Ross Douthat – dwkcommentaries

More Details on U.S. and Other Countries’ Worker Shortages

This blog already has discussed the current declining and aging populations of many countries, and their impact on employment in those countries. [1]

Here are some additional articles on these subjects.

Wall Street Journal Analysis [2]

“Employers in healthcare, education, leisure and hospitality and other services such as dry cleaning and automotive repair . . . [accounted] for 63% of all [recent U.S,] private-sector job gains. .. . In January alone, restaurants and bars added a seasonally adjusted 99,000 jobs. The healthcare industry grew by 58,000, and retailers added 30,000 jobs.”

This result is helped by “more workers . . .searching for jobs: bigger paychecks and benefits, diminishing fear of getting sick, and financial worries amid high inflation.” Also “more women are flowing back into the labor force, which could help service-sector employers fill positions that traditionally have been held by women.”

Increased U.S. Immigration [3]

Last year U.S. net immigration increased by about a million people, and the “foreign-born work force grew much more quickly than the U.S.-born work force.” This “helped power the job recoveries in leisure and hospitality and in construction, where immigrants make up a higher share of employment, and where there were bigger increases in wages and job vacancies.”

This employment result happened despite the inadequate staffing of the U.S. immigration agencies, resulting in huge delays in acting on asylum applications as well as those for green cards and work permits. “One of the few industries with unlimited immigrant visas is agriculture, where the number of guest worker visas “has risen by double-digit percentages over each of the last few years, reaching 371,000 in 2022.”

Difficulties in Raising Birth Rates [4]

Echoing the pessimism of Ross Douthat of the New York Times caused, in part, by China’s recent declining birth rate and population, other Time’s authors say, “History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little its government can do to reverse it. And as a country’s population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one. . . . That’s because the playbook for boosting national birthrates is a rather thin one. Most initiatives that encourage families to have more children are expensive, and the results are often limited. Options include cash incentives for having babies, generous parental leave policies and free or subsidized child care.”

This more recent Times article claims, “many young Chinese are not interested in having large families. Vastly more young Chinese people are enrolling in higher education, marrying later and having children later. Raised in single-child households, some have come to see small families as normal. But the bigger impediment to having a second or third child is financial, [and] many parents cite the high cost of housing and education as the main obstacle to having more children.”

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[1] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Another Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century (Jan. 28, 2023); Skepticism About Douthat’s Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century (Jan. 30, 2023); Comment: Developments in Africa and Italy Accentuate Douthat’s Concerns (Jan. 31, 2023); Iowa State Government Encouraging Refugee and Migrant Resettlement (Feb. 3, 2023);Comment: National Worker Shortages in U.S. (Feb. 3, 2023); Economists Surprised by January’s New Jobs Data (Feb. 4, 2023); Sub-Saharan Africa Is ‘New Epicenter’ of Extremism, Says UN, (Feb. 8, 2023); Migrant Workers Being Paid Premium Wages in U.S. Tight Labor Market, (Feb. 8, 2023).

[2] Cambon & Smith, Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market, W.S.J. (Feb. 9, 2023).

[3] DePills, Immigration Rebound Eases Shortage of Workers, Up to a Point, N.Y. Times (Feb. 6, 2023).

[4] Jacobs & Paris, Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden, N.Y. Times (Feb. 9, 2023).

Sub-Saharan Africa Is ‘New Epicenter’ of Extremism, Says UN

On February 7 the U.N. Development Programme reported that searching for better jobs eclipses religious ideology as the main driver of recruitment to violent extremist groups in Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, 71% of 2,200 interviewees said the precipitating event for joining such groups was human rights abuse, often conducted by state security forces.[1]

According to an officer of the U.N. Programme, ““Sub-Saharan Africa has become the new global epicenter of violent extremism with 48% of global terrorism deaths in 2021. This surge not only adversely impacts lives, security and peace, but also threatens to reverse hard-won development gains for generations to come. Security-driven counter-terrorism responses are often costly and minimally effective, yet investments in preventive approaches to violent extremism are woefully inadequate. The social contract between states and citizens must be reinvigorated to tackle root causes of violent extremism.”

To counter and prevent violent extremism, “the report recommends greater investment in basic services including child welfare; education; quality livelihoods; and investing in young men and women. It also calls for scaling-up exit opportunities and investment in rehabilitation and community-based reintegration services.”

This U.N. report underscores New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s contention that a major challenge for the world this century is responding to the growing turbulent population of the African continent.[2]

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[1] Musambi (AP), Sub-Saharan Africa is ‘new epicenter’ of extremism, says UN, StarTribune (Feb. 7, 2023); Hope for better jobs eclipses religious ideology as main driver of recruitment to violent extremist groups in Sub-Saharan Africa, U.N. Dev. Prog. (Feb. 7, 2023); Journey to extremism in Africa: Pathways to recruitment and disengagement, U.N. Dev. Prog. (2020).

