No, America is not collapsing

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/no-america-is-not-collapsing

by jinjin2 • 4 years ago

70 223 4 years ago

noahpinion.substack.com

jleyank2• 4 years ago

No, but rather than being united to face an external threat it’s disunited to deal with imagined or self-constructed internal threats. It’s moved from a manufacturing to a post-manufacturing society, concentrating on finance, information and consumption. Basically recapitulating the uk in the Victorian and Edwardian periods (complete with morality concerns). Backwards-looking, growing more conservative countries are not the most appealing to the young or the economically mobile.

See Paul Kennedy “decline and fall of the great powers”.

rvz• 4 years ago

Well said and explained. Constant hysteria, screeching, panic, outrage and doomerisim towards thinking 'America is collapsing' is yet another downward spiral towards demoralising each other into believing nonsense like this especially when the media likes feeding them the same garbage on every outrage event.

Next thing you know, they will find a new villain of the month to screech at and cause outrage towards.

mgh24• 4 years ago

Good example of the disparity between public perception vs. reality - subjective and qualitative vs. objective and quantitative data.

eqNotEq• 4 years ago

There’s no guarantee this author chose the right data points.

Just because you feel satiated does not mean the end of RvW won’t spark a sudden social meltdown. We could be one stupid political decision away.

We’re not property of the elites. None of the bank tellers by me own the banks. Mortgage strikes, wfh worker strikes could follow further erosion of human rights. Good luck going door to door, Jamie Dimon and co.

There’s a broader distribution of possible triggers than the ones in this post. People still need to eat so certain behavior will look the same. That doesn’t mean they aren’t ready to eat the rich.

erellsworth2• 4 years ago

I have a hard time taking this seriously when it doesn't even the biggest mention climate change. Talk to me when Lake Powell stops being able to generate electricity and the West coast runs out of water.

jimmaswell7• 4 years ago

Why is that relevant to America in particular here? Shouldn't the whole world be "collapsing" then?

ncmncm3• 4 years ago

It is wholly possible for one country to collapse, and another not, in the face of identically the same threat.

PartiallyTyped• 4 years ago

Food shortages fuelling inflation, and extreme events putting further burden on an already aging and dysfunctional infrastructure come to mind.

erellsworth2• 4 years ago

Don't worry, we'll get there if we don't get climate change under control.

pjc509• 4 years ago

Texas has been focusing a lot more effort on abortion bounty hunting than it has on grid resilience.

suture• 4 years ago

He says America is not collapsing despite the failed coup and the growing chorus of people who perceive things are fundamentally wrong within the country. He talks about the economy and in this case it’s not about the economy. It’s about soon living in a country where in one state you can do something that is legal while in another state you can be executed for it. It’s about living in a country in which voting rights have systemically been watered down and in which neither the House or Senate has proportional representation. We are entering a period of religious minority rule.

The sum of these things indicates that absent major structural reforms in how apportionment occurs indicates that a breakup is a realistic outcome.

jimmaswell7• 4 years ago

It’s about soon living in a country where in one state you can do something that is legal while in another state you can be executed for it.

As a gun owner, we've been dealing with this for a long time.

bluejekyll• 4 years ago

Guns are legal in every single state.

bengold142• 4 years ago

As someone who doesn't own a gun, but could be shot if I accidentally bump into someone in Florida and they decide to "stand their ground." Same.

CabSauce3• 4 years ago

Could you point to a source for someone being executed for owning a gun? Unless of course you were just being extremely hyperbolic to bring up something completely unrelated to the discussion.

pixelatedindex2• 4 years ago

As someone who has been reading about the stoic philosophy recently, this article has a good sense of the “discipline of assent”, where we should not be caught up in the storm of illogical and emotional thinking. A lot of doomerism that’s prevalent these days (on both sides of the political spectrum, to a lesser or greater degree) really try to prey on our irrational or emotional aspect of how we react to events around us (which is further compounded by how easy and fast information travel).

All that to say, this was a good read - so thank you for posting.

troyvit• 4 years ago

That's a good way to put it. I think the fact that he used tweets to illustrate examples of doomerism exemplifies that. Twitter was written from the ground up to prey on our irrationality and emotions.

giraffe_lady• 4 years ago

I truly abhor this trend that views authoritative detachment as a virtue. Do you read things the stoic philosophers wrote on other subjects? Do you read about the actions of their lives?

This article claims it's not endorsing passivity but it is. It is reassuring you that doing nothing is the correct course, and that you are noble for having the detachment and self-knowledge to choose not to act.

