When in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine I addressed the discussion of German--and Japanese--"rearmament," I argued that some seemed to have an exaggerated sense of the significance of those countries' governments' announced increases in defense spending and other policy changes, for a number of reasons. One was the fact that the remilitarization of both countries began even before they regained sovereignty from their occupiers after the Second World War, and traveled most of the way to being not just relatively large military powers (as the Federal Republic of Germany had become no later than the mid-1960s), but "normal" ones disposing of their forces in the same manner as other nations, with Germany's allies' relaxation of their earlier treaty-imposed restrictions on the country's rearmament, and the German courts' reinterpretation of the constitution, long since giving Germany a pretty free hand to send its forces around the world on combat assignment (as seen in the fact of German soldiers fighting from Mali to Afghanistan). Another reason was that given the state of the German armed forces in 2022, the sums of money then being talked about, and how very, very good militaries and defense ministries can be at making a very, very large sum of money go absolutely no way at all, the boosts to German defense spending would plausibly not translate to great changes in the size or capabilities of German forces relative to what they had been before.
Three years on I see no reason to change that assessment--and indeed every reason to stand by it, because the publicly available information shows just how little change there has been in Germany's position these past three years, with this reaffirmed by how German policymakers in the grip of aspirations to weltpolitik are demanding way, way bigger changes. Instead of talking about working toward boosting defense spending to 2 percent of GDP with a "one-off" supplement helping the process along the way Olaf Scholz did in February 2022, now, amid much talk of "Whatever it takes!" the minimum figure they have in mind is 3 percent, while they discuss exempting defense spending above 1 percent of GDP from the Holy Debt Brake, and talk of a €500 billion "special fund" (five times the supplement of 2022) for "infrastructure" (perhaps a redress of genuine need bolstering higher defense spending through its enabling of industry and stimulus to the economy, but easily imagined as a vehicle for more direct funding of military objectives). They also make explicit calls for conscription to enable the mobilization of a vastly enlarged force. (Germany's military reserve, like that of pretty much every European country, dwindled to nothing after the Cold War, so that even fully mobilized it does not raise the size of German forces amount to much more than 200,000. But the document published by the now parliament-dominating CDU/CSU calls for Germany to, with reserves mobilized, have over 500,000 at Berlin's disposal.)
Meanwhile, German European Commission President Ursula von Leyden is calling for a broader European effort on such lines, her ReArm Europe plan not only calling for a 1.5 percent of GDP boost in European defense spending by the member states (which would see Germany going well above the 3 percent of GDP mark as a spender), but also proposing a new "instrument" for defense investment capable of loaning €150 billion and the use of the EU's own budget, the previously proposed Savings and Investment Bank, and the existing EU member-stated owned European Investment Bank (EIB) to support such efforts. (Indeed, the EIB has already sent a letter to those member state governments proposing policy changes "allow[ing] investments into non-lethal defence products, provid[ing] unlimited loans to the defence industry . . . and measures to motivate commercial banks to follow suit in lending cash to the defence industry.")
Considering the implications of that German policymakers could expect not only to benefit from the direct policy alterations that have EU institutions providing direct support for its defense investments, cooperation with other countries better able to contribute to joint efforts because of the greater sums on the table, and other synergies that might follow from such a situation. Showing every sign of (once more) fancying themselves the "taskmasters of Europe" (Herfried Münkler only said what they were thinking, and how they behaved toward nations like Greece) they evidently expect to lead the combination--to which degree may be indicated by how the German army has worked to "integrate" five brigades from Romania, Czechia and the Netherlands (in the last case, three brigades amounting to pretty much the whole Dutch army's fighting strength) into its army's divisions.
In contrast with the proposals of three years ago all this looks much, much more significant--if it is actually acted upon. Still, if with these proposals Europe's political elite certainly make clear their extreme enthusiasm for remilitarizing and rearming, I see no evidence whatsoever of comparable enthusiasm on the part of the European public for the project. Quite the contrary, that public has been increasingly hostile to their governments' dragging them into one increasingly costly "forever" war after another, just as they have been enraged by those governments' refusing to do much about their economic problems, the environment, and much, much else affecting their daily lives, and indeed going into reverse on anything that could be deemed a solution. (Indeed, the idea of repurposing unused funds for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic's disruptions for rearmament seems entirely symbolic of how the elites think here--and discomfort with the idea a hint of how the public actually feels.)
