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The Number go up rule: Why America refuses to fix anything
In the Booming Twenties, all decision-making is about protecting the value of financial assets held by older people. Therefore, the number must go up. And nothing else matters.
Anything hindering short-term increases in profits, whether that’s higher wages, more factory investment, ending tax loopholes, rules to block being able to unsubscribe from Planet Fitness, transitioning to different energy sources, addressing an opioid crisis, or breaking Chinese control over the necessities of life, gets pushed out of the way. “Rising stocks are how we pay for retirement, education, consumption, and so forth… any impulse to abundantly build out less profitable lines of business undoubtedly strikes at the heart of how American capitalism works.” Probably the most popular formulation of the ‘number go up rule’ is a famous New Yorker cartoon from 2012 showing children around a fire in a post-apocalyptic scene, with the caption “Yes, the planet got destroyed. The number go up model moment reminds me of the archival research I did on the roaring 1920s, with its deep reservoir of fatigue at the idea of do-gooderism, at the prevalence of scams, gambling, liquor, and celebrated immorality, with a backdrop of a financial market moving endlessly higher.
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