Also note this is a “contributed by” paper which means it didn’t go through the usual PNAS review process. (Presumably the authors didn’t think it would make it through.)
After all, it’s the data that is widely available to people on the internet.
The decline of collectivism and the rise of individualism following the near total destruction of unions and the labour movement? Sound like a pretty significant contributor to me.
That is what caused their membership rates to decline. They are now poised to take over the new bright spots of the US economy: Amazon and Tesla, and destroy these golden geese, for the short term benefit of their members, just as they did to the ones before them.
In the one sector where expenses are socialized, and thus which doesn't go bankrupt easily, they have gotten increasingly powerful.
Government social welfare spending has rapidly grown, at the behest of public sector unions who increasingly control the political system:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
A couple anecdotes illuminates the kind of power these unions wield:
New York has nearly 300,000 unionized public sector employees receiving over $100,000 a year:
In California, emergency workers can retire at 55 with 90% of their pension, that averages $108,000 per year.
California now has $1 trillion in pension obligations for its unionized public sector workers.
The interesting line of thought here is that NYT articles have fairly clear authorship (and to a lesser degree editorship). Do individual authors follow a similar trend (implying that people are changing) or do authors stay the same (implying that the NYT composition is changing)? In short, how much is personal change, and how much is churn?
The reason people are down on PNAS is the way that members of the National Academy can, if they choose, sort of jam things into the journal through a side entrance. Here are all the details. The unusual thing about the journal is the existence of "Track I". Basically, a member of the NAS can publish up to four of their own papers per year. Each of these have to be submitted with the comments of two qualified referees, but the author gets to pick them. So a reasonable member should be able to get any sort of interesting or at least non-insane paper in there, by judicious choice of colleagues for review.
An easy way to go get interesting papers in does not seem like a reason to be 'down' on it.
Through my various social engagements, I've spent time in many political discussions. Trump, politics, race, and anti-vaccination are recurring themes. Some observations:
* Those on the left tend to insert race into situations in which it does not naturally arise as I see it. Here focus is nominally on inclusion/significance of minorities. It periodically comes with a tone of judgement something like getting a visit from an evangelical at your door. Listen to NPR: at least around north east cities it's replete and centered on identity politics.
* Those on the right tend to insert race into situations in which it does not naturally arise as I see it. Sometime emphasis here comes as self-righteous anger, feeling excluded, and kind of self-imposed victimization of thought or culture putatively at the hand know-it-all-liberals.
* Older guys on the right side who are pro-Trump, anti-vax tend be the angry individuals spending time recollecting the good-ol-days when guys were hardcore men. I sometimes probe these older guys with questions. What I tend to get is a lot o whining, frustration but little in the way of answers. That's a shame: us older guys are supposed to have some answers standing on the shoulders of our own experience.
My view then is the emotionalism, complaining, putative self-righteous anger, and whining is a layer on top of a more basic problem which is victimization. And that sits on an even deeper layer of lack of competence broadly speaking on what to do about it.
Whether it's "stop the steal", deep state, MSM (mainstream media) there's a running sense of we're victums. Look at headlines. You'll see plenty of "The real truth behind..." (i.e. you've been lied to elsewhere), "The dirty little secret at..." (i.e. people have omitted information we're strong enough to tell you).
I yet remain convinced that the majority of Americans (of which I am one) know full-well the solutions are at the center. I also feel like almost all Americans are sick-and-tired of the 24-7 soap opera from the talking heads on TV, and headless voices on AM/FM.
Besides this statement?
That's an objective truth claim right there!
Maybe the issue is that our culture, economy, and technology has become so complex and exotic that very few people understand anything about how anything really works. We are surrounded by layers and layers of "magic." This might feel tremendously disempowering to people, especially older people who recall a simpler era when things were more understandable.
Feeling like a victim seems to be a really common sentiment across the board.
As opposed to some sort of "new" brand of victimization or something. People are telling their own stories in an effort to be seen and to change how we do things.
Compare and contrast with the much narrower mix of "public speaking" which was more driven by classic (yes, mostly white) American Boomer-esque capitalism of before.