Of course, as the policy record shows governments have pressed ahead with their preferences in complete contempt of voters' opinions, and often complete contempt of their constitutions as well. (Such is their version of the "democracy" and "rule of law" for which they claim to stand.) However, as governments raise taxes and cut services and inflict added inflation on publics already battered by decades of neoliberalism (all of that borrowing and government demand seems likely to have unpleasant consequences in a context of profound deindustrialization, structurally higher energy prices, lingering and painful inflationary shocks, and governments ferocious in their enmity toward social protections)--and gets rougher with labor and with dissent (and it's pretty damn rough now)--and sends draft cards to its young people as it demands their "sacrifice" of freedom, self and even life itself for the sake of objects they do not support and against which they indeed protested--those elites may find the going less smooth than they imagined in this way, as it may in so many others.
Monday, March 10, 2025
Reflections on the German Federal Election of 2025
The early election in Germany this year seems to me to warrant comment as reflective of the broader trend of electoral politics across the Western world. This may most obviously be the case in how as has already been seen in Italy and France, where the party system has long been more mutable (perhaps because it is so fragmented), but also to a lesser degree in more concentrated and stable British politics (where the vote for the Conservatives collapsed in 2024, and Reform UK surged), Germany likewise seeing support for the traditional parties collapse, with the far right the principal beneficiary.
In discussion of the matter I have seen the historical background was almost always less than sketchy, partly I think because there is less in the way of handy comprehensive tabulations of historical election results for the Federal Republic (anything like the excellent publication from the House of Commons' Library unavailable). Still, it seems to me that a look at this is key to giving us more than a superficial picture of the situation, and it does not take too much work to cobble together at least a rough image of the past. According to the data I have found the Federal Republic saw its two traditionally leading parties together claim 60 percent of the vote in that first election in 1949, a higher 74 percent in 1953, 81 percent in 1957, at which point one can regard these dynamics as having established the norm for the next several decades. In the nine Federal elections held over the 1957-1987 period the two parties together claimed a consistent 81 to 91 percent (on average, 86 percent) of the vote--a formidable share indeed, leaving less than a fifth, often much less, to all the third-parties combined (like the Free Democrats, or from 1980 forward, the Greens).
However, that position was eroding by the 1990s, with the two big parties claiming just 77 percent of the vote in the four elections of the 1990-2002 period, and then trending more sharply downward from 2005 on. Seeing the two big parties claim 69 percent of the vote in 2005 (their lowest since that first election in 1949), and 57 percent in 2009 (the lowest ever since the Republic's founding), after a limited resurgence in 2013 (to a still relatively low 67 percent), the downward trend continued to new lows in the three elections since, with the figure 53 percent in 2017, just under 50 percent (49.8 percent) in 2021, and finally, under 45 percent (44.9 percent) in 2025, scarcely half the norm for the 1957-1987 period. That last election saw the Conservatives, even as the "number one" party, with a near-record low share of the vote (28.5 percent, second only to their share in 2021, as against the 41-50 percent they managed in every election in 1953-1998, the 38 percent they at least averaged in 2002-2013, and the 33 percent they got in 2017), while the Social Democrats had their absolute worst performance since the Republic's start. Their mere 16 percent of the vote is to be compared with their second-worst of 20 percent in 2017, their 23 percent average in 2009-2021, and before that their share of 32-45 percent, and average of 38 percent, in 1957-2005--as well as, of course, the 21 percent that has seen the far-right party the Alternative for Germany replace them in the number two spot.
As the numbers presented here imply the decline of the two leading parties was a decades-long matter. It would seem that the reunification of Germany played its part here by shifting the electoral landscape (whether due to legacies of the German Democratic Republic, the combination of shock capitalism and swaggering right-wing nationalism that left many former East Germans traumatized for decades, or some mix of both), paving the way for and in respects (the relative poverty and general feeling of "second class"-citizenship in eastern Germany) intensifying those factors that have so much shaken party systems elsewhere--reaction against the commitment of all the major parties to neoliberalism, which worsened significantly with the onset of the Great Recession and all that has come after it, and opposition to war. This points to the extent to one of the most significant features of that collapse, namely the way in which opposition to neoliberalism and war, consistently translates to votes for parties which deliver more neoliberalism and more war, not least by way of those far-right parties that members of the "Fourth Estate."