It's no different and no better than the appeals to emotion that you believe you're above.

pixelatedindex2• 4 years ago

It is reassuring you that doing nothing is the correct course

That was definitely not my take. It is reassuring me that things will be ok, and that definitely doesn’t mean I should be doing nothing. Quite the opposite actually - I should vote, organize and protest - do things that are in my control. It is moot to worry about things that may happen in the future, which is what doomerism tends to be.

waterlaw2• 4 years ago

Lost me at wages keeping up with inflation.

In Canada (unrelated to article, but similar.) I'd need a 16% raise to keep pace with inflation. Since 52% tax bracket.

Meanwhile homeowners do nothing and have tax-free returns. Yearly returns larger than my net salary.

Collapse is a matter of perspective. Being in the working class sucks and everyone knows it.

This is a much better article:

Collapse Won’t Reset Society https://palladiummag.com/2022/04/11/collapse-wont-reset-soci...

jimmaswell7• 4 years ago

Meanwhile homeowners do nothing and have tax-free returns. Yearly returns larger than my net salary.

What do you mean, their theoretical home value going up? What good is that until or if they sell, better home equity loans?

s1artibartfast11• 4 years ago

In the US at least, there are many ways to avoid paying any taxes on home sales. You get a 500k tax deduction every 2 years for primary residence swaps, or do a 1031 exchange to avoid taxes on rentals.

I had a peer and we both made 120k with 35% taxes. In the last 10 years he made 2.5 million trading up houses tax free. Roughly 2x our salary per year tax free.

A lot of jealousy going around. I try to say good for him, but a lot of people have more trouble with that.

monkeybutton• 4 years ago

I think what you're complaining about is dangerous in the long term. People are becoming frustrated and don't have relief. I bet we're going to see more unrest like the convoy protests.

honkdaddy• 4 years ago

As a Canadian currently living in the States, I think it's worth pointing out that our housing market is currently one of the most inflated in the world which affects nearly every facet of economic life for Canadians. Every day there's increasing pressure on the provincial and federal governments to somehow settle down the price of housing.

It will take time, but I'm confident things will change.

gonzo41• 4 years ago

I'm Australian and we have the same problem. I lay blame on the banking sector for being unwilling to engage in small business risk and thus causing most small investor money to flock into real estate. Whilst OP talks about year on year 'gains'. You have to sell to see them, and then you're just buying in the same market. Though, the access to equity is not nothing.

grenoire• 4 years ago

I don't see how the tax rate impacts your inflation pace. Your net wage increases with the percentage raise you get as well. W * R * (1 - T) / W * (1 - T) = W * R / W = R, no? (Wage, Raise, and Tax as the variables).

travisjungroth• 4 years ago

Progressive tax brackets make raises sublinear. If the bracket thresholds raise with inflation, it evens out. I don’t think they have.

Round number example: $150k gross, $100k net and $100k of expenses. Expenses go up to $108k. If your top marginal tax rate is 50%, you need a $16k raise to match it. 10.6% raise (not 16% though).

nivenkos2• 4 years ago

At least as a Canadian you can get a TN visa and move to the US - enjoy those $200k+ salaries!

EForEndeavour• 4 years ago

And, as we all just read, the definite lack of collapse :)

immigrantheart• 4 years ago

There are people who believe that America is collapsing if Roe v Wade isn’t overturned.

ncmncm3• 4 years ago

A quite small minority

bitshiftfaced5• 4 years ago

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters would approve of a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, including 32% who would Strongly Approve. Forty-five percent (45%) would disapprove of overturning Roe v. Wade, including 35% who would Strongly Disapprove.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/pub...

pessimizer• 4 years ago

For some reason, both liberals and right-wingers need to think that they're the vast majority of people, and if there were real democracy everything would be going their way.

myvoiceismypass• 4 years ago

What are the odds that abortion rights are the last one this court strips away from Americans?

jimmaswell7• 4 years ago

This court is at least poised to restore some of our gun rights, and the next democratic majority is free to pass an actual federal law on abortion. Even supporting abortion myself, you have to admit Roe's legal argument was questionable at best and living on borrowed time.

gaze• 4 years ago

The fact that Noah is saying this means America is absolutely collapsing.

Cd00d• 4 years ago

I'm not familiar with the author, so maybe you can add context for this comment. I'm reading it as snark that posits the author has no credibility, which isn't a very valuable comment in itself.

pjc509• 4 years ago

The political unrest is increasing, though. The risk of an election being rigged, overturned, or having the losing party refuse to acknowledge the result and have parts of the state acceed to that is much higher than comfortable levels.

When you see a system that fails through four levels of safeties, and is stopped by a fifth, do you see that as "good the system is working" or "we need to re-examine the first set of safeties"?

eschulz2• 4 years ago

Yes it's unsettling that public figures in the current and previous administration have publicly expressed their belief that the 2016 and 2020 elections, respectively, were stolen. I wish that could be changed.

turtledove2• 4 years ago

That's a false equivalence, however. In 2016, stolen meant "gerrymandering, winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college, voter suppression" - real and measurable impacts to the outcome.