[2] Another Defining Challenge of the 21st Century, dwkcommentaries.com (Jan. 28, 2023); Skepticism About Douthat’s Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century, dwkcommentareis.com (Jan. 30, 2023).

Skepticism About Douthat’s Defining Challenge of the 21st Century

As discussed in a prior post, New York Times’ columnist Ross Douthat argues that the defining challenge of the 21^st century is declining population in many of the world’s countries. [1]

Skepticism about this contention has been voiced by Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvin, even though he does not cite Douthat’s article.[2]

While conceding that “a shrinking global population . . . poses unprecedented challenges for humanity,” Feng says, “alarmist warnings are often simplistic and premature” and “can lead to hasty policy and human tragedy.”

Instead Weng says, “The population declines seen today in some countries have come about largely as a happy story of greater longevity and freedom. Fertility rate worldwide dropped from more than five births per woman in the early 1960s to 2.3 in 2020. Credit greater investment in child and maternal health everywhere: A mother who successfully brings her child to term and an infant who survives to childhood lower birthrates because parents often don’t feel the need to try again. Greater availability of free or affordable contraception has also reduced unwanted births.”

Moreover, Feng asserts, “additional “women in the work force is a recipe for even greater productivity and prosperity and could help ease labor concerns among falling populations. More women than ever are rising to leadership positions in business, media and politics.”

“Compared with a half-century ago, people in many countries are richer, healthier and better educated and women are more empowered. “ This is associated with “[a]verage world life expectancy . . . [having] increased from 51 years in 1960 to 73 in 2019, and even more so in China, from 51 in 1962 to 78 in 2019. Increases of that magnitude reshape lives and open up opportunities unimaginable when life spans were shorter.”

“Fewer people on the planet, of course, may reduce humanity’s ecological footprint and competition for finite resources. There could even be greater peace as governments are forced to choose between spending on military equipment or on pensions. And as rich nations come to rely more on immigrants from poorer countries, those migrants gain greater access to the global prosperity currently concentrated in the developed world.”

Feng, however, concedes, “This new demography brings new challenges, including the need to offer quality and affordable child care, make college education more affordable and equitable, provide guaranteed minimum income and make societies more gender equal. Governments should abandon the mindless pursuit of economic growth in favor of well-being for citizens.”

Conclusion

Whose side are you on? Douthat or Feng?

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[1] Douthat, Five Rules for an Aging World, N.Y. Times (Jan. 21, 2023); Another Defining Challenge of the 21^st Century, dwkcommentaries.com (Jan. 25, 2023).

[2] Feng, The Alternative, Optimistic Story of Population Decline, N.Y. Times (Jan. 30, 2033).

Another Defining Challenge of the 21st Century

Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist, asserts that at least one of the defining challenges of the current century is “the birth dearth, the population bust, the old age of the world.”[1]

This assertion is based, he says, upon “various forces, the Covid crisis especially, [that] have pushed birthrates lower faster, bringing the old-age era forward rapidly.” Additional support for this thesis, he says, is China’s recent announcement that “its population declined for the first time since the Great Leap Forward, over 60 years ago.” And “variations on that shadow lie over most rich and many middle-income nations now—threatening general sclerosis, and a zero-sum struggle between a swollen retired generation, and the over-burdened young.”

Douthat then asserts the following “Rules for an Aging World:”

“The rich world will need redistribution back from old to young.” “[R]eform [of] old-age entitlements will become ever more essential and correct — so long as the savings can be used to make it easier for young people to start a family, open a business, own a home. And countries that find a way to make this transfer successfully will end up far ahead of those that just sink into gerontocracy.”
“The big bottlenecks [of the new A.I. technology] aren’t always in invention itself: they’re in testing, infrastructure, deployment, regulatory hurdles.”
“Ground warfare will run up against population limits [as we see today in the Russia-Ukraine war and the tensions over Taiwan].”
A “little extra youth and vitality will go a long way.” For example, “countries that manage to keep or boost their birthrates close to replacement level will have a long-term edge over countries that plunge toward . . .half-replacement-level fertility.” The same “will be true within societies as well.”
A major challenge in this new age will be the international response to the projections that Africa’s population will “reach 2.5 billion by 2050 and [4.0] billion by 2100. . . .The balance between successful assimilation and destabilization and backlash [of the African diaspora] ….will help decide whether the age of demographic decline ends in revitalization or collapse.”

Reactions

Wow!, This is a new and frightening projection of the next 80 years for all of us on planet Earth today! We certainly have seen these challenges in states in the Middle West like Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas and Nebraska, and this blog has advocated for increased immigration in these states to counteract aging and declining populations. Nearly everyone in the U.S. today and in the future should join me in a chorus, “I am a proud descendant of immigrants!!”

