In The Red

 https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/in-the-red/

This article sorely deserves to be read in its entirety. It describes the level of financial peril in the US as succinctly and as nonpartisan as is possible. Of course there are aspects of partisanship because we are a two party country -- we need to deal with the problems in that context as marital problems need to be dealt with in a two party solution. Unless the union is to be dissolved.

The first step in avoiding a truly calamitous, debt-ridden future is to understand how we got ourselves into this predicament to begin with. It is not national defense or even the New Deal but rather the Great Society that is bankrupting us.

Sadly, the excellent charts that make our peril painfully clear are not in the digital version linked, so I was forced to go screen capture PDF route, but I think you can get the picture. 

One of the quick responses from the left will be that our problem is that we are undertaxed, not overspent. More government MUST be better! 

A fundamental preliminary question is whether our government taxes too little or spends too much. The answer is easy to determine. In 2021, the federal government collected more than three-and-a-half times as much money, in real dollars per capita—that is, above and beyond inflation and population growth—as it did at the start of the postwar period. But it spent nearly seven times as much. From 1947 (the first postwar fiscal year, as FY 1946 began in July of 1945) through 2021, the population of the United States rose 2.3-fold, while prices rose nearly 13-fold. Combining these two factors, the federal government could have collected and spent 29 times as much in nominal dollars in 2021 as it did in 1947 without collecting or spending any more in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars per capita. Instead, the federal government taxed more than 100 times as much in 2021 as in 1947 and spent almost 200 times as much. By any reasonable standard, our government isn’t afflicted by a shortage of tax revenues but by an almost endless appetite for spending.

Means are always limited, desires are not.  

As the charts show, it matters which party controls the executive and legislative branches. 

Despite this subsequent debt explosion, the Clinton-Gingrich era was a successful one in terms of fiscal responsibility. Indeed, over the past 40 years, deficits have been lowest when a Democrat has been in the White House and Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress. The second-best scenario has been a Republican president with either party controlling both houses of Congress. Next-best has been a Democratic president paired with a mixed Congress (with each party controlling one house), followed by a Republican president paired with a mixed Congress. The worst scenario has been Democratic control of the whole government. Over the past four decades, Democratic control (average deficit of $1.1 trillion in constant 2012 dollars) has been more than twice as costly as Republican control ($490 billion).

It would appear that unless there is massive vote fraud, we may go from the worst to the best case in finances in 2023-2024, however the hole is very deep at this point. Thomas Jefferson described the likely outcome of our financial incontinence. 

Thomas Jefferson described fiscal profligacy as a precursor to inevitable misery and suffering, the first in a stampede of apocalyptic horsemen. “[T]he fore horse of this frightful team is public debt,” he wrote. “Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” This wretchedness will only be more keenly felt as interest rates rise. Too much debt puts power in the hands of our enemies and renders the average American poorer every year.

How do we fix it? Pain ... a lot like how anyone "fixes" other cancers if they can fix it at all. In our case, we basically have to return to representative Constitutional  government -- rather than the Administrative/Deep State we are governed by now ... especially since Obama. 

It has become fashionable to think of constitutional amendments as relics from the past. But then, so are fiscal responsibility and—increasingly—representative government. The founders made the Constitution amendable for a reason, and we should take our cues from them. In the late 1990s, we showed—briefly—that it’s possible to take action to reverse our course and help save our country from the tragic fate that Jefferson described. But the first step is to recognize that the $30 trillion elephant in the room isn’t going away. It’s just growing bigger.

I'm thinking our odds are not very good.  

Going Under With the Overclass

 https://newcriterion.com/issues/2022/4/going-under-with-the-overclass

Alonng with reading a lot of books, I tend to subscribe to somewhat esoteric periodicals ... to wit, the "New Criterion". One of my many woeful lacks is broader culture ... art, music, poetry, syphon, poetry, etc

I have no illusions of "catching up" at this late date, however, some exposure is at least humbling, and civilization/culture are certainly related. I find the linked article to be a worthwhile summary of our plight is more of an intellectual vs polemic tone. Some excerpts: 

We don’t often hear about the plight of the overclass, but our progressive elites have a problem. They have become too successful, and their success is starting to show poorly. Over the last decades, these elites have experienced the traumas of contemporary life very much in reverse to most Americans. Our difficulties have been their triumphs. Our restrictions have become their liberation. With ever greater efficiency, they have become the creditors to our debts, the marketers of our drugs, the title-holders of our homes, and the sellers of the fruits of our industry. They have risen as many others have fallen. They are good at what they do, and for this they have been handsomely rewarded. No one would deny a payment for a job well done. Yet these victories have demanded ever greater tribute from the vanquished. Progressive elites have taken their successes out on the rest of us.

