The Green Road to Tyranny

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In all the hysteria about the threat to democracy connected to the bombast of Donald Trump, an arguably greater long-term threat is mounting, though all but ignored, from the well-funded green movement. Read more

How California Became a Warning to the World

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For generations, California has led the world in creating cutting-edge ideas and opportunities for newcomers. As actor-turned-governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger once said:

‘We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta… Not only can we lead California into the future… we can show the nation and the world how to get there.’

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Are Progressives to Blame for the Worsening Housing Crisis?

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In recent years, housing has emerged as arguably the key driver of class divisions in the Western world. For decades, working- and middle-class people could dream reasonably about buying a house, providing security for their families and a financial nest egg for themselves, but that dream is now slowly dying. Until the Nineties, house prices generally rose at about the same rate as income, and homeownership became more widespread, with the median multiple in most areas around three. But since then, prices “have been three times faster than household median income over the last two decades”, according to the OECD.

This has been further confirmed by a new Demographia International Housing Affordability study which found that, despite claims that they reduce prices, higher urban population densities are associated with worse housing affordability in the United States, Australia and Britain. Many of these changes are due to urban containment or compact city strategies that seek to limit development in already urbanised areas and promote urban density — an approach widely popular with progressive activists.

Unfortunately, many of the drivers behind these trends are political: the embrace of pro-density policies has been commonplace in both the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations, as well as in progressive bastions such as California. Indeed, there are even attempts by the likes of Biden to transfer inner-city populations to suburbs, who may be less than welcome when they get there. Add to that the problem of high interest rates, the product of Washington’s extreme profligacy, and even more people are being driven out of the market.

Those hurt most by these developments are the new entrants to markets, such as minorities — who now account for virtually all growth in suburban areas — and Millennials. According to US Census Bureau data, the rate of homeownership among young adults at ages 25–34 was 45.4% for Generation X, but dropped to 37% for Millennials — even though nearly three in five see homeownership as an essential part of the American dream. It should be no surprise, then, that Biden’s drop in support among young people largely lies with the diminishing prospect for upward mobility and home ownership.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Residential area of Whitter, California via Wikimedia CC 1.0 License.

Why Johnny Can’t Build

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We were once a nation of builders—from the toll roads and canals of the early nineteenth century and the railroads of the second half of that busy century, to the construction of power, energy, and water systems that were the envy of the world. Read more

Progressive Biden a Threat to His Own Party

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At a time when the Republican Party seems united around Donald Trump and his MAGA vision, the ruling Democrats seem about to tear themselves into pieces. Even with the looming presence of a second Trump electoral triumph, a growing proportion of the party’s traditional constituencies – ethnic and religious minorities, working class people and young people – are detaching from the party.

Perhaps the fear of losing in November will be enough to keep this fraying coalition together. Still, there’s little that will unite the party in future elections. Democrats are polling poorly on big issues like inflation, the border, crime, and national security. Barely a third of the population thinks the country is headed in the right direction. Yet rather than address these concerns, Biden has focused on placating the party’s new political base, educated professionals, through vanity schemes like the massive cancellation of college debt.

As a recent Rasmussen survey suggests, there’s an enormous distance between the core of graduate school educated urban professionals and everyone else on virtually every major issue. Unlike most Americans, this class has benefited from Biden’s wild spending sprees, with most employment growth concentrated in public sector government jobs and largely public-funded health care.

In contrast, the traditionally private sector middle and the working classes buckle under the twin pressures of monopoly power and regulations that increasingly imperil smaller firms. Even young people are shifting away from Biden, who won their votes easily in 2020, and towards Trump. Media accounts may link this to the Palestine crisis but polling shows that young people rank virtually every other issue as being more important. Their concerns are real: one in four Americans overall fear losing their job in the next year.

Jewish Democrats, alarmed by the rise of pro-Hamas forces in the party, are financing bids to take on progressive legislators. Jewish organisations have targeted anti-Israel politicians in the primaries, and won some significant victories in California and Oregon. Mainstream Jewish organisations also seem likely to oust later this month the pro-Palestine New York progressive Congressman Jamaal Bowman.

Most Jews will likely vote for Biden, but support for the Democrats is gradually eroding. After all, Donald Trump managed to boost his Jewish vote from 24 per cent in 2016 to 30 per cent – well above the average for most modern Republican Presidents. The GOP also made gains in the 2022 election, going from one quarter in 2016 to fully one third. A recent Siena poll even showed Trump leading among New York’s large Jewish population. The Jewish vote could play a decisive role in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. Biden’s handlers seem to have forgotten that unlike Britain or France, there are well over twice as many Jews as Muslims in the US.

Read the rest of this piece at Telegraph.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Anthony Lemus is a professor of practice and director of industry relations at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Engineering.

Photo: The White House, via Flickr, in Public Domain (U.S. Government Work).

Faith and the City

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The streets of the South Bronx testify to the decay that has afflicted parts of modern American cities. In some ways, they resemble those of Mumbai more than those of gentrified Manhattan. Men lie prostrate outside empty storefronts or relieve themselves in broad daylight on the trash-strewn streets. It’s a hipster-less landscape of despair. Read more

Why London is Beating American Cities

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As America’s cities continue to decline, as even ardent boosters warn of “an urban doom loop”, how does London remain a global powerhouse? The straightforward answer is that it retains an old advantage: its origins as a former imperial capital.

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The Strange Death of the Family

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Over a decade ago, I led a team of Singapore-based researchers to investigate why families were declining. Back then, we were experiencing a historic shift away from population growth and familial ties, towards individualism. Since then, the post-familial age has entered full swing.

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EVs Will Decide the Outcome of the American Election

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If Joe Biden loses to Donald Trump this November, he can apportion blame towards his administration’s many unforced errors, from the botched Afghanistan bug-out to the mess at the southern border. But the biggest blunder of all has yet to fully reveal itself: the ill-conceived drive to push electric vehicles (EVs) into making up over three-fifths of all car purchases by the 2030s.

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The Coming Revolt Against Woke Capitalism

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The greatest threat to Western civilisation comes not from China, Russia or Islamists, but from the very people who rank among its greatest beneficiaries. In virtually every field, the midwives of our demise are not working-class radicals or far-right agitators, but, as the late Fred Siegel called it, the ‘new aristocratic class’, made up of the well-credentialed and the technologically and scientifically adept.

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