The global housing crisis across the high-income world, particularly in the Anglosphere, represents perhaps the single biggest challenge to the future of the middle class. From the United Kingdom to Australia, an entire generation is facing a future that will preclude even those with decent incomes from ever owning a house or acquiring assets.
No issue plagues Californians more than the high cost of housing. By almost every metric—from rents to home prices—Golden State residents suffer the highest burden for shelter of any state in the continental U.S. Its housing prices are, adjusted for income, as much as two to three times higher than those in key competitive states, such as Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, and neighbors like Arizona and Nevada.
On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by American writer, Michael Lind, to discuss the future of work.
Many conservatives may see Gavin Newsom as the epitome of the progressive Left, with some even calling his policies “communist.” But the policy preferences of the California governor (whose presidential ambitions are evident) represent something more plausible and thus more dangerous: a blending of Peronist income redistribution coupled with the fanatically “green” authoritarian agenda embraced by the state’s dominant tech oligarchy, public-employee unions, and climate activists. Read more
Over the past century, and even before, conservative political movements thrived by challenging the Left’s appeal to the working and middle class. Virtually all the successful movements on the democratic Right—Disraeli’s Tory Democracy to Thatcherism, Reaganism, and even Trumpism—won by establishing a link between conservative policies and upward mobility. Conservatives have done best when they have met the challenge first posed by social democrats.
Fred Siegel’s passing this weekend represented a huge loss not just for me personally but, more importantly, for all those concerned with the future of the United States, and particularly its cities. Fred was fearless, willing to take on conventional wisdom but always tethered to history in a way that is increasingly rare.
By: Amanda Vanstone
On: CounterPoint
Are there any limits to libertarianism? Joel Kotkin, author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, argues that there is and it is most obvious in housing and the market economy. Does it matter?
Listen to this interview at CounterPoint
It is difficult, given what Silicon Valley has become, to convey exactly what it was like in the 1970s and ‘80s. It was a remarkable center of technology, but also the embodiment of the spirit of capitalism at its very best, as epitomized by garage start-ups like Apple. Greed, of course, is always a human motivation, but the early Valley culture was created by entrepreneurial outsiders who genuinely wanted to make the world better.
By: Michael Medved
Joel Kotkin, Professor of Urban Studies at Chapman University joins the show to discuss his recent piece on the Depopulation Bomb — the threats posed by demographic decline.
Listen to this interview:
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