– HL Mencken
If you’ve never studied economics – or have but rely on the NYT for your political, social, and/or economic opinions – you should read the essay I’ve linked to below.
It’s an entertaining explanation of what motivates almost everything our politicians promise, but fail, to do. It points out the fundamental reason why Trump is doing what he’s doing now – including waging war and collecting tariffs. It’s also the reason why AOC and Mamdani promised to “tax the rich,” and why some of NYC’s largest employers are leaving the city. And it’s a refreshing reminder of the discerning political and social insights of HL Mencken, who was perhaps the shrewdest critic of American values and habits since Mark Twain.
It was written by Garrett Baldwin, one of my favorites of Agora’s many economic and financial analysts, which makes the learning pleasing, if not downright fun.
In this essay, which challenged me to reconsider some of the political perches upon which I recently settled, Baldwin argues that the US (and pretty much the entire developed world) is barely surviving on – as he puts it – “the shared agreement that money means what we say it means.” And that is because, as Mencken said in Notes on Democracy(1926), “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.”
You can read it here.