In 2020, stolen meant conspiracy theories about people cheating at the polls with absolutely zero evidence that anything untoward had happened.

In both cases, "stolen" is the wrong word, but to casually lump them together is also incorrect.

hn_throwaway_993• 4 years ago

Equating the responses to the 2016 and 2020 elections is nonsense, most specifically because the loser in 2016 conceded. Yes, she may have blamed a host of other people besides herself, but she conceded, and the previous administration assisted with the peaceful transfer of power.

Compare that with the 2020 election, where the loser is still going on national tours saying how the election was stolen and rigged after trying to get the result overturned, and many in his party believe him, and worse, many leaders in his party privately comment that this is all bullshit but publicly are silent or support his narrative.

hn_throwaway_993• 4 years ago

Scarier is the fact that many states have indeed removed that "fifth level of safeties" by moving responsibility for declaring the outcome of elections from officials like the Secretary of State to the legislature.

pjc509• 4 years ago

Oh, that's entirely intentional to allow the legislature to overturn elections they don't like.

onlyrealcuzzo5• 4 years ago

I'm highly skeptical we'll live in a country with free and fair elections for the rest of my life.

It seems like a majority of people (or close) are vehemently opposed to free & fair elections - thinking the only votes that should count are they votes they agree with.

And it seems like the VAST majority of people in this country would be willing to steal an election if it went in their favor.

In this landscape - I'm not sure how it doesn't eventually happen. And once the genie is out of the bottle, I don't think it ever goes back in.

When we live in a world where hardly anyone respects the opinions of others - it's hard to think a democracy is even what people want.

eatonphil3• 4 years ago

The more that I read of (US) history the less extremely worried I am. Maybe I should be more worried about climate change. But other than that, we've been doing crazy stupid stuff, some evil stuff, some good stuff for a long time. Yet the general trend has been to become more democratic, more socialist, more multi-ethnic/multi-cultural, more scientific, etc. I'm not defending any of the bad parts historically or that still exist today, just trying to understand better what the US is and was. I think that this is a good article reminding everyone of all of this.

archhn2• 4 years ago

Reading history to comprehend the present is like watching videos of other people driving, while you are driving. The past is not like the present. Things have changed. There were no nuclear bombs when the constitution was written, nor chemical weapons, bio labs, genetic engineering, the internet, etc. We live in unprecedented times--if we can believe the mainstream view of history.

Some like to think that history repeats itself. That human history is just a demonstration of invariable principles of human nature in different guises. This is an antiquated view, given man's newfound ability to change himself and his environment.

Some people have also said that we're reaching the end of history. That the systems of the world will become so stable, owing to the apocalyptic prospect of war with modern technology, that everyone will basically become a moronic beurocrat in it and there will be no more wars. Humanity will be benevolently managed a la brave new world. Social stability will become the only goal of the human race because every other aim leads to war, and war will become suicide for humanity.

I'm also skeptical of this idea as well. The will to power that breeds war will adapt. We won't fight wars with guns and nukes, but with words and culture. The new wars are psychological. And these wars are constant and just as destructive as real wars.

More Americans die from complications associated with being overweight than from fighting in foreign wars. French fries are the new bullets in modern wars. If you look at Mexico and see the alarming rise of diabetes, this can be traced back to U.S. corporations pushing unhealthy sugar drinks on their population. Pepsi is just as dangerous to these people as the cartels.

I believe we're in the midst of a war we can't recognize because it isn't fought with conventional weapons. Birth rates crashing, social blight everywhere, insane wealth inequality, families unable to stay together, cultural chaos, etc. Lives are being destoroyed, casualties are mounting, but they aren't seen as such. It's "just the way things are."

My friend, I hate to rain on your parade but my ultimate prediction is this: the psychological warfare will get so bad that people will believe things are the best they've ever been as they are being destroyed. People will be conditioned to yearn for their own destruction and will see all healthy things, all things that could save them, as bad things. Death will become the ultimate good. And when everyone is dying, the world will be seen as a paradise.

eatonphil3• 4 years ago

It's more that, just like you are doing here, I saw that people have been predicting the end of times for a long time. :)

skywal_l• 4 years ago

Reading history to comprehend the present is like watching videos of other people driving, while you are driving

Completely off-topic but watching car accidents video on Youtube clearly made me way more prudent. As long as you have not seen accidents, you feel that you have a way better control of your vehicle that you actually have.

