This an amazing read and history on economics and culture.
Socialist movements are born of this…a revolutionary push against unregulated capitalism that no longer serves the working man. Capitalism isn’t to blame. Laissez faire/objectivist/cronyism is the culprit.
A reader recently made an important observation about my essay on the stupidification of America: our growing contempt for knowledge should be examined alongside the economic transformation that began in the 1970s and accelerated during the Reagan era.
Ronald Reagan did not invent inequality, deregulation or hostility toward government. But his administration gave those forces a governing philosophy.
Americans were told that cutting taxes for the wealthy, weakening regulation and increasing the rewards of capital would eventually benefit everyone. Supporters called it supply-side economics. Critics called it trickle-down economics. The promise was that wealth at the top would produce investment, jobs, higher wages and shared prosperity.
It did not produce the broadly shared prosperity its advocates promised.
Reagan’s tax policies sharply reduced top marginal rates. Wealth grew. Productivity increased. Corporations expanded. Executives and investors prospered.
But the gains were not broadly shared.
For decades after World War II, worker compensation generally rose alongside productivity. After the 1970s, the two began to separate. Workers kept producing more, but the compensation of typical workers failed to keep pace.
There was no single cause. Globalization, technology, financialization, declining unions and public policy all played a role. But the middle class was not weakened by nature alone. Policy choices helped determine who absorbed the costs of economic change and who received its rewards.
Taxes on the wealthy fell. Union power declined. College became more expensive. Much of healthcare became increasingly commercialized and enormously profitable, even as medical costs placed greater pressure on families. Housing, education and medical costs climbed faster than many workers’ pay.
Meanwhile, Americans were repeatedly told that their struggles were personal failures.
They had not worked hard enough. They had chosen the wrong degree. They had spent too much. They expected too much from employers and government.
Almost anything could be blamed except an economy increasingly structured to direct income, security and influence toward those who already possessed the most.
This is where inequality and the stupidification of America meet.
An educated population asks dangerous questions.
Why should someone lose healthcare after losing a job?
Why should a child’s opportunities depend on the wealth of the neighborhood where that child is born?
Why should millions of young adults begin their lives with student debt while wealthy heirs begin with investments, inheritances and connections?
Why should full-time workers need public assistance while some of their employers report billions in profits?
Why should billionaires be able to purchase media platforms, influence elections and shape public policy?
Those are not communist questions.
They are democratic questions.
Universal healthcare is not communism. Affordable education is not communism. Public transportation is not communism. Progressive taxation and strong labor protections are not communism.
Modern democracies combine private enterprise with public institutions and social protections. The question is not whether government should have a role.
The question is whom government should serve.
The United States already funds highways, schools, courts, police, firefighters, the military, Social Security and Medicare. Yet proposals to extend that principle to healthcare or higher education are frequently denounced as socialism or communism.
That rhetoric functions less as an argument than as a way to end the debate.
The United States remains one of the most unequal wealthy democracies in the world. The OECD has estimated that the wealthiest 10 percent of American households own roughly 79 percent of household wealth, though estimates vary by dataset.
A level playing field does not guarantee equal outcomes. It gives people a fair chance.
It means allowing ability and effort—not inherited wealth, family connections or a parent’s insurance plan—to shape opportunity.
Some powerful interests benefit when attention is diverted from taxation, wages, union power and concentrated ownership. Those interests benefit when struggling workers are encouraged to blame immigrants, minorities, teachers or one another instead of asking why so much wealth has accumulated in so few hands.
They benefit when people fight culture wars instead of examining tax policy.
Ignorance does not need to be centrally planned to be useful. It can be cultivated, exploited and monetized.
An informed electorate recognizes exploitation.
An uninformed electorate can be persuaded to defend it.
Donald Trump did not create this political culture, but he perfected its language. He turned decades of resentment, misinformation and economic anxiety into grievance and spectacle.
He offered enemies instead of solutions, insults instead of policies and conspiracies instead of explanations.
Trump simply removed the disguise.
Millions of Americans have been taught that universal healthcare means oppression while private insurers decide what treatment will be covered. They have been taught that affordable education is radical while decades of student debt are treated as normal. They have been taught that worker protections threaten freedom while employers hold enormous power over wages, schedules and medical coverage.
A society does not become free by leaving ordinary people at the mercy of every powerful institution except government.
Real freedom requires education, healthcare, mobility and economic security.
The reader was right: powerful people do not necessarily fear stupidity. Some encourage it. Some exploit it. Many profit from it.
The stupidification of America may not have been planned in a single boardroom.
But it has been politically useful.
It has been economically profitable.
And until we confront the system that rewards it, ignorance will remain one of the most successful industries in America.
#EconomicsOfStupidity #Stupidification #EconomicInequality #WorkingPeople #Reaganomics #TrickleDownEconomics #UnionStrong #DemocraticValues #IgnoranceIsProfitable