From later in the article":  

“There has always been a privileged class,” said Lasch, “even in America, but it has never been so dangerously isolated from its surroundings.” Contempt now replaces elite obligation and noblesse oblige. “Simultaneously arrogant and insecure,” Lasch wrote, “the new elites regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension.” They now despise their countrymen, especially those who do not pay tribute to their superiority. Meanwhile, “ ‘Middle America’—a term that has both geographical and social implications—has come to symbolize everything that stands in the way of progress: ‘family values,’ mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, retrograde views of women.”

While "wealth" isn't all it is cracked up to be since it is short, often painful (meaningless, guilty, ageing, physical ailments, loss of loved ones, etc), it does however tend to isolate and give a view of "power" that can lead to finding out that the elites heads can be removed too. 

 

Twenty-five years ago, at the time of Lasch’s writing, America’s richest 20 percent controlled half of the country’s wealth. As of 2021, the top 10 percent control 70 percent of the country’s wealth. The top 1 percent alone controls nearly a third of the country’s wealth. The top 50 percent hold 98 percent of the wealth. That leaves the bottom 50 percent with but 2 percent, a division that has only grown more stark through the pandemic as inflation, crime, and learning loss now add to the disruption.

Way back in 2017, I wrote on 8 billionaires that owned half of the world wealth. At that point, they all met yearly in Davos Switzerland, and I'm quite certain that they and the new class of same continue to meet virtually, What could say "10" men that own by now well over half of the total wealth of the world. In this age where power is "ethics", what might they do? We are relying on their godless "morality" to not take severe actions to remove any threat from the "deplorables",  

If you applaud the killing of over 60 million babies and are willing to support violence to prevent a SCOTUS from putting even minor limits on your "right to death", where might you boudareies be? 

Would engineering a global pandemic that killed millions of elderly (they can be expensive to keep alive) cratered the economy of the lower class, allowed you to remove your greatest threat (Trump), while enriching you with further billions of dollars be beyond your "morality" ? 

The whole article is well worth the read. 

Thiel, Bitcoin $60K

 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/peter-thiel-bitcoin-60000-report-us-political-system-unsustainable-cryptocurrencies-2021-10

I really like Peter Thiel. He is an iconoclast like Elon Musk -- not a guy that follows crowds. My review on his book "Zero To One" here.

I hope this statement proves to be true. 

Now is the time where the "one-world state" stops, and with the help of crypto, "we're going to succeed," he said, according to The Information.

Bankruptcy Abolished

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/weimar-its-us.php 

Most of us have heard this statement more than once -- "The US can't go bankrupt because we can print all the money we want". 

It is rare however that you hear it directly from someone that  supposedly is managing our money ... like "The Chairman of the House Budget Committee". 

A super way to test it's truth would be to just cancel all taxes and print ALL the money. If his view is view is right, a new era in public wealth and ease has arrived!  It is amazing nobody has tied since a simple solution before ... or maybe they have, and the results were "non optimal". 

In further cherry economic news from our economic elite, the current numbers are not so bad if you just remove "beef, pork, and poultry" from the calculations! 

I suspect the results could be further improved by removing milk, bread, and eggs! 

Biden On Inflation

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/22/remarks-by-president-biden-in-a-cnn-town-hall-with-don-lemon/ 

And so, it is — I sincerely mean this: Prices are up now, and they’re up in — for example, you’re in a position where you’re trying to build a house, trying to find two-by-fours and lumber. Well, guess what? People stopped working cutting lumber. They stopped doing it because they — the unemployment was so down. Now, all of a sudden, there’s this need because people are coming back. And guess what? Instead of paying 10 cents, you’re paying 20. But you understand what I’m saying.

Got that? Do you "understand what he is saying? 

I can tell you how the MSM would report that if it was Trump. "Can you believe it? Trump thinks it is no big deal if you pay twice as much because of his insane policies! There you have the billionaire perspective in nutshell!".  

But this is Biden, so basically it doesn't get reported, in the MSM at all, while it would be headline fake news if Trump said the same thing. Certainly there are elements of "fake" in the whe way NR reports it, however compared to the way the MSM would have trimmed  to a misleading meme under Trump,  it is fairly honest, they include more context. 