Watching accident video should be a mandatory part of driving training.

bmitc• 4 years ago

I think "muddling" in the subtitle is a key point, because that's exactly how things are going. These reversions, due to in effect religious fundamentalism and pandering to what I only hope are minority crowds emboldened by gerrymandering and the electoral college, are concerning. The U.S. will continue to stagnate if all we ever discuss and rabble about are fringe issues. Why is abortion literally a major topic in every presidential election over decades? Abortion is a tough issue no matter what, and so a compromise is needed. There will never be a totally clean solution. Why are people so damn concerned with decisions others make? In Texas, last time I looked, anybody can initiate a lawsuit against a doctor on abortion related issues, making doctors frozen due to legal worries and even reverting to communicating on paper notes that they then throw away. It's insane. We're taking decision making from the educated and giving it to the uneducated.

Education in the country is a major concern and has domino effects that take decades to correct, but the more the less educated come into power, the harder it gets to revert. And we're trending in the wrong direction.

I also think the section on inequality is greatly misleading. Inequality keeps getting worse and worse by basically any measure. Picking out any data over the past two years is likely to be very, very biased, because the economy has been wildly swinging back and forth. Data can be picked to basically back up any position. The middle class is getting absolutely hammered by taxes while the rich just keep on keeping on in a tax-free world not experienced by others.

Bloomberg reports that the world’s richest 500 people have lost a total of $1 trillion this year.

I can't view the article, but aren't those "losses" likely to be paper losses, i.e., unrealized losses? When lower and middle class people have losses, they are realized. People lose jobs, money, homes, etc. Rich people "losing" money in the various markets and their investments continue to reap dividends and other monetary gains and will eventually recuperate.

Articles like this are akin to burying one's head in the sand and consist of cherry-picked data to say everything's okay.

skizm2• 4 years ago

Why is abortion literally a major topic in every presidential election over decades?

Abortion is a big issue that will continue to come up because one group of people view it as literally murdering a child and another group see it as a minor medical procedure. In reality the debate should just be "how many weeks into pregnancy should it be allowed?", but that's hard to sell in a campaign so politicians will go hard one way or the other.

s1artibartfast11• 4 years ago

Abortion is a great example of an issue where the resolution of discourse isn't adequate to actually address the problem. It's not a binary yes/no question and biologically cannot be, but somehow people are stuck debating as if it is.

In reality it is a matrix with time on one axis and extenuating circumstances on the other.

crooked-v• 4 years ago

view it as literally murdering a child

Except they obviously don't, actually, or they wouldn't so regularly permit abortion in the case of rape or incest, nor would fertilization-preventing birth control be so often mislabeled as 'abortifacents'.

Preserving life may be the stated goal, but if you look at the actual actions taken, it's obvious that it's actually about controlling sexuality.

bitwize2• 4 years ago

One group of people see it as literally murdering a child; the other group see banning or restricting it as literally enslaving or murdering women.

You're right about the true nature of the debate: it's really at which point during the pregnancy is the unborn child to be considered a full human whose right to life it is imperative to respect?

ta988• 4 years ago

Nobody sees it as a minor medical procedure.

giardini• 4 years ago

"bmitc>Why is abortion literally a major topic in every presidential election over decades?

skizm>Abortion is a big issue ... because one group of people view it as literally murdering a child and another group see it as a minor medical procedure...<"

That is, it is a religious dispute and religious disputes are impossible to settle by negotiation or compromise.

tablespoon• 4 years ago

In reality the debate should just be "how many weeks into pregnancy should it be allowed?", but that's hard to sell in a campaign so politicians will go hard one way or the other.

I've read the problem there was actually Roe v. Wade itself. The Supreme Court took it upon itself to prematurely decide the issue, which twisted the politics around it into a question of "how to control the Supreme Court" that is resistant to nuance (because the court is so insulated from normal politics).

Without Roe v. Wade, the debate would have probably eventually settled on the question you proposed in nearly all jurisdictions, though with some setting a number that Roe or Casey forbade.

s1artibartfast11• 4 years ago

I for one hope the Roe decision diffuses the abortion question in the long term. At least theoretically, having the decision state by state means more people can agree with their local legislation

triceratops3• 4 years ago

In practice states do whatever they like, even if something is wildly unpopular with voters. Exhibit A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_Amendment_4#Imple...

eatonphil3• 4 years ago

The senate minority leader already started talking about banning abortion across the entire US [0]. The states are gearing up to fight each other when they pass laws banning abortion for their citizens in other states like Texas either has done or is doing [1]. And on the other side you've got Connecticut allowing their citizens to counter-sue [2].

So no matter what side you're on it doesn't seem like it's about to be diffused. It seems like without federal law one way or the other states are going to be fighting each other. It sounds like chaos.

