Yeah, that's my guess as to what Avicebron meant as well. Various flavors of extremists use it (like others have used "social darwinism") as a justification or excuse for their accumulation and abuses of power. "We are the 'hard men' this time needs! Shut up and do what we tell you!"
Basically we've been in a "4th Turning" for about two decades, and the 4th turning typically ends in some sort of crisis (hence the name for it, "Crisis"): Great Depression/WWII in the previous one, the US Civil War before that, the "Age of Revolution" before that, etc.
The idea behind it is lessons learned last until the people who lived through the previous one die. So the 4 "turnings" repeat every 80-100 years, and some sort of major crisis is expected around now - hence talk of another Great Depression or WWIII.
I don't see what GP means by "hijacked", GGP is pretty much a direct reference to exactly what it talks about.
It has felt inevitable to me for a few years now. The market != the economy but a major crash can still trigger a credit crunch that will materially affect regular people.
As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.
> As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.
How naive one must be to consider this NPC as the biggest threat to human kind since the dawn of man.
It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.
To both of your points: the beer hall demagogue wouldn't have gotten to Chancellor if the German elites hadn't decided that he really couldn't do that much damage and we may as well let him be chancellor to quiet down his followers. Even after the putch, he got a very light sentence because the judge was sympathetic with his right-wing cause. You're both right to some extent. A huge amount of damage was done by one man, but he got to where he did because the German elites thought that he might be useful to their cause.
Indeed, and that is perhaps the most important lesson of Hitlers rise - dangerous people will always exist, and so it is critical to have systems that are resilient to them, and not allow them to be hollowed out just because the current crop of leaders looks like they can be trusted with more power and less oversight, because who knows what kind of madman will get power next.
The issue with beer hall demagogue is that their rise has been made only while the society at that time was so devastated in every sense (morally, economically, ...) that people saw them as the only hope against the status quo.
That's the moral of the story: if the present is so bad, and the elites refuse to change anything and just go push for their agendas against the will and the interest of common people, common people will support the devil himself if he is the only one promising he'll do something different.
>It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.
I agree that Americans themselves are the root cause. Americans are deeply unwell and I have no sympathy for any of them.
But only one person is the commander in chief of the US military, and the checks and balances that are supposed to keep him in control are not functioning.
> It's not that single person who threatens the world
The question is: is he enabling them, or are they enabling him? I suppose it could be working in both directions. That said: while the "elite" were problematic before his second rise to power, they were also more constrained.
I also have some question as to who the elite are? Certain individuals are more prominent these days, while others have faded in the background. While it may feel good to apply a singular label to the wealthy (or any other group we disagree with), they are not a single ideological entity. It's probably more beneficial to align ourselves with those who agree with us, rather than alienating them based upon a metric that is only tangentially related to their values.
If so, we haven't hit the equivalent of Sept 1 1939 yet. That's when WW2 is generally considered to have started, but residents of Manchuria, Austria and the Sudetenland probably consider it to have started earlier.
Sep 1 1939 is when it escalated from a small number of 2-party wars to a massive multi-party war. It's not the day the war started, it's the day it became a "World War".
> As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.
You're a 26 year old in 1926. You're part of what history would later call the Greatest Generation. You will suffer through both the Great Depression and World War II. Perhaps due to those experiences, you will be the only generation that votes more left as you age.
> Perhaps due to those experiences, you will be the only generation that votes more left as you age.
I doubt it. My dad lived through the Great Depression, and fought desperate battles in WW2 and Korea.
As a young man, he was a socialist. His experience in fighting for American freedoms changed all that. Before he passed, he told me he regretted leaving me in a country that was significantly less free than when he was young.
I don't believe you'll find many communists in the greatest generation, especially among the war veterans.
> Also, the Democrat party has steadily moved leftwards over time.
What an absurd statement. During the Great Depression FDR was considering a worker's bill of rights that would guarantee employment. In the '60s LBJ used the specter of a dead president to push through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (which have been considerably undone). In the '90s, Clinton undid the what remained of the Federal welfare state in this country. In the '10s, Obama was barely able to pass legislation that forced people to buy health insurance. In the '20s, Biden's major achievements were largely spending related. So in what universe has the party steadily moved leftward?
LBJ's "Great Society" programs still exist and are greatly expanded. The scope of federal entitlements have steadily expanded. And there are strident calls for Medicare for all.
Have you not noticed the recent elections of Democrat Socialists, and the Democrat leaders are endorsing them? This was unthinkable just a few years ago.
The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act are not socialism. I am not sure the VRA has been undone - didn't Los Angeles just enact a law to allow non-citizens to vote?
And none of those things are a move leftward, simply a return to FDR's Democratic Party, universal healthcare and equal rights first had a chance of passing. That a handful of democratic nominees (most of the Democratic Socialists you allude to simply won their primaries, they aren't in power yet) are on the ballot for the first time demonstrates that the party itself has, in fact, moved rightward, as they wouldn't otherwise need to be described separate from the party itself. And your equation of left and socialism is deeply flawed. Ensuring equal rights with the CRA and VRA wasn't socialism (which is largely an economic framework, not political), but it was certainly a move to left. So much so the country essentially repolarized around those positions. Oh, and you do realize the difference between federal legislation and local laws about who can vote, right?
Endorsing and electing Democrat Socialists is not a move leftward?
Sanders, AOC, Jayapal, Mandami, Katie Wilson, Bass, etc., are already elected and in power.
> Ensuring equal rights with the CRA and VRA wasn't socialism (which is largely an economic framework, not political), but it was certainly a move to left.
Nobody in the US is voting "left" as there is no such choice. Democrats are right-leaning centrists, owned by capital just like the far right. You keep using the word socialism and communism, but it's clear those have no meaning or knowledge behind them. Just thought-terminating placeholders for some vague thing you were taught to hate. Not surprising, USAmericans are some of most propagandized populations in the world.
> Also, the Democrat party has steadily moved leftwards over time.
the only way someone thinks this is if they have fox news blaring all day every day. the dems keep moving rightward step by step to appeal to "moderates" while the right wing keep moving the overton window even further right.
I was speaking in general terms of the trend that spanned a long time and not to the rapid lefward swing in a few recent elections of a few candidates... the general trend of the party went rightward even if there are outliers. those elections were a reaction to how disastrous the republicans have been these past two years.
