Articles - Joel Kotkin

The Old Can Share the Wealth, Or the Young Will Take it From Them

October 9, 2019/in Demographics, Politics, The Economy

The next great political civil wars won’t be over race, the nation-state, religion or even class. They will be generational, pitching the Boomers, who still dominate the global economy, against their offspring, the Millennials, who assuredly do not.

Can California Win the New Space Race?

October 8, 2019/in California, Politics, The Economy

California may have gotten its global allure from the Gold Rush and the movies, but it’s planes, missiles and now drones and spaceships that have underpinned the state’s industrial emergence.

Benjamin Franklin College at Yale University

Elites Against Western Civilization

October 6, 2019/in Politics, Religion, Urban Affairs

The intellectual class across the West—encompassing its universities, media, and arts—is striving to dismantle the values that paced its ascendancy. Europe, the source of Western civilization, now faces a campaign, in academia and elite media, to replace its cultural and religious traditions with what one author describes as a “multicultural and post-racial republic” supportive of separate identities.

So Much for Localism

September 30, 2019/in Politics, Urban Affairs

In the months that followed President Trump’s election, many thoughtful Democrats and progressives re-discovered the beauties of federalism. After all, with a brute in the White House, maybe the best thing to do was to devolve power to the local level, notably in urban centers where Trump is about as popular as the bubonic plague.

Property and Democracy in America

September 23, 2019/in California, Demographics, Politics, The Economy, Urban Affairs

To understand how American democracy has worked, and why its future may be limited, it’s critical to look at the issue of property. From early on, the country’s republican institutions have rested on the notion of dispersed ownership of land — a striking departure from the realities of feudal Europe, east Asia or the Middle East.

Transit Planners Want to Make Your Life Worse

September 16, 2019/in California, Politics, Urban Affairs

In our system of government, the public sector is supposed to serve the public. But increasingly, our state and local bureaucracies seek to tell the public how to live, even if the result is to make life worse.

The Real Conflict is Not Racial or Sexual, It’s Between the Ascendant Rich Elites and the Rest …

September 12, 2019/in Demographics, Politics, The Economy

Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

Earth as seen from the International Space Station

NASA, CC 2.0 License

Common Sense versus Climate Hysteria

September 9, 2019/in Demographics, Politics, The Economy

The reinforced specter of imminent destruction from climate change increasingly drives the demand for ever more extreme policy choices.

The Politics of Procreation

September 5, 2019/in Demographics

Throughout most of history, starting a family was a task that most people either aspired to or dutifully performed. Today, that is increasingly not the case— a trend that will reshape our politics, economy, and society in the decades ahead.