“Does a person's perception of their place within the general socioeconomic order directly influence their physical and psychological well-being? Let's pretend that researchers find robust evidence that subjective social status does indeed predict various indicators of well-being, e.g., people who rate themselves lower in the pecking order are less healthy or happy than those with higher self-ratings. What can we learn from such evidence? Nothing much by itself. We'd have to dig deeper.” - Singh-Manoux, Adler, and Marmot (2003)
For comparison, as of 9/30/24, the Dow Jones average net profit margin was 2.46%; the Nasdaq average net profit margin was 16.09%. And according to a January 2024 analysis by NYU Stern School of Business, the average net profit margin for US corporations across 94 industries was 8.54%, based on a sample of 6481 firms.
Americans used to be fairly united on the need to protect the environment through stricter laws and regulations. That consensus took a nosedive in the 1990s and has never recovered…
“False consciousness [is] the notion that people are so misled about reality that they act against their own interests. What was once the preserve of Marxists, flummoxed that workers refused to lose their capitalist chains, is now the fall-back position for the modern [left], which worries that voters cannot accurately comprehend the world in which they live.” - Are voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks? The Economist, November 30, 2024.
Climate change and the environment were simply non-factors in this year’s election - no surprise, given that polls have repeatedly documented declining public concern about the environment. For example, in a recent Gallup poll “environmental quality” ranked 12th among issues that Americans worry about, after inflation, crime and violence, hunger and homelessness, the economy, healthcare affordability and availability, federal spending and the budget deficit, illegal immigration, drug use, the Social Security system, the possibility of terrorist attacks, and the availability and affordability of energy. That’s a lot of competition for scarce resources.
According the numerous economists and publications, the American economy is booming, yet most Americans polled disagree with that assessment and many say they were better off during the Trump years. What gives?
My progressive friends tend to dismiss these poll results, saying it’s mostly “low-information” Trump supporters who on down on the economy and their opinions don’t matter. That’s because Trump supporters are dumb, deluded and willfully ignorant - per my friends, not me!
Which got me wondering: how do Americans arrive at their opinions of the economy?
Harris Supporter (before the election): “[Trump’s] message is straight-up misogyny, transphobia, racism, xenophobia. This is the kind of President he is, and Trump voters must know this. If Trump wins, that means this is who America is also.”
Never-Trumper/Critic of the Left (before the election): “One of the reasons Trump is going to win so easily is the CONSTANT accusations of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and racism from progressives. Translation: ‘Shut up, you're not allowed to talk about things.’ “
Trump Supporter (after the Election): “This is where the war with reality has taken the Democratic Party…And reality always wins, sooner or later. More precisely, in this case, the people's common sense has spoken.”
“Russia has been plotting to place incendiary devices on cargo planes in Europe and even performed a test run this summer, setting off fires at shipping hubs in Britain and Germany,” the New York Times reported [November 5, 2024].
“The United States probably cannot break the link between China and Russia, especially in the near future while the Ukraine war continues. But it can attenuate that link, for example, by leveraging Beijing’s interest in maintaining a positive relationship with Europe and by adopting a balanced strategy toward Beijing itself. U.S. leaders should be cognizant that there is a connection between the degree of hostility Beijing perceives from Washington and its willingness to provide meaningful support to Moscow. It would therefore be dangerous for Washington to make the cooperation between these states a framing strategic concept.” - Cooperation Between China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia: Current and Potential Future Threats to America by Christopher S. Chivvis and Jack Keating/Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. October 8, 2024
“For the past few years, civilian life in northern Norway has been under constant, low-grade attack. Russian hackers have targeted small municipalities and ports with phishing scams, ransomware, and other forms of cyber warfare, and individuals travelling as tourists have been caught photographing sensitive defense and communications infrastructure.” - Ben Taub, Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic/The New Yorker, September 9, 2024
Ten years ago the Kremlin worked with America and Europe to counter Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programme. Such co-operation is now fanciful. “It is as if the Russians no longer feel they have a stake in preserving anything of the post-war international order,” says Mr Radchenko…Mr Putin embraces these ideas. “We are in for probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time most important decade since the end of World War II,” he said in late 2022. “To cite a classic,” he added, invoking an article by Vladimir Lenin in 1913, “this is a revolutionary situation.” - Vladimir Putin’s spies are plotting global chaos: Russia is enacting a revolutionary plan of sabotage, arson and assassination, The Economist, October 13, 2024.
Putin’s Worldview: Themes and Variations …
Anti-liberalism (liberalism = political and civil freedoms)
Orthodox Church: central to national and moral identity
Imperial nostalgia (Tsar Nicholas I – those were the days!)
Family values: “The main purpose of the family is to have children, about procreation, and thus, the perpetuation of our people and our centuries-old history”, per Putin, January 2024 (link)
"Russia does not consider itself to be an enemy of the West, is not isolating itself from the West and has no hostile intentions with regard to it, …[but] in response to unfriendly actions of the West, Russia intends to defend its right to existence and freedom of development using all means available" [emphasis added] - The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, approved by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, dated March 31, 2023
"Moscow’s hostility towards the West is just the tip of the iceberg. In terms of a grand strategy, Moscow, under President Putin’s leadership, desires a return to the power balance of the past wherein the Soviet Union was a superpower and could thus define the rules of the international order on a global level." - Russia’s hybrid war against the West , by Arsalan Bilal.
“…despite ample proof to the contrary*, many polls still show voters think Trump would still have an edge over Harris on handling the economy. We can chalk that up at least in part to short-term memory loss of the Trump administration’s chaos, along with [post-pandemic] inflation…” - Hayes Brown/MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor September 29, 2024 [my italics]
Over 80% of the Democrats and Democrat leaners agreed on 12 of the 24 issue statements. Republicans and Republican leaners did not reach 80% agreement on any statement and strongly disagreed with just one statement (that abortion should be legal in any circumstance). What that tells me is ...
So it doesn’t surprise me that political groups can agree on the same moral basics but still doubt each other’s moral commitments. This doubt may not reflect a misunderstanding or lack of trust but real disagreement on how foundational values and principles should be applied in real life.
Unfortunately, many proposed fixes to the US national debt problem focus on raising income and capital gains taxes on the very affluent and rich. Politically and emotionally satisfying, perhaps, but the revenue proceeds are bound to disappoint. Besides the distortive and unpredictable effects of such taxes, there simply are not enough high-income taxpayers to fill tax coffers to the required level.
My distinction between insider and outsider perspectives comes from 20th century anthropology, which used the terms emic and etic to make the same distinction…What I’ve learned from reading about patriotism in America is that emic and etic descriptions tend to be worlds apart.
Yes, my example is old. But I still encounter that binary mindset just about every day: variations on we’re smart, they’re dumb; we’re good; they’re bad; we see the truth, they’re deluded.