Of course, the mainstream of the commentariat cannot be expected to point to, let alone puzzle out, what such a situation says about voters' range of "choice"--just as they do not consider how, even were one to accord der kulturkampf more weight in electoral politics than it actually has, in Alternative for Germany's Alice Weidel, a choice of leader who resides outside the country where she is an office-holders with her Sri Lankan (female) partner as leader of a German far-right party, makes a mockery of the pretensions of those who take a conventional view of the culture war. After all, incongruous as the situation may seem to them, it is less so to those who take the reminder that not only has identity politics been advantageous to the right in its diverting attention from class, and creating divisions and resentments of which the right has taken full advantage; or that such politics have often been reconcilable with many a right-wing imperative, not least in the economic arena ("market populism," "woke capitalism"), but even the geopolitical-military arena; but that the anti-universalistic, nationalist tendency of such politics has enabled identity politics to be pressed into the explicit service in highly pointed fashion, as seen in the phenomena of "feminationalism" and "homonationalism," in which purported respect for the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ is openly presented as a justification for racist hostility or religious discrimination toward selected minorities, immigrants and foreign countries, a game that Ms. Weidel has, of course, personally played. In the process one is reminded by the possibility of such accommodation of what the right's priorities truly are--and that useful as cultural traditionalism has often been to the champion of status quos and reaction, in the end with elites, even more than with working people "It's the Economy, stupid," first, last and always (after all, what else makes them elites in today's world?), with the vehement denials of their courtiers only ever underlining the matter.
In discussion of the matter I have seen the historical background was almost always less than sketchy, partly I think because there is less in the way of handy comprehensive tabulations of historical election results for the Federal Republic (anything like the excellent publication from the House of Commons' Library unavailable). Still, it seems to me that a look at this is key to giving us more than a superficial picture of the situation, and it does not take too much work to cobble together at least a rough image of the past. According to the data I have found the Federal Republic saw its two traditionally leading parties together claim 60 percent of the vote in that first election in 1949, a higher 74 percent in 1953, 81 percent in 1957, at which point one can regard these dynamics as having established the norm for the next several decades. In the nine Federal elections held over the 1957-1987 period the two parties together claimed a consistent 81 to 91 percent (on average, 86 percent) of the vote--a formidable share indeed, leaving less than a fifth, often much less, to all the third-parties combined (like the Free Democrats, or from 1980 forward, the Greens).
However, that position was eroding by the 1990s, with the two big parties claiming just 77 percent of the vote in the four elections of the 1990-2002 period, and then trending more sharply downward from 2005 on. Seeing the two big parties claim 69 percent of the vote in 2005 (their lowest since that first election in 1949), and 57 percent in 2009 (the lowest ever since the Republic's founding), after a limited resurgence in 2013 (to a still relatively low 67 percent), the downward trend continued to new lows in the three elections since, with the figure 53 percent in 2017, just under 50 percent (49.8 percent) in 2021, and finally, under 45 percent (44.9 percent) in 2025, scarcely half the norm for the 1957-1987 period. That last election saw the Conservatives, even as the "number one" party, with a near-record low share of the vote (28.5 percent, second only to their share in 2021, as against the 41-50 percent they managed in every election in 1953-1998, the 38 percent they at least averaged in 2002-2013, and the 33 percent they got in 2017), while the Social Democrats had their absolute worst performance since the Republic's start. Their mere 16 percent of the vote is to be compared with their second-worst of 20 percent in 2017, their 23 percent average in 2009-2021, and before that their share of 32-45 percent, and average of 38 percent, in 1957-2005--as well as, of course, the 21 percent that has seen the far-right party the Alternative for Germany replace them in the number two spot.
As the numbers presented here imply the decline of the two leading parties was a decades-long matter. It would seem that the reunification of Germany played its part here by shifting the electoral landscape (whether due to legacies of the German Democratic Republic, the combination of shock capitalism and swaggering right-wing nationalism that left many former East Germans traumatized for decades, or some mix of both), paving the way for and in respects (the relative poverty and general feeling of "second class"-citizenship in eastern Germany) intensifying those factors that have so much shaken party systems elsewhere--reaction against the commitment of all the major parties to neoliberalism, which worsened significantly with the onset of the Great Recession and all that has come after it, and opposition to war. This points to the extent to one of the most significant features of that collapse, namely the way in which opposition to neoliberalism and war, consistently translates to votes for parties which deliver more neoliberalism and more war, not least by way of those far-right parties that members of the "Fourth Estate."
Of course, the mainstream of the commentariat cannot be expected to point to, let alone puzzle out, what such a situation says about voters' range of "choice"--just as they do not consider how, even were one to accord der kulturkampf more weight in electoral politics than it actually has, in Alternative for Germany's Alice Weidel, a choice of leader who resides outside the country where she is an office-holders with her Sri Lankan (female) partner as leader of a German far-right party, makes a mockery of the pretensions of those who take a conventional view of the culture war. After all, incongruous as the situation may seem to them, it is less so to those who take the reminder that not only has identity politics been advantageous to the right in its diverting attention from class, and creating divisions and resentments of which the right has taken full advantage; or that such politics have often been reconcilable with many a right-wing imperative, not least in the economic arena ("market populism," "woke capitalism"), but even the geopolitical-military arena; but that the anti-universalistic, nationalist tendency of such politics has enabled identity politics to be pressed into the explicit service in highly pointed fashion, as seen in the phenomena of "feminationalism" and "homonationalism," in which purported respect for the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ is openly presented as a justification for racist hostility or religious discrimination toward selected minorities, immigrants and foreign countries, a game that Ms. Weidel has, of course, personally played. In the process one is reminded by the possibility of such accommodation of what the right's priorities truly are--and that useful as cultural traditionalism has often been to the champion of status quos and reaction, in the end with elites, even more than with working people "It's the Economy, stupid," first, last and always (after all, what else makes them elites in today's world?), with the vehement denials of their courtiers only ever underlining the matter.
