The Distance Between Rulers and Ruled

because the rulers just don't care

The Zman today writes about the disconnect between the government’s data showing low inflation and decent growth in the GDP and the economic pain felt by average people.

According to their court wizards, the economy is growing at a blistering pace. The fourth quarter of last year saw growth at over three percent and inflation falling down to two percent for what the wizards call personal items, while overall inflation was under two percent…

The American economy over the last thirty years has transformed into something that is really good for people in finance, government, the academy and corporate governance, but it has not been great for people who make things and fix things.

That’s partly why President Joe Biden’s approval numbers are way down and President Trump is presently leading in the presidential polls.

Strictly speaking, everything should be copacetic. The present ruling class obviously should be gifting itself, and it should be gifting its Oppressed Peoples supporters. The ordinary middle class in between doesn’t really count.

So we had the Rasmussen poll on the “The Elite 1% Project” that I discussed yesterday where the 1 percent — graduate degrees, urban residents, $150,000 income — reports the economy is fine:

74 percent of them say they’re actually better off financially than they were before COVID (only 20 percent of the rest of us say so);

And for me, a baby-boom retiree, the last decade up to 2020 or so has been great. My net worth was up 300% while the nominal GDP was up 50 percent. But in the ordinary economy the Obama years were slow because the Obama stimulus went to Democrat voters, and didn’t stimulate the economy. And the Fed was running a zero interest rate policy to clean up the credit system after the mortgage meltdown of 2008.

Same thing today. The Biden Inflation Reduction Act is pushing climate change and DEI — great for the climate industrial complex and DEI bureaucrats — which do not put money in ordinary worker pockets.

Of course, all the myriad of government statistics are supposed to inform the rulers about the state of the economy and guide their policy decisions. But in reality the rulers are interested in fighting their wars and gifting their supporters in advance of the next election.

American philosopher Chuck Schumer once said, of the intelligence community, that it has six ways from Sunday in getting back at you.

We could say the same thing about the economy, that the government has six ways from Sunday in gaming the economy to finance its wars and gift its supporters.

But then the question arises: how do you restore the economy after the rulers have gamed it to win a war or buy a bunch of votes or gamed the economic statistics to make things look good?

Actually, nothing has changed since Frederick Douglass said this is 1865.

The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us.…Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!

Only, his remarks are true about just about every political issue. Because almost every political program is riddled with mischief, with some cunning plan to benefit A at the expense of B, which ends up hurting both A and B.

And then comes the day when the Trump voters are Occupying Capitol Hill and the truckers are Occupying Ottawa and the farmers are Occupying Paris and the rulers react by saying “Insurrection!”

Because, ever since time began, the anointed rulers really don’t care about the benighted peasants.