Interesting debate. Ferguson is a really interesting thinker. I think his point comparing the two is useful. But Goldberg clearly wins the “argument” here that the two are fundamentally different.
Does the US today resemble the late-stage Soviets?
- Thread starter BradStevens
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We are the economic engine of the world, while the Soviet Union was always a 3rd rate economic power.
In our supposed decline, I read somewhere that if the entire EU were to join the USA as the 51st state, it would rank 51st, in per capita economics (I forget what the criteria were), behind Mississippi.
In our supposed decline, I read somewhere that if the entire EU were to join the USA as the 51st state, it would rank 51st, in per capita economics (I forget what the criteria were), behind Mississippi.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
My view is the United States will falter because they want to falter. The system we have is made to thrive because it is based on freedom of the individual. And that is the reason why we took off and people have been wanting to come here for so long. On the other hand the system of the Soviets was the opposite. There was no freedom and people had to go to work where they were assigned. It is the same in China except China has put some principles of capitalism. The reason they are so big right now is they have multiple millions of slaves who are paid dirt wages and therefore the government can rake in the money because they can undercut the other nations whose people live a lot better.
I agree on both points.
I get what Niall is saying and why he’s saying it. But Jonah is spot on with his rebuttal. But this is not to say that there isn’t still some value in NF’s analysis.
I really do believe that we’re at something of a fork in the road. And that is mostly because the course we’re presently on is unsustainable. This forces us to decide what course correction we’re going to take - and it is not a trivial question. It is a big question (series of questions, really) that will lead to significant changes one way or another.
I also think this is the primary explanation of the heightened acrimony in Washington.
I think the US might be in a worse position. Frog in a pot style.
We can vote ourselves out of this situation but we don't. The USSR (and really current Russia) didn't have that option. The problem is Americans. It's us. We're the problem. Not a system of government. We have one of the most liberal democracies in the history of mankind.
As crazed notes, there are choices to make. We won't make them.
We can vote ourselves out of this situation but we don't. The USSR (and really current Russia) didn't have that option. The problem is Americans. It's us. We're the problem. Not a system of government. We have one of the most liberal democracies in the history of mankind.
As crazed notes, there are choices to make. We won't make them.
For starters, my reading of the overall feelings in America today is we are aphrensive and fearful concerning our future.
Ferguson plays into this national mood of decline with his comparisons that we are like the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Goldberg pretty much agrees but offers some degree of hope.
Interesting discussion between the two gentlemen. However, it was not as much a debate as just some slight disagreement about just how bad our future looks.
Yikes, hoping they are both exaggerating, and we will overcome our funk once this election and Covid are finally in our rearview mirrors.
The feeling of America being in precipitous decline is an image carefully crafted by the religious right and white nationalists for almost 50 years now. It's silly.
America is as great as it has ever been.
I'll put on my scream-teamer whiny Trumpturd hat.
It's not great because gays are no longer told they are scum and need to hide, and are told that they can marry, adopt, and be themselves? The horror!
It's not great because we outlawed segregation (the driving force behind the moral majority, which was formed not out of Roe v Wade but out of rulings that Christian schools could not remain tax-exempt if they excluded blacks)? The horror!
It's not great because even the poor, homeless, etc is now allowed to vote? The horror!
It's not great because we value women and minorities in the workplace? The horror!
It's not great because we have decided to protect the environment, clear air, clean water, and a stable climate? The horror!
You "dream teamers" are dumb shit whiners.
America is as great as it has ever been.
I'll put on my scream-teamer whiny Trumpturd hat.
It's not great because gays are no longer told they are scum and need to hide, and are told that they can marry, adopt, and be themselves? The horror!
It's not great because we outlawed segregation (the driving force behind the moral majority, which was formed not out of Roe v Wade but out of rulings that Christian schools could not remain tax-exempt if they excluded blacks)? The horror!
It's not great because even the poor, homeless, etc is now allowed to vote? The horror!
It's not great because we value women and minorities in the workplace? The horror!
It's not great because we have decided to protect the environment, clear air, clean water, and a stable climate? The horror!
