Gary Morehead

Brilliant point.

@poqjournal @jacksantucci Congrats!

Out now! The latest issue of POQ! Read Volume 90, Issue 1, Spring 2026 here: academic.oup.com/poq/issue

Trying my hand at the delicate genre of accessible, opinionated prognostication by launching a Substack. First up: deception, delegation, and what opinion research might look like in the not-too-distant future. newinstruments.substack.com/p/who-answered…

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin “Yes, those tax cuts were a way of taking a (third) share.” End of story. The rest is superfluous to your original comment on the wealth pump, which was what I was here to discuss.

Yes, those tax cuts were a way of taking a bigger share. The investors got little from them…their tax rate is capital gains mostly…but they wanted the loyalty of the white collar. 70% is shocking today, but it served a purpose: it said, “If you are a high achiever and want to be rich, don’t work for wages. Build something.”

David French asks, "How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?" Answer: because of the wealth pump, which creates both immiseration and elite overproduction. nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opi…

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin You identify 3 tax cuts as important. So actually, economic elites took a third share - triggering government deficits. Turchin’s model includes state indebtedness. Again, it fits us more and more.

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin What to fix next: “white collar…wanted to continue getting their share of the rising productivity, at the expense of the blue collar.” No. Investors and managers wanted a fair share of the economic gains, sure, AND wanted workers’ share, and they took both shares. No shortage.

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin The investor class is driving, not managers. Shareholders are permanently biased self-maximizers. They never give up more than forced. (Has your namesake volunteered he has enough?) Workers lost political power. The wealth pump turned on. It remains on. Peter Turchin gets it.

@GaryWMorehead @Peter_Turchin Ok. The managerial class <felt> that there wasn’t enough to share. And the productivity gains didn’t seem like the hard work of the staff, but rather settle-by-wire and containerization…in other words globalization. It was natural the workers would lose bargaining power.

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin The ruckus began long before 2016: Strikes in the 70s & 80s; anti-NAFTA/globalization/World Bank-IMF protests in 90s & 00s; demands for Wall Street prosecutions after the 2008 crash; Tea Party; Occupy Wall Street. Deaths of Despair 2000-2020. System ignored all. Results in graph.

@GaryWMorehead @Peter_Turchin On the flipside, why did the working class wait until 2016 to make a ruckus? Because they were told they could get raises by moving jobs or getting promoted, and it seemed good enough.

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin Correction to your framing: Why couldn’t elites stop wages from rising in sync with productivity (being forced to share the economic gains of the economy) until they suddenly could - and therefore did?

@Peter_Turchin Why did elites turn on the wealth pump then, and not before? Putting it another way, why were they ok with wages that rose faster than the deflator until suddenly not? Because they found their own (and their kids’) living began to stagnate.

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin White worker short-sightedness & racial jealousy paid off well for econ elites (predictably following the Iron Law of Oligarchy - google it). Workers “sewed the wind & reaped the whirlwind.”Charitably, they allowed econ elites to dupe them. Really, they prioritized their racism.

@ThankElon @Peter_Turchin US “wealth pump” was turned off by New Deal elites, against opposition, & kept off by its remnants, through the civil rights era. Elite opposition was always present. Then the “anti-pumpers” lost too many white workers over racism to continue to defend workers’ prosperity.

@AnthEid OK, see current Colorado PR initiatives 262, 263 and 264 here (look down the list): sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections… And feedback from CO legislative staff on the original filings (an interesting feature of CO’s process - free legal advice for reformers!): citizenportal.ai/source/7672028…

@GaryWMorehead Would love to see it!

Democracy as we know it might end tomorrow.

@groupindividual @scottsantens @leedrutman No, not more exec elections methods - approval, cumulative, etc. Fusion is a bit better than RCV but both are transfer methods. F is at least party-based. Politics is a team sport. Focus on state/local OLPR/MMP & embrace spoiling (see UK). PR has never been adopted w/o spoiling.

@GaryWMorehead @scottsantens @leedrutman The national, state and local discussions should contain more options. That's the whole point.

"You don’t fix a structural problem with better messaging. You fix a structural problem with a structural solution." (url in replies)

@scottsantens @groupindividual @leedrutman Part of the reason may be the changing, increasingly polarized, political environment: ‘RCV performs best when polarization is moderate.’ Correa-Lopera, 2025, “Ranked-Choice Voting Versus First-Past-the-Post: How Polarization Shapes Their Performance.” dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5…

@scottsantens @groupindividual @leedrutman Oh, if only. 2025 peer-reviewed evidence survey: ‘Taken as whole, this article does not find evidence RCV has produced transformative political effects reformers postulated.’ Vishwanath, “The Effects of Ranked Choice Voting on Substantive Representation.” dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00…

Michigan's maps (via independent commission) rank among the fairest nationally. Princeton Gerrymandering Project: state House B (slight GOP edge), Senate A (neutral). Congressional: near-zero efficiency gap per MSU/IPPSR (-0.16, slight Dem lean in projections). Compared to others, far better than NC/TX (strong GOP bias) or IL (D bias). 2022/2024 outcomes aligned with statewide votes—big upgrade from prior gerrymanders.

@GaryWMorehead @bdtamas Hi @GaryWMorehead, here is the link to the webinar: youtube.com/watch?v=8Pbx7l…