Tag Archive for: economics

America Has An Oedipus Complex

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As in Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Rex, we are witnessing a generational drama in which inheritors kill their proverbial father to marry their mother, in this case Mother Earth. The psychology behind this pattern is above my pay grade, but many of the richest people on the planet, and their heirs, now seem anxious to disparage the economic system that created their fortunes. With few exceptions, the new rich, and particularly their children and ex-wives, embrace a racial, gender and environmental agenda that, while undermining merit and economic growth, still leaves them on top of the heap.

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The Democrats’ New Climate Bill Abandons Green Zealotry

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The Senate has passed the Democrats’ mega climate, health care and taxation bill along party lines and after much griping from Republicans. “The Green New Deal Democrats are coming straight after American natural gas with huge tax hikes,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said of the bill last week. “The result will be higher electricity bills, higher heating costs, less exporting to our European allies.”

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Why Suburbia Will Decide the Future

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Welcome to the future of American politics. The US population is changing in major ways that will likely alter the balance in politics and economics to the advantage of Republican-leaning red states, as well as suburbs and exurbs across the country.

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Are Big Cities Past Their Prime?

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By: Tim Hains
On: Real Clear Politics

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. Read more

Why Millennials Are Dropping Out

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With inflation soaring, trust in governments plummeting, and the global economy teetering on the brink of collapse, one might expect to see the masses out in the streets, calling for the heads of their rulers. But instead of rage and rebellion, we mostly see apathy. Rather than getting radicalised, people are dropping out.

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The Cost of Biden’s Racialism

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Joe Biden may have once bragged about his cooperative relations with segregationists, but he still arguably owes more to African-American leadership and voters than any politician in recent history. After all, it was black voters who bequeathed him the two critical victories in South Carolina and Georgia that led to his nomination in 2020. Perhaps that’s why he promised in his inaugural address to focus on the “sting of systemic racism” and fight encroaching “white supremacy.”

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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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Joel Kotkin Talks with Jane Wells about Economic Impact of Ending Roe v. Wade

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By: Jane Wells
On: Wells Street

How will the likely ending of Roe v. Wade affect corporate relocation decisions? Companies have been leaving, too. Stanford’s Hoover Institution reports 265 businesses relocated their headquarters outside California from 2018 through the first half of last year, including Oracle, Schwab, and CBRE.

Most of those companies moved to Texas, where abortion is currently banned after about six weeks of pregnancy. Elon Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas, along with one of his other ventures, The Boring Company. Could SpaceX follow? One can only imagine what Twitter employees in San Francisco are thinking. “I’m not moving to Texas, especially not now.”

“The Roe decision will probably have more impact on highly educated white women than minorities,” says Joel Kotkin. “They [are] more likely to be able to afford living in some of the more expensive blue states.”

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