Middle Class

California and Its Contradictions: Rumblings of Realignment Beneath a Solid-Blue Surface

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California remains deep blue, but the good news from this week’s elections is that it has not yet achieved complete ballot-box unanimity.  read more »

Escape from the Working Class

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Discussions about policies to help the multiracial American working class majority as a whole typically take a detour into the completely unrelated subject of how to help individuals escape from the working class.

Helping as many individuals escape from working-class occupations as possible is the goal of both the conventional center-left and the conventional center-right.  But the proposed escape routes differ.  read more »

Urban Reform Institute Releases Report on Upward Mobility

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In a new report, Upward Mobility, Charles Blain, Wendell Cox and Joel Kotkin examine examine housing costs, patterns of domestic migration and how they affect upward mobility for middle and working-class citizens, especially historically disadvantage minorities. An excerpt from the report follows below:  read more »

Reality TV and Real Work in the Fishing Industry

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Fishing may be the world’s second oldest profession, but the industry is about as visible as a quiet cousin at a family reunion. Unassuming, keeping to itself, it is largely ignored in talk about work and the economy.  All of which belies its oddly large footprint in reality TV.   read more »

Americans Won't Live in the Pod

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“No Bourgeois, No Democracy”
Barrington Moore

Protecting and fighting for the middle class regularly dominates rhetoric on the Right and Left. Yet activists on both sides now often seek to undermine single-family home ownership, the linchpin of middle-class aspiration.  read more »

This is the Great Reshuffling

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The Interwebs are abuzz over the mass exodus from cities triggered by the coronavirus. Cue up the images of Moses parting the sea for a caravan of U-Hauls destined for the verdant cul-de-sacs of the Promised Land. This outward population migration is quantifiable and real. You’ll get no arguments at all from me. But the nuances are being lost in the chatter.  read more »

Blue Today, Bluer Tomorrow

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The long-rising blue tide that has colored American politics and values may have crested, but it could still have enough momentum to make it through the election year. Even if Trump is somehow reelected, the wielders of power and influence — academia, media, Wall Street, Hollywood, the big-tech oligarchs, the dominant nonprofits, and the governmental apparat — will remain deep blue for the foreseeable future.  read more »

Dissecting Black Suburbia

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By now, everyone who's paid attention to the Trump Administration lately knows that the suburbs, however defined, look to figure very prominently in the 2020 presidential election.  read more »

Let's Stop Shaming the Suburbs

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I have been a New Yorker for over a decade now, but I have spent the past few months in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, since it’s a little easier on our family during the pandemic. Locals joke that it’s a “suburb of nowhere,” and it’s true that the region may lack some of the density and sizable cultural institutions that define the New York experience—24/7 amenities, robust public transit, and the sidewalk ballets. But the tidewater region is anything but an isolated wasteland, and spending time here has been absolutely lovely.  read more »

Why the 2020 Election Will be Decided in Suburbia

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American politics is increasingly about dueling geographies. Democrats have become the party of the nation’s cities, while the Republican Party finds its base in rural, small town and low-density exurban America  read more »