Dana Blankenhorn

The Way to Wealth is Tolerance

There’s nothing wrong with wealth.

Wealth is supposed to create a sense of responsibility. Andrew Carnegie understood this after he sold his Carnegie Steel in 1901.  Thereafter he devoted himself to giving all his money away. MacKenzie Scott, formerly Mrs. Jeff Bezos, is doing that today. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have promised to do that.

They do it to protect the system. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith defended capitalism by positing that wealthy people would be inclined toward the common good. Some are. Others are not.

For every Carnegie there’s a Vanderbilt. The good news is that, after a few generations of profligacy, even a Vanderbilt fortune can run dry. Anderson Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt but he’s not a rich man. That’s a hopeful story.

The good news is that, so far, 2022 is giving me an 1898 feeling. David Traxel’s book on 1898  describes a nation facing a Populist uprising amid a progressive ferment. It describes a war that was blissfully short, a turning point because it brought to power a man who would get along with Wall Street.

The Progressive movement and Wall Street’s self-interest lined up perfectly. Few people understand this, even today. Utilities for electricity, telephony, for transport, for water and for natural gas, could only be created through regulated monopolies. The late 19^th century’s efforts to create them in other ways failed. J.P. Morgan portrayed the evil trust king in the popular imagination, and Theodore Roosevelt the benevolent trust-buster. But they were working toward the same end. The result was today’s American cities.

Ghosts of Our Fathers, Angels of Our Nature

When someone says of the Fascists, oligarchs, religious bigots, and racists of today’s Republican Party “that’s not us,” I shake my head.

That is us. I’m a history major. America has always been a battle between our ghosts and our better angels. There’s nothing Russia or China can teach us in that regard.

• Slavery? We perfected it, in the American South.
• Genocide? We perfected it, in the American West.
• Eugenics? We invented it, in American cities.

The Taliban have been here since the Puritans. Nearly all Christianity’s craziest cults were American-born. The Great Awakening of the 19^th century was just an appetizer.

The Creativity Economy

The Creativity Economy is why Trumpism won’t win.

Technology created the Creativity Economy. Creativity is now the gating factor to economic growth. America has more creativity than any other country, thus more growth.

This means more than having talent. Lots of places have talent. But the Creativity Economy has needs that go beyond having talent. Talent must be taught, and it must be free to learn. It must be mentored. Most importantly it must be empowered. Anything, or anyone, who says “no” to a creative person is harming the economy.

Creativity has many dimensions. The Creativity Economy draws from all of them. Whether your talent lies in organizing, in selling, in technology or explaining it, in music or art, the Creativity Economy needs you. Many business leaders don’t have degrees in business. Part of nurturing the Creativity Economy is giving people the freedom to change their path.

Will Rogers Was Right

“I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

Will Rogers’ saying of a century ago is just as true now, even though the political positions of the parties have reversed.

Republicans are united. Once you’re in, all you need do is follow the leader. They make it easy. You never have to think. It doesn’t matter if the leader is a madman, or you’re taking the country off a cliff. That’s why Joe McCarthy wasn’t fatal. Neither is Trump.

Democrats remain a collection of interests. Instead of ethnic machines and southern whites, it’s a rainbow of McGovern-era complainers.

Democrats make it very hard to be a Democrat. Liberal elites are constantly creating new red lines, and anyone who crosses one crosses them all. Anything that goes wrong, whether large or small, is a sign of the apocalypse, a sign to surrender rather than attack.

Eternal White Majority

When my Irish ancestors came to America, this is how they were portrayed.

The whole point of the Scorsese movie Gangs of New York was to illustrate the contempt with which the Anglo-American majority treated Irish immigrants. They saw them as black.

The same thing happened later, with the Italians. Then with the Russians. But today you wouldn’t see Bruce Springsteen or Jerry Seinfeld portrayed as anything but white. Like Alec Baldwin. Like me.

When people write that America will soon be “majority non-white” this is what they’re ignoring. People can easily be made “white” when it’s convenient. By being made “white,” these same people can then look down upon other people, darker people.

Atlanta Politics: Still All About Race

For the first time since I moved here 40 years ago Atlanta finally succeeded over the last four years.

It attracted a huge Microsoft development. It built parks. Its population grew.

The reaction by the city’s leaders has been panic.

The reason? Developers moved in near the coming Microsoft offices and built housing for upper-income people who might work there. The white gentrification of the west side, starting at Georgia Tech, has accelerated. Until recently this was the heart of the ghetto, and of the Atlanta machine’s political strength.