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Did China Really Fly a Sixth-Generation Fighter Last Month?
The portion of the news media attentive to defense affairs and aviation technology has since late December buzzed with talk about the public flight of what is apparently a prototype of a new Chinese combat aircraft. Identified as the Chengdu J-36 by Western observers, many rushed to speak of it as a sixth-generation fighter.
But is it really a sixth-generation fighter? Given the differing, and changing, understanding of the term, what would that even mean, anyway? Back circa 2010 when talk of sixth-generation fighters was really getting going in a public way there were particular expectations for those planes, identifying the sixth generation of jet fighter with optionally manned hypersonic fighter jets capable of changing shape in flight and armed with directed-energy weapons--expectations which have proven profoundly unrealistic given the far slower pace of the development of the relevant technologies, such that more recent discussion has had much more modest expectations with regard to the technological difference between them and their fifth-generation predecessors. Indeed, it seemed to me that by "sixth-generation" what the analysts meant were more usefully describable as "fifth-generation-plus," fifth-generation jets with some modifications enhancing their abilities beyond the baseline for that generation but falling short of a true shift to some subsequent generation. (For example, it seemed we might end up with fifth-generation jets that were not "optionally manned," but provided "AI" copilots that meaningfully relieved the pilot's workload.)
Considering what we know of the J-36 do we have something that can be considered even "fifth-generation-plus?" Let us go with what seems most clearly established about the plane, namely its shape--that it is, as Rick Joe explains over at The Diplomat, a "double delta tailless flying wing planform, with a rather voluminous and blended fuselage," a 20 meter wingspan, and a length that may be up to 26 meters, with its dimensions suggesting a weight that may exceed 50 tons.
None of those traits are obviously "next-generation," or even obviously fifth-generation-plus, and nor are the smaller, more argued-over features. The plane has a visible cockpit, perhaps designed to accommodate two crew seated side by side, so while one cannot rule out its being highly automated, one cannot claim that it is so on the basis of what we can see. The plane has "low observable" features, like the aforementioned flying wing shape, the internal storage of weapons (until recently, also associated with strike aircraft rather than fighters), and the design of the intakes and the exhaust system--but again these do not warrant characterization as "next-generational." The result is that claims for this plane as "sixth-generation" smack of hype. Indeed, it is not clear the plane is even a fighter at all. The flying wing design, the dimensions and weight, the use of three engines rather than two to power the whole because of that weight, even the possible tandem seating in the cockpit; the apparent optimization of the plane for "range, internal volume, and high-altitude as well as high-speed performance" as Joe has it, with subsonic agility a relatively low priority; and the fact that at this moment we have no evidence whatsoever of its actually being equipped for air-to-air combat; has me wondering whether the plane is a "fighter" rather than a strike aircraft, a mistake people have made before in regard to radical new aircraft designs. (Those who remember the F-117 Nighthawk will recall how people initially thought that "stealth fighter" was a fighter when in fact it was a strike aircraft, and a "fighter" only in the sense that the plane was designed for tactical rather than strategic use. Those who remember the F-111 Aardvark will remember, too, how that plane was originally intended to be a fighter, but partly because of its sheer size and weight ended up filling a strike role instead.)
Altogether we may simply be looking at an advanced but essentially current-generation strike aircraft--a view some have already taken, as Joe acknowledges in his article. However, he also suggests that if the plane looks strike aircraft-ish, it may be that in an age of increasingly beyond visual range and system-of-systems-based combat strike aircraft-ish designs optimized for persistence and capacity may make more sense than nimble dogfighters in the air superiority/dominance. He even goes so far as to speak of the term "fighter" as becoming anachronistic in this new age of air-to-air combat. I do not wholly rule out that possibility--but considering it remember that past generations of defense planners thought such a moment was at hand too, as we saw when in the 1950s we started getting fighter jet designs which eschewed maneuvering and gunnery in favor of long-range sensors and missiles, like the F-4 Phantom--and the decision quickly discovered to have been a mistake, the technology for all that proving to "just not be there yet," so that they incorporated guns into later models of the aircraft, pilots learned to dogfight again, and the next generation designs placed a high stress on maneuverability (as we saw with the fourth-generation F-15 and F-16, the fifth-generation F-22). If that is not the case, however, and Joe is right about what air combat will mean, then we still have grounds to not speak of this plane as a sixth-generation fighter--because rather than a new generation of the Meteors and P-80s and Me-262 we saw at the end of World War II what we are getting is the first generation of something else.
But is it really a sixth-generation fighter? Given the differing, and changing, understanding of the term, what would that even mean, anyway? Back circa 2010 when talk of sixth-generation fighters was really getting going in a public way there were particular expectations for those planes, identifying the sixth generation of jet fighter with optionally manned hypersonic fighter jets capable of changing shape in flight and armed with directed-energy weapons--expectations which have proven profoundly unrealistic given the far slower pace of the development of the relevant technologies, such that more recent discussion has had much more modest expectations with regard to the technological difference between them and their fifth-generation predecessors. Indeed, it seemed to me that by "sixth-generation" what the analysts meant were more usefully describable as "fifth-generation-plus," fifth-generation jets with some modifications enhancing their abilities beyond the baseline for that generation but falling short of a true shift to some subsequent generation. (For example, it seemed we might end up with fifth-generation jets that were not "optionally manned," but provided "AI" copilots that meaningfully relieved the pilot's workload.)
Considering what we know of the J-36 do we have something that can be considered even "fifth-generation-plus?" Let us go with what seems most clearly established about the plane, namely its shape--that it is, as Rick Joe explains over at The Diplomat, a "double delta tailless flying wing planform, with a rather voluminous and blended fuselage," a 20 meter wingspan, and a length that may be up to 26 meters, with its dimensions suggesting a weight that may exceed 50 tons.
None of those traits are obviously "next-generation," or even obviously fifth-generation-plus, and nor are the smaller, more argued-over features. The plane has a visible cockpit, perhaps designed to accommodate two crew seated side by side, so while one cannot rule out its being highly automated, one cannot claim that it is so on the basis of what we can see. The plane has "low observable" features, like the aforementioned flying wing shape, the internal storage of weapons (until recently, also associated with strike aircraft rather than fighters), and the design of the intakes and the exhaust system--but again these do not warrant characterization as "next-generational." The result is that claims for this plane as "sixth-generation" smack of hype. Indeed, it is not clear the plane is even a fighter at all. The flying wing design, the dimensions and weight, the use of three engines rather than two to power the whole because of that weight, even the possible tandem seating in the cockpit; the apparent optimization of the plane for "range, internal volume, and high-altitude as well as high-speed performance" as Joe has it, with subsonic agility a relatively low priority; and the fact that at this moment we have no evidence whatsoever of its actually being equipped for air-to-air combat; has me wondering whether the plane is a "fighter" rather than a strike aircraft, a mistake people have made before in regard to radical new aircraft designs. (Those who remember the F-117 Nighthawk will recall how people initially thought that "stealth fighter" was a fighter when in fact it was a strike aircraft, and a "fighter" only in the sense that the plane was designed for tactical rather than strategic use. Those who remember the F-111 Aardvark will remember, too, how that plane was originally intended to be a fighter, but partly because of its sheer size and weight ended up filling a strike role instead.)
Altogether we may simply be looking at an advanced but essentially current-generation strike aircraft--a view some have already taken, as Joe acknowledges in his article. However, he also suggests that if the plane looks strike aircraft-ish, it may be that in an age of increasingly beyond visual range and system-of-systems-based combat strike aircraft-ish designs optimized for persistence and capacity may make more sense than nimble dogfighters in the air superiority/dominance. He even goes so far as to speak of the term "fighter" as becoming anachronistic in this new age of air-to-air combat. I do not wholly rule out that possibility--but considering it remember that past generations of defense planners thought such a moment was at hand too, as we saw when in the 1950s we started getting fighter jet designs which eschewed maneuvering and gunnery in favor of long-range sensors and missiles, like the F-4 Phantom--and the decision quickly discovered to have been a mistake, the technology for all that proving to "just not be there yet," so that they incorporated guns into later models of the aircraft, pilots learned to dogfight again, and the next generation designs placed a high stress on maneuverability (as we saw with the fourth-generation F-15 and F-16, the fifth-generation F-22). If that is not the case, however, and Joe is right about what air combat will mean, then we still have grounds to not speak of this plane as a sixth-generation fighter--because rather than a new generation of the Meteors and P-80s and Me-262 we saw at the end of World War II what we are getting is the first generation of something else.
What Do They Mean When They Tell Us the Economy Was "Good?"
Part of the narrative to which the "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" crowd is sticking in regard to the U.S. national election of 2024 is that the economy was in fact "good" before and at the time of the election, and that as a result either economic discontents had no part in the election's outcome (never mind the polls indicating how many of those aggrieved over inflation voted Republican), or that the public had been deceived about the reality of the economy's performance.
I have already argued for the falsity of this position. But even having done so it seems worth saying something more of how those in the media commonly attempted to argue that position to the broader public, namely by citing a handful of statistics. To cite two of the most important they reported unemployment at 4 percent, and inflation falling toward the 2 percent level. Conventionally regarding these as excellent numbers even in ordinary times, never mind in the wake of the historic shocks of recent years (the COVID-19 pandemic immediately spiking unemployment, and spiking inflation as well in later but more prolonged fashion), they said "See? No problem. So what have you got to be so glum about?"
In doing so they overlooked all that those who calculated these numbers did not even presume to represent. In speaking of unemployment they speak of "U-3" unemployment normally--just one of six ways of measuring employment reported every month, while giving no thought to the still other ways of considering the extent of unemployment, like examination of the percentage of people who have dropped out of the labor force. (The reality is that as of November 2024 the Labor Force Participation Rate was just 62.5 percent, still not recovered to its pre-pandemic level of 63.3 percent at the start of 2020--and the 66 percent it was before the Great Recession that, I remind you, never truly ended.) It certainly does not account for, for example, the college graduates who have a job but are "underemployed" in the sense of taking a job not requiring their expensively bought credentials, and paying them less (a far more common problem than most seem realize, and not only for those who picked the supposedly "wrong" majors).
Just as is the case with the talk about unemployment, those who talk about inflation tend to go by one specific measure, the Consumer Price Index--which certainly has its uses, but at the same time fails to account for a very great deal. It does not include food and fuel, for example, and dealing with them indirectly fails to fully capture rises in the price of housing or health insurance, which have not incidentally consistently outpaced official inflation measures. There is a tendency, too, to overlook subtler aspects of these matters. Consider, for instance, how rises in food prices hit low-income persons who cannot switch to "cheaper" brands because they already buy what is cheapest--and the fact that inflation tends to raise the prices of the lowest-cost items more than the average (because the margins here are slighter than with many more expensive products, making producers quicker to pass on higher costs to the consumer).
When one considers all this it is easy to see how supposedly "good" numbers do not necessarily seem so, all as one should remember that the Talking Heads' consideration of the economy is very, very short-term, telling us how things stood this month, this quarter, at most this year. In reality people's perceptions of their well-being are not shaped simply by how well-off they are at the moment, especially when long-term trends are at work--as is the case with those prices for many necessities relative to incomes. Consider how, for example, between 1973 and 2023 the median house price rose about twice as fast as the Consumer Price Index overall (the CPI going up by a factor of 6.9, the median house price by a factor of 13.3 over the same period)--a far from insignificant difference after all that time, and from the standpoint of most people's incomes, which did not do much more than keep pace with the CPI over the long term, all as, again, all this had parallels in other areas, like health insurance and education and the price of a car (in a country which expects anyone who wants to have a job to be able to drive there!). When they have experienced that long deterioration of their purchasing power with its associated stresses, amplified by the recent spiking of prices in the wake of the pandemic, a single quarter or single year of stability in the relation of incomes to prices is just not going to make that much difference (not that they got it). Indeed, Alan Greenspan himself made the point in Congressional testimony in the '90s when discussing the lack of upward pressure on wages amid what the Talking Heads (as superficial and dishonest then as they are now) told the public were "boom times" for them--observing that the American worker, made insecure by painful past experience, went on being so, giving rise to talk of "Traumatized Worker Syndrome" (all as, with a further generation's hindsight, the trauma would seem to have been just beginning).
Considering all this the discrepancy between the lived experience of the public and what their media tells them about their lived experience is appalling--and if the public has often believed the media rather than reality that has often been because drawing conclusions about that reality from the data was sufficiently beyond them that they could be deceived. The prices they pay at the grocery store have been another matter, however--with the results we have seen in public sentiment about the economy, no matter how much the "experts" clutter up the editorial pages of papers of record telling them their experience of being worse off is "all in their mind."
I have already argued for the falsity of this position. But even having done so it seems worth saying something more of how those in the media commonly attempted to argue that position to the broader public, namely by citing a handful of statistics. To cite two of the most important they reported unemployment at 4 percent, and inflation falling toward the 2 percent level. Conventionally regarding these as excellent numbers even in ordinary times, never mind in the wake of the historic shocks of recent years (the COVID-19 pandemic immediately spiking unemployment, and spiking inflation as well in later but more prolonged fashion), they said "See? No problem. So what have you got to be so glum about?"
