... Ah yes, talking of calling people out when they're spouting crap, a fine opportunity now presents itself. In a word, what a load of complete bollocks that piece is.
Here's an excerpt:
Quote:
Structurally, there’s been plenty of economic growth inside the U.S. — vastly increasing the pile of money to be divided.
Sorted!
Oh wait, apparently the author has issues with those who have "benefitted"...
Quote:
But these charts also hint at who the players are in the game. The first player consists of those people inside the U.S. and U.K. who have benefitted from globalization and trade: the “elites”, derisively referred to as “the 1%”.
And the second player? That’s everyone inside the United States and the United Kingdom who aren’t in those upper income echelons. They’re all the lines in the second chart that aren’t going up.
These folks are seeing the pile of money in the game growing ever bigger. And they’re also watching on, as the other player keeps an ever-larger share of that pile for themselves.
Righhhht. It's the usual "the top 1% get EVERYTHING, the rest get NOTHING" grievance-monkey narrative bollocks, then. Except - even by their own bloody graph which states that the middle rump 40%-80% affluence group's real terms household income has gone up between 20%-40% since '79, i.e. about a third, which is shitloads - it is categorically
not the case, or even anything like it. At all.
In other words, the premise of the entire piece is flawed - demonstrably so even by its
own presented data - and so surely fails even the most cursory scrutiny.
Trouble is, though, and as I've been saying, objective scrutiny and healthy scepticism are hard to find among the ranks of the deluded, the thickoes, the axe-grinding grievance monkeys, those clinging onto age-old beliefs and/or the absurdly partisan... and the new media (Twitter etc.) provides an easy conduit for punting around piss poor zoomer-fodder like this, and vastly more besides. For me at least, it is actually *this* syndrome that's the issue: a refusal to confront (or even acknowledge) the truth, because post-truth politics sounds
so much more comforting, and all with the minimum of effort (e.g. any reliance on actual, pesky basis in fact). Just tell 'em what they want to hear; propagandists rejoice.
This syndrome is true of many political spheres of late, but none moreso than in matters of Nationalism (Brexit - and even Trump - included). Frankly, it's all enough to make me *puke*.