"Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future." Have you ever heard of the Progressives? The workers just don't know who is on their side yet. But they will find out.
3
Mr Brooks, you speak of educated elites in cities who thrive. Many poor live in those cities. You speak of Trump's white ethnic nationalism. Can't bring yourself to speak of the racism underlying
white ethnic nationalism?
5
I like David as a person,but there is so much wrong with this I have neither the time or energy to comment. This is why I retired to europe to get away from this,yet I still read US papers! Must be something wrong with me?
2
Brooks's last two paragraphs describe the progressive intentions for the "social bargain."
So I suppose that means we win the future!
2
David, you're dreaming again. People aren't fired up about 'freedom' in the sense you mean, they are fighting against the failures of so-called capitalism to provide anything but an orgy of acquisition by the ruthless.
Don't get me wrong - free markets by themselves aren't a bad thing, but they don't work perfectly. Thinking about allowing someone to dump the leavings from their slaughterhouse upstream from where people drink should be all it takes to convince a rational person that a perfectly free market is a bad idea.
The problem isn't populism but the chaos of a revolution poorly thought out. Scavengers get fat during a disaster, and the smart ones take control. Once under control they tend to run things so all benefit goes to their own belly, not anyone else's.
But you do view everything through the lens of a moderate conservative. Which is unfortunate, living in a country founded by liberals. The backlash isn't 'globalized democratic capitalism', the term is an oxymoron. It doesn't exist. It's globalized capitalism, masquerading as democracy for the benefit of a few.
You really aren't fooling many people.
3
"This is the most widespread surge in global civic unrest since 1989. It’s a story 10 times bigger than impeachment."
And a story 9 million times bigger than this surge in civic unrest concerns global warming:
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/11/20/world/asia/20reuters-climate-change-accord-fossilfuels.html
Why do I use the factor of 9 million? Because there are 9 million species of living things on Earth, and all of them are being affected by climate change. Only one species is affected by the "widespread surge in global civic unrest".
2
"What comes after the failure of populism?"
Blood lots and lots of Blood!!!!!!!!
Eventually the losers who are figuring out that no matter how they vote or what the politicians say. That their situation isn't getting better, their kids situation will be worse. They'll will abandon the ballot box (which is ever more irrelevant has policies passed in congress are nearly identical between the parties) for the gun. And they will likely drown the nation in blood. Why not? The losers of Globalization view themselves has having little to lose. And for all the talk of Bernie or Warren, Their policies (irregardless of which party controls congress) are non starters. Even if the Dems controlled every single seat in BOTH houses it still wouldn't get the congress. The Dems being just has beholden to the Corporations & Big donors. And the Big Donors and Corps. having the final say. It's all a big show and boy it looks good on TV. But the end NO MATTER how sincere they are, how good of a game they talk. They couldn't get it through congress AND THEY KNOW IT! I'm afraid the only option I see is lots and lots of Blood. Ending with a strong man likely a General in charge for the duration of the emergency. It has happened more then once in history. There are too many people nothing loose and no reason not turn on the system. Scorched Earth! They won't win but they'll take the winners with them!
1
Quick, before your Conspiracy Theory Immunity Response kicks in: are the worldwide protests being coordinated by some kind of central command? I think so, and I've been calling it a giant international fraternity stunt. However, I have to admit that almost all of my information about world events comes from this newspaper. So maybe the way it covers the events makes it look like a coordinated effort? From my armchair it's impossible to know. Anyway, for the typical person who reads and comments here, what do you suppose is the lowest number of degrees of separation from people who have firsthand knowledge of these events?
When Brooks hates the incumbent regime, the protests are cleansing and joyful. When he loves the incumbent regime, all he can see is the "pink tide" populism which "can't deliver the goods".
Of all the ways to promote the interest and program of his beloved Republican party, twice weekly, this particular column has got to among the most incoherent and self-serving.
1
In David Brooks we have another extremely articulate NYT's pundit who consistently overlooks the essential existential political issue of our moment, even though the paper itself has published many important articles on the subject. Wake up Brooks, so you can help wake up your readers.
Obviously you can't make global warming and the overall environmental degradation of our planet central to every column, but when you make a statement like this you lose me- "The big job ahead for leaders in almost all these nations is this: Write a new social contract that gives both the educated urban elites and the heartland working classes a piece of what they want most."
That is the biggest job, as long as we can ignore the iceberg our global titanic has already hit- that giant piece of ice freed by a relentless sun whose heat is being trapped in our atmosphere at ever rising rates.
The iceberg relates directly to a global economic model that allows an ever increasing human population to buy an ever increasing quantity of non-essential consumer goods that help propel an economy that can satisfy the needs and the desires for more consumer goods for more and more people.
How, exactly, can politicians put an end to this suicidal cycle.
So maybe there is an even bigger issue involved than giving everyone a fair share of the pie when the pie itself is toxic and killing us.
1
This is a schizophrenic article that throws everything at the wall to see what sticks. Mr. Brooks, once again, has a thin understanding of the root problem that has afflicted the world. The problem is unfettered global capitalism, also known as neoliberalism that thinks "free" markets (more like feral markets) are good. Couple that with austerity and you have a world-wide revolt against capitalism. A global oligarchy where roughly 26 people own the wealth of 4 billion inhabitants of this planet. Yes, 26! Is it any wonder the planet is in revolt? Throw into the mix our multiple wars where we are bombing multiple countries, instituting regime changes, and our CIA is actively assisting coups by the oligarchs in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela that are rich in natural resources and you understand this response.
The author misses the point about populism when he points to the backlash of neoliberalism and its partner, the meritocracy, as THE issue. Trump and all the rest of the worlds fascists are a symptom of this corrupt and crushing ideology of supply side economics and corporate mentality that is supported by a blinded meritocratic class and institutions like the IMF.
In Iowa more than half of likely 2020 Democratic caucusgoers say they would be satisfied with a presidential candidate who wants the U.S. to be more socialist. If that doesn't tell you capitalism, as now practiced here and abroad, is broken, nothing else will.
How about a true democracy in the United States ?
2
Sir - As a white male who has benefitted from privilege and patriarchy - your opinion is not important to us.
It appears the social democratic Scandinavian nations are fiddling while Rome burns.
If you grind up the recent columns of Brooks, Stephens, and Douthat, add water, stir, let them ferment, and then slowly distill, what comes drip, drip, dripping out the condenser is a fine liquor called "Joe Biden for President".
1
"The educated elites" might be replaced with "The educated", since they are happy to have anyone join the group.
1
You nailed it again, Mr. Brooks. To paraphrase Peter Viereck, "Whether they're putting the thumbscrews to you from the left or from the right, you really don't care. You just want it to stop."
1
David deflects. Impeachment simply isn't important. Nothing to see there; move on....
The revolt against populism is waged in the NYT OpEd section on a regular basis, with inept analogies, disproportionate coverage of money-backed candidates who have little voter support, and sob stories on behalf of the economic class whose boundless greed provokes the sort of response that that class regularly whines about.
Come to Australia!
So Trump’s the fault of the elites and “spiritually thin”.
Brooks has nailed it. The problem is that people on both ends of the economic scale are thinking to themselves: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Lack of trust leads to chaos.
This article deserves an award for the most egregious misuse of the word "populism." Isn't the "Revolt Against Populism"...... populism? Please stop equating nationalism, xenophopia, and authoritarianism with "populism."
1
"... educated urban elites and the heartland working classes..."
Sorry, but the line should be,
"...educated working urban elites and the heartland welfare classes..."
1
"Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth."
And there you have the issue: growth. Growth for whom?
People are weary of hearing about "growth" and "the market" as these are essentially fictions in their day-to-day lives. Growth doesn't bring better wages, growth doesn't bring healthcare or housing within reach. Growth is someone else's high score going up while managerial brows are furrowed, hours are cut, staffing levels sag, and wages remain stagnant as personal expenses rise.
Higher productivity doesn't translate to benefits. Record profits are damning, as they can lead to layoffs in order to beat that growth rate the next quarter.
Neoliberalism is dying as it confronts the self-created challenge for which it has no solution. For the wealthy, having enough is not enough, having more than most is not enough, having more than everyone is not enough. Having it all is the only valid measure of success.
The masses of this planet could live in comfort and security to a degree not known to history if the wealthy would cease defining their own self worth by the absolute control of all assets within their reach and shaping policy to bring the rest close enough to take.
This would come at a price that would leave the rich still rich, but they'd be denied the growth rates that allow them to say they've achieved the high score that provides the only real validation to individuals who will never have to work (nor will their great-grandchildren).
1
Populist wave, my foot. We’re all tired of being told that it’s in our best interest for the rich to get richer while the rest of us have to take less but pay more for basic services. Since Reagan and Thatcher we’ve been told that we are all entrepreneurs of ourselves and if you fail it’s your own fault. We’re sick of it. Unfortunately, what comes next may be xenophobia and the fascist boot.
Excellent piece, David!
looks like the people in those countries are just trying to make their respective "countries" great again......!
Everybody condemnes elites but when you watch totally incompetent leaders like Mr Trump et al then you know exactly why we need elites.
1
David Brooks reaches a new low when he call an obvious right wing coup d'etat in Bolivia "Revolt Against Populism". This is a revolt of wealthy against loosing power.
How many kids from the Midwest do the Ivy League’s recruit?
Interesting that the author only uses economic measurements to decide whether a country is advancing or not.
Thanks, David....but it's going to take many more than one "Whoever...."
1
Populists are left behind because they find it difficult to change in a world rapidly leaving them on the sidelines. They believe without any thought the lies of leaders all too eager to take advantage of their stupidity. Corruption is always about money. Those that have it and want to keep it and those who want it and will find whatever means to get it. This is human nature and when the checks and balances in societies disappear we open up a black hole where corruption runs rampant. Some countries like Venezuela and Lebanon are in late stages of populism while Britain and the US are in the early stage of not yet realizing that facts and truth are important.
Brooks obsession with “elites” is a tired trope. Every column is a treatise on the ignorance of this rarified bird. What is an “elite” anyway?
Some of us who didn’t grow up in families where college was a given, are wondering if we must now suffer the label of “elitist” because we took the initiative, and the loans, to get an education?
I wonder if Mr Brooks knows what the wolf looks like when he’s standing at your door.
Some of us so called “elites” know that wolf very, very well. And when we vote, we’re not voting for ourselves as we are now, but for that person we used to be, the other people we know, waiting tables, selling retail, and trying to just get by.
Do you even have a clue, Mr Brooks?
Superb analysis!
Economic populism is doing very well in America. In fact, we have the best economy ever under this president. This is the same president the deep state plotters and globalists are trying to oust.
This article is highly flawed. The globalists running the world previous to Trump were and still are mostly corrupt. The world is readjusting to the evils of the corrupt communist and socialist regimes and fundamental Muslim autocracies.
We will get there, and very soon. People all over the world are catching on. What’s happening here in America is spreading.
Globalists...one world government...is inherently evil.
1
"Everything I don't like is Populism" - David Brooks
You lump all these corrupt leaders and philosophically bankrupt regimes together under the banner of Populist, but is it some quality of populism that's to blame for the trouble? Or is populism just the best sales pitch of the opportunistic liar in our socio-political climate?
You ought to define what you mean by populism when you say "What comes after the failure of populism?"
You haven't made the connection between populism and failure of all these govermnents clear to me.
1
How do you, Mr. Brooks, give a piece of what they want when their feeling is "it is my father and his father who built this country" and here you guys are invading us and trying to rip our culture from our land?
Populism is a euphemism for the all- time original favored historical form basics for human conflict and conflagration and war aka gender,color aka race aka ethnicity aka national origin aka sectarian.
The capitalists, the Bolsheviks and the Facscist etc. try to put an objective educational, political, socioeconomic and scientific mask and sheen on this reality.
See Matthew 7:12 aka ' The Golden Rule; ' The Violence Paradox' NOVA PBS
1
Trump is a populist—how’s his economy doing?
The economic problem is often presented as a conflict about the redistribution of income. That framing ignores the fundamental issue: the distribution of income and wealth in the first place. Market economics, by definition, set prices based on the relative bargaining power of the participants in the market. When *none* of the participants have much bargaining power, the free marketers say that "prices" offered to each side of a transaction are "fair." This viewpoint assumes full information by all parties who are able to rationally choose. The only problem, of course, is 1) markets don't look anything like this model -- there's a reason that the average large corporation's chief executive is now paid 300 x the pay of his lowest paid employee (i.e., that's 10 x more than in 1980): hint, it doesn't have anything to do with the ideal of a well-functioning market, and 2) human decision-making doesn't look much like the theoretical economic man of the classical economists texts (see Kahneman and Twersky for details).
The economic issue is about the distribution of increased productivity in the first place, and the distortions in both economics and political life that inevitably occur when the physics of money is unrestrained by human intervention.
Money, like matter, attracts more of itself to itself, leading to black holes that suck everything into them. And since our laws of financial physics are firmly tied to the political power of money, even more so.
Are we great again?
GORMLESS AS WELL AS NORMLESS
Trump's conduct is described by Davd Brooks
as being normless,
but to this expat British poet looks
completely gormless.
The origin of “gormless”is Old Norse
for lack of heed,
not paid by him, as a quid pro quo, of course,
when there's a need,
like one that will make Democrats impeach
the dirty Don,
although Republicans won't dare to take peach,
their snow-white swan..
Political black swans are common, but
white swans are not,
for black ones stick around when men tut-tut
the books they blot.
wishful thinking?
Kansas can take care of Pompeo.
This has happened before. Think circa 1910-1950. Think Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Franco, the Emperor of Japan. That global disruption was in response to the globalization induced by the industrial revolution. I very much hope that we are not in for a similar ride.
Oversimplification!!!
Populism is a ten-cent word for Fascism.
It’s just too facile to blame all today’s global darkness on economics.
Sure, people gotta eat and millions can’t, but the truly striking and dispiriting thing about right now isn’t the poverty, or even the starvation. It’s the poor (putting it charitably) quality of political leadership spilling out all over the place.
It’s not that foxes are guarding the hen house. It’s that rabid rats.
I refer to the almost total lack of anything resembling a moral compass, or long-term thinking, among many of the world’s political leaders.
Let’s see, . . . we’ve got Khamenei, Rouhani, et all in Iran, Assad in Syria, Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Johnson-Cummings (and Corbyn) in England, Abe in Japan, Netanyahu in Israel, and of course the Trump-Barr-Pompeo-McConnell-Graham-Nunez cabal here in the “good old” USA.
Heaven help us and save us! Arguably, not too long ago, all it took was Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Hirohito to cause global mayhem.
So there’s just no denying that, political leadership-wise, were skating on cracker-thin ice right now.
This conflates so many disparate things under the rubric 'populism' as to be almost incoherent. And it reverts to the by-now threadbare and thoroughly debunked idea that 'growth', undifferentiated and coarsely measured, is an unquestionable good. Someday, presumably not in David Brooks' or Steve Rattner's lifetimes, people who hold the reins of authority will awake to the reality that any ideology which promotes consumption and the god of 'always more' will doom human civilization by destroying the one planet upon which it depends. The only outstanding question is whether that realization dawns before or after we've ruined everything worth saving.
3
Can David Brooks DEFINE populism? How does "populism on the Left" fit into that definition? Maduro and Chavez in Latin America ran COMMUNIST not populist states. They were clearly for the working class- is populism for the working class?
It is true that capitalism unrestrained caused the ills of those that supported Trump- and that we are now prey to tragic levels of inequality and that this vague populism tries to combat this-but not by economic means- mostly by cultural solutions- and this has failed. Is it the middle class that is protesting populism or the working class? Brooks is confusing on this point.
1
"Trump’s trade war has lowered American economic dynamism."
Nope.
As the Democrats took control of the House, the stock market tanked $5.5 trillion (Sept 9, 2018 to December 24, 2018), consumer confidence plummeted by 10 points and business investment, which had been increasing at $55 billion per quarter setting repeated records, plunged $40 billion, a $95 billion swing.
Now, Trump has it back under control. The stock market is at an all-time record, up $9.5 trillion under his stewardship. Consumer confidence is back up and, shortly, so will business investment.
2
@John Huppenthal Trump is never under control of himself, nor is the stock market under his control. It's an old canard that the President has much of any influence on the stock market; more sophisticated and complicated forces are at work. And if what you assert were true, you'd then have to credit Obama with rescuing the entire economy and criticize GW Bush for almost wrecking it. I doubt you'd be doing that.
In addition, your comment doesn't really address the statement you quote, since "economic dynamism" isn't measured only by the stock market, which is, in the end, a gambler's game in which the short-term gain in dividends and profit-taking are gods. Historically the stock market often rises when companies lay off workers. Some dynamism.
2
I'm a retired history professor. Every time I hear a journalist or pundit use the word "populist" to describe Trump, Viktor Orban, or other contemporary political leaders, I cringe.
Regardless of how many people in the media and politics use the term in this way, it's still an error. The late 19th-century Populist party was a coalition of workers and farmers who figured out that they were getting hosed by the very wealthy, the monopolies in major industries--oil, steel, sugar, beef, etc--and the Eastern urban banks that held their mortgages and other loans. They ran their own presidential candidates and carried a few Southern and Midwestern states in 1892, and in 1896 fused with the Democratic Party. Candidates of the Party ran in 1900, 1904, and 1908, but won no states. After World War II and the advent of the Cold War and a second "Red Scare" (the first was in 1919), American historians characterized the Populists as cranky xenophobic paranoids, rather than rational critics of an economic system. The post-war era also saw the emergence of an anti-"elites" bias that the GOP used to their advantage, beginning with the election of 1980.
Today's "populists" are nothing like those of a century ago. They are clever autocrats and shameless demagogues who exploit the people with whom they claim to empathize. Once in power they abandon those who trusted them. Their message is often steeped in bigotry and intolerance, and a phony hyper-nationalism that masks their real aims.
5
@Harvey Green
Whatever happened to the term " reactionary "?
1
these protesters just think they want liberal democratic freedoms. what the really want is to be able to vote to impose their majoritarian view on the minority. democracy is nothing more than the tyranny of the majority unless individual rights are protected as they mostly are in the US. dont expect any revolutionary changes in any of these countries.
Just more Brooksian nonsense, with a little self awareness Brooks could escape his own short sightedness. And perhaps acknowledge the actual rather than regurgitating high school text books perspectives on reality.
What's it going to take for Brooks and his elites to acknowledge that no, it is not okay for the 1% to own 90% of the worlds wealth?
What does it mean to be a populist?
Populists typically present "the elite" as comprising the political, economic, cultural, and media establishment, depicted as a homogeneous entity and accused of placing their own interests, and often the interests of other groups—such as large corporations, foreign countries, and billionaires above the working class.
Exactly right,
1
Things are a mess, Mr. Brooks. I would not describe Trump as a populist. He is a lazy liar who had absolutely no plans for the future except building his boondoggle wall. People are frightened for their future. The Bush recession in 2008 was a resounding blow for everyone including the rich. The rich were bailed out as were the banks. Millions lost their jobs and thousands lost their homes. Wages are not rising much. I am making $15,000 less per year than I was in 2001. Yet college costs are appr 4 times more than my college degree. Mortgage rates are down, but housing prices are higher. Unions don't have the power they used to. I think the Green new deal makes sense to try. Creating jobs while fighting pollution sounds like a smart balance to me.
6
People aren't cut out to govern themselves. Democracy will fall. Technology such as facial recognition, the proliferation of cameras, etc. will only expedite this. Instead of expecting an outdated system to work, it'd be much wiser to plan and adapt to the inevitable future.
2
They are so many floating bits of half digested truth, misstatements of fact and outright lies in this piece, its hard to know where to start. But for the heck of it, lets start in Bolivia. As Lula—recently released from prison after a trumped up charge against him by US backed Sergio Moro (the Obama administration supported the impeachment of Dilma which started the whole ball of wax unraveling in Brazil)— put it, "this is a coup. Morales should not have run for a fourth term but what has happened to Evo is a US backed coup."
Further there is no evidence of vote fraud except from the OAS which at this point is under the sway of Senator Marco Rubio's office.
What is happening in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Iran is breathtaking. But each country has a slightly different, if related, scenario. If anyone is really interested, check the International Crisis Group website. As opposed to Brooks they actually know what they're talking about.
Where is the evidence that the policies of the left curb growth? The problem is Venezuela is two fold, a temporary collapse in the price of oil, which was exacerbated by US sanctions on the country, followed by several Maduro economic and political misteps. Maduro is no model but we are engaged in a policy of total economic war on the people of the country, not just Maduro.
Brooks, these rebellions happening all over the world, ARE populism. Will we get revolution, reaction or, probably, both? As Joe Strummer said, the future is unwritten.
1
The problem is with the word “feel”. They “feel” left behind, “feel” disrespected, “feel” loss of culture, and so on. All things they expect others should give to them instead of them going out to get themselves. And when “feel” and reality meet, a train wreak. When this results they “feel” rage, no discussion possible. And so it goes.
2
Thank you, David. I believe the social bargain is this: guaranteed lifetime base income for those willing to volunteer 2-3 years of national service. We need collective and personal security. We need to feel that this income is not a “handout” but deserved for this service to our common good. We need to believe there is a common good. I know these ideas will be opposed by some liberal/leftists and some conservative/rightist, but I believe more than half of us will agree to them.
"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project. The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies.
Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
His name is Bernie Sanders.
1
When people talk about the educated urban elites they really ought to call them credentialed instead. Mr. Brooks, how many people do you know who understand what is meant by the first derivative of the function tan(theta) or who are genuinely bilingual?
People all around the world understand that there is a strange sort of privilege at work now; by belonging to certain power networks which defend themselves by every means you can claim an unfair share of the benefits of our political and economic institutions. The kind of privilege varies with location but fundamentally those who control institutions use that control for their own and their families' profit and keep everyone else out. The means of exclusion include admission to high prestige educational institutions and subsequently to jobs whose chief function is to control others' jobs. These jobs are not carried out in way that benefits those who are being controlled, but the controllers themselves do very well.
If there's a solution to our problems it has many parts, but one of them is for the "educated elites" to understand what they really are and to show a reasonable amount of human feeling toward those who don't have fashionable diplomas.
2
Many references of "the core problem" here, but don't see one to the main problem with this article: definitions.
Populist movements are fueled by what people think is good for them, and since there are a multitude of "goods" there are a multitude of populisms.
Mr. Brooks uses the term for everything, so that the word becomes meaningless.
Trump did promise to pursue economic populism, contrary to Republican desires and history, certainly since Reagan. On that front we knew he was just kidding, and his actions have proved it, beginning early with the great tax scam, his only legislative accomplishment.
Racist populism? A lot of people want that, and there he's delivered. Build that wall and separate 60,000 children from their parents. That's apparently popular with many.
The House has passed hundreds of populist (as in good for most people) pieces of legislation, which have died upon arrival in the Republican Senate. Trump and the Republican Party have no interest in any of them, popular as most of these measures are.
And in pursuing foreign policy, he spells "populism," PUTIN.
Trump's populism works to the degree he can keep racism and resentments stoked to a high level, as at his rallies.
But popular in the nation as a whole?
We'll see.
I've never really understood what populists have in common other than that they are all grifters.
David, I believe that this piece makes for fine reading in glossed over generalities but it misses the specifics. For example, in England, the middle class went for Brexit because they are against EU foreigners came to UK to take their jobs and they are against EU telling UK what to do and where to go.
Here in the US, it is the middle class factory workers, in the rust belt and elsewhere, losing their jobs to cheaper foreign imports and watching illegal immigrants, streaming into the US unchecked, consuming social services without paying and taking jobs wherever they find them.
I am sure that each of the other countries, cited in this piece, must have its own unique set of reasons causing the middle class to rise up voicing their dissatisfaction.
With so much turmoil and uncertainties around the world, David did ask the right question "Where do we go from here ?". Actually in many of the countries cited, let's pick the UK and USA where both are essentially in political gridlock.
It means going nowhere anytime soon until the gridlock is broken. That is the curse of elected democracy with 2 political parties in a virtual gridlock. Do we need a 3rd party of moderates to break this gridlock ?
1
@CAboom
Living in a rust belt state (Ohio) and talking and listening firsthand to factory workers, I conclude one needs more than anti - immigrant sentiment or declining wages to explain the defection of factory workers from the Democratic party.
Obama and the democrats saved hundreds of thousands of jobs here in 2009. Immigration is not an issue in Ohio.
Even after the loss of the Lordstown plant ( 1600 jobs lost around Youngstown) one still hears of auto worker support for Trump.
"Write a new social contract. . . ."
Stop calling legitimately angry people "populists" and roll up your sleeves and get to work relieving their anger! There's nothing wrong with the existing social contract, it's just that one end hasn't been living up to its end of the bargain!
THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE - ELITES MUST SHARE MORE.
Such sharing would increase growth, not slow it, because healthier, happier people would have more enthusiasm for life and more money to spend.
In the U.S. elites could start by paying higher wages and by enacting something like Medicare for All (i.e. federally insured health care) to stop the fleecing of Americans via health care expenditures. And a federal jobs program, similar to the CCC, to improve infrastructure wouldn't hurt, especially in rural America.
While the wealthy are considering ways of preventing a complete meltdown of society due to their erstwhile stinginess, they might also think about caring a bit for our planet. That same CCC program could be used to help reverse vast environmental damage so everyone - including the elites - will continue to have a nice place to live for a while yet...
Despots like Trump use the people's legitimate anger to obtain power, but they have no interest in alleviating that anger. Indeed, despots stoke anger so they can stay in power.
Until reasonable elites finally ACT to relieve the people's anger, society will continue to degrade - perhaps until it becomes quite dangerous to be elite...
3
People, not "masses", in Iran, Hong Kong, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia Lebanon and Bolivia protest to bring political and/or economic change.
These countries have in common either corruption, autocratic, generally right-wing leaders who have mismanaged their economies, or who have trampled human rights. Or both.
But in this essay, Brooks continues to perpetuate the us vs. them, urban vs. rural, educated "coastal elites" vs. "heartland working classes" and thereby contributes to the division that traumatizes and paralyzes this country.
The various neatly labelled groups Brooks pokes all of us into have more in common than not. We are all equally affected by stupid tariff wars, stupid, dysfunctional government, destructive foreign policy, destruction of environmental protections, crumbling infrastructure, and abuse of the poor, immigrants and minorities.
We are all victims of the catatonic GOP and its despicable figurehead. Most of us are embarrassed and appalled by him.
We are impotent when our vote doesn't count, our water unsafe, our wages stagnant, and housing, education, health are all unaffordable.
Soon, even we may take to the streets.
2
Great article. I oten tell people that the US is undergoing "Brazilification"- or perhaps more exactly, "Argentinifcation".
100 years ago Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world with high income per capita as well. Then, thanks to Person and Personism, Argentina took a populist turn to poverty. 100 years later Argentina is mired in debt and defaulting on bonds. Unless we get this populist urge under control, that is the American future.
3
You may want to check your history, dude (and do some spell check as well) as it was not Peron nor Peronism what made the Argentine economy collapse.
As for this entire piece, presenting what is going on in Bolivia, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Iran, US, and so forth, as part of a larger process that challenges populism is just an indication of ignorance and a negligent intellectual exercise.
Every single example cited for why populist policies don't work is a country that the US has actively spent decades trying to tear down. Venezuela's problems come from extreme sanctions more than any policy they've pursued. If the US supports sanctions and coups then it's hard to pin failure on anything but that.
