In the early Islamic period, despite being extremely urbanized, Jews were disproportionately proletariat and petit bourgeoise. It another religious minority that dominated finance: Christians !
The best explanation for any overrepresentation of Jewish people in finance is simple: Cities!
Finance and trade live in cities. In Europe, few Christian but most Jewish people lived in cities. Excluded from other places + strong religious preferences for cities, as below:
In turn, the history of economic development is in large part the history of urban development -- historical GDP per person correlates nearly exactly with historical % urban population.
Literacy, wealth, finance, trade, industry, technical development: Products of the city!
I believe that sociological explanations like these should make myths of "Jewish conspiracy" seem unnecessary and vile.
Research supports that point: Disputing the facts of alleged Jewish conspiracies reduces belief in them ("rational" line): sci-hub.st/10.3389/fpsyg.…
In general, telling people facts works!
Wood 2018: there is no evidence for a consistent "backfire effect"; telling people facts generally changes their minds; the effect of factual correction is ~1/3 as large as the effect of ideology on stated belief: sci-hub.se/10.1007/s11109…
This holds true for (at least some) partisan topics with partisan messaging
Tappin 2021: evidence changed minds in a sample of 24 policy issues; no significant difference between "evidence + contrary party leader cue" (purple) vs "evidence alone" (black) psyarxiv.com/247bs/
TLDR:
Socialists should believe material conditions explain social outcomes -- such as urbanization driving Jewish job choices.
Evidence shows that facts really do change minds.
The facts are on our side. We should not shy away from explaining them!
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- narrowly wins Seattle city council seat as open socialist
- Trot, loves to hate DSA
- looks like she will lose recall election
- joins DSA, we canvass for her, she wins by <1%
- resigns her city council position
- becomes a full-time anti-DSA podcaster
- her Trot org splits in three (lol), she takes ~200 ppl
- she talks shit about Zohran (DSA), until he wins
- her org uses his win & face to promote her vanity campaign for US House (will get <5%)
- she talks more shit about Zohran
What can you say but opportunist?
"They don't want power. They want to endlessly podcast about power."
For good and bad, the world was on demographic track for a Long American Century.
At current growth, fertility, & immigration levels: The US would be the ONLY world power with exponential total GDP growth by 2100.
If Trump ends birthright citizenship, he ends that trajectory.
"America First" types ignore how immigration makes the USA stronger: It makes us bigger!
Remember when Japan was going to take over the world? Japan never stopped growing more productive -- it just stopped growing more populous.
Without immigration, the US would be shrinking.
All the world's geniuses want to move here.
Trumpists would turn them away -- and lower innovation, lower growth, lower population, weaken the USA -- all to please mediocre White racists that can't intellectually compete.
Trumpists are genuinely too stupid to run an empire.