You "dream teamers" are dumb shit whiners.
The critiques you're making here bear little resemblance to either the arguments put forth by Niall Ferguson or the rebuttals made by Jonah Goldberg. They are instead a series of non sequiturs, presented in bullet point form.
Ferguson (who, far from being religious right, is an avowed atheist) gives a couple of paragraphs in his piece towards criticism of DEI. But if you read criticism of DEI as necessarily an objection to valuing women and minorities in the workplace, then you haven't read many good criticisms of DEI. I'm sure there are bad ones (heck, I know there are bad ones...I've read them). But there are also some very thoughtful ones as well -- that only the most hackneyed of responses would characterize as being hostile to the idea of valuing women and minorities in the workplace.
In reality, policies to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” do nothing to help poor minorities. Instead, the sole beneficiaries appear to be a horde of apparatchik DEI “officers.” In the meantime, these initiatives are clearly undermining educational standards, even at elite medical schools, and encouraging the mutilation of thousands of teenagers in the name of “gender-affirming surgery.”
As you can see, his specific criticism of DEI here isn't even so much about that -- but about how academic institutions have been damaged by reorienting their missions around this paradigm at the expense of educational standards.
And, beyond that, it isn't even the primary thrust of his narrative -- which is about the unsustainability of our current fiscal/economic situation. He makes this argument....and you go off on some tangent about gays, segregation, and poor people voting?
FTR, I absolutely share a lot of Ferguson's concerns, even if I ultimately side with Goldberg that the comparison to 1980's Soviet Union is specious. I do not think we're a decade away from societal implosion. But do I think we have some serious, structural problems that must be addressed? Yes, I do.
This is not a white nationalist thing. Nor is it a religious right thing. Like both Ferguson and Goldberg, I have no equity at all with those movements. The problems I recognize and fear are not the result of our becoming tolerant of gay people, women, and minorities. They're more akin to the farmer killing the goose who laid golden eggs.
She. Is. A. Lesbian. Brad.
How many times must I tell you?
How many times must I tell you?
And that right there is basically what I fear -- and expect.
I remember vividly when President Clinton emphasized 4 words in his 1998 State of the Union speech: Save Social Security First. Policymakers already knew (and had known for a number of years) that the demographic tea leaves had put Social Security on a collision course with insolvency. It wasn't even the first time in the program's history this had been foreseen as a problem. The original tax rate was 2%. It's currently 12.4% -- and still going broke.
Every year, the Trustees publish a report -- and every year the first thing everybody looks for in that report is the likely date of depletion of the funds in the Social Security Trust Fund. It's presently about 9 years away -- and that rests on the assumption that the General Fund will have paid back the ~$3T it borrowed from the Trust Fund. Those payments are being made...because (last I looked) OASDI taxes fall short of covering the cost of benefits.
So...we've known this program was headed for insolvency for several decades. And what have our policymakers done about this? Well, nothing. GW Bush tried to address it and, predictably, that went nowhere. Third rail and all that.
But our problems don't end with Social Security -- or with all other entitlement programs. Medicare's long-term fiscal hole is even larger than Social Security.
Our elected officials lack the courage or the leadership skills to take this problem on. It's far easier for them to look to the Fed to use its balance sheet to bail them out and save them from having to make hard choices. That is what they've done to date and it is, I suspect, what they'll continue to do.
I don't think we're becoming the 1980s Soviet Union. I think we could well become a much larger and more consequential version of 1990s Japan. Japan hasn't collapsed. But, notably, their per capita GDP has been basically flat since the early 90s. And, folks, that's no bueno.
That is absolutely a valid criticism of DEI as is is practiced in some situations.
I was at one time the elected national chair of a scientific organization with 11,000 members. One weakness identified early on was lack of representation of women and minorities at our national meetings as invited speakers. We had many detailed and even somewhat heated discussions of how to "fix it".
Do you put different speakers in different bins and pick "x" number of each? No. You pick the best people to present the best work.
So do you do nothing? No.