America is in end stage capitalism. Think about how it looks in the last 10 minutes of a game of Monopoly - well that's end stage capitalism, that's America today. There are just a few players who have all the money and property and the rest are sat on the sidelines, with no chance of winning and nothing left to lose. They don't have a shake at the dice.
Capitalism is Darwinian. It is survival of the fittest or luckiest. The more free market , the more Darwinian. The evolutionary curve of capitalism rises towards a winner take all position. But eventually it will snap.
The snap will go in one of 2 directions. There will be a left wing revolution, or a fascist takeover. The GOP is clearly arcing towards the fascist totalitarian. There is no left wing alternative in America. The left wing in America is politically very centrist. There is no communist party, or socialist party worth talking about in America. And please don't say Bernie Saunders or Elizabeth Warren - but rather tell me where the leftist organisation is within the House or the Senate? There is, however a strong, well organized and well funded cult called the Christian Right that has all the hallmarks of a fascism. Their goal is to tear down the wall between church and state and they have chosen the GOP as the vehicle. Their goal is to establish a right wing "Christian" judiciary.
3
Uh, what about the good old U.S.A.? Or have you somehow not noticed the massive waves of populism here at home...? Why don't we take care of ourselves first.
3
mr. brooks is ripe with trenchant insights such as, "the world is unsteady and ready to blow" -- cinematic, kinetic, visceral, that.
populism brought corruption? hmm ... those are big words, david, and if you have a big enough brush, you can cover a wall of facts with them.
the actual process, as i interpret it, is that the world is complex and will become more so. complexity is used to resolve the problems of complexity, the benefits of increased complexity deflate into harms, and systems fail not in catastrophic collapse, like a car wreck, but in the decline of functional integration ... the hospice codger with creeping organ failure.
it's our future, and we're living it now.
yes, there will be little disruptions here and there -- and by little, i mean a few thousand or so human might die in the tussle. mere noise in the "big data".
meanwhile, amid all the tussle, corruption, disruptions and authoritarianism (another bloated, brushy word), there's climate change.
climate change: the one thing in all the trends that is data driven, scientifically explained, economically linked -- and, for big brushy thinking, truly catastrophic. as in, tens of millions displaced, millions dead, economies wrecked, social order upended, and so forth.
costs that will only manifest decades and decades from now ... yes, probably true.
but a responsibility that rests on those living tomorrow, not with those of us living today, here and now?
false.
1
Seems to me that what Elizabeth Warren is offering fills the bill for both sides. Am I wrong?
2
Didn't we already know, since before "All The King's Men" was published, that populism from the right or the left is a fraud?
"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project. "
The United States needs a tremendous amount of infrastructure work done over the next twenty years, from burying power lines in California to building solar panels for smart electric grids. This is the time for the federal government to repeat what FDR did: spend money, employ people, and make the nation a better place for all of us, whether we're urban or rural dwellers.
5
I wish it were as simple as 'whoever can write that social bargain wins the future.' If the impeachment inquiry showed one thing, it was that conspiracy theories that fulfill an emotional need don't give way to facts, no matter how clearly laid out. Just ask the Fox news junkies what they think of the witnesses. They'll spout conspiracies, and angrily ask why Hunter and Joe Biden weren't there to grill about the fired Ukrainian prosecutor. The fact that the entire western world wanted that corrupt prosecutor dismissed won't get past their collective emotional need for the debunked conspiracy theory to be true.
I honestly began to lose faith in the human race when I listened to the Republican inquisitors, and when politicians say 'I have faith in the American people.' I have to wonder what they're smoking. Bring back the fairness doctrine, and make Face book play by the same rules other media outlets play by, maybe we'll have chance.
4
Mr. Brooks has defined the problem quite nicely. To his last sentence I would add that it has to be someone that both sides will listen to.
People need to know their voices are heard by the politicians who make the laws that control their lives.
In the US, it is an economic problem but also a fact that our elected leaders are doing nothing. Even those that came into power riding on the Sara Palin-Tea Party populist bandwagon 10 yrs ago (remember that?) who are now the "Always Trumpers No Matter What" Republicans, are not doing anything to help regular working people. How many bills have passed the House and are now sitting in the Senate - sitting in some dark corner of Mitch McConnell's office?
It's frustrating. It feels like no one in power cares. But what is equally frustrating is that most US citizens don't even vote. Where is the spirit? The anger? I don't see it here, not like in Hong Kong. Any populist wave here may be so subtle that I'd say don't blink or you'll miss it.
Populist policies have never provided consistent economic growth, and they have always promoted corruption and bad government.
But it's also unrealistic to believe that any other approach is going to come up with 'solutions' to things like rising inequality. Capitalism has winners and losers, and technology and other factors mean that inequality is increasing now. Will that always be the case? Who knows? But capitalism provides a very powerful foundation for wealth creation and we've done very well by it, on balance.
Many in the Democratic party are vastly over-estimating the power of government action to change our society. Not to mention the fact that 40% of the electorate doesn't want to see any government action at all.
1
The op-ed is not particularly helpful in understanding what is going on. The narrative is familiar, biased, and largely wrong. The globalized democratic capitalism pitted educated urbanites against uneducated rural masses (the terminology is dated), which led to the global rise of populism, etc. etc. etc. The Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the Maidan movement in Ukraine, and many similar developments were not about uneducated protesting against global capitalism, even if global capitalism was a contributing factor. For this reason, the author does not really see any way out of this conundrum. Social contracts are an intellectual fiction that is good for library shelves. What we need is a new social practice—one that would be universally inclusive and empowering. The author has no idea of what it may be like. He is still overly obsessed with the Enlightenment and its solutions that are totally inapplicable to the modern world. This problem is typical for present day elites. That is why they have no solutions and that is why we face turmoil in this country and around the world.
1
Mr. Brooks had to leave out a few important factors that Populists in particular are ignoring through a haze of magical wishful thinking. Climate change is going to make the necessary task of finding food and clean water in much of the third world much worse, very soon; Gaza runs out of clean water in 2020. 75 million people are on the move on this planet, north to south; it is abundantly clear in both Europe and the US that no amount of sympathy is going to triumph over the wish of most people in those countries to maintain their life style, angry as its inequities makes them, by not allowing an influx of cheap labor they don't need. Europe and the US don't have jobs for migrants, because they will not have enough viable jobs for their own children and grandchildren, a crisis which is probably, barring legislation, going to hit thanks to Artificial Intelligence within a decade (listen to the likable Mr. Andrew Yang). And while, as in the 1930's, targeting the well off is highly profitable for the new political elites, this time the Jews will defend themselves, and the billionaires on CNBC seem to be saying they understand the need to fight inequality, and they're not going to stand for taxes on themselves that add up to more than 100% proposed by Populists who don't seem to be able to add and subtract. Perhaps those "ethnically diverse pluralistic societies" can be set up in UN blue tented refugee camps somewhere in the desert?
1
Mr Brooks:
"Although frequently used by historians, social scientists, and political commentators, the term [populism] is exceptionally vague and refers in different contexts to a bewildering variety of phenomena. Margaret Canovan on how the term populism was used."
Your article could be interpreted as saying that no political system or economic strategy can achieve a positive outcome for "The Masses". Since in the United States the masses can now be seen to be a term representing 90% of the population. The urban elite (again a mashing together of two inexact terms) represent about 9% and the mega-rich representing about 1%. If you plot household wealth in the US you will see that it fits nicely with an ordinary geometric function with the bottom quintile having negative wealth and the top .001% having stratospheric positive wealth.
How did this happen? Tax policy, currency manipulation, failure of financial regulation and strangulation of wages all helped. When did it start? The late 1970's and early 1980's. Things were much better in the decades preceding this time, they can be better again.
2
>"We all know now what many of us didn’t appreciate then: Globalized democratic capitalism was going to spark a backlash. It led to growing economic and cultural clashes between the educated urbanites, who thrived, and the rural masses, who were left behind. "<
And that's where this analysis goes off the rails. Try it this way: What sparked a backlash was the usurpation of power and wealth by corporations and the rich.
Relatedly, trade deals aren't about one country or another "winning", as the orange one would have us believe. They are about corporations and the one percent overpowering workers.
3
"The populist/authoritarian regimes are losing legitimacy."
David, how is populism, which portends to represent the interests of ordinary people, be represented by authoritarian regimes, which by definition and actions do not practice equality for all?
Authoritarianism is losing legitimacy because it fails to recognize the basic human element of cooperative egalitarianism.
2
"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project. The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies. Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
Sounds like we need a new FDR.
1
Bingo! I am usually loathe to agree with David on most issues but he really hits the nail on the head with this one.
Try the US constitution and Declaration of Independence as a place to start.
1
There are no rural masses in the United States. Farmers in the sparsely populated mid-West are succumbing to big domestic agribusiness, not globalization. Factories first closed in the Rust Belt (including big cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, and others) because domestic auto makers relocated to the anti-union Sun Belt, before NAFTA and globalization.
What masquerades as populism in the US is racist nationalism. They say America First, but what they mean by Americans is people of white, European background. America as a national identity was never a single ethnic group, not originally and not now, except when you forget about African slaves and Indigenous Peoples and Asian railroad laborers and Mexican settlers in annexed territories.
People around the world are fighting for freedom. Republican "populists" in the US are fighting for voter suppression, gerrymandering, putting immigrants in cages, and eliminating taxes for the wealthy.
Brooks, don' equate populists and progressives!
5
Another Brooks deepity that talks about a real problem superficially and ignores a lot of what's behind it, especially the kleptocracy that is so dear to his own heart and climate change, because the kleptocracy prefers to stick its collective heads in the sand to preserve their short-term wealth.
1
Please consider the urban poor and “working class” in your trope! The division and inequity motive dominates urban distrust of identity politics as well as rural. Also, (poorly named) “populist” movement in the US partly provoked as a backlash to what is seen and required as politically correct language. Take away peoples permission to express themselves, and don't be surprise that it takes a long time - too long, I grant, for that value to become intrinsic.
Cant help but feel that Mr Brookes article reflects his own elitist perspective of the world. Populism is present because the ordinary people have no other voice or choice. Whether its judged right, wrong, ignorant or ill-informed by the elites is immaterial .. its their voice, demanding to be heard .
The "world on fire" is exactly what our founders feared the most. They had seen a revolution up close and wanted nothing to do with the unleashed mob. And so, they wrote a document of genius--with the mob surrounded by speed-bumps, divided power, and a heavy foot on the brake. Old dead white men--how 'bout that!
2
It's called the endgame of capitalism. It was nice (for some) while it lasted, but....pencils down, times up.
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Mr. Brook says that "The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy." The main way to do that is to have jobs and that is exactly what Trump said he would do and exactly what Trump did. Millions of new jobs have been created. The unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 years. For African Americans and their youth, Hispanics,and women, the lowest ever. Wages have expanded. Our economy has thrived. The handicap who were losing jobs before Trump, are now up 7-11%. That is why the Democrats are so afraid, that they are doing everything in their power to keep Trump off the ballot. They can't tolerate what Brett Stephens of the NYT wrote. "The best way to end this administration — and the only realistic way — is for him to be convincingly turned out by a vote of the American people next year." When Hilary was campaigning, she raised her arms high and declared, "Now its my tum." At the same time, Trump looked at the crowds and said, "Now it is your turn." He is not the Washington Insider so touted in another Opinion. That is really the anti Trumpers want, hand the presidency and government to the Washington insiders,
1
@Ron
Trump's actions consistently demonstrate that he believes he's above the law. He admires dictators, especially Putin and would like to 'rule' rather than govern.
We can have a President who stays within the bounds of Constitutional authority AND a prosperous, growing economy.
All Trump and the Republicans needed to do was borrow $1 trillion a year, degrade the environment, and strip away consumer protections. Shazam! Economic growth. Enjoy it while it lasts...
1
Seems like most of these protests come about when society tries to pin its costs on the lowest earners. Transit fares, WhatsApp taxes, hookah bar taxes... rich people aren’t affected by these taxes- middle and lower earners are.
So, since there seems to be no way through the normal governance process to get the rich to actually pull their weight, people revolt.
I wonder when that will happen in the US?
Like an overdue earthquake, the longer you wait, the greater the strain, the more violent the outcome.
Or we could just raise some taxes on the wealthy and move on.
3
in order to give a fairer playing field for our population the government of the people needs to bring back a fairer tax code. the republican 2017 tax code was horribly unjust and is going to hurt social programs such as social security, medicaid and medicare by dramatically reducing to the tax income that supports those programs. the illogic of the republicans at first, with reagan, is the fallacious concept of trickle down economics. it is a complete farce. it did not happen in the 1980s and it is not happening now. but regardless of fact, the republicans are using it again with the recent tax code and again it proves false. with the advent of increased usage of ai in factories, in banks and in stores, it is estimated that in 15 to 20 years up to about 50% of the current work force will disappear. with the amount of work that is even available to people, more of some kind of social programs that allows people to survive needs to be thought of and produced. and those few that are in the power of working and creating jobs for a much more limited work place must pay a higher tax rate then they have recently been given. it will not prevent new ideas, but it will not be a place for the rich to become so ridiculously rich at the expense of others. my heart will not bleed if bill gates's income would drop from 100 billion dollars to somewhere in the 20 to 30 billion dollars. his argument is grossly absurd.
3
Unmentioned is that the solutions to the Financial Crisis helped the privileged and left the unprivileged behind. That's the main cause of this problem.
2
After reading this, I think I'm ready for Happy Hour
"We all know now what many of us didn’t appreciate then: Globalized democratic capitalism was going to spark a backlash."
Many of us did appreciate this then, but the point was and remains precisely that "democratic capitalism" is a complete fantasy, yet one that constantly gets trotted out as everyday common sense, a foundational floating premise in a supremely successful project of ideological hegemony. "Democratic capitalism." Meaning a kinder and gentler capitalism that provides equitable access to resources and opportunities? LOL. How can a political-economic system that *requires* unequal access to resources and opportunities achieve this fantasy of equity? Capitalism has never been "democratic" and never could be. People are ultimately "fighting for freedom" from this reality.
3
I find myself agreeing with Mr. Brooks on this one!
Is it a revolt against populism or the leaders within this movement? Just as capitalism has been hijacked by pirates, populism has been hijacked by scoundrels.
1
Some suggest the left in the USA are embracing Tyranny.
David, I need to edit one of your closing paragraphs:
“...The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to ”survive” in the modern economy and a sense they are ”vital” contributors to ”our” national project. The ”self serving, delusional elites” want their democratic freedoms protected and to ”visit” ethnically diverse pluralistic societies ”and instagram their shallow elite life style”.
Your welcome
1
There is an stupendous song by The Pet Shop Boys from last year “Give Stupidity a Chance”
It is Mr. Brooks column made song.
Globalism started this by shipping unskilled factory jobs overseas, but what really made this possible was the internet, where jobs in the skilled US jobs could also be done by skilled people in other countries such as India. Corporations used to support their employees and their communities. They enhanced their compensation packages with good benefits. Now we have a gig economy and contractors work without benefits and can't even get healthcare without going broke. The erosion of the middle class also eroded a part of the tax base, because as we've seen, corporations and the rich, find their way around taxes. We are reminded every day of how the haves are running the game, because the guy in the WH lies, confabulates and breaks the law without any penalty. The Republicans had better watch their backs and think about whether they want a country or a Banana Republic. They might want to get out of the capital and go visit a few Banana Republics. If they allow Trump to continue his presidency, they are not doing their duty. He will destroy the country and so far, I have not seen a democrat who will challenge him, because they must pass some sort of left wing purity test for the woke. While Mike Pence was an insurance policy against impeachment, even he would be better than the idiot in office now.
David Brooks has a perfect rear view mirror. He is lucid and brilliant. He sees what's what clearly, but he does not see what's coming...
I'd like to know in what particular universe could the countries of Iran, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia be seen - as Mr. Brooks does - as having ever joined hands with his bogeyman called "liberal globalization"? The masses rising up in these countries against their sclerotic clique of authoritarian, religious and corrupt thugs who rule, are protesting against an elite clique of liberal globalizers about as much as Donald Trump was protesting against corruption in the Ukraine.
1
By and large, the protestors have always been fighting for freedom. Not counting the Make America Gross Again gang.
1
The populist backlash observed by David is fueled by divisive propaganda and insane mob forces in the human mind about “the other”. This rancid mob incitement is sponsored and fertilized by wealthy individuals hungry for power, not for the correction of inequality and corruption. It is an old story, most spectacularly exampled by Germany and the events leading to WW II.
2
The irony for me is that scholars tend to associate liberal democratic capitalism (neo-liberalism) with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan. Conservatives! In other words the same rural masses that complain of being left out are the same rural masses that voted for conservative free market fundamentalist politicians. It's no secret that thousands of blue collar working class voters abandoned the Democrats and voted for Reagan. People who asked why they had voted against their own economic interests were mocked. They abandoned unions and the Democratic Party in droves to embrace Republican free market conservatism but now they are angry and bitter? They got exactly what they voted for. There was no deception.
3
"Write a new social contract that gives both the educated urban elites and the heartland working classes a piece of what they want most."
Who writes it? The Preamble written by Gouveneur Morris has only 4 points and one is "to promote the general welfare.” The word welfare has been rapidly attacked relentlessly by Republicans while they promoted and insured the welfare of the wealthy class.
Contrast two educated elites. Donald Trump who uses every vehicle, even government, and opportunity, to increase his wealth.
And FDR who gave America the foundation of economic equality to fulfill the Preamble’s goal, “to promote the general welfare.” Social Security is one of his item in his toolbox to promote the general welfare. Educated Republican elites have never ceased seeking to undermine the general welfare. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” This is altogether loathsome to the educated Republican elite and the likes of a Mr. Melania trump,
who only manipulates populism to keep many of his base economically where they are.
There are many educated elites among his followers who conspire to prevent economic equality.
An excellent column! But about your assertion that "The overall message is that the flaws of liberal globalization are real, but the populist alternative is not working." I don't see rioters raging against liberal globalization. I see rioters whose haircuts and clothes are much like those in NYC, LA or SF and who have cell phones. Who knows? They might watch The Big Bang Theory or Friends. I think they want their countries to become prosperous liberal democracies.
42
Mr. Brooks appears to think if only we grow the pie, people will return to happiness and our problems will be solved. What he fails to recognize is that more business-as-usual growth leads us down a different, no less dangerous path - of more production, more consumption, more waste, more Greenhouse Gas emissions.
I see no signs that smart growth is imminent. Meanwhile the world literally burns. Either way - more populism or more business-as-usual growth - civilization approaches the precipice.
1
yes, i was aware that the world is full of protest. I wonder why Americans are not out in the streets.
2
The GOP resisted FDR every step of the way in the creation of the New Deal. Since they have tried to undo it. Now they are closer to their goal than ever, and look what it took to get them there—the most corrupt, ignorant, and subversive individual ever elected President, and his willing enablers in Congress, Republicans who should know better and who have nothing like the courage and the resolve of the Founders of this republic and the Framers of the Constitution. The American people have elected great, good, bad, and ordinary Presidents in their history, as James Madison noted they would in Federalist #10. Everyone in this country—and especially in Congress—would do the country a great service by reflecting on how far down we have come from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt. Republicans have shown that they will pay any price, accept any sort of corruption, and abandon any of ideas and ideals that underpin the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to attain their goals. On this, the 56th anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination, nothing could be further from JFK’s lofty aspirations expressed in his Inaugural Address.
Aston-Martin just released a $200,000 SUV for moneyed idiots who are desperate to feel important.
Over 40% of Americans are $400 away from a financial meltdown. Many more could not handle a trip to the emergency room.
Something has to give and it looks like it will. 2020 will be an interesting year in the Chinese sense.
1
@Plennie Wingo
And 140,000 school children are homeless in NYC - open up the hotels for god’s sake.
Ten times bigger than the impeachment of our most corrupt President and that circus which is the House GOP "leadership?
Oh how you wish...
The world was on fire too in the 1930s. God forbid. It takes just one megalomaniacal or insane person leading a superpower to plunge the world into war. In WW I, we had one: Kaiser Wilhelm II. In WWII we had two: Hitler and Stalin. Today we have three. Those numerical coincidences sound ominous.
1
Just one note David. "The populist alternative" isn't even allowed to work, at least here in the US, because Trump is constantly being sabotaged and blocked (e.g. impeachment, "Anonymous," the media, cultural Marxism, etc.). An elected president is being frantically impeded. So it's also a case of being censored rather than not working.
21
@Eugene Although he has passed a tax cut for the rich that was boiler plate GOP, trickle down policy....Trump is a populist.....he ran on populist themes. Also....he was installed by officials in the EC. 3 million more people voted for his opponent. He is the legally the President, but he wasn't elected by 'the people.' And he is being held to account by a coequal branch of government, via a process outlined in the Constitution.
189
@Eugene Trump sabotaged himself. There would not be the present impeachment situation if he hadn't tried to hold up Ukraine aid for his own personal gain. Which is a very populist thing to do. Look at famous populists in the past. They all of them cared about themselves and didn't really care about the people they were leading.
And where did those countries end up when the populist alternative was successful?
75
@Patrick It's even more than 3 million. That's the additional number of votes for Hillary over Trump, but it's easy to forget that there were other candidates -- Jill Stein and two others whose names I always forget -- who siphoned off another 3 million or so. So Trump was beaten by about 6 million in the popular vote, making the EC even more egregious.
51
So elites are educated and workers aren’t? The defining quality of today’s only important elites is not that they are educated but that they care for nothing but power and boundless wealth. In fact, they act as if they are uneducated in history or economics or literature. Hubris? What is that?
There is a way to forge unity between the real elites. It is called social democracy. We know it works.
Maybe some day the real elites in the US will be educated and not react to the solution as if it was too radically extreme.
51
@Allan I don't know, I think most of the elites care more about their careers and social status. But I agree, their defining characteristics are their arrogance and self-indulgence, not their education.
The solution is partially to stop letting the elites lead. Maybe someone of true expertise and experience can lead, but not "elites".
5
@Allan
They would first have to get a soul and a moral compass.
1
I get protests are happening around the world but what i don’t get is why Mr. Brooks deflects attention from the very important week we just had in the United States. Why is it so hard for him and other conservatives to provide an opinion piece regarding the seriousness of the hearings. I want to hear a conservative voice that has not compromised him/her self with faux news.
Go back to the 'Occupy' movement. It was a disorganized organic populist movement that arose in reaction to the trillions used to bail out the financial system. Wall Street and Banks benefitted from their failures and illegal acts while Main Street was left to founder. People were mad - rightfully so. Yet Obama did nothing.
The financial crisis made it crystal clear where government's priorities were. Government could have rewritten every mortgage at risk with new terms that allowed people to stay in their homes AND spent billions on rebuilding infrastructure, putting people to work, a modern day New Deal. But no. So, the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. People are losing hope that change is possible through elections.
103
@cynicalskeptic So they elect a guy, maybe the the guy who is the archetype of everything they are railing against? How sick is that? People react more strongly to emotional triggers and the new media- including social media but also even more importantly FOX News and right wing talk radio- are particularly adept at using them to play people like a fiddle. Yes- there must be freedom of the press- but perhaps there are outlets that are only pretending to be part of the "Press" and manipulating people for their own purposes instead of informing them of factual information which is what the Press intended and even limited to doing. I suspect it will all end in everyone saying -grrrr- we have to have a big fight to resolve things- but as we all know- that is a situation none are going to walk away from as winners. Everybody loses- but things are moving to the point where that doesn't/won't matter.
4
I think you really missed the truth of what has been going on. Leaders of the populist right - for example Trump - only pandered to populism to gain power but ultimately used that power only to enrich themselves while also doing everything possible to prevent populism on the left from succeeding, for example the unrelenting efforts of the republican party to prevent healthcare reform.
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@zb
Trump was a political outsider who got elected OUTSIDE the normal party system. He did not expect to get the Republican nomination or the Presidency - he ran as a marketing gimmick to raise 'brand awareness'.
He found that blurting out things that many people were thinking, that tapping into a sense of outrage and disappointment with Washington, got him more supporters - people who never would have supported a conventional candidate.
Many voted for Trump HOPING he would literally 'break Washington.' In that sense they are getting their wish. Trump is making a mess of things and more than a few people are quite happy he is. They see Trump taking on the DC establishment not Trump breaking the law.
15
Has there ever been a time, including the run up to the great depression where so many companies were hoarding so much cash? Apple has $225 billion, Google $117 billion, Ford has $37 billion. None of these companies can think of anything better to do with that cash?
3
I am actually in Bogotá, Colombia, now, and there was a national strike today, closing schools, businesses, major roads, the airport, etc. As I write this, helicopters are circling my neighborhood. The people are demanding an end to corruption - let’s hope their leaders listen.
66
@MHA I hope so, too! You have a beautiful country!
4
"The core problem is economic. Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth. "
Not exactly. The tail is on the other end of the horse.
It is big business and not "popular policies", i.e. political ideas, that drives the economy. Policy, left or right, is just an inconvenience to be circumvented.
Big business defines optimum employee policy in the form of labor arbitrage. Find the needed labor at the best price anywhere on the planet.
The reduction of overall corporate efficiency and "growth", defined as increased profits, as a matter of reducing every possible cost.
People are not regarded a human beings, they are just another cost center to be made "more efficient".
Job preservation is an irrelevance to business.
94
"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project. The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies.
Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
Someone did write that social bargain, he was the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The social bargain was called the "The New Deal".
"The New Deal" was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted in the U.S. between 1933 and 1936. It responded to needs for relief, reform, and recovery for all Americans, both rural and urban.
Almost all Republicans fought The New Deal tooth and nail at a time F.D.R. was fighting to save America from a host of economic and social evils, not the least of which was a massive movement of corrupt right-wing nativists/white supremacists positioned as populists. They rose out of the KKK, saying they'd Make America Great through virulent and violent racism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism.
We once again have a toxic right-wing authoritarian "Make America Great Again" movement, in large part, because Republicans and Conservatives spent the last 70 years dismantling the original New Deal.
If you're serious about what you write here, acknowledge the social and economic destruction the GOP has wrought, and strongly advocate the recreation of The New Deal.
921
@Robert B Best comment I've seen. Thank you for saying it so well.
94
@Robert B
I hope that the great minds of our research institutions can work to understand how working class people can be led to vote for politicians who vow to undermine the social safety net and favor the wealthy over the majority of citizens. There are multiple factors but it may be possible to analyze the issues and offer a cure.
23
@Robert B While I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments you are missing one big item: our economic structure today is completely different than what was in-place during FDR's time. Trying New Deal solutions like the CCC won't work. The problem then was our industrial base had ground to a halt and it need to be restarted. Today manufacturing makes up less than 20% of our economy so that type of approach won't work. Sure things like raising the min. wage will alleviate the problem temporarily but it isn't the long term solution.
Face it...half of our populace have the skills and education needed for success in the 19th/20th century and we are already well into the 21st century.
27
I'm currently reading The Righteous Mind Why Good People Are Divided By Politics & Religion. Jonathan Haidt sides with David Hume stating we then to be (10% rational 90% emotional) when making decisions. Mr Haidt writes, “If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.” The human mind is a story processor not a logic processor. Regardless, click recommend if you're up for some Bertrand Russell quotes.
1
Yes! Good overall analysis, thank you.
The many contradictions that reside within Mr. Brooks are fascinating. I hope he can sort them out with some humility.
