In recent history, the United States has arguably never been so divided — but not in the way you might think. Yes, the country has been split by the culture wars, with their polarising focus on race and gender. But behind the scenes, another conflict has been brewing; shaped by the economics of class, it has created two Americas increasingly in conflict.
The First America is made up of the highly educated and affluent, who have already managed to recover their pandemic-depleted incomes. Its biggest winners, though, have been large tech firms — notably Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google — who together have added more than two and a half trillion dollars to their valuation since 2019, and last year enjoyed record breaking profits.
In contrast, the Second America, made up of the working and private-sector middle classes, has been devastated by the pandemic, with more than half of small businesses unlikely to fully recover. Meanwhile, the expanding serf class, many of whom were employed in small businesses, has become increasingly dependent on handouts from Washington and bloated state governments, so much so that it has made little sense for many to go back to work.
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At stake, increasingly, is the future of America as an aspirational country. Traditionally, the growing gap between the rich and the other classes would be fodder for a Left-wing bonfire, but the progressive Left now gets much of its funding from the corporate elite, notably Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The oligarchy not only funded Biden’s campaign, but, particularly in the case of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, leant critical support to boost the November electoral turnout.
Taking on the oligarchy, therefore, has not been Biden’s priority, at least to date. Rather than focus on traditional working-class concerns, he has been swept up by the cultural memes of the HR departments, newsrooms and faculty lounges. The results have been all too predictable: draconian energy policies, the racialisation of education and support for public sector unions, the one arguably working-class bastion for the Democrats.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Justin Webb"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/06/the-death-of-american-patriotism/[/su_unherd_related]
But in the long run, this may not constitute smart politics. The politically correct agenda of the progressive activists, at least according to a survey conducted by the non-partisan More in Common group, inspires the loyalty of barely 8% of the electorate. Another recent study found that 80% of all Americans, including large majorities of millennials and racial minorities, find the “politically correct” politics “dangerous”. And so Washington’s aggressively discriminatory policies — such as steering aid to farmers based on race — are unlikely to connect with most Americans, as are attempts to impose “anti-racist” programming in companies and schools, suggesting that to be white is equivalent to having disease. There’s also considerable scepticism about this approach among America’s minorities, whose priorities don't concern compensation for past evils but a better life for their families.
Indeed, pushback against the progressive agenda has been growing among the two fastest growing minorities, Asians, and Hispanics. Asian communities may be feeling the sting of racial resentment, and were until recently tilting towards the Democrats, but last year they began shifting back to the centre-right, even in California. This stems in part from their opposition to race quotas, which work against this often over-achieving population. Asians are also over-represented among the ranks of homeowners and small businesses, which are less able to cope with progressive regulation and were in the crosshairs of the recent surge of urban violence.
Similarly, Hispanics also appear to be moving more towards the Republicans. They gave a larger share of their votes to the “racist” ogre Donald Trump, and just elected a GOP Mayor in McAllen, a heavily Democratic, overwhelming Latino border city. Hispanics often work in industries such as manufacturing and construction that often struggle under progressive energy and planning policies. To put it simply, they are — just like the Asian communities now looking Rightwards — increasingly in the Second America.
The Biden Administration, meanwhile, seems blissfully unaware of the emergence of two Americas. The Biden cabinet is overwhelmingly made up of elite-school educated, coastal big city denizens — a third of the new cabinet went to Harvard — with little representation from the South, the evangelical community or the Plains (agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack is the exception).
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Oliver Wiseman"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/06/san-franciscos-progressive-nightmare/[/su_unherd_related]
Meanwhile, policies like lavish funding for mass transit and restrictions on single-family homes may appeal to those at the top of the pyramid, but workers seem ready to resist attempts to force them back into long commutes and small flats. Likewise, Biden’s affiliation with the dense Northeast seems utterly out-of-sync with a country where the “hot” metros in America — in terms of jobs and migration — are no longer the agglomerations around San Francisco, LA or New York, but places like Dallas-Fort, Salt Lake City, Columbus, Indianapolis and Des Moines. Between September 2019 and September 2020, the biggest job losses, according to the firm American Communities and based on federal data, have been in big cities, while rural areas suffered 6% and exurbs by less than 5%. Virtually all the highest unemployment rates are in coastal red states, while the lowest tend to be in central and southern states.