At the end of the Douthat column are many comments from readers. Here are a few of those comments:

Geoff Burrell of Western Australia said, “Aged 72 I tend to agree that longevity is currently a problem but hasn’t ‘age at dying’ decreased in western countries due to the pandemic, a trend that may continue for many decades as new Covid variants and climate change induced pandemics come along. The article also characterizes elderly people as a ‘burden’ but doesn’t recognize the substantial portion of any population’s wealth they hold, much of it, ironically, used to support younger family members. Immigration is also able to overcome most of the deficits faced by a population with an ageing society, though that requires a good immigration policy to ensure the country gets what it wants.”
Edwin, an American MD in Africa, thanks Douthat “for his recognition of the importance of Africa. Most of Africa’s low- and middle-income countries have 50% or more of their population under the age of 17 years. The education, health and stability of Africa’s children and adolescents is critically important, and will be a major determinant of global security in the 21st Century…” He adds, “Northern Nigeria, where I spend much of my effort, now has a huge number of people living in extreme poverty. Yet the young people in this area of Africa’s most populous nation have much promise. We in the West must prioritize the health, education and security of places like northern Nigeria.”
Nicholas Mellen of Louisville, KY agrees with Edwin. “An aging population? Allow migrants in. They’re young healthy and ambitious. The most productive and successful Americans are usually within the first 3 generations; these migrants will do the same: from Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia, China, Afghanistan to name a few. You have to be brave, persistent, hopeful and lucky to survive the journey. So there’s how you rejuvenate an aging nation.”
Patrick Bohlen of Orlando, IL, says, “Allowing for more immigration is an obvious top 3 solution that would solve many of the issues brought about by the demographic shift. It will also be unavoidable with climited migration. . . . We don’t need higher birth rates, but we do need sane immigration policies that help address both the demographic and climate crises.”
Anne F of New York, concludes her comment, “We don’t need to be concerned about population decline as it is part of a long-term picture of sustainable human existence. Climate needs to be the focus.”

Surprising news relating to this subject was the recent release of information about the results of the 2021 Gallup World Poll based on detailed interviews with nearly 127,000 adults in 122 countries. “Globally, people’s desire to move reached its highest point in a decade, but interest in moving to the U.S. plunged. When asked where in the world they would want to migrate, 1 in 5 potential migrants — or about 18% — named the U.S. as their desired future residence. The new numbers marked a historic decline that began in 2017, when just 17% — the lowest rate ever recorded — said they’d want to move to the U.S. In previous years, the U.S. has polled between 20% and 24%.”[2]

The managing editor of this World Poll and one of the report’s authors, Julie Ray, attributed the decline in foreigners desire to relocate to the U.S. to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies of the Trump Administration. A Palestinian man, for example, came to the U.S. for graduate study because he thought the U.S. offered “infinite opportunities, but soon he saw a U.S. “workaholicculture,” a lack of fulfillment and evaluating a person’s value by their job status.

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[1] Douthat, Five Rules for an Aging World, N.Y. Times (Jan. 22, 2023).

[2] Abdeleziz, Fewer People Are Interested in Migrating to The U.S. Than Ever Before. Here’s Why, HuffPost (Jan. 26, 2023); Pugliese & Ray, Nearly 900 Million Worldwide Wanted to Migrate in 2021, gallup.com (Jan. 24, 2023).

More Republican Opposition to Trump

A prior post discussed The Lincoln Project, which was organized by a prominent group of Republicans, “to “defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.”

Republican Voters Against Trump[1]

Now the Lincoln Project has been joined by a new group, Republican Voters Against Trump.

Initially it was composed of 93 ordinary individuals from 34 states who describe themselves as “Republicans, former Republicans, conservatives, and former Trump voters who can’t support Trump for president this fall.” Their website quotes one of them as saying, “I’d vote for a tuna fish sandwich before I’d vote for Donald Trump again.”

This new group is aimed at chipping “away at “Mr. Trump’s support from white, college-educated Republican voters in the suburbs” in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, all of which are represented in the 93 individuals featured in the group’s website.

This new group is about to launch “a $10 million digital and television advertising campaign that will use personal stories of conservative voters giving voice to their deep — and sometimes brand-new — dissatisfaction with the president.”

This new group was organized by Sarah Longwell, “a lifelong conservative and a prominent Never Trump Republican;” Bill Kristol, the prominent conservative writer; and Tim Miller. a former top aide to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

The Lincoln Project’s Recent Activities[2]

The Project has released an ad contending that Trump Campaign Manager Brad Parscale has been fleecing the re-election effort. Even Trump himself in a recent telephone call with Perscale is reported to have threatened to sue him because of all the money he had made while working for the president.

