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The recent sparring between Starbucks’s longtime CEO Howard Schultz and Senator Bernie Sanders reflects a conflict within the Democratic Party that is likely to get far more intense in the years ahead. Sanders accused Schultz, a self-described progressive who once considered a presidential run, of conducting “illegal union busting” at the coffee chain’s shops — something that the Starbucks CEO vehemently denied.

Schultz is finding out the hard way that liberal intentions are not enough to prevent his employees from seeking better wages and conditions. This dilemma mirrors that of his gentry progressive allies, who represent the Democrats’ increasingly affluent, well-educated base. They are now primary funders of the party and it is their agenda that has come to achieve dominance.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

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.

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States exported a record 3.6 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2022, a 22 percent increase from 2021. According to the EIA:

“Since early 2022, trade patterns have shifted because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions of Russia’s crude oil exports. Prior to 2022, OECD Europe had been the largest regional importer of Russia’s crude oil, receiving 2.3 million b/d from Russia in 2021.

Less crude oil was exported to India and China from the United States in 2022 than in 2021 because the two countries imported more discounted crude oil from Russia. India was the largest export destination of U.S. crude oil exports in 2021; China had been in 2020. Decreased demand for U.S. crude oil exports to India and China was more than offset by increased demand from other destinations, particularly in Europe.”

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Just implemented service adjustments will reduce Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) services to nine percent below pre-pandemic levels.

A Toronto Metropolitan University report (2023 TTC Service Changes and Transit Equity in Toronto), while acknowledging TTC’s challenging fiscal situation, notes that “Toronto’s most marginalized neighbourhoods will likely be disproportionately affected by the TTC service cuts.” The report continues: “These neighbourhoods may not generate the highest amounts of public transit trips, but residents in these neighbourhoods may be more dependent on public transit for their everyday needs compared to other parts of the city.” This “will likely make these neighbourhoods more mobility poor, creating additional barriers to the residents’ participation in employment, education, and society in general.”

Moreover, the report finds “At a time when all levels of the government are committing to address affordability and inequality, the proposed TTC service cuts are not justified.”

Note: The TTC principally serves the city (municipality) of Toronto, which accounts for 45% of the Toronto census metropolitan area population.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

The rescue of Silicon Valley Bank and its large depositors has drawn together unlikely bedfellows. Both the Right-wing Free Beacon and the Leftist Stranger magazine, to give two examples, have denounced this federal largesse as “socialism for the rich”.

Whether this is true or not lies in the eye of the beholder, but one thing is for sure: this is a crisis that could reshape the 2024 election.

Americans, particularly progressives, no longer see the Silicon Valley elites as “enlightened plutocrats” eager to create a better world. Now they view these same people as sinister far-Right figures, as evidenced by the treatment of Elon Musk since his takeover of Twitter. Indeed, the vast majority of Americans now also fear the tech elite, and the industry’s approval dropped dramatically in the years before the pandemic.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

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.

On this episode of The Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky help us understand the Iranian revolution with project analyst, Mahnaz Asghari, Iranian actress Nazanin Nour, and hematologist Montreh Tavakkoli.

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Latest Research: From Chapman’s Center of Demographics & Policy, Joel Kotkin & Marshall Toplansky co-author the new report on restoring The California Dream.

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