Tonight I went rather late (around 9 pm) to an expensive New York restaurant; not super expensive where the millionaires from the East Side meet but one in West Village where mostly successful young (and not so young as the story will soon reveal) people gather to dine and talk.
I liked learning about politics from a Eurovian Barbarian in Berkeley a long time ago. Alas, the cigarettes caught up with Milos Martic a long time ago.
My main complaint about Eurovian Barbarians is that there ain't enough of them, leastways not right here and now.
Come and visit. Said barbarians have some reservations about stone-headed hippies from Berserkeley, so they mostly avoid the place. And the news still travel slow in this part of the world. It's a feature. And a curse.
Something like Schrodinger's cat; you never know which one it'll be, until you let the genie out of the bottle. And by that time it's too late, of course.
Aristotle himself would have trouble navigating the minefields of middle-aged women at NY restaurant bars. When time is short, as elsewhere around the globe, there is the market, or thrifty solitude, to fall back on.
An entertaining and thoughtful contribution - adjusting to this new state of affairs is going to take a great deal of time and effort. Muddling decline seems to be the new normal.
That is the old (4 decades at least) normal for the bottomost 60-80% of people, those exposed to competition with the global job market where the typical wage is $1-2 per hour. The old (4 decades) normal for the top 20-40% has been rising. affluent, comfortable living standards powered by property and stocks profits redistributed from that 60-80%. Immigrants and offshore workers have benefited too.
I like these kinds of posts, they give a "view of the world" as I think you put it in the title of another post.
Two things come to mind when reading. Firstly, that if the first woman is at all reprensentative of the American liberal elite (and I think she is) then we are well truly fcked. The exalted classes have always tended towards self-satisfaction, but the level of smug ignorance and detachment from reality shown by this woman is giving less englishman in the run up to WW1 who complacently believes the sun will never set on the British empire and more Chemical Ali in the ruins of Baghdad insisting that the american tanks rolling up the road towards him are simply not there.
Secondly, and more tentatively, I find it endlessly fascinating how our beliefs when we get down to it seem much more a function of our biography than the product of rational deliberation. I have this theory that our core beliefs are the product of some adversity or shock in the world that come to us at a formative moment in our development; everything after that is the just the working out of that core idea. The beliefs of the first woman (I presume) are a function of her experience of riding a high and beautiful wave of progress and rising asset prices, her formative beliefs were shaped by the experience of the crumbling of her enemies circa 1989 and of the victory of neoliberal consensus and american exceptionalism. In her mind that victory is final. This belief is unshakeable and everything else she knows follows from that. The second, younger woman by contrast is shaped (like me) by the formative experience of 2008. Capitalism and the american world order are in question and rightfully so, from this follows pessimism but also a search for answers, openness to new ideas and ways of doing things. I wonder what that crucial exogenous shock is for the youngest generation, coming up now- covid, gaza?
100% agree w/ all you wrote. "This belief is unshakeable and everything else she knows follows from that." I think that we all, as you write, share that feature; that our beliefs are formed, at most by 2 or 3 formative experiences (for many people, by just one) and all the rest is our attempt to sustain them in face of contrary evidence.
Oh how I wish I could have been at the next place at the bar to eavesdrop on this exchange, especially with the first lady. I suppose my laughter might have put a damper on the conversation and ruined your data collection/ field study of elite New Yorkers. If you are seeking another observation sight - may I suggest Georgetown (in Washington DC).
About the second woman’s view that Americans can’t or won’t be able to start up and staff businesses that Americans ran in the past, I encounter this view all the time. But I don’t understand the logic.
Part of the logic behind not being able to restart is that it’s not just one business it’s the entire network that supports the line of business. The suppliers, the skills, the wide range of tangentially related things necessary for a business to make a go of it.
«the second woman’s view that Americans can’t or won’t be able to start up and staff businesses that Americans ran in the past, I encounter this view all the time. But I don’t understand the logic.»
The logic seems very simple to me: offshore/immigrant wages are so much cheaper, that results in much bigger profit margins, so use whichever claim to make-believe that replacing them with "lazy, insubordinate, overpaid" western workers could never work. Depending on country around 10-20% of GDP has been redistributed from average workers to the middle-class and the upper class, so it is a big deal.
You're unbelievable. The Universe conspires, as is its custom, to teach you something, and then, instead of ordering rum & Coca-Cola (as any Balkan boy with a modicum of self-respect would do), you stick to your rose with the proper accent and your ideas about the world, also with the proper accent.
A song comes to you and you decline an invitation to dance. That's not proper. I'm sure you know the song.
She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College
That's where I caught her eye
But it's always nice to have one's prejudices confirmed. And you'll never know what could have happened if you took her to the supermarket.
My usual point: it is not just the 1%, it is the 20-40% of middle class voters (usually older people from growing areas), who have voted and donated zealously for rapidly rising property and share prices and for shrinking wages and social services.
In the UK, Margaret Thatcher realised that by facilitating the acquisition of real property and securities (via privatisations of nationalised industries) by working-class voters, she would recruit many supporters to her right-wing party. Her legacy lives on, in the UK, at least.
«Margaret Thatcher realised that by facilitating the acquisition of real property and securities (via privatisations of nationalised industries) by working-class voters, she would recruit many supporters to her right-wing party.»
It was not quite Margaret Thatcher: "The Economist" reported quite a while ago that in the 1970s one of the new "think tanks" did a voting patterns study that found something both very obvious and very non-obvious:
* Obvious: People who owned a house, a car, had a share based pension account voted by a large margin to the right of people who rented a house, used public transport, had a defined benefit pension.
* Non-Obvious: this remained true *regardless of the income and wealth level* of voters. In particular voters from the middle and working class who owned even a tiny house, even a very cheap car, had a quite small stocks based pension account tended to vote for right-wing policies.
Thatcher and Blair (and Reagan and Clinton in the USA) and all their successors have therefore aimed to undermine rented housing, public transport, defined benefit pensions to shift voting patterns substantially to the right, successfully.
In the UK it turned out that of the three factors property profits were by far the most important in turning voters to the right; in the USA gun ownership also matters and while property profits have also had a significant role ("401k") stock profits have had a much bigger role than in the UK.
The woman with the fashion company should take heart. I'm told that employers are desperate for workers, she can find a great job easily, or get on as an apprentice somewhere.
Very nice. As one of Eurovian Barbarians, I can tell you that Democrats have screwed out big time. It is now the harvest season.
I really enjoyed to read this! Thank you.
I liked learning about politics from a Eurovian Barbarian in Berkeley a long time ago. Alas, the cigarettes caught up with Milos Martic a long time ago.
My main complaint about Eurovian Barbarians is that there ain't enough of them, leastways not right here and now.
Come and visit. Said barbarians have some reservations about stone-headed hippies from Berserkeley, so they mostly avoid the place. And the news still travel slow in this part of the world. It's a feature. And a curse.
Something like Schrodinger's cat; you never know which one it'll be, until you let the genie out of the bottle. And by that time it's too late, of course.
Milos said “be international.” And to take as much math as I could.
When we went to confront the Dean, Milos told me how Tito would pick and manage members of his delegation.
We got what we wanted.
Berkeley in those days (late 1970s) was rich in people who brought terrible experiences and deep wisdom to the redwood groves of Strawberry Creek.
Milos Martic, child of Fascists and student of Tito's revolution, was my friend and teacher.
Aristotle himself would have trouble navigating the minefields of middle-aged women at NY restaurant bars. When time is short, as elsewhere around the globe, there is the market, or thrifty solitude, to fall back on.
An entertaining and thoughtful contribution - adjusting to this new state of affairs is going to take a great deal of time and effort. Muddling decline seems to be the new normal.
«Muddling decline seems to be the new normal.»
That is the old (4 decades at least) normal for the bottomost 60-80% of people, those exposed to competition with the global job market where the typical wage is $1-2 per hour. The old (4 decades) normal for the top 20-40% has been rising. affluent, comfortable living standards powered by property and stocks profits redistributed from that 60-80%. Immigrants and offshore workers have benefited too.
I like these kinds of posts, they give a "view of the world" as I think you put it in the title of another post.
Two things come to mind when reading. Firstly, that if the first woman is at all reprensentative of the American liberal elite (and I think she is) then we are well truly fcked. The exalted classes have always tended towards self-satisfaction, but the level of smug ignorance and detachment from reality shown by this woman is giving less englishman in the run up to WW1 who complacently believes the sun will never set on the British empire and more Chemical Ali in the ruins of Baghdad insisting that the american tanks rolling up the road towards him are simply not there.
Secondly, and more tentatively, I find it endlessly fascinating how our beliefs when we get down to it seem much more a function of our biography than the product of rational deliberation. I have this theory that our core beliefs are the product of some adversity or shock in the world that come to us at a formative moment in our development; everything after that is the just the working out of that core idea. The beliefs of the first woman (I presume) are a function of her experience of riding a high and beautiful wave of progress and rising asset prices, her formative beliefs were shaped by the experience of the crumbling of her enemies circa 1989 and of the victory of neoliberal consensus and american exceptionalism. In her mind that victory is final. This belief is unshakeable and everything else she knows follows from that. The second, younger woman by contrast is shaped (like me) by the formative experience of 2008. Capitalism and the american world order are in question and rightfully so, from this follows pessimism but also a search for answers, openness to new ideas and ways of doing things. I wonder what that crucial exogenous shock is for the youngest generation, coming up now- covid, gaza?
