In the 80s Thatcher and Reagan broke down trade barriers and ceded government power to banks and corporations. This created a consumer world driven by debt, where everything was assessed by utility. Politics essentially “became a wing of management, saying that it could stop bad things from happening instead of imagining how things could be better.”

Consumer debt has fallen since the peak in 2007-2009 or so.

https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/...

Rather spending seems to be driven by the wealthy, upper-middle class, who don't need as much debt to consume and boost the overall economy.

Now politics feels like pantomime, with both parties bickering over social issues while neither has the political will to meaningfully affect the economy. Curtis: “Online psychodramas create waves of hysteria that make it feel like the world is transforming. In fact, nothing actually changed in the last four years. Trump made himself a pantomime villain, and we booed rather than imagine an alternative.”

Agree. I think the power of the federal government to affect change peaked in 2001-2008 or so, first with massive buildup homeland security and defense apparatuses following 911, and then in 2008-2009 during the financial crisis . After that the federal government has significantly stopped having influence as far as policy is concerned. Rather, much if its power is through administrative functions, like the FBI , NSA, IRS, SEC, etc.

Money became our religion, and now money is starting to run dry, as the world’s largest economies slow in their growth. Both democracies and dictatorships are in a moment of crisis.

Money is like a religion, but scant evidence to suggest it's running dry. As stocks and home prices boom since 2020, there is more wealth than ever before.

Purchasing power hasn’t changed in the past 40 years, according to the Pew Institute: “Today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

Again, you have to look at the top 10% or so. That is where the purchasing power is coming from...stuff like Disneyland tickets, NFL tickets, lifted trucks, expensive elective cosmetic procedures, home renovations, and so on.

All meritocratic platforms are winner-take-all, with the top 1% of performers collecting a vastly disproportionate share of rewards. Look at Substack and Onlyfans. This is not a conspiracy engineered by anyone: when anyone is allowed to compete, a small percentage of people tend to capture most of the profit.

It's been like this for a long time, and recent trends have only accelerated this. The Ivy League is more importent and competitive than ever before; Covid has not changed this at all. Same for top 50 schools overall. Same for high stakes testing, math competitions, top tech & finance jobs, etc...everything more competitive and difficult. More people applying, fewer people getting in. Winners get bigger and bigger, whether it's top Substack content creators or Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.

The American dream, the idea that anybody could make a good living for themselves and their family through nothing but hard work, has become far less realistic. You know the Steinbeck line about how Americans think they’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires instead of exploited proletariat. But they don’t believe that anymore, do they?

It's still realistic if you have a high IQ, choose a good career, and have good work ethic...people in tech, consulting, finance, healthcare, law, etc. making record income even after accounting for student loan debt and inflation. (The so-called school to career STEM pipeline.) Reddit 'FIRE' subs are full of such individuals, in their 20-40s, doing just that, with not uncommonly millions of dollars. But for those at the middle/left-side of the IQ distribution, maybe not so much. They tend to rely more so on lottery-like systems of success/promotion compared to more meritocratic ones. https://greyenlightenment.com/2022/03/19/losers-iq-and-the-l...

This clearly isn’t true, since people obviously aren’t free: they’re controlled by socioeconomic circumstances.

And also biological constraints, like again, IQ. But I have also read many stories on Hacker News and Reddit of people born in the lower-middle class or worse circumstances rising up due to high intelligence and getting scholarships and landing decent-paying jobs.

Good article...a lot of food for thought.