American Dreams, Populist Screams
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Is the American Dream dead? How are most Americans actually doing? Will the coronavirus kill us all? And most importantly, is Star Trek: Picard actually good? Repeat guest Michael Strain, author of The American Dream Is Not Dead, has all of these answers and more.
Show Notes:
-Michael’s book, The American Dream Is Not Dead
-Marco Rubio’s father as an American success story
-Irving Kristol on the power of ideas
-The New York Times on the power of lawns
-Josh Hawley at King’s College
-Brink Lindsey on U.S. culture after the 50s
-Oren Cass’ Cost-of-Thriving Index
-Elaine on stuffed crust pizza
-Jeri Ryan is why we live in this timeline
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I'm no bleeding hear liberal, but there is serious denial of reality going on here. There IS a problem with so many billionaires, if you take a look at the changes in income inequality. Here's a quote from Deloitte (certainly not a populist source) from an article which shows in graphs, what the trend is:
"Now, nobody should expect income to be distributed equally, and that has never been the case in any event. Some people earn more because they’ve invested in their careers, some because they take advantage of unforeseen market forces, and some because they are lucky, or even just born lucky. And some people earn less because they have less experience, have not invested in their careers, suffer from changes in market forces, are simply unlucky, or face hurdles such as racial discrimination. The real question is whether the trend is toward equality or inequality.
Figure 2 shows that the trend is indeed toward greater income inequality. The share of total income earned by the top 10 percent has risen from around 31 percent in the 1970s to about 50 percent today. Some of the loss was borne by the middle 40 percent, but much of this increase among the top 10 percent has come at the expense of workers in the lower half of the distribution. Their share of total income fell from 20 percent in the 1970s to just over 10 percent today."
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/economy/issues-by-the-numbers/july-2017/rising-income-inequality-gap-united-states.html
I really enjoy Jonah's podcasts but not being a movement conservative, I do understand that this is a dying breed and they are trying to bolster their movement as much as they can. But Michael Strain comes off as terribly out of touch. This is why so many people in the heartland turned to Trump.
Just wait until covid-19 hits Silicon Valley. That could be highly problematic.
Is the American Dream dead? For some more than others.
But the larger question is at what point will the "political class" figure out that a not inconsiderable number of the population are not doing well and are I would suggest foolishly supporting candidates who can drink a crowd and nothing else.
As for the homeless, at least those I interact with -- until that time that drug and mental health issues can be cured -- they'll be unable to maintain themselves.