I'm (genuinely) curious as to what your idea of a less dangerous theology would be. I'm an atheist, but I find the inherent dignity of humans as beings made in the image of God to be one of the more appealing aspects of the Abrahamic faiths.
Some of the greatest horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries were committed by people who refuted that theology and replaced it with Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism.
The first summer after COVID I was bitten by 3 different dogs in 3 separate incidents. I went 48 years without ever getting bitten by a dog until that one season.
If history is any guide, you're technically correct, but it's no help to the lower classes. Many a divine king, high priest, or emperor has died at the hands of those they depended on. But systemic change is rare. A new despot replaces the old and the cycle continues.
There was a whole "Party Decides: Endorsement Tracker" graphic and everything, but Trump securing the Republican nomination and eventually the presidency pretty conclusively showed that theory to be a relic of the past.
So the 538 election coverage that year was:
- Party endorsements matter more than early polling (they didn't)
- Hillary's up so big there's no way Trump can win (he did, and yes I know they didn't actually say that but that's what the layman saw)
(ironically the Party Decides thesis seems to have correctly predicted events in the Democratic primary that year)
IIRC Nate Silver (or Bronze as the kids called him) was the only poll aggregator to even give Trump "a chance", but he really went overboard afterwards arguing that he got "it right" even though clearly he was wrong.
Once again, a failure to understand probabilities.
"They gave heads a 50% chance and it came up tails. They're claiming success for giving heads more of a chance than anyone else but they were still wrong". 65-35 probability is squarely in the neighborhood of a literal coin toss.
IDK if pretty much everyone can exclude Florida and Texas, the second and third most populated states. (Or I suppose you could be excluding the Northeast Corridor instead of Florida)
I'm no expert on USA but looking at a map Florida is very obviously on the east coast, and the entire peninsula is only slightly wider than GP's 100 miles.
Touche, I was thinking of it more as 100 miles in length, not 100 miles in width running all the way down the coast, but your interpretation seems more correct.
> I make it a point to have 5-10 minute ad-hoc conversations with my directs 1-2 times a week, feels a lot more natural than a scheduled 1-on-1.
I prefer the exact opposite, especially when working remote.
When I was a manager, I saved non-urgent topics for a weekly 1-1 instead of pestering busy people with "Quick chat?" or "Do you have a minute?" messages. I wish others would do the same.
I don't pester people. I also hate that. In fact, nobody likes that. I regularly see people during the course of my day just doing my job, going to meetings, hacking on hardware, etc., and just say "hey how's it going? Anything I can help with?"
I'm also quite aware of what my people are working on, so its never a "what are you doing?" conversation. Some of my folks are remote, sometimes I am remote. If you do it right it really is just natural.
That's the whole point. When people hear "the middle class is shrinking" they intuitively believe people are slipping down a rung and joining the ranks of the working poor. The data doesn't back that up. The middle class is shrinking, but more people are moving up a rung than falling down one.
Which isn't to say that you're wrong about wealth inequality increasing. The share of wealth controlled by the ultra wealthy IS increasing, but the specifics of how that is playing out are nuanced and, at times, counter-intuitive.
But, Doctor, the data does back that up. The US middle class is shrinking, and most of the shrinkage is on the low end. There's no mystery about this, only potential for distractions.
The American shale gas/fracking boom really distorted a lot of things. The strategic energy situations of the United States, the EU, and China were all pretty similar in the late 20th Century: major dependence on OPEC-controlled oil and gas. Post-fracking, the US strategic energy situation has diverged from the others.
This difference leads indirectly to things like the current "not war" in Iran. (Iran's geography already gives it strong bargaining power via pressure on energy markets. It would have an even stronger hand if the US was not capable of energy independence).
The long term impacts on climate changes are even more negative. It's hard to supplant a cheap, ubiquitous energy source with strong negative externalities when those externalities are subtle, gradual, and strongly denied via propaganda by entrenched interests.
TBH, it seemed such an obvious point you're making that I assumed the author had to be comparing inflation-adjusted dollars, but from the (very little) digging that I did, it looks like that's not the case.
I would assume that downward trend has continued as inflation has spiked in the past few years and people had to spend more of their money in other areas.
> I assumed the author had to be comparing inflation-adjusted dollars
As did I.
90s weddings remind me of the Friends episode where Monica was scoping out her wedding. Chandler revealed how much money he had by writing it on a price of paper (that is, the audience never saw the dollar value), and Monica said something like "oh, we can go with best one, plan A" and Chandler said he didn't want to spend that much money "on one party". I've always wondered what amount of money that was.
Inflation has made prices higher, but people's purchasing power has been decreasing all this time. Salaries, benefits etc have all not been keeping up with inflation for decades. It is why young people are marrying later, not able to afford to buy property etc. All the gains the economy has made over the past handful of decades have been captured by a small percentage of the population.
Some of the greatest horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries were committed by people who refuted that theology and replaced it with Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism.