Quo Vadis, Democrats?

[frunk]

I'd also ask, is there someone who's aspiration for themselves or their family is to be waiting tables for minimum wage?  I would think that everybody hopes to achieve more than that, and if they don't have that desire our system is even more broken then I thought.

I think that for many people living a relatively comfortable life, with a reasonable amount of respect and stability is considered a reasonable aspiration.

If waiting tables provides that, then I expect there are some for whom that's the aspiration. Similarly, if the minimum wage provides that, then it's potentially enough.

In a society where waiting tables is seen as demeaning and the minimum make is only enough for poverty, I'd expect most people to aspire for more. IMO it's an issue of respect and the distribution of resources within a society, not an issue of people's lack of drive.

I think minimum wage is the kicker.  It hasn't moved in most parts of the US in years, and in no way is it a livable wage now.  So people might be happily employed in a restaurant, but it would require more compensation than the least possible to make it work.

[crazy canuck]

My favourite restaurant here on the North Shore has staff who consider themselves professionals and spend their careers to working at that restaurant.

The staff stay there for years.  To Jacob's point, my impression is that the owner of the restaurant treats them very well both in terms of their pay and also their working conditions.

[Josquius]

I'd also ask, is there someone who's aspiration for themselves or their family is to be waiting tables for minimum wage?  I would think that everybody hopes to achieve more than that, and if they don't have that desire our system is even more broken then I thought.

No idea how true but I'm sure I remember reading in France it it seen as a more respectable job.

All right, I give up. It's both true that social media is the cause of people being upset and it's also true that social media has nothing to do with it and it people are upset because their lives are actually demonstrably worse even if they didn't see it on social media

Well no.
Social media is a key factor in being people so upset because it really highlights that their lives are demonstrably worse than those of people they think are their equals.
If they didn't have social media rubbing in this message the unrest would take quite a different and probably more accurate form.

[crazy canuck]

I'd also ask, is there someone who's aspiration for themselves or their family is to be waiting tables for minimum wage?  I would think that everybody hopes to achieve more than that, and if they don't have that desire our system is even more broken then I thought.

No idea how true but I'm sure I remember reading in France it it seen as a more respectable job.

All right, I give up. It's both true that social media is the cause of people being upset and it's also true that social media has nothing to do with it and it people are upset because their lives are actually demonstrably worse even if they didn't see it on social media

Well no.
Social media is a key factor in being people so upset because it really highlights that their lives are demonstrably worse than those of people they think are their equals.
If they didn't have social media rubbing in this message the unrest would take quite a different and probably more accurate form.

How does social media demonstrate that their life is worse?  Are you assuming that people are so intellectually ill equipped to understand that the lifestyle that influencers are portraying on social media aren't real?

Also, why do they have to look on social media to realize that their lives are actually pretty crap

[Zoupa]

The problem is that the radicalization isn't coming poor.  The DSA stalwarts aren't working class or poor.  They are mostly from the Middle Class or really upper-Middle Class.  And this is true for a lot of MAGA (though MAGA probably has more working class people in it, both as a percentage and in absolute terms.)  What these people do have in common is a fear of downward mobility.  For all the talk of solidarity about the working class, the these people don't want actually be the people waiting tables for minimum wage.

A lot of people would be fine with minimum wage if you could actually live off of it.

[Josquius]

]

How does social media demonstrate that their life is worse?  Are you assuming that people are so intellectually ill equipped to understand that the lifestyle that influencers are portraying on social media aren't real?

Also, why do they have to look on social media to realize that their lives are actually pretty crap

There's a tonne of research out there about it's ill effects.

It's nice to think people can be rational and recognise it's all just put on for the cameras and the reality is not constant glamour but.... No.

Eg https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/mar/19/instagram-worse-mental-health-whatsapp-global-study-finds

[Jacob]

I think minimum wage is the kicker.  It hasn't moved in most parts of the US in years, and in no way is it a livable wage now.  So people might be happily employed in a restaurant, but it would require more compensation than the least possible to make it work.

Yeah for sure. My point was more to point at a broader world outside the US at the moment. It is possible that the minimum wage could be livable and adequate, though that does not seem to be the situation in your country right now.