The democratic socialist races that have recently concluded do not represent any kind of powerbase in the party. They are in the news cycle now but as soon as they aren't the party will begin the process of co-opting, corrupting, or ultimately crushing these upstart elements. The party is kid gloves when it comes to fighting fascists but when it comes to suppressing internal dissent you see the gloves come off. Every time.
Democrats in 1994 were a very different proposition when compared to today. They had the union vote locked up, and the greatest generation benefited greatly from unions.
Traditionally, the left is associated with small “L” liberalism, and the right is associated with small “C” conservatism.
Generally speaking, it has been a historic debate between whether the “natural” way things are is good and prudent (e.g., monarchs, religion, castes, roles, and norms), or if the way things are should be challenged to try something that seems like it should be better (e.g., liberté, égalité, fraternité).
When one of these ideas is successfully, it is often adopted by the right, when one fails, it is often abandoned by the left. Whether or not socialism is part of the left depends on whether folks on the left think it’s an idea worth trying. In America, right now, the vast majority are still quite hesitant to include it in their platform.
Again, "the left" is not a homogeneous entity. When talking about "the left" we should look at the left's coalition. We don't really have significant party platforms anymore, but I can assure you "rent control" would not get passed by the Democratic Party coalition in the House of Representatives right now, much less the Senate.
Associating a political coalition with their most extreme or noisy members is counterproductive. When looking for what a coalition stands for, it's better to look at the coalition member who are most productive with legislation in places they have control.
Statewide rent control was recently enacted by Oregon and Washington. It's also statewide in California. Not coincidentally, all three have Democrats completely controlling the governorship and legislature.
I'd appreciate it if you found any free market proposals in it (I didn't read the whole thing).
I did notice the advocacy of rent control: "the Administration has
eased rising rents by capping rent hikes in 2 million federally-funded apartments."
and
"It offers corporate landlords a basic choice for the next two years: either cap rent increases at 5 percent, or lose a valuable federal tax break."
and
"the Administration is going after unfair rental “junk fees,” like fees people are charged just to pay rent online or to receive sorted mail. And, we will crack down on corporate landlords who are gouging tenants, for example by capping the amount they can raise the rent each year"
I don’t know about Washington State, but Oregon’s rent control is capped at 7% increases after inflation per year, which isn’t exactly stopping market forces.
Now, I agree with you that rent controls are bad, generally, but a system simply reasonably dampens real price increases, rather than eliminating them altogether is effectively a different kind of law. I don’t support it, but I think it’s reasonable.
That from one of the most progressive states in the nation. It’s not socialism.
Any form of rent control reduces the supply of housing, because of the Law of Supply and Demand. It's not full on socialism, but the government setting prices is socialism.
After looking at the Democrat Party Platform, are you going to agree or disagree that rent control is quite definitely part of it?
When I talk about "rent control" I'm talking about it in the form of "general price controls" that keep the price of things from meeting supply on the demand curve. The controls in the party platform have everything to do with already subsidized housing that isn't actually on the demand curve anyway. The distinction is subtle but matters.
Similarly, a price-shock dampener that allows the underlying good to return to market rates in a reasonable amount of time is not messing with the demand curve, it's just a generalized safety measure, no different than a circuit breaker on a trading floor.
Again, rent controls and restrictive zoning laws both fall on the small-c conservative side of the spectrum, because both see stasis as a kind of natural order. The populists on the left are generally more aligned with small-c conservatives on the political spectrum, but again, the single-pole, right-left spectrum doesn't capture that distinction.
There is a pervasive kind of dork that continuously panics about reasonable policies until they are enacted and everything works out great and they find a new crisis to panic about.
I heard all the same stuff when my state legalized weed. There was going to be gang wars in the streets cartels would run the state there would be chaos.
It's confusing because different people mean different things when using political terms. The political compass (https://www.politicalcompass.org) has two axes: left-right and libertarian-authoritarian. On it, socialists are definitely left wing (and communists far left), regardless of what the left/right wing meant at the time of the French Revolution.
Suffices to say, if we look at politics through a two party, first past the post framework, I still think small letter conservatism vs liberalism is the best frame, simply because it is vague enough to be used generally.
You are off by a generation. The Greatest Generation was born in the 1920s. This was the generation that produced the Boomers.
I knew my great grandparents. Most were born in the last part of the 1800s and lived through the First World War as young adults. They always seemed significantly less scarred by the Great Depression than their children (the Greatest Generation).
> Perhaps due to those experiences, you will be the only generation that votes more left as you age.
They grew up in an era when various flavors of communism were serious considerations and they saw state power "save the world". Of course they couldn't get enough of it after that.
yeah but America 1926 didn't have a billion dollars a day being extracted from the economy by a totally useless war (that is going to start again in 60 days)
or a President extracting billions from his own government for a plane, golf, inexplicable illegal destruction and renovations to national sites
the government was also not purposely imploding academia, science and medicine
there are also now over a THOUSAND billionaires "silo-ing" their wealth, barely paying any taxes and trying to eliminate the cost of employing anybody
we cannot recover this decade, maybe not even next century, and that assumes this horror show doesn't have a "part 2"
You might be surprised to hear that wealth concentration was worse a hundred years ago than it is now. It's very easy to assume otherwise when the numbers are so much larger now across the board.
The definition of homeless was quite different at that time --- note that there was an entire class of people defined as hobos/migrant workers who began the year helping out with cutting lumber and harvesting maple sugar in the winter, then working south to help with the planting of truck crops (lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas...) in the spring, pruning fruit trees and harvesting early crops in the summer, then in the fall helping with the harvests and picking cotton and so forth, then helping to plant cover crops and so forth and moving north to repeat the process.
Louis L'Amour writes on this a bit in his wonderful book:
That's an interesting point - we may be keeping people alive better now. And the rate of people experiencing homelessness is 5-10x lower now than it was during the Great Depression.
I did a quick check, and the HUD point-in-time counts show the rate of homelessness was dropping slowly from 21.5 per 10000 in 2007 (the first year of a national standard), to around 17.5 per 10000 in 2020, then rose in 2023-2024 up to 22.9, and in 2025 was back down to 21.9. During the Great Depression this rose up to 100-200 per 10,000.
Keep in mind that "more homeless than ever" (and I would prefer "more people experiencing homelessness than ever") may be technically true, but per capita we've seen a post-covid bump that's likely already back to 2007 levels. Without understanding the trends I wouldn't predict what happens next.
I've done some research to try to help you understand more - can I ask you to think about your frame and beliefs and consider changing them?
Great article. Just reminds me of how much societies resemble a pendulum; swinging from one extreme to the other. And of course you have the problem that some people want to freeze it mid-swing, or worse tear the damn thing down completely.
I discovered the pendulum of social movements after reading Bertrand Russell's "The Ancestry of Fascism" at a relative young age (~16 years old), it only really made sense after my 30s though.
It required me watching, experiencing how things I had considered settled and humanity was over them started to turn back: the rise of fascistic tendencies in different societies, anti-intellectualism, etc. things that as a teenager/young adult I never considered could become societal issues again.
I’m really not sure, if you look at things before the 20th century it’s difficult to see a pendulum swing pattern. That works relatively well between the 20th and 21st centuries, but I don’t think we can see it as a general rule. It’s also pretty dependent on the region you look at, and movements you decide to take in consideration or filter out. There is just so much room for biases, it’s easy finding a pattern because that’s what our brains are good at doing, but it doesn’t mean it is predictive of anything
> Just reminds me of how much societies resemble a pendulum; swinging from one extreme to the other. And of course you have the problem that some people want to freeze it mid-swing, or worse tear the damn thing down completely.
Or keep pushing it to further and further extremes with each swing until it inevitably breaks under the strain. :(
Geography isn't just climate. The US has exceptional soil for agriculture at incredible scales, one of the richest mineral belts in the world, and pervasive waterways outside of the Great Basin. Add to that just about every biome that exists within its borders.
Many people find Europe to be gloomy -- too little sun and too much rain. The US is only "harsh" if that is your platonic ideal for weather. The Pacific Northwest is a sunnier version of this climate. Most of the US is well within the range people can naturally adapt to and be comfortable in. The US is also an incredibly sunny place by comparison, even the parts not known for heat. The US does have unusually extreme weather but those events don't define the day-to-day and the built environment is adapted to it.
There are only a few parts of the US with irredeemable weather in my opinion. The low deserts of the southwest (e.g. Mojave) are literally among the hottest places on Earth. The northern Plains reach Arctic temperatures during winter. This is why almost no one lives in these places. The South famously has tropical heat/humidity during the summer, which Americans complain about, but that is like tropics everywhere and is quite pleasant during the winter.
That said, the best weather in the US (and arguably the world) is widely considered to be in San Diego. Perfect sunny days at an almost ideal temperature with no humidity for virtually the entire year.
I love that I got downvoted above for literally suggesting they ask someone who was recently in America for their opinion as to what America has to offer.
Freedom to say (almost) anything, publicly, including criticism of the elite and powerful.
Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
Yeah, you can quote me all the caveats. They're there; I don't deny them. But: Freedom to say, freedom to do, and freedom to go. Those are really big deals.
Europe isn’t a single country. We have multiple countries where you can create a company in no time, with little capital. And have freedom of movement within the whole EU
I moved to Spain from The Netherlands as a Dutch citizen. It was a lot of paperwork, lots of planning, needed close to €10k in my bank account and needed to get private healthcare with a pretty serious health check. I had to do multiple trips to the national police office and municipalities.
That is not needed when you switch states in the US. You just need to update your address and tax records. You do not needed to show financial means and you do not need private healthcare.
> Freedom to say (almost) anything, publicly, including criticism of the elite and powerful.
Most European nations strongly protect free speech, allowing open public critique and satire of politicians, the wealthy, and the powerful.
> Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Several European countries actually lead global easy business rankings, some offering fully digital, single-day company registration, very little bureaucracy (not mine, sadly)
> Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
The schengen zone grants passport-free travel across 29 nations, spanning thousands of miles without a single border checkpoint.
> The schengen zone grants passport-free travel across 29 nations, spanning thousands of miles without a single border checkpoint.
Not anymore. I got stopped between The Netherlands and Germany, between France and Spain, Denmark and Sweden. Germany has border checkpoints with most of its bordering countries.
That is unheard of in the USA. You can travel thousands of kilometers without getting stopped by authorities for checking your passport or identity card.
The numbers aren’t very clear but from what I can read online I see that the border checks in Germany resulted in a couple thousand deportations. Hundred of thousands of people checked.
Not comparing that to ICE as deportations in the EU are typically peaceful.
If you can be compelled to produce your papers or get arrested by ICE then everyone will have to have their papers on them. ICE and leaders in this admin are also stating that they are aiming for millions of deportations.
> Not anymore. I got stopped between The Netherlands and Germany, between France and Spain, Denmark and Sweden. Germany has border checkpoints with most of its bordering countries.
Lots of good farmland, and it has lots of mineral resources that we often ignore rather than cut margins to mine safely.
The US's problems are entirely political. Geologically and climate wise it is a really great place. And it already has an educated populous and a significant amount of industrial hardware.
Some of every industrial resource, seemingly for every new technology to need one. As a country it’s been like playing civ and every tech upgrade you lucked out in a resource node popping up on your territory.
I an a completely unabashed leftist who has been "radicalized" (if you call free school lunches "radical", which apparently it is in modern America) by seeing the rapidly accelerating wealth and income inequality since 2008. I mean it really kciked off in the 1970s but the effects post-2008 became impossible to ignore.
In the spirit of all models are wroong but some models are useful and that generational politics is overly reductive (which it is), I still see the Millenials as the new Lost Generation. The original Lost Generation were born 1883 to 1900. They came of age in the devastation of WW1 and the Spanish flu. What happened after 2008 was that all the entry-level jobs disappeared. Millenials had taken and continued to take on massive student debt and otherwise "do the right thing" yet found there were limited opportunities at the end of that pipeline. Baby boomers still had a stranglehold on academic and they both refused to quit or die (something which is still true). This is where the trope of the college educated millenial barista came from.
Obama's presidency was a massive lost opportunity to correct some of this. It directly led to Trump being elected (over Hilary "more of the same" Clinton). Trump, for all his many, many faults, talked to the rising anger in young people at the lack of opportunity, the possibility that they'd never own a house or have a good-paying job or they'd have a family. The disillusionment and anger has only grown.
So, as a leftist, the irony is that I get shit on constantly for essentially trying to preserve the current system by those people who like the current system but are contributing towards us bouldering towards war and revolution. Because those are the ultimate form of wealth redistribution [1] and become increasingly inevitable as material conditions worsen.
Even more ironic, many of those same people fetishize the 1950s where the top marginal tax rate was 91%, the CEO-to-median-wage ratio was a fraction of what it is now and the corporate tax rate was 40-50%. But then came along the likes of McKinsey who justified greed witht he patina of executives being "underpaid" [2] and then the social destruction of Nixon, Reagan and Clinton.
It took FDR in the 1930s to repair the damage of 1920s pro-business slavishness of Coolidge and Mellon. And let's not forget there was an attempted coup in 1933 [3]. But you see the same messages (as the author notes) in the 1920s of lower taxes, destroying unions and being pro-big business. Sound familiar?
> talked to the rising anger in young people at the lack of opportunity, the possibility that they'd never own a house or have a good-paying job or they'd have a family. The disillusionment and anger has only grown.
This should be the absolutely only thing that Democrats talk about. Every single day, with a big graph and call in number, so people can call in to say if this was fixed for them or not. And if it's not fixed, they should outline steps on how it gets fixed that day. It's insane they aren't using this opportunity.
The insane thing is that nobody listens when they do talk about it.
A huge thing in the Harris campaign was that her policies polled much better than Trump's (including housing accessibility by increasing construction, regulations for a fairer rental market, downpayment support for firstime buyers). Nobody knew the policies were hers, though, just like awareness of the accomplishments of the Biden admin seem to be shockingly rare.
You can put part of that on the Democratic party, which could clearly up their media game.
But especially in the algorithm age, a lot of what you see is based off your preferences. This makes people who think their main leverage is their resentments really easy pickings. Someone posts content about how the housing market is unfair and politicians aren't doing enough and everyone who agrees teaches their algorithm that's what they find engaging and important -- not that housing policy and who is doing what is important.
Personally, I think GenX are the lost. (I'm a late GenX) Our colleages took the brunt of the global war on terror, and because we entered the workforce at the peak boomer pivot away from the pre-Internet era of business those of us that were in the corporate/government workforce were basically stuck waiting for people to die to move up. We're the people who got computers and internet in a way that neither our elders or children understand.
The millennials are the recipients of the great dumbing down. They get the inherit the wealth of their parents and grandparents, just in time for it to be inflated away to nothing.
I don’t know any millennials who are inheriting anything. Everyone’s boomer parents who inherited family wealth are either losing it to healthcare costs extracting everything at their end of life or (literally in at least one friends case) saying “you can’t take it with you” and burning the family wealth on luxuries while their kids struggle.
Maybe there’s a handful of ultra wealthy families tending the family wealth well but most of the middle class boomers don’t even have a concept of leaving something for future generations.
Fellow GenXer here and no, the millenials have it way worse. We paid a pittance for college and had to buy literally any house in the 1990s and we're fine. Now if you didn't buy a house in the 1990s, yes, you're screwed.
We have our own problems, namely that we were raised by boomers who went from Flower Power in the 1960s to voting for Reagan in the 1980s. We were the last free range generation but that wasn't freedom. It was neglect. Many of us also grew up with things like ADHD and Type 1 Autism long before anyone knew what those things were so that, too, was fun for us.
Baby boomers as a whole seem terrified of dying. So they don't retire but also they don't leave anything for their children. Tehy can't take it with them but by God they're going to spend it before they go. Or it'll just get eaten up on end-of-life care.
I can barely contain my rage at the baby boomer generation who took the fruits of prosperity from FDR in the post-war era and pissed it all away voting for Reagan while bringing people into the world then making sure to pass absolutely nothing onto them in a world they can scarcely afford.
Given all that I still say millenials got shafted way worse.
> They get the inherit the wealth of their parents and grandparents, just in time for it to be inflated away to nothing.
There are far worse factors than inflation moving that to nothing. The healthcare administrative (privatized) state will make sure that nothing is left.
I'm shocked how much the average American knows about how things work. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. I'm not surprised how quickly Americans are giving up their liberty.
How much and how little are logically equivalent, although in vernacular usage it is of course common to use how little when implying the amount is less than one might expect, and how much to imply the amount is more than one might expect.
obviously you can use much to mean little with a how in front but generally with a little snarky aside like ", which is not much at all," after the "how much", but yes, in typical usage they are not interpreted the same, although I'd say the difference really only becomes important in comparative usage as in "how little for how much" and similar examples.
"Surprised by how much" pretty directly means the amount is higher than expected. It has the opposite meaning the person intended. The neutral phrasing would be more like "surprised by the amount".
OK this is of course not about you but I am starting to get somewhat annoyed by the subject, you are correct it would be sarcastic, with the sarcasm I have demonstrated two ways in which "how much" can be used to mean the opposite.
in the first one would say: I am surprised by how much you know, which is very little indeed.
the second is the sarcastic one I made that you noted above.
Of course sarcasm is generally conveyed by tone. One can make the sarcasm completely deadpan. Now someone has to evaluate the text to determine if "How much you know" actually means "you know very little", my friends would know I meant that the person did not know much when I said how much, someone else might mistake my meaning, but really, probably not. Because in the context who actually would respond in that way?
But let's go back to the original statement I made that how much and how little are technically equivalent and everybody being so peeved at it. Because there are some other ways that we can use the phrases that show their equivalence.
"hey you have to pay for that"
"how much or rather how little?" there is of course a nuance, by saying how much I am asking what amount I have to pay, and when I follow with how little I am asking the amount I have to pay but asserting I expect that it should be a minimal amount.
"hey you have to pay for that"
"how little?"
I am asking the amount but communicating I consider whatever amount it could possibly be to be so minimal it's almost not worth discussing. Obviously here we have another place where the common "how much" would almost always be used, as "how little" would be somewhat annoying and maybe announce that one is a bit of a show-off.
Someone earlier made the comment about that English is very context-dependent, indeed it is, the original "how much" usage was so obviously being used in a way that it meant what would commonly be said "how little" that someone actually asked "do you mean 'how little'". Because of the various ways that much can refer to a small or indeterminate amount - for example
"you have to pay for that"
"how much"
"one penny"
"how much is one penny"
"one penny is very little"
"how little"
"it is the smallest coin in our currency"
it should be clear that the phrases "how much" and "how little" while having common usages and meanings these are still very much determined by their context, and in the response to the original phrasing I think, given all the ways they can be used, that it would have been more reasonable to ask not if he meant "how little" but assume that "how much" was being used to describe something small, which is one of the ways it can be used, as demonstrated (albeit not exhaustively) in various scenarios here.
All of which comes back to the example I also made earlier that as comparative statements how much and how little are only really tightly locked when used together, as in "How little do I get for how much!?"
on edit: obviously smallest coin in this context means coin holding the smallest monetary value.
English is a very context dependent language, so the phrases "surprised by how much" and "surprised by how little" actually have opposite denotations. Mechanically, sure, they're interchangeable, but using the "incorrect" form carries extra connotations. You've used the counterintuitive form, demanding the reader more carefully consider your meaning, which heavily implies you're making a point beyond what appears in the text.
If the second half of that reader engagement doesn't pay off, the sentence reads as clunky or incorrect, likely a mistake from a second language speaker.
Natural languages are not code and words can't be swapped arbitrarily. Word choice and construction carries meaning in and of itself, totally divorced from the actual words used.
46% dont even know what America 250 is... Worse 61% of <30 year olds dont' know. Dont like them but here is poll source (while not crazy maga i dont fully trust it's not push-poll or biased question structures wo reading full xtabs): https://www.cato.org/blog/gen-z-fails-basic-civics-quiz-amer...
a gross percent can't name the 3 branches or their Reps.
America250 is the official organization/celebration [2] established [3] to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence [4] in 1776:
> America250’s mission is to celebrate and commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking America’s Semiquincentennial.
> The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission was established by Congress in 2016 to plan and orchestrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...
In the same vein, his It Can't Happen Here is also well worth reading, as is Jack London's The Iron Heel. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Is this some sort of a paid advertising piece, to make you feel better about inflation, lack of affordable medical care, lack of affordable housing, lack of jobs for recent graduates, etc...?
"Life is much better in 2026. We live healthier, richer, and longer lives, with better medicine and more self-determination." - I can't speak for 1926, but compared to 1980s or 1960s, this is so patently not true. The US population is much sicker and more obese, as one example. People are not starving, but at the cost of eating "manufactured" foods that will make them sick in 20 - 40 yrs. And so on. I don't see a lot of happy faces on the streets of America.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that today U.S. citizens in the bottom economic decile live longer lives and do so with more comfort and convenience than even the wealthiest and most powerful people of 100 years ago. Not even the infamous robber barons, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, with all their staggering wealth, had access to anything approaching modern health care (and dentistry!); air-conditioned comfort; television, instant communication across the planet via text, voice, and video; computers, let alone supercomputers in their pockets giving them the internet, Google, GPS, and approximately free and instant access to the world’s information.
Yes, there is still much work to be done to improve the United States, but I’d rather be poor in the United States today than wealthy in the United States 100 years ago. I suspect that most educated people would choose likewise.
> I can't speak for 1926, but compared to 1980s or 1960s, this is so patently not true. The US population is much sicker and more obese, as one example.
If you're a woman, would you rather live in the 1960s or 2020s? If you're gay, would you rather live in the 1960/80s or in the 2020s?
Average US life expectancy was in about 70 in the 1960s, and mid-70s in the 1980s, and approaching 80 until COVID hit. Cancer survivorships has improved (not only because better screen and treatment, but also because of less cigarette smoking). The infant mortality rate now is a fifth of what it was in the 1960s.
Of course for all these numbers non-US developed countries are much better.
> People are not starving, but at the cost of eating "manufactured" foods that will make them sick in 20 - 40 yrs.
Groceries have gone from being 14% of household spending in the 1960s to being less 6% (takeout from 4% to 6%). In 1900 food was 40%:
> Is this some sort of a paid advertising piece, to make you feel better about inflation, lack of affordable medical care, lack of affordable housing, lack of jobs for recent graduates, etc...?
I don't see how anything in the article would influence anyone to feel better about those things.
yeah, that is honestly a good win, going from awful side effects of prohibition to intelligent legalization. Even cannabis has been largely legalized, although there is the opiate epidemic to worry about now.
Still, overall, I feel like drug policy now beats 100 years ago :)
Nit: movies with sound were around as early as the 1800s; 1927 is just considered the turning point when they became commercially viable and widely available (with the release of The Jazz Singer).
Something that really helped me understand how similar and yet bizarrely alien the 1920s are to modern eyes was watching the films of Buster Keaton. They're still pretty entertaining and relatable and all available for free on YouTube. They really drive hone the notion of "the more things change the more they stay the same".
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 83.7 ms ] threadThe relevant sections for these comments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
Basically we've been in a "4th Turning" for about two decades, and the 4th turning typically ends in some sort of crisis (hence the name for it, "Crisis"): Great Depression/WWII in the previous one, the US Civil War before that, the "Age of Revolution" before that, etc.
The idea behind it is lessons learned last until the people who lived through the previous one die. So the 4 "turnings" repeat every 80-100 years, and some sort of major crisis is expected around now - hence talk of another Great Depression or WWIII.
I don't see what GP means by "hijacked", GGP is pretty much a direct reference to exactly what it talks about.
Aside, this meme is based on this theory: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hard-times-create-strong-men - "hard times" represents the 4th Turning, though it's oversimplified, which makes it not really a great match.
As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.
How naive one must be to consider this NPC as the biggest threat to human kind since the dawn of man.
It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.
That's the moral of the story: if the present is so bad, and the elites refuse to change anything and just go push for their agendas against the will and the interest of common people, common people will support the devil himself if he is the only one promising he'll do something different.
I agree that Americans themselves are the root cause. Americans are deeply unwell and I have no sympathy for any of them.
But only one person is the commander in chief of the US military, and the checks and balances that are supposed to keep him in control are not functioning.
I would not say have pity for everyone, but at least have pity for those incompatible with our cruel society who are nevertheless stuck within it.
