Repost - Precarity, American-Style: Causative Factors

For the next couple of weeks I won't have time or opportunity to write a new long-form post, but I'd like to direct readers to some of the posts I wrote between 2022 and 2024 on the subject of economic precarity.  In particular, I'd like to point out a post I wrote in March 2023 titled, "Precarity, American-Style: Causative Factors."

In my research for writing this particular post, along with many of the posts in this series, I was struck by how much precarity and inequality in the U.S. has been driven by plain old-fashioned racism - namely the insistence by white supremacists in high places that they should be allowed to create structures of economic oppression which continue to Make Themselves Great by keeping many nonwhite people poor. It's as if these people said to themselves, "The people our ancestors conquered - the people over which our ancestors gained oppressive power - these very people are now OUR inheritance, our hereditary possession to whom we can do whatever we want!  How DARE these people try to be happy in OUR world which WE have possessed!"  This has been the blatant motivation behind the choice of these supremacists and would-be supremacists over the last 45 years.  In other words, they consistently voted Rethuglican (and rabidly supported Trump) precisely because they hoped that the pack of Rethuglican leopards would eat the faces of all their "enemies".

But as my posts on precarity will show, in voting for the Rethuglicans, these voters are now finding that their own faces got chewed up.  Please read the post I have cited and see how supporting the conservative Republican agenda has hurt most Americans who are not rich by forcing us to live in a society dominated by economic monopolies and oligopolies, a society in which it has become unnecessarily hard for people who want to start small businesses in order to escape economic exploitation.  See also how while President Biden was in office, his administration worked to make economic conditions more favorable to small business as well as working to rein in the power of big business.  Consider also that Kamala Harris would likely have continued promoting policies that would have helped people who are not rich.  If you are a reader who has made a habit of voting for red Republican candidates, let me ask you: how are those leopard bite marks on your face feeling?  Maybe the incoming Democrats will have some ointment for you.

P.S. Please also note that the government of the People's Republic of China is now enacting policies designed to boost its own citizens who want to start and run small businesses!  (See also "China to support 'little giants' and other emerging companies in plan to boost jobs and innovation," Reuters, 2026年9月 or, for us in the U.S., September 2026)