In reality, Coolidge Republicans and Roosevelt Democrats were not that far apart, agreeing that collective bargaining was legitimate in the private sector but not in the public sector. Before the late twentieth century, mainstream Republicans and Democrats alike agreed with the sentiment expressed by Coolidge in his speech to union officials in 1924: “We have yet a long way to go…
Read MoreIt sounds like an absurd riddle, or perhaps a kindergarten-level math problem: the median male full-time worker earned $314 per week in 1979, while his counterpart at the median in 2018 earned $1,026; who was better off? In fact, the question proves fiendishly difficult, even as its answer lies at the heart of understanding America’s economic progress…
Read MoreWe have always had a political class, composed of politicians, donors, consultants, and media who make decisions about what our politics and campaigns should focus on. But never have the views of this political class and the rest of the country been so different. For our political class, the operating assumption has been that popular concerns, like families’ cost of living and industries moving to China, are issues that are either simply inevitable in modern society or can be dealt with by a tax credit or a government program. I think one of the lessons of the 2016 election is that these are more fundamental issues that demand deeper political attention…
Read MoreIn spring 2019 I published an article in this journal predicting that the British Left was far more divided than it appeared on its surface. I argued that the activist group Momentum, which had taken over the Labour Party, risked alienating traditional working-class supporters. My argument was based on the fact that Momentum tended to be…
Read MoreSince at least 2016, the divide between the “working class” and the “elite” has been considered a defining issue in American (and Western) politics. This divide has been defined in occupational terms (“blue collar” versus “information workers”), geographic terms (rural and exurban regions versus major urban cores), and meritocratic terms (non-college-educated versus those with elite…
Read MoreAmerica’s two major political parties appear to be in the process of swapping their historic coalition constituents. With that shift, many of our assumptions about what it means to be a Democrat or a Republican are coming apart at the seams. The most significant development seen in recent polling data is the exodus of college-educated…
Read MoreMy first reaction to the work of Barbara Ehrenreich was one of complete indignation and contempt. A professor had assigned Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed (2001) for an English prerequisite at my commuter college—the urban satellite campus for two major universities intended to cater to low-income and nontraditional students. (Go Jaguars!) The book was a…
Read MoreAs the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, so too, it seemed, did the dream of socialism. The German sociologist Rolf Dahrendorf declared, “The point has to be made unequivocally that socialism is dead and that none of its variants can be revived for a world awakening from the double nightmare…
Read More“Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.” Our current moment of corporate wokeness and “extremely online” pearl-clutching has made this phrase something of a cliché. In its most sympathetic rendering, it means that a free exchange of ideas allows everyone to decide who they wish to associate with…
Read MoreThe story of upward redistribution over the last four decades is overwhelmingly a story of money going to high-end wage-earners. While there has been a shift in income from wages to corporate profits in this century, it appears that this shift is being reversed in the tight labor market of the last four years. That…
Read More
Already subscribed?
Sign In With Your AAJ Account
| Sign In with Blink