But if you are proposing to have a symposium on (say) recent advances in breast cancer therapy, and have lined up 6 good speakers, and they are all white men... maybe you need to think about it a bit more. Ask the 20 professors in the room discussing and voting on what symposia to have about any exceptional women or minorities in the field. Or maybe you want to highlight the work of the hotshot male Professor Smith at Harvard who just published a great study as senior author. But then you notice that the first author, the person who rolled up sleeves and did the work in the lab, has a woman's name. Can you ask HER to give the talk, with the blessing of her mentor? Why not?
Then some other symposia you ask to people to apply to speak. Maybe you encourage applications by women and minorities. Just simply ASKING does increase the applicant pool. I have seen it.
Over my 4 years we did increase woman's representation as speakers, up to at least the percentage of women membership in the organization. It had been half that, just a few years prior. It was harder to get hard numbers on race, since we don't ask people to identify by race and we shouldn't guess, by type of name.
There was NO tradeoff at all with respect to QUALITY. There doesn't need to be. If there is, you are taking the lazy way out.
But she's so cuuuuuute. I'm sure I can turn her.
You couldn’t be more stupid. Or wrong.
Are you deliberately trying to avoid addressing the basic thrust of Ferguson's piece?
I feel like I'm listening to somebody panning a movie by pointing out that the costumes it used were from a slightly different time period than when the story took place.
All shitter knows are lefty talking points bouncing around a bubble at some fourth rate school. That unclemark likes his post is sad.
Your reply is spot on. With re to maga the fear isn’t around the things noted for the vast majority. It’s economic. The American dream. Tech replacing industry. Tech that they won’t be able to gear up for in time. It’s a nostalgia not predicated on racism but affordable starter homes, jobs that don’t require a master’s, and a parent having the choice to stay home with kids while the other works. That’s what trump won an election on. Is it achievable. Probably not. But so much of what shitter wrote is vapid crap you would hear on the view. No one is reversing all of the anti discrimination laws etc
He’s not worth engaging. Very very dumb dude. Like a cartoon character
Re your analogy, the criticism also needs to come from someone who never saw the movie.
I haven't studied Ferguson, sorry. What I have studied a bit are Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, Tim LaHaye, Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., Pat Robertson, Joseph Coors, Stephen Miller, Derek Black, Renaud Camus aka the "le grand remplacement” guy, and others. The movement to stage a hostile takeover of the GOP by the religious right.
One thing that is seldom discussed regarding the violent Jan 6 mob is how many were carrying Bibles, crosses, and shouting about how they were fighting for Trump and fighting for God. That this new revolution, this 1776 revisited, was in part at least a Holy War.
Scary shit.
Well, when your goal is to win popularity contests (why even call them elections anymore), it doesn't pay to be unpopular.And that right there is basically what I fear -- and expect.
I remember vividly when President Clinton emphasized 4 words in his 1998 State of the Union speech: Save Social Security First. Policymakers already knew (and had known for a number of years) that the demographic tea leaves had put Social Security on a collision course with insolvency. It wasn't even the first time in the program's history this had been foreseen as a problem. The original tax rate was 2%. It's currently 12.4% -- and still going broke.
Every year, the Trustees publish a report -- and every year the first thing everybody looks for in that report is the likely date of depletion of the funds in the Social Security Trust Fund. It's presently about 9 years away -- and that rests on the assumption that the General Fund will have paid back the ~$3T it borrowed from the Trust Fund. Those payments are being made...because (last I looked) OASDI taxes fall short of covering the cost of benefits.
So...we've known this program was headed for insolvency for several decades. And what have our policymakers done about this? Well, nothing. GW Bush tried to address it and, predictably, that went nowhere. Third rail and all that.
But our problems don't end with Social Security -- or with all other entitlement programs. Medicare's long-term fiscal hole is even larger than Social Security.
Our elected officials lack the courage or the leadership skills to take this problem on. It's far easier for them to look to the Fed to use its balance sheet to bail them out and save them from having to make hard choices. That is what they've done to date and it is, I suspect, what they'll continue to do.
