Comment by h2zizzle

>Currently, the US is coasting, relying on talent from outside the country for the cream of the top, so they can afford nonsense beliefs, given also that most middle-class jobs are not all that related to knowledge, and are more status-jockeying email jobs.

Ironically, we also rely on talent from outside the country to undercut wages and worker protections on the low end, which also allows us to afford even more nonsense beliefs.

I think we've worked ourselves into a sort of topsy-turvy paradigm where academic and cultural deviance from a certain range is punished severely, but a non-existent ceiling on wealth/floor on poverty are just assumed to be natural and correct. And it really should be the opposite, not least of which because extreme wealth and poverty seem to exacerbate the contraction of the acceptable academic/cultural range, and the punishments for being outside of that range.