A house divided can not stand
--- Abraham Lincoln
There was a time, when the left and the right can come together after the election, and do what is in the interest of the nation. We are all Americans after all. Lately, we are going down a different path.
Actually, the reason that different groups of people come together in a Democracy is that they share at least some common interests. At least, they feel that coming together accomplish more then fighting each other. This requires that among the main voting blocks, there are no irreconcilable differences.
This was easier back in the day when all the voters have to be land owning white males. When women were allowed to vote, while they added a dimension to the voting blocks, they too, have to watch out for the interests of their families. When the blacks were allowed to vote, they were a smaller percentage of the population.
Times have changed since the good old days. Economically, we are losing our middle class and going towards a nation made up of a small elite group of knowledge workers and a larger group of underclass that work at lower end service jobs. The eruption of the "99%" against Wall Street was born out of this demographic change. The factors that drove this trend for the last few decades showed no sign of slowing down.
1. Automation as well as offshoring of manufacturing have taken a large number of what was middle class paying jobs. Automation also made what is left of the service jobs worth less. For example, cashiers used to need to do addition and multiplication on the fly. Now, she just scans all the items through and bag them. As the skill requirements of the jobs gets dropped by automation, so are the wages.
2. Automation also requires a more skilled and disciplined work force at a time when Americans are getting less disciplined and willing to work. We all want to blame the big bad corporations for offshoring the jobs, but a Chinese glass company opened up a factory in Ohio, and showed that the American factory worker is only about half as productive as their Chinese counterparts given the same technology and work conditions. This is on top of the higher wages that the company must pay to hire an American compared to Chinese.
3. At the same time, technological advances and more interconnectedness have allowed the high IQ workers to be much more productive compared to before. Unfortunately, only a small group of us could be high IQ workers. Unlike in Lake Wobegon, not all kids grow up to be above average.
4. Ironically, higher degree of meritocracy through institutions like colleges and assortative mating have significantly reduced upward mobility. America is sorting itself out with an elite upper class based on good genetic endowment and a lower class based on the lack of.
Our relatively high wages and many who are unwilling to even work have opened opportunities to Mexicans willing to work hard. Many industries like construction in California and meat packing as well as agriculture for the entire nation will collapse today without the contribution of the Mexicans.
Adding to this mix is a large permanent Black underclass. Most studies show that their under achievement to be mostly genetics in nature. Largely unproductive and under the care of the government, this group is bitterly angry at the world. The crimes committed by this group is vastly disproportional to their numbers. Not willing to blame the man in the mirror, they have, instead, blame racism and the police. In a world for the rest of us, when we are stopped by the police, if the police wanted to take us in, we don't resist. Among this group, many put up a big fight. When some are killed or injured by the police in the scuffle, it reinforce the idea that the police are bad and out to get them.
The Democrats, for whom Blacks and Latinos are major constituents, have pandered to this anger. The entire Black Lives Matters movement, with the abetting of the Democratic Party, have carried this pandering to new levels of absurdity. A Black person was killed during his arrest by a White cop, maybe with less than honorable intent. There is not a single person in this country that is on the side of the White cop. Instead of chalking this to a bad apple in the force, riots erupted nation wide with vandalism, theft and some people killed by the rioters. What is much more alarming is the call to defund the police. In a city with a significant black underclass, defunding the police is the fastest way for the city to commit suicide.
On the other side is the angry White lower and middle class that have been displaced by automation and offshoring. They feel the competition from the Mexicans and the anger from the Black underclass. Angry that their lives are harder compared to their parents, this group feel that Trump is the only one on their side even though he has done a horrible job with Covid and can point to no achievement during his four years in office. Indeed, Trump got into office by being one of the most divisive candidates and presidents in our time.
Mexicans and Blacks together are already near majority for the newborns. This means in a not too distant future, the Democratic Party that they will help elect will enact policy that will pander to these groups at the expense of the others, further dividing the nation. This demographics and the divisiveness of the two parties ensures that conflicts between most Whites on one side and Blacks and Latinos on the other will be a permanent feature of American Landscape. The Democrats will have control of the government in the not so distant future and will carry this control for a long time. We can expect more unconditioned largess for the poor. As I will talk about in the next post, this is the wrong thing to do. Bigger financial aid to the underclass based on the condition that they have low income will have serious implications for the manufacturing revival that is needed if our country is to be turned around.
The forces that I have outlined above are all structural and very hard to reverse. There are two things that potentially could reverse them, but the chances of these being implemented are very low indeed.
If the nation were to widely accept Human Bio-Diversity, to understand that group differences in achievement are mostly due to the difference in genetics, there would be much less anger and hate. The Black underclass will understand that there is no "the man" causing all their issues, they need to change themselves if they want to do better. Many Whites will at least be sympathetic to groups of people that under-achieve through no fault of their own. They were just dealt a bad hand at birth. Unfortunately, this goes against the victimization industry that is the left and to a less extent, the right of American politics. American politics have become a spoil system. Under this system, victimhood is jealously guarded as a means to extract a larger piece of the pie. The truth will not stand in the way when the interest of the group requires a different narrative.
Universal Basic Income, if done right, will relieve the anxiety for the poor and bring back their initiative to work again. The key is, while we provide Universal Basic Income, we must remove all other financial aids for the poor. People have a way to survive. The government does not care if you are rich or poor. The poor must manage their financial affairs on their own. Work will not be penalized if you are taking Universal Basic Income. Further, we need to prevent the poor from given birth to more kids purely as a means to extract more financial gain through Universal Basic Income. Charles Murray had the idea that Universal Basic Income is only extended to people starting in their early twenties. Indeed, some candidates are talking about this. Jerry Yang was the most energetic proponent of this Idea. Unfortunately, the welfare industry is too strong and powerful, so if this is implemented, the most likely way is that the poor will keep their welfare and the Universal Basic Income goes on top of the other mean tested financial aid. This will move the country further in the wrong direction.
Our nation is divided as never before. Rich against poor, left against right and Black against White.The most likely future is that this will not only continue, but will get significantly worse.
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