10/30/2023 0 Comments Feudal chart nflOnce upon a time, when the boomers entered adulthood, they entered an ascendant middle class. The fading prospects for the new generation are all too obvious. This is a global phenomenon: Starting in the 1970s, upward mobility for middle and working classes across all advanced economies began to stall, while the prospects for the upper classes rose dramatically. This trend has been most pronounced in the economy, where income growth has skewed dramatically towards the ultra-rich, creating a ruling financial and now tech oligarchy. Yet in recent decades this country has begun to show signs of growing feudalization. In contrast, as Jefferson noted in 1814, America had fewer “paupers,” and the bulk of the population was “fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families.” Save for a few vestiges of the old European feudal order, mostly in the plantation economy of the Deep South, there was no hereditary nobility, no national church and, thanks to George Washington’s modesty, no royal authority.Īt least among whites, there was also far less poverty in America, compared to Europe’s intense, intractable, multigenerational poverty. America’s birth represented a dramatic break from the past.
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