Trending
I still listen to Oliver Anthony. He was the rednecky guy who played guitar outdoors with bugs and dogs. His songs are mournful and angry, lamenting his struggles with addiction, his poverty and the changes in America. In his song "Rich Men North of Richmond," welfare queens on one side and a Washington elite on the other were wasting his life. The song became what Fox News called "The Conservative National Anthem." Biden was president then. They even played of bit of it at the first Republican debates in August of 2023. The politicians appeared a bit mystified when asked to comment.
We don't hear much about Oliver Anthony today. After the debates he informed everyone that the people he was singing about were on that stage. After that, I no longer heard about him on Fox News. If you do not understand American culture right now, you might be confused by this.
We sometimes have a version of economics in our heads that is a generation older than the economics that we experience. That maybe a source of confusion. I live in a small town that will illustrate this. Lock Haven, Pennsylvania was the home of Piper Aviation. They made very popular Piper airplanes. The plant was on the eastern edge of town and it employed an outsized number of people. Mr Piper was an outsized fellow. He was the Henry Ford of airplanes. The rugged little planes were synonymous with Alaskan and Canadian puddle jumpers. Sarah Palin, once governor of Alaska and presidential candidate even named one of her daughters after the airplane her family owned. I know many older people in town who worked for Piper.
Mr Piper was accessible. He owned a home across the runway from the factory. It was no mansion, just a good brick house. Everyone knew where he lived and workers could knock on his door. The connection was strong. He paid good wages and helped create the YMCA and maintain the public library. Sociologists call this "compassionate paternalism" where a powerful, father-like figure helps maintain the town because the townspeople's fortunes are his fortunes. He lives there too. Today, Piper is owned by a foreign government and builds the airplanes in Florida. I am not entirely sure what occupies the big building on the eastern edge of town.
I could say the same of another iconic company once headquartered near Lock Haven. Woolrich made the best hunting clothes in a village called Woolrich. The family who owned the company lived there and supported the town with ballfields and a Methodist church that contained a small bowling alley. I've rented it. The factory is now quiet and they very recently closed the "flagship" retail store in town because nobody went there. Today, I have a Woolrich sweater made in China and the headquarters is now in Italy.
Funny... if I bought and reopened the factory in Woolrich and called it "Woolrich," I could be sued by Woolrich.
This old economy made sense and, for the most part, it worked. But it no longer exists. Today we have trillionaires. I could not tell you where Elon Musk lives, nor could I tell you about Jeff Bezos. You could certainly not knock on their doors. In less than a generation, big owners went from sitting down the pew or perusing menswear downtown to being surrounded by armed guards and only appearing as spectacles on the news. Today, the wealthy don't buy bowling alleys. They buy politicians.
Ending inequality is a silly socialist platitude. Sociologists believe inequality exists because it works. In the time of Piper and Woolrich, there were tangible examples of what it took to be successful. Younger people could see the light and often worked hard. The system created an entire middle class which felt like a default. Families knew how their neighbor afforded the fishing boat or second car.
But today, inequality has gone haywire and money has become weird. Since the pandemic we learned the "essential" workers were stocking shelves at the grocery stores and every day, we are reminded that our best and most moral people are not rising to the top.
I don't think Oliver Anthony is confused when he laments living in the "new world with an old soul" and when he sings words like, "they don't think you know but I know that you do." I think politicians are confused... probably because they are bought.
Greg Walker is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, Sociology, Criminal Justice and Social Work at Commonwealth University's Lock Haven campus.