Edit: Also, although it's tempting to think of "red" and "blue" states, the minority party in each state is humongous. Almost 40% of New York state voted for Trump in 2020 [3]. Desantis in Florida only won his election by 49% [4]! And a higher minority percentage in Mississippi voted for Biden in 2020 than minority in New York voted for Trump [5]. As much as it is easy to think of there being separate political halves of the US it's just not the case. There is huge Democrat and Republican presence in every state.

[0] https://thehill.com/news/senate/3480725-mcconnell-says-natio...

[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/09/texas-republicans-ro...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/nyregion/connecticut-texa...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_gubernatorial_ele...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

voidfunc• 4 years ago

The conversation is quickly going to turn to a federal ban that the GOP will use to bring in voters.

ModernMech6• 4 years ago

I for one hope the Roe decision diffuses the abortion question in the long term.

If this is what you hope I don't think you've been paying attention. They're gutting the right to privacy with Roe, so they're coming after gay marriage and contraception next; their legality is predicated on exactly the right to privacy that the supreme court is about to gut. Religious conservatives are salivating at the thought of making Plan B and IUDs illegal. There's no diffusion going on; they lit a match next to a powder keg. Roe is just the beginning.

And if you think this is going to be left up to the states, Republicans are already talking about a nationwide ban on abortion. This has never been about leaving it up to the states, when one side believes they are fighting for the rights of unborn defenseless babies in the name of God.

masklinn3• 4 years ago

I for one hope the Roe decision diffuses the abortion question in the long term.

That is obvious and absolute nonsense. The only thing it does is make the issue worse.

At least theoretically, having the decision state by state means more people can agree with their local legislation

Not only will you always have people which do not agree with their legislation (even more so when that legislation is in no way representative thanks to voter suppression and gerrymandering), the GOP is already pivoting to trying for federal bans.

And that's ignoring the regressive states also already looking to push things further. Contraceptive bans are already coming up more and more as well.

masklinn3• 4 years ago

Why is abortion literally a major topic in every presidential election over decades?

Because the GOP found that by making it a wedge issue they could have a reliable lock on the religious right.

danShumway2• 4 years ago

It's impossible for me to over-stress how toxic the GOP has been to any kind of productive conversation about fetal rights as a concept and how transparently opportunistic they've been about using abortion as a means to preserve power, lock in voters, and push back on progressive policies in general.

It makes it incredibly difficult to talk to many pro-life people about abortion in any context, because there's a huge effort happening to convince Evangelical voters that:

A) literally any sympathy for the parent, nuance, or lack of ferver is the same as wanting the unborn to die.

B) it's a primarily religious issue and that being an Evangelical means voting a certain way and aligning with a set of political issues, and that conversations about abortion must be approached through a religious lens.

C) that because it's a religious issue, there is one singular "correct" way to focus on reducing abortion, and any deviation from that specific strategy is literally a religious failing.

I see people just shut down during conversations about abortion, like even talking about it is itself a sin.

----

There is still a lot of nuance; I'm not trying to lump an entire group together or demonize people or say that Evangelical conservatives all collectively hate women. But there is (to me) a very obvious intentional push coming from some parts of the political spectrum and from some Church leaders to eliminate any nuance or openness that those people have -- to get people to approach abortion though a very specific lens and to only ever acknowledge or think about that specific lens, because those leaders/politicians see it as a really convenient way to create an identity that requires people to vote/associate in a certain way, to demonize people who those leaders/politicians would like them to demonize, and to go even further and tie that political identity to people's religious security in a way that is inherently dangerous for them to question or examine.

As a result, it then becomes easier for people to tie that religious identity to other political topics as well; the more that pro-life becomes shorthand for Christian, and the more that Christian becomes shorthand for "votes Republican", the easier it is to pick out other social/political issues (wealth inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, even entirely amoral, purely practical questions about things like economic policy), and to say that deviation from the expected party position is literally a sin and that non-party positions are guilty by association with the enemy.

And again, definitely not all Evangelicals and absolutely not all Christians. I grew up in white Evangelical communities; I see their flaws and their occasional strengths. And regardless of the flaws I still care about people in that community. But it is a very concerning problem that the Church needs to grapple with; at some point something needs to break and white Evangelicals need to decide whether their primary identity is Christian or Republican.

slowmovintarget2• 4 years ago

This is also why the Democrats, when they get a majority, never bother to make a law ensuring the legality of the procedure or defining its limits.

It is too valuable to Left to fix, though the Right seems perfectly content to go forward and act. The Right isn't merely agitating, they're trying for policy. The Left aims for outrage and political energy.