“Prices are up now. For example, we’re in a position where you’re trying to build a house, trying to find two-by-fours lumber. Well guess what? People stopped working cutting lumber, they stopped doing it because the unemployment was so down. Now all of a sudden there’s this need because people are coming back and guess what? Instead of paying ten cents you’re paying 20,” he said.

That is exactly the  WH transcript of what he said. I bet dollars to donuts that the MSM meme if it was Trump would be; "Trump claims doubling prices not a big deal!". 

How does one parse "Well, guess what? People stopped working cutting lumber. They stopped doing it because they — the unemployment was so down." 

??? 

Was he trying to say they quit cutting lumber because there were a bunch of stimulus payments and unemployment benefit extensions so people quit working? Unemployment was UP, not down ... less people were cutting lumber and pretty much any other sort of work, and the government was pumping money into the economy so spending was up. More money chasing less goods, so inflation is up! Duh. 

Prices are also up because energy is a major foundation of the economy, and doing as much as you can to stop fracking and other energy production  drives prices up. LP here in IA is a $1.50 now vs $1 last year at this time. Earth to Biden! 

The NR link is pretty good. No matter what the cadaver in chief says, printing money is inflationary, and printing more money is even more inflationary! 

If Biden gets what he wants, he will pump ANOTHER $4.4 trillion into a $20 trillion economy! 

Oh, and trust him, that is going to reduct inflation. 

Destroy Your Currency, Destroy Your Country

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/happens-currency-collapses-lebanon/ 

A good report on what is happening in Lebanon as their currency becomes increasingly worthless. Our elites assure us "it can't happen here". Why, thinking it would, is like thinking the 2016 election was not invalidated by Russian interference, or imagining that Biden breaking Obama's 2008 record of 69 million with a new record of 81 million was somehow "fishy". Obvious conspiracy theory ... like thinking that the Wuhan Coronavirus may have come from a lab in Wuhan working on enhancing the lethality of Corona viruses.  

Even looking at things like this shows that one's mental faculties are slipping ...  some idiot people even question the clear ability of our vibrant leader Joe Biden! It seems that such people need to re-educated at a minimum ... possibly put in nice remote camp for some therapeutic shock treatment to get their minds right?

It can't happen here! Just look at the gas pump, or a restaurant tab, it is obvious our dollars are as sound as Biden, and isn't that a relief? 

Killing Freidman

 Link to NR column.

A little hard to do since he died in 2006, but the dead are a major part of the Cadaver In Chief's constituency ... could the dead be the opposition? Things like ideas and principles are easy to ignore, but they often take over when you really desire to ignore them most (age and death being great examples). 

Milton Friedman, whose empiricism led him to embrace free-market public policy, was the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century. But Biden has a weird habit of treating Friedman as a devilish spirit who must be exorcised from the nation’s capital. For Biden, Friedman represents deregulation, low taxes, and the idea that a corporation’s primary responsibility is not to a group of politicized “stakeholders” but to its shareholders. “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” Biden told Politico last year. “When did Milton Friedman die and become king?” Biden asked in 2019. The truth is that Friedman, who died in 2006, has held little sway over either Democrats or Republicans for almost two decades. But Biden wants to mark the definitive end of Friedman and the “neoliberal” economics he espoused by unleashing a tsunami of dollars into the global economy and inundating Americans with new entitlements.

As we can see from the Cadaver administration, reality seemingly isn't running the show either.  

The Dollar Demise

https://americanconsequences.com/kim-iskyan-the-death-of-the-dollar/ 

I've been predicting the death of the dollar for a long time -- when will the global economy pull the plug on the ailing dollar? 

And greenbacks are the world economy’s most important medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. If they don’t use U.S. dollars, it’s a lot more difficult – and expensive – for countries, companies, and people to buy oil or gold, sell toys or cars, or invest in hotels or bridges.

At a gut level we all understand this. Inflation is vastly understated -- look at your medical and insurance bills for example. Look at taxes on your internet and cell phone bills, and the increasing cost of the services themselves. Everything with few exceptions is rising in price, and it is rising faster than whatever you put in your savings. The government reports the inflation numbers, and they claim they do COLA (Cost Of Living Adjustments) for things like Social Security, military and government pensions, inflation protected bonds (TIPs) etc. Artificially keeping those numbers and interest rates artificially low is a way to heavily tax the masses without letting the "little people" know.

Put it all together, and 78% of all dollars that have ever been made, have been created over the past 12 months. (And… none of that, of course, includes the proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan announced by the White House in late March.)

