Bremer's digression about the black experience in the US missed the mark to my mind. Definitely a lack of nuance, made all the less clear by the meandering comparisons to other countries. Good on Yascha for pushing back on it.
A good discussion, I thought. The parameters for evaluating Bremmer's point about the "experience of the average black American male" with the "liberties" of the average Hungarian citizen under Orban were probably not well-enough defined by him. Just how those two things are to be compared economically (either by annual income or net worth) was not very clear. It was also not clear to me what Bremmer believed was enlightening about comparing the average experience of a disadvantaged minority group member in one country to an average citizen in another. A comparison between African-Americans in the US and, say, the Roma population of Hungary for centuries and now under Orban would be more telling, in terms of situating the average black American experience. But perhaps I missed the point?
Great article in NoneSite that sheds light on just how ignorant of the numbers on the ground Bremer is. His focus on wealth disparity is as if the representative groups of Black and White are the top 10% only, which is obviously not the case. A quote from the article: "That means, as Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project recently noted, “the overall racial wealth disparity is driven almost entirely by the disparity between the wealthiest 10 percent of white people and the wealthiest 10 percent of black people.” While Bruenig is clear that a discernible wealth gap exists across class levels, he explored the impact of eliminating the gap between the bottom 90 percent of each group and found that after doing so 77.5 percent of the overall gap would remain. He then examined the effect of eliminating the wealth gap between the bottom 50 percent—the median point—of each population and found that doing so would eliminate only 3 percent of the racial gap. So, 97 percent of the racial wealth gap exists among the wealthiest half of each population. And, more tellingly, more than three-fourths of it is concentrated in the top 10 percent of each. If you say to those white people in the bottom 50 percent (people who have basically no wealth at all) that the basic inequality in the U.S. is between black and white, they know you are wrong. More tellingly, if you say the same thing to the black people in the bottom 50 percent (people who have even less than no wealth at all), they also know you are wrong. It’s not all the white people who have the money; it’s the top ten percent of (mainly) whites, and some blacks and some Asians. The wealth gap among all but the wealthiest blacks and whites is dwarfed by the class gap, the difference between the wealthiest and everyone else across the board." https://nonsite.org/the-trouble-with-disparity/
It would be great if you could have a conversation with Martin Gurri on this topic. He has some great insights and it would be fascinating to hear his latest thoughts, and give him space and time to develop that.
Bremer's digression about the black experience in the US missed the mark to my mind. Definitely a lack of nuance, made all the less clear by the meandering comparisons to other countries. Good on Yascha for pushing back on it.
A good discussion, I thought. The parameters for evaluating Bremmer's point about the "experience of the average black American male" with the "liberties" of the average Hungarian citizen under Orban were probably not well-enough defined by him. Just how those two things are to be compared economically (either by annual income or net worth) was not very clear. It was also not clear to me what Bremmer believed was enlightening about comparing the average experience of a disadvantaged minority group member in one country to an average citizen in another. A comparison between African-Americans in the US and, say, the Roma population of Hungary for centuries and now under Orban would be more telling, in terms of situating the average black American experience. But perhaps I missed the point?
Great article in NoneSite that sheds light on just how ignorant of the numbers on the ground Bremer is. His focus on wealth disparity is as if the representative groups of Black and White are the top 10% only, which is obviously not the case. A quote from the article: "That means, as Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project recently noted, “the overall racial wealth disparity is driven almost entirely by the disparity between the wealthiest 10 percent of white people and the wealthiest 10 percent of black people.” While Bruenig is clear that a discernible wealth gap exists across class levels, he explored the impact of eliminating the gap between the bottom 90 percent of each group and found that after doing so 77.5 percent of the overall gap would remain. He then examined the effect of eliminating the wealth gap between the bottom 50 percent—the median point—of each population and found that doing so would eliminate only 3 percent of the racial gap. So, 97 percent of the racial wealth gap exists among the wealthiest half of each population. And, more tellingly, more than three-fourths of it is concentrated in the top 10 percent of each. If you say to those white people in the bottom 50 percent (people who have basically no wealth at all) that the basic inequality in the U.S. is between black and white, they know you are wrong. More tellingly, if you say the same thing to the black people in the bottom 50 percent (people who have even less than no wealth at all), they also know you are wrong. It’s not all the white people who have the money; it’s the top ten percent of (mainly) whites, and some blacks and some Asians. The wealth gap among all but the wealthiest blacks and whites is dwarfed by the class gap, the difference between the wealthiest and everyone else across the board." https://nonsite.org/the-trouble-with-disparity/
It would be great if you could have a conversation with Martin Gurri on this topic. He has some great insights and it would be fascinating to hear his latest thoughts, and give him space and time to develop that.