In addition, the Project has broadened its efforts to campaign against Republican Senator and Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. Dubbing him “Rich Mitch,” it accuses him of enriching himself while not improving the rankings of his own state (Kentucky) with respect to job opportunity, education and health care.

This recent effort was described by one of the Project’s co-founders, George Conway, this way. ““When he fixed the impeachment trial by blocking evidence of Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors, McConnell violated and abased the solemn oaths he took as a United States Senator. Add in the fact that, as our ad shows, he’s managed to do much better for himself than for the people of Kentucky, and it becomes a no-brainer: McConnell has to go.”

McConnell also is subject to criticism for his unrelenting campaign for the Senate to confirm young, conservative attorneys to lower federal court judgeships, including overt suggestions to older conservative judges to resign now so that the current administration with McConnell’s assistance can confirm additional judges with those “credentials.[3]

Now Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has joined this effort to encourage more senior federal judges to resign as soon as possible so that the current Republican-controlled Senate can confirm more conservative judges before the November election might cause the Republicans to lose control of that body going forward.[4]

Conclusion

These conservative efforts against Trump are reinforced by New York Times conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, who recently said Trump “is interested in power only as a means of getting attention” and feared “claiming any power that might lead to responsibility and someday blame, a showman’s preference for performance over rule, a media addict’s preference for bluster over deeds.” When the U.S. in this pandemic needs “a president capable of exercising power,” it found “it had only a television star, a shirker and a clown.”[5]

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[1] Republican Voters Against Trump; Karni, Get Republicans to Vote Against Trump? This Group Will Spend $10 Million to Try, N.Y. Times (May 28, 2020).

[2] The Lincoln Project, President Donald J. Trump Is Running His Re-election Campaign As Poorly As He Runs His Government (May 20, 2020); Haberman & Karni, Polls Had Trump Stewing, and Lashing Out at His Own Campaign, N.Y. Times (April 29, 2020); Wagner, Anti-Trump super PAC launched by Republicans takes aim at McConnell, Wash. Post (May 28, 2020); The Lincoln Project, The Lincoln Project Releases New Ad: “#RICHMITCH” (May 28, 2020).

[3] Pandemic Journal (# 24): What We Are Leaning in the Pandemic (May 25, 2020).

[4] Sonmez, Graham urges senior judges to step aside before November election so Republicans can fill vacancies, Wash. Post (May 28, 2020).

[5] A Conservative’s Critique of Trump, dwkcommentaries.com (May 19, 2020).

Pandemic Journal (#23): Different Opinion on Class Conflicts Over Pandemic

Previous posts have reported that according to Fareed Zakaria, Peggy Noonan and Ross Douthat, two classes of U.S. society have different opinions about how the U.S. should respond to the coronavirus pandemic: the Managerial Overclass or the Remote Class favors maintaining the lockdown until the virus has been controlled while the Underclass or the Exposed Class favors abandoning those policies and reopening as soon as soon as possible.[1]

Another New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg, disagrees. She believes that the conflict over policies regarding the pandemic are better explained by political party affiliations.[2]

Her dissent cites a recent public opinion poll in which “74 percent of respondents agreed that the “U.S. should keep trying to slow the spread of the coronavirus, even if that means keeping many businesses closed.” Agreement was slightly higher — 79 percent — among respondents who’d been laid off or furloughed.”[3]

Another basis for her opinion was research at the University of Chicago that found that “when it comes to judging policies on the coronavirus, ‘politics is the overwhelming force dividing Americans,’ and that ‘how households have been economically impacted by the Covid crisis so far’ plays only a minimal role.”[4]

More specifically, the Chicago survey showed that roughly 77 percent of Democrats favored lockdown measures remaining in place as long as needed compared with roughly 45 percent of Republicans. On the other hand, roughly 30 percent of the Republicans wanted such measures to remain no longer than a few more weeks versus roughly 4 parent of Democrats. The report adds, “the data reveals no strong association between having lost income due to COVID-19, or fear of losing one’s job, and views about the right length of the lockdown. Among survey respondents, 41 percent indicate having been negatively impacted financially by the COVID-19 crisis. Yet, all else being equal, these respondents were not more likely to favor a quick reopening.”

Goldberg also says, “Donald Trump and his allies have polarized the response to the coronavirus, turning defiance of public health directives into a mark of right-wing identity. Because a significant chunk of Trump’s base is made up of whites without a college degree, there are naturally many such people among the lockdown protesters.”

On the other hand, “The push for a faster reopening, even in places where coronavirus cases are growing, has significant elite support. And many of those who face exposure as they’re ordered back to work are rightly angry and terrified.”

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[1] Pandemic Journal (# 19): Class Conflicts in Responses to Pandemic (May 15, 2020); Pandemic Journal (# 21): Concurring Opinion on Class Conflicts Over Pandemic (May 16, 2020); Comment: Endorsement of Pandemic Pragmatists (May 16, 2020).

