Political Observer comments.

After this May 17, 2024 opening paragraph:

When I was two or three, I went walkabout and wasn’t found until some time later at a local mall. What a close brush with disaster, readers will think. What a potential loss to English letters and the Clerkenwell restaurant trade. Relax. This happened in one of the safest countries on Earth. I got my infant meanderings out of the way in Singapore.

And it’s successor:

A point gets lost in all the coverage of the island state as it changes leadership this month. Economic enrichment is Singapore’s other achievement. It comes below, and wouldn’t have happened without, the creation of order and cohesion where there had been communal strife. To quote its per capita income, which now tops that of the US, is to understate what has happened in a once-fractious Chinese-Malay-Indian society.

https://www.ft.com/content/6f59d545-8201-4fe6-b280-3e96cc245dc4

Reader, that was just the amuse bouche: Let me segue to Ganesh’s May 21, 2024 essay:

In Europe, the three signs of spring have arrived: the bright flora, the endless days and the ambient sound of American voices. All are welcome. But the last is also an annual reminder of the spending power of US tourists. That their economy has outperformed the continent’s this past decade or two can be felt, not just measured.

The material success of the US is discussed in all quarters. What isn’t said enough is that it has happened amid political bedlam. America has roared ahead in the era of the Tea Party, Donald Trump, “forever wars” abroad and culture wars at home. There have been more presidential impeachments in the past generation than in the previous two centuries of the republic. At the turn of the millennium, 44 per cent of Americans trusted the federal government. Now 16 per cent do. The US failed to achieve even a peaceful transfer of power at its last election. (Unlike, say, Senegal.) The civic rot is so deep that well-adjusted citizens find themselves taking an interest in the health of Supreme Court justices, lest one die under a president of the opposing side.

So much political turmoil, so little economic consequence. Why?

https://www.ft.com/content/4effcabc-8b5b-4cd4-a3e7-b5a38f487863

Now Ganesh favorite guise is that of the boulevardier! Yet what is the poverty and homeless rate in America?

As of January 2024, the US Census Bureau reported a national poverty rate of 11.5%. The federal poverty level (FPL) for 2024 is $15,060 for a person living in the mainland US, $17,310 in Hawaii, and $18,810 in Alaska. The FPL is used to determine eligibility for certain programs and benefits, including: Medicaid, CHIP coverage, and Savings on Marketplace health insurance.

And it’s not a small problem. A December 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said 653,104 Americans experienced homelessness, tallied on a single night in January last year. That figure was the highest since HUD began reporting on the issue to Congress in 2007.

This final paragraph of Ganesh’s ‘essay’

In liberal thought, stable political institutions are held to be a precondition for affluence, which in turn increases public support for those institutions, until the circle of logic is closed. In America we are seeing, if not the first ever challenge to this notion, then perhaps the one on the largest historical scale. It is hard to know what to feel: relief at the resilience of America’s wealth creators, or dread that its voters lack a material incentive to fix politics.

Mr. Ganesh is a Neo-Liberal, in the mold of the Hayek/Mises/Friedman Trinity!

Political Observer