Article  From citizens to peasants: How California destroyed its middle class (pop. analysis)

#1
C C Offline
https://youtu.be/slV4JDtmQBQ

VIDEO EXCERPTS: In this period there was about five trillion dollars in market capitalization that grew out of Silicon Valley alone, and we created sort of a medieval cast. A wealthy cast of barons and lords [...] They had so much wealth they felt they were exempt from worries about taxation. [...] We have private jets, our kids go to prep school, my tax accountant finds a way to get out of painful, burdensome taxes.

[...] We did exactly what the Greeks and Romans and medieval of thinkers warned us about. We created a very, very wealthy elite that was not subject to the consequences of their own ideology. And whether out of virtue signaling and guilt, or whether out of contrived political necessity, they made a political alliance with the very poor of California.

And the poor said give us more entitlements, tax the middle class. Transfer that money to us. We need it.

And the wealthy [progressive capitalists] said: Yes, we will open the borders, we'll transfer money. But you have to vote for issues that we're in favor of, and we're in favor of them precisely because they don't affect us.

The erosion of the middle class is something that the ancient philosophers, and indeed our own founding fathers warned about. The erosion of the middle class leads to a society of two classes: wealthy and poor.

Oppressed and oppressor. A binary that's very unstable. And the best word I could use to term it would be medieval.

[...] Greece and Rome developed the idea of citizenship predicated on someone who is neither poor nor rich. They said that this was essential, because they lacked the pathologies of both.

But they brought enhancements of independence, both in the political and the economic spheres. If you had a grouchy outspoken citizen, and you had enough of them, then they would check the aggrandizement of power. And they would make better decisions.

And out of this tradition they would create capital, they would use their imagination. They would be turned loose to create wealth and continuity within defined borders. And then they would be able to pass on that achievement to their children, out of that independence...

From citizens to peasants: How California destroyed its middle class ... https://youtu.be/slV4JDtmQBQ

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/slV4JDtmQBQ
Reply
#2
Magical Realist Offline
I intuitively picked up on this bi-classism of California when I visited there back in 1999. As I drove down one of the streets in Hollywood I noticed all the high end boutiques and classy clothing shops. A veritable shopping wonderland exclusively for the very rich. But I also noticed that just a few streets over was a largely poor hispanic community. How do they reconcile this gap in the classes? Have the middle class all moved to the burbs? I felt I was looking into the future of a coming dystopian metropolis.
Reply
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Research “Ban-the-Box” not helping job applicants with criminal records (statistical analysis) C C 0 397 Apr 16, 2025 10:36 PM
Last Post: C C
  Research Sometimes it hurts to think (meta-analysis of studies data) C C 1 512 Aug 6, 2024 03:58 AM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  Research EU citizens feel increasingly European (data analysis) C C 0 419 May 31, 2024 02:15 AM
Last Post: C C
  The hidden motive behind U.S. voters' stance on noncitizen voting (data analysis) C C 1 484 May 21, 2024 11:24 PM
Last Post: Syne
  Are cats the most murderous & extinction-driving pets in the world? (data analysis) C C 2 516 Dec 15, 2023 03:22 AM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos
  4+ hours smartphone use tied to health risks for adolescents (statistical analysis) C C 1 421 Dec 10, 2023 10:31 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  Article Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI (data analysis) C C 0 387 Jul 16, 2023 03:44 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Medical students aren't showing up to class. What does that mean for future docs? C C 0 329 Jun 2, 2023 04:33 PM
Last Post: C C
  Paradoxes of religion and science in the USA (data analysis) C C 2 525 Feb 14, 2023 08:37 PM
Last Post: Ostronomos
  TaylorMitchell's brutal death by coyotes: Rare attack on human solved (data analysis) C C 1 506 Dec 16, 2022 09:01 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)