We are not all monsters. It's as simple as that.
The question is: is he enabling them, or are they enabling him? I suppose it could be working in both directions. That said: while the "elite" were problematic before his second rise to power, they were also more constrained.
I also have some question as to who the elite are? Certain individuals are more prominent these days, while others have faded in the background. While it may feel good to apply a singular label to the wealthy (or any other group we disagree with), they are not a single ideological entity. It's probably more beneficial to align ourselves with those who agree with us, rather than alienating them based upon a metric that is only tangentially related to their values.
Wait, which one are you talking about?
Putin? Trump? Nethanyayu? Kim Jong-un?
You have the Changing World Order, How to Navigate Debt Crises.
I doubt it. My dad lived through the Great Depression, and fought desperate battles in WW2 and Korea.
As a young man, he was a socialist. His experience in fighting for American freedoms changed all that. Before he passed, he told me he regretted leaving me in a country that was significantly less free than when he was young.
I don't believe you'll find many communists in the greatest generation, especially among the war veterans.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/30/a-different-...
What an absurd statement. During the Great Depression FDR was considering a worker's bill of rights that would guarantee employment. In the '60s LBJ used the specter of a dead president to push through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (which have been considerably undone). In the '90s, Clinton undid the what remained of the Federal welfare state in this country. In the '10s, Obama was barely able to pass legislation that forced people to buy health insurance. In the '20s, Biden's major achievements were largely spending related. So in what universe has the party steadily moved leftward?
Have you not noticed the recent elections of Democrat Socialists, and the Democrat leaders are endorsing them? This was unthinkable just a few years ago.
The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act are not socialism. I am not sure the VRA has been undone - didn't Los Angeles just enact a law to allow non-citizens to vote?
Endorsing and electing Democrat Socialists is not a move leftward?
Sanders, AOC, Jayapal, Mandami, Katie Wilson, Bass, etc., are already elected and in power.
> Ensuring equal rights with the CRA and VRA wasn't socialism (which is largely an economic framework, not political), but it was certainly a move to left.
No, it was not a move left.
the only way someone thinks this is if they have fox news blaring all day every day. the dems keep moving rightward step by step to appeal to "moderates" while the right wing keep moving the overton window even further right.
Traditionally, the left is associated with small “L” liberalism, and the right is associated with small “C” conservatism.
Generally speaking, it has been a historic debate between whether the “natural” way things are is good and prudent (e.g., monarchs, religion, castes, roles, and norms), or if the way things are should be challenged to try something that seems like it should be better (e.g., liberté, égalité, fraternité).
When one of these ideas is successfully, it is often adopted by the right, when one fails, it is often abandoned by the left. Whether or not socialism is part of the left depends on whether folks on the left think it’s an idea worth trying. In America, right now, the vast majority are still quite hesitant to include it in their platform.
In American english it does.
> when one fails, it is often abandoned by the left
Rent control has never worked out (it results in a housing shortage), but proposals for more rent control constantly flow from the left.
Associating a political coalition with their most extreme or noisy members is counterproductive. When looking for what a coalition stands for, it's better to look at the coalition member who are most productive with legislation in places they have control.
Statewide rent control was recently enacted by Oregon and Washington. It's also statewide in California. Not coincidentally, all three have Democrats completely controlling the governorship and legislature.
Here's the DNC official platform:
https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2024-Democr...
I'd appreciate it if you found any free market proposals in it (I didn't read the whole thing).
I did notice the advocacy of rent control: "the Administration has eased rising rents by capping rent hikes in 2 million federally-funded apartments."
and
"It offers corporate landlords a basic choice for the next two years: either cap rent increases at 5 percent, or lose a valuable federal tax break."
and
"the Administration is going after unfair rental “junk fees,” like fees people are charged just to pay rent online or to receive sorted mail. And, we will crack down on corporate landlords who are gouging tenants, for example by capping the amount they can raise the rent each year"
Now, I agree with you that rent controls are bad, generally, but a system simply reasonably dampens real price increases, rather than eliminating them altogether is effectively a different kind of law. I don’t support it, but I think it’s reasonable.
That from one of the most progressive states in the nation. It’s not socialism.
After looking at the Democrat Party Platform, are you going to agree or disagree that rent control is quite definitely part of it?
When I talk about "rent control" I'm talking about it in the form of "general price controls" that keep the price of things from meeting supply on the demand curve. The controls in the party platform have everything to do with already subsidized housing that isn't actually on the demand curve anyway. The distinction is subtle but matters.
Similarly, a price-shock dampener that allows the underlying good to return to market rates in a reasonable amount of time is not messing with the demand curve, it's just a generalized safety measure, no different than a circuit breaker on a trading floor.
Again, rent controls and restrictive zoning laws both fall on the small-c conservative side of the spectrum, because both see stasis as a kind of natural order. The populists on the left are generally more aligned with small-c conservatives on the political spectrum, but again, the single-pole, right-left spectrum doesn't capture that distinction.
I heard all the same stuff when my state legalized weed. There was going to be gang wars in the streets cartels would run the state there would be chaos.
Then they legalized it and everything was fine.
Complete turbodork material.
Yes, the reality of politics is that they are highly multipolar. The political compass is useful, but maintaining only two axes is wildly simplistic.
Moral Foundations Theory suggests there are five axes for political views. I think this theory is one of the best for explanatory power, but is still limited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory
Suffices to say, if we look at politics through a two party, first past the post framework, I still think small letter conservatism vs liberalism is the best frame, simply because it is vague enough to be used generally.
I knew my great grandparents. Most were born in the last part of the 1800s and lived through the First World War as young adults. They always seemed significantly less scarred by the Great Depression than their children (the Greatest Generation).
Greatest Generation: adults during WW2
Silent Generation: children during WW2
People born in the 20's would be split between Greatest & Silent.