[2] Goldberg, The Phony Coronavirus Class War, N.Y. Times (May 18, 2020).

[3] Washington Post-Ipsos coronavirus employment survey, May 4, Wash. Post (May 20, 2020).

[4] Bertrand, Briscese, Grignani & Nassar, Wave 2: When and How the U.S. Should Reopen Is a Matter of Politics, Trust in Institutions and Media, Survey Says, ChicagoBooth.edu (May 5, 2020).

A Conservative’s Critique of Trump

Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, writes a most damning critique of Donald Trump as president.[1]

The coronavirus pandemic, Douthat says, provided Trump with the opportunity to consolidate political power. “Here was a foreign threat, an invisible enemy that required a robust government response, a danger that arguably vindicated certain nationalist and populist ideas, a situation in which the normal rules of politics could be suspended for public safety’s sake.” This “was exactly the scenario that people alarmed by his ascent most feared — a case of History granting a president temperamentally inclined to authoritarianism a genuine state of exception in which to enact his fantasies of one-man rule.”

“But Trump didn’t want the gift. It’s not just that our president was too ineffective to consolidate power, that any potential authoritarianism was undermined by his administration’s incompetence. . . . Trump clearly lacks both the facility and the interest level required to find opportunity in crisis. In this case, . . . he showed no sense of the pandemic as anything save an inconvenience to be ignored, a problem to be wished away, an impediment to his lifestyle of golf and tweets and occasional stream-of-consciousness stemwinders. And when reality made ignoring it impossible, his only genuinely political impulse — the only impulse that related to real power and its uses — was to push the crucial forms of responsibility down a level, to the nation’s governors, and wash his presidential hands.”

“In this the coronavirus has clarified, once and for all, the distinctiveness of Trump’s demagogy. Great men and bad men alike seek attention as a means of getting power, but our president is interested in power only as a means of getting attention. Which is why, tellingly, his most important virus-related power grab to date has been the airtime grab of his daily news conferences — a temporary coup against the cable television schedule, a ruthless imposition (at least until the reviews turned bad) of presidential reality TV.”

The more important aspects of his character are a “fear of claiming any power that might lead to responsibility and someday blame, a showman’s preference for performance over rule, a media addict’s preference for bluster over deeds.”

The “great crisis of his presidency has revealed the vast gulf that separates him . . . from almost every statesman ever considered uniquely dangerous or uniquely skilled.”

“In the fourth year of this presidency the black comedy has finally given way to tragedy. But not because Trump suddenly discovered how to use his authority for dictatorial or democracy-defying purpose. Rather, because in this dark spring America needed a president capable of exercising power and found that it had only a television star, a shirker and a clown.”

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[1] Douthat, Donald Trump Doesn’t Want Authority, N.Y. Times (May 19, 2020).

Pandemic Journal (# 19): Class Conflict in Responses to Coronavirus Pandemic

Fareed Zakaria, a noted political commentator, sees class conflict in different responses to the coronavirus pandemic.[1]

He starts by noting that today many “wonder why partisanship has become so strong in the United States that people will not listen to experts, even at the risk of their own health.” This observation, however, obscures a broader distrust.

That broader distrust, says Zakaria, is illuminated by a book, The New Class War, by Michael Lind, an author and professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of PUblic Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

In the U.S. today, according to Lind, there is an “overclass” that dominates “government, the economy, and the culture.” The members of this overclass “tend to be urban, college-educated professionals, often with a postgraduate degree. That makes them quite distinct from much of the rest of the country. Only 36 percent of Americans have a bachelor’s degree, and only 13 percent have a master’s or more. And yet, the top echelons everywhere are filled with this ‘credentialed overclass.’”

“For many non-college-educated people, especially those living in rural areas, there is a deep alienation from this new elite. They see the overclass as enacting policies that are presented as good for the whole country but really mostly benefit people from the ruling class, whose lives have gotten better over the past few decades while the rest are left behind. In this view, trade and immigration help college-educated professionals who work for multinational companies but hurt blue-collar workers. So when they hear from ‘experts’ about the inevitability of globalization and technological change and the need to accept it, they resist. It does not resonate with their lived experience.”

This especially is true now during the pandemic, writes Zakaria. ‘Imagine you are an American who works with his hands — a truck driver, a construction worker, an oil rig mechanic — and you have just lost your job because of the lockdowns, as have more than 36 million people. You turn on the television and hear medical experts, academics, technocrats and journalists explain that we must keep the economy closed — in other words, keep you unemployed — because public health is important. All these people making the case have jobs, have maintained their standards of living and in fact are now in greater demand. They feel as though they are doing important work. You, on the other hand, have lost your job. You feel a sense of worthlessness, and you’re terrified about your family’s day-to-day survival. Is it so hard to understand why people like this might be skeptical of the experts?”