How the current administration responds to the emerging economic reality — and the potential rise of a Second America — may prove decisive. The deep-seated labour shortages, particularly evident in industry, are largely the product of low labour force growth and a sinking birthrate. These shortfalls create a unique opportunity for working-class Americans. Before the pandemic, wages for lower income labourers were rising for the first time in decades. Today, even with high unemployment over 6%, and over 8 million fewer positions, there are 7.4 million unfilled jobs.
Ultimately, Biden could help Americans most by adopting at least some of the Trumpian programme on issues such as trade and domestic manufacturing. This is more than just good policy; it’s good politics. A recent survey by the Left-leaning Center for American Progress found that far more Americans prioritise protecting US jobs and reducing illegal immigration than such progressive mainstays as draconian policies on climate change and improving relations with allies.
Of course, any Biden effort to adopt populist approaches will face resistance from many of the corporate entities which supported him. Apple’s Tim Cook can pose as a progressive Green visionary, but will fight for his right to employ brutalised Chinese labour, and use factories powered largely by coal power. Progressive oligarchs have been unsurprisingly uncritical of things as Chinese slave labour, the assault on Hong Kong and the repression of Uighurs. The money, technical expertise and media power of these oligarchs are far from trivial. But these once widely admired tech moguls are now increasingly feared by the public and have stirred concerns both among Left-wing activists and a growing number of conservatives who recognise that they represent not the paragons of capitalism but its privileged undertakers.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this author" author="Joel Kotkin"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/05/how-america-turned-into-the-eu/[/su_unherd_related]
There is clearly powerful support for restraining the tech monopolies; their growing penchant for censorship over issues like Covid, race or the environment. But if Biden instead follows his establishment backers, only the Republicans will benefit. Yet even the Republicans could eventually come off worse. In their embrace of nativism, a pernicious aspect of Trumpism, they may face problems with their much anticipated rebranding as the new working-class party of Second America, given that by 2032 more than half of working people in America will come from racial minorities.
As the divide between the oligarchs and the people becomes ever more evident, the battle between the two Americas — one more numerous, but the other far better funded and media savvy — will determine our country’s future. The early 20th Century showed that populist elements could transcend traditional party labels, and find common ground to restore America’s traditional promise. But that requires a leader, in either party, to stand up for the majority of Americans against a relentless ruling elite seeking to extend ever more its suffocating grip. Until then, the United States will remain split in two — with the Second America increasingly forgotten.
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SubscribeI wonder sometimes if politics has shifted from a gap between money and classes to a gap between administrators and doers. Administrators always vote for more administration – more rules, more commands, more paper checks, more policies and more programmes. The doers just want to do things – make stuff, build, invent, sell, dig, plant and live. In modern society, regulation controls production, and the doers are starting to resent being told they can’t do things.
Politics or the material dialectic. The managerial class in the West is the Western version of Djilas’s New Class. There are still classes and one has lots more money, it’s just that it’s no longer the capitalists (those whose claim on profits come from risking their own resources, capital, in enterprises that are not certain of producing profits) who are in charge, but the managerial class (which spans business, government and the non-profit sector), who are embracing fascism (not in the meaningless pejorative sense, but in the sense of a political program and methods similar to those of the original fascists). And it’s not just in the US. That’s the darker version of what’s going on. The more hopeful interpretation is that this is the depths of Kondratiev winter, and that spring is around the corner: Quillette had a recent article entitled “Silicon Valley’s ‘Mission Protocol’ Revolution Is Beginning to Attain Critical Mass” describing what looks to me like the green shoots of a Kondratiev spring.
Great article. As always, I wonder what is the solution to the Great American Divide, and perhaps the author provides a clue when he writes: “The early 20th Century showed that populist elements could transcend traditional party labels, and find common ground to restore America’s traditional promise. But that requires a leader, in either party, to stand up for the majority of Americans against a relentless ruling elite…”
Maybe that’s what we’re waiting for, a more politically savvy version of Trump who speaks for the masses and who actually knows how to get things done. I imagine the tech elites will, however, actively conspire against such a person running for the Presidency.
I was a bit surprised when the author wrote, “Virtually all the highest unemployment rates are in coastal red states.” I wonder if he meant coastal blue states since most of the highly populated coastal states are heavily democratic?
I agree… it should be coastal blue dem states. Those ones that now resemble third world inner cities.
Ron DeSantis immediately springs to mind as the ‘more politically savvy version of Trump’.
I wondered about that as well. Could it be that Kotkin is styling his essay for a mainly British readership? I believe that Tories are still associated with (True) Blue – a reference to a dyeing process, I believe – while UK Labour is more honest than the US Democrats about their socialist proclivities, and so remain Red. In that case, “red coastal states” would make sense, though it’s confusing to us Americans. Then again, he may have just made a mistake.
