Tom Ritchford
1 min readDec 9, 2019

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If you point out my house is on fire, me saying, “Why didn’t you bring a fire extinguisher?” isn’t really fair to you.

Most Americans have no idea of what the problem is. Indeed, about 40% of them believe that the problem could be fixed by reducing the amount of money spent on public goods and social services.

Umair is providing a valuable service just identifying the problem, even if he doesn’t propose an answer, in the same way that a doctor who diagnoses but cannot treat your cancer does.

I might add something else — sometimes spelling out the solution makes people reactive against it.

Umair’s statement of the problem is extremely clear — the English-speaking world has taken a huge amount of money out of public goods and social services, and given it to the very rich.

You don’t have to be a genius to see that the only answer is to take the money back from the very rich and put it into social services and public goods again.

But if Umair said it that way, he’d be branded a Socialist and worse. By leaving the answer to the reader, he lets them to come to that answer themselves, and allows them to feel justified satisfaction for doing so.

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