1
"Globalized democratic capitalism was going to spark a backlash... The populist backlash came in different forms in different parts of the world... In India it was the Hindu nationalism of Narendra Modi."
Anyone remotely familiar with Modi's foreign policy would know he has increased India's engagement with the world, supports multilateralism and promotes globalisation, contrary to what NYT writers keep insinuating.
I fail to understand how Modi's election had anything to do with globalisation. India has quite a protected economy. Nevertheless, FDI limits have been lowered under Modi to facilitate investment to create jobs as well as for tech transfer. I highly doubt such policies would be promoted by someone opposed to globalisation.
Also, if Modi is opposed to globalisation, then why has he reaffirmed commitment to global multilateral organisations (unlike Trump who undermines them). India has ramped up ties with a whole plethora of countries under its "Act East" policy and is negotiating to join the RCEP, an Asia-Pacific free trade bloc, at a time when the US is shunning free trade.
Modi also spearheaded the 121-member International Solar Alliance and inaugurated solar plants in India when Macron visited. But of course, he must be an anti-globalist demagogue or populist just because NYT says so...
If by "populism" you mean long simmering nationalism and racism, then I agree that what has been leashed on the world by Putin, Orban, Modi, Khan, our SCP and others is a resurgence of the state of the world pre-WWI.
All we need is a Sarajevo, and off we go.
Yeah, and the end of the industrial age and the shift to digital has had nothing to do with any of this, right, David? Kind of missing the point (or the largest actual cause).
1
You missed your calling Dave. IDK how you keep doing it. Inventing these stories to explain away you and yours responsibility to others and culpability for creating problems for others that can easily be avoided. The new sexy word to confuse and confound is "populism" which you are, as you well know, not using correctly.
Populism's true meaning is a political appeal to the masses that is based on working for those masses. It is not as you and yours have been using it, a propaganda tool to hoodwink those masses into thinking you are on their side then betraying them while blaming that betrayal those who actually are on their side.
We should call this "The New Colonialism". Because it is using old colonial tactics to impose old colonial norms as if it were something new. Capital C conservatism was never the right name for it. I guess that was always part of the propaganda though.
The problem with that capital C conservatism, is greed not a lack of profit. There are more than enough profits around to keep people employed (profitably) and to pay investors. But you all don't want to share any more than you absolutely are forced to. Doing the right and decent thing is immoral if it allows the plebs to benefit from it in your Capital C conservatism code of ethics.
1
I just had an epiphany, we are all part of the problem. If this is true, what's next? Write down your defense mechanisms in the comment section. The defense mechanisms I usually use to help me cope are
1. denial
6. rationalization
7. sublimation
10. intellectualization
Those brave enough should post their respective defense mechanisms listed below
1. Denial
2. Repression
3. Projection
4. Displacement
5. Regression
6. Rationalization
7. Sublimation
8. Reaction Formation
9. Compartmentalization
10. Intellectualization
David is right to point out that the unrest and propensity for violence just below the surface is not limited to the US. Look a little deeper and you will see that it's not just Americans who are divided. This division exists across the developed world - in Eastern and Western Europe and in Israel which is about to have its third election in a year because neither of the major parties can get much more than a third of the vote and are unable to form a coalition with the remaining parties. Developed societies are divided between those on the left to center left who believe that generally people are better than they appear and you can appeal to those better natures, and a right that knows people are worse than they appear and are not to be trusted. Neither is completely right and working people fall on both sides of the divide. I fear the only thing that will pull people together in common purpose is an immanent existential threat. Climate change should be that threat, but the climate moves too slowly and few will see that barbarian at the gate until it is in the castle keep. We need a project, God-forbid a Hitler as opposed to the authoritarians-lite we now have, or a malevolent actor from another planet. Without that threat, we are content to simply retreat into our preconceived implicit biases and confine our outrage to comments posted to the NY Times.
1
The examples Brooks refers to in this article fail to prove his point. The people aren't rejecting populism in Bolivia, where the interim right-wing party is at least as anti-liberal as Morales's socialists. Nor in Iran and Chile, where the revolts began with transit fare hikes. In Hong Kong, the revolt is just as much about intolerable living conditions and housing shortages.
By in large, the streets are filled with populists, and the main issue is still economic inequality. Western liberalism is still in retreat. For the anti-populist revolts, you have to look at the US and Israel, where Netanyahu was just indicted on bribery charges.
The real revolt against populism is the one coming from inside the house.
It is true, much of the world, and the ancien règime, is in flames.
It is also true that it is extremely rare to have a successful, orderly revolution.
We are in the interim period of the usual post-régime chaos. The civilization we knew, which began with Greece and ended with America, is essentially over. The era of Immense Corruption that usually follows has begun.
The problem is, what needs to come next - a popular, not populist, not elitist, international government and economy - will not happen fast enough to save our species from climate change.
Hence the rich tech fantasies of AI, space exploration and colonization, driverless vehicles and robot warehouses. They imagine lines of escape from a fate they inevitably share with the rest of us.
There is no escape. There is no solution.
Will The End come in five years? Ten? Sooner than we are prepared to cope with, for sure.
1
The alignment between rural populations and conservative populism is not a new phenomenon. History reminds us that it is as least as old as the nation state. Mr. Books should not assume it is novel just because he finally tumbled to it.
As for discontent and economic growth, this is rooted in expectations that will inevitably be unfulfilled, given that we live on a more-or-less round and finite planet whose low-hanging fruit have been plucked. The Japanese appear to have outgrown the western disease and accepted low levels of growth without being disgruntled. Do we really need more reminders that the desire to accumulate ever more "stuff" creates more appetites than it satisfies?
Great piece. Like you stated, the driving force behind what is happening around us is economic and economic dislocation.
1
So close. Now just make the step to recognizing the role of income inequality and its root causes. Then Mr. Brooks will begin to understand.
1
I really love Brooks, but I have two criticisms.
"The core problem is economic."
I think Brooks is actually somewhat mistaken on this. I think the economic problem is only ONE of two core issues. I think the fundamental problem (arguably, the root of the economic issues) is essentially spiritual (in a non-sectarian sense that reflects attitude more than doctrine, though not necessarily exclusive of religion).
Brooks even hints at this with, "[Globalized democratic capitalism] was too spiritually thin, too cosmopolitan and deracinated."
"But the big question is, what’s next? What comes after the failure of populism?"
I'm idealistic enough to be afraid of the answer that my cynicism provides (and I'm young enough that I don't actually remember a world that wasn't globalizing). I'm afraid the answer is essentially some form of autocratic quasi-fascism that incorporates or coopts the elites.
President Morales of Bolivia is the first indigenous elected leader of a country with a majority non white population. His popular government has reduced poverty from 40% to 15%, cut in half infant mortality rates and eliminated illiteracy. The self appointed President Anez is a white supremacist. Her party received only 4% of the vote in the October elections. She has been put in power by a fascist coup by the police and military backed by the United States government. Thousands of protesters are in the streets and the police are shooting them down in cold blood, with at least 23 killed and more than seven hundred wounded. And these events are being portrayed in the US media as a return to democracy!
1
" . . . the populist alternative is not working"? Hey, they've just gotten started. It took Hitler 14 years, for heavens sake.
1
"The core problem is economic. Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth. "
Have you considered the core problem is the tools "center" left and right economists used who guided policy based on growth? That the real issue is not that populism created the problem, but that populism is a response to the failed policies of those who believed that economic "growth", in terms of rising GDP, meant better living standards for everyone?
Unless you are referring to the neo-liberal policies you champion as populist, I can't understand how populism has created any of our contemporary problems. its a relatively new phenomenon. And I think you'd be hard pressed to suggest that economic phenomenon are begotten by the simultaneous political movements that accompany them.
You talk about giving the "working class a piece of what they want", but argue for the same system that created the massive inequality that denies them such opportunity. The new "social bargain" is out there. Its advocating for a return to higher corporate and personal tax rates for the wealthy that led america to thrive from the 1950-1980, when wages grew at a 2% annual rate.
The bargains not hard to find. its out there. You just have to stop holding on to unchecked free market capitalist ideals to see it.
3
"the populist wave is still rising. The Yellow Vests in France and the protests in Chile are led by those who feel economically left behind. But it’s also clear that when in power the populists can’t deliver goods."
Brooks here runs all populists together as one thing. In fact there are right wing populists, left wing, and even rather centrist populists.
Trump is our right wing, Bernie is our left, and the recent winner of the governorship of Louisiana is a centrist populist (yes to medical care, but not to gun control).
They are not all the same, though they have some things in common.
What they have in common are the things that help them win, the best things about them.
People like Brooks seek out the example of the worst of populism, and tar all with that brush, because really they fear for the continued dominance of the old, failed elite who've led us into our current mess.
Populists may not fix the climate, some of them at least. But they didn't create that. That problem came from the status quo, the very thing defended by the smearing together of populism by Brooks of all alternatives to the status quo.
His examples show this. Bolivia has a lot of killing now, now that the populists are being put down by the return of the old elite. It was Sisi who killed so many in Egypt, putting down the Muslim populists even to the point of shooting a crowd during prayers.
Trump and Bernie are both populists, and not the same at all.
5
Thank you, Mr. Brooks!
Finally, an analysis that looks past the current maelstrom and sees the bigger picture, that reminds us history and social evolution are progressing towards greater inclusion, not exclusion, that the populist backlash is just a backwards and temporary blip on the longer arc, that global integration and cooperation is coming and is good.
My sense of optimism is refreshed.
What??? How is this a failure of "liberalism" and "Coastal Elites"?
I agree that we are divided and that this global angst exists, but to use language that seems to lay this problem at the foot of progressives seems ludicrous.
From the 80's we have been dominated by a Center-Right agenda. One that believed solely in the free market. With the majority of our policies directed toward less government, less regulation, more free trade blah blah blah.. So I am not sure how that is liberalism, that is unconstrained capitalism.
In the end there is a simple analogy.. Every Monopoly game I have ever played ends up with one person with all the money and someone flipping the board over anger. Is that not what is happening today?
3
Freedom? From what? So, what you're saying is that "rural", uneducated people get to riot so they can stop and reverse a direction of economic change they don't like. Smash the frames, Luddites!
Passing laws against automation might work. Or not. Seizing the assets of the "wealthy" (the line for which will soon drift down to you... for the good of the People, of course) would put in motion some very interesting effects, quite a few unintended.
And spare me the homilies about "oh, equitable... fair share... common sense...". You want to cheer on rioters and ignorant ideologues and will wind up with a global expansion of the "wholesale killing" now happening in Iran.
Economics is not zero sum, but politicians think that their particular game is. Blather all you want about lowering standards so that the incapable reap benefits just because they threaten unrest, but the regime or whatever system that plows ahead with economic and technological development will win this particular round of Prisoner's Dilemma.
Brooks' right wing has not brought back the dreams of those who see themselves left out of the modern world. Instead their populism brought crooks and thugs into power who are using bigotry to squelch freedom.
1
The World in on fire;
Our Lot in life;
The End of the world; and what order would you place as top priority.
Perhaps for this reader of the New York Times and essay of Mr. Brooks, 'Our lot in life', having been asked a century to travel. This is a fairly mundane question, and for no particular reason, the choice was 'The Industrial Revolution', which I know little about.
If the world had 'Freedom', would the inhabitants know how to use it in ways that would make all of us feel content. Not all persons, rich in monetary funds, want to live in a diamond as big as the Ritz, and some of the biggest scrooges met, come from inherited wealth. They suffer the Fear of Money.
'The World is on fire'; one that is growing in multiple ways, and if you receive the daily bulletin of what is happening Elsewhere, your bones feel cold and it is tempting to go helpless, sensing that hope is dwindling without strong leadership in America, where some of us exist and options are fewer.
Placing politicians and pheasants aside, populists are in need of a sense of direction in order to progress. The world is changing much faster ,due to modern technology, and looking back to 2013, you will see a stark contrast:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pwe-pA6TaZk?rel=0
We are waking to certain realities and Mother Nature never lies. America may hold the key to freedom and invite others to follow, but only if other nations believe in 'Our Choice' of democratic leadership.
Give us back Hope.
Did David Brooks just propose a Universal Basic Income? Seems like. Because that will be the only way to get money into dying rural towns.
1
When those who buy are not the one participating in the making you have the emergence of the middleman. Globalization has produced a super class of middlemans . Walmart is the the one that comes to mind as the one that sells in the USA but buys in China all for great margins. Unintended consequences the skills required to make products migrate to China we are stuck with salesman’s .
Middlemans are everywhere; in politics to impersonate your wants , in religion to save your soul in lawyers to dispense you justice . Somehow the middleman is getting rich on the shoulders of a multitude of us
2
A new social contract sounds good. I believe it is too late. This Republic is about to be lost. Trump will not be impeached by the Senate. Three predictions. Watch.
The first problem is corruption. Ruthless politicians have always taken advantage. They exploit hate and fear.
Economic concerns are important, but it's more complicated than that. David doesn't mention the rise of sophisticated influencers who have access to technology that manipulates public opinion. Those tools are used by the very wealthy and powerful who have no scruples about the consequences of their actions.
Fox News and its armies of opinionators are central to this phenomenon here in the US. Russia's oligarchs and autocrats are exploring effective ways to undermine governments around the world.
Democracy depends on an informed populace. When lies and distortions become the rule and not the exception, that populace finds it hard to be well informed.
I know a lot of people who think that Trump has been good for the USA. They like his policies in regard to taxes and immigration. The fact that the economy is booming helps, but that boom has not reached our corner of the nation.
Racism and xenophobia seem just expressions of truth as they understand it. It's easy to exploit hate and fear.
Unfortunately, I do not see a pathway to changing this mindset.
2
Did you really mean to call the group of witnesses who have shared their knowledge of how our country came to withhold congressionally approved foreign aid to Ukraine "Washington insiders"?
Sounds like Trump speak to me, an educated person's description of the "deep state".
How about referring to them as brave citizens who volunteered, at personal cost, to speak truth to power?
3
The word "populist" is misleading. It sounds like an uprising of people looking to bring power to the people. What the protesting and angry people demand is not what they are served.
The words we want to look for "authoritarian" and "demagogues." People who are angry and betrayed look for people who offer simple solutions, in easy words.
Scape-goating, demonizing, pandering - bread and circuses - are the tools of the demagogue. Give people a symbolic win, to make them feel better, then blame someone else - immigrants, NAFTA - for the continued misery, while peeling the wealth of the nation off for private gain.
Give the cake bakers the their religious freedom, and the anti-abortionists their demand for the destruction of Planned Parenthood. Give tradesmen and manufacturing labor the deportation of immigrants and a whacko trade war. Give the tea partiers the belief you've lowered taxes, while raising taxes on all imports. And give everyone a gun. Bread and circuses.
I don't know how to get people to step back, and think, and see the naked emperor. And that may be our undoing.
4
The unrest is drive by inequality.
In a world of free trade, workers wages in high wage islands (US, UK ) must fall towards the global average. That is US workers wages must move down and Bangladesh wages must move up
On the other hand, the global elite (traders in goods, global finance, owners of capital i.e. factories) benefited. Apple amassed $ 245 Billion cash by pocketing most of the wage difference between China and the US.
Such a social system will break. Trump is the symptom, not the cause. Free trade , free movement of people and opposition to tariffs MUST move US workers wages DOWN towards the global wage average, EXCEPT for the elites.
The move is spreading up the education ladder - IBM has now more employees in India than in the US - but until it reaches journalists, and economists , the elites will not understand
Here's an example
"Such moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization–of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries and the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports. "
Paul Krugmam
What set him off? Quote
" letters along the lines of, “Well, if you lose your comfortable position as an American professor you can always find another job–as long as you are 12 years old and willing to work for 40 cents an hour.”
by laid of US workers
2
Only in America would a pundit call being educated part of an elite class of people. It doesn't take a college education to realize that paying people a living wage is the right thing to do. It's not a philosophical conundrum to decide to treat one's fellow human beings with decency, kindness, and courtesy no matter what their status is in life.
What we are experiencing in America and some other countries is a distinct lack of empathy on the part of the economic 1% towards the rest of the population. I would recommend that, in America at least, McConnell, Pence, Trump (yes even Trump), Nunes, and the rest of sycophants refresh their acquaintance with novels like "Animal Farm", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Lord of the Flies". Then I would suggest that they do less reading of Ayn Rand and her ilk.
One book I recommend highly is "The Lord of the Rings". Pay attention to Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo, and the rest of the Fellowship. But pay very close attention to Boromir, Gollum, Saruman, and Shelob.
11/21/2019 11:31pm first submit
3
Why do the terms "educated" and "elite" so often appear together? I am educated, but I am by no means elite.
1
"Write a new social contract that gives both the educated urban elites and the heartland working classes a piece of what they want most."
Who writes it? The Preamble written by Gouveneur Morris has only 4 points and one is "to promote the general welfare.” The word welfare has been rabidly attacked relentlessly by Republicans while they promoted and insured the welfare of the wealthy class.
Contrast two educated elites. Donald Trump who uses every vehicle, even government, and opportunity, to increase his wealth.
And FDR who gave America the foundation of economic equality to fulfill the Preamble’s goal, “to promote the general welfare.” Social Security is one of his item in his toolbox to promote the general welfare. Educated Republican elites have never ceased seeking to undermine the general welfare. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” This is altogether loathsome to the educated Republican elite and the likes of a Mr. Melania trump,
who only manipulates populism to keep many of his base economically where they are.
There are many educated elites among his followers who conspire to prevent economic equality.
2
Now everyone knows why I think DB IS the sharpest tool in the shed. Who else can move that smoothly thru so many messy
details of our very complicated geo political world, and end up with such a simple solution that could actually, if only...
Not one mention of the polarization of wealth. Demand drives the world economy, not supply.
We are experiencing the effects of a foolish wager on supply-side economics both financially and politically. So successful has been the propaganda worshipping the business class that even democracy is sacrificed to unbridled capitalism.
4
Yes, it becomes more valid with each passing day.
Freedom is slavery.
Freedom from what? Freedom to do what?
Freedom to believe or refuse to believe whatever you want?
Is it simply a woman's right to choose, to control her own body or is it a perverse right to kill rather than be inconvenienced?
How do you see any of the protests going on around the world as revolts against populism? Putin is a populist? The ayatollahs are populists? And what protests in Warsaw? A google search finds a march in 2016 and another in early 2018, but nothing more recent. I recently spent a week in Poland, and it felt about as edgy as Sweden or Denmark, that is: it didn't feel edgy at all.
All of the protests you cite are by ordinary people protesting against elites using their power to line their own pockets by sacrificing the interests of the masses. I.E. the protests are themselves populist.
You're highly educated, highly remunerated, and you prefer "to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies." And apparently you're willing to allow other people to sink into poverty to allow you to do that.
1
This is the thing that I can't figure out with these Trump "conservative" supporters. They want to hold everyone else accountable for their situations and conditions (poor, sick, immigrant, whatever). But when it comes to their conditions and situations, it is the "elite's fault, or even more confusing, some imaginary "Deep State".
There's really nothing truly conservative about Trump or his supporters.
Joe
1
Brooks: "The big job ahead for leaders in almost all these nations is this: Write a new social contract that gives both the educated urban elites and the heartland working classes a piece of what they want most."
Perceptive observation. And encouraging. It is also a relief that I don't hear from Mr. Brooks the usual right wing bromides about resurrecting Ronnie Reagan political curatives.
2
This seems astonishingly ignorant and US-centric. There is no unrest in most of the countries said to be ruled by populists, including Poland, Hungary or Brazil. OTOH, what is "populist" about Saad Hariri? About Xi Jinping? About Pineta? Actually, almost none of the governments facing major protests can said to be even remotedly populistic.
Frankly, for all your wish for sweeping generalizations, those countries have almost nothing in common. Almost all are countries where a small oligarchic elite has captured both political power and the lion-share of economic wealth, but given that that is the reality of most of the world's countries, that's a very small commonality. In all those cases, protesters demand that more of the captured political power and wealth be returned to the people - which, by the way, is the populist promise from Warsaw to Washington (with varying degrees of lying on the populists' part).
Some, like Lebanon, face economic difficulties, as they have done repeatedly; others, like Columbia or even HK, are thriving by standard economic measures. None of them have much to do with the crisis in DC, which is not, no matter what you may think, the center of the world.
From description of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics:
"...the most effective interventions for improving educational outcomes or child health [or poverty]... smaller, more precise, questions are often best answered via...the people who are most affected."
OPERATIVE WORDS: "The People Who Are Most Affected."
1
Yes it is Social Contract, not absolute economic success. Relative success, including making it while struggling but then finding the wealthy get the breaks, $16M by the Prime Minister to a concubine?, I'm ready to march! We all have to struggle, trust and solve the same problems. So, in US, who is cheating? Why are we fighting over Climate Change? Why are we divided over minimal gun control? Why do we have to fight over a Wall that won't work? Why are rich getting their kids into Ivy League by cheating. None of those things affect us day to day, and none change the economic standing. Millenials make less than Boomers, because they haven't gotten all their raises yet, but they would be angry to find that they will never get the raise. Yes you have nailed it; if the Social Contract is violated by the elite wealthy, and their kids get a better shot at the next round, and you don't see an end to your struggles for you and your family, Revolution! Thomas Pickety called it.
1
What do you mean by capitalism? By populism? You should define your terms, especially since they are used in many ways.
The planet’s ills are great. Political systems seem incapable of providing solutions. Major indIcators of social well-being are trending down - drug abuse, growing poverty, collapsing ecosystems, massive military spending, polarized politics, more refugees.
Just as the impacts of climate change are slowly approaching a tipping point, so is the possibility of global conflagration. Those nukes aren’t going to launch themselves.
But hey, Black Friday is next week, great deals on flat screens. To watch the apocalypse.
2
"Democratic capitalism"? Capitalism is the system where he who has the gold makes the rules, and his rules are: we don't have to pay a living wage; we can allow monopolies that overcharge for necessary goods; we can charge whatever we want for healthcare because patients can't say no; we can pollute air and water; we can make a cable show and call it news and demonize any person who disagrees with us; we can cut our taxes and raise yours; we can let schools in poor districts crumble and fail while ours are best; we can kill workers with impunity; we can call global warming a hoax; we can keep on polluting the air with carbon while your fields and wells turn to dust but we will never hunger and we will never thirst and we will never pay for the messes we made.
3
Trump the populist tells it like it is, except for the 12,000 lies (and counting). Trump’s lying, grifting, and moral corruption are obvious to anyone.
I’ve understood over the past two years that votes for Trump are not votes for Trump. They are votes against liberals. I’m impressed with how well with how well Trump can keep his base with him. I’m extraordinarily disappointed that 70 million of my fellow citizens have fallen for the pseudo-populism that Brooks describes.
1
Wow, a tall order--satisfy the urban elites and the working class. Suspect there will be working through, but it is a very worthy goal.
I didn't know that it was a populist wave that swept across the European Union after the 2008 economic crisis, leaving 'austerity' in its wake, stifling growth, and thereby condemning an entire generation of Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese to a lifetime of poverty or the cruel fate of immigration to the north. I thought it was the work of German and Dutch bankers. I do remember the liberal markets that this columnist adores calling these countries 'PIGS'. Economic stagnation in Europe has nothing to do with the failures of populism and everything to do with the triumphant ideology of the Hungarian economists who buried Keynes in the rubble of the Berlin Wall.
You can only give your best and if you have nothing to offer beyond what you wish to keep for yourself please let the rest of us know how you plan to take it with you when you go.
Right Left Right Left Right Left into the valley of death rode the 600
we are supposedly a classless society, no working class, we are all one class and we choose our leaders or fire them if they fail to represent us properly.
It wears me out to keep trying to rationalize the mind of a conservative who has as much in the game as everyone else.
Beware the greedy capitalist dressed in populist clothing, such as the current POTUS. He promises jobs to the masses, while serving the objectives of international corporations. And therein lies the problem with populism in America: The wealthy pay for the music, while "liberal" politicians too often ditch their working-class dates in order to ride off on the tour bus. And we are left to feel used, betrayed and jilted.
The welfare reform and the overturning of Glass-Steagall under Clinton and the pro-charter school bias of the Obama administration demonstrate that the infidelity is not just a GOP thing: It is systemic to our money-soaked political system.
2
There is a very short piece written about the responsibility of both individuals and society to carefully investigate things and people. The short essay is by William Kingdon Clifford, on the 'Ethics of Belief". It is not about religion-rather, it is about what our responsibility is to know that what we believe is true, are. This is a an eye opener, and everyone ought to read it- .
It can be downloaded free at Project Gutenberg:
William Kingdon Clifford:
"The Science of Morality". If you Don't read the newspaper -still, do read this essay!
Interesting that Brazil's Lula, a union organizer, who became president and made Brazil an economic power isn't mentioned.
Lula was and is a populist.
DSB, the rage in some of us started in the 1940s. The nation has been misled for a long time. The people lead themselves... and many are just lost. Success can destroy us... but who doesn't want to succeed? Protesters world wide are scared... leaders are not leading, teens are depressed... the more intelligent are simply terrified... the mob is angry...
"Washington insiders are rising up to curtail Trump’s normlessness"
It's lawlessness. That's not a matter of opinion, it's the fact.
1
And they will try to tell me my democracy is under attack, except we lost that along time ago.
David, the middle class you so cherish are not better off under either the far right or far left. The poor and the downtrodden know when they are being ripped off and have nothing to lose in fighting back, but the middle class fear losing the few baubles they have toiled hard for.
Little do they know that this is a losing game because under either left or right the middle class are considered little more than running dogs. They will be used up and when the time is ripe the middle class will be hosed down the sewers of the world too.
No mention of US violence against the world. No mention of TARP. No mention of neoliberalism and its failure to live up to its hopey changey. No mention of global heating and the collapse of the economy of scale.
Just more elitist, technocratic illusions of verisimilitude. Just more pretending his moment did not pass when he supported Bush's crimes against humanity.
It's taken a while, but you're an "ok boomer", Mr. Brooks.
I would rather hope to see a revolt against Conservatism, where people were valued over the Corporations.
"Throngs are marching to preserve democratic rights in Hong Kong, Warsaw, Budapest, Istanbul and Moscow. The masses are angry in Pakistan, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and toppling leaders in Lebanon and Bolivia. "
David- you left out here in the US. We are in just as much trouble as those folks are, possibly more. Every day our Democracy is whittled away by a seemingly impossible to predict sociopath with a very large axe to grind over people who don't think or act like him. Namely most of the civilized population.
This is horrible. Stop comparing left-wing populism to right-wing authoritarianism.
You say the left hasn't delivered the goods but many in Latin America would disagree. Leaders like Morales and Lula have lifted tens of millions out of poverty. And what happens? Morales is removed via military coup and Lula is unjustly jailed so he cannot compete in the election.
This quiet acceptance of these things by people like David Brooks is harmful. Enough with the simplistic, yet out-of-touch view of the world. The Pink Tide governments did deliver but countries like the United States continues to meddle in their politics.
Trump/Johnson/Modi/Putin/Orban are nowhere close to the same as Morales. Bolsonaro, yes but again, he won an actual rigged election. The Times and Brooks has to do better than this.
Well, the populism is fueled by the corruption within the elites. So, maybe, they’d like to comment?
The white ethnic nationalism of Brexit? Give me a break. You know full well that the UK has a different political tradition than the Continent, and that it has resisted at every step moves toward economic and political union. A majority voted to recenter political sovereignty at the national level, away from the EU superstate. Once Brexit is completed, what ensues is up to UK voters -- of all backgrounds -- to decide.