They grew up in an era when various flavors of communism were serious considerations and they saw state power "save the world". Of course they couldn't get enough of it after that.
or a President extracting billions from his own government for a plane, golf, inexplicable illegal destruction and renovations to national sites
the government was also not purposely imploding academia, science and medicine
there are also now over a THOUSAND billionaires "silo-ing" their wealth, barely paying any taxes and trying to eliminate the cost of employing anybody
we cannot recover this decade, maybe not even next century, and that assumes this horror show doesn't have a "part 2"
https://americanbusinesshistory.org/superwealth-a-historical...
except we have more homeless than ever so they don't even have that
with taxes slashed for billionaires and safety-nets for food and healthcare being destroyed, we are actually headed back to 1926 on purpose
Louis L'Amour writes on this a bit in his wonderful book:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/828165.Education_of_a...
Keep in mind that "more homeless than ever" (and I would prefer "more people experiencing homelessness than ever") may be technically true, but per capita we've seen a post-covid bump that's likely already back to 2007 levels. Without understanding the trends I wouldn't predict what happens next.
I've done some research to try to help you understand more - can I ask you to think about your frame and beliefs and consider changing them?
It required me watching, experiencing how things I had considered settled and humanity was over them started to turn back: the rise of fascistic tendencies in different societies, anti-intellectualism, etc. things that as a teenager/young adult I never considered could become societal issues again.
Pre-industrialization, civs tended to come and then go(dispersing with other groups), as power structures came and went.
Or keep pushing it to further and further extremes with each swing until it inevitably breaks under the strain. :(
The money is largely a side effect of these two things.
Coastal California is probably one of the nicest places on earth but generally US is quite harsh.
Many people find Europe to be gloomy -- too little sun and too much rain. The US is only "harsh" if that is your platonic ideal for weather. The Pacific Northwest is a sunnier version of this climate. Most of the US is well within the range people can naturally adapt to and be comfortable in. The US is also an incredibly sunny place by comparison, even the parts not known for heat. The US does have unusually extreme weather but those events don't define the day-to-day and the built environment is adapted to it.
There are only a few parts of the US with irredeemable weather in my opinion. The low deserts of the southwest (e.g. Mojave) are literally among the hottest places on Earth. The northern Plains reach Arctic temperatures during winter. This is why almost no one lives in these places. The South famously has tropical heat/humidity during the summer, which Americans complain about, but that is like tropics everywhere and is quite pleasant during the winter.
That said, the best weather in the US (and arguably the world) is widely considered to be in San Diego. Perfect sunny days at an almost ideal temperature with no humidity for virtually the entire year.
Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
Yeah, you can quote me all the caveats. They're there; I don't deny them. But: Freedom to say, freedom to do, and freedom to go. Those are really big deals.
To a certain degree. In the US you can drive to another state thousands of kilometers away and decide to just live there for the rest of your life.
That is not needed when you switch states in the US. You just need to update your address and tax records. You do not needed to show financial means and you do not need private healthcare.
Most European nations strongly protect free speech, allowing open public critique and satire of politicians, the wealthy, and the powerful.
> Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Several European countries actually lead global easy business rankings, some offering fully digital, single-day company registration, very little bureaucracy (not mine, sadly)
> Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
The schengen zone grants passport-free travel across 29 nations, spanning thousands of miles without a single border checkpoint.
Not anymore. I got stopped between The Netherlands and Germany, between France and Spain, Denmark and Sweden. Germany has border checkpoints with most of its bordering countries.
That is unheard of in the USA. You can travel thousands of kilometers without getting stopped by authorities for checking your passport or identity card.
Free speech is also on the outs since we’re having people getting jailed for not carrying the flame appropriately with regards to the late Mr Kirk.
Oh, and people getting prosecuted for 8647 as the powers at be decided to interpret that as a death threat instead of call to impeach.
Not comparing that to ICE as deportations in the EU are typically peaceful.
Schengen allows to have temporary border controls, you can see the, here: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen/schengen...
I also was really surprised to get controlled between Germany and Denmark. But it’s not the same as the old border checkpoints
The US's problems are entirely political. Geologically and climate wise it is a really great place. And it already has an educated populous and a significant amount of industrial hardware.
In the spirit of all models are wroong but some models are useful and that generational politics is overly reductive (which it is), I still see the Millenials as the new Lost Generation. The original Lost Generation were born 1883 to 1900. They came of age in the devastation of WW1 and the Spanish flu. What happened after 2008 was that all the entry-level jobs disappeared. Millenials had taken and continued to take on massive student debt and otherwise "do the right thing" yet found there were limited opportunities at the end of that pipeline. Baby boomers still had a stranglehold on academic and they both refused to quit or die (something which is still true). This is where the trope of the college educated millenial barista came from.
Obama's presidency was a massive lost opportunity to correct some of this. It directly led to Trump being elected (over Hilary "more of the same" Clinton). Trump, for all his many, many faults, talked to the rising anger in young people at the lack of opportunity, the possibility that they'd never own a house or have a good-paying job or they'd have a family. The disillusionment and anger has only grown.
So, as a leftist, the irony is that I get shit on constantly for essentially trying to preserve the current system by those people who like the current system but are contributing towards us bouldering towards war and revolution. Because those are the ultimate form of wealth redistribution [1] and become increasingly inevitable as material conditions worsen.
Even more ironic, many of those same people fetishize the 1950s where the top marginal tax rate was 91%, the CEO-to-median-wage ratio was a fraction of what it is now and the corporate tax rate was 40-50%. But then came along the likes of McKinsey who justified greed witht he patina of executives being "underpaid" [2] and then the social destruction of Nixon, Reagan and Clinton.
It took FDR in the 1930s to repair the damage of 1920s pro-business slavishness of Coolidge and Mellon. And let's not forget there was an attempted coup in 1933 [3]. But you see the same messages (as the author notes) in the 1920s of lower taxes, destroying unions and being pro-big business. Sound familiar?
[1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2017/01/stanford-historian...
[2]: https://observer.com/2013/08/the-godfather-of-ceo-megapay-mc...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
This should be the absolutely only thing that Democrats talk about. Every single day, with a big graph and call in number, so people can call in to say if this was fixed for them or not. And if it's not fixed, they should outline steps on how it gets fixed that day. It's insane they aren't using this opportunity.
Instead they're taking the opportunity to be insane. But the faithful are not allowed to admit that.
Democrats are half of the uniparty of capital interests. They only exist to prop up the illusion of a functioning democracy.
"Look guys, the election was so close! Democracy is still alive! We just need to vote harder [for the lesser of two evils] next time!"
