What people are getting wrong about ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’By Daniel McCarthy
August 20, 2023
You don’t need a college degree to understand what’s happening in our country.
Oliver Anthony, the songwriter behind the viral hit “Rich Men North of Richmond,” didn’t even finish high school.
But his song is the most intelligent political commentary of the year.
That’s because there are two parts to it, though most critics and many admirers have only picked up on one.
The song isn’t simply a class-war complaint — the trouble with the rich men north of Richmond isn’t that they’re rich, it’s that “they all just wanna have total control / Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do.”
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Look at the first verse: “Overtime hours for bulls–t pay” is the line that catches everyone’s attention.
If low pay is the problem, the obvious solution is more money, so some economic conservatives say Anthony (or the song’s version of him) should just pack up and move wherever jobs pay more, while progressives would simply mandate higher wages or provide generous welfare benefits.
Those answers don’t address what Anthony actually sings about, which isn’t just money but “sellin’ my soul . . . So I can sit out here and waste my life away / Drag back home and drown my troubles away.”
The song’s economic agenda is in fact notably Reaganite, as Anthony directs his ire at inflation (“dollar ain’t s–t”), taxes (“it’s taxed to no end”) and welfare as a substitute for work (“if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”).
That’s not just a rejection of progressive nostrums, it’s a powerful rejoinder to complacent conservatives who think that moving to Florida is a substitute for sound monetary policy and an anti-tax agenda designed to appeal to people like Anthony, not just rich men north of Richmond.
Moving from one end of the country to the other doesn’t help anyone escape inflation, and writing off workers angry about their taxes and how they’re spent is a surefire way for Republicans to lose the House, the Senate and the Electoral College, regardless of how prosperous things might seem in certain red states.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/20/what-people-are-getting-wrong-about-rich-men-north-of-richmond/