[Sheilbh]

The problem is that the radicalization isn't coming poor.  The DSA stalwarts aren't working class or poor.  They are mostly from the Middle Class or really upper-Middle Class.  And this is true for a lot of MAGA (though MAGA probably has more working class people in it, both as a percentage and in absolute terms.)  What these people do have in common is a fear of downward mobility.  For all the talk of solidarity about the working class, the these people don't want actually be the people waiting tables for minimum wage.

Sure but that's always been the case, no?

Not to go all Marxist and be too simplistic and programmatic but the driving force of right-populist movements historically is the downwardly mobile petite bourgeoisie. Similarly on the left it is often (though not exclusively and more in the Western world) downwardly mobile, for want of a better word, "graduate" class. Or as you often frame it PMC - though I'd handle that with a bit of care - I can't help but think there's something a little bit of the Mao in the Cultural Revolution in Musk et al.

I think the big question that we need to answer - and where the challenge to the "system" comes from - is why are so many people downwardly mobile? I mean to screw over one is unfortunate, to fuck up both is starting to look careless.

FWIW I'm not entirely convinced by inequality as we're talking about it - not least because I think the trajectory is rather different in different countries. I think the fundamental economc condition is global and it is the emergence of a new global middle class because of Asia and above all China which materially reduces the position and goods available to the traditional developed world's (a position fundamentally based on two hundred years of an injust economic order established and maintained by force) middle class and poor. Ultimately I would argue that for all the talk of neoliberalism, which is important, when the histories are written Reagan and Thatcher and Pinochet etc will be footnotes in the biography of Deng Xiaoping. Because that's the profound economic change, re-ordering, up-ending that is shaping our world and everything else are just little local difficulties.

I think there is more in the parity of esteem, respect and voice which is not just about wage and working conitions. But also I think there is something to the wider point on social media and rolling the "Bowling Together" argument forward to a signficantly more atomised and and algorithmically isolated society. That's partly why I think you cannot disentangle the social benefits and freedoms of neo-liberalism, based on liberating the individual from the market forces producing it by atomising the individual - they are two sides of the same coin.

[Jacob]

I think there is more in the parity of esteem, respect and voice which is not just about wage and working conitions. But also I think there is something to the wider point on social media and rolling the "Bowling Together" argument forward to a signficantly more atomised and and algorithmically isolated society. That's partly why I think you cannot disentangle the social benefits and freedoms of neo-liberalism, based on liberating the individual from the market forces producing it by atomising the individual - they are two sides of the same coin.

What's the "bowling together" argument?

And what does your last sentence mean? The two sides of the same coin one?

[Sheilbh]

What's the "bowling together" argument?

I got the name wrong It's "Bowling Alone" It was a book, I think from the 90s, about how Americans weren't hanging out anymore - and the knock on effects that was having socially, culturally, politically. I think we're thirty years into that story.

And perhaps now we are bowling together but it's not in person and your team are algorithmically determined.

And what does your last sentence mean? The two sides of the same coin one?

Basically I think economic conditions broadly produce the social, cultural and political worlds we live in and I think one aspect of that is that neo-liberalism is an economic project that is premised on breaking down the possibilities of collective power (whether at the level of the union or the state) and treating everyone as individual workers or unit costs and individual consumers with our appropriate, algorithmically measured preferences.

I think the social and cultural consequences of that economic order is also an atomising and individual social and cultural reality. Which can be experienced as alienating and also profoundly liberating. It is both the village or the town without a pub or boulangerie (statistically more likely to vote Reform or RN than a village with those hubs), as well as the person able to express themselves in ways that they couldn't previously or people finding different communities online (even sickos like people so degenerate they were expelled from a forum by a game company beloved of tankies and fascists alike ).

Having made a barb at her irrelevance there is a line that sort of gestures at this about Thatcher. Her line on her project was that "economics are the method; the object is to change the soul of the nation". It was often described as an aspiration to re-create the Britain of her father: a stolid, community minded greengrocer who was a local councillor, chair of the local Rotary Association, Methodist lay preacher, chair of the local building society (like a credt union etc). What she actually created was the Britain her son: a spiv. And I don't think that's an unfortunate side effect I think it is the logical outcome - or contradiction - within neoliberalism as a "conservative" or "right-wing" project. The economics will inevitably and profoundly undermine the social fabric that conservatives are trying to preserve (up to and including the "national"). It is not an accident that people who were hippies in the 60s form the generational base of Reaganism, or that neo-liberalism is ascendant when soixante-huitards are at the age of maximum political power generationlly.