I don't think we're becoming the 1980s Soviet Union. I think we could well become a much larger and more consequential version of 1990s Japan. Japan hasn't collapsed. But, notably, their per capita GDP has been basically flat since the early 90s. And, folks, that's no bueno.
And, to be sure, raising taxes, slashing programs, etc. is unpopular. Even at the height of the Cold War we had no true economic adversary. Now we do (China, possibly India). We can't scare them with our military b/c they have no intention of actually engaging in that manner. When we do try to impose ourselves, we look like brutes.
We've spent 70 years creating a consumeristic economy that began with manufacturing prowess but has morphed into a financial services, healthcare services heavy ecosystem which, while benefitting us tremendously, likely won't sustain a country of near 400m people in 20 years.
I'll be in Africa part time by then with any luck. Growing trees and driving on the wrong side of the road.
Ah yes, of course.
They made their totally disconnected review after they saw the movie....poster.
Reading this response reminds me of the impression Kevin Pollak did of Christopher Walken on Bob & Tom years ago.
POLLAK: Have you interviewed Christopher Walken?
B&T: No.
POLLAK: OK, well here's your chance. And keep in mind, all of his thoughts are completely unconnected.
B&T: Alright....what's your new project Christopher?
POLLAK (AS CHRISTOPHER WALKEN): Frankenstein never scared me!
B&T: So how long have you been working on the film?
POLLAK (AS CHRISTOPHER WALKEN): Marsupials do.
B&T: And when's its release date?
POLLAK (AS CHRISTOPHER WALKEN): 'Cuz they're faaaast.
In all seriousness...if not for your benefit, then at least for the benefit of others, here's a link to the original piece that Niall Ferguson wrote comparing the current United States to the late Soviet period.
You know, you don't really have to "study" Niall Ferguson or anybody else in order to read and respond to something they wrote. If you feel it necessary to get some background on the author -- so you don't make a fool of yourself publicly by saying "Well, I don't know about this Ferguson fella....but I studied Jerry Falwell, and that dude said some scary shit!" -- Wikipedia is a pretty reliable source on biological info.
FTR, he's a historian from Scotland who has held affiliations with Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, Harvard, Stanford and probably some other prestigious academic institutions.
I usually blame the emergence of populism on the negligence of non-populist politicians who have allowed problems to fester to the point that voters just throw up their hands and say "What the hell...sure, I'll vote for a con artist from Queens who once sold a line of Trump Steaks and sold degrees from Trump University. Why the hell not? The 'normal' guys I've always voted for haven't delivered on their promises. If I'm going to get a ration of bullshit either way, I suppose I'd rather get it from a guy who's been peddling bullshit his entire life."
In other words, normie politicians may take comfort in thinking that the Fed can bail them out from having to make the hard choices. Monetizing our debt will be even more painful for average Americans...but at least politicians won't have to sacrifice their seats! But they shouldn't take comfort in that at all. Eventually, they'll likely have no choice but to try to out populist the populists.
Of course, the problem with this is that populism (by Trump or anybody else) isn't the solution here. It'll just make matters worse. The solution is for us to have fiscal, monetary, trade, immigration, etc. policies that look as if they were designed on purpose.
But it's hard to be hopeful that we'll ever see this. Because there are a whole helluva lot of people who are deeply invested in the status quo of our welfare state -- and not just the people who have arranged their livelihoods around it. I honestly think they'd rather continue to see the currency continue to be devalued than to do anything which might call that vision into question. At least they can blame that on Kroger and WalMart.
For some part of every year, sure. Again, pending high speed internet access.
It has its charms not least of which is it being far away from here.
Isn't she royalty over there? Can't she just order that they bring you your Internet?
I think the more frightening thing is what Ferguson refers to as our desperation that is leading to all these suicides and fentanyl deaths. I'm not sure how we turn that around and I'm afraid it is being passed on to the younger generations.And that right there is basically what I fear -- and expect.
