I opened up the email from Snow Peak this morning to find that the Limited Edition Stainless Wine Tumbler was sold out after only one week. At $69.95 a pop. It was another piece of anecdotal evidence that the high end consumer is alive and well, reinforcing my thoughts on the state of the nation.
It occurred to me that maybe “polarized politics” reflects what’s happening on the ground in the United States. The income inequality seen in the country follows a macroeconomic trend that’s happening all over the world: prosperous cities vs. the rest.
On one hand, we have voters rejecting education funding, more people jailed for no good reason, bulldozing all over Detriot, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo and a family with 35 guns in Lincoln, Illinois. For millions of Americans, the country as they knew it is gone:

Back in town, you can’t buy any more of the Snow Peak wine tumblers or get a parking spot at Whole Foods while the NY Times reports that, “10 world record prices were achieved for artists who, besides Bacon, included Christopher Wool, Ad Reinhardt, Donald Judd and Willem de Kooning.” For us, it’s all good.
On the aggregate, we know the economy will go on just fine like it does in Mexico for example, but like so many countries around the world, it will become harder to govern because the people share few interests and even fewer common goals. Perhaps this is why government seems so broken to so many, enough for them to believe that democracy is no longer the answer.