Which portion of the US do you live in? (My apologies to those of you outside of the US.) Do you live in the portion nursing a grudge about your way of life slowly evaporating and your dreams of success seeming further and further away? Or do you live in the portion where it is still possible to achieve the American dream of a life better than what was available to previous generations?
More and more, it is the education you have achieved which determines what portion of the US you live in. It is less possible for people to have skills wanted by employers if you do not have academic credentials. There are many jobs, jobs that sustained small towns and cities in the past, where it was possible to earn a measure of success without academic credentials. But now, with the withdrawal of manufacturing from America’s heartland, the variety of jobs left are mainly associated with chain restaurants and big box retail stores. Few of these jobs provide a salary that enables a married couple to survive on a single wage. So it is necessary to cobble together a living by selling your labor and time to a large company, and deal with the uncertainty regarding hours and schedule these types of jobs provide. The stress of living like this leads many to wonder where things went wrong. They result in envy against the “elite” people who hold their education as a mark of superiority. And they elected Donald Trump in 2016.
So what has happened in the 7 years since that initial election? Well for several years, we managed to coast by on momentum alone. Tax reductions were the pinnacle of policy achievement during the past presidential administration, but a careful look at their effects leads one to realize that the gains from those tax cuts were illusory at best. In 2019 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that “Investment did not boom and workers will not see the promised bump in pay. Instead, the federal government incurred massive deficits while wealth inequality increased to its highest level in three decades.” And then, in 2020, the COVID pandemic hit. An economy already running on the high-octane mix of lower taxes and higher corporate profits, was hit by the reality of an illness no one had seen, and no one was able to develop an effective strategy against the disease.
It took a while, but battle lines hardened over response to COVID. One side seized on initial inconsistencies by those who pleaded with others to follow the science. They insisted that the virus (if it indeed existed) was not justification alone for mandating a ceasing of economic activity. It infringed the ability of people to take risks on their own, which they did increasingly as the effects of the virus eventually weakened. So now we see the results. As the National Institute of Health reported in December 2022, a 10-percentage-point increase in vaccination was associated with an 18.1% decrease in mortality after 6 months (95%CI, 7.4–28.8%), Still you see “conservatives” claiming evil effects of vaccination, pointing to massive epidemics of heart ailments and cancer which were supposedly caused by vaccines. Funny how these epidemics have not been reported in any responsible media. I will admit I greatly misread the popular response when mRNA vaccines came along. I believed many who were anti-vax would take to these new vaccines which did not rely upon traditional vaccine techniques. I was not ready for the virulent opposition to any vaccine.
Now we are actually seeing human evolution in action. Those who choose to believe science have a better survival rate than those who actively repudiate science. Let me be the first to state that science is not always straight forward. What people don’t understand is that science is aimed at providing the most accurate answers given the information available. As more information becomes available, scientific advice may change. The majority of the public does not understand this. Indeed, they do not understand statistics or confidence intervals at all. The statistic given above says that at a 95% confidence interval, the true value of mortality reduction is between 7.4 and 28.8%. The difference cannot be explained away by chance. So this pandemic has manifested itself in more science believers living, while more science deniers died. If this persisted for multiple generations, it would result in more people with higher education (and by proxy, higher IQ’s) surviving and reproducing.
Today we are seeing the last bastions of physical trait superiority trying to maintain their position atop the social pyramid. When US Senators challenge hearing witnesses to get it on, indeed, when mixed martial artists can get elected as US Senators, it shows how an appeal to brute force is trying mightily to hold on to power. There is no better example of that than the bully-in-chief we see trying to recapture the presidency. The antithesis of intellectual curiosity, somehow he has established dominance over his tribe of like-minded followers. And just like the alpha male chimpanzee, he maintains that dominance only until a bigger bully is able to defeat him.
Legislation recently approved has tried to re-establish manufacturing across this nation. Large battery factories are favoring the rural heartland. But now these plants are having difficulty in hiring, partially because fewer believe in manufacturing as a viable career, and partly because even an assembly-line position requires education beyond high school. Community colleges are trying to fill that void, but it may require several years before the work force needed for these new manufacturing jobs will enable these new plants to be the job magnets capable of sustaining rural communities. Some might say that the inhabitants of fly-over country have become weak, but I have confidence we will eventually meet the challenges of education in this country. It will require effort and sacrifice. What I fear is the devolution of the American peoples as someone pledges to make things better without pain or sacrifice.
Indeed, this country seems determined to prove that no central government is needed. As was stated, the purpose of an administration should be to shrink government so it can be dragged into the bathroom and drowned in the bathtub. The siren song of economic growth is equated with freedom. Well, sooner or later this 40+ year march to the bottom that began with Ronald Reagan must stop, and the trend must reverse, or else we will only find out how much our government has done for us through its absence.
Even A Broken Clock 