lots of truth to this. Loyalty is a virtue that reactionaries should admire, and it’s a big part of the answer to the question ” why can’t Red State Americans see that their government hates them, is using them, wants them gone?” Vile indeed is the system that uses it’s best citizen’s virtues against them.
I have to imagine a large bulk of new businesses have traditionally been tradespeople. However, now all the tradespeople are 50+ years old, nearing retirement, and they were taught to teach their own children to go and earn a college degree.
Debt issues aside, that college degree puts that generation on track to work for somebody else, unlike Dad.
Can we expect a spike of new businesses forming when all the Boomer tradespeople retire, and younger (if less experienced, talented, and reliable) folks filling the gap?
Or, with increasing automation in the manufacturing arena, former machinists and the like taking their practical skills to other avenues in the nearer term?
On the other hand, I’ve noticed an increase in franchise-style handyman advertisements. Many people are too frightened to let a tradesman in their home who isn’t backed by a major corporation, because they don’t trust them. Often with good reason. So maybe one day a few corporations will run all the carpentry repairs in the country.
I don’t think automation is a factor there. Better communications and more efficient marketing (pay per call on Adwords for a locksmith is more cost efficient and automated than, say, a Yellow Pages ad).
Amazon is also entering that particular market with special listings, so that will probably hurt the franchises and help independents who are good at leveraging that platform.
The student loan issue is more severe than it seems because students are not included in unemployment stats. We have a lot of permastudents who are useless, which will lead to situations like those that we see in Europe with mass youth unemployment. They are perma-unemployed because they are not oriented towards ye olde Protestant work ethic.
>Can we expect a spike of new businesses forming when all the Boomer tradespeople retire, and younger (if less experienced, talented, and reliable) folks filling the gap?
No. We should expect more Detroitification.
This also brings to mind a post John Michael Greer had on thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com some months ago. He was explaining that, contra “sudden collapse” fantasies, you really wouldn’t need any major mass-casualty event to lower the global population by a significant percentage. If you simply increased the mortality rate for communicable diseases a bit, lowered the fertility rate a bit, control for immigration, and let the Baby Boomers die off, the population of the US would decline precipitously even without an epidemic or war.
I deal with this in the rural Midwest daily — I work in local government, with family and friends who work in social services, etc.
Where are the poor? The jobless?
Well, by and large, they are morbidly obese and stuck to their couches, and never need to leave, because they get disability/welfare/etc. And what children they have are morbidly obese as well.
They’re invisible, and fading away. I know you can go to a Wal Mart and it seems people are breeding like rabbits, but how long can that fertility hold when every aspect of their lives — from Mountain Dew to Television to Obesity to Oxy — reduces overall fertility?
Of course, the remnants of the vaunted Middle Class continue to descend into degeneracy (a la Gregory Clark), but how will this end up looking on the ground, who knows?
Yes, I have done some charity work among these people in the rural Midwest also, and can confirm that ‘poverty’ is watching TV, smoking cigarettes, and eating EBT food in a subsidized apartment with donated furniture.
So, how it looks on the ground, which I’ve seen, is a fat Navy veteran shacking up with a hag in a third floor 1BR in a suburban complex that smells like old cigarettes, with their transgender she-son, watching an old TV to pass the time, living among middle class workers but never leaving the apartment except to buy groceries.