Tag Archive for: economic inequality

How the Boomers Robbed the Young of All Hope

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“Young people do not degenerate; this occurs only after grown men have already become corrupt.” – Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1748.

The great test of a generation is whether it leaves better prospects for its descendants. Yet by virtually every indication, the baby boomers, and even the Gen Xers, are leaving a heritage of economic carnage – as well as a growing social and cultural dissipation that could shape our future and the fate of democratic self-rule, and not for the better. This legacy comes not from outside forces, but the investment bankers, tech oligarchs and their partners in the clerisy who have weakened their national economies and undermined the chances of upward mobility for most young people.

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Joel Kotkin Talks with Anthony Furey: Payback Against Political Elites

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By: Anthony Furey
On: The Full Comment

Voters around the world are saying they’re angry. They’re unhappy that the promise of upward mobility is over and they’re frustrated that government policies animated by elitist values keep making life harder for the middle and working classes, Joel Kotkin tells Anthony Furey this week. Younger voters around the world are already flocking to more extremist solutions after feeling abandoned by the establishment, explains Kotkin, a noted authority on global economic, political and social trends from California’s Chapman University. It’s all creating a powerful political volcano, he says, and the explosion won’t be pleasant. (Recorded April 28, 2022)

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Do We Need a Capitalist Civil War?

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We Americans like to think of ourselves as a thoroughly modern people — living proof of what, with enough toil and grit, the rest of the free world can one day hope to be. And yet for all our progressivism and idealism, America’s political culture finds itself unable to escape the past. We may be living in a 21st century democracy, but that “democracy” increasingly resembles something that could have been plucked out of feudal Europe or, perhaps more accurately, feudal Japan.

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California’s Vanished Dreams, By the Numbers

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Even today amid a mounting exodus among those who can afford it, and with its appeal diminished to businesses and newcomers, California, legendary state of American dreams, continues to inspire optimism among progressive boosters.

Laura Tyson, the longtime Democratic economist now at the University of California at Berkeley, praises the state for creating “the way forward” to a more enlightened “market capitalism.” Like-minded analysts tout Silicon Valley’s massive wealth generation as evidence of progressivism’s promise. The Los Angeles Times suggested approvingly that the Biden administration’s goal is to “make America California again.” And, despite dark prospects in November’s midterm elections, the President and his party still seem intent on proving it.

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America is Headed for Class Warfare

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Nothing has revealed the class divide in the U.S. quite like runaway inflation and skyrocketing gas prices. But in addition to the economic impact the staggering incompetence of the Biden administration is having on the working class, there is a political one; it’s undeniably driving working class voters even further from the Democrats and toward the GOP.

But it’s not all good news for conservatives. The recent Amazon vote to unionize could be a precursor to something less appealing to the Right: a nascent rebellion among the vast armies of service workers who for decades have inhabited the lower economic rungs.

The truth is, the rising tide of class conflict is problematic for both parties. The Amazon vote challenges the GOP’s anti-union stance and its free market dogma. But Democrats, too, face an embarrassing conundrum, since the companies most likely to face continued union drives—Amazon and Starbucks among them—are themselves core funders and media stewards of the Democratic Party.

This is not the discussion either liberal oligarchs or Right-wing activists want. They would rather battle over media hot buttons like climate, race, and gender, than meaningfully address working conditions, wages or rapidly rising rents.

In other words, neither party has developed a program to boost proletarian aspirations.

And this despite the fact that the growing class divide could well be the dominant issue of the next decade. Middle- and working-class Americans are widely—and correctly—pessimistic about their economic futures. Even before the civil unrest of recent years and the pandemic, Pew reported that most Americans believed our country was in decline, with a shrinking middle class, increased debt, alienation from leaders and growing polarization.

Almost 70 percent of Americans told pollsters last year that the next generation will be worse off than their parents. And it’s not just the masses. Young people across the country are pessimistic as well: Most people 15 to 24 also think life will be worse for them than for their parents.

They aren’t wrong. The share of American adults who live in middle-income households has decreased from 61 percent in 1971 to 51 percent in 2019, and the pandemic appears to have accelerated this pattern, hitting low-income workers hardest while the recovery helped them least.

