The USA can seem misleadingly European if you only fly between cities, or shuffle around the Acela corridor. Got to get into six hours' worth of corn fields to see the reality. (View Post)

To speak literally about the world, income gains in the last 40 years have been incredible, and more equally distributed than before, maybe than ever before. The problem is that the kind of people wh… (View Post)

There is a reason why the Statue of Liberty isn't inscribed "give me your middle-income earners". It's never been the case that the average European in a normal economy found them… (View Post)

The official CCP ideology under Deng had been: democracy and freedom good, but we have too many local elites who would use those freedoms to grab power and undermine them, so we need a time of centra… (View Post)

The article only hints at the likely historical reason: Poles moved around a lot in the 20th century, and the ones who ended up in the new territories in the west were often the kinds more likely to … (View Post)