dvorak asks a straightforward question that will never be answered on NPR,
steve sailer: You know, New York Times, there is this concept called “per capita” that’s useful for thinking about topics like this.
It would be interesting to determine when the media stopped talking about ‘standard of living’ (inherently per capita) and replaced it with ‘the economy’.
SFG provides the Ngram.
“Standard of living” was the guiding concern leading up to the Great Compression — mid-20th Century egalitarian and 90% White America — and was lapped by “the Economy” sometime around 1950, presaging the Great Divergence and 60% White America.
The Economy became the clarion call of the elite when their fellow Americans became ballast holding back the potential heights of the elite’s avarice. “Standard of living” is what we talk about when we actually care about the quality of life of fellow Americans.
Cohencidentally, the media began to idolize “The Economy” when both the media and the economy became the playground of one very small but extraordinarily privileged and powerful minority. You see, “Standard of Living” risks empowering the Cossacks; “The Economy” weakens them with the imported detritus of scab laborers and mercenaries.
This rhetorical and policy switch reminded me that the Corporatocracy is alive and well, and consuming the last bits of America’s carcass. (And, I’m afraid, Trump has no intention nor plan to curb the power of the Corporatocracy.) From Amon Ra,
One of the [special] inventions, corporate personhood, destroyer of nations.
– You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead. –
”Corporations, special interests wrote bills. Politicians introduced them. 10,000 times”
Here is the link provided by Amon Ra, and which was working as recently as yesterday:
Today, the link is dead.
Deep-sixed.
Memory-holed.
As if it never existed.
I was about to comment on the article, because it was a real eye-opener on the extent to which corporate lobbyists basically dictate policy to Congress. Naturally, these corporate whores get policies which benefit them and not regular Americans. This is why we don’t have a Wall today, and why the Trump Admin is considering, incredulously, cutbacks to the E-Verify program.
But the article was too hot to handle, so TPTB made it disappear.
Self-rule is dead in America.
We are ruled by billionaires.
By fat cats.
By a malevolent tribe.
By deracinated oligarchs.
And they will not allow dissent.
Suppression is the order of the day.
If they keep this up…
well, I’ll leave it at that.
***
FYI Tucker Carlson, rightfully, took Trump to the wood shed in his monologue yesterday.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who in a segment on his show wondered what it might look like if Trump had decided he didn’t want to be president anymore and was taking steps to ensure he didn’t win another term…
In this “hypothetical” scenario, Carlson ran through a number of things Trump could do so that his base would turn on him — all of which line up with actual Trump administration actions or reported proposals. He noted, for example, that if Trump wanted to lose, he could raise gas taxes, something the administration is reportedly considering and an idea that Carlson said is “so mindless and counterproductive there’s literally no way you could get re-elected after doing it.” Later, he told Trump he should definitely “go with the gas tax” if he secretly wants “to retire early” and is “really sick of the job.”
Proposing cuts to Medicare and E-Verify would also be ways Trump could undermine his re-election chances, Carlson argued, as well as continuing “our pointless military intervention in Syria.” These, again, are not hypothetical scenarios at all.
“If the president did all that, the message would be very clear: he has no idea what he ran on in 2016,” Carlson said. “He just wants out.”
Tucker 2020.
***
A Vatican Cardinal has warned the “West will disappear” as a result of mass migration.
“If the West continues in this fatal way, there is a great risk that, due to a lack of birth, it will disappear, invaded by foreigners, just as Rome has been invaded by barbarians,” said Sarah, adding, “My country is predominantly Muslim. I think I know what reality I’m talking about.”
The Cardinal also blamed the European Union for its “desire to globalize the world, ridding it of nations with their distinctive characteristics,” labeling the move “sheer madness”.
“The Brussels Commission thinks only about building a free market in the service of the great financial powers,” he continued. “The European Union no longer protects the peoples within it. It protects the banks.”
Here is a photo of the Cardinal:
Is anyone surprised? Realtalk has ceased being the province of pathologically virtue signaling White elites.
[crypto-donation-box]
