The ‘autopilot nation’ is part of the greater economic moderation and what Steven Pinker calls ‘the long peace’. As much as the left wishes it weren’t so, the world is becoming less violent, thanks in part to innovation, free markets, and the spread of American-style capitalism around the world. The left seeks civil war (rich vs. poor) and economic crisis so that the rich lose money and society can be rebuilt in their image, similar to the October Revolution, French Revolution, The Great Depression and much later, 2008.
As Russia, EU, Japan and Australia struggle with sluggish growth, thanks to the success of the much-hated bank bailouts, effective fed policy, the strong US consumer, free markets, and unstoppable technological innovation, America’s economy been in an autopilot Goldilocks economy since 2009, but Obama deserves no credit for it. There has been no stock market crash since 2008, economic data such as consumer spending, profits & earnings, and exports keeps being blowout. Home prices in high-end, high-growth regions such as the Silicon Valley, DC, Manhattan, Seattle, and Southern California are rising.
America is becoming successistan, iqistan and richistan. To get an idea of how important IQ, wealth and success has become in the hyper-competitive, winner-take-all post-2008 economy, the most popular Reddit Ask Me Anything is by a man who epitomizes all the three of the aforementioned qualities – Elon Musk. It has gotten over 10,000 comments – much more than any celebrity. Recall in 2013 the increasingly irrelevant liberal Rag, the New York Times, tried, with much desperation and futility, to defame Tesla and Elon Musk in an editorial where avowed liberal auto reviewer, John M Broder, deliberately ran his test Tesla out of electricity in order to write a bad review. Tesla stock was trading at $40 at the time; it’s now at $210, to the chagrin of the liberals who wanted to see Tesla fail, and another defeat for the wealth spreading left in their war on success and capitalism.
Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel are right; democracy and capitalism are not necessarily mutuality inclusive, and America was never intended to be a direct democracy. For years, the left has predicted, incorrectly, that rising wealth inequality would be bad for the economy, and yet all economic data such as consumer spending and exports keeps being better than ever. Countries that have less inequality (EU nations, Japan) have had worse nominal economic performance than the US, post-2009. Adjusted for inflation, US economic growth leads the pack.
People are falling behind because of low IQs and the winner-take-all economy that showers great riches upon some and not much for everyone else. Today’s hyper-meritocracy is amplifying the socioeconomic ramifications of individual cognitive differences such that a person with an IQ >110 is much more likely to succeed than someone with an IQ <90 , whereas decades ago the divide wasn't so obvious. The right keeps talking about the need for 'stronger families' and the left goes on about the need for 'more social programs and spreading the wealth', but both ignore the inextricable role of biology. As part of the HBD resurgence and America's intellectual Renaissance, smart people are eschewing the politically correct MSM in favor of sites like Reddit and 4chan that provide alternative explanations and discussions for America's most persistent, pressing problems. For decades, politicians on both sides of the spectrum have been waging a futile war on poverty, and despite unending entitlement spending and regulations designed to narrow and wealth and achievement gap, inequality is worse than ever. And it's not just the inequality between the .0% and the 1%, America has has an increasingly large underclass. The theory that the achievement gap is an IQ gap and that the failure of so many people to participate in America's economic prosperity has a biological etiology, not a social one, is becoming increasing popular and relevant. The left, in their war on IQ, wants to believe that America is dumbing down. Or that IQ is not important. But to the contrary, here's a list of mind-blowing physics discoveries made in just 2014. The left would rather have more social justice and less technological innovation, unless the science pertains to the normalization of homosexuality, industrialization being responsible for global warming, humans being irrational, or IQ not being important. That kind of science is welcomed with open arms. The left says that because string theory cannot be tested it is therefore invalid, but they still believe that Keynesian economic stimulus works – despite all the evidence that it doesn’t.
The autopilot economy and do-nothing congress means those at the top – the smarties – have little to fear from those at the bottom, as much as the left yearns for class revolution. There won’t be rioters with pitchforks, and if there are, the militarized police will put them down with ease. The Greater Moderation and The Long Peace will continue unimpeded for many more decades to come.