The federal deficit is forecasted to hit 15% of GDP in 2021, the biggest deficit since World War II. That’s compared with 2.4% as recently as 2015… and 9.7% in 2009, in the depths of the global financial crisis.

Debt, like most degenerative diseases, doesn't happen quickly, although also like degenerative diseases, when the end does come, that will be quick.  All of a sudden, Bitcoin or some other digical currency is very likely to replace it. 

Most likely is that the U.S. dollar continues to be nudged out of the ring. The other reserve currency options – euro, yen, renminbi, digital renminbi – may become more palatable in relation to a debauched dollar. And in time, bitcoin – or a future cryptocurrency standard-bearer – may also be used as a reserve currency.

When that happens (and it is inevitable unless policies drastically change)  the dollar will drop in value very quickly. Something that cost $1 will cost $1.50,  $2?,  $5? ... no real way to know. 

WTF Happened In 1971?

 https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

That site will show a bunch of charts that seem to indicate that going off the gold standard was a bad idea. It should be pointed out that 9 out of 10 economists disagree with that assessment.  

OTOH, a visit to "Worst Economic Predictions" will show they are far from always right. My favorite of is this quote from Keynes, the godfather of economists in 1927, who claimed to solved the problem of recessions: “We will not have any more crashes in our time.” Perhaps he meant we will just call them depressions now?

 
I think all economists would agree with Galbraith, who said "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." 

We ought not be too hard on them. As the baseball philosopher Yogi Berra informed us; "Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future". 

A look at this site will give you some background on the charts. 

I continue to believe that having "5%" or maybe a bit more of your wealth in metals. I prefer gold and silver coins in a safety deposit box. 

He Who Has The Gold Makes the Rules

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/when-the-partys-over/

We all love to remember when we were right, and hate to remember when we were/are wrong. As a moderate depressive, I tend to remember being wrong pretty well, and being right, not as much as your average bear. (being a moose, that is understandable). 

So, I've been wrong about the coming massive financial crash since "1990" ... and have forgone a lot of market gains because of that belief. Fortunately not ALL of the gains, and my much more optimistic wife continues to beat me in the market like a rented mule. 

The linked is a pretty good summary of what I've thought would happen for a long time ... but hasn't. I hope it doesn't happen at all. I don't speak Mandarin, I have grandchildren, and while I think I'm pretty well situated for "whatever comes", evidence shows that I'm frequently wrong, although for the last year or so, my TIPs investments have been looking not as wrong as usual. 

Somebody needs to remind President Biden about the Golden Rule — the real Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules, and we are clean out of ducats.

Jim Rogers, the famous investor, offered a version of that golden rule when explaining why he decamped to the Far East and has raised his daughters speaking Mandarin: “You know where the assets are, and you know where the debts are.” President Bill Clinton, enraged at the way the financial markets constrained his grandiose ambitions, observed ruefully that in his next life he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market so that he would finally know what it’s like to have some real power. Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht, goes the Yiddish proverb: Man plans, and God laughs.

The Jim Rogers linked article from  2010 is worth looking at as well. This part resonated with me ...

And that’s where Rogers’s start-a-farm pitch comes in. He pitches farming the same way he pitches Asia, like it ought to be obvious to you, but, because of some intellectual defect on your part, it isn’t: “It sounds radical, but it’s based on simple facts. Food inventories are the lowest they’ve been in decades — not months, not years, decades. And there’s a shortage of farmers. Japan has vast empty fields where all the farms have died, and the kids have all gone to Tokyo and Osaka. Japanese dislike foreigners, particularly Chinese foreigners, but they’ve started importing Chinese farmers to farm the fields in Japan that don’t have anybody to farm them. The farmers are going to have a future. Smart guys on Wall Street are going to learn to drive tractors, because the guys who can drive tractors are going to be driving Lamborghinis.” Foreseeing a unified Korea, he recommends buying now, just south of the DMZ: cheap land for hardy, self-reliant homesteaders looking to make their fortunes in a new world. Sound familiar?

Sitting here in Iowa, considering buying a couple acres of land so at least hunger would not be a problem. I don't fit in a Lamborghini, but I can drive a pretty sophisticated tractor, so there is that.    

Davos Reset, Leveraging Covid

 https://www.weforum.org/events/the-davos-agenda-2021

As Rahm Emanuel famously said;

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

I believe that the RESPONSE to Covid was engineered on a global basis. The virus may well have been engineered as well, there are a lot of pieces of evidence that point that way. Naturally, that evidence is largely suppressed, however the fact that viruses are being modified to do good things means they can be modified for bad things. Any powerful technology can be used as a weapon -- think nuclear power. "Coincidences" of the magnitude of Covid at the time it happened largely aren't coincidences. 