Be honest Mr. Brooks. You have become a subtle distortion machine of truth in this column. The spread of Globalization and Free Market Fundamentalism was not a liberal policy. It was a conservative dream. They used it to ship jobs abroad. Please correct the sentence "That was the heyday of liberal democratic capitalism " to " The run-amok conservative capitalism". The socialists like Bernie Sanders and like were protesting against shipping of jobs to overseas. They were labeled protectionists by YOU ! Now don't go and change the underlying fault to "All of Us". It was just you and your conservative capitalists doing it.
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It is not populism or leftism that is destroying counties, but corruption and tyranny. To call China, which imprisons and tortures ethnic minorities, and surveils all its citizens with punishments for bad behavior "populism," is just grotesque. People can call themselves whatever they want--look at Trump. What they do is what matters.
There is not a shred of coherent thought in this oped.
Good column. We were hoping Barack Obama was the one to do the job.
The two party system is proving itself to be a battle between self-serving liars and truth-tellers dedicated to serving the people. As this becomes clear, the future will be a one party system that is securely controlled by truth tellers (science, etc.) and servants of the people. That is the only sustainable future. The "good guys" must rule before the house collapses into chaos.
"The educated elites want ... to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies."? Maybe when they're single. Once they settle down and have kids they congregate into enclaves where everyone is just like them. So 'ethnically diverse' NYC also has the least ethnically diverse school system.
I’m wondering about the title of this piece. If the world is indeed rejecting populism, why do we have billionaires effectively attacking progressive tax proposals and criminals running the White House abetted by a morally bankrupt GOP?
MEA CULPA?
The jesuitical pro-capitalist, pro-power columns of Brooks labelled as "conservative", with its relentless drop-by-drop effect spread over decades, contributed to a cynical confused backdrop that made the victory of a self-seeking Trump supported by Russia possible. Is this article a kind of opportunistic mea culpa?
"Democracy is never a thing done, is always something that a nation must be doing."
- Archibald MacLeish - poet and librarian of Congress
Curious how the protests against a neoliberal government in Chile are ignored and a one sided version of events in Bolivia is peddled.
The better bargain would be a way of forcing politicians and other useless ornaments to stop creating so much human misery every day. Something to shut down the madness. Tell them, "Just to away and be rich, or whatever it is you do." Stop getting in the way of everyone and everything, while you're at it..
The world as we knew it is not the world we know now. For some that's good, for some it's bad, for some it's the same and for all it's confusion, fear and hatred initiated by greed, corruption and hypocrisy fed by a fire hose of constant disinformation from enemy to enemy.
Everyone saw it coming. Those who want to preserve the status quo and those who want to destroy it. The answer lies in the ever fluctuating middle.
This is another ridiculous attempt by Brooks to offer grand, sweeping conclusions, as he tries to put widely different struggles under one rubric. The protests in Hong Kong (against Chinese control, Iran (against sanctions-caused austerity) and Bolivia (a coup ginned up by the wealthy and the military) have very little in common, for example.
Populism of the left and right is alive and well, with all the mixed consequences. And it is being challenged by the rich and the poor respectively. And lots of other factors are playing a role, especially global capitalism. Let's not support the oversimplification of complex events.
How can David Brooks claim these are all examples of a rise AGAINST populism when they are quite the opposite: the rise of authentic (not Trumpian) populism? Have all the Republicans, including your columnists, gone mad, gone through the Looking Glass, gone to an alternate universe where white is black, up is down, etc.?
Pure projection. Brooks confounds matters by pointing at several examples and ignoring the details.
To say that Bolivians are revolting against populism is ridiculous. The new interim prime minister accused the socialists of satanism, and she was sworn in on a bible the size of a couch cushion. Even Morales’s socialist movement still enjoys broad (if not majority) support. This a fight between two different kinds of populists, not a return to moderation.
The retreat of western liberalism continues unabated.
1
Democratic socialism is what is needed.
The world must come to value every individual life, and end the incredible wealth inequality in the world.
Human rights, the dignity of every worker , and true justice must be defended worldwide.
Brooks either is ignorant about Latin America or chooses to avoid reality. Evo Morales' Bolivia grew at the fastest pace of any Latin American country. In contrast, the neoliberal government of M. Macri in Argentina was a nightmare: it acquired the largest foreign debt the country ever had and plunged the country into stagflation (actually recession), The latter done in complicity with IMF that allowed Macri's government to use loans to artificially sustain the peso during his failed attempt to be re-elected. People in Chile are still in the streets after 35 days protesting in mass neoliberal policies like paid education, privatized health care, pensions reform that provide insufficient funds to survive for the elderly. In Ecuador and Peru people revolted for the same reasons and as recent as yesterday there were huge crowds in Bogota's and other Colombian cities protesting neoliberal policies.
For the record, when progressive people tried to deliver through popular vote the US supported coups to stop those attempts: Jacobo Arenz in Guatemala, Bogotazo, Salvador Allende in Chile, Lugo in Paraguay, Zelaya in Honduras (explicit support from H. Clinton), Evo Morales in Bolivia to mention the most obvious ones.
As we move into an unknown political reality dictated by a new synthesis, it is clear that what is really in crisis is the neoliberal model, even if the response to it are not clear yet
I can't help thinking that Brooks is unclear on the definition of "populism".
"In the U.S., Washington insiders are rising up to curtail Trump’s normlessness."
No. In the U.S., American diplomats and soldiers are rising up to curtail Trump's dangerous willful ignorance -- not "normlessness." Trump and his enablers know, deep down, that Ukraine did not meddle, that the Biden's are not a threat. Rather, they see the endgame, the art of propaganda. The calculation is to keep power. It is disingenuous to couch Trump as simply lacking proper norms; it's much worse.
So Xi has walked away from market reforms? Maybe he doesn't want a Yellow Vest movement in China.
American, crony capitalism is at the heart of the problem. The World Bank keeps countries tied up in debt to keep them down and to extract that counter's natural resources. The Chinese are doing the same thing with their Belt and Road program. Shareholder interests overpower every other interest. Stakeholders are paid the minimum, the environment is an afterthought to corporate pollution, graft and corruption is how you grease the skids. Nationalism and religion provide cover to crooks who pretend to be moral and ethical. It's all a sham. Unfortunately, the only remedy seems to be protest and violence which is what the strongman desires. That will enable him to bring down the power of the state onto the heads of his adversaries. Pray for non-violence, pray for decent people to come into power. Peace.
David Brooks has created a grab bag of populists that have little in common with each other. Xi Jinping is not a populist, but an autocrat who has purged all the other factions in the Chinese Communist Party on his way to thinking he could acquire absolute power until Hong Kong blew up in his face.
Imran Khan may have ridden his cricket fame populism to become Prime Minister of Pakistan, but David Brooks knows the only power in the country has always rested with the Pakistani military and security services. And Pakistan’s economy has only expanded when America pumped billions of dollars into the military and security services. Meanwhile, the Pakistani people are as poor and uneducated as ever, and polio is endemic because the Taliban keep killing all the healthcare workers trying to vaccinate the children.
By the way, neither Victor Orban in Hungary or Jarosław Kaczyński of Law and Justice in Poland are in danger of being replaced, although the the populist Prime Minister of the Czech Republic is on shaky ground.
Lousy opinion.
1
It's not about the culture war then, in the US? The Tea Party was all about money? Extraordinary.
I grew up in Indiana, a farming state, where I heard the following: ”Money and manure are best used spread around.” Hoarding money in stinking piles in banks is as useless as hoarding manure in stinking piles behind barns.
We need stronger unions to get hard-earned money moving around through more hands. If technology destroys jobs, a basic universal income may be our only hope to avoid permanent interclass warfare
To some degree, we'll always have leaders whose only merit consist in saying and doing stupid things at the right time, and who ruin all if they change their manners. What's wrong with promoting individual self reflection that enables us to be more conscious, grateful, forgiving, envisioning a perfect future, in the moment and blessed? We revolt when we realize and can't accept how insignificant we are and instead distract ourselves with the illusion of a new master. Instead of repeating this mistake, we should embrace the discomfort & place no expectations on others when sharing love, kindness & good vibes. We all don't get a trophy. Expect, budget for & embrace times, we go unnoticed, unheard, ignored & unvalidated.
You failed to mention Netanyahu. And by the way.....whenever we send aid to places it is always viewed as a waste because the people in power use the aid for corrupt means. Because they way things are done in the places that send the aid are so much less corrupt. Like when you give an ambassador position to someone for a million dollar donation. And that person gets in front of Congress and says he talks to so many people that he can't remember any of the conversations, even the ones from just a few weeks prior, and never takes notes and.....you know setting the example for the rest of the world.
Populists are bugs in tactics. To progress, they maneuver through cracks created by divisions, by-passes of legalities, holes in the law system, breaking rules, ..etc, To sum up, they entertain imperfections in the governing system to fight liberal democracy. Doing that, they create corruption, at the same time they dig their fate to the trash barrel of history.
Actually, they lame swim against the stream of natural law and discipline, not for long to be drowned. You may visualize the scene as a fight between money and natural law, between darkness and enlightenment.
1
As always, the orthodox left and right will scream bloody murder over another excellent piece. It takes bravery to endure the slings and arrows of the left and right and stay the course.
Thank you David for being a voice of sanity in this overwrought time.
America has a lot of problems, but "too cosmopolitan" is not one of them.
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Populism: If the US elected our President by popular vote instead of the Electoral College, Al Gore and Hillary would have been elected, the Supreme Court wouldn’t be right wing, corporations wouldn’t be people, we would be fighting climate change, our tax system would be fairer, the US would be respected around the world, and America would still be great. How I long for that alternate universe.
4
Global economic capitalism also raised billions out of poverty and created a much larger global middle class. Despite the many street clashes, we are still living in the most peaceful 40+ years in modern history.
We do not need World War III to re-align the world, as Mr. Brooks tacitly implies. It is also not time to panic. Trump, the goblin under his bed that is causing all these late night fears will be gone soon enough. How he and his elite friends on Martha's Vineyard survive the turmoil is the real question.
2
You know what's next, don't you?
The rich automate all labor, colonize some other planet, and just like in many sci-fi distopian movies, leave the rest of us here to endure the end of civilization.
Or does anyone actually think there will ever be a global plan (or even local plans) to adequately raise wages and protect fair labor standards?
You heard it from Brooks: left-wing economic policies destroy growth! Code for the basic truth that the powerful will NEVER give up any of their riches to make life more livable for the rest of us.
We got lucky once in the twentieth century when they wrecked the world economy and planted the seeds of World War II. We could then squeeze their wealth and filter it down to workers and servicemen and women sacrificing for world peace. But now wars no longer require that mass sacrifice or filtering.
Instead, a hundred unconnected mass protests that accomplish nothing but rearranging the elites on top will go on and on, while the very richest hope to make their escape. Meanwhile the rest of us will be completely consumed with finding any way to live the rest of our lives that doesn't involve homeless and hunger.
Nice world we're living in!
3
While it’s difficult to begrudge anyone their perspective, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to recognize what populism is, carried to its logical conclusion. When politics are reduced to an actual popularity contest, the only winners are the ones who are profiting from the madness, and that win will only last as long as our fiat currency remains the global standard.
“But the big question is, what’s next? What comes after the failure of populism?”
This would be the $64,000 question, if the answer had not already been provided in abundant clarity over the course of recorded human history.
Eternal Recurrence forever.
Protesters are fighting for freedom. How is this a revolt against populism? In my opinion populism is a description applied to whatever a pundit or a regime or a leader doesn't like. In America it's not populism to expect to have a decent life, access to medical care when and where it's needed without worrying about bankruptcy, to hope one's children can have a more comfortable life, to want to support oneself and one's family, to have a comfortable retirement. It's part of being human. Yet, in many countries, the United States included now, citizens who are not rich are being denied hope, denied the basics except at very high prices, and are watching as the economic elites deprive them of the ability to have a better life.
5
Only David Brooks could look at mass protest movements around the world and conclude they are a backlash against populism. Very wishful thinking. The mob has merely taken on a new cause. The populist genie has been unleashed and it was brought to us by the the very-moderate-centrist and willfully blind establishment elites that are among Mr. Brooks' biggest fans.
2
The scary part is. WE DO NOT KNOW how an economy should work without labor being a significant redistribution method. We need to know how economic redistribution will work in the future as labor becomes less valuable ( or more productive ) due to automation. We need research and we need investment in detailed economic simulators. Economists will propose hypothetical solutions that should not be tested on real populations. A lot of ideas will need to be generated and filtered through the simulations for practicality. The effort will need coordination by government since there is no immediate financial advantage. Look toward politicians who understand this. Find (vote for) an executive that can direct research.
3
Capitalism masquerades as populism when it lets people believe their most important freedom is making money. Safety, sustainable growth, protection of natural resources, all left behind. Large tax cuts that promise jobs that never materialize result in no consequences for the greed that drives those who benefit most. Just let everyone have this freedom, the myth goes, and all will be well. Our period of mist sustained growth, economically, a when the rich and corporations were taxed more than the middle class. There was no lack of investment even when tax rates were more than double what they are now. The populist myth is that lack of constraints on capital are the key to success. The opposite is true. We have a crumbling infrastructure, poor citizen respect for government( well earned lack of it). FDR had it right and the capitalists hated him, so they called themselves populists and overturned everything he created. Like Fiona Hill said, "and here we are."
3
What is our new social contract? That is what the democratic primary is partially about. Because that is what government is for, right? Government is the society identity the boundaries and priorities of that society. Our government has evolved on this over the past 230 years. The populist movement in the US is about breaking the previous rules, obviously that provide a coherent agenda and all we have left is self enrichment and corruption. And the Republican Party seems intent on defending that.
The entire debate about how to change governments, priorities, laws and regulations is happening in the democratic primary. It ain’t adequate, but it’s what we have right now. I think that frame would help the lost former Republicans like Brooks when he tries to assess the field running for President. Because having a leader who at least is thinking along these lines would help all of us start asking better questions about our government. You can’t be for or against governing. That’s nihilism, which is where the populist seem to have gone.
1
Adam Smith wrote two books. The one, well-known, tells us how macro economies work. The other, The Theory of Moral Sentiments may or may not have been considered by Smith as a necessary companion to Wealth of Nations, but maybe it should be. Greatness in nations or economies only works on a foundation of moral goodness...
And I'll add you can't just pull compelling ethics out of nowhere -- a cosmos that is only material won't serve as anything but a "might makes right" basis for ever-changing, power driven "ethics."
Brooks writes a litany of disparate protests around the world, ties them together as somehow resulting from a failure of populism, and then drags middle class liberal aspirations into a conclusion that seems to come out of nowhere. What Brooks wants is for us to see the world as a conflict between the working class and the middle class, leaving his plutocratic buddies out of it. Divide and conquer.
Mr. Brooks, please do some fact checking.
"Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth"
The economy of Hungary is booming and growing, despite of predictions by all the doomsayers. Very low unemployment, rising wages (especially the lower ones). Businesses growing.
In Hungary posters of job openings are all over the streets.
Throngs are marching in Budapest?
Not really. Even though Budapest basically an opposition city, the number of demonstrators hardly justifies the word throngs.
Mention instead that even in the last elections (municipal) Fidesz, the governing party, got over 50% ofd the popular vote nationwide.
In recent weeks I've written comments to Op-Eds by Messrs Kristof, Cohen and now Brooks, all along the same lines. Why? Because each of them—all journalists I admire greatly—has fallen into the trap of conflating (actually equating) Brexit with white nationalism. It's a charge I feel unable to let stand.
I'm a Brexit-supporting Brit and I find myself—yet again—needing to point out that holding a pro-Brexit view does not make one a xenophobe or a racist (or even anti-immigration).
Brexit is a **constitutional** not a political issue. I'm dumbfounded that more people don't seem to recognize this. Could it be because it makes for boring copy than "Have you noticed that the world is on fire?" (Brooks, today) or "Britain has gone crazy" (Kirstoff, a week or so ago)?
I'd like to suggest we all calm down. To support Brexit means only this: a desire to return power to Westminster, and away from Brussels / Strasbourg.
Consider this: after Brexit I will be free, as a Briton, to lobby my government (via my local MP) to pursue all kinds of open-minded and progressive policies—even, if I'm so inclined, internationalist ones. To open Britain's borders! To join global treaties! To pioneer solutions to the climate crisis....whatever.
But this will be done through a process I can see, and a political contract I and my fellow citizens can understand: the centuries-old British constitutional system. We'd like this system back, fully under our control.
That's all.
wondering why he left out the Israel president from the list of crooks
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@Sean Daly Ferris I wonder why he left out Donald Trump from the list of crooks.
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Interesting
Mr Brooks,
„Deracinated“? Is that NYT elite-speak for White? Is journalism still here for those of us, without your editors guide to shrouding your truth in vagaries?
Thank you
Stefan Brün
"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy"
And therein lies a potentially unsolvable problem. How are the working classes to thrive when there is little -- if anything -- of economic value which a machine cannot do better and cheaper that a human being? The old dynamic whereby rich people purchased labor from less rich people has broken down, because the rich no longer need the labor -- at all. For anything.
The working class doesn't need a modern economy. They need a radically revised economy, where an equitable division of wealth is as important a consideration as the generation of wealth. And it will be a cold day in hell before the 1% permit anything like that to happen.
Interesting times are a'coming.
1
" It was too spiritually thin, too cosmopolitan and deracinated." Too _____for who?
"People felt that their national cultures were being ripped away from them."
Who? Not me or anyone I know who isn't and idiot.
Rather than seek to perpetuate the blatantly unethical division of humanity into classes, we should actually seek the abolition of class entirely. Why ever were we told to fear such a thing?
Ah, right. Because your class is winning the class war.
1
Based on what I saw today, I’d vote for Dr. Fiona Hill over any Republican.
3
And this point I think they “spirituality” has about as much meaning or power as “vanilla”. I’m willing to propose a one year moratorium on the use of this word.
*Against freedom that is. And against republicanism with calls for elected leaders to resign for no other reason than the terrorists don’t agree politically
Everyone needs to feels valued. Who would have thought?
Mr. Brooks, you are glossing over the role your party has played in the hollowing out of the middle class and denied support to them that could have cushioned the impact of globalization purely for partisan politics.
Who opposed infrastructure spending proposed by Obama in 2009? Mitch McConnel did "to make Obama a one-term president," that was his goal and the country be damned. Who cavilled about defict in 2010 when it was needed the most and is silent about it now when unnecessary tax cut has made deficits the highest they have ever been, $1tr)? Republican Party did.
No, it did not just happen in the last thirty years since 1989 as you claim. It happened because of what Republicans have been doing or trying to do for more than 80 years since the days of New Deal, that is to enrich the rich at the expense of poor.
And unless your party changes, it will continue to happen in the future as well.
5
How shameful we still behave like brutish entities seeking power, to abuse it, and convince gullible people it's all written in the stars and for everybody's progress and well-being. This, by us being complacent, and allowing demagogues and charlatans to gain the upper hand...and screw us in the name of justice, even peace, a sick joke on us when we choose to look the other way. Although corruption seems universal, it is useful to pay attention to the various ingenuous methods, and nations, subject to something akin to an oligoplutokleptocracy. Look at Bolivia, where Evo Morales tried to force himself in becoming president again (4th time) in spite of being against the constitution, this time caught committing fraud again, 'a la Trump'. And to add insult to injury, protected in Me'xico by Lopez-Obrador, Evo is actively engaged in causing chaos in Bolivia, using his coca growers, no doubt anxious to re-gain protection to renew their cocaine production (always in demand in the U.S. and Europe). Did you notice that, whenever there is incompetence (and Trump comes to mind), corruption enters uninvited, to close the deal. Who are we, why are tolerating all this despicable behavior? Anomie perhaps?
2
These uprising are not for the same reasons in all the examples the the author presents. In the three similar uprising, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon its not about freedom it’s not about freedom it’s about cost of living, in particular increase in the cost of gasoline, deteriorating economic conditions, and ethnic/religious strife.
Everyone naturally wants a piece of the good life.
Some want more of the good life than others - they want more resources than they themselves or their heirs or their heirs' heirs can ever deplete.
They oppose any efforts to diminish their wealth, regardless of its magnitude. We need forms of governance that do not allow such people to determine the fate of us all.
When the rule of law, honesty and integrity become outdated , dismissed and laughed upon by this administration, GOP senators and particularly by mr. Barr attorney general , one has to alarmed about the future of this Great Country.
Are people of good will going to vote out of office all these unqualified villains or will go about their daily business without seeing the catastrophe that will ensnare their beloved country?
1
David,
This article was about as refreshing as a cold can of last week's pork and beans. Heartbreaking.
1
Simply put ... a person wants/needs to feel that they matter.
We all, as individuals, need to feel that our governments hold our best interests as the core of every move they make. Clearly, this is not always the case.
I feel that all peoples are lurching toward democracies of some kind. Rebellions and revolutions have, generally, been reactions of populations to unsatisfactory governance. You can go back in history to see this and observe the rate of change as a fitful progress.
The future will be no different. Change is necessary and there will always be diverging ideas on how to best attain the changes needed. There will always be resistance to that change. Some folks fear the unknown and therefore hesitate. Some aggressively resist for fear of losing what they have gained.
This is, of course, short-sighted and selfish … very human.
2
The primary cause of these problems is the governments of the world embracing neoliberalism and austerity economic policies. A solution to these problems could come from the adoption of policies based on Modern Monetary Theory and the creation of a job guarantee program. David should study Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). There is ample info on the web for anyone interested.
2
When Greed became Good, and employees were regarded as costs instead of the people actually making the product, it was the beginning of the end. If companies are valued and praised only for what return they give the shareholder, is it really surprising our country looks like this today? Bottom line- it’s not just the bottom line .
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All correct observations , but the author uses the term "liberalism" connected with "globalization" so much his explanation is eroded. I am uncomfortable with a conservative writer using a term which has become fogged by overuse. The word "organic" has suffered the same fate.
2
It's so simple. Begin with the notion of equality, such as in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
Then tax progressively enough so that all boats rise. We used to do that in the U.S. before the Reagan Tax Cut Revolution.
Tax First! There is no end to the good things that can be done with the money - that the "free market" won't do.
The notion of "private property" is getting in the way of the notion of "equality" and getting in the way of a just and sustainable society.
4
Every economy rests on an agreement between Capital & Labor. In the past 30 years Capital has been eating Labor's lunch. This is true in the west & east, in democracies & authoritarian states alike. Global Finance & technology will only make things worse for anybody not in the ownership class. The issues which 20 years ago affected rural uneducated workers have moved towards middle-class suburbs and now urban college graduates. There has to be a realignment of what a society is. Perhaps having naked wealth be society's only goal is not a sane position?
3
"What comes after the failure of populism?"
How about pragmatism? Like, the climate really does need to be dealt with. Like, economic inequality really does need a new tax code. Like, gerrymandering really does need to be nationally eliminated. Like, big tech really does need common sense regulation.
Not hugely difficult, but hugely important.
12
All this occurs while mankind can produce more wealth than it needs while billions live like paupers, and while mankind impacts our global ecosystem more than it can handle, while we still tout the false narrative that we can have unlimited growth into the distant future.
Our future depends on an enlightened innovation based economy that replaces our extractive and acquisition based economy, and provides a decent income for everyone who participates in it.
2
All politicians make promises that are beyond their or the nation's ability to deliver. That's not new nor what we're seeing here. Rather, a faction is intentionally amplifying discontent and using that to tear down the norms that protect citizens with the goal of transferring more power and wealth into their own hands. Its corruption at both individual and national levels. Americans can either reject it now or fight to get their rights back later. Its in America's best interest to rip out corrupt behavior now when its still weeds or we'll be forced to burn them down as trees and our communities with them. America prospers if we do the former; our adversaries prosper if we do the latter.
To paraphrase Andrew Yang, how much of this slow growth is due to automation? We truly have minimal or no means to address job losses due to automation, while wealth will continue to accrete to the owners of the new, highly automated, AI-reliant "capital." Communism, the historic solution, doesn't work: we know communism simply creates a new class of oligarchs. What other means are available for equalizing the wealth gap, redistributing the golden eggs without killing the golden goose?
2
« The core problem is economic » is a simplification typical of those who feel that just by tweaking neoliberal economic policy, we could bring back the good old days of growth, growth, growth, which of courses solves all problems, floats all boats etc.
If he is interested in what a new social contract might look like, Mr Brooks should take a look at what Otto Scharmer and colleagues at MIT and Presencing Institute are currently accomplishing via their ULab platform for social transformation. Scharmer’s work addresses not just the economic divide, but also the ecological and yes spiritual divides that interact to create results that nobody wants. 14000 people in hubs worldwide are working currently via the Edx ULab platform on local actions to address these divides, grounded in the best ideas of progressive economics, ecology and mindfulness practices. The work avoids old political or economic dogma, focusing instead on improving the quality of relationships on the interpersonal level, which is foundational to finding common ground and making progress on all the macro-level challenges which threaten human well being at the current moment.
3
Populism in the United States is somewhat of an exception to populism in other countries in that it is based on race even more than economics and culture. The rise of the modern Republican party began with the Civil Rights movement and Nixon's southern strategy. Reagan attacked welfare queens. Trump rose to power vilifying Barack Obama and Mexicans. Democrats have been tagged as social justice warriors and politically correct snowflakes, clear code for African-American enablers. In fact, Trumpian populism has offered Trump's followers very little economically. Like fascism in the 30's, it has flourished by identifying scapegoats for frustrations and resentments that are virtually universal. Unfortunately, Democrats have played into Trump's hands by engaging in identity politics themselves. When you focus on the rights of one minority predominantly, by definition you are ignoring a large segment of the population. Politically it is unwise, whatever the moral imperative might be.
2
While a new social contract is necessary, it doesn't address the underlying problem: we don't know how to pick the right leaders, and the leaders we have picked are driving us off a cliff.
We're looking at the beginning of the end of expansion, and at the part of the process where intense hoarding begins.
There might still be a chance to unwind things, but our social contract has to include leaders that really lead us where we need to go; to a world where a comfortable lifestyle uses a whole lot fewer resources, and where no private entity gets to control those resources.
Communism was an early and mostly failed attempt to take care of the resource issue, but it failed miserably on the leadership side. Social democracy is a more modern variation, but it is struggling with sustainability vs. comfort. It is also allowing control of resources to become concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer successful individuals. It has to make the distinction between success, which is OK, and control of things that people need, which is not OK. Throw in the reduction and near elimination of C02-based energy, and population reduction and you get an idea how difficult it can be.
A tall order? Yes, but we've faced challenges before, and we're facing one now. As the saying goes, this one is for all the marbles.
1
This is quite a clear definition of the current situation in my opinion. The statement at the end it powerful and to everyone here: what would a good social contract look like for you?
Mine would begin with reform on campaign finance and taxes on superwealth be it corporate or private and include health care for all, public and private, universal good education which is certainly possible in the digital world we now share and at the very least a global court system for all things electronic and digital. It is far easier to free or freeze bank accounts than to start and recover from wars and the digital world is global so this can be both legitimate and needed. What are your ideas?
