Tag Archive for: economic inequality

You Can’t Fix Housing with New Houses. We Need New Cities

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Housing is rapidly becoming the key economic issue facing America’s beleaguered middle class. Even as interest rates rise, rents are on a wild binge, up near 20 percent in the past year or more in some cities. Meanwhile, home prices have hit a high and appear to be climbing further still. Higher prices are emerging even in what have long been relative bargain communities in the southeast, as refugees from the high-priced Northeast pour in with their greater resources.

The property gold rush has been made more problematic by the growing role of professional, well-funded investors and speculators, to whom the housing market is more attractive than a sometimes unsteady stock market. Read more

Welcome to the End of Democracy and It’s Not Trump’s Fault

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By: Tällberg Foundation
On: Tällberg Podcast

“We may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the noisiest of dictatorships.”

Those words were written by Joel Kotkin in a recently published essay on democracy’s demise. Donald Trump is not the villain of the piece, as most pundits want us to believe, nor other populists outside the United States. Rather, Kotkin argues that the withering of democratic process and institutions reflects the deeper transformation of American and European societies: the emergence of a ruling technocracy; the use of the pandemic and the environmental crisis to constrain individual rights; the new concentration of power in governments, and the growing distance between the governing and the governed. All of it is made worse by the mind-boggling concentration of economic wealth, which is as much an issue in China as it is in the United States. Read more

What’s Left? Podcast: The Work of Housing with Joel Kotkin

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By: Aimee Terese and Oliver Bateman
On: What’s Left?

Urban Reform Institute executive director Joel Kotkin returns to the podcast to discuss housing and development issues with Aimee and Oliver.

 

Listen to this episode on What’s Left? podcast

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Joel Kotkin Talks With Inaya Folarin Iman About Populism Revival

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By: GB news
On: The Discussion

Joel Kotkin joins host Inaya Folarin Iman to talk about the populism revival.

Joel talks with Inaya about the recent truck driver protests in Canada, the ways in which pandemic policies have contributed to the frustrations of the middle and working-class, how political leaders are failing to address the issues that most affect the working-class, the effect of social media on public debate, and more.

 

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The Zaibatsu-ization of America

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Enthusiasts of “the new economy” long cherished the notion that it would be different from the unenlightened, sluggish, and piggish older one. Yet our economy seems increasingly to resemble not some hippy capitalist utopia, but the deeply concentrated economy of pre-war Japan.

At the time, Japan had developed an economic model around a handful of large corporate conglomerates called zaibatsu. Organized as a “financial clique,” with a bank at the center, these firms extended their interests into virtually all economic activity. They included Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Yasuda. Mitsubishi led the way in shipbuilding, steel, and of course aircraft, being the creator of the famous Zero fighter.

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A New Dawn for the Working Class?

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The labouring masses are restless, as evidenced by the Canadian trucker strike, union drives in Amazon warehouses in the US and in demonstrations throughout the developing world. More revealing still may be the turmoil in the labour markets, where workers are changing jobs, creating their own and, overall, refusing to return to the structures of the pre-pandemic order.

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Kotkin on KFBK Morning News: Haves and Have-Nots in CA

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By: Sam Shane

On: The Morning News (iheart radio)

Joel Kotkin, Professor of Urban Studies at Chapman University joins host Sam Shane to discuss California society and how the state has become one of “haves and have-nots”.

Listen to this interview:

Restoring the California Dream

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Join us for a webinar hosted by Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky to learn how we can restore the California Dream for middle and working class Californians. Following the presentation of the report, there will be an all-star panel led by Jeff Ball, new CEO of the Orange County Business Council.

Panel participants include Raul Anaya, Joe Hensley, and Karla Del Rio.

Register for the free Zoom webinar Restoring the American Dream

Restoring California Dream

Related:

Click here to view or download a copy of the full report (17MB PDF opens in new tab or window)

California is a Bastion of Innovation Marred by Deep Inequality. Is That America’s Future?

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Everyone seems to be California dreaming these days. Much of America, particularly its red parts, see California as a hopeless dystopia best understood as everything the nation should avoid. Meanwhile, for the progressive Left and many around Joe Biden, California is the Mecca, a great role model being attacked by jealous reactionaries.

As in so many cases, both sides have a piece of the truth.

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Class War is Just Beginning

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With the seeming deconstruction of the Biden Administration proceeding at a rapid clip, many on the right hope for an end to the conscious stoking of class resentments that has characterized progressive politics. Yet despite the political meltdown, America’s class divides have become so wide, and so bitter, that Biden’s presidency may prove more a prelude than a denouement for the future of class warfare.

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