What you don’t know
Life used to be so simple: Plow your fields and plant seeds, and if it rains, you do well; if it doesn’t, you don’t do well. Start a hardware store, and your store does well or badly depending on when in the business cycle you started up. Not complicated.
Then things changed. Seventy years ago, as men came back from the war and went to work, it seemed like everything worked. Anyone could get a small business loan, everyone had money to spend; everyone had a car and could get to your store come rain or shine. Those were the good old days. Everything worked.
Now, 70 years later, it feels like nothing works. One percent of our people are getting fabulously rich (and paying little or no taxes), and the rest are slipping backward two steps for each step forward. It takes $100,000 in student loans to get a job that sucks the life out of you and doesn’t pay enough to repay your loans or save up the down payment for a house. House prices go up more every year than your income does. Marriages fail, and those 2 kids you could afford to take care of on two incomes are too much for one.
We struggle to understand, but it’s hard. Macroeconomics is hard enough when you know the facts. When you’re being lied to, it’s nearly impossible. “The Big Short,” written by Michael Lewis, describes what was done to us by Wall Street investment bankers, but it’s not an easy read. “Flash Boys,” written by the same author, describes how things went from bad to worse.
The one percent, it turns out, stole what they have. That’s why Elizabeth Warren — author of “Persist” — wants it back. But if you didn’t read any of these books, you probably don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Both of these authors have devoted a considerable part of their lives to understanding what’s been done to the American people. You, I’m guessing, haven’t. So you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know.
We have ways of figuring things out. You can figure out how tall something is if you know how far its base is from you and the angle of sight to the top. Trigonometry tells you how — if you know trigonometry. If you don’t, you’ll probably think people who say they can figure it out are just guessing. But they’re not. They know something you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know.
In a viral epidemic, there are ways to calculate how many people will get sick, and how many will die, once you know the rate of transmission and the lethality of a virus. Dr. Charity Dean knew more than a year ago. But Donald Trump didn’t, and he didn’t ask her, or anyone else. That was 800,000 deaths ago — Charity Dean’s approximate estimate in March of last year. Statistics will tell you the answer — if you know how to calculate probabilities. If you don’t, you’ll probably think people who say they can figure it out are just guessing. But they’re not. They know something you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know.
You hear the losing candidate actually got millions more votes than President Biden did — and you believe it. Never mind hundreds of people have been involved in recounting the votes, and so far, fewer than 500 cases of voter fraud have been documented. It’s not true, you say, because Trump says otherwise, and when has he ever lied? He HAS lied — 30,573 times, if you cared to find out. You probably think the people at the Washington Post who figured this out are just guessing. But they’re not. They know something you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know.
A Mongolian proverb says an idiot can ask more questions than 10 wisemen can answer. Stop asking how we know, and figure out what “knowing” means. Hint: It doesn’t mean if all of your ignorant friends think the same thing, it must be true. There are reasons for everything, if you’d take the time to find out what they are, and stop believing the liars who are trying to mislead you, you’d finally know what you don’t know now.
What you don’t know will hurt us. It will hurt you, too, and your children and your children’s children.
I had a bumper sticker made up to remind you, if you’re driving behind me. I still have 80 or so left; write to me and I’ll give you one: IGNORANCE IS TREASON Inform yourself before you vote