This class divide is also seen in the differing “job flexibilities” of U.S. employees. “Of the top 25 percent of income earners, more than 60 percent can stay home and still do their jobs. Of the bottom 25 percent, fewer than 10 percent can do the same.” The latter know that “it is a luxury to be able to work from home.”

Therefore, Zakaria concludes “we need to hear many voices as we make these difficult decisions [about responding to the pandemic], and that those making the decisions need to have empathy for all Americans — those whose lives are at risk, but also those whose lives have been turned upside down in other ways by this horrible disease.”

Conclusion

The Michael Lind book was also cited before the pandemic by Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist, as seeing the current polarization as “the consolidation of economic power by a ‘managerial’ upper class’” and the resulting weakening of “any institution — from churches and families to union shops and local industries — that might grant real power to groups outside the gilded city, the Silicon Valley bubble, the Ivy League gate.” This phenomenon coupled with libertarianism of Regan and Thatcher promoted “economic and social permissiveness . . . [and] a new class divide, between thriving meritocratic hubs and a declining and demoralized heartland, . . . [that] explains both the frequency of populist irruptions and their consistent futility.”[2]

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[1] Zakaria, Experts have jobs. They need to understand those who don’t, Wash. Post (May 14, 2020).

[2] Douthat, The Many Polarizations of America, N.Y. Times (Jan. 28, 2020); Responses to Ezra Klein’s Democratization Thesis, dwkcommentaries.com (Feb. 15, 2020).

Are Developed Countries Decadent?

Yes, provocatively says Ross Douthat, a conservative New York Times columnist, in a recent lengthy column that deserves reflection by us all. [1}

Introduction

He starts with the assertion that in the 21st century the U.S. and other developed countries “are aging, comfortable and stuck, cut off from the past and no longer optimistic about the future, spurning both memory and ambition while we await some saving innovation or revelation, growing old unhappily together in the light of tiny screens.” In other words, we “really inhabit an era in which repetition is more the norm than invention; in which stalemate rather than revolution stamps our politics; in which sclerosis afflicts public institutions and private life alike; in which new developments in science, new exploratory projects, consistently underdeliver.”

This is an overall depiction of “decadence,” which Douthat defines as “economic stagnation, institutional decay and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development .” This “stagnation is often a consequence of previous development.”

He then expands upon this opinion by examining current economic, social and political factors.

Economics

“The decadent economy is not an impoverished one. The United States [for example] is an extraordinarily wealthy country, its middle class prosperous beyond the dreams of centuries past, its welfare state effective at easing the pain of recessions, and the last decade of growth has (slowly) raised our living standard to a new high after the losses from the Great Recession.”

But, Douthat says, the U.S. and other developed canopies are not dynamic. “American entrepreneurship has been declining since the 1970s. . . . [There is] a slowdown, a mounting difficulty in achieving breakthroughs [in science and technology].”

One of the sources for this assertion was a 2017 paper by a group of economists, “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?” These economists asserted, ““We present a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply.”

Another source was Northwestern University economist, Robert Gordon, whom Douthat describes as “one of the most persuasive theorist of stagnation.” Gordon had concluded, “the period from 1840 to 1970 featured dramatic growth and innovation across multiple arenas — energy and transportation and medicine and agriculture and communication and the built environment. Whereas in the last two generations, progress has become increasingly monodimensional — all tech and nothing more.”

Society

“America is a more peaceable country than it was in 1970 or 1990, with lower crime rates and safer streets and better-behaved kids. But it’s also a country where that supposedly most American of qualities, wanderlust, has markedly declined: Americans no longer “go west” (or east or north or south) in search of opportunity the way they did 50 years ago; the rate at which people move between states has fallen from 3.5 percent in the early 1970s to 1.4 percent in 2010. . . . Nor do Americans change jobs as often as they once did.”

“Those well-behaved young people are more depressed than prior cohorts, less likely to drive drunk or get pregnant but more tempted toward self-harm. They are also the most medicated generation in history, from the drugs prescribed for A.D.H.D. to the antidepressants offered to anxious teens, and most of the medications are designed to be calming, offering a smoothed-out experience rather than a spiky high.”

“[P]eople are also less likely to invest in the future in the most literal of ways. The United States birthrate was once an outlier among developed countries, but since the Great Recession, it has descended rapidly, converging with the wealthy world’s general below-replacement norm. This demographic decline worsens economic stagnation; economists reckoning with its impact keep finding stark effects. A 2016 analysis found that a 10 percent increase in the fraction of the population over 60 decreased the growth rate of states’ per capita G.D.P. by 5.5 percent. A 2018 paper found that companies in younger labor markets are more innovative; another found that the aging of society helped explain the growth of monopolies and the declining rate of start-ups.”

