Middle Class

The great core cities don’t die — but only if they are willing to change. Today the world’s great cities, such as New York or London, face dramatically changed conditions, notably the rise of remote work, fears from the pandemic, and rising crime.  read more »

Reading the mainstream media, one would be forgiven for believing that the upcoming midterms are part of a Manichaean struggle for the soul of democracy, pitting righteous progressives against the authoritarian “ultra-MAGA” hordes. The truth is nothing of the sort. Even today, the vast majority of Americans are moderate and pragmatic, with fewer than 20% combined for those identifying as either “very conservative” or “very liberal”.  read more »

America’s narrow escape last week from a major rail-worker strike brought home an important truth: people who make and ship real things – let’s call them material workers – now hold the whip hand over our supposedly ‘post-industrial’ economy.  read more »

There’s much talk today, from left and right, about threats to democracy, yet little focus on the social dynamic critical to its survival. In this respect, we may see the current, and troubling, escalation of violent political rhetoric, and even political violence, not so much as the cause of polarization but the result of changing class dynamics, most notably the increasingly perilous state of the yeoman middle class.  read more »

California is working overtime to prove something that is obvious to most middle-class Americans: electric vehicle mandates are something of a scam.  read more »

Canada’s housing affordability crisis is a matter of considerable concern especially for young people trying to buy a house. The worst problems are in the Vancouver and Toronto markets with their excessive land use regulation.  read more »

Over a long summer weekend a group of the usual suspects got together and rented a cabin in the Sierra foothills about three hours east of San Francisco. It was an idyllic landscape of modest homes tucked into the forest around a small lake.  read more »

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.  read more »

Free trade and open markets are great ideals. These principles, over the last few centuries, but especially since World War II, have created tremendous wealth, particularly in the developing world. But free markets were made for human society, not the other way around.  read more »

While topics like “The Great Resignation” and “the labor shortage” have gained traction in popular discourse, much of these discussions overly simplify trends that have been brewing for decades.  read more »