The response has been two-fold. First, Atlanta isn’t really fighting Republicans’ efforts to extract Buckhead, with 20% of the city’s population and 40% of its tax base, from the city. Buckhead is nearly all-white. They will complain, but they will let it go.

#NeverAgain

If #NeverAgain doesn’t apply to everyone it’s just special pleading.

This statement that nearly got me fired last week, from both my jobs. It’s a stance that, if made to a conservative Israeli in 2021, gets you branded an anti-semite.

Of course, even that term is loaded. Anti-semitism refers to prejudice against any semitic people. Palestinians are semites. So are all Arabs. How Israelis can commit daily outrages against Palestinians and call their critics anti-semite is beyond me. But there it is.

In saying this, I’m not denying the Holocaust or diminishing it. Most of the people I grew up around were children of survivors, or the soldiers who liberated them. But genocide is not the unique property of Jews. Armenians were victims of a genocide years before Hitler, no matter how much Turks reject that even today.

White Americans committed genocide against the native Americans, a fact obvious whenever you look into the eyes of Mexican immigrants. Most are descended from Indians. We killed ours. The Spanish just enslaved theirs.

America’s genocide, meant to create “living room” for European settlers, became Hitler’s model for his eastern war, German “lebensraum.” Another American idea that turned out to be nonsense was “eugenics,” the idea that certain races were genetically superior. (In fact, genetic diversity makes a species stronger.) Hitler adopted that, too.

The Holocaust was born in America.

We still hear echoes of it in Republican rhetoric. They won’t be “replaced?” By whom? Immigrants are as human as Tucker Carlson.

Genocide is more than prejudice. It’s more than oppression, or murder. It’s mass murder, meant to exterminate an entire race of people. Americans are committing genocide as I write this. We make guns into totems and kill 100 Americans each day with them. We ignore science and have lost 550,000 in one year. Why won’t Republicans speak out? Because most of the victims are black or brown or immigrants. Never again? Really?

Class Struggle in the 2020s

In the 2020s there are generally two classes of people. (The Class Sketch was first broadcast in 1966. See the whole sketch here.) 

There are the highly educated with their hands on the code. Then there are the uneducated whose actions are controlled by the code.

The result is that instead of having three economic classes in America we mostly have two. Both sides feel bad about it.

The controlling class, understanding that human potential has value, support all kinds of aid to the controlled. We’re liberals. We’re “woke.” We oppose discrimination because it’s inefficient. We support education because we want more of us. Health care, infrastructure, all the social costs that let us focus on the work we do rather than the rest of life, we’re all for it.

The controlled class sees accepting aid as demeaning and they have they pride. It may be all they have, but it’s a potent political force. Knowing that they lack skills, they’re also deathly afraid of being replaced. They lash out in anger at anyone they think might do this – at minorities, at gays, at smart women. They’re focused on protecting what they have.

Labor Troubles

Labor troubles are coming, but they’re not what you think.

We’re being told that the problem is unemployment. That’s temporary. Much more dangerous is the coming problem of labor shortage, especially in high skill positions

This problem has been with technology for decades. Want to know why a skilled computer programmer makes six figures, or why a trained biochemist has no trouble getting a job? It’s the market.

But the pandemic has made some permanent changes. Millions of baby boomers have been locked down, many with jobs, some without. We’re nearly all in our 60s now, and it makes you think. Do we really want to expire at our desks? Or do we want to smell the flowers first? A lot of skilled workers are going to exit the work force in the next few years. We won’t be coming back.

Then, for our elders, there’s the long slide. As we age into our 70s, 80s and 90s, we need more services to get through the day. How much will they cost? Where will they come from? I think some boomers’ “million-dollar retirement” won’t be as plush as we think. Not that those having to wipe the shit off our asses will be happy about it.

The Big Political Story of 2021

Money is walking away from the GOP. (Shown, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.)

This has been going on for some time. Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston and New York, the places where money is made, generally vote for Democrats. They do this because Democrats deliver what technology wants. Tech runs on brains. It’s always in the market for more of them. Brains need training, they need to be empowered, they want to be recruited, they like to be comfortable.

This is the big economic change of our time, a move from resources to brains as the gating factor to growth. Resources need force to secure them. Manufacturing needs hands to run machines. Tech needs brains.

The news hasn’t gotten to everyone. Wall Street sharpies think they know more than the market. There are tech executives who want to corner the market on brains and think other brains are a threat.

These views are wrong for the economy.

Still. It’s hard for money to switch sides. The Republican Party is the natural home of money. That’s been true since the 1860s. For generations, however, money sided with progress. Progress is the root of the word progressive. Both Roosevelts ran as progressives. They wanted progress. So did most businesspeople.