Tag Archive for: economic inequality

Feudalism Without A Soul

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Casey Chalk reviews The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

Perhaps one of the great cons of the twenty-first century has been corporate America’s success in deceiving middle-class and lower-class Americans that corporations are on their side, while profiting from international tax havens and cheap foreign or immigrant labor that reduces American jobs and keeps money from American taxpayers. Major American businesses declare their woke credentials vis-à-vis Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and other activist causes, while they send their jobs (and even sometimes their headquarters) overseas. Companies denounce “toxic masculinity” while benefiting from foreign child labor. Read more

The Never-Ending Threat of Utopia

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Robert Grant Price reviews The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

Feudal times are here again. This is a thesis Joel Kotkin hammers to a fine point in The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, a clarifying study-of-the-moment presented as sweeping history.

The idea behind the book is simple: Kotkin says the social hierarchy of the Middle Ages closely traces the lines of today. If our society continues down the current path of economic disparity and social disintegration, the feudalism we left behind will return. With force. And it will be the middle class, the benefactors of liberal capitalism, who will suffer most. Read more

Elite Democrats Could Destroy the Middle Class if Biden Wins in 2020

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It’s been a long time since the Democrats were considered “the party of the people” and the GOP the party of the fat cats. This year Joe Biden and even more so his running mate, Kamala Harris, are raising record sums from the corporate elite, notably the tech giants and their Wall Street allies. These wealthy donors dominate the party, own much of the media, and can manipulate the social-media platforms where a growing proportion of Americans get their news.

Meanwhile, the Republicans find themselves largely castigated in the press and overwhelmed by a torrent of oligarchic wealth at the Senate and local levels. This wealthy oligarchy is not just liberal; many members also support a thorough remaking of our country. Some, like former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, are so committed to progressivism that, as he said recently, those who don’t get with the program should “face a firing squad.” Currently led by CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gone so far as to block The New York Post’s account after it reported on the unsavory foreign business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter.

If these Democrats win both houses of Congress as well as the White House, things could get far worse for the already beleaguered middle class, which has been rocked by the pandemic, with an estimated 100,000 small firms going out of business. Particularly hard-hit by the recent urban unrest are inner city and minority businesses.

The other big winners have been the professional managerial class, including top levels of the federal bureaucracy, academia, and the mainstream media. These are, for the most part, people who can work from home, or, in some cases, the safety of their country houses. Meanwhile, they have achieved power at a level never before exercised outside of wartime and are as likely to surrender this control as the oligarchs are to give up their money.

If the Democrats win on Election Day, the future for the middle class could be bleak. As a lifelong Democrat, this is not easy to write, but most of the party’s initiatives — such as the Green New Deal — are directly harmful to those in the middle and working classes, who’d be forced to face increased housing and energy prices and fewer upwardly mobile jobs in industries like manufacturing.

A Democratic landslide could prove particularly devastating to owners of small businesses, particularly those in the energy, agriculture and manufacturing sectors, who were all critical to electing Donald Trump and seem likely to follow him again this year, despite the recession caused by the pandemic.

Read the rest of this piece at NYPost.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage photo credit: ptufts via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Making the Middle Class Wealthier: A Conversation with Joel Kotkin

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With: Walter Russell Mead
On: Hudson Institute

Join Hudson Institute for a discussion with Joel Kotkin about building middle-class wealth and housing opportunities. Described by the New York Times as “America’s uber-geographer,” Joel Kotkin is an internationally-recognized authority who has published reports on topics ranging from the future of class in global cities to the places with the best opportunities for minorities. His newest book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, was published in May 2020. Hudson Institute Distinguished Fellow Walter Russell Mead will moderate the conversation.

For most of American history, housing has been the key to middle class prosperity. Starting with the original settlers, ordinary Americans have been far more likely to own their homes than their counterparts in other countries. Homesteaders on the frontier tended to own their own farms and urban workers began moving to the suburbs for inexpensive housing before the Civil War. As the Industrial Revolution brought more people to work in cities, suburban housing became vital for the working class. Today, concerns about “urban sprawl” and the environment have made some policymakers concerned about continued suburban growth, potentially jeopardizing the next generation’s pathway to homeownership and wealth accumulation.

This conversation is part of a series entitled, “The Future of the Middle Class” by Hudson Institute’s Center for the Future of Liberal Society. In this series, Hudson Distinguished Fellow Walter Russell Mead will moderate discussions with thought-provoking policy experts about some of the most pressing challenges associated with rebuilding the economy and promoting the prosperity of America’s middle class.

Click to Hudson Institute to Watch the Video Event

 

Related:

Beyond Feudalism: A Strategy to Restore California’s Middle Class
Preserving Opportunity for the Global Middle Class
The Two Middle Classes

Joel Kotkin talks with Rod Arquette About How the GOP Can Win Over Millennial Voters

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By: Rod Arquette
On: The Rod Arquette Show at iHeart radio

Joel Kotkin joins the Rod Arquette show to discuss how the GOP can win over millennial voters. Upward mobility is a key issue for millennials, and problem solving at a local level (rather than a federal level).

 

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