Out there on the library shelves there has to be a discussion, an explanation, of how in the 1850's plantation owners in the South and others who benefited directly from slavery were able to convince hundreds of thousands of Southerners who gained next to nothing from slavery (a source of unpaid forced labor actually hurt most of them economically) to die defending their wealthy elites. Could it be an ingrained fear of the Other. That no matter their economic disadvantages, they were at least not the Other. So get your musket a fight those who would free the slaves. Really?
1
The left thinks government is the answer and the right thinks government is the problem. They are both right and wrong but no one accepts that simple truth. Today there is no room for nuance or detente. Perhaps it is social media or globalization or biased news but we have descended into tribalism. It is an angry world because no one seems remotely capable of seeing the "other side" as anything but a detestable enemy. Human history is not a clear line of steady improvement and our recent advances in technology are in reverse proportion to our recent regression in civility. When humans can not accept a little unhappiness, they will then receive a great deal of unhappiness. Governments have come to a screeching halt in a standoff that has led to the rise of populists to "get things done." Of course there would be a counter reaction to the populists but be assured that unless or until people and governments can put aside their differences for the benefit of all, populists will keep making comebacks.
2
Economic growth is not the solution to our problems; economic growth IS the problem.
To survive, much less thrive, we must stop the quantitative growth of production and become aware of the quality of WHAT it is that we produce and decide, individually and collectively, what products serve the consensus values of human life, freedom and dignity and whatever other values we might choose. As things now stand, there is a strong correlation between the most profitable products, like weapons (whose business model is the promotion of violence, death and destruction, not to mention the profit that consists in rebuilding the things and human bodies that our weapons destroy, and then the profit of replacing the weapons with ever-more powerful and expensive ones) and plastic (whose business model is the promotion of gratuitous waste and unnecessary energy consumption and health and environmental destruction and the profit that consists in the disposing of and cleaning up after products that should never have been made in the first place and the treatment of diseases that would never have occurred but for the product).
In short, much industrial production should be stopped, which would make all of us much richer, rather than poorer, as we would have no less of the things we need that make life better rather than worse. The real problem is not economic growth, but ethical choice in production and distribution of the things that make life possible and worthwhile.
3
Something akin to the New Deal is probably forthcoming not out of electoral politics but likely in terms of an economic forced awareness analogous to historical precedence. Protectionism along with fiscal and monetary policy failures have resulted in individual and sovereign debt problems and global economic malaise. Doubling down on ill fated policies will only exacerbate the problem. The invisible hand of necessity will ultimately bring about the positive change that divisive politics will only delay.
1
I wonder sometimes if the educated elites really want to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies, or if they just like the idea of living in said societies. The educated elites I know, to the extent I understand Brooks' usage of that term, don't live in ethnically diverse pluralistic neighborhoods, work for ethnically diverse pluralistic companies, or teach or work at ethnically diverse pluralistic nonprofits and schools. In fact, they're almost uniformly white and rich. It seems so often that they "advocate" for these diverse societies as some sort of religious or idealistic proposition, a sort of self-congratulating virtue signaling, but I don't see that they live it out in their everyday lives. I don't see them welcoming Guatemalan immigrants to be their neighbors in their walled subdivisions and private schools. I wish it weren't so.
I wish I agreed with Brooks, but what I see is what I have always seen: the have nots wanting what the haves have. The populists take advantage of that to the detriment of the have nots. All too often, so do the so-called educated elites.
2
As we approach 2020, it is time for the keepers of the Republican flame to become alarmed and speak out against populism. But whatever they do, a carefully charted path through the current disaster must not mention which party is to blame. The greatest ruse of all is to keep repeating the lie that Trump is not a Republican. Who knows? Maybe some voters will believe them.
1
"The core problem is economic. Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth."
Growth actually is part of the problem, as it contributes to environmental destruction, doesn't benefit most workers (while at the same time we're asked to work more and longer hours), and is often illusory or fraudulent, as we see in the tech and financial sector. What people want is some sense of stability, purpose, financial security, and to not feel one health problem away from serious debt or bankruptcy. If we look around the world that seems best accomplished by the countries of Scandinavia. While definitely not perfect, their balance of capitalism and socialism and relative equality seems better than anything else. And yet Brooks doesn't mention it. The societies that are teetering are societies that are unequal, like ours. To accomplish greater equality, we need wealth redistribution.
4
Great article.
One distinction, however:
The source of the problem is not so much an “urban elite” vs “rural worker” divide, as it is a super-rich vs rest of us divide. The gap has been widening and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a very, very few is at the point where its absence is being felt by the masses.
The economic pie is finite. It has to be shared more equitably.
The result of economic inequality, throughout history, has always - always - been revolution.
8
"Age of Anger" by Mishra is a book that describes how all societies which have gone through a disruption due to economics react to the resulting cultural and social dislocation with populist anger. This started with the industrial revolution, but continues today as various countries like China and India join the industrial world, and countries like the US have to adapt. The end of the cold war, the death of communism, and the relatively sudden embrace of global capitalism by billions of people is the source of the economic disruption in this era. The internet has made the resulting cultural and social unrest more effective and influential. History says it will take us a generation or two to fully get over it.
1
As soon as 100% of the middle class all started BEHAVING like the middle class it truly is, the smallest of matter, when factored by squaring its invoked enlightenment/speed, would yield an enormity of energy whence the thermodynamics of economy are more concentrated in center-out equivalence than top-down entanglement.
In addition, per an op-ed alongside David's this morning, any benefit to our collective belief would definitely be better served if we democratize any notion that we've all been created in God's image by duly replacing it with our far greater awareness that our collective conscious has yet to create a God from whom we'd all wanna come. That way, any order about which more-perfect-union/formation can MOVE FORWARD is literally open-minded to a universally perpetual "e pluribus unum" singularly destined.
1
"We all know now what many of us didn’t appreciate then: Globalized democratic capitalism was going to spark a backlash."
For someone like David Brooks to admit this is somewhat remarkable. You know who did appreciate these things at the time? The people who started Occupy Wall Street, like the Anthropologist David Graeber, now at the London School of Economics. He's there by the way after a detour in his career after having been not granted tenure by Yale, something that led to a worldwide response from others in the field like the previous dead of the LSE who called him the most important anthropological theorist of his generation, anywhere. Yale's reason for not snapping him up was almost certainly because of his activism, since otherwise it made no sense.
David Brooks goes on to water down the moment of clarity above by blaming all sorts of "left wing" and "spiritually thin" culprits, in keeping with his lifelong view that if everyone just adhered to authoritarian traditional Republican principals and went to church things would be better. The real culprit meanwhile is the project of neoliberalism that impoverished entire populations by insisting on austerity programs that tried to create growth by "belt-tightening", always by the working class and poor of course, that always just made things worse.
2
Great column. The world is afire, and populism and authoritarianism has indeed proven to be hollow. I've seen the G.O.P. in the U.S., the Party of Reagan, have its traditional values of free enterprise, anti-authoritarianism, strength against enemies like Russia, and rule of law violated and changed by the odd and ideologically-unmoored populist-nativist Trump regime. As with populist strongmen everywhere Trump's first priority appears to be his personal interests, so its sad to see a Party that under Reagan operated on clear core values sacrifice those principles for a raw pursuit of power. The irony, that blind pursuit of power via Trump has already lost the G.O.P. the power of holding the U.S. House, and many more losses are yet to come...
2
Brooks, who usually writes with well-considered perspective, misses the boat on this one. Three problems.
First, he assumes causation, when the (somewhat selective) evidence he amasses merely notes correlation. Causation may exist, but he does not make the case.
Second, he ignores the qualitatively pernicious effects of the internet, a vehicle for universally selling snake oil, whether bogus consumer products, fake news, alternative facts, or false narratives.
Third, he ignores the change that is also at the root of rampant, anthropogenic global warming: the confluence of two factors, the quadrupling of the human population in little over a century and the democratization of material expectations (universal entitlement, so to speak.)
One could argue that the parallel of our current situation is not to 1989 but to 1968. An America more divided than now, with the opposition taking to the streets, essentially ignoring the electoral process entirely in favor of a "no business as usual" imperative. Mexico massacring hundreds of students to "clean up" for the Olympics. John Carlos and Tommie Smith losing their medals at that same Olympics for giving a Black Power salute. Millions in France taking to the streets to oppose De Gaulle. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to prevent "contamination" of the Warsaw Pact countries by democracy (among other things), ethnic separatist movements in Canada, Switzerland, and Nigeria (among others), and many more examples.
3
DSB, the mess starts with what we eat and drink, and health care. Anaplasmosis is endemic. Tetracycline is fed cattle in the water to suppress and spread anaplas. This destroys the microbiome of the soil, kills feed for insects and insects, and birds are dying by the billions... and we humans are oblivious to what our farms are doing, big and small... I take calls 24/7 on this subject... and we are listed. Word is spreading: parenteral, subcutaneous, do not eat anything unless you know the soil in which it grew. We are trapped. And almost helpless. Warming is a disaster. Antibiotic misuse is a disaster. Hospital are dangerous. Safe water is vital..
4
The true definition of a real populist was expressed best by Lincoln. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people".
What we have had and so has the rest of the world are Faux Populists.
True populists want income equality, fair elections, freedom of choice, freedom of Religion, good educations, good health care, decent housing, well-paying jobs and a good future for their children. These are universal wants and needs.
Until then, we have been ill served by those leaders and countries, including our own, that have been listed in Mr. Brooks column.
My hope is whomever becomes the next President will make a firm commitment to these self-evident truths.
4
You're right David Brooks - "The core problem is economic" However, it is not economic equality." It is the measure of value we give to economic success, be it a country or an individual. Trump is not an aberration. He is the extreme example of who society has told us we should be. We are bombarded with messages every day that tell us Trump is right. It is called advertising. Affluent liberal columnist and politicians tell us daily we are not getting our share of the money. And yet we all know someone in our life who is poor and more at peace with the world than those with more money. And we admire and wonder at their happiness. It is not economic equality that the liberal politicians are selling. It is the dream of economic equality. We are stirring in our sleep and waking up from that economic dream. We now go to bed each night searching for a new dream. Trump gave a lot of people a dream that has turned into a nightmare. God, we are desperate for a new dream.
3
Is it true that "These days, the protesters are fighting for freedom" ? It is true that around the world as at home the rural and working classes are struggling for their future and protesting being left behind. "Populist" movements may have high aspirations: "freedom," "work," "education," jobs, the rule of law. Nonetheless, as you survey the populist revolts and revolutions of the past 20 years, in most cases the energy, passion, and anger, end up being entrained and manipulated by demagogues and authoritarians with a tendency to very poor outcomes. Alas the situation is not unlike Europe between the World Wars.
Democracy is hard and needs both fertile soil and infrastructure. Liberals and conservatives alike seem devoid of ideas that can successfully mobilize this populist energy for the good. Meanwhile our own capacities (which have a history of not being so successful) in this regard are in the process of rapid decline.
1
"Have you noticed that the world is on fire?" begins Mr. Brooks, but he and the corporate world have decided it is figurative while Greta and I see it as all too literal. The climate is evidently not their priority---though soon it will be everyone's.
2
@Newell McCarty I don't know as if I've ever read a Brooks column where he acknowledges the enormity and the severity of the climate crisis. He's in a bubble.
2
There is a glut of electronic entertainments in the modern world. Most people today can't even walk down the street without their handhelds, including children who used to play with each other. I watch mothers who openly neglect their babies. Can any society survive that relies on so much unproductive time-wasting?
2
PLease go take a look at the actual economic evidence than come back. What destroys effective growth are neoliberal policies. Populist poplicies do just fine, which is why places like Scandinavia and France have higher productivities than the U.S. Economic "growth" that just ends up buried in billionaire bank accounts isn't growth.
1
"The core problem is economic." No, David, the core problem is that we have bought into the notion that economics is the core problem. What has initiated the most recent swing of the pendulum is a market system - the one that you championed for many years - that placed "economic efficiency" and the banal measure of GDP growth as our raison d'être. Under this regime, it was acceptable to permit cities, i.e. places where people live and raise families, to disintegrate because they were deemed no longer places to conduct business profitably. Until we make our economic arrangements an instrument of how we choose to live rather than an end in themselves, there can be no stable social bargain.
1
Mr. Brooks, you are asking for a lot here. Show me a time in history where such powerful social forces have been peacefully negotiated among a divided citizenry. The internet and globalization have unleashed these forces, previously dormant. I am pessimistic over successful peaceful resolutions in these deeply conflicted countries.
3
"Globalized democratic capitalism was going to spark a backlash. It led to growing economic and cultural clashes between the educated urbanites, who thrived, and the rural masses, who were left behind."
Not only the best column by Mr Brooks, it's the best I've read this year, and that's saying something as the year comes to a close.
Brilliant.
3
Revolt by those who have been “marginalized”, or “left behind” is one of the oldest and most repeated stories in human history. Hunter gatherers were left behind by organized agricultural societies. Workers were left behind by Pharoes. Serfs were left behind by nobles and royalty. After the industrial revolution, craftspeople were left behind by factory owners. Today, factory workers are being left behind by tech billionaires. The idea that it’s possible to create a society without stratification is a chimera: stratification is in our genes. But we can, and must, do a better job at reducing some of its really negative effects.
3
Not really sure this frame fits. Among other things, it leaves out the massive technological changes that are feeding much of this discontent. Digitization is destroying jobs, livelihoods and ways of life at warp speed. It's also concentrating more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands to the point that individuals are beginning to rival national governments in power and influence. That appears to be the goal of some of the world's wealthiest people. Exhibit A is Mark Zuckerberg's plan to create his own currency and banking system, a bold power grab that could one day make him as powerful as the United States government. The very notion is chilling.
What Brooks gets right is that the current system is not working for the majority of people worldwide, and that is stoking unrest. But it seems to me that the protests erupting for various reasons around the globe signal a new and potentially even more unpredictable phase of populism, not a rebellion against it.
Fixing this problem is far more difficult than Brooks makes it out to be. it will require not just a reordering of economic and social policy, but also a strategy to stop the shredding of our lives by technology as well as arrest technology's natural bias toward concentrating wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. A tall order to put it mildly, one that will prove especially difficult in the U.S. with its powerful legal and cultural biases against strong government intervention.
6
"Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth."
What a minute. This sounds like a dig at Sanders and Warren as much as Trump. What is the value of economic growth if my wages are stagnant and all the new wealth goes to the top? You mean neo-liberal economic policies have been working out for us? We needn't be Venezuela. The USA already has Social Security and Medicare, many countries throughout Europe have universal health care. Recently we haven't been trying left-wing economic policies. If we did, it would help the middle class immensely.
"The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies."
Speak for yourself. I'm very well-educated. I have a Ph.D. Honestly, I don't care at all about living in "ethnically diverse pluralistic societies". In fact, I prefer living in a strong community of people who are ethnically similar to me. Also, I care deeply about my ability to thrive in the modern economy. I feel like I am drowning in the modern economy. Seriously, give me universal health care and taxes on the rich without diversity any day of the week.
Stop presuming that just because I went to university I am some socially liberal to the extreme SWJ type and I am fiscally conservative because I think I can get rich off of a college degree and economic growth. I'm a normal person who wants a sense of community and good life like everyone else.
4
Despite the grandiose claims of 'globalisation's' proponents it was never about redistribution or uplifting the poor. Globalisation was about the rich increasing their wealth by shifting production (and jobs) to low-wage countries; with non-organised labour forces. The most favoured countries were those that were also without environmental standards.
The workers, in countries like America, were then told that to compete that had to join the race to bottom on wages, conditions and living standards. The only surprise in this, is that it took so long for the popular revolt to occur. Probably because it took a while for the author's 'middle classes' to realise that they had been duped just as badly as the factory workers.
Farmers did not dodge the globalisation "bullet" either; since those profiting from exports are largely agri-businesses, operating on the same " moral principles" as Robert Mugabe or 'El Chapo'.
7
"Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth." , says Mr. Brooks. But growth destroys the environment which leads to; the environment destroys us. Unless growth is sustainable and its hard to see that happening right now unless the population numbers drop dramatically. Just a thought.
3
@Mr. Jones
Yes I share your pessimism about population growth. The Population Bomb is still with us as the world continues to add 80 million people a year, as it has for decades, as the world approaches 8 billion people, up from 2 billion in 1930. The media in developed countries are pushing for more population growth, especially with immigration, rather than enjoying all the many benefits of low fertility rates of 2 or less. Why have limitless population growth with rising congestion, noise, air,water pollution, urban sprawl, and less of the natural world.
So the world needs love ... which is regarded as a threat to freedom, but which, paradoxically, is freedom’s essential condition. And this is not for sale, nor is it realized through complicated strategy and tactics; it comes with the courage to trust in decency and goodwill and readiness to forgive. In other words, getting “the me” out of the way. Though the problem of pervasive human discord to-day seems to have new elements from events 30 years ago, it’s not exactly a new problem at all. For example (though it goes back much further), take a listen to the 1958 song “They’re Rioting in Africa,” by Kingston Trio.
2
Isn't it amazing that it is 2019 and we are still struggling with the same ideological battles waged by guys like William Jennings, Roosevelt, FDR. Populists, progressives, liberals,conservatives, socialists, they are not proposing anything new. We are all just going through motions, repeating the historical cycles. The biggest difference however, is that nowadays we are more than ever ready to gobble up whatever the propaganda machine throws at us. Orson Welles got nothing on Hannity. Until we step out of our own bubbles, nothing will change. All these conflicts, just an occasional burst and then we insulate again.
2
What Mr. Brooks attempts to explain in terms of politics is really an issue of demographics. Technology and globalization are rapidly reducing the need for human labor at the same time that the world's population is growing. Because basic labor has become cheap as an economic input, individuals scramble to piece together a living with multiple jobs while their bills mount and their standard of living declines. Those who are successful under current conditions are the minority who are well educated and/or innovative. It is also helpful to have won the parent lottery, to have been born into a stable home with family resources and an emphasis on education.
The resentment and competition between those able to thrive in this economy and the majority who struggle and fall behind will not be solved easily. Our world will continue to suffer unrest no matter what political system gains control, until there is a solution to this problem of demographics.
9
When people talk about foreign affairs, it’s often shallow and light on detail. And this can be a sign that they’re not *really* talking about what’s going on over there. They’re trying to make sense of something closer to home.
In this case, David Brooks’s scattershot references to the cacophony of global revolts culminates in some wishful thinking about Donald Trump.
3
Let's not mention crippling economic sanctions led by the US on countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba whose aim is to destabilize the current governments...and direct and indirect meddling in elections and internal politics through USAID funding and CIA in countries like Bolivia, Nicaragua and the Ukraine or actual invasions and regime change. Some of what Mr. Brooks describes are indeed "populist" uprisings against the status quo. Chile, Iran and Iraq are examples. Bolivia is an example of a military coup overthrowing a "populist" democratically elected government. There is no clear evidence that these citizen uprisings(aren't they by definition a form of populist revolt unless orchestrated by outside agitators?)are collectively a revolt against "populism".
2
Why does populism/nationalism in the United States always begin with the adjective "white," David?
Many people of color have been left behind in this economy but they are not Trump supporters. They are working class. They are struggling.
Populism in the U.S. is tied more directly to racism than it is to economic distress. That's the sad truth. And more than 150 years after the Civil War it is appalling.
7
@History Guy Indeed. Populism in the US is defined by George Wallace: Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
“The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project”
So easy to say. At some point the world needs to realize an essential truth that no government, in whatever form, can deliver prosperity for all its citizens. It is pure fantasy.
2
We need Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt to square the circle. Smash the oligarchs and restore hope and dignity to workers. Perhaps a resurgence of democracy in the workplace, unions, free from hoodlums and other shortsighted criminals. Perhaps the recognition of barriers as essential to capitalism. Once the “monied” classes recognize that there are vast profits to be made from satisfying wants. Exploiting human needs is definitively parasitical.
The foundational narrative of economics is self serving. Labor is not a factor of production. Labor is majority of people. While it is familiar and does enable calculations the make “management” able to move without concern or compassion it is a fundamental dehumanization of the majority, of all who must work to eat. Conferring the term “Labor” on humanity denies individuality.
Then there’s “supply and demand”, a useful notion in all instances where satisfying human wants but an abomination when addressing needs. Exploiters insist that medical and pharmaceutical progress rely on competition obscuring the majority of advancements which originated in government funded university labs. In a democratic republic, it is appropriate for government to fund research that satisfies human needs. Prices determined by the market are absurd in healthcare. Pain, death, breathlessness represent profound needs. Exploiting them is immoral, tantamount to torture.
2
"Globalized democratic capitalism" unfortunately never happened.
The world went from imperialist empires of goods, using enslavement, exploitation, property (intellectual as well as real) theft, as the way to create a world system favorable for a few. to using a facade of nice-sounding laws and principles to cover over continued structured inequality.
From the beginning, the 95% of the populations at the wrong end of this deal have been trying to find ways to change this.
What we are seeing are continued attempts to do this, and often the distortion of these movements by false leaders.
Whose side are you on?
One big reason is- (officially) educated urban middle class and traditionally dynastic elites got detached with the vast majority of low income, mostly, rural people. The perception that having that increasingly expensive and increasingly redundant college degree is basically essential to have a middle class life with a job with a living wage was, is, and will remain wrong for many reasons. People, who don't like accumulating academic degrees or can not afford to buy it, also must have the confidence, respect, and social acceptance, and a say in public policy issues.
Recent data indicate that top 0.1% of richest Americans and corporations (basically the same) are increasingly targeting shrinking American middle population to grow their wealth is as poor Americans have no wealth to give away. Economic growth became addictive and obsession for our politicians and economic elites. They refuse to accept that World has finite resources. They refuse to even try credible alternative economic models that recognize ecological limits of human development and emphasize social equality.
Growing number of former middle class people with education and exposure are becoming frustrated and sometimes angry.
Corruption in the guise of globalization, which tries to accommodate many very corrupt countries for the benefit of big companies and its shareholders and top executives, are also helping to inflame that volatile sociopolitical situation.
3
Use of technology is making the situation worse, far worse, as the land of Silicon Valley in the most educated and progressive state in USA is proving.
When a village/city/state/country develops it must help the original inhabitants. Benefit local poor as well and help them becoming middle class. It must not mean that local poor or middle class people are left behind and forced to leave the place while a tiny number of more "qualified" or "able" (for lack of better term) people from around the world gather there.
After factoring for costs of living, California is the poorest state in the union.
An average of 14 percent of Americans live below the poverty line by census measures. California made major news this month, reclaiming a valuable economic marker and surpassing Britain as the fifth largest economy in the world. Its growth after the recession has accelerated under President Trump.
2
David, in your social bargain, someone needs to pay for the working classes' way to thrive in the modern economy. The only ones who can pay are the wealthy who have hoarded the cash that should be put to work in the economy to stimulate growth. If they won't willingly invest in job growth through creating jobs and raising workers' salaries (and they haven't), the only other alternative is higher taxes.
David Brooks is finally advocating for raising taxes on the wealthy. If only he could be plain-spoken about it.
4
First of all, who could have predicted that Donald Trump, the grifter of grifters, would have majored in self-dealing as President?
And yes, it is partly economic, as the "economic populists" like Trump have essentially governed as radical corporatists.
But in the United States it is also a moral revolution against xenophobia, misogyny, flat-earthism, and four decades of trickle-down economic nonsense. It is a revolt against government of, by, and for the corporation. It is an uprising against exactly the kinds of government policies that led to Donald Trump's wealth (at least the appearance of wealth).
Bill Clinton, for all his faults, at least said a couple of things right. One is that abortion should be legal, safe, and rare. The other is that a person who works hard and plays by the rules should not live in poverty.
This is not going to change until we radically revise the personal income tax. The answer is not Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax. Rather, part of the answer is to eliminate the distinctions that reward income from wealth while punishing income from wages, salaries, and tips. Simplify the tax code, but start right there.
3
There was such a "social bargain," it was called the New Deal, which Republicans from Reagan onward have tried to destroy, which is chronicled in Thomas Frank's "The Wrecking Crew." Lewis Powell, President Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and subsequent Republican administrations have systematically destroyed economic equity and fiscal and environmental responsibility. This outcome was not an accident, but a policy gestated in policy think tanks. "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart."
4
It isn’t so much populism as population that is behind the upheaval in last 30 years. Paul Erlich was ‘t wrong about a “population bomb” but got the timing off a bit. When Mr. Brooks writes about no-growth Latin America, no-jobs Lebanon, and growing inequality almost everywhere, he neglects to mention that the modicum of wealth to live satisfying lives is still calculated by the equation (total wealth) / (total population) = average wealth. A totality of factors, e.g. monopolies, excessively long patent protection, tariffs, and politics seems to have limited the growth of wealth, whereas population keeps increasing.
I can’t claim originality in saying this, after all there already was Mr. Malthus, but recognizing that there are limits on the rate of economic growth suggests that there need to be limits on population growth.
2
The Republicans have closed ranks against the truth, against their future political interests, and against the general wishes of the voters. They feel that everyone else is so fractured that this final tactic will allow them to get away with maintaining power under Trump.
I guess the Democrats have to come together and strike a bargain to take back power and accomplish a few basic goals involving the working and middle classes and the super rich of the corporations.
I don't like it but I'm appalled by what the Republicans have wrought as a "winning strategy." We can't let it fester on.
2
Growth is a loaded word. Capitalism has a dark side. Wasn't the objective, a balance? We are losing our country in the name of growth.
1
@barbara
You are not quite correct: we losing the civilised world in the name of growth.
One can look at the 1930s era of dictators as the culmination of populism. It required WWII to reverse (except for Spain's Franco who held on another 30 years). Now we're reliving 1929-32, so have many more years to celebrate the joys of populism. This time though, with Trump (here to stay), the US will not be the outlier, but in the vanguard (with Putin, Xi, Bolsanaro, Orban, etc, etc, ad nauseum)
@Rethinking
World War II did not get rid of dictators, it merely redistributed them. Franco was the only dictator in western Europe but Stalin (then Krushchev) and Mao appeared to the east. Along with a selection of Asian, African and Latin American examples. Not to mention the "Nanny State" in the UK.
There has never been a year, in my lifetime, when the world was free of dictators. The names you mention are simply the latest crop. Trump, by the way, is too incompetent to be an effective dictator; he is more of a "puppet wannabe".
Yes, a "new social contract" is needed that will reasonably and effectively distribute the income. "Redistribution" is a term that won't be used, replaced by new terms that explicitly recognize the realities of the new world economy. How we get from here to there, in fits and starts, hopefully no terrible wars thrown in, will be the history of the rest of the 21st century.
1
I'm afraid we are still a long way off from Mr. Trump's supporters realizing that his "policies" (which seem to be set on random) are not working to their financial favor.
1
It's obvious after watching and listening to the entire HIIC testimony over the past few days there won't be any "social bargain" coming soon. That requires a common language. I was amazed to watch multiple GOP committee members conflate presumption and assumption inn their desperate attempt to defend the President.
A legal presumption is a conclusion based upon a particular set of facts, combined with established laws, logic or reasoning. It is a rule of law allowing a court to assume a fact is true until it is rebutted by the greater preponderance of the evidence against it.
Dr. Fiona Hill identified the problem we are facing now when she pointed to the Putin's successful and current exploitation of the political divides not just in our country but Europe as well.
Adam Schiff pointed the way out... "We are better than this!"