A huge thing in the Harris campaign was that her policies polled much better than Trump's (including housing accessibility by increasing construction, regulations for a fairer rental market, downpayment support for firstime buyers). Nobody knew the policies were hers, though, just like awareness of the accomplishments of the Biden admin seem to be shockingly rare.
You can put part of that on the Democratic party, which could clearly up their media game.
But especially in the algorithm age, a lot of what you see is based off your preferences. This makes people who think their main leverage is their resentments really easy pickings. Someone posts content about how the housing market is unfair and politicians aren't doing enough and everyone who agrees teaches their algorithm that's what they find engaging and important -- not that housing policy and who is doing what is important.
So who hears about this?
https://newdemocratcoalition.house.gov/media-center/press-re...
The people who tell their algorithms that's what they want or are more deliberate about their communication channels and what they go looking for.
The millennials are the recipients of the great dumbing down. They get the inherit the wealth of their parents and grandparents, just in time for it to be inflated away to nothing.
Maybe there’s a handful of ultra wealthy families tending the family wealth well but most of the middle class boomers don’t even have a concept of leaving something for future generations.
We have our own problems, namely that we were raised by boomers who went from Flower Power in the 1960s to voting for Reagan in the 1980s. We were the last free range generation but that wasn't freedom. It was neglect. Many of us also grew up with things like ADHD and Type 1 Autism long before anyone knew what those things were so that, too, was fun for us.
Baby boomers as a whole seem terrified of dying. So they don't retire but also they don't leave anything for their children. Tehy can't take it with them but by God they're going to spend it before they go. Or it'll just get eaten up on end-of-life care.
I can barely contain my rage at the baby boomer generation who took the fruits of prosperity from FDR in the post-war era and pissed it all away voting for Reagan while bringing people into the world then making sure to pass absolutely nothing onto them in a world they can scarcely afford.
Given all that I still say millenials got shafted way worse.
There are far worse factors than inflation moving that to nothing. The healthcare administrative (privatized) state will make sure that nothing is left.
Luckily, other humans can 'clear things up' :)
on edit: took out hows to avoid confusion.
"well, I'm certainly surprised by how much you know, good day."
in the first one would say: I am surprised by how much you know, which is very little indeed.
the second is the sarcastic one I made that you noted above.
Of course sarcasm is generally conveyed by tone. One can make the sarcasm completely deadpan. Now someone has to evaluate the text to determine if "How much you know" actually means "you know very little", my friends would know I meant that the person did not know much when I said how much, someone else might mistake my meaning, but really, probably not. Because in the context who actually would respond in that way?
But let's go back to the original statement I made that how much and how little are technically equivalent and everybody being so peeved at it. Because there are some other ways that we can use the phrases that show their equivalence.
"hey you have to pay for that"
"how much or rather how little?" there is of course a nuance, by saying how much I am asking what amount I have to pay, and when I follow with how little I am asking the amount I have to pay but asserting I expect that it should be a minimal amount.
"hey you have to pay for that"
"how little?"
I am asking the amount but communicating I consider whatever amount it could possibly be to be so minimal it's almost not worth discussing. Obviously here we have another place where the common "how much" would almost always be used, as "how little" would be somewhat annoying and maybe announce that one is a bit of a show-off.
Someone earlier made the comment about that English is very context-dependent, indeed it is, the original "how much" usage was so obviously being used in a way that it meant what would commonly be said "how little" that someone actually asked "do you mean 'how little'". Because of the various ways that much can refer to a small or indeterminate amount - for example
"you have to pay for that"
"how much"
"one penny"
"how much is one penny"
"one penny is very little"
"how little"
"it is the smallest coin in our currency"
it should be clear that the phrases "how much" and "how little" while having common usages and meanings these are still very much determined by their context, and in the response to the original phrasing I think, given all the ways they can be used, that it would have been more reasonable to ask not if he meant "how little" but assume that "how much" was being used to describe something small, which is one of the ways it can be used, as demonstrated (albeit not exhaustively) in various scenarios here.
All of which comes back to the example I also made earlier that as comparative statements how much and how little are only really tightly locked when used together, as in "How little do I get for how much!?"
on edit: obviously smallest coin in this context means coin holding the smallest monetary value.
If the second half of that reader engagement doesn't pay off, the sentence reads as clunky or incorrect, likely a mistake from a second language speaker.
Natural languages are not code and words can't be swapped arbitrarily. Word choice and construction carries meaning in and of itself, totally divorced from the actual words used.
a gross percent can't name the 3 branches or their Reps.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_heard_round_the_world
America250 is the official organization/celebration [2] established [3] to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence [4] in 1776:
> America250’s mission is to celebrate and commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking America’s Semiquincentennial.
[2] https://america250.org/about-america250/
> The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission was established by Congress in 2016 to plan and orchestrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
[3] https://america250.org/about-america250/a250-leadership/
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...
[4] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...
"Life is much better in 2026. We live healthier, richer, and longer lives, with better medicine and more self-determination." - I can't speak for 1926, but compared to 1980s or 1960s, this is so patently not true. The US population is much sicker and more obese, as one example. People are not starving, but at the cost of eating "manufactured" foods that will make them sick in 20 - 40 yrs. And so on. I don't see a lot of happy faces on the streets of America.
Yes, there is still much work to be done to improve the United States, but I’d rather be poor in the United States today than wealthy in the United States 100 years ago. I suspect that most educated people would choose likewise.
If you're a woman, would you rather live in the 1960s or 2020s? If you're gay, would you rather live in the 1960/80s or in the 2020s?
Average US life expectancy was in about 70 in the 1960s, and mid-70s in the 1980s, and approaching 80 until COVID hit. Cancer survivorships has improved (not only because better screen and treatment, but also because of less cigarette smoking). The infant mortality rate now is a fifth of what it was in the 1960s.
Of course for all these numbers non-US developed countries are much better.
> People are not starving, but at the cost of eating "manufactured" foods that will make them sick in 20 - 40 yrs.
Groceries have gone from being 14% of household spending in the 1960s to being less 6% (takeout from 4% to 6%). In 1900 food was 40%:
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...
I don't see how anything in the article would influence anyone to feel better about those things.
Still, overall, I feel like drug policy now beats 100 years ago :)
Humorous and informative writer. Not a historian.