So I don't think you can disentangle the political, social and cultural products from the economic order - because I think they are ultimately products of it. And I think that tempers the end of neo-liberalism discourse - of what will come next and what it will produce socially, culturally and politically.

[The Minsky Moment]

Robert Putnam - Bowling Alone.  All the rage in the mid-90s. 
We've gone way beyond the decline of Elks Clubs at this point. 

[Norgy]

What's the "bowling together" argument?

I got the name wrong It's "Bowling Alone" It was a book, I think from the 90s, about how Americans weren't hanging out anymore - and the knock on effects that was having socially, culturally, politically. I think we're thirty years into that story.

And perhaps now we are bowling together but it's not in person and your team are algorithmically determined.

And what does your last sentence mean? The two sides of the same coin one?

Basically I think economic conditions broadly produce the social, cultural and political worlds we live in and I think one aspect of that is that neo-liberalism is an economic project that is premised on breaking down the possibilities of collective power (whether at the level of the union or the state) and treating everyone as individual workers or unit costs and individual consumers with our appropriate, algorithmically measured preferences.

I think the social and cultural consequences of that economic order is also an atomising and individual social and cultural reality. Which can be experienced as alienating and also profoundly liberating. It is both the village or the town without a pub or boulangerie (statistically more likely to vote Reform or RN than a village with those hubs), as well as the person able to express themselves in ways that they couldn't previously or people finding different communities online (even sickos like people so degenerate they were expelled from a forum by a game company beloved of tankies and fascists alike ).

Having made a barb at her irrelevance there is a line that sort of gestures at this about Thatcher. Her line on her project was that "economics are the method; the object is to change the soul of the nation". It was often described as an aspiration to re-create the Britain of her father: a stolid, community minded greengrocer who was a local councillor, chair of the local Rotary Association, Methodist lay preacher, chair of the local building society (like a credt union etc). What she actually created was the Britain her son: a spiv. And I don't think that's an unfortunate side effect I think it is the logical outcome - or contradiction - within neoliberalism as a "conservative" or "right-wing" project. The economics will inevitably and profoundly undermine the social fabric that conservatives are trying to preserve (up to and including the "national"). It is not an accident that people who were hippies in the 60s form the generational base of Reaganism, or that neo-liberalism is ascendant when soixante-huitards are at the age of maximum political power generationlly.

So I don't think you can disentangle the political, social and cultural products from the economic order - because I think they are ultimately products of it. And I think that tempers the end of neo-liberalism discourse - of what will come next and what it will produce socially, culturally and politically.

Since there is no upvote or downvote here, I'll just write this: Superb post, Sheilbh.

We will all end up as some individual version of the Ciskei experiment.

[Jacob]

Yeah now I follow. Thanks for the clarification.

I think I tend to agree.

Some times I wonder to what degree this is something altogether new versus to what degree this is just the eternal "O Tempora O Mores" of the moment.

[Josquius]

Yes. Totally agreed with Sheilbh.
We can say Neo Liberalism is the core ideology to blame absolutely.
Though on a lower level we know what technology is to blame at the core- the car.
Its ill effects of course take time to really be felt. Americans look back at the 50s as a golden age as they had their cars but they still had their classic main streets and actual towns that worked like towns.
The logical effect of motorisation though was that those main streets were soon to die.
Its quite the chicken and egg situation really, a negative cycle. Communities die so people vote for policies that will further kill communities and the promise of enrichening individuals (which for most, don't).

[Sheilbh]

Yeah now I follow. Thanks for the clarification.

I think I tend to agree.

Some times I wonder to what degree this is something altogether new versus to what degree this is just the eternal "O Tempora O Mores" of the moment.

I think that's fair.

I think for me the single big driver of everything - the central, brute fact - is the rise of China and the return of Asia (especially if followed by India). It is a reversion to distribution of production and economic power that existed before the late 18th century when, because of the agricultural and industrial revolutions and imperialism, the Euro-Atlantic took over. But it is a profound shift from the world order we've had for the last few centuries which was based on accumulating wealth and productive power within that Euro-Atlantic zone (plus some outliers like Japan).

So I am tempted by the "o tempora o mores" view but I think what is happening in underlying economic terms is the most profound and significant shift in the last 200-250 years. I've no idea what follows but I think we're living through basically a "world-historical" change (and there is nothing any of our leaders can do about it).