Health care reform in America would go a long way to helping people feel less help-less. I just went on Medicare which is great, but my prescription drug coverage has a $430 deductible and a recent prescription my Dr gave me is going to cost $420 for 30 days. It's the end of the calendar year so I am holding off till January because I can't afford it right now. This means my body is being damaged by excess blood sugar in the meantime. I'm in that space of having to choose between the meds I need and the repairs on my car. So, welcome to America where we have the "best" health care in the world, IF YOU CAN AFFORD IT
@Larry From Motown
I hope you will not hate me too much for saying this but $430 would cover my prescriptions for a year, with change. Even without my special discounts, $430 would still cover you for close to a year.
It is strange how globalisation never seems to operate in the favour of ordinary Americans.
Populism arises when inequality and fear intersect. The "public" will try anything for a change, whether Obama or Trump and are more prone to embrace supposed strong men like Trump. He tells them what they want to hear, not what he actually can do or will do and it takes some time for them to understand they were conned. Whether the country can survive until the the con man goes away is the question. The second problem is what is real change. The combination of globalization, automation, AI, ever rising costs to house and have simple things like health care for your family creates fear both now and fear of the future. Politicians love fear and feed it to get elected. The third issue is inequality. When one gold plated toilet would provide any number of families with health care for a year or you are stuck in your job because you cannot afford to lose the health care or you haven't had a real boost in wages when accounting for cost increases and inflation, you see the inequality.
3
There are plenty of highly educated people in urban area who definitely are not elites. They are educators, healers, public servants and others who are paid wages that barely keep them in adequate housing. There are plenty of rural landowners who become millionaires by sitting back and collecting agricultural subsidies that were originally intended to protect family farms - but in fact do the opposite.
This is not an urban/rural divide; this is a rich/poor divide that is getting wider and wider.
Capitalists do not grow economies. Demand grows economies. Right now all the money is stuck at the top, in the possession of obscenely wealthy people who could not spend it all if they tried. Meanwhile more money pours into their coffers while they sleep through one night than most people make in a year of hard work.
Until we find a way to reward work and stop the voracious corporate welfare machine, there should be unrest. FDR diagnosed and mitigated the basic problem nearly 3/4 of a century ago, setting the stage for a generation of growing economic equality. Then the Republicans began dismantling FDR's New Deal. Now they tell us that anyone wanting to revive it is a wild-eyed radical with crazy pie-in-the-sky ideas that couldn't possibly work, even though we know they did and do work much better than the endless tax cuts offered by the other side.
7
Welcome to the Democratic Party, Mr. Brooks, and give a fond farewell to the all but dead real conservatives. I recall many columns of yours that espoused the old "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" story. That encouraging philosophy failed to notice that most had no bootstraps to pull up.
4
There are two intertwined but different types of corruption in play: Economic corruption, where it seems it's no longer enough to have an advantage...you have to take it all. Political corruption, where some consensus and cooperation have given way to scorched-Earth tactics. These two are self-reinforcing, as the elites are insulated from the adverse implications in return for either active support for or tacit acceptance of excesses. But the life of the average person doesn't get better, and as they watch their leaders enrich and/or empower themselves, they question the value of a system that leaves them behind. Until we fix this, we will have more upheaval.
1
This is a thought mess. "Winds are blowing all over the world, and it's getting windier, and the fires from the west winds will melt the icebergs and then flood the cities so we need to be better at building boats together. And remember every day how smart I am"
I am a big fan of David Brooks but this particular piece is nothing but a long sequence of apples to oranges comparisons.
2
A branch of government that most if not all “leaders” try to ignore except at election time is the people. When elections are not occurring, politicians do everything they can to control the people and almost nothing to include them in the political process. Indeed power corrupts. Populism is just one more facade at autocrats disposal in their arsenal of people control mechanisms.
1
I wonder. There are short-term and long-term historical trends. The mega trend in the world, especially the West, appears to be toward some kind of nationalist or (if you prefer) populist conservatism. This takes many forms, but it is a consistent theme in places as diverse as the USA, Latin American, even Northern Europe. Are phenomena like Warren/Sanders in the US or Corbyn in Britain really a wave of the future, or more like foam on the waves?
Let's not forget that politicians are only to happy to exploit people's grievances for their own gain. If politicians actually led, these outcomes would probably be different.
1
Meanwhile, here at home income inequality is at a 50-year high. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 has not changed in 10 years. More than 500,000 Americans, many of them children, are homeless.
Millions of Americans live from one paycheck to the other.
3
Not a chance. They aren't protesting populism.
They are protesting rigid systems that aren't responsive. Systems that are headed in the wrong direction. Systems that are that way because they are corrupt. From models of neoliberalism like Chile to authoritarians like China. It's the same.
2
Add to this, the failure of populist nationalism in the UK which is now in economic recession. The U.S. GDP rose 2.0 percent in the second quarter of 2019, 1.9 percent in the third quarter and is projected to grow 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter because of Trump's trade war. Growth has successively slowed since Trump has been in office. This is Trump's biggest threat in 2020. His economy will be flirting with recession.
2
Brooks’s implication is, in my reading, that neither “educated elites” nor “working class people” can write new social contract, but philosophers of a new era in which digital globalization has been waking up the vigorous consciousness of freedom for actions on streets and agora levels, on which manifestations of protests against corrupted governments and cold hearted populists, are actually going on right now here and there in the world. Unfortunately, there is no philosopher such types as selected those of the bygone era. No in our days as today, that is my view. I think Brooks probably holds the same view as mine (regarding no more philosophers). So, to me, his obvious implication is some very educated elites who are not bound to particular interests for their own, but have good and strong influential powers over both conservatives and liberals, and even able to cover progressives and non-aggressive far rights to direct a unity. Hypothetically, such elites exist and initiate a new social contract. What will happen as succession in immediacy, however, is non-philosophical dissection of the social contract into divisive interests, which would be directed as such by focus groups and multiple interests strategy agencies or companies. My expectation and hope, thus, go to the people themselves. Yes, we live in a new era. Now, people can write a book for their social contract as new to retrieve and revive the best of liberal democracy by their actions and platforms unbound.
1
That “social bargain” is contingent upon an economic bargain, an equitable rebalancing of the relationship between effort and reward. When almost all members of a society are able to at least adequately meet their needs, friction between them is reduced.
In our country’s current political cycle, one populist extreme (Trumpism) pits the “left-behind” against various “others”: China, “socialists”, global corporations, immigrants, etc., while the Left (Sanders, Warren) proposes taxing wealth, income, and corporate profits and simply directly funding desired services (education, health care, etc.).
An economic bargain that could be embraced by all would be based on investment of both labor and capital, with an earned return to both, a sort of grand public-private enterprise: appropriate and fair taxation that is invested in much-needed infrastructure, both physical and human, that puts people to work and meets both individual and societal needs (including the needs of those unable to currently contribute their labor, e.g. the disabled, the unskilled, the aged, children).
Neither bashing convenient scapegoats, not offering “free stuff” is going to cut it.
1
I've noticed what's going on. I write from Uruguay, South America. Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and Mexico are all showing the strains of which you write. China is now the largest trading partner in Latin America. The U.S. has all but disappeared from the list of important players in those countries...save Mexico, which has to deal with Trump's blackmail vis a vis immigrants.
Writing a new social contract in these countries is a near oxymoron. The new social contract in the U.S. where the educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies is at least possible, if not probable. "Nimbyism" in the broadest sense is still too strong. Until the disparity of wealth distribution can be addressed and solved, we may as well learn to live with chaos and increased violence.
This is the message of Elizabeth Warren----you need to preserve capitalism, but, at the same time, curb his worse tendency funnel money to the top. You do that with a mix of strong safety net programs, a real progressive tax system, strong regulatory oversight, and public works program. You can argue over the details of this mix or what should be included or excluded, but, the market system, with all of its flaws does generate economic growth---the problem always has been how to make certain that growth does not end up in the hands of a few hundred people.
9
Very difficult to know what is meant by "populism" here, either in a global context or just in the context of contemporary America. Has populism actually been tried in the United States? Hillary certainly didn't promote it, and Trump channels some of the passion without actually recognizing its aims (neither party does, but the GOP is worse, obviously). But if populism in some sense refers to promoting the interests of the people, then here are a few things populism would mean in the United States:
1. affordable health care for all (it doesn't have to be Medicare for all)
2. decent schools for all (and affordable post-secondary education)
3. an end to foreign entanglements that have no clearly defined objectives in the national interest (but do channel tax dollars to the military-industrial complex)
4. higher taxes on the wealthy not to "redistribute wealth" in any simplistic sense but to create a socioeconomic culture in which more people have a chance to lead a decent life (and the money might go for things like infrastructure, which helps everyone)
The list could be much longer, but the point is simple: what Brooks decries as "populism" might very well be a) what thoughtful citizens actually want in order to b) improve the lives of regular people. It is Brooks' own retrograde elitism that fails to understand the obvious. Which is pretty much par for the course with Brooks.
3
It's not "populism" that is being rejected. It is fact that leaders are corrupt, self-interested, and out-of-touch with the people they are supposed to govern.
Tax hikes are a major trigger for the protests. A real populist government would be lowering taxes on the middle class, not raising them.
1
David Brooks tells it like it isn't. For one, the protests in Iran have nothing to do with populism.
Effective populism, or even good government in general, rests on addressing Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In some cases, personal freedom will be the issue, and in others, economic prosperity.
America is overdue for populism of the progressive kind. Since Reagan became president we have seen growth, but all of the benefit of that growth has gone to the top; median income has hardly changed, while economic conditions in general for the lower middle class and poor have declined. The top 1% saw their incomes triple over this time; the world is their oyster under Reaganomics.
Someday this economic reality will cause people to spill into the streets here; we had a taste of this with Occupy Wall Street. But if trends persist, it will engender a labor revolt never before seen here, along with Republicans embracing fascism to quell it.
4
@Kevin Blankinship Not a pretty picture.
The thing is that the globalization of the economy was working in a lot of places. Look at how the standard of living has improved tremendously in places like China, Vietnam, Columbia. The real problem, at least here, is that insufficient resources are being spent on training workers for jobs in a new economy and the financial burden of higher education has become onerous.
1
The populists cited in Mr. Brooks article have all run against "the government" and persuaded disenfranchised voters that they alone can solve the problems that "the government" cannot. These populists all have one thing in common: they are supported by oligarchs who fuel the anti-government movement. These oligarchs don't want the government to succeed and don't want the government to regulate their businesses.... and they certainly don't want to pay any taxes themselves.
A "new social contract that gives both the educated urban elites and the heartland working classes a piece of what they want most" would require an effective government that regulates businesses, redistributes the outlandish wealth that is centralized into the hands of fewer individuals, and provides everyone's children with an equal opportunity to live a comfortable life. In order to take on this "big job" the leaders in these nations will need to succeed without the financial backing of the oligarchs who want to keep things the way they are.
3
"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project. The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies."
Glad you have come to see the light David. So are you endorsing Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren? Because that's exactly the Sanders/ Warren platform. A fair andunrigged deal for working middle class Americans, reinstitution of the demotic freedoms ripped down by Donald and the GOP, and full implementation of a non-racist, non-sexist society.
We don’t make anything but consume everything . Our time is spent in consumption and entertainment
We have neglected the time for individual development in all human areas and have fallen hopelessly behind in all our wants individually and collectively. A culture of money ,stories ,celebrity’s and super egos has not helped . The time for high fives is over a cruel reality has emerged : we are not what we think we are.
3
My first reading of this article would probably give psychologists a lot of material to work with: I thought it was funny, that David Brooks has a great sense of humor even though probably inadvertent. I mean how the article went from disaster to disaster to climax wonderfully at the government raising taxes on hookah restaurants in Saudi Arabia--I just thought it was funny. Obviously psychologists would remark that I'm laughing at clearly an inappropriate thing to laugh about, but in my defense Brooks was sort of doing that too...In other words, when things get tense the body reacts, you laugh, cry, sweat, try to get inspired, etc.
Seriously, this is one of the best articles Brooks has written and he is correct about the whole and with his closing sentence: "Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
The thing that really makes me angry though, is we have Brooks clearly laying it out, and we can see it's a challenge like trying to construct a house or structure a painting or build a piece of technology--that it's a situation that begs for design--but we never really get to hear from creative minds, people just thinking wildly about solutions, but rather hear daily from the same old right and left wing political perspective; essentially there is a vast and ugly control of the very argument from power structures in society, that we're not permitted to hear a wide variety of designs which would be routine in any number of fields and disciplines, in arts/sciences.
1
I am still appalled that Brooks and his fellow travelers in the media get away with calling these nativist, neo-fascist political movements ‘populist.’ There’s certainly nothing ‘populist’ about Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
A ‘populist’ advocates for the people - the 99% who are not the playboy beneficiaries of family fortunes, hedge fund billionaires, CEOs. The people want and need clean air and water, rewarding jobs, fair pay, safe working conditions, affordable health care and education and housing, modern infrastructure, security in old age.
Republican policies - particularly Trumpist policies - threaten these vital elements of our quality of life at every turn; and thus far have only caused the public’s indebtedness to swell, depressed manufacturing output and, oof course, helped the uber rich get even richer. Turning working people against one another on the basis of race, religion, national origin... that’s the cheapest, oldest trick in the book, a fan dance to keep the exploited in a fog, scratching and clawing with one another rather than identifying and turning on those who exploit them.
That’s not populism. That’s plutocratic, kleptocratic plunder. That’s banana republicanism. That’s what the Gruesome Old Party has been hawking since the 1980s.
3
Mr. Brooks the word liberal was used numerous times in your opinion piece. I get it, liberals are the republican scapegoat for all that has happened to rural America and that is now happening to the middle class.
That said, nowhere did I read the word conservative. Unless my age is clouding my mind it was the conservatives that ignited the Reagan revolution and brought free market fundamentalism to this country and started the culture wars. It was Reagan, and his get rich friends, that opened the door to ruthless globalization that left rural Americans behind and is now attacking the middle-class.
Remember the Laffer curve, tax cuts for corporations and the job creators, and trickle down supply side economics that was going to raise all economic boats? How has that worked out for rural America and the middle-class? Those are not liberal economic programs, they are republican orthodoxy.
This is a very crafty piece that avoids placing the blame for the unrest in this country, and many others, on the backs of Reagan conservatives. The fact the corporations and hedge funds have destroyed the economy of numerous Central American countries and created economic refugees that are desperate for a better life is not linked to liberal policies; this is conservative free market sanctioned looting at work. Invading and toppling governments to ensure the free flow of capital is one of the cornerstones of the Reagan revolution.
33
@old soldier
One final observation, at every opportunity the law and order soldiers of the Reagan revolution have weakened the rule of law to strengthen their power and control of this country. To people like Barr, McConnell, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, et al. the law is a tool to grab and maintain political power.
10
Populism is the response. The inequality produced by crony capitalism is the stimulus. Here in the US, Trump told the people what they already believed and knew -- the system is rigged. Our government has chosen to regulate the economy for the benefit of wealthy, capitalist donors.
Populism should not be confused with populist leaders. When the people shout enough and demand change, you have a populist wave. When an opportunist like Trump, or a real patriot like FDR, steps up and says follow me, you have a populist leader.
Mr. Brooks tars populism with the sins of populist leaders and condemns populism. The truth is that Trump was elected because our political parties are unable, or unwilling, to produce a patriot like FDR.
11
One of the reasons that we have revolts and find so few persons rational and agreeable is there is hardly protestors who does not think more of what they want to say than of the reply to what is said. The most clever and polite are content with only seeming attentive while we perceive in their mind and eyes that at the very time they are wandering from what is said and desire to return to what they want to say. Instead of considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer well are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation.
1
Here is another simplification to suit the ideological narrative that the pundit is peddling. I happened to know Latin America very well, and to the true examples given of Venezuela, Mexico and Bolivia; the exact deterioration of economic conditions happened under governments that are aligned with liberal economic policies that Mr Brooks identifies with growth such as Argentina , Brazil and Chile.
The truth is a lot more complicated that what Mr Brooks try to explain here. I will suggest that the inequality generated by the market fundamentalism born in the USA thirty years ago is now receding because of its failures, but still controls the economic levers of the world. Many of the populist movements are fake attempts to prolong that order in concealed fashion, others cannot succeed without the acceptance of the centers of power. The end result is that justice and equality take a back seat to the greed and hierarchies of the traditional order. The solution is not simple or obvious, but should be rooted in equality of opportunity to health, education and political decision making. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders represent those ideas, they may not be electable today in the USA, but that does not mean that is not the right recipe, the American public may choose fast food over a healthy diet, but we know the result.
3
Most people want to believe in democracy and equality. They operate under the mistaken notion that the values embodied in democracy and fairness are embraced by everyone. The reality is quite different. Consider, corporations today are organized around maximizing shareholder value. Nothing else matters. They are by design amoral, undemocratic and some would say sociopathic. When government (which is supposed to represent the interests of citizens) won't or, as it seems today, can't defend the interests of regular folk, then bad things happen.
Strangely, there are a huge number of Americans who will, in spite of the facts, vote in the interest of the very sociopathic corporations rather than themselves.
3
Blaming those on left or right who rise up against the inequities in their system is shooting the messenger. What is needed to address the inequities is not some mythical "middle road" but meaningful change to address the inequities. In the U.S. that's exactly what Bernie and Liz are addressing.
8
Yes, the world is on fire, David Brooks. We are experiencing the equivalent of 1883's volcanic eruption of Krakatoa today.
Leaders toppling like tenpins, global civic unrest, a literal sea-change on earth. Ethnic nationalism and authoritarian regimes led by strongmen in Europe, Asia, Latin America, England and America are about to explode. Populism is halting economic growth while overpopulation rises unabated. Three things through time have controlled overpopulation and authoritarianism on Earth -- wars, famines and disease. They're all present today and we are wondering what on earth will happen tomorrow.
7+ billion and growing, almost three times the number of human beings as the year I was born. The planet is reeling under the pressure of human consumption. Combine that with non stop technical change. Of course there is social unrest in every corner of the (flat?) globe!
The insatiable avarice of powerful, wealthy and sometimes corrupt leaders of corporations, governments, religions leave few choices for survival to the vast majority of humans. Yes, the horror of the French Revolution and the unbending social castes that spawned it, should be a warning bell clanging through this dark night.
The same technology that can destroy us can save us. If it is used for all and not the few. If there was ever a time in human history to tell the selfish and greedy "enough" it is now.
6
Populism leads to these problems because it assigns fault to the wrong groups of people. As a populist says things like "the immigrants are causing our problems" or "other countries are moochers", people start fighting and responding in ways that don't help and don't fix the problems.
Here in the US, a core problem is wealth and income inequality. Our political problem is that when candidates correctly identify the problem and propose solutions, Conservatives and the right go berserk and create populist alternatives.
6
"Write a new social contract that gives both the educated urban elites and the heartland working classes a piece of what they want most."
There it is. The required Brooksian either-or, black or white rhetorical framing that underpins all his thinking and analysis instead of acknowledging the interdependency and complexity of the variables in play. It is tired, overused, and inadequate for the analysis Times readers deserves.
4
This opinion piece is on the mark about the global corruption of the so-called populist movement. Still, there is a pervasive social undercurrent, equal parts paranoia and jealous comparison, that I just don't understand. I'm not immune: on paper, I'm in a great financial position. I have a good income, robust savings and two fulfilling, solid jobs between my partner and me. But I don't feel great, in fact, I'm terrified. I know most of my friends are as well. I can only imagine how people my age (30s) with a serious debt load must feel. And I suspect this feeling cuts across the political divide. So I have to disagree with Brooks' final prediction. I think whoever can speak to our collective paranoia will win the near future. Trump's already done it once by amplifying fears. What we desperately need is a leader who can turn down the volume on all the noise that has us white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel of life.
3
Populism and climate change are linked. Relatively nascent, agriculture is showing signs of collapse around the world, which drives migration pressure, and, in turn, drives populism.
Yes, population is a huge factor in causing our biggest problems. If we are unsuccessful at mitigating climate change, and we merely perceive that we can’t feed everyone, risk of world wide conflicts increasing to unprecedented levels is humanity’s greatest risk.
3
And this all comes at the worst possible time, when we all need to unite and work together to mitigate climate change. Sobering.
3
In re to: "These days, it doesn’t take much to set off a giant wave of anger... In France,... it was rising fuel prices."
What the protests in France show is that governments will pay a price when they choose to place the heaviest burden of environmentally friendly policies on society’s least prosperous while giving corporations and the wealthy a pass.
3
Ask yourself, how can we avoid strategies of divide and conquer, ignore distracting messages and instead create a way for us to work with citizens and government in a format that eliminates these ingrained fears by understanding both supply and demand? Science and many of the human sciences are beautifully based on evidence- based, fact-yielding work. The problem is that in many of the most important aspects of existence, there simply are no ‘facts’ available. The big questions that bedevil us, individually and collectively, have no facts to appeal to. – How should we live? – What is the right economic system to institute? – What sort of relationships should we have? – What choices should we make? – Who are we and what do we want and need?
This piece has a “very correct” gut feeling to it. I couldn’t agree more and I am hoping our nation rises to the challenge together. We have proven to the world before - we are a great nation when united for a cause.
I propose we unite for the simplest reason as nations and a race.
Survival. Working out the details together is always tough but in this case extremely rewarding.
No one ever talks about the elephant in the room-overpopulation.
This planet is a finite place with finite space and resources. It will collapse and soon, if we do not stop reproducing.
The fact is: there is not enough for everyone because there are too many of us.
And we cannot survive without ocean and trees, both of which are dying.
6
@Carla Should we also reinstate the corn laws? In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus famously predicted that short-term gains in living standards would inevitably be undermined as human population growth outstripped food production, and thereby drive living standards back toward subsistence.
@Carla
You hit the nail on the head. This is the biggest problem and no one is addressing it! Not the government that needs workers to help prop up the social security system, not business leaders who need more and more future consumers, not the church that needs larger congregations. The next time someone announces their 3rd child’s arrival in the world, instead of offering congratulations ask them why they felt the need to have him/her.
2
@Pat The green paradox is the title of a controversial book by German economist, Hans-Werner Sinn, describing the observation that an environmental policy that becomes greener with the passage of time acts like an announced expropriation for the owners of fossil fuel resources, inducing them to accelerate resource extraction and hence to accelerate global warming. The green paradox’s line of reasoning starts by recognizing a fundamental, unavoidable fact: every carbon atom in the gas, coal or oil extracted from the ground to be used as fuel ends up in the atmosphere, in particular if high efficiency combustion processes ensure that no part of it ends up as soot. About a quarter of the emitted carbon will stay in the atmosphere practically forever, contributing to the greenhouse effect that causes global warming. Apart from afforestation, only two things can mitigate the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere: either less carbon is extracted from the ground, or it is injected back underground after harvesting its energy.
Environmental policy efforts, however, in particular European ones, go in neither of these two directions, aiming instead at the promotion of alternative, CO2-free energy sources and a more efficient use of energy. While the author, Hans-Werner Sinn in particular claims that support schemes for renewable energy sources have little effect, he overlooks government support to fossil fuel consumption and production.
1
I believe American exceptionalism is alive and well. For it to continue, we have to practice and enable freedom of thought. Most Americans who are unwilling to ask themselves tough questions, may think America finds itself in a dangerous position in 2019. These well intended citizens fear that America has lost its greatness. They fear they’ve lost their self respect and their perception is validated through nostalgic propaganda (“Make America Great Again”). The reality of the United States predicament is that things aren’t as bad as many politicians would like us to believe. I believe America’s future is brighter than it has ever been despite giving the vote to all citizens without connecting it to that of wisdom. Collectively, we have to decide the direction we wish to follow instead of folding to externalities. We should rejoice as we visualize the rebirth of the American people. Unfortunately, not everyone will ever see things the same way, and here is where the danger lies. Some Americans resent a world where the input of other countries are addressed.
It is true that Trump's message appealed to a lot of "ordinary people" and had his policies actually benefited those poeple, he would indeed be correctly labeled as a populist. But it turns out that Trump was all about doing things which benefited himself instead of those who supported hm. There is no better example than his tax cut which he championed as a tax cut for the middle class; he even said many times that it would hurt wealthy people like him. Of course, just the opposite was true. So the Trump's administration is not an example of the failure of populism. He was never a populist to begin with.
11
Instead of taking to the streets in protest, our political lives would benefit if voters had a greater awareness of some of the critical economic paradoxes that underpin our society. Our goal shouldn’t be perfection, we should strive to do the greatest good through the most pardonable inconveniences. Economists believe the line is between free-enterprise and planning, and that the logical extremes are not possible. Most politicians and economists’ inability to be forthcoming and transparent isn’t a coincidence. One has to be selfless and egoless to give perfect guidance as to where to draw the line since it exposes your preferences and biases. Most of us, (10% rational and 90% emotional) will continue to produce a variation of the political circus we have today for the foreseeable future. Despite this, make sure you vote, even if you have to hold your nose while picking a candidate.
2
The concentration of wealth worldwide is the fundamental cause of the discontent. This concentration of wealth is due to rampant corruption in both autocratic and democratic countries. In autocratic countries, the corruption is blatant money grabbing of public wealth by those in power whereas in so-called democratic countries like the US, it is the uber-wealthy gaining control of the economy to steal all of the money through market manipulation.
5
It looks like Milton Friedman and his university of Chicago brand of economics has not worked out well. His free market capitalism has done more for the capitalist than the workers. One has only to look at what the “Chicago boys “ did to Chile. The more socialist approach of the Nordic countries seems to have been more successful.
9
I find this quote key to the issue: "The populist/authoritarian regimes are losing legitimacy." What gained them their so-called legitimacy in the first place? Simply that the free-market regimes had lost their legitimacy before them.
The populist wave is in response to something, you have to agree. Global capitalism is not free of blame. How much war and misery, how much degradation of the middle class, how much degradation of our very place on this planet can be laid squarely at the feet of global capitalism. The upward surge of wealth to the 1% was efficiently humming before Hugo Chavez came on the scene.
What we don't know, and what we are afraid to discuss, is what do we do now? If global capitalism is illegitimate and wrecking the world, and so is populism, where does that leave us? Surely there are more than two options? Surely the finest minds in the room can come up with something better?
3
"The big job ahead for leaders in almost all these nations is this: Write a new social contract that gives both the educated urban elites and the heartland working classes a piece of what they want most."
That is the biggest job, as long as we can ignore the iceberg our global titanic has already hit- that giant piece of ice freed by a relentless sun whose heat is being trapped in our atmosphere at ever rising rates.
The iceberg relates directly to a global economic model that allows an ever increasing human population to buy an ever increasing quantity of non-essential consumer goods that help propel an economy that can satisfy the needs and the desires for more consumer goods for more and more people.
So maybe there is an even bigger issue involved than giving everyone an equal share of the pie when the pie itself is toxic and killing us.
6
Now more than ever, global ferment needs the anchor of admirable government in the U.S. to secure their hope for instituting good government where ferment lives.
So, yes, the impeachment process is related. Can we show that our Constitutionality works? Republicans will not let that happen. Servants of oligarchy couldn't care less about global leadership.
But the stark fact is: If good government isn't feasible in the U.S., nowhere else provides a basis for hope.
People everywhere are confronted by what they see as a false narrative, a framing of issues by elites which is intended to deceive.
Even the description of "populism" as always being a racist authoritarian political impulse is an elite framing. It ignores the history of the word going back to agrarian populism in the 19th Century, and its current left manifestations in people like Bernie.