I remember vividly when President Clinton emphasized 4 words in his 1998 State of the Union speech: Save Social Security First. Policymakers already knew (and had known for a number of years) that the demographic tea leaves had put Social Security on a collision course with insolvency. It wasn't even the first time in the program's history this had been foreseen as a problem. The original tax rate was 2%. It's currently 12.4% -- and still going broke.
Every year, the Trustees publish a report -- and every year the first thing everybody looks for in that report is the likely date of depletion of the funds in the Social Security Trust Fund. It's presently about 9 years away -- and that rests on the assumption that the General Fund will have paid back the ~$3T it borrowed from the Trust Fund. Those payments are being made...because (last I looked) OASDI taxes fall short of covering the cost of benefits.
So...we've known this program was headed for insolvency for several decades. And what have our policymakers done about this? Well, nothing. GW Bush tried to address it and, predictably, that went nowhere. Third rail and all that.
But our problems don't end with Social Security -- or with all other entitlement programs. Medicare's long-term fiscal hole is even larger than Social Security.
Our elected officials lack the courage or the leadership skills to take this problem on. It's far easier for them to look to the Fed to use its balance sheet to bail them out and save them from having to make hard choices. That is what they've done to date and it is, I suspect, what they'll continue to do.
I don't think we're becoming the 1980s Soviet Union. I think we could well become a much larger and more consequential version of 1990s Japan. Japan hasn't collapsed. But, notably, their per capita GDP has been basically flat since the early 90s. And, folks, that's no bueno.
FWIW, today on NPR they said that fentanyl seizures in Mexico and US fentanyl deaths were half what they were previously. So something is being accomplished.
I'm not sure it matters, Mark. Fentanyl is so cheap and easy to make, they can afford to have half seized and they still crush it.
Kevin Kisner wore a 1776 hat while playing in The Open.
Has just as much relevance to the topic as your statement
The underlining issue is the money is broken. There are similarities between all declining empires because they all end going broke. Ferg is seeing that, but not understanding it.
In the current debt based system a majority of the wealth flows to the top and the more scare assets become harder and harder for a majority of the population to afford, for example housing. The natural state of a free market is deflationary. It has to be. The only reason we have inflation is because they print money and it ends up stealing a large percentage of the productivity gains, that we all should be enjoying. The two charts below are why people are pissed off and why we’re declining. People are unable to articulate the problem, but they feel it and experience it everyday. Unfortunately, we all end up getting pissed off and pointing the finger at the other side, which is what the government wants, so they can continue to steal from us.
And of course Boomers don’t understand the frustrations because they were young at the beginning of the cycle and able to acquire all the assets before they got too expensive.
Don’t worry, Bitcoin fixes this, it just takes time for people to understand it and adopt it, but it’s happening. Trump is speaking at the Bitcoin conference in two weeks. You might want to start paying attention to signals. Also, the next crisis will be enormous, whatever it is. In 2008 we spent a trillion to paper over the problem. It took 6-7 trillion to paper over in 2020. These moments speed up adoption quickly, as people realize what they thought they knew, wasn’t true .
In the current debt based system a majority of the wealth flows to the top and the more scare assets become harder and harder for a majority of the population to afford, for example housing. The natural state of a free market is deflationary. It has to be. The only reason we have inflation is because they print money and it ends up stealing a large percentage of the productivity gains, that we all should be enjoying. The two charts below are why people are pissed off and why we’re declining. People are unable to articulate the problem, but they feel it and experience it everyday. Unfortunately, we all end up getting pissed off and pointing the finger at the other side, which is what the government wants, so they can continue to steal from us.
And of course Boomers don’t understand the frustrations because they were young at the beginning of the cycle and able to acquire all the assets before they got too expensive.
Don’t worry, Bitcoin fixes this, it just takes time for people to understand it and adopt it, but it’s happening. Trump is speaking at the Bitcoin conference in two weeks. You might want to start paying attention to signals. Also, the next crisis will be enormous, whatever it is. In 2008 we spent a trillion to paper over the problem. It took 6-7 trillion to paper over in 2020. These moments speed up adoption quickly, as people realize what they thought they knew, wasn’t true .
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