The Underlying Problem

[LearnedHand]

By Hamilton Nolan

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-underlying-problem

OP: Excellent analysis of the extreme issues caused by severe income inequality. Bolding mine in the snippet below.

There is a lot of chaos emanating from Washington. A decade of Donald Trump’s presence as a political figure has shattered the assumptions of many who thought that they understood how things worked in America. This year’s drastically increased ideological aggression—the apparent determination of the administration and its allies to destroy the federal government itself, to run the White House like a mafia, to simultaneously undertake dozens of devastating existential changes—contributes to the swirling feeling of pandemonium. Not just the left, but all of the political establishment, feel themselves grasping for an anchor, something they can use to orient themselves and determine the way forward.

In this environment, it can be extremely difficult to analyze what went wrong. Each new crisis feels like a data point that must be added into the analysis, creating an intellectual stew with an infinite number of ingredients that is never finished. Trump is such a sui generis figure that it is possible to attribute his rise to any combination of a laundry list of personal attributes, social trends, and political events. Is all of this a consequence of Trump’s own celebrity? A racial backlash to the Obama years? The outcome of decades of brain poisoning by right wing media? Pandemic social isolation and inflation manifesting in a national death cult? What the hell?

SNIP

In the midst of our national dissolution, people sit and dream of the quickest route to salvation. Air Force One crashing into a mountain, with Musk and Trump on board? The electoral defeat of the MAGA movement? A few enlightened Supreme Court rulings? Would that do it? No. It sure would not. The closest thing there is to a magical solution for our predicament would be: Erase three zeros from the net worth of every multibillionaire in this country. That would, at least, catapult us back to the comforting world of normal flaws that many are now pining for.