Everyday consumption tells a different story than snapshot wealth inequality. Jeff Bezos may drive a fancier car, yet today’s average cars deliver performance and capabilities that vastly exceed what even elites had decades ago. Same thing for houses, appliances, and electronics.
Low-income college student enjoy living standards that exceed those of the world’s first billionaire roughly 100 years ago. The practical gap between top and average consumption has narrowed substantially over time. Why? Because capital is constantly being reallocated to the people judged the most capable of utilizing it to produce innovative new products and services for ordinary people.
Static inequality measures overlook global capital markets, rapid innovation, and economic mobility. Consumption data and economic mobility provide a much more accurate picture.
Mehdi Hasan was 30 years old in 2009 when he called non-Muslims ‘animals with diseased minds.’
He was so extreme that he even attacked ‘dog and music lovers’, since dogs and music are haram in Islam. He also compared homosexuals to pedophiles.
He only apologized a decade later, because the video leaked.
Mehdi claims he has totally changed, which I find hard to believe given his actions and the fact that he practices Twelver Shia Islam, where lying (Taqiyya) is completely allowed.
Mehdi hates when this video goes viral. It would be a shame if it did.
@AffordAnything This is true, but most won't do it, so it would probably be best for the average American to spend 3.7 hours one time to automate their savings into a Vanguard target date fund and go back to watching TV.
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is working very hard to put the antisemitism back into socialism. The last time politicians explicitly mixed antisemitism and socialism in Germany in the 1920s, who also blamed an international cabal of Jews who secretly controlled politics in Germany, it didn't end well. The rise of Mamdani, as well as equally antisemitic Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Adam Hamawy, Graham Platner, Abdul El-Sayed, Ro Khanna, Bernie Sanders, and others is very troubling, indeed.
I want to thank the IDF, Mossad and Israel for killing the Hezbollah leaders who have killed so many Americans. Tough, dirty work. America and the world are safer because of your sacrifices.
Data centers didn’t raise electric bills nationally from 2015–24. Surprise! Actually, they modestly lowered them. That's because big fixed grid costs get spread over more kilowatt-hours, and new demand can unlock economies of scale.
@arxiv
@GaryWinslett I don't think virtually everyone agrees the status quo is untenable. The status quo has made us the wealthiest country in the history of the world. I would much rather see us trim around the edges (cut government spending, more consumption taxes, reduce regulations) than go big.
Arguably the most under-appreciated fact in US economic history: FDR’s statist policies lengthened and deepened the Great Depression. https://t.co/7DO0dXVZJy
Aaron Brown’s phenomenal piece of the affordability crisis (I was a glorified repeated editor he kindly added as a co-author, Mike was in-between).
Hint — most of what you read, and certainly what you hear from politicians and activists, is not, you know, right.
One last upper-middle class piece from me, this time for @CivitasOutlook, again with Steve Rose. This one tries to answer 2 critiques we got. One was “OK, neolibs, but now do wealth!”
So we did. This is not the same chart, copied. These are the income and wealth results sideXside
When Israeli Prime Minister 'Iron Lady' Golda Meir met Pope Paul VI on 15 January 1973, he criticized the state of Israel.
In response, PM Golda said:
"Your Holiness, do you know what my earliest memory is? A pogrom in Kiev. When we were merciful and when we had no homeland and when we were weak, we were led to the gas chambers."