“Sterility feeds stagnation, which further discourages childbearing, which sinks society ever-deeper into old age — makes demographic decline a clear example of how decadence overtakes a civilization. For much of Western history, declining birthrates reflected straightforward gains to human welfare: victories over infant mortality, over backbreaking agrarian economies, over confining expectations for young women. But once we crossed over into permanent below-replacement territory, the birth dearth began undercutting the very forces (youth, risk -taking, dynamism) necessary for continued growth, meaning that any further gains to individual welfare are coming at the future’s expense.”

Politics

“From Trump’s Washington to the capitals of Europe, Western politics is now polarized between anti-establishment forces that are unprepared to competently govern and an establishment that’s too disliked to effectively rule.”

“The structures of the Western system, the United States Constitution and administrative state, the half-built federalism of the European Union, are everywhere creaking and everywhere critiqued. But our stalemates make them impervious to substantial reform, let alone to revolution. The most strident European nationalists don’t even want to leave the European Union, and Trump’s first term has actually been much like Obama’s second, with failed legislation and contested executive orders, and policy made mostly by negotiation between the bureaucracy and the courts.”

Douthat’s Conclusion

“Complaining about decadence is a luxury good — a feature of societies where the mail is delivered, the crime rate is relatively low, and there is plenty of entertainment at your fingertips. Human beings can still live vigorously amid a general stagnation, be fruitful amid sterility, be creative amid repetition. And the decadent society, unlike the full dystopia, allows those signs of contradictions to exist, which means that it’s always possible to imagine and work toward renewal and renaissance.”

“So you can even build a case for decadence, not as a falling-off or disappointing end, but as a healthy balance between the misery of poverty and the dangers of growth for growth’s sake. A sustainable decadence, if you will, in which the crucial task for 21st-century humanity would be making the most of a prosperous stagnation: learning to temper our expectations and live within limits; making sure existing resources are distributed more justly; using education to lift people into the sunlit uplands of the creative class; and doing everything we can to help poorer countries transition successfully into our current position. Not because meliorism can cure every ill, but because the more revolutionary alternatives are too dangerous, and a simple greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number calculus requires that we just keep the existing system running and give up more ambitious dreams.”

“The longer a period of stagnation continues, the narrower the space for fecundity and piety, memory and invention, creativity and daring. The unresisted drift of decadence can lead into a territory of darkness, whose sleekness covers over a sickness unto death.”

“So decadence must be critiqued and resisted . . . . by the hope that where there’s stability, there also might eventually be renewal, that decadence need not give way to collapse to be escaped, that the renaissance can happen without the misery of an intervening dark age.”

This Blogger’s Conclusion

The societal facts cited by Douthat are well known, and this blog has commented about the economic challenges presented by lower birth rates and aging populations of the U.S. [2] and of his home state of Minnesota. [3] Therefore, this blogger has been and is an advocate for increasing U.S. welcoming refugees and other immigrants in accordance with the U.S. history of immigration, which should be an U.S. advantage over other countries. [4] Douthat, however, does not mention immigration. Nor does he mention the high costs of raising children in the U.S. as a deterrent to having children. This blog also has discussed declining birth rates and aging populations in Japan, China and Cuba. [5]

This societal situation is also shown by recent U.S. declines in important international socio-political indices: freedom of the press, human development, level of corruption, income inequality, global peace and social progress. These may well relate to Douthat’s thesis.[6]

I agree with Douthat’s assessment of the political scene at least in the U.S. In fact, I believe that the U.S. Constitution is obsolete in so many ways, especially in its anti-democratic U.S. Senate which gives greater weight to land than to people, its filibuster rule, its Electoral College for electing the president and to the difficulty of amending that document.

Douthat’s discussion of current economic conditions presented new facts and analyses for this blogger. As a result, I will be studying Douthat’s forthcoming book, examining the paper by Robert Gordon that is hyperlinked in the column; finding and reading the paper by an unnamed group of economists that is discussed in the column; reading the over 1,000 comments on the column published by the Times; and searching for other opinions on these issues.

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[1] Douthat. The Age of Decadence, N.Y. Times (Feb. 9, 2020). He will expand on this topic in his book: The Age of Decadence: How We Became Victims of Our Own Success (to be released Feb. 25, 2020). An earlier column provided a slice of his analysis in discussing the second decade of our current century: The Decade of Disillusionment, N.Y. Times ( Dec. 28, 2019).

[2] ] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: More Warnings of the Problems Facing U.S. Aging, Declining Population (Aug. 14, 2019); Implications of Reduced U.S. Population Growth (Jan. 10, 2020); U.S. Needs Immigration To Keep Growing and Maintain Prosperity (Feb.16, 2020).

[3] ] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Minnesota’s Challenges of Declining, Aging Population (Oct. 2, 2019); Slower Growth Projected for Minnesota Population in the 2020’s (Dec. 29, 2019).

