I felt it made sense in this thread because what’s shocking to him – and presumably also to the Times editors – is that this conflicts with the liberal concept of the meritocracy. He doesn’t say exactly who thinks should have comprised the richest Americans, but the tone is surprise that somebody can get rich in a place he never visited, without an ivy degree, just for inheriting a company that controls 100% of InBev distribution for Wisconsin. It’s a baby brained understanding of capitalism that I don’t think you’d find if you went further to the left or right.
Aceris
5565
Or it’s an understanding driven by NYT and LA/SF where most of the people who get into the top 0.1% by “earned” income live, so they have only a partial perspective.
Thrag
5568
I mean, I learned in college what a beverage distribution company was! Though granted, it wasn’t part of the cricciulum.
Seems you might still be affected by your discovery
Matt_W
5570
I will counter my own point though and point out that if you zoom out to the 1% rather than the 0.1%, most reported income (~2/3) is from salaries and not investments. Zoom out to the 10% and it’s more like 90%. It’s only in the very rarified strata of people making $3M+ that you see investments being the primary income source.
I just cannot get with the lefties who are flatly opposed to the very existence of armed forces.
I mean, I wish there weren’t belligerent assholes out there who need to be kept in check with bigger guns and the threat of existential violence too. But as a wise man once said, “You want it to be one way. But it’s the other way.”
Yeah. I, too, want to live in a world where military might is not necessary. We are a long, long way from that world.
Timex
5575
The day when humans stop turning weapons upon each other will be the day after we find aliens to aim our weapons at.
Ozymandias was right long before Thanos was right, amirite?
Matt_W
5577
Sure, OTOH I struggle to articulate any good use our military has been put to in the past 20 years.
Oh don’t get me wrong, Eisenhower was right. But there’s quite a spectrum between “enough firepower to depopulate the Earth 3x over” and “soldiers, force, and violence are always wrong in every circumstance.”
Timex
5579
Suggesting that Catherine Rampell is some kind of corporate shill or right leaning economist is nonsense.
He’s suggesting she’s an employee.
Timex
5582
Out of curiosity, have you ever read anything that Rampell has written, or seen her speak?
I mean, I did read her article. It’s not particularly good.
E.g. 1:
That higher inflation, and the resulting political blowback, ultimately helped kill negotiations over Build Back Better.
BBB was dead as soon as it was de-linked from the Infrastructure Bill; there wasn’t any magic formulation of that was going to get Machinema to follow through on their promises and vote for it. Inflation was one of the fig-leafs that Manchin mentioned, but I’m pretty confident it was not an actual deciding factor.
E.g. 2:
She briefly recognizes that inflation has many causes, but spends much of the article harping on the one part of the stimulus that actually benefited average Americans. She also does not give a single word to exploring the counter-factual where Biden does take her advice, and refuses to send out the $1400 stimulus checks. I can not think of a more effective way for Biden to have destroyed his presidency from the very beginning.
In general, the article seems like a swipe from the centrist wing of the Democratic party against the left wing of the Democractic party, with the article following along the same lines of argument that Bezos laid out. Was their a direct link between the two as Sirota claims, or was it just a billionaire-friendly stand alone complex? Less clear.