Abortion convinces me that the general population has no respect for life. If you have no respect for life, and you have the means, doesn't getting rid of a bunch of old people, small businesses, and Trump, while padding your pockets and prepping for a "reset" to give you even more power seem like a "no brainer"?

When you see the worlds "elite" meeting annually under the cover of "we are doing a lot of good things", I think we have PLENTY of evidence that what they are doing is increasing their own wealth and screwing the middle and lower classes. 

Witness this chart from  National Review  

In 2016 the people woke up a bit and realized they were getting screwed by the "elite". In 2020, 10 million more of them woke up -- and the elite decided that enough was enough, so they cheated -- they doubled down on the "Covid Crisis", and made "elections" a thing of the past. 

The link at the top is worth following and crying a bit -- when you have a bunch of billionaires marketing their "good deeds", the pitch is pretty slick. What you really need to know is this ... it is time for the elite to do a "reset": 

Inevitably, the event for the 1,200-plus delegates from 60 countries aims to respond to the apocalyptic events of the past 12 months. “A crucial year to rebuild trust” is the theme, built around the “great reset” that World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab and Prince Charles launched last year.

Remember "Hope and Change"? It's accelerating to a new global level.  

Damn The Environment, Invest In Lithium

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact?fbclid=IwAR2xqU3xKobB0E8SrU99RyB8JPYFaHUYttjGq-Ww0I8sYUut08BcWdRH5N8 

The world is filled with winners and losers. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

The world is on a "clean energy" binge -- so what is the equal and opposite reaction? Lithium, cobalt, manganese and other things have to be mined, processed, transported, etc. So there is collateral damage to the environment. Who cares? The "right" people get rich and the oil and gas workers get the shaft.  

My current (small) investment in lithium is LIT ... based on my investment expertise, I'd recommend selling that puppy short! (NO! I'm kidding! Unless you are a Davos elite insider, short selling is RISKY). 

Much like the Covid panic, where the elite made LOTS of money (Amazon, Google, WalMart, people that were in the know that after the crash, governments would go on a printing binge, etc). 

Who makes lots of money from Biden being "elected"? Wind / solar companies, rail companies like BNSF because pipelines are being cancelled, so more has to move by rail (Warren Buffet owns BNSF) ... 

Short Squeeze For Dummies

 https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/602165/what-exactly-is-a-short-squeeze

I've always been a dummy investor, so the whole Gamestop deal was a mystery -- especially since I no longer follow the MSM, it had to show up on Power Line before I cared enough to look. 

The Spectator has a somewhat interesting column on more of the psychology and real world human effects. 

There is a lot of sadness about our tragic money obsessed culture in the link -- the profanity is just the beginning: 

And boy has it worked. The user who first pitched GameStop on Reddit is called DeepFuckingValue. His original investment of $50,000 is now worth $50 million. This weekend he celebrated his gains in a video by dipping chicken tenderloins in a glass of Champagne. He still hasn’t sold.

For the congenitally stupid like me, the Kiplinger link covers it well -- I DID know "selling short" is betting the stock goes down, I just had a VERY foggy idea of what the mechanism was. 

Short selling – or shorting – is placing a bet that a stock declines in value. To do this, you borrow shares from another investor and then sell them. (Your broker does this for you behind the scenes.)

But remember: Those shares aren't yours to sell. You borrowed them. This means you are obligated to buy the shares back so you can to return them to the original owner.

There is an old saying attributed to Daniel Drew, a legendary speculator of the late 1800s:

"He who sells what isn't his'n, must buy it back or go to pris'n."

They don't send bankrupt short sellers to prison anymore, but the obligation to buy the shares back is very real. And this is where short squeezes come into play.

In the physical world, it would be like you borrowed 100 rounds of ammo from your friend when you went to the range, because you thought you were a little "short". Assume ammo was going for .10 a round  (so $10 for the 100). A guy at the range was buying ammo at .10 a round (he didn't bring enough) and you decided you were done shooting, and sold him what you borrowed ... so now you have $10, and no ammo. 

Unfortunately, you forgot to get more ammo, and now you are out. So when your friend asks for the ammo back, you find that ammo has gone up to $10 a round (where it is today BTW if you can get it) ... so you have to pay $100 for it, and therefore lost $90. 