Mass protests by their very nature are populist. When the system doesn't work for the majority of people, new movements arise. The US media did its best to "mute" the Occupy Wall Street movement, and its own failures (no coherent demands, no leadership) led it to fail.
Trump turned out to be a false populist, a con on the middle class and poor. No infrastructure plan, no healthcare plan. Yet he's complied with two broadly supported demands: he's attempted to stop illegal immigration and he's kept the USA out of new regime change wars so far.
The utility of Trump is that he's excited some elite opinion against him. So people are being told things are bad. If Hillary had won, we'd have been told how great she is while she sent the 101st Airborne into Syria and maintained the ruthlessly predatory US labor, tax, and consumer economy.
2
Ten times worse than impeachment- Brooks continues to get so very much so very wrong. Those who want a bigger piece of the pie have every right , and are right, when they see the very wealthiest in their societies get most of what is on the table and they struggle more and more while the rich keep getting more inappropriately rich.Our country is at a tipping point about our very way of life, and it is far more important than just economics, even given how important as that sphere of our life might be.
3
Hmm no mention of regressive tax policies spearheaded by the Republican party creating massive income disparity in the United States. Did you forget something Mr. Brooks?
3
David Brooks is my favorite Op-Ed writer for the times. He's a spiritual, "let's zoom out & see the ignored historical & spiritual reality that got us here with compassion & understanding" kind of guy.
To my eye, he values the middle way (& I don't mean in a purely political sense). Balance.
So do I.
There is a lot of dog whistling in much of what he writes, & my criticism of the sum of that underlying message is that he equates the body of ideas that Bernie Sanders represents as equivalent to Hugo Chávez and Orban. As imbalance.
I am in agreement with his account of the collateral damage of the Chicago School (neoliberalism) on the world, & the backlash triggered by it. However, I can't understand how he is unable to distinguish the neoliberal influence on the left. The democratic variant of neoliberalism is to focus primarily on image based identity politics with occasional engagement with economic issues that don't threaten big money donors. Sorta like that famous 1982 Benetton ad. A corporation signaled acceptance of an edgy social cause with a relatively low cost spread, and became regarded as social heroes. The image-identity playbook has been deployed to distract & absolve corps and dems of all economic malfeasance ever since.
Account for the rightward shift neoliberalism exerted on all institutions before implicitly smearing previously orthodox ideas (think FDR, Europe post WW2), & tacitly allege that they are merely another incarnation of this populist wave.
1
We are in a global economy and like it or not, the world's population continues to grow and require more and more food, services and products.
We are competing against the lowest common denominator for producing goods. This means production of goods based on the least expensive methods possible (i.e., limited environmental protection; worker health and safety; increased use of child labor working 60+ hours a week; etc.)
Tariffs are not the solution, nor will tariffs bring jobs back to the U.S.
We must get back to basics in our trade, defense, and other agreements with other countries, and require that environmental and worker health and safety protections and basic human rights are included in these agreements.
Every college 101 macroeconomic class teaches the basic principle that tariffs do not work, tariffs almost always backfire, and tariffs usually cause more economic and social harm than good to countries setting the tariffs. Data and experts resoundingly agree that focusing on tariffs as a solution towards saving jobs here in U.S. is wasted time and counterproductive in the extreme.
Until we require environmental and worker health and safety protections and basic human rights in our international agreements, the big whoosh sound we're hearing will continue on....the sound that manufacturing jobs are making as they exit the U.S.
3
@Ed
I agree. The problem is how.
1
Seems to me that limits to income inequality and a serious world-wide effort to fight climate change might do the trick. Social democracy might be a good starting point.
4
@The North
Limits on inherited wealth - and limits on 'personal foundations' would help. Perhaps those making fortunes might then think about sharing the money with the employees that helped them make their money.
3
"Populist alternative "? Perhaps I don't understand the word. Oh, I get it. The "appeal" to regular folks was there,just not the actions for the betterment of them. Brooks, essentially, you wrote a whole lot of words that could have been summed up in one: AVARICE.
5
There isn’t yet a clear way forward. We are living in a breakneck pace changing world. The populist backlash was a desperate attempt to stop the clock and even turn it back. Of course, this isn’t going to work – long term. We’ll find a way forward, but it will not be by using the old playbook. It will almost certainly take a combination of designed programs (the new, New Deal, etc.) but even more so, it will require educating people (they educating themselves) for an unknown world, an unknown future, an unknown job. The old jobs, the old way of life are NOT coming back. Be nimble, be brave, embrace the inevitable change – it is not going to work to cling to the past.
3
What is 'Globalized Democratic Capitalism'?
Capitalism used to operate to benefit a nation's interest and increase a nation's wealth. Nations sought to maximize the profits they made on their natural resources. They protected their market and jobs. Local industries in the US were protected by tariffs on imported goods. No longer.
The multinational corporations that grew in protected domestic markets now want access to global markets. They do not want competitors arising anywhere in the world. They now control the natural resources they need, forcing nations to sell them those resources at the lowest possible prices (instead of those resources going to benefit a nation's people). Global Capitalism now seeks out the lowest possible labor costs.
Global corporations focus on making MORE goods that do not last. We consume more raw materials, use more energy and produce goods that are thrown out in a few years instead of being repaired.
This system is not at all democratic in that it serves the wealthy. The poorest may see marginal increases in wages but the vast majority see lowered pay or lose their jobs.
8
This just in:
Capitalism is capitalism.
And you may want to read some Marx. Try, well, “Capitalism”
Yes, there were few disenchanted manufacturing workers and coal miners in the US who were enamored by a populist. But your theory cannot explain the farmers who were doing very well selling to China and the ethanol industry. Finally there are the boomers who are mostly concerned with growing their investments and reducing taxes. It may be possible to change the minds of the first two groups, but boomers will stick with the status quo (including on the environment) unless the stock market crashes or healthcare benefits are reduced.
2
Populists are not the only sources of corruption. They are often protesting the corruption of elites, and elites often deal with them by trying to make them as corrupt as anyone else, and refusing to allow them to fulfill their promises by any other way than corruption.
The elites care about their money and their place in their societies more than their democratic freedoms. Leaders who take their democratic freedoms away but leave their ability to protect their money alone can buy their support. Often the elite economy is based on patronage, so that being a member of the elite or a scion of the elite gives preference based on patronage, on which powerful network of people a striver can get close to.
An efficient economy does people little good when they must compete with the elite for money and wind up losing, so that the wealth generated by economic growth goes to those who are already doing well. This is the situation in our country and in many others.
The social bargain must include support of whatever measures will lessen the income and wealth gap. But whatever policies support this result will face vigorous resistance from those whose incomes and wealth make the gap greater.
Following the money leads to understanding, and ignoring the money leads to the sort of false consciousness that believes that since anyone who tries hard enough can be above average, everyone can be above average if they all try hard enough.
2
Boy! Talk about trying to shoe horn very diverse phenomenon into your own pet hobby horse theory - and failing. Too many egregious leaps of logic to mention but one stands out. Brooks wants to equate populism with authoritarianism? No. Simply no. Very few of "the people" protesting think "populism" defined as "support for the concerns of ordinary people" is a bad idea. These protests are manifestations of the "concerns of ordinary people.
These ongoing attempts by elites to turn populism into a bad thing are quite telling.
8
7.7 billion and growing fast. So why do we seem shocked and even dismayed of the effects of the trend towards increased globalization? Given the mushrooming numbers of humans that places increased pressure on all resources, and our advances in technologies that both arm us and link us together at an equally headlong and numbing pace, we really should be expecting and planning to have to deal with the destined increases in conflicts and clashes. Yet we seem to plod along to find ourselves in the position where suddenly nationalism or populist feelings swell to epidemic proportions. No, the core problem in not economic, it is irrational shortsightedness - and apparently not having the capacity to plan for the inconvenience of the obvious and the inevitable. And otherwise idle autocrats or other authoritarian regimes are then able to prosper - and they have little motivation to rebuild a strong middle class or embrace liberal democracies. It is our collective nescience that is revolting.
3
In USA, the person most qualified to try to write that social bargain is Elizabeth Warren. She and Bernie Sanders are the only candidates who are trying to reform extreme capitalism that permeates USA into a more moderate and humane economic system that doesn’t not abide the vile corruption that exists today.
19
No, their proposed wealth tax sounds good in principle but does not work. There have been many past attempts in different countries. The rich are individuals with money and power, and they’ll find obscure ways to avoid taxes like they do even now. Have you taken a look at andrew yang?
1
Brooks, who usually writes with well-considered perspective, misses the boat on this one. Three problems.
First, he assumes causation, when the (somewhat selective) evidence he amasses merely notes correlation. Causation may exist, but he does not make the case.
Second, he ignores the qualitatively pernicious effects of the internet, a vehicle for universally selling snake oil, whether bogus consumer products, fake news, alternative facts, or false narratives.
Third, he ignores the change that is also at the root of rampant, anthropogenic global warming: the confluence of two factors, the quadrupling of the human population in little over a century and the democratization of material expectations (universal entitlement, so to speak.)
One could argue that the parallel of our current situation is not to 1989 but to 1968. An America more divided than now, with the opposition taking to the streets, essentially ignoring the electoral process entirely in favor of a "no business as usual" imperative. Mexico massacring hundreds of students to "clean up" for the Olympics. John Carlos and Tommie Smith losing their medals at that same Olympics for giving a Black Power salute. Millions in France taking to the streets to oppose De Gaulle. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to prevent "contamination" of the Warsaw Pact countries by democracy (among other things), ethnic separatist movements in Canada, Switzerland, and Nigeria (among others), and many more examples.
6
@Steve Fankuchen ... Baghdad's Tahrir Square, Oct. 2016. Independence Square in Kiev, Feb. 2014. Snipers gunned down five police officers and injured seven others during protests over two fatal police shootings, Dallas, 2016. Las Vegas. Mexico City was just the first of many from all sides to the pure anarchy from the eye of the scope. Snipers and populists seems a bit at odds with one another. But cleaning up for the ideological and nationalistic cold war expression of athletic power was uniquely perverse, may the students of Mexico never be forgotten.
@john
John, I look at the arc of history much like the dance, the two-step, where you take two steps forward and one step back. Only with history, it's ninety-nine steps back for every hundred forward, so that at any given moment you are almost as likely to see regress as progress.
My guess is that you are much younger than I, giving me the advantage of having seen more of both, thus concluding that, though it's dark here in the tunnel, if we keeping moving, ploddingly along, we will get to the light at the end.
So be of (relatively) good cheer, and may the only turkey at your Thanksgiving be on your table. And may the only T-words allowed be turkey and Thanksgiving. Don't give that other T-word the power to ruin your day.
1
It seems as if the rich and powerful just need to be scared out their wits once in a while. I'm sorry that's the case, but the threat of social unrest usually brings about a healthy concern on their part for the needs of all. It's as if civilization needs to throw up occasionally to restore health.
17
@jim guerin Agreed, except the only way to "scare them out of their wits" is to kill a bunch of them. They behaved well throughout most of the 20th century because they feared communist revolution and the inevitable death that would follow; the result was the creation of the middle class.
This is perhaps the best column Mr. Brooks has ever written, certainly one of them. It offers a key insight into recent developments, making sense of them. I am sure my remedy is very different from whatever Mr. Brooks has in mind, but I really appreciated reading this superb political-economic commentary.
I think the remedy lies in (1) vast investment in green infrastructure and education, creating goods jobs and opportunities for millions while we build sustainable economies; (2) a transition away from our military economy and our fossil-fuel economy; and (3) the ever more liberal movement of people, goods, services and investment, with the end result being foreseeable: nations and peoples who work together tend to thrive together in the long run and case to go to war against one another, but everyone needs a chance to contribute and be respected.
6
Capitalism requires nonstop growth. A century ago, Marx identified this as its fundamental contradiction.
Meanwhile, the world is facing a terrible ecological disaster in the making. What the world needs is a reversal of growth, not an acceleration of growth.
We need a way to bring some of the existing wealth of the world to the poor, and we can't do it by making more stuff. It can only be done by redistribution -- by taking away some of the obscene wealth of the 0.1% and investing it in the poor.
In other words, we need socialism.
28
I like your assessment about capitalism requiring constant growth. In its current form, this involves creating more physical products - which creates an endless loop of trash and resource overuse, which magnified over time by compounding growth is ecologically unsustainable
I once read a paper in economics (early 1990s?) that argued that the iterative production of ‘things’ (I.e. manufacturing) is not actually required for a vibrant economy. What IS required is that money continually flow thru the economy. This could occur via an economy in which art, music, dance, theatre - the non physical aspects of our lives - were the foundation for consumption, supply and demand. An economy based on human creativity; if people really honored those things and paid for (and got paid to do) them,it could be a basis for a growing economy just as well as taking petroleum products out of the ground. Money just has to move through the economy; manufacturing is not actually required
That paper has stayed with me for 20 years. Imagine a healthy economy that was not contingent on the endless creation of widgets, but on creativity itself
On a macroeconomic basis it would work.
The environmental impact would be enormous.
Just putting it out there; it’s far away from where we are, but we need big changes and solutions now
Side note - America is already exporting culture, music, film & art to the rest of the world - so such an economy may not be as esoteric as one might think
3
Mr. Brooks, one important thing you failed to mention, it seems to me, is — who has the guns, the bombs, the armies and the ruthlessness to use them in the sorting out of the future you describe? I love your storyline, but it does not seem realistic.
2
The idea that endless economic growth is desired, let alone sustainable needs to die along with this neoliberal era. Striving for endless growth and expansion is what got us into the climate crisis we now face and is also responsible for the growing inequality between lower, middle, and upper classes.
Also, it should be noted that the working class supporting right-wing populists such as Trump are doing themselves no favours. Implying these people are voting for in their own interests is just perpetuating the lie that Trump (and like-minded politicians) actually care about the working class.
The demands of the economic elites and the working class go hand in hand if something similar to a green new deal were to be implemented. The upper class, however, would finally get what's coming to them after years of unearned prosperity at the cost of destroying others' livelihoods.
8
David - Unfortunately, the situation only gets more volatile from here. What will happen to the existing unrest when waved of climate refugees crash into Western Europe? What about when automation strips away millions more jobs with nothing to replace them? The decades ahead are terrifyingly perilous, and one struggles to find reasons for optimism.
8
The protests mentioned , have been amplified a million fold by the media. The populists are not going anywhere so soon.
2
I think everyone in a democratic country wants their own democratic freedoms protected. And I don't think it's so much that educated urbanites "want to live in diverse pluralistic societies" as that our society has become diverse and pluralistic and people who live in densely populated urban areas have adjusted to that out of necessity and learned to like it, as they well should. People who live in rural areas that are less diverse have simply never been exposed to many people of other cultures, and often don't seem to understand that their country is really diverse and that they inhabit a misleading enclave that enables them to keep an antiquated mindset. Also, there are plenty of non-college educated people who live in densely populated, diverse areas, including many people who work at blue collar jobs. There are plumbers, electricians, carpenters, construction people who do a wide variety of physical work. There is a big steel foundry in the city of Denver, for example. And not all of these people have jumped on the Trump bandwagon by a long shot. Many of them are people of color from diverse backgrounds.
11
Growth is the problem, not the solution to today's problems. It's the growth model of economics that is stymying progress.
5
"Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
We can write that social bargain now, but it would never pass in the USA. That social bargain is socialism. By imposing a limit on wealth, society can provide a minimum quality of life for nearly everyone. However, the working class needs to accept that they will never be rich, and the rich need to accept responsibility for the health of society (including the financial health of the average citizen). These are the opposite of what Reagan, modern conservatives, and neo-liberals promised, and most Americans are not ready for that much change.
In this context, Warren is an existential threat, not to the average citizen, but to the old guard of conservative intellectuals like Brooks.
21
@NeilG My grandparents were not educated after 8th grade. My parents went to college (my dad on the GI bill) and became teachers. I had a good career and my husband, an engineer, still does. We hope our children will be in similar circumstances.
Rich? Depends on what that means. We have what we need as well as some luxuries we enjoy but could do without. But we’re not millionaires. One would hope that working class and underpaid professionals (teachers, for example) could expect better lives for their kids, and that comfortable families like mine could expect that to continue. A cautionary note is that if you get out of line, it is nearly impossible to get back in. My sisters skipped college and have never recovered the level of security my parents enjoyed
5
Predatory capitalism, fueled (literally) by coal and oil and gas, has created both a vast increase in material goods and extreme inequality at the cost of enormous damage to the environment. The inequality has become intolerable and the fossil fuels remaining must be left in the ground because of the climate crisis.
"The world is unsteady and ready to blow." Right. But it's tha natural world that's "ready to blow." The climate crisis in boxing us in. The natural environment is deteriorating rapidly. Nature cares nothing for moderation or what is politically feasible.
The Green New Deal is an attempt to address both inequality and the climate emergency on a scale commensurate with the challenges we face. The time for advocating baby steps is past. "Nothing fundamental will change?" That's a lie. Everything will change. The question is, will we adapt or perish?
4
This seems a tad incoherent, more like a theme in search of facts. Free market fundamentalism produced populism which produced a middle class revolt which produced a popular uprisings in the street by the ...the masses? Somehow the mass revolt in Iraq , Chile , Lebanon etc is against left wing economic policies? this is shoehorning a pet narrative into a some very complex circumstances
3
When are you, Zakaria, and your ilk going to start listening to our young people and realize that there is another word for "unlimited growth"? When it happens in a human being, it's called cancer.
Yes, we need a new social contract. But that includes foregoing fossil fuels (what does that do to the "growth" of oil companies, auto manufacturers, etc?), and - if we expect them to pay for our retirement, nurse and care for us when we are old - providing the younger generation with free education through doctoral level, when appropriate, and not saddling them with, in some cases, almost life-long debt.
As Tom Swanson points out, this isn't rocket science. We know exactly what to do. We're just not doing it.
13
David, you work for one of the very few newspapers in this country that has always paid writers handsomely. The rest of us--some with masters' degrees (at least one, sometimes two)--have been scraping by for decades on $35K, if we're lucky. We take adjunct teaching jobs that pay $2,000 per semester, per course, and hope for maybe two courses, if we're lucky. We've never had health insurance or dental insurance, and if we live into our 70s, we're lucky. This is what I've seen of what used to be the "middle class." People who have money (sorry, "wealth") don't usually have jobs. They invest that wealth, or handle other people's money, getting rich by what would not have been thought of as "legitimate" means, in earlier times. Thing is, the old salaried ways don't generally work in this global, ultra-capitalistic society. Not when businesses pay the least possible for labor and scoop the profits, greedily, for those at the top. Nothing will improve for the middle class until workers tilt the system back in their favor, somehow. It won't be easy.
60
one way in which I notice we tend to lead ourselves astray is by assuming that problems automatically imply blameworthiness.
we see problems with the world, and we simultaneously notice errors, either in ourselves or other people, and we connect the two logically, without ever really analyzing whether one in fact caused the other or, if it did, in what way this causality might be reversed.
and so we just start blaming people, having ourselves failed to identify a definite cause of the problem, or a realistic concept of how to fix it.
of course, this sort of blame is futile, and breeds animosity, because the people we are blaming might be helpless to change the problem for which they are being blamed.
so, except in rare cases of extreme wrongdoing or error, I think it makes sense to share blame communally, and always include ourselves, our political allies, and our political opponents in the blame for the fundamental errors of our times.
that way, the focus shifts to the problems themselves, rather than the interpersonal dynamics surrounding them
1
Brooks, who usually writes with well-considered perspective, misses the boat on this one. Three problems.
First, he assumes causation, when the (somewhat selective) evidence he amasses merely notes correlation. Causation may exist, but he does not make the case.
Second, he ignores the qualitatively pernicious effects of the internet, a vehicle for universally selling snake oil, whether bogus consumer products, fake news, alternative facts, or false narratives.
Third, he ignores the change that is also at the root of rampant, anthropogenic global warming: the confluence of two factors, the quadrupling of the human population in little over a century and the democratization of material expectations (universal entitlement, so to speak.)
3
In striking that bargain between urban and rural, elites and working class, technology and humanity, we have to look at radically new models. I’d argue that Universal Basic Income and funding it through VAT and a shift in spending priorities toward infrastructure instead of defense is worthy of a hard look. Thank you, Andrew Yang, for your contribution in this search for solutions.
4
Social contracts are essential in families & communities - yes. When I was a little kid I heard actor Ronald Reagan give a nominating speech for Barry Goldwater in San Francisco and one lady of the DAR was so inspired, she hugged little kid (me) and said at last we found our man who will kill social contracts with labor unions and labor in general - Ronald Reagan.
2
I have to say that the narrative about thriving urban liberal elites versus left behind rural communities is a giant oversimplification. What of the 114,000 homeless school children living in New York, are they thriving urbanites?
I teach at a community college not far from an urban center and I can tell you that the “well educated elites”
who teach as adjuncts are living on the edge of poverty, with no health insurance, no retirement income and a pitiful salary.
The “urban rich versus rural poor” is a convenient divide and conquer narrative that the GOP loves to embrace. The fact is that working people in most areas of the economy have seen their working hours increase and spending power radically decrease. Meanwhile, we live in fear of getting sick and going under.
74
Another factor is overpopulation and the degradation of the environment and civil services, which thrives the protests in iraq (shortage of water) or lebanon (garbage disposal). Pakistans population has quadrupled in the last 50 years, this is not sustainable. Capitalism left many behind, but overpopulation makes them so many in the first place. And at some point even a fairer system would not provide enough resources.
Populism is fueled by the panic, that the banquet will be empty. And this is not just an hunch. That is why populism will not go away so easy. It is more likely to get worse.
8
One could argue that the new social contract that Brooks is promoting could be embodied in the Progressive Sanders/Warren agenda in its purest form. It would be a massive challenge to legislate but IMO it’s closer than it’s been in a long time to a legitimate option to present to our country as obscene wealth continues to flow unimpeded to the top at the expense of ordinary wage earners while global warming runs riot over the earth. I’m more or less a comfortably retired moderate but no longer think of “radical progressives” as radical. I think they are making sense.
32
Brooks, as usual ignores the 800 pound gorilla in the room - The almost total takeover of governments worldwide by the 1%. In all of the countries mentioned, including the US, a tiny 1% has hoarded the income the wealth and the power. The only thing Trump has actually delivered, for example is an acceleration of the great transfer of wealth and income from the middle class to the 1% thanks to his billionaire tax cut. As long as the political leaders of the left or the right, of the populist strain or the "moderate" strain, continue to enrich the 1% they can do anything else they want on social issues, immigration, etc. Only when the wealth and power of that 1% is threatened to see we see chaos created and allowed to erupt and eventual return to "normal" 1% covert rule.
51
I am sympathetic with the gross injustices globally. But we as a country can not take on the entire world, not in this present time for sure. We need to start with our own nation. And this neo-America, or should I write "noir" under Trumpism, needs a lot of fixing and re-fixing. David wrote what should and certainly could be done here: "The working classes...need a way to thrive in the modern economy..." "The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies." So, step one, Trump must go. Step two, with a president who works for all the people, not just the few, with a moral compass, intelligence, and experience can also be a world leader by example and diplomacy. This right now is how we can help the plight of those abroad. Yet it must start here.
5
This isn't rocket science. People want a living wage. People want to feel they are an active participant in their society, validated by that society with a wage that allows some security, some dignity, and some choices. You can trace this back on a graph to the beginning of globalization and since then flat wages have squeezed families nearly to death. Many working people are homeless, the rest know how close they are. We need to rebuild the middle class one way or another, or we will collapse into chaos.
651
@tom swanson Since capitalism is very unstable, I propose instead of dressing up what’s going on today as a freakish and rare crisis, we acknowledge that crisis are endemic to capitalism and are caused by a crisis of abundance. Our systems are so efficient, we could give everyone on earth a car, a house and fill the house with appliances. Today, we are so much more efficient at making things leading to more manufacturing unemployment. How can we alleviate this angst in a capitalist society where actions which may be qualified as vicious with regard to individuals have benefits for society as a whole?
17
@tom swanson
"Squeezed families nearly to death " is a gigantic exaggeration in a country like the United States. Yes there are huge issues with inequality that need to be addressed and many people have struggles but in no point in human history has the average standard of living been remotely like it is today in advanced economies. The level of material prosperity that a member of the American middle class has today would be unimaginable for members of any society in world history prior to modern times.
24
@tom swanson
It is not rocket science. It is considerably more difficult and complicated than rocket science.
We need to rebuild this, we need to end that, we need to start this other thing. We should follow this guy's advice, and ignore that guy. Prescriptions are cheap and abundant, some sincere and others cynical, mostly simple and ideological and therefore suspect.
If we approached political science like we studied rocket science--that is, with the detachment of logic and reason--then perhaps our results would improve. Instead we choose tribalism, identitarianism, moralism and drama. It makes for good TV.
34
Thanks for yanking our attention back to the big picture: the state of the world, the widespread unrest.
The places that are not on fire politically are on fire literally due to extreme weather conditions.
Please stop falling back on simplistic oppositions: the urban educated who thrived vs the rural masses who were left behind. It's too neat. This is of a piece with your constant flogging of "coastal elites." It is so much more complicated than that. There are urban masses who have been left behind. Here among the coastal elite of New York there are tons of Trump supporters.
382
@HK Exactly! I live in Suffolk County, NY (the eastern 2/3rd of Long Island); it went for Trump. I found this shocking since we know who he actually is: a grifter who figured out it was cheaper to have a lawyer on retainer than to honor contracts with tradesmen. And yet the electricians, plumbers, roofers, LI Rail Road guys I know voted for him, and may well do so again despite the fact that he undeniably raised their taxes.
I don't get it, but neither do most of their wives, sisters and daughters.
74
@HK Yes. Yes. Yes.
On one side, he is compelling because he calls attention to things mosy media ignore.
On the other side, he uses their distinctions. It's really frustrating!
10
@cathleen
I think there is a perception that continued imbalances in the system have given rise to the ever exploitable populist sentiment.
Things have gone beyond merely privatizing justice: move to safe neighborhoods and schools, etc.
It seems as though, with open borders, a de facto process of installing a permanent underclass is well under way.
What we have always claimed as key was free elections; this last one was a surprise. As this opinion piece seems to suggest, it might have been a wake up call. Maybe its not too late: impeachment.
Most of the time, peace holds despite the failure of new leaders to deliver.
One thinker suggested moral judgments of others should be avoided. The pot and the kettle never seem to be able to work it out.
It is kind of a luxury to repeat the mantra, 'I don't get it'
Marie Antoinette probably did not say, 'Let them eat cake'; only history put that in her mouth.
The flatness of standard of living for most has taken only a moderate downturn. Instead of being grateful for that, many are in the fear zone that they and theirs are being slowly suffocated.
Maybe they'll go quietly.
3
In the United States at this moment, that person is Joe Biden. He’s not slick, nor quick on his feet, but possesses the genuine empathy, experience and policy chops that can reunite our country at a critical point in history. This is way more important than specific promises. He garners support from diverse, important constituencies. And he will win the hearts and minds of an exhausted electorate.
5
Several years ago I was on a project with a man I had taught a college class with and the ‘16 election was in full swing and Bernie was going on about free tuition for all. That’s a great statement but how will it be paid for i asked my colleague? In his mind it was a no brainer, an informed public makes informed decisions and votes.
That statement really resonated with me after Trump was elected. Fast forward to an article I read yesterday about the dumbing down of our culture in general , in part largely because the local newspaper is practically dead and now many people either flat out don’t follow local news or get it from unreliable sources.
