... and it isn't just inflation!

This link is to a thread containing some eye-opening charts portraying how the world (UK in particular) is changing under our feet.  Some of the changes being captured have been gaining momentum over many years, and are fairly familiar (see this chart, for example; and the growth in financial inequality).

Others are less so, e.g.

• % young adults living with their parents  
• % women aged 30 that are childless
• out-of-pocket payments for healthcare in the UK - now the same as in the USA!
• rise in crowdfunding to pay for medical costs

These sorts of socio-economic shifts require a D.Cummings to wrestle with them politico-strategically.  The long term implications will be significant.  Can't see B.Johnson having the slightest interest in that anymore, though.

ND

Trump shows how deep the rabbit hole has become

Trump vs Democrats 

Remain vs Leave

Covid19 vs Anti-vaxers

Liberals vs identity politics

The Fed vs the markets...

The advent of social media has truly de-stabilised the world now. Trump seems to have convinced himself the normal election was stolen from him. The fact that every investigation has come up empty passes him by. 

In the UK, Remainers were full of how our Country would fail literally on the day of Brexit, with no food or medicines coming in. Brexit is not without its downsides, but non of this was ever true and yet still it gets repeated ad nauseam. 

On the vaccine, utterly unsubstantiated tripe about the vaccine is shared widely, putting people off having it. Does no one recall the MMR scandal and how unscientific nonsense was published linking it to autism? So many kids then exposed to diseases that were supposed to be near eradicated. 

But the internet is powerful, it allows groups who previously would have been 2 people in a pub to gather in larger virtual numbers and in the US just now in real numbers to push their crazed agenda. The whole element of Fake News is such a dark element in our society. Anyone can reinforce their beliefs by finding more outlandish information on QAnon or the Canary - whichever side they are on, there is plenty of content to keep them off-track. 

I have a whattsapp with a CEO of a very large company. All he does is send conspiracy nonsense about the virus not being real and the great reset. An intelligent guy, lost in the rabbit hole of the web. 

What Trump shows is this now goes right through society in the West, right to the top where the person literally in charge of the US can claim 'THE MAN' is against him - he is the man for goodness sake. It is an insanity. 

What I have not figured out is how we get out of this conundrum as a society. Social media won't be put back in its box, How do we figure out a way through it? I think perhaps it is time to make Social Media companies register as publishers. They have to be responsible for content like a newspaper or any other offline media. We need to do something or else the craziness in the Capitol will be the nearer the beginning and not the end.