The market (broker) doesn't trust you like your friend, so you have to "cover" as the price of the stock rises ... and keep covering as the price goes up -- and it can go up A LOT, theoretically infinitely. If you can't cover, you MUST actually buy the stock and give it back, thus making the stock rise in "value".  (the scare quotes are because the underlying real world value of the stock (the earnings of the company and sale price of its assets) are often way less than the stock price. In markets, "value" is whatever people are either willing -- or forced to pay if they can't cover the margin call. 

So short selling is very risky ... your potential gain is limited, your potential loss is unlimited. 

Naturally, on the chance you buy the actual stock at $10 (ammo at .10 a round) and it gets into a "squeeze" (like say Biden gets elected and he bans ammo sales), and stock (ammo) goes up to $1,000, AND YOU SELL IT, you made $990. (often, the other problem is that you are greedy, don't sell in time, so just lose your $10) 

... and now you know why I have a stockpile of ammo.  

Things like the Gamestop squeeze add to to the uncertainty of markets -- people have to sell assets they otherwise would like to keep in order to cover the margin -- other stocks, or maybe gold, thus causing their values to drop -- at least temporarily. 

So I think I understand it now -- always dangerous! 

The Managerial Revolution, Burnham

 I'm on a bit of a Burnham tear, primarily because I believe that even though most of his specific predictions have proven wrong ( Germany defeating the USSR and winning WWII, later, the triumph of "efficient" USSR Socialism being inevitable), he correctly points out the big picture -- the rise of bureaucratic power linked with increasingly massive and powerful corporations. 

To a major extent, the world is now run by "managers" both in the government and in corporations -- to a large extent we in the "Proletariat" largely work for Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc, although the vast majority have no idea this is so. We are increasingly Orwellian "Proles", believing "Newspeak" in the form of "Fake News", and living in fear that we will say something not allowed by the elite, and be "Canceled". 

My full set of notes and comments are here. 

The managers will exercise their control over the instruments of production and gain preference in the distribution of the products, not directly, through property rights vested in them as individuals, but indirectly, through their control of the state which in turn will own and control the instruments of production. The state—that is, the institutions which comprise the state—will, if we wish to put it that way, be the “property” of the managers. And that will be quite enough to place them in the position of ruling class.

While Burnham somewhat understands the impact of money, he seems to have significantly missed the requirement for a incentive (profit, wealth) and reality based feedback (profit/loss) in the system. The demise of the USSR and China's creation of a crony capitalist (Fascist) economy, as well as the US and Western Europe ending up with a softer version of the same, seems to have at least for the present vindicated Capitalism as the equivalent of fossil fuel for the creation of wealth. 

We have seen that its structure is based upon the state ownership and control of the major instruments of production, with the state in turn controlled by, and acting in the primary interests of, the managers. This in turn means the disappearance of capitalist private property rights vested in individuals.

Well, no ... what Burnham thought inevitable. wasn't.  

The book is well worth reading for those of us that are cultural, historical nerds. Metaphysical truth is often at least hinted at in human error!

Corona Turning Point?

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/is-the-stock-market-crazy.php

One can only hope ... agree that the BIG question may well be "before November or not"?

If it is a "not", then recovery is likely at least 5 years away if Trump loses.

The path of INTELLIGENT globalization, keeping most / all critical industries / technologies in the US and controlling immigration to only those likely to benefit the US are all key -- and in opposition to Democrat agendas.

I am pretty certain that in less than ten years, coronavirus will be seen as a turning point that favored the U.S. economy over that of China and perhaps other third-world countries. Let’s hope that becomes clear by the Fall.

Killing The Extended Family Was a Mistake

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/

A fairly concise statement on a maior reason why America has a large wealth gap.

If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We’ve made life better for adults but worse for children. We’ve moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.

It's the Atlantic, and Brooks, so the flight from religion is largely ignored ... and it is always hard to empirically decide the "chicken and egg" between economics, technology, sociology, culture, religion, etc ... it's a bit of a "scramble".

When you put everything together, we’re likely living through the most rapid change in family structure in human history. The causes are economic, cultural, and institutional all at once. People who grow up in a nuclear family tend to have a more individualistic mind-set than people who grow up in a multigenerational extended clan. People with an individualistic mind-set tend to be less willing to sacrifice self for the sake of the family, and the result is more family disruption. People who grow up in disrupted families have more trouble getting the education they need to have prosperous careers. People who don’t have prosperous careers have trouble building stable families, because of financial challenges and other stressors. The children in those families become more isolated and more traumatized.

In any case, more supporting information for what we know -- the cost of "it's all for ME, the individual" is very high!