That is George Orwell’s 1984 in a nutshell. For a while we hated Soviet Russia, but recently we have learned to embrace them and hate NATO. You can’t make that stuff up unless you are Mr Orwell. God help us in this digital world we created to make us even lazier as an informed society .
515
@Ted Siebert Actually, I think it's more like Huxley's Brave New World where everyone is simply amusing themselves to death. Read Neil Postman's great book "Amusing Ourselves to Death."
38
Agreed. If you want to evaluate the health of democracies world wide, just look at whether or not they support accessible, high quality publicly funded education, from K right through to higher education.
23
@Ted Siebert This is the great dilemma of democracy isn't it? Giving voice to millions who are ignorant and/or just don't care to stay informed. Is there a scarier phrase in the english language than "power to the people?" Yet, I celebrate diversity & inclusion. All of these neat explanations of how and why we find ourselves where we are societally/politically are guesses. Same as it ever was.
7
It's interesting that David Brooks now resorts to class analysis to make his argument! He neglects to suggest any potential systematic improvements and instead predicts that "Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future".
But this prediction smells of some version of the same old minority rule that fascinates and captivates conservatives like Brooks. He can't imagine a better US Constitution. He certainly never asks his readers to abolish the Electoral College, for example. He expects change to come from the top. Using law to limit executive power and to build democracy doesn't even occur to him. He just wants a better dictator or powerful president who he hopes can make a "deal" to appease those frustrated classes that scare him when they get too close to real power.
26
@Alan
You’ve said it so much better than I could. Brooks infuriates me weekly, but after your excellent comment, I can just sit back and enjoy a stiff drink instead of crafting a reply to his usual non-sense. Thanks, Alan.
The Democrats could have guaranteed health care for everyone who works for a living. They are the party of labor, right? Instead they threw us under the bus to free up resources for the least fortunate, who are all too often -- self disabled.
I'm hoping that moderate Democrats will find their voice, or we will all be silenced.
1
Note to Mr. Brooks: Your assertion that "Washington insiders are rising up to curtail trump" is a part of the problem in this country. The language is offensive and divisive. Indeed, the House of Representatives are insiders, but they are a co-equal branch of government conducting a legitimate investigation into the behavior of a president who may have failed to uphold his oath of office. To besmirch the House with a term that more befits Fox news is beneath you. You and your editor need to do better.
3
Mr. Brooks,
Please read Branko Milanovic's "Capitalism, Alone" as soon as possible. Corruption, either in liberal or political capitalism, is probably withus for a while.
Steve Strand
We had a perfectly sound system for decades-
Reasonable regulation of business and industry, support for Labor Unions and the late, lamented Glass-Steagal Act, which
”...Precluded banks from investing with savings funds and mean that we could never have another depression...”
10
"They vowed to smash the rules, but it turns out it was mostly for self-enrichment and self-protection."
That, in a nutshell, is why we're seeing the backlash to the backlash.
Those who support populists basically think that those adherents to the philosophy will take back what they think "those people" have "stolen" from them. But the populists are invariably either cynically corrupt, just trying to line their own pockets, or merely spouting populist rhetoric to pursue a bit more "legal" payday.
It often takes a while for their supporters to find this out--no one generally loses money betting against the intelligence of populist supporters--but eventually the grifting and corruption becomes to obvious for even the willfully ignorant to continue to ignore, because they notice they're not getting back what they were promised in return for their support.
And then there's a big shakeout, and someone else rises to the top for a while. And then, unfortunately, the whole process tends to repeat itself.
One wonders what it would take to break the cycle.
2
David Brooks just can't help himself: "Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth."
No, David. It's not both sides. It's right-wing economic policies in this country that destroy labor rights, keep minimum wages at real levels of more than half a century ago, that permit huge consolidation by major businesses, resulting in rising prices to consumers, that block healthcare reform, that result in huge increases in college tuition, all of which are destroying the middle class.
No, David, these cruel policies have all been inflicted on us by your party, the Republican Party. Stop pretending that anyone else is to blame.
You and your party own this economic cruelty.
48
Trying to engage in “both sides” are doing it argument is ludicrous. Bottom line is that right wing authoritarianism is a stain in freedom the world over.
11
"Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
Unfortunately you can't bargain with people who cannot distinguish fact from fiction and the populists know that propaganda works to keep their supporters from knowing who their friends are.
Just look at the daily dissembling of the facts on Fox News on behalf of their news director in The White House.
9
Tehran./ How about Baghdad ?! The "end" of the cold war certainly had its geopolitical affects. However, I am struck by the absence of the causus prima in most of the Europe and Asia-- The Invasion of Iraq.
Any analysis ignoring this can not possibly be honest.
stephenadairvernon.blogspot.com
1
"The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies."
Really? REALLY?!? I wish it were so utterly quaint as that!
The real elites (aka, the moneyed class which is the only elite class that actually counts) wants their billionaire, 1% status to remain unchallenged and their taxes to be lower than their secretaries. Ask Bill Gates what he thinks about Elizabeth Warren. Ask Mike Bloomberg.
The elites are much uglier than Mr Brooks wishes to admit.
26
@Jason "elites" in this [political] context refers to education, not money. The vast, vast majority of what commentators refer to as the "coastal elites" are just people with college degrees and post-graduate degrees, who tend to be politically aware. It's not associated with income.
"It’s a story 10 times bigger than impeachment." Well, it was only to be expected that a practiced spinner like Mr. Brooks would want to downplay the importance of impeachment.
3
"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project. The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies. Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
Brooks presents these needs/wants of these two "different classses" as if they're mutually exclusive; but they're not.
Giving "educated elites" democratic freedoms and ethnically-diverse societies doesn't prevent the "working class" from attaining economic security, nor from feeling a sense of belonging.
So, why does the "working class" feel like it "doesn't belong?" I can think of two possible causes:
1) They don't get paid a reasonable wage for the work that they provide.
and/or
2) The feel like they're being displaced by "other" people.
Fine, I'll accept #1 as a legitimate gripe. And it's clear that the capitalist ideals of the American Right (and political corruption in many cases) has created so much income inequlity that they have every right to hold this gripe.
But I'm sorry; #2 isn't a legitimate gripe. #2 is xenophobia; #2 is racism.
Creating an ethnically-diverse society doesn't take anything away from whichever group was here first (except in the case of Native peoples).
The fact that Brooks conflates the two demonstrates that he's not nearly as enlightened as he thinks of himself.
6
Is populism the right word for what has happened in the U.S.? It was simply astonishing how many Trump supporters would repeat the mantra, "He tells it like it is." Equally astonishing was how, with near unanimity, the religious right found their champion against godlessness in the person of Donald Trump. Has such widespread self-delusion ever so dominated a nation's politics? The Trumpian revolution is as thoroughly irrational as could be. It's foundation and only reason for being is to feed the ego of a single individual. The whole Trump phenomenon strikes me as some juvenile desire to smash things to pieces.
627
@LewisPG
Agreed. The last time a major party in this country accepted populism was after William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech.
Trump is a demagogue. He is no more for "the people" than he was for the subcontractors and tradesmen he steped on his way to TV star and the White House.
46
@LewisPG
I think you have to understand that when people say the he tells it like it is they are referring to selective parts of his message. His supporters certainly believe that there is a self-dealing elite who run government and business, ensure that the they keep all of the winnings, that their kids retain all of their advantages, and seek to change American social mores and standards.
Progressives believe a similar message, but one that differs at key points. They also believe that there is an elite that is taking all of the winnings and keeping the non-elite down, while seeking to change American social mores and standards.
The difference is who the group is, and which mores and standards are being pushed. The right wing populists identify the elite as anyone with a degree, especially one from a "good" school, including most of the leadership of both parties, and most corporate leaders. The left wing progressives identify any white man unwilling to apologize for being so as a likely oppressor, economically, culturally, and socially. They will also include anyone who has made money in the business world as inherently suspect.
The cultural/social debate remains as it has for 40 years, but with less tolerance on both sides.
A competent problem-solver who works to increase opportunity and tolerance while decreasing inequality is the only real answer, but people are too impatient for that solution. Both sides are too outraged with the status quo.
18
@LewisPG "The whole Trump phenomenon strikes me as some juvenile desire to smash things to pieces." Perhaps this is the form that riots are taking here in the US.
3
The wealth of the heavily Republican upper class was built on the backs of working people through rigging the entire financial/political system to keep the money flowing to the top. And now demagogues such as Trump inflame those who have been bilked by his own class into rising against accused liberal elites who are somehow responsible for Trump and his cronies' thefts. It's a perfect scam and one that only a well-practiced con man could pull off: but the Republican Party has been running this same scam since Nixon and his Southern Strategy of "let's you and them fight, while I steal you blind." It's amazing that the American electorate falls for this same old trick over and over. It says a lot about either the native intelligence or the achieved education of many Americans.
502
@larry bennett
This is a spot on analysis of our current situation. It is frightening and depressing.
24
@larry bennett Trickle down economics is a scam we keep falling for.
I heard it the other when someone was criticizing the wealth tax.
“ the wealth tax will hurt the job creators.”
My oh my.
Rapacious Capitalism is not an economic system that distributes wealth. Rapacious Capitalism concentrates wealth. The only time wealth is distributed down the economic ladder is when Rapacious Capitalism is forced to give some of it up.
42
@larry bennett
Get your facts straight. Americans in the top 1% of wealth are more likely to vote for DEMOCRATS than Republicans. This is undisputed. Federal, State and Local representatives in the wealthiest areas of the country are far and away represented by Democrats. So that idea that the upper class is entirely Republicans is a false narrative that has been overly used by progressives as part of their blame game. That you are supporting that narrative only means that you haven't done your research on the subject.
13
The future belongs to those of caring hearts and open minds. Of course, we've known this for centuries but struggle to get it right. Maybe this time.
5
Trump's rise was never really about populism. Populism is a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. Trump and their ilk hijacked populist sentiment to further their own personal enrichment and retain the political power of the white elite in the US.
When governments are unresponsive for long enough to the plight of their citizens and the democratic processes so tainted and corrupted by money, they have no other option but take to the streets. A new social contract does need to be written but first you have to have leaders that recognize that it needs to be written, willing to write it, and support it.
7
Post WWII the US was the pre-eminent military, industrial and political nation. In my view it remains so now. This was the great economic and demographic advance and over time it spread throughout the Western World.
Post the Cold War, globalization took off, principally sponsored by the US. It lifted billions out of abject poverty. Countering this was the de-industralisation of most western countries.
So now we seem to have protests in the west about falls in living standards and protests in other places that living standards haven't risen enough.
Then we've had big tech enabling everyone to see how everyone else lives.
And overlaying all this we have end of the world scenarios re Climate Change and identity politics (identity everything in fact).
Good luck with the social bargain!
Still, personally I prefer living in 2019 rather than any previous year.
3
"This is the most widespread surge in global civic unrest since 1989."
This is the only part of the picture that Brooks gets right. To try to explain the current world in terms of a general reaction against populism is wishful at best. More broadly, we see a breakdown in the capacity of democratic governments to offer effective solutions to increasingly vast and intractable structural problems.
People are rebelling, often somewhat mindlessly, against whoever happens to be in power at the moment. Yes, some of the targets are now populist regimes that promised simple solutions to complex problems. But in other places the the populists are in the upswing. It depends on where in the yo-yo cycle a country finds itself.
For example, countries in which populism is newly ascendant or likely to increase include Argentina, which is verging on another tango with Peronism,and much of western Europe. We will know soon whether a pro-Brexit nationalism will become triumphant in Britain, with nationalistic populist surges potentially waiting in the wings in France, Italy, Spain and perhaps even Germany.
When nobody offers a good answer, the pendulum swings wildly back and forth, most likely not stopping until some authoritarian is entrenched and democracy effectively abandoned. To take our immediate example, the defeat of Trump by Biden in 2020 would be seen by Brooks as a rejection of populism. But if Biden proved ineffectual, the pendulum could swing back with a vengeance in 2024.
5
To be fair to Mr. Brooks, he was the first to admit that Trump's populist ascendancy caught him by surprise, and I would argue he was quite self reflective compared to others in his traditional conservative camp, such as George Will, Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rupin, and so on. That said, this article is a wishful slight of hand by someone who yearns for the days when his brand of conservatism held sway (or put another way, was able to command elections through party politics). What Brooks does here is equate the rule of bad actors and tyrannical rule with 'populism.' When one looks at Brexit's reality, Hungary, Salvini's polls (even if he's not in power), Macron's collapse against the far right, the rise of Germany's AfD party and, most recently, Sweden's equivalent, one realizes that the nation state and populist politics continues to roar. Why? The populists are the ones who now advocate for free speech; the populists understand wages are depressed by widespread immigration; the populists are fighting the tyranny of globalistic economics; the populists understand that a nation's historical culture has meaning and is worth defending. Mr. Brooks can talk as much as he likes about some sort of revolt, but his arguments mislead the public into assuming that populist policies automagically create tyrannical rule. It's time for Mr. Brooks to travel perhaps to Sweden now and visit some of those voters who voted for the far right for the first time. Populism cannot be argued away.
8
"The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies."
No. They want others to live in ethnically diverse societies while they live removed from that. And they definitely do not want to live with the working classes, thriving or not. It is often do as I write or say, but not necessarily as I do.
23
@Joshua Schwartz
Yesterday I listened to a radio interview with the artist Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He said something about Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s that stopped me in my tracks. I currently am raising two kids in LA.
Flea went to Hollywood High School, where he said he met his first rich friend. This friend lived in a spacious designer home in the hills above Sunset Blvd. It had tremendous views, a pool, pool house, and a live in housekeeper. He said he had friends from all different social economic backgrounds, including artistic and musical kids that really educated him on rock n roll. He said back in the 70s and 80s, rich kids didn't really attend private schools. Everybody, the latch key kids of struggling parents like his, shopkeepers' kids, doctors' kids, and the wealthy scions of Hollywood Hills real estate developers, all went to public school together.
That is definitely not true of LA today. If you've got the means, you send your kid to private school. So maybe there was a time before 1989 when more people agreed on some kind of social bargain.
19
"..the populist alternative is not working." - it works very well at my 401k plan.
1
I'll tell you: Brooks never fails to give one something to roll their eyes about.
Saying-for example-that "the IMF sees a world economy that is in 'synchronized slowdown' and growing at 'its slowest pace since the global financial crisis'" is like saying that the International Coyotes and Foxes Henhouse Collective has recently noted that there is a marked decrease in the population of chickens.
The fish always rots from the head down. So too it is with power and corruption. So it is with this - these things are engineered - they're not happening in a vacuum; and the people who DID this already knew what their end intent was before they did it.
George Carlin said: "I don’t really–honestly–deep down–believe in 'political action'–because the system contracts and expands as it wants to accommodate these changes. I think the...people who own this country..see where their self-interest lies...[and accordingly] a certain amount of freedom seems good; an illusion of liberty."
The very people who are telling you that this is not working, are the people who created it in the first place towards the goal that they now express; and the only purpose was to cause this very thing to happen.
Until we are willing to embrace this fact and use the political process to resolve it, things will NEVER really change.
6
Articles like these exist to deflect public opinion from domestic issues by painting a dismal picture of the rest of the world.
Strikes and protests have always occurred. In a world of 200+ countries it is not hard to find countries confronting certain challenges at home. But issues need to be viewed in context in an objective light and not disproportionately magnified.
Throughout most of the world, poverty rates are falling rapidly. Hundreds of millions have escaped poverty since China's 1979 market reforms and India's 1991 financial liberalisation. And inequality between countries is falling as well with developing countries comprising a fast-growing share of world GDP. China is now a middle-income economy and India will reach there in 10 or so years. So the large bulk of a combined 2.5 billion people people are markedly better off.
Actually, even as the rest of the world has improved, income inequality in the US has risen over the past 4 decades, with the share of income going to the top 1% increasing drastically.
One way to divert public attention is by amplifying negative incidents in the rest of the world and making them seem like the norm. People who don't read a variety of news sources will then buy the narrative and consequently believe that the country they reside in can only be the greatest.
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time...
14
@Jack
Thanks, sir. I understand your response better than Mr. Brook's article. I ask Mr. Brooks, where do the 1% fit in? They don’t pay a fair tax. They got tax cuts during the Mideast wars of 2001 & 2003, the first-time during wartime in American history! Fox News viewers are constantly lied to, don’t question the lies, & vote for the 1%. Is this populism, revolt, or something else?
10
David Brooks is conflating way too many political developments as popularism. One of the first lessons in social sciences is that if everything is one thing than nothing is that thing: if every political movement is populism then nothing is populism for it explains nothing. From modernity onwards, every political movement seeks to be a "populist" movement: the foundation of all political legitimacy after the French Revolution is embedded in the masses. The modern use of populism is to make a useful distinction between the interests of the majority and the rights of the minority in modern nation-states. Politicians who are "populists" are those political leaders who are willing to serve the interests of the majority without any regard for the rights of the minorities. In that sense, Donald Trump and Victor Orban are populists who appeal to the majority of their countries by stoking hatred and resentment toward minorities. Hong Kong protests, then, isn't a populist movement: there's no charismatic leader who's rallying the masses against some marginalized minority in their midst. Indeed, it's bizarre use of the term.
The problem of populism across the world--from the U.S. (Trump) to Hungry (Orban) to the Philippines (Duterte)--is massive enough without lumping all mass movements into the category. Since real populism relies on conjured up domestic enemies and external threats (immigrants mainly), the response should be a return to civility, decency, and the rule of law.
10
I think this column points to the underlying problem — that technology and climate change have generated changes that our worldview cannot accommodate. We have been far more successful at innovating - at inventing machines to do our work - than we have at adapting to less work. Work and money determine our sense of self-worth. But apparently 88% of jobs have been lost to automation (not to globalization) — so the work/money ethic is unsustainable. I think - if we are going to get to the other side of this - we are going to have to completely overhaul our beliefs surrounding work, money, and individual worth. That is, everyone’s basically worthy — because anyone who is scorned will in all likelihood turn to leftist or rightist populism.
15
These comments are all good, and it is an insightful discourse/dialogue that can be read in them.
What needs to be better highlighted is the statement by Mr. Brooks -- "People felt that their national cultures were being ripped away from them."
From whence does this claim come? It is a direct affirmation of a Trump agenda to underscore fear and mistrust of "the other." In our case, "the other" is those from Central America and, as is almost everywhere, those from the mideast.
These kinds of nationalist appeals are subtle and often built on foundations of good. historical scholars. But they are also now outdated. In a world where you can get on a plane and be half-way around the globe in less than a day, we need to realize that we need to try to foster a new national culture--one that recognizes differences are inevitable and tries to forge a new sense of unity in the midst of our diversity.
7
Thank you for synthesizing the current worldwide eruptions. That was badly needed as it certainly does seem that the political world is in an exceptionally volcanic and volatile state—despite all the scientific, medical and even political progress that has occurred worldwide since about 1776. Doubtless some of the current trouble is related to environmental degradation due to resource overuse and scarcity and overpopulation. Obviously it is not easy to operate a democracy or keep a republic, as Franklin implicitly warned. But having too little chance for prosperity or even survival due to environmental stress will tax any political system. Keeping a republic is now the challenge and your formula for succeeding is a good one. As long as environmental concerns are also made a priority.
4
@Margaret King Yes, the environment has often been missing from these "big picture"/pattern-defining analyses, and needs to become a major part of them. And not just climate change. Biodiversity is another bear.
3
The definition of "liberal globalization" is not at all clear to me, but if David Brooks is referring to key policies over the last 30 years that have defined the current world order, I would point to the failure of spreading capitalism to include everybody.
Capitalism, as it is practiced in most place, tends to favor those people who are connected and already members of the wealthy classes. That's why the richer keep getting richer while the middle class is shrinking in this country. This kind of capitalism is best only for the wealthy.
The answer, I believe, is to institute a more inclusive and ethical form of capitalism that allows everyone who contributes to society in some way to share in the profits.
23
"Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth" ...
No David, if you mean that economic policies of the left in our country equate to Democrat policies, you are, once again, mistaken.
Over the post WWII period since Ike, annual growth in real GDP p/capita under Dem tenures far exceeds that achieved under the GOP.
Provably, the trickle down tax cut nostrum favored by the Right has only served to concentrate wealth and run-up deficits. It needs to be summarily deposited onto history's junkyard of failed ideas.
The fruits of America's productivity need to be more widely shared, and stop flowing so overwhelmingly to a tiny fraction of American households.
The Dems offer the superior social bargain. Always have .. full stop.
59
@JH
Nice strawman. You say: "Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth"
No David, if you mean that economic policies of the left in our country equate to Democrat policies, you are, once again, mistaken.
I'm pretty sure he isn't equating leftist populists (eg. Chavez) with Democrats.
@Andio
Read again, the words ..our country .. is what was written. Chavez doesn't live here. Got it?
BTW, since when did the GOP discriminate democrats from "socialists" or "leftist populists"?
The "base" of Mr Brooks is the wealthy who have been increasing inequality by reducing taxes on the rich and funnelling government spending to the rich.
Mr Brooks never criticises his base, but tries to deflect attention through elaborate ruses such as this column.
The problem of inequality is so simple that everyone around the world can see it -- except for apologists like Mr Brooks who long ago invested in that problem.
86
@Michael - So. How did Chavez and Maduro's handling of the simple problem of inequality and the wealthy work out? Waiting for the apologists' elaborate ruse.
2
@Uxf The short answer is that Chavez did reduce inequality in his early years, but then he over-spent and over-controlled, which reduced economic resilience. It was poor management, not class war or ideological failure. Brooks' ruse is to connect the wrong dots, in order to avoid the inconvenient truth that increasing inequality is the cause of global resistance.
15
@Michael I pay almost half my income in taxes. How much more do you want? What is the current liberal definition of “fair share” when half of Americans pay not a single dime.
The constant drumbeat of tax cuts preferentially benefiting the wealthy is statistically true but logically manipulative because. Drumroll.... the rich pay most of the taxes.
Watch what happens if and when you tax us out of this country.
1
We shouldn’t discount the impact of advances in digital technology that have enabled globalization of businesses, ever-present marketing and the depersonalization of social and political interactions. These changes amplify social conflicts that have always existed.
6
We got to this point because the news media allowed it to happen. In particular because so many departures from democratic norms were excused by news commentators like David Brooks. His unwavering excuses for the excesses of the W Bush administration, and dismissal of the visceral and unfounded attacks on Obama in small part help undermine the true picture of what was befalling us.
41
And the thing that is creeping up on all this unrest, economic, political, and civil dissatisfaction, is the environmental cataclysm of climate change - rising sea levels, loss of vital water supply to many places and people, loss of ability to grow sufficient food, myriad refugees fleeing loss of habitat, famine, and drought, increasing degradation of our home and what we need to survive, and the wars that are and will be occasioned by all of these unsettling, seemingly uncontrollable events. Either we will begin to see beyond the current populist moment and take in the central lesson that all of our fates are tied together by the fact that we live on a small, vulnerable, limited-resource planet, or we will remain absorbed in fighting each other and fail to learn it, meaning that many if not most of us will perish slowly but inevitably together.
We must very soon learn to distinguish between what may seem important but is in actuality a distraction and what is truly, vitally important to the survival of the human race. We don’t have much time left to make that distinction.
54
@Karen
Thank you,Karen. Well said!
"Populist economic policies of left and right destroy growth." As he likes to do, Mr. Brooks positions himself in the center, but in doing so he fudges the real problem, which is that economic policies of the "center"--namely, the neoliberalism that he has been supporting for the last 20 years--produce growth, but funnel all of the new wealth into a tiny minority at the top. This is why populists on the left and right can get traction: the "center" has failed.
And let's be honest. The current global wave of populism is mostly a right-wing phenomenon. It's the monster child of thirty years of "centrist" neo-liberalism. As long as Brooks is defending that center, he will have nothing useful to say by way of diagnosing populism.
109
@TMSquared
More of a fusion of right-wing and left-wing populism. For example, the SPD lost more votes to AfD in Germany than the Christian Democrats.
1
The world is more at Peace than it has ever been. The people of the world are wealthier than they have ever been. We live longer, we are healthier, most of us can read, we are better off than we have ever been.
Hong Kong protestors are among the very richest people on this planet living in what was the safest city in the world.
The "conservatives" are calling for a more authoritarian government and the "unconservatives" are calling a more powerful government or vice versa things don't look good for democracy. I've always thought of our Chinese students as the most conservative on the planet.
As we worry about friends and family in Santiago I get to read another Brooks op-ed I cannot understand.
Is there an antonym for what Americans call conservatism, in Canada the antonym is progressive but that is wrong in country where conservatism is a search for parts unknown.
5
You can't feed people marketing and culture (movies & TV) that tells them they are supposed to be consumers at a higher level, and expect people to not feel manipulated and insulted when they can't achieve it - even when they have high degrees and have done nothing wrong.
Those people who see marketing for things they can NEVER have simply do not care if the upper middle class is happy or not.
The system is already not working for them.
And besides, the mass immigration because of the climate crisis that will start in a much bigger way in the next decade or so....will put all of your GDP WORSHIP in its place.
17
There is only one candidate who wants to reform capitalism, the government and give more freedom to individuals, part of which is through rebalancing the distribution and opportunity for wealth.
That is Elizabeth Warren.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to her.
She is not some leftwing populist as people are trying to portray her. She is not against wealth or capitalism. But the economic system, as well as our governments, has been corrupted from working as it claims: for the benefit of all.
Warren recognizes that "Nobody makes it on their own. Nobody." And the true beneficiaries of a society should be willing to pay back so that others can live good lives as well.
When they don't; when they promote a self-serving ideology of rugged individualism or cowboy capitalism they are not only telling a lie about how the world really works but they lay the grounds for its destruction.
Saying that "we create the jobs and wealth" sounds ridiculous when people don't have them, are starving and live are being destroyed by climate change..
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Well, for sake of fairness, Bernie wants to reform capitalism as well, he (as many others) just calls the reformed capitalism as socialism
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@Christine - I agree that the Progressive platform of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would benefit the working classes the most as well as appeal to the, as Mr. Brooks frames it, "coastal elites" concerned about social issues. But for Mr. Brooks, who has written a book titled, "The Road to Character" and "The Social Animal," Warren is a bridge too far. In fact, his Oct. 17th op-ed attacked her on several fronts. So, it seems disingenuous for him to describe populist angst and ask for solutions, yet when real life options are proposed, he is an avid detractor.
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@john Really? They didn't get any education? Use any roads? Get information from free airwaves? Nada? Come on. Get real. Everyone gets a LOT of help from the gov't -- they just take it for granted.
1
Enjoyed the article. Brooks has a stealth identification process-i.e. Populists v. Educated Elites. Let's try it another way-Globalists v. Nationalists. And in that recognition is found the dilemma for America. Globalists in our nation can't move without the voluntary participation of the Nationalists. For in that group is found the enlistees in the military, the lower sectors of law enforcement and judiciary-litigation and the general work force (which sustains the economic health of our nation.). If America is forced to pull back the international military shield, for preclusion of domestic difficulties, the entire "Globalist Agenda" dissipates to nonperformance. (No other country has the will or capability.) This is most likely the present condition of America. Elites can't lead if there are no participants.
7
David Brooks mentioned the frustration of the newly arrived middle class throughout much of the developing world. One of the factors that might be driving the dissatisfaction is the Middle Income Trap. Rapid economic development is often accompