Alan Greenspan's Ghost

Too bad Alan Greenspan didn't live long enough to see the election victory of the Democratic Socialists. The obituaries all mentioned the fact that Alan, as chairman of the Fed, admitted his "mistake" to Congress; he assummed Markets worked, that they factored in risk perfectly. Oops. The obits wanted us to believe that this error only applied to the 2007-8 financial meltdown but of course Markets still aren't pricing in the risk posed by ecological collapse. Economists believe they can calculate "the social cost of carbon" but it is a wildly random estimate with a huge range. And that's just carbon- no one is calculating the cost of crossing all the other planetary boundaries. That would crush the fantasy. Instead they keep talking about the price of oil and about raising interest rates and AI IPO's blah blah blah. Good luck with that. Speaking of hyperscalers and super intelligence, they plan to focus on putting their energy-gobbling data centers in the rural south, where intelligence is a rare commodity. This could replace the tobacco and textile industries. The Wall Street Journal has a quiz you can take to find out what class you belong to. "See what your lifestyle says about your economic class" and we are given these categories: upper, upper middle middle, working and lower. This is the thing Marxists like Vivek Chibber have so much trouble accepting; conciousness has been traded for identity. Consumption won. Do you shop at Nordstroms or K Mart? With a large enough line of credit you can join the upper class for a few hours, even days. Till the bill shows up anyway. I'm not sure if working or middle classes shop at Wal Mart or who it is that has an REI membership. Does the upper-middle go on Princess Cruises but have their own hot tub? Who gets to fly first class? Then there is the all-inclusive approach, from a member of DSA New York: "Mr. Custodio, a 28-year-old investment researcher, has a ready reply. “If you’re someone who has to work for a living, and you’re not living off a trust fund, you are part of the working class,” he says. There goes the Proffessional Managerial Class. Now a bank president or CEO is as much "working class" as a plumber with investments. But will they join the revolution?