[4] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Another Report About U.S. Need for More Immigrants (Aug. 25, 2019); Japan Shows Why U.S. Needs More Immigrants (Sept. 1, 2019); Prominent Economist Says Cuts in U.S. immigration Threaten U.S. Economy and Innovation (Oct. 12, 2019); Immigrants Come to U.S. To Work (Jan. 31, 2020); U.S. State Governments Celebrate Refugees’ Accomplishments (Feb. 2, 2020); U.S. Needs Immigrants To Keep Growing and Maintain Prosperity (Feb. 16, 2020).

[5] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Japan Shows Why U.S. Needs More Immigrants (Sept. 1, 2019); Japan Implements New Law Allowing Increased Immigration (Sept. 15, 2019); Cuba’s Aging and Declining Population Continues (Dec. 13, 2019); Continued Demographic Squeeze on Japan (Dec. 26, 2019); “The Chinese Population Crisis” (Jan. 21, 2020); Cuba’s Low Birth Rate, Increasing Emigration and Declining Population (Feb. 3, 2020).

[6] Declining U.S. Rankings in Important Socio-Poltical Indices, dwkcommentaries.com (Aug. 19, 2019).

Responses to Ezra Klein’s Democratization Thesis

A prior post reviewed the recent Ezra Klein column (and related book) that argued for “reducing the polarization of American politics by democratization, including “proportional representation and campaign finance reform; . . .[making] voter registration automatic and. . . [giving] Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico the political representation they deserve.” https://dwkcommentaries.com/2020/02/14/u-s-needs-more-democratization/

Two respected political commentators–Norman J. Ornstein, a noted author and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Ross Douthat, a self-proclaimed conservative New York Times columnist–have discussed the Klein book, which was the basis for his column.

Norman Ornstein[1]

The Klein book cites research by political scientists showing that split ticket voting in presidential and congressional elections has virtually disappeared, that self-proclaimed independents now vote more predictably for one party over another and that such voters are now more motivated by their antipathy for the other party rather than affinity for their own. Related to all of this is the emergence of political mega-identities: “Republicans have become more cultlike and resistant to compromise or moderation” while “Democrats have an immune system of diversity and democracy.”

Ornstein also endorses Klein’s opinion that “baked into the political system devised by our framers is an increasing bias toward geography and away from people. As the country becomes more diverse, the representation and power in our politics will grow even less reflective of that dynamism. . . . At some point, the fundamental legitimacy of the system will be challenged.”

Therefore, in the book, Klein calls for eliminating the Electoral College and the Senate filibuster, allowing Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to become states and taking steps to make the House of Representatives more reflective of the country. “Of course, even these measures , commendable though they may be, are a very heavy lift.”

Ross Douthat[2]

Douthat also takes on the more expansive statement of Ezra Klein’s opinions in his book, “Why We’re Polarized.” [1]

This book, says Douthat, correctly debunks the theory that “the cure for division is just to educate people about the Right Answers to complicated policy disputes.”

Then Douthat counters Klein by relying on two other recent books, Christopher Caldwell’s “Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties” and Michael Lind’s “The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Managerial Elite.”

According to Douthat, Caldwell, another conservative author and New York Times contributing opinion writer, sees the current polarization as due to the 1960’s reformers creating “through the Civil Rights Act, a structure of judicial and bureaucratic supervision and redress that gradually expanded into a rival constitutional system. This so-called ‘Second Constitution’ is organized around the advancement of groups claiming equality, not the protection of citizens enjoying liberties. And so the claims these groups make must be privileged over and against both the normal legislative process and the freedoms of speech and religion and association that the original Constitution protects.”

Lind’s book, says Douthat, sees the current polarization as “the consolidation of economic power by a ‘managerial’ upper class'” and the resulting weakening of “any institution — from churches and families to union shops and local industries — that might grant real power to groups outside the gilded city, the Silicon Valley bubble, the Ivy League gate.” This phenomenon coupled with libertarianism of Regan and Thacher promoted “economic and social permissiveness . . . [and] a new class divide, between thriving meritocratic hubs and a declining and demoralized heartland, . . . [that] explains both the frequency of populist irruptions and their consistent futility.”

The above two books, however, in Douthat’s opinion, fail to acknowledge the importance of the “secularization and institutional-Christian decline” and resulting religious polarization as important trends contributing to polarization. which Douthat will address in a future column.

Note that Douthat does not address Klein’s point about American polarization being connected with the structure of American government giving greater weight to geographical units than to the number of people.

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[1] Ornstein, Why America’s Political Divisions Will Only Get Worse, N.Y. Times Book Review (Feb. 9, 2020).

[2] Douthat, The Many Polarizations of America, N.Y. Times (Jan. 28, 2020).