If Trump wins the election here’s one idea that will keep me from being incredibly upset. Hear me out… In America we have a massive income equality problem. It’s getting worse and if we don’t fix it will continue to rear its ugly head. Twenty, 30, 50 years from now, we might look back at this period and explain it to our kids by saying: the internet ushered in a new era of great technological advancement but also massive income equality — so much so that America worked great for one part of the population and didn’t work at all for another. The segment of the population that it didn’t work for had very little means to complain, and little recourse. To fight against not being able to achieve middle class or simply even live paycheck to paycheck, they did everything they could — including electing those who claimed to understand them and help them.
I’m sure you’ve seen it, but this incredibly prescient quote from Carl Sagan keeps coming back to me.
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
Good comment from a reader:
I’m sure you’ve seen it, but this incredibly prescient quote from Carl Sagan keeps coming back to me.
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."