Seems pretty natural and expected so far, actually.
Dems had a chance with Trump to rise and be above the identity politics, and to focus on more universal goods, such as the rule of law, having a non-conspiracy based response to covid (Trump lowered the bar so much lol), etc. I don't think they properly seized it.
It's a strategy to divide the working class. With raising inequality you need to do something with the people that are unhappy. Or you give them money, and reduce inequality so they are happier; or you give them an enemy to fight so they forget about the money.
A similar thing happened after the great depression of the 30s and culminated with communism and fascism rising to power. Communism was driven by angry workers that wanted a fair share of the money. Fascism was driven by identity politics and workers more worried about identity than money, they wanted everybody to be like the ideal themselves.
So, or we end inequality, or communism comes back, or identity politics takes over. For me the first option is the best, but it's very difficult to achieve.
Not when I posted, he didn't. That's why I my quotation of him is different than what's now in his post.
The powers that be are trying to make the mob angry at straw men such as "capitalism", "colonialism" and "the patriarchy", but in the mean time, nobody is discussing real, evidence-based measures we could be taking to make the world a better place, there's only posturing and finger pointing.
IMO, we should be ensuring that the best, more positive aspects of capitalism are used to serve the best interests of humanity (i.e. stimulating investments in innovative technologies like electric cars). We should strive to have measures in place to prevent regulatory capture from fucking over startups in favor of inefficient zombie companies... And we should also have more scientists and engineers in the government, looking at evidence-based solutions to make sure we can comfortably provide housing, food, clothing, education and medical care to every child in the world, with a 5-year, 10-year and 25-year plan... Instead we have governments run by ex-lawyers and "activists" inventing new forms of victimhood.
But if we aren't talking material wealth, y'know, how about equal freedom? Equal leisure time? Equal representation? Autonomy? Respect? Everybody seems to be fixated on material wealth - which I'd infer is the whole basis for equal opportunity, and I don't think that's the question to ask. If you treat janitors with the same deference as you do a CEO, their life would be less shitty, it might even be pretty good; you're minimizing their work and treating them like a human being. Maybe this is a thing and you can get some real Princess and the Pauper (or vice versa) shit going on. And, at that point with their work minimized, maybe they could get some more paid vacation without some eminent disaster looming. And, since people are pretty self-organizing when they're not treated like shit, and they're not high-strung and burning out, they can... Maybe... do without a manager breathing down their neck? And now they don't have to run up a chain of command to fill up their squirt bottle or talk to the person that actually calls the shots, and negotiate with the client directly. Wow.
Like hypothetically, right? Who knows, maybe I'm wrong, but having been on the ground for years in various industries I don't think I am.
I don't think the material shit is what everybody is all about, I think people are fronting with their consumer goods to be able to function in the social hierarchy. I mean, there's a whole class of people who enter into debt obligations just to front like they've got money which is "directly proportional to status and success". If you remove that bar, if you equalize social standing to a singular nominal human value, I don't think most people care to entertain the ratrace. But that's a culture thing, that's an economy thing, that's an identity thing - ethereal and malleable. I think people are lead to believe that they have to run in the ratrace, and buy all the shit, and front like they're a big shot just to get to the home stretch of the human shit, live, love, laugh, family and friends. 'Cause at the end of the day, you can have all the shit, but if you don't have anybody to share it with you just look like a dildo wearing designer bedazzled pants.
Now you suffer from subprime mortgage based securities and cryptocurrency miners and microchip shortage you can't get a car or some shit. Same house increases in price 10x over lifetime because of - well, explanation takes a book. Go look at water bottle, it's made of materials average person can't even pronounce, popupropeline, polycarbonate. You put it in recycling but it killed a poor turtle in Indonesia because global supply chains and corruption.
Is this really comparable to, 'I need a new plought, and i dont know exactly all detail of how cousin jimmy does his hammering?'
I think we feel like victims because modern life is basically walking along a tight thread of avoiding becoming a victim. The reality of that is if we live in a space surrounded on all sides by prisons heuristically it's not that much different than actually being in one.