100% agree w/ all you wrote. "This belief is unshakeable and everything else she knows follows from that." I think that we all, as you write, share that feature; that our beliefs are formed, at most by 2 or 3 formative experiences (for many people, by just one) and all the rest is our attempt to sustain them in face of contrary evidence.
Great read
very nice dinner and its story. Thank you!
Oh how I wish I could have been at the next place at the bar to eavesdrop on this exchange, especially with the first lady. I suppose my laughter might have put a damper on the conversation and ruined your data collection/ field study of elite New Yorkers. If you are seeking another observation sight - may I suggest Georgetown (in Washington DC).
About the second woman’s view that Americans can’t or won’t be able to start up and staff businesses that Americans ran in the past, I encounter this view all the time. But I don’t understand the logic.
Part of the logic behind not being able to restart is that it’s not just one business it’s the entire network that supports the line of business. The suppliers, the skills, the wide range of tangentially related things necessary for a business to make a go of it.
My guess at logic: Everything else being the same, I don't see how this could happen.
Which is probably correct. From that follows that everything else won't be the same.
«the second woman’s view that Americans can’t or won’t be able to start up and staff businesses that Americans ran in the past, I encounter this view all the time. But I don’t understand the logic.»
The logic seems very simple to me: offshore/immigrant wages are so much cheaper, that results in much bigger profit margins, so use whichever claim to make-believe that replacing them with "lazy, insubordinate, overpaid" western workers could never work. Depending on country around 10-20% of GDP has been redistributed from average workers to the middle-class and the upper class, so it is a big deal.
You're unbelievable. The Universe conspires, as is its custom, to teach you something, and then, instead of ordering rum & Coca-Cola (as any Balkan boy with a modicum of self-respect would do), you stick to your rose with the proper accent and your ideas about the world, also with the proper accent.
A song comes to you and you decline an invitation to dance. That's not proper. I'm sure you know the song.
She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College
That's where I caught her eye
But it's always nice to have one's prejudices confirmed. And you'll never know what could have happened if you took her to the supermarket.
Really interesting. Like myself, from a small business.
We failed to look to the future, failed to adapt and failure of diversification. Better forward looking businesses run over us. Who is to blame?
Thorstein Veblen would instantly recognise these women, and their lifestyle, as would F. Scott Fitzgerald. We live in a gilded age, for some.
True.
Especially Fitzgerald.
«We live in a gilded age, for some.»
My usual point: it is not just the 1%, it is the 20-40% of middle class voters (usually older people from growing areas), who have voted and donated zealously for rapidly rising property and share prices and for shrinking wages and social services.
In the UK, Margaret Thatcher realised that by facilitating the acquisition of real property and securities (via privatisations of nationalised industries) by working-class voters, she would recruit many supporters to her right-wing party. Her legacy lives on, in the UK, at least.
«Margaret Thatcher realised that by facilitating the acquisition of real property and securities (via privatisations of nationalised industries) by working-class voters, she would recruit many supporters to her right-wing party.»
It was not quite Margaret Thatcher: "The Economist" reported quite a while ago that in the 1970s one of the new "think tanks" did a voting patterns study that found something both very obvious and very non-obvious:
* Obvious: People who owned a house, a car, had a share based pension account voted by a large margin to the right of people who rented a house, used public transport, had a defined benefit pension.
* Non-Obvious: this remained true *regardless of the income and wealth level* of voters. In particular voters from the middle and working class who owned even a tiny house, even a very cheap car, had a quite small stocks based pension account tended to vote for right-wing policies.
Thatcher and Blair (and Reagan and Clinton in the USA) and all their successors have therefore aimed to undermine rented housing, public transport, defined benefit pensions to shift voting patterns substantially to the right, successfully.
In the UK it turned out that of the three factors property profits were by far the most important in turning voters to the right; in the USA gun ownership also matters and while property profits have also had a significant role ("401k") stock profits have had a much bigger role than in the UK.
Based Branko.
Why would anyone invest in a business that only makes money behind a tariff barrier that can go away any time?
Of course I am an economist, with a lifetime of confusticatlng our host's first conversationalist.
So did she explain why she hated "The Democratic Establishment?"
Isn’t it clear?
The woman with the fashion company should take heart. I'm told that employers are desperate for workers, she can find a great job easily, or get on as an apprentice somewhere.