(Conservative) Niall Ferguson on (Conservative) May’s Abbanomics
Even though Ferguson is often a jack ass, this is an excellent article.
“On one side, the citizens of the world — the Weltbürger — who are only citizens in the sense that Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane was a citizen. We have at least two passports. We speak at least three languages. And we have at least four homes, not one of them in the town where we were born.
On the other side — seething with resentment against us — are you citizens of the nation state. You have one passport, if that. You hate the few words of French you learned at school. And you live within driving distance of your parents or your children.
No prizes for guessing which group is more numerous. No matter how many donations the global elite made, philanthropic and political, we could never quite compensate for that disparity.”
Full text at the Boston Globe (free): Theresa May’s Abbanomics and Brexit’s new class war
My Mazamet 
I don’t think it is the economic disparity that people mind. The problem is that the “citizens of the world” are running the nation yet they feel no loyalty to it.
1) If the government treats foreigners as if they have the same rights as citizens then they are not standing up for the concrete interests of their citizens.
2) The result is that the “citizens of the world” run the nation as if the people to whom the are legally accountable do not matter. They basically treat citizens as subjects. Migration is a typical case: they displace citizens for the sake of cheap labor.
3) The citizens of the world push globalization, and benefit enormously from it. They clearly govern in their own self interest but simultaneously insist on their own moral superiority.
4) They insulate themselves from the negative effects of globalization. It isn’t their jobs getting outsourced or their neighborhoods taken over by the low-skilled foreigners. Yet if you complain about this, they call you a racist.
So no, it isn’t the fact that they speak French and own four houses.
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Hogwash. This mislabelling of the “elite” has been going on for decades. That’s how you get people calling college professors or even just graduates the “elite”- while the Dick Cheneys or Donald Trumps of the world are Joe Everyman- concerned with the well being of workers.
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What is not true about what I just outlined? Be specific.
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It’s not citizens of the world who are running the nation. The people being labelled the elite aren’t the elite at all. They’re the middle class. It’s absurd to describe young urban voters (as was the case of remain supporters in the UK) as the *elite*. The same thing occurs in America.
The other day a study came out showing the average Trump supporter makes 70k per year ( http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ ) That’s hardly people being displaced by migrant Mexican workers.
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The young urbanites have an elite education (not necessarily a good education) and aspire to elite status: they are convinced they have the right to rule. Class is not just money, it is also consciousness.
70K is about what a good machinist makes, good for him. Your young urbanites look down on that kind of work as being beneath their station in life – even though they likely make less.
Angela Merkel feels more responsibility to wandering Arabs who may or may not be Syrian refugees than to the people who elected her. Conveniently, she also needs cheap labor, and what do you know, it isn’t her who is going to get raped or blown up.
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So you’re giving the word elite a new definition?
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No, you have the real elite and the aspirational elite. They happen to share a vision of how the world should work.
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Right. And the aspirational urban educated elite supports more pollution? Restricting the rights of minorities? Who actually benefits from those policies?
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The general trend is more pollution and less minority rights?
Pollution is an excellent example. Right now the focus is on raising the cost of energy to drive down use: which sorts of jobs are more likely to be lost from higher energy costs – clerical jobs for the college educated or industrial jobs for the high-school educated?
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So what was the whole *climate change* debate about? And as for clerical jobs… well, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and Ireland have their most educated generation of all history and unemployment levels that rival the worst of times in history. You ask me what sort of jobs are being hurt? What we’re seeing is the re-creation of a two tier society. How does that benefit the educated middle class?
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The climate change debate is mostly about tribal (or class) membership, and a little bit about the role of computer models in predicting things.
It isn’t the fault of the blue collar class that the promises of the elite class – get an elite-style liberal education and you will make great money – don’t pan out for millions of people.
I am afraid of a two tiered society… or maybe not that so much as I’m afraid that the best way of getting out of the stupid class and into the working class – factory labor – is becoming more and more rare.
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Are you not going back and forth between a two tiered society and one that has a delusional “elite”?
You can’t have it both ways.
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Don’t tell me what I can’t have! I can and will have it both ways!
The global elite is one thing. People who share a similar view of the world but not the money is something else. People who do not directly work in the global economy are a tertium quid.
That having been said I am feeling a little confused right now.
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Then let’s revisit it tomorrow! 😀
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Oh my…“the state exists to provide what . . . markets cannot,” declaring her readiness to “intervene . . . where markets are dysfunctional.”
I have no idea what else Theresa May said in that speech, but this little bit seems to be a re-affirmation of what most people see as the true role of government – i.e. to provide the checks and /balances/ Capitalism needs to stop it from becoming a totalitarian non-state.
I know I’m a bit of an anarchist, but I’ve never been a fan of unfettered Capitalism, or any other ‘ism’ for that matter. As for elites, they take advantage of whatever ‘ism’ is around. -shrug-
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It’s a total con job. She’ll intervene to say Brexit means the UK will no longer abide by the EU human rights bill; but somehow Brexit doesn’t mean they’ll fulfil the promise to fund the NHS.
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-sigh- I got a bit excited, just for a moment there. 😦
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