Meanwhile, those at the top are raking it in. CEO compensation reached record levels this year, investment bankers on Wall Street enjoyed record bonuses and the giant tech firms now boast a market capitalization greater than the bloated federal budget.

Read the rest of this piece at Newsweek.

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 Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Elvert Barnes via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Welcome to the New Middle Ages

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By: Ed West
On: UnHerd

Today the richest 40 Americans have more wealth than the poorest 185 million Americans. The leading 100 landowners now own 40 million acres of American land, an area the size of New England. There has been a vast increase in American inequality since the mid-20th century, and Europe — though some way behind — is on a similar course.

These are among the alarming stats cited by Joel Kotkin’s The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, published just as lockdown sped up some of the trends he chronicled: increased tech dominance, rising inequality between rich and poor, not just in wealth but in health, and record levels of loneliness (4,000 Japanese people die alone each week, he cheerfully informs us). Read more

Joel Kotkin on Big Cities are Past Their Prime at Intelligence Squared Debate

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By: John Donovan
On: Intelligence Squared Debates

New York. Los Angeles. Boston. San Francisco. Call them America’s “superstars.” With mega populations, these urban hubs have long reigned as the nation’s economic, social, and cultural capitals. But big cities have also been the hardest hit by the pandemic. “Zoom towns” are springing up across the country as professionals leave the city in droves. Even more, the pandemic has brought economic and social inequality into sharp focus for the nation’s lawmakers. And some, particularly in large cities that boast the most obvious cases of such inequality, are enacting new progressive policies and laws that seek to combat inequality. For some, this means a new financial structure that makes city life less compelling for those in higher income brackets. Will megacities keep their magnetism in the wake of Covid-19? Or are their best days behind them?

Listen to this episode at Intelligence Squared Debates

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Next California Migration: Video

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By: USC Sol Price School of Public Policy

California poses many challenges for the middle- and working-class. As a result, there is a significant migration of people, jobs, and opportunities— both within and outside the state. Who is leaving California, and who is no longer seeking to move to the golden state? Are there incentives for job creation and how can the state remain competitive?

Dr. Jorge De la Roca, Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky tackle these questions and more. This expert panel offers an overview of current demographic trends in California, followed by a discussion around future implications for the state and possible solutions to reinvigorate the California dream. The event concluded with audience Q&A.

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Joel Kotkin Talks with Amanda Vanstone about the Limits of Libertarianism

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By: Amanda Vanstone
On: Counterpoint

What are the limits of libertarianism? Joel Kotkin explains that ‘in recent years, libertarians increasingly seem less concerned with how their policies might actually impact people. Convinced that markets are virtually always the best way to approach any issue, they have allied with many of the same forces – monopoly capital, anti-suburban zealots and the tech-oligarchy – which are systematically undermining the popular rationale for market capitalism’. He goes through some core libertarian beliefs and how they’ve changed and says that ‘in many ways, libertarians, like all of us, are victims of history’ and that to become relevant again, libertarians need to go beyond their dogmatic attachments, focus on bolstering the vitality competitive free markets’. That ‘libertarian ideas still have great relevance, but only so much as they reflect markets that are open to competition and capable of improving everyday lives’.

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The Power Hungry Podcast: Joel Kotkin Talks with Robert Bryce

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By: Robert Bryce
On: The Power Hungry Podcast

Joel Kotkin is a demographer, journalist, author, and executive editor of NewGeography.com. In his second appearance on the Power Hungry Podcast, Kotkin discusses his recent article for Quillette, “The New Great Game,” how China and Russia are allying against the West, why America needs “a new nationalism” to counter this alliance, how California’s administrative state is crushing the poor and the middle class, Michael Shellenberger’s gubernatorial bid, energy, housing, and why despite his many concerns, he remains bullish on the future of the United States.

 

Listen to this episode on The Power Hungry Podcast

Related:

The Great New Game
Welcome to the End of Democracy and It’s Not Trump’s Fault
Buy The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

What’s Left? is a weekly podcast hosted by Aimee Terese (@aimeeterese) and Oliver Bateman (@moustacheclubUS). Among other topics, we usually discuss politics, current affairs, culture, and the sleazy world of bourgeois media.