Death By Hedge Fund

 Why are Americans so unhappy? Why are they retreating into a fentanyl induced haze? We live in the most prosperous society in the most prosperous time in world history. We have things that would gobsmack our grandparents, much less our great-great grandparents. 

I keep coming back to the idea that happiness is not a fixed quality. After a certain level of material comfort - once you've moved up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - happiness is not determined by the state f your material possessions, but rather by your perception of your material possessions in comparison to others. 

Where are the happiest countries in the world? Scandinavia is always at the top of the list, as these countries are relatively homogenous and sustain robust welfare states that perpetuate relative equality. It can't be the weather that's making them happy. The US actually ranks fairly high on the list at 15, so we aren't saying we're miserable, we just seem to act that way.

I think, at some point, the high levels of wealth inequality are driving Americans, especially those at the margins, into despair. Polarization has also ruptured our sense of national purpose. We really do live in two alternate realities at this point, and that fracturing both weakens our commitment to social welfare programs and creates a general sense of unease. I think millions of us looked around from 2016 until today and marveled that our countrymen could think that Donald Trump was anything but a shallow conman.

Which brings me to Vivek Ramaswamy. He is largely being touted as the "next Trump" because he has certain attributes that align with Trump's political skills and messaging. DeSantis thought abrasive cruelty was the message, but it's a sort of smiling, devil-may-care cruelty that actually typifies Trump. Dark, sure, but also joking. DeSantis was too grim. Ramaswamy is also a "business man" though I will concede that, unlike Trump, he actually has shown the ability to make money as opposed to lose it.

Ramaswamy and Trump are both, at their core, salesmen. They are bullshit artists who operate at or over the margins of fraud. (Trump mostly over the margins.) Salesmen have a great read on people and what they want to hear. Trump has no policy agenda, except to translate the rage and grievance of his audience into vague ideas, like bombing Mexico. Ramaswamy seems to be cut from the same cloth. 

Ramaswamy also has a link to Mitt Romney - hedge funds. The massive wealth that these funds manipulate have a distorting effect on the economy and on the economic lives of Americans. This has its most profound effects at those margins - the inner city and rural America - where economic opportunities are few. When a hedge fund buys up a business and "streamlines" it, they are firing people and driving smaller competitors out of business. 

There used to be a stupid talking point about how "We need to run America like a business." Except business - especially the sorts of businesses that Trump and Ramaswamy ran - are very poor models for governance. Romney, for all his plutocratic cluelessness, at least makes a nod towards the "common good" whereas these two carnival barkers are all about grabbing as much as they can as soon as they can. Business has become about winning the quarter and cashing your stock options, whereas government is about service. Sure, your local grocer might have service in mind, until Stop & Shop comes in a drives him out of business.

This isn't limited to the United States. We have a global problem of unaccountable and undemocratic wealth. Yesterday, I wrote about the links between fundamentalist Christianity and authoritarian thinking, but it's also clear that the super wealthy are eager to make cause with Christianist voters, as they share a contempt for democracy and equality.