Why death by lack of merit cannot be part of a modern democracy
Christian nationalists and meritocracy were formerly able to join forces to form a supermajority, where now they cannot join forces and are not even a simple majority if they did.
By some estimates Christian nationalists are only 3 in 10 Americans. Christian nationalists are a minority now and so democracy no longer works for them. The entire hysteria over trans women in sports is just Christian nationalist feelings that imposters are usurping them.
The coalition with hopes of a plurality greater than Christian nationalists is meritocracy. But, thanks to rising inequality, the math against democracy is similar. Less than 1 in 10 Americans are winning the economy and so the votes are simply not there for meritocracy either:
Over one quarter, 28.5%, of all income was earned by the top 8%, those households earning more than $150,000 a year. The top 3.65%, with incomes over $200,000, earned 17.5%. Households with annual incomes from $50,000 to $75,000, 18.2% of households, earned 16.5% of all income.
Meritocracy is also hard to extend because most workers are not very productive. Some Silicon Valley innovations made things worse and others only thrive because of socialism IE Wikipedia, open source, subsidized electric cars, and things like iPhones which come exclusively from government funded research.
This power vacuum leaves oligarchs in charge by default and threatens to end democracy. Two traditional ways to reach majority were to have an underclass the over class could vote to suppress or give the over class useless, invented jobs.
For instance even Denmark has an underclass:
In 2002, the Liberal-Conservative government enacted changes, cutting significant social assistance benefits for specific groups, such as refugees, new immigrants and ethnic minorities. It pitched these changes as a part of immigration policy reform. However, these changes have had lasting impacts on the welfare system and on poverty in Denmark as a whole. The government justified the cuts to social assistance as necessary to increase immigrants’ and refugees’ incentive to find work.
Denmark’s attitude towards immigrants is hard to reconcile with its 1.55 births per woman (US 1.66). Their 700,000 immigrants are an underclass of almost 12%, close in size to the 13.7% in America identifying as black. That’s on top of a Nordic glass ceiling which can even be compared to the US — 28% female management as opposed to US 43% (the US does worse in other respects though).
However Denmark levels of socialism will still leave America divided and, more importantly, just delay chaos. Automation means manual labor jobs are not coming back even via tariffs. At best there will be positions like checkout machine attendant who oversee the new degraded experience that we already have for groceries, furniture and many other goods.
MAGA is defined by people that want less meritocracy and more defined feel good norms — for instance scientists should not get paid a lot and instead “businessmen” must prosper. When these norms are violated the Karen rallying cry is one of rage, “You think you’re special!?!?”
The Christian oligarchy partnership is helped by Musk and Trump not being “special”. Rich get richer is the expected norm outcome and they are not even rags to riches with some merit like some other billionaires. Still Musk and Trump are not Christian and not interested in their agenda.
So the current far right fight is poison pill politics — no time machine gets back factory jobs or pretending women and other races are inferior. There is of course a gender glass ceiling in the US but nothing as substantial as existed in previous centuries and no way back to that state. At only 1% of the population, transgenders will never sufficiently create an underclass.
FDR socialist policies were for agrarian supporters, a baby boom, nationalism at its height, dominant religion, and a much larger female / black underclass. That’s in many ways the opposite of the current environment.
So where can America find a new majority coalition of voters? And can that coalition be formed without enlarging the underclass or embarking on a made up quest that drains resources better spent preserving the environment or ending poverty or invasions?
Republicans are betting on a new majority coming from anti-democracy and a mass rejection of logic and reason. The only remaining move for the Democratic Party is to double down on the opposite — logic and reason.
Logically food, health care, and shelter must be universally provided goods for everyone that can vote. We cannot, as a society, allow mass automation and simultaneously declare that one of our citizens has not achieved enough “merit” to be worthy of basic support. Modernly, not providing basics creates a spectacle of cruelty which paves the way for fascism.
America’s new majority coalition of voters will be formed of people determined to provide basics for free for US citizens. Unfortunately that will immediately exacerbate the underclass of non US citizens in the US. There will inevitably be elements of a spectacle of cruelty, but that’s the only way forward.
Of course pro business mouthpieces will declare that universal basic support will cause shortages of workers. However even the US Chamber of Commerce admits that America’s unfilled jobs are not in basics:
So taking death by lack of merit off the table might even help some workers make the climb into jobs in “financial activities” and “professional and business services”.
The real question will be about the children of illegal immigrants to the US receiving universal basic support. There will be fear mongering of a potential mass migration to America. This question and others will have to be answered but let’s not pretend that American democracy has any other choice. At this point it’s universal support or fascism.