In doing so they overlooked all that those who calculated these numbers did not even presume to represent. In speaking of unemployment they speak of "U-3" unemployment normally--just one of six ways of measuring employment reported every month, while giving no thought to the still other ways of considering the extent of unemployment, like examination of the percentage of people who have dropped out of the labor force. (The reality is that as of November 2024 the Labor Force Participation Rate was just 62.5 percent, still not recovered to its pre-pandemic level of 63.3 percent at the start of 2020--and the 66 percent it was before the Great Recession that, I remind you, never truly ended.) It certainly does not account for, for example, the college graduates who have a job but are "underemployed" in the sense of taking a job not requiring their expensively bought credentials, and paying them less (a far more common problem than most seem realize, and not only for those who picked the supposedly "wrong" majors).
Just as is the case with the talk about unemployment, those who talk about inflation tend to go by one specific measure, the Consumer Price Index--which certainly has its uses, but at the same time fails to account for a very great deal. It does not include food and fuel, for example, and dealing with them indirectly fails to fully capture rises in the price of housing or health insurance, which have not incidentally consistently outpaced official inflation measures. There is a tendency, too, to overlook subtler aspects of these matters. Consider, for instance, how rises in food prices hit low-income persons who cannot switch to "cheaper" brands because they already buy what is cheapest--and the fact that inflation tends to raise the prices of the lowest-cost items more than the average (because the margins here are slighter than with many more expensive products, making producers quicker to pass on higher costs to the consumer).
When one considers all this it is easy to see how supposedly "good" numbers do not necessarily seem so, all as one should remember that the Talking Heads' consideration of the economy is very, very short-term, telling us how things stood this month, this quarter, at most this year. In reality people's perceptions of their well-being are not shaped simply by how well-off they are at the moment, especially when long-term trends are at work--as is the case with those prices for many necessities relative to incomes. Consider how, for example, between 1973 and 2023 the median house price rose about twice as fast as the Consumer Price Index overall (the CPI going up by a factor of 6.9, the median house price by a factor of 13.3 over the same period)--a far from insignificant difference after all that time, and from the standpoint of most people's incomes, which did not do much more than keep pace with the CPI over the long term, all as, again, all this had parallels in other areas, like health insurance and education and the price of a car (in a country which expects anyone who wants to have a job to be able to drive there!). When they have experienced that long deterioration of their purchasing power with its associated stresses, amplified by the recent spiking of prices in the wake of the pandemic, a single quarter or single year of stability in the relation of incomes to prices is just not going to make that much difference (not that they got it). Indeed, Alan Greenspan himself made the point in Congressional testimony in the '90s when discussing the lack of upward pressure on wages amid what the Talking Heads (as superficial and dishonest then as they are now) told the public were "boom times" for them--observing that the American worker, made insecure by painful past experience, went on being so, giving rise to talk of "Traumatized Worker Syndrome" (all as, with a further generation's hindsight, the trauma would seem to have been just beginning).
Considering all this the discrepancy between the lived experience of the public and what their media tells them about their lived experience is appalling--and if the public has often believed the media rather than reality that has often been because drawing conclusions about that reality from the data was sufficiently beyond them that they could be deceived. The prices they pay at the grocery store have been another matter, however--with the results we have seen in public sentiment about the economy, no matter how much the "experts" clutter up the editorial pages of papers of record telling them their experience of being worse off is "all in their mind."
The Supposed "Eclecticism" of the American Voter
In the wake of an election many in the commentariat took as a shock and a revelation (everything's a revelation when you don't know much) we have seen an outpouring of analysis purporting to tell us What It All Meant. The election is certainly worth analyzing--but the bulk of the analysis is, alas, not worthwhile, just the usual garbage generated by media-Establishment "experts."
Of course, it is possible to learn something even by picking through garbage. The vehement insistence of many that "It Isn't the Economy, Stupid," in its way reminds us that it really is the economy, while it also makes clear that the commentariat which had no interest in acknowledging the fact that it was the economy, stupid, before the election still has no interest in acknowledging that it was the economy, stupid, after the election, with the same going for the political elite whom they so happily serve as, to use a politer term than they deserve, courtiers.
One can likewise learn something picking through that more specific garbage the commentariat speak and write about the "eclecticism" of the American voter. Basically they are shocked, shocked I tells ya, that if one were to consider the electorate as a whole one would find that the electorate dislikes both economic neoliberalism and identity politics (which, to be clear, refers not to principled opposition to bigotry as such, but rather the "nationalistic" attitude exemplified by the grasping and vindictive "weaponizaton" of race and gender for self-advancement deployed by all sides in the culture wars).
They also present this "insight" as challenging our conventional thinking in terms of "right" and "left."