BTW, if anyone is puzzled by the metropolitan area called Dallas – Fort, “Fort” would be “Fort Worth”, a city of over 900 thousand people. Dallas has a population of a bit over one-and-a-third million. Both cities are in the state of Texas. I hadn’t previously seen the smaller of the two abbreviated as just “Fort”, it makes me think Kotkin might have just made an error about the blue-red state matter.
“Today, even with high unemployment over 6%, and over 8 million fewer positions, there are 7.4 million unfilled jobs.”.
Till September when the Federal $300 a week unemployment paid to anyone on Unemployment, on top of the State Unemployment pay, Ends – which make it better to stay unemployed as it is running about the same as earning $17 an hour! Many Minimum wages rates are about $7.50 an hour, rising to $15 at the very top, so back to work at a pay loss? And then work expenses on top of that? People are not doing that.
I posted this before, but it is excellent. ‘Reventure Consulting’ has youtubes on USA Real Estate, great to watch, but this one is really worth it. He uses statistics and charts to tell of recovery across USA, and what it shows is 100% recovery is based on Republican (red) and Democrat (Blue) state control, and those divides are also weather Lockdown was mild or strong. It is clear lockdown, in USA split right along party lines, saved no lives, but destroyed economies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuPhovcR3xE California, down 1.4 Million jobs, Realestate up 12%? New York 1 Million jobs gone, 9% rise in real estate price? The disconnect is shocking.
One thing many of the Red States (Republican) have done is to refuse the Fed $300 unemployment from a wile ago as it was stopping recovery, the effect is very strong.
The anger and polarization in USA today is stronger than the Thatcher Scargill/Foot 40 years ago but without the landslide at the polls choosing the direction. This is not going to end well.
This $300 per week handout is staggeringly stupid.
It was $600 for a very long time! Biden Also now gives $300 per child to every custodial parent per month! Just for free, the only criteria is the family income is under $125,000 and $150,000. Just think, every child, every month. This is not going to stop.
All the mess in the West is from the way White Westerners stopped having replacement numbers of children in the 1970’s because it became a Two Earner world where both parents had to work, except the unemployable, they got paid to have children wile the workers could no longer afford children with both at work.
If this $300/child was given then the Westerners would have had steady demographics and no need for millions of third worlds brought in and paid to have children.
Liberals hate White people and are out to replace them, finally the reality of their thinking is in the open today with ‘Critical Race Theory’, but too late.
Welcome back. Unfortunately I agree with your analysis – as an outsider. But as an outsider I see that the only solution is war, either an internal war or a major war against Asia.
Politicians are notoriously bad at solving problems but very good at creating them. With problem solving, you have to analyse the situation in a cool way, decide on your plan, sell your plan to the people and then go for it. We know that politicians can’t do that, so they get forced into more and more narrow ventures until they find themselves in a blind alley and then they try to blame the situation on whoever is around at the time. Maybe they will blame the labour unions and create an internal war; maybe they will blame the Chinese and then…… Bang !!!
All the problems are intentional. The Global Elite are making their move, and the first thing needed is to destroy the middle class as they are moral, patriotic, and wealthy enough they vote for free and fair nations. Thus the plan for mass immigration and dividing the people into groups who are at odds. Then divided you only need to buy the votes of a sizeable minority to own who gets into office.
Thus ignorant are made to vote, and their vote bought with free money, and for class war created intentionally. That is all it takes for Biden to win, a minority of ignorant wile the majority is split down the middle. The leaders in the West are selected by the least informed and the least able to succeed in the world, opposite of what it should be. The unemployable pick who taxes the workers, and who gets the money.
I remember challenging the Unherd community to defend their pro lockdown stances including issues like the economy. One female investor from the US immediately said that the economy was flying. These people are myopic.
As this link shows, suppressing COVID is better for both health, economy, and civil liberties than trying to mitigate it. Since the list of suppressors they use is Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, that does, to be sure, leave the question which other countries could in practice have achieved the same result. But it seems clear enough what the best result would be.
These are bar one, easily isolated island states. Lockout zero Covid states. The other one Korea, is an Eastern country with mostly slim healthy people following a good diet chock full of fermented vegetables. There was always going to be a bad result in the UK and the US with their obese, insulin resistant populations with people marching swiftly to an early death.
