Quibbling with Deaton
Polistra's rule of one exception: When a profession or a business is totally corrupt and criminal, Deepstate always allows exactly one exception.

In "economics" the one exception is Angus Deaton. He's the only economist in the world.

All "economists" serve exactly one purpose: RAISE SHARE VALUE. Deaton points out that all "economists" serve exactly one purpose: RAISE SHARE VALUE. That's why he's the only economist.

His latest effort is important, and as always he gets the main points of human behavior right.

Here he expresses all the main problems concisely and correctly:

Unions provided social life and political power for many people who have less of both today. The replacement of stakeholder capitalism by shareholder value maximization is widespread in the US and has been remarked on here, too. Paul Collier has noted that Imperial Chemical Industries, once the crown jewel of British industry, used to boast “we aim to be the finest chemical company in the world,” but that, before it was lost to takeovers and mergers in 2006, it had changed its slogan to “we aim to maximize shareholder valuation.”

ON. THE. FUCKING. DOT.

Because Deaton is British, he misses some cultural or historical factors for US.

Example 1:

America’s first Gilded Age is another case. It also shows that the fundamental rules of the game can be changed. In the Progressive Era, four constitutional amendments were passed, all designed to limit inequality of one form or another. One instituted the income tax, one gave women the vote, one prohibited alcohol—strongly supported by women, who believed that alcohol abuse was an instrument of their oppression—and one an electoral reform that instituted the direct election of senators, as opposed to their previous appointment by state legislatures that were often dominated by business.

Those 1918 changes didn't cure the Gilded Age, they expanded it. Three of them MULTIPLIED the power of banks and corporations, and one was irrelevant. 1. Prohibition created a new form of government corruption. Previously governments obeyed legitimate mobsters like Morgan and Vanderbilt, who were creating real industries with real jobs. After Prohibition, Deepstate switched its allegiance to illegitimate mobsters who created nothing but damage. 2. The change in the Senate removed the power of the states. Previously each senator represented a state government, which gave him considerable leverage in resisting federal centrality. After the 17th, senators represented corporations. 3. The income tax replaced tariffs, which had encouraged real industry and agriculture. The income tax put the burden of taxation on workers and removed the pressure to keep skills local. 4. Voting by women was irrelevant because voting is irrelevant.

Example 2:

Less-educated white men and women in America have had their lives progressively undermined, starting in the 1970s, and showing up, since 1990, in rising numbers of deaths from suicide, alcoholic liver disease, and drug overdoses. African Americans experienced a similar disaster thirty years earlier and the improvements in their lives since then have protected them to an extent.

Right about the main point. Wrong about the timeline for blacks. Black income rose steadily from 1930 to 1970, when it started to drop. That was the same time when those "improvements" came into effect. Those "improvements" took blacks out of the jobs they could do, and pushed them into jobs where they would fail. The INTENDED RESULT was blacks on welfare. Blacks are less prone to suicide because they retained a Natural Law culture, with family supports and functional churches. The churches remained powerful and godly because they remained segregated. White churches were never especially powerful, and after 1970 most of them turned Satanic and lost their members.

What Deaton misses above all is the INTERNAL GOD-ASSIGNED PURPOSE OF MAKING. Working class men are in trouble in bank-driven Sorosia because banks are systematically EXTERMINATING all real labor and all real laborers.

Men are meant to MAKE THINGS. If they can't make things, they will BREAK THINGS.

Labels: Make or break

  ¶ 9:35 AM