In reality the fact that the electorate as a whole has disliked both neoliberalism and identity politics is no revelation to anyone, even the commentariat. It is also the reality that it does not show the meaninglessness of right and left, however much those making the comment may be eager to persuade us (yet again) that the old political spectrum is meaningless. After all, certainly if we are speaking of the major parties in America, there has never been a left to speak of among them save in the sense of the existence of people who are to the "left" of the avowed right, which however convenient some find it confuses rather than illuminates give the meanings of those terms. Using as a basis for judgment the political spectrum as conventionally understood by educated observers (e.g. people who cracked open a book once in their lives and not the talking heads we see on the screen, or smiling smugly from the photos accompanying their columns in "papers of record") what we have had instead has been the right, and the center--with the center itself highly conservative. This is why the center so readily embraced neoliberalism, such policy a truly "bipartisan" affair. At the same time the identity politics, even those identity politics they pass off as progressive because they are the identity politics of traditionally marginalized groups, have ALWAYS BEEN NON-LEFTIST and indeed EXTREMELY ANTI-LEFTIST FROM THE START, and that not as a bug but as a feature. (Identity politics is just another example of the long use of nationalism to deflect or suppress concern for democracy and for social class, already old when the postmodernists came on the scene and did their bit for this game, and indeed were appreciated for their contributions to the Cold War by some the West's own foremost Cold Warriors as "Defection of the Leftist Intellectuals.")
The acknowledgment of the public's sentiments is one to which the intelligent observer of the political scene may do well to pay attention because it won't last long--for just as the commentators have done before when they observed this they will drop it down the Memory Hole again, the reality simply too unacceptable to an elite whose commitment to neoliberalism and kulturkampf is unshaken and unshakeable, even as the world, in the view of anyone at all capable of processing the reality as the globalization that Thomas Friedman treated as being as unchangeable and beneficent as the rising of the sun is being shredded in an age of trade war, and trade war looks like a potential prelude to shooting war that in the view of some may have already begun.
Of course, it is possible to learn something even by picking through garbage. The vehement insistence of many that "It Isn't the Economy, Stupid," in its way reminds us that it really is the economy, while it also makes clear that the commentariat which had no interest in acknowledging the fact that it was the economy, stupid, before the election still has no interest in acknowledging that it was the economy, stupid, after the election, with the same going for the political elite whom they so happily serve as, to use a politer term than they deserve, courtiers.
One can likewise learn something picking through that more specific garbage the commentariat speak and write about the "eclecticism" of the American voter. Basically they are shocked, shocked I tells ya, that if one were to consider the electorate as a whole one would find that the electorate dislikes both economic neoliberalism and identity politics (which, to be clear, refers not to principled opposition to bigotry as such, but rather the "nationalistic" attitude exemplified by the grasping and vindictive "weaponizaton" of race and gender for self-advancement deployed by all sides in the culture wars).
They also present this "insight" as challenging our conventional thinking in terms of "right" and "left."
In reality the fact that the electorate as a whole has disliked both neoliberalism and identity politics is no revelation to anyone, even the commentariat. It is also the reality that it does not show the meaninglessness of right and left, however much those making the comment may be eager to persuade us (yet again) that the old political spectrum is meaningless. After all, certainly if we are speaking of the major parties in America, there has never been a left to speak of among them save in the sense of the existence of people who are to the "left" of the avowed right, which however convenient some find it confuses rather than illuminates give the meanings of those terms. Using as a basis for judgment the political spectrum as conventionally understood by educated observers (e.g. people who cracked open a book once in their lives and not the talking heads we see on the screen, or smiling smugly from the photos accompanying their columns in "papers of record") what we have had instead has been the right, and the center--with the center itself highly conservative. This is why the center so readily embraced neoliberalism, such policy a truly "bipartisan" affair. At the same time the identity politics, even those identity politics they pass off as progressive because they are the identity politics of traditionally marginalized groups, have ALWAYS BEEN NON-LEFTIST and indeed EXTREMELY ANTI-LEFTIST FROM THE START, and that not as a bug but as a feature. (Identity politics is just another example of the long use of nationalism to deflect or suppress concern for democracy and for social class, already old when the postmodernists came on the scene and did their bit for this game, and indeed were appreciated for their contributions to the Cold War by some the West's own foremost Cold Warriors as "Defection of the Leftist Intellectuals.")
The acknowledgment of the public's sentiments is one to which the intelligent observer of the political scene may do well to pay attention because it won't last long--for just as the commentators have done before when they observed this they will drop it down the Memory Hole again, the reality simply too unacceptable to an elite whose commitment to neoliberalism and kulturkampf is unshaken and unshakeable, even as the world, in the view of anyone at all capable of processing the reality as the globalization that Thomas Friedman treated as being as unchangeable and beneficent as the rising of the sun is being shredded in an age of trade war, and trade war looks like a potential prelude to shooting war that in the view of some may have already begun.
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