Covid is a disease of Westerners, the West 2000 deaths per million, The Far East, 4, rising to 90 in some places, per million. That its origins are what they are is very……………………
Plus, South Korea is effectively isolated like an island, given how little the North will permit in terms of crossing the border. I wonder too if, given that East Asia was hit much harder by SARS I than the West, they might have acquired some immunity to SARS II, also known as COVID-19.
Leslie, I am addicted to the economic situation now. On youtube I fallow DiMartino-Booth, Peter Schiff, and then a selection of various doom mongers, and try to leaven it with those of conventional wisdom saying times are GOOD and the future bright.
1) Hyperinflation, high inflation doom. Because the interest rate may not be raised without crashing the West, and the Trillions of Fiscal stimulus (M2 doubled in a year) inflation must come, cannot be suppressed by raising interest, and then will devalue the Dollar, and thus loss of ‘Reserve ‘ status, and ——–> Boom, West in Great Depression.
2) Deflation. With Tech increasing productivity prices drop, and the only thing holding off deflation (The great depression was deflation) is the fiscal and Monitary printing, and when it stops ——–> boom, deflation great depression.
3) Goldielocks, economies booming because of increased Tech productivity which is deflationary, MMT stops deflation, and prosperity is achieved as UBI will be needed to absorb the high money printing which will be needed.
4) It just keeps on because that is the new Paradigm, zero interest, high growth, high stimulus with tech making high productivity.
I lean towards 1) and have bought metal commodity mine stock and 100 lbs of physical silver and so on. Last week silver crashed 8%, miners and gold too (still ahead, but not much, I am as likely wrong as right.)
Exceedingly well written article. Perfectly encapsulates our issues.
If inflation does take hold and isn’t transitory, the service on the mounting deficit will require an increase in taxes but it won’t be on the wealthy who can hide anywhere. Inflation may arise as employers try to recover and offer better wages but that may be an issue with the numbers of undocumented. If much of that happens then the divide between the well insulated (most of the government) and the insulted citizens will increase even more. The mid-terms will be a sign indicating the end to much progressive overreach. By that point it’s possible the minorities will have shifted entirely. The real divide is showing by the people voting with their feet and many companies doing that as well. Much turmoil ahead.
The money the USA federal government is printing at the moment is just plain decadent. This will not turn out well and yet the Democrats are doubling and tripling down on this strategy. It’s insane.
A modern version of the Roman Empire and we know what happened to that.
It went on for a thousand years or so after its original capital was sacked about a century after the actual capital had been moved to a more defensible location overlooking the Bosphorus. Of course, it did, in its last few centuries, dwindle to a city-state before falling to the Turks. Oh, wait, . . . you’re not referring to actual history, but the version taught in Western Europe and the Anglosphere.
In “Western Europe”, it DID fall. That’s the version that’s thought in western Europe. Because there are a lot of western Europeans there.
Sure, though the Western Europeans at the time didn’t notice — in 476 the last Western Augustus was retired to a villa near Naples, the Emperor in Constantinople having decided he was redundant since the King of the Ostrogoths as a Partician of the Romans could look after affairs in Italy. This is why Charlemagne thought he was simply reviving the office of Western Augustus, not founding a new Empire, perhaps thinking he could get the whole Empire since in the year 800, an Empress was reigning in Constantinople. The end of really effective Imperial control in the West is of interest to the history of Western Europe, but when considering the fate of the Roman Empire as an analogy for the fate of modern governments, looking at its state only in its original home provinces is less illuminating than many would make out in light of history of the Empire as a whole.
And if your anology is wrong, well the sun going Super Nova in a few billion years will do the same thing. It is just a matter of time is I guess what you are saying. A useful comment.
Being as it’s the left and their phony compassion which has caused the beating down of the poor, I would be surprised if they managed to profit from the division. They say God always manages to bring good out of evil. Maybe the poor will stop seeing the left as their salvation now.
The brief analysis of Tim Cook as a representative oligarch is on point. Green and woke at home while profiting from brutalized labor and coal fired factories in Asia is standard procedure for the tech oligarchs. What was not mentioned is, to me, the breathtaking level of cynicism demonstrated here. As an old school cynic myself, I feel positively naive when I look at the tech titans and the political leaders of the American left.
Wait a minute, Daniel Kotkin, you are blurring your own message. Last year in Quillette you divided America up into Clerisy, Yeomanry, and Serfs.
How medieval! Is America now neo-feudal?
Now you are dividing America up into First America, Second America, and a “serf class.”
So you are still dividing America in three, which I think is the simplest division that doesn’t reduce politics into pure civil war.
But I think that Clerisy, Yeomanry, and Serfs is more fun.