"Clearly we have to pack the court!" No. Clearly you have to pass a law. Understandably, that's much harder, because you must actually engage the electorate and build consensus instead of passing the buck to judges to "detect" what the people want, or slant things in your favor by ignoring (or selectively upholding) the Constitution.

tjs8rj• 4 years ago

“We're taking decision making from the educated and giving it to the uneducated.”

I can’t find the quote, but someone said something like “democracy is the system of government where the stupid lead society” (implying that the majority of people are stupid, so rule by majority is rule by the stupid). I tend to agree a little, but every other system seems so much more dangerous (including trying to only let “smart people” make decisions).

ryandrake2• 4 years ago

Reminds me of this clip[1] (trigger warning: R-word). Probably the worst feature of democracy is that morons vote for morons, and once they're the solid majority, we're doomed.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AeO-dKGBLs

onlyrealcuzzo5• 4 years ago

The middle class is getting absolutely hammered by taxes while the rich just keep on keeping on in a tax-free world not experienced by others.

Define middle class. If you make >$250k but <$2M - you're probably getting hammered. But I don't think many people consider that "middle class". The ones with the highest tax rates by far make around $400-$600k. You don't have enough income for it to make sense to spend a lot of money to avoid taxes (accountants, tax lawyers, shielding income through corporations, etc) - and most of your income is "earned" from an employer - so you don't have many strategies to avoid taxes realistically anyway. You're pretty much stuck with a relatively high tax rate. But this is the top 1% - that doesn't seem middle class to me.

If you make ~$100k - you're still in the top 15% - but your tax rate is really not THAT high. Middle class should probably center on FAMILIES earning between ~$40k and ~$100k. By no means are these FAMILIES being hammered with taxes - on the low end, you're looking at hardly any federal or state tax beside payroll (your pension).

c223• 4 years ago

40k is a full time minimum wage job where I live. Does the middle class really consist of just everyone who is fully employed?

em500• 4 years ago

> Bloomberg reports that the world’s richest 500 people have lost a total of $1 trillion this year.
I can't view the article, but aren't those "losses" likely to be paper losses, i.e., unrealized losses?

Yup, these kind of articles are just padding. They're very cheap to write, and there's almost always "news" since stock prices always move. Most of the richest people (that we know of) hold the vast majority of their wealth in shares of public companies, so the richest got X-trillion richer/poorer in the past months/years is pretty much synonymous with the stock market went up/down by Y-%.

You can probably write a script that fetches stock returns and autogenerates the article. Heck, someone at Bloomberg probably already did.

ShockTohp2• 4 years ago

These reversions, due to in effect religious fundamentalism and pandering to what I only hope are minority crowds emboldened by gerrymandering and the electoral college, are concerning. The U.S. will continue to stagnate if all we ever discuss and rabble about are fringe issues. Why is abortion literally a major topic in every presidential election over decades? Abortion is a tough issue no matter what, and so a compromised is needed. There will never be a totally clean solution. Why are people so damn concerned with decisions others make? In Texas, last time I looked, anybody can initiate a lawsuit against a doctor on abortion related issues, making doctors frozen due to legal worries and even reverting to communicating on paper notes that they then throw away. It's insane. We're taking decision making from the educated and giving it to the uneducated.

RvW was a compromise that made both sides feel shafted, like most good compromises. The rise in extremism on both sides is fueling this, not religious fundamentalism. For states like Texas, where most people still hold to vaguely Christian values and new life is valued over choice, they feel like they are forced to allow murder. For other places like California who have a more secular egalitarian leaning, and value choice over life, they feel as though being limited to before viability is too much restriction.

RvW was always on shaky ground legally and morally speaking [1]. Making it a federal issue was always going to lead to this. States are different, some so different they might as well be separate countries. California, for example has already toyed with the idea of making abortion part of their state constitution. With Roe gone, it's much easier to do that, not harder.

Acting like this was done out of a lack of education is reductive and pointless. The justices know what they are doing and what it means. Just because you happen to be against this particular decision does not make it wrong. Abortion rights are not going away, they are being given back to the states where they belonged in the first place. Activists on both sides will just have to deal with the fact that they can no longer dictate how the entire country lives, just because their local bubble agrees with them.

[1]https://www.liveaction.org/news/roe-v-wade-exploitation-mcco... [2]https://apnews.com/article/california-reproductive-rights-st...

pjc509• 4 years ago

Abortion rights are not going away

Abortion rights are going away in some states.

In Texas, last time I looked, anybody can initiate a lawsuit against a doctor on abortion related issues, making doctors frozen due to legal worries and even reverting to communicating on paper notes that they then throw away. It's insane. We're taking decision making from the educated and giving it to the uneducated.

.. as you've pointed out yourself.

The rise in extremism on both sides is fueling this,

There is no pro-abortion "extremism". There never has been anything comparable to the anti-abortion bombings.

For states like Texas, where most people still hold to vaguely Christian values and new life is valued over choice, they feel like they are forced to allow murder.

Texas has the death penalty to show how much they value life.

ipnon• 4 years ago

Everytime I wonder if we're doomed I just remember we were locked in mortal combat with ourselves only 140 years ago. Sociopolitical relations seem absolutely rosy in comparison! America has been through a lot (to put it mildly), this is far from the worst of our historical challenges.

lom888• 4 years ago

In the 1930s a large section of the country was undergoing an ecological collapse that caused mass migration. There was a sustained occupation of the capital by an army of former soldiers that was dispelled by force of arms. Unemployment was at 25%. Reproductive rights were not a thing. It seemed axiomatic to many in the educated classes that the more (apparently) efficient anti-democratic ideologies of communism and fascism would eventually displace the capitalist liberal democracy that had been the midwife of the depression. The Supreme Court overturned popular legislation for apparent political reason.

And by 1946 the US was moving to the apogee of its power.

I think the popularity of the collapse narrative over the past 10 years or so speaks more to the emotional salience of the topic and the ability of the web to supercharge emotionally potent topics than to the likelihood of any sort of collapse of the American state.

dncornholio• 4 years ago

All I see is 2 tweets from random Karens and we need a blogpost for them?

logicalmonster• 4 years ago

I can't exactly predict the future other than giving my opinion about the divisions and what I suspect is going to happen, but historically speaking, even the strongest empires ultimately get displaced by other powers and collapse. I'm sure there were Moscow-based Communist writers who wrote things towards the end of the Soviet system writing about how the CCCP would reign forever. I'm sure there were some Roman historians towards the end writing about how the Empire would be eternal.

nivenkos2• 4 years ago

The US is about to become wealthier than ever with the new LNG exports to Europe and the lend lease terms, etc.

waterlaw2• 4 years ago

Half the population has low to no income. Manufacturing was gutted and sent overseas in an effort to integrate China into the world order.

Russia exports way more resources and has decrepit living conditions.

LNG will not make up for a fall in GDP due to supply chain, monetary or political issues.

The risks are piling up for a black swan, but it's not a collapse. Western Civilization is far from collapse, but it might be entering its long decay. That's difficult to quantify.

paganel• 4 years ago

Not so sure about that, for the first time in my adult life (I'm in my early 40s, I've been reading the "serious" print media on and off for about 20 years now) I saw a magazine like The Economist seriously suggesting that the State governors ignoring a Supreme Court decision might actually happen and, on top of that (and the thing which made it interesting for me), that there was nothing wrong with that (or at least that seemed like the subtext of the article to me).

Again, this was the first time for me reading in a MSM entity that a decision/action that would de facto mean the (at least) partial dissolution of the idea of the United States would not mean the end of the world.

Dark times ahead.

(if it matters I'm not from the US nor have I set foot in there, but I do love the country and I have been trying to read the most that I could find when it came to its history and its institutions).

chubot• 4 years ago

I tend to ignore the "endless screeching", and I've long had an optimistic world view somewhat aligned with say Steven Pinker -- we're living through the best times, roughly monotonic progress, with some temporary setbacks.

But this recent video by Ray Dalio made me think a lot, and led me to his books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

He did a bunch of quantitative research and came up with a model for the prosperity of countries, and "the world order".

In the model, there were 4 world leaders at various points: Dutch, British, Americans, and Chinese. The basic pattern is that they were productive and industrious, gained military power, and grew to hold the world's reserve concurrency.

After they hold the world's reserve concurrency, they stop being as productive. The rich parents can bend the rules and corrupt society for their kids.

And there is more internal conflict about how to divvy up a fixed or declining pie. There can be more external conflict once rivals see weakness. In Dalio's view, China is obviously on the rise economically, and you also see signs of their increased military power.

There is more to it than that -- see the video and books, but that's my short summary.

-----

It sounds a little too "clean", but after some reflection, a lot of it is hard to argue with. (I'd definitely be interested in criticisms -- this presentation / framing is pretty new.)

This doesn't mean America is "collapsing". But I would now say it's clearly "declining". Our energies are directed more at fighting amongst ourselves than producing things.

It always boggled my mind that everything we buy is made in China -- how could that not have an effect? Well it does appear that having the world's reserve concurrency is a huge advantage. That was established long ago, before we were born, and now we're coasting off of it.

But then again, Britain and the Netherlands "declined" and they seem to be doing OK. They lost their empires, but they recovered to some degree of civilized society and prosperity.

And I'm pretty sure I would not want to live in China right now, e.g. especially with what I hear about the COVID lockdowns. (even though I'm ethnically Chinese)

But yeah I think I need to take the idea of decline a lot more seriously. I think the blog post is also "overcorrecting" from the screeching. I think what decline looks like is a bunch of little collapses in all areas of life, and people endlessly arguing about it, while doing little to correct it.

mywittyname4• 4 years ago

It will happen gradually, then suddenly. I suspect there's a lot more discontent with the country than people are recognizing. I'd be curious to hear peoples' honest opinion on the maintaining the union, because I do think that a large number of Americans from both political parties are increasingly considering a break up to be the only real solution.

Climate change is a substantial omission here: forest fires and droughts in the west, heat waves/cold snaps in the south, increasing floods and hurricanes in the south east. Those are drastically changing the population landscape of the country.

Then there's the whole change with SALT deductions. This was a lot more insidious than a lot of people credit it with being. The long-term effects are hard to predict.

We are going to see a repeat of 2020 in 2024. Except this time, it will probably be successful. Will the next president continue trade wars against allies? Successfully withdraw from NATO? Again make military aid contingent upon corruption? Actively target "left wing" people with laws that allow them to be arrested, robbed, and have their children taken away?

I think this article undersells how incredibly precarious our democracy is right now. I genuinely feel like I'll see the end of the USA in my lifetime. I just hope it is a peaceful dissolution.

qalmakka• 4 years ago

America is not collapsing

That what they were also saying about the USSR and look how it went.

To be clear, I don't think the USA will collapse soon because I do not have the necessary skills to assess a claim like that. The one thing I think everyone gives too much credit to is our own ability to foresee events such as a country collapsing.

How human crowds behave is notoriously very hard to predict, and people have a tendency to retcon their historical perception of events in order to justify what has just happened. Just look at the USSR, where the majority of experts in Russology scoffed at the idea that the Soviet regime was going to collapse, yet it did and afterwards everyone was like "well, that's obvious!". If the USA were to collapse tomorrow, future historians would probably point at things such as the current Supreme Court composition and the divide between political lines as the inevitable, unstoppable factors behind it.

IMHO except the fact that every Empire some day inevitably falls, how and when countries implode is often too complex to predict, so most of these discussions about the impending (or lack of) doom of a polity basically boil down to white noise or fiction.

rkk3• 4 years ago

my Latin teacher told me that America was declining and falling just like Rome, and that was back in 1995
No, America is not collapsing

A collapse is different than a protracted decline and fall.

Historians could make a lot of similar points about Rome still being a successful superpower in the 3rd, 4th or even 5th century AD.

incomingpain• 4 years ago

An opinion piece written by a rabbit?

https://bigthink.com/the-present/5-reasons-why-america-will-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-a...

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/four-s...

The contemporary assertion that america is collapsing is well established by the entire political spectrum as well as objective observers internationally.

I realize that to a large extent, “doomerism”, as the kids call it, is just self-expression. We just went through a massive pandemic that killed a million of us, we had an era of riots and coup attempts and random acts of terrorism, crime is high, inflation is eating away at people’s paychecks and savings, and there are rumblings of major war from overseas.

That is the collapse... you just proved it's happening. There has been 2 years of racial unrest and so far minor insurrections.

Nor do I want to deny that the country faces real risks. If WW3 starts, that’ll be a calamity. We could also have a civil war in 2024-5 over a disputed presidential election result. It’s even possible that inflation could spiral out of control and turn us into Venezuela.

Midterms are this year and we are going into another summer of racial unrest. It's inevitable another black person is killed by police brutality who doesnt get punished because of immunity. If the food shortages happen you're going to have riots which are hungry. BLM is only popular during elections and midterms are this year.

The economy is not collapsing

Your first graph shows no peak since 2000? How terrible. Prime age working and there hasnt been a peak since 2000?

Once we control for the Baby Boomer retirement by looking only at the “prime age” population between 25 and 54,

Because why? What does the boomer graph look like? Really bad eh? I know you looked and chose not to include.

Wage growth tracker also peaked around 2000. 2 decades of failure?

Yes, we had some huge protests and riots in 2020. Yes, crime is way up. We even had a (shambolic, ridiculous, halfhearted) coup attempt. Yes, there’s even a slight danger that a disputed 2024 election could lead to civil war. I do not deny any of these things.

Is this post meant to be sarcastic and it doesn't read like it? I assume your 'coup' attempt was Jan 6... the weaponless trespassing for a couple hours? Not a very good coup is it. Or are you referring the multiple insurrection autonomous zones that existed for days to weeks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest

This roe vs wade thing is because of #metoo. It's only vaguely part of the collapse. Men vs women(and however incels fit in) isn't majorly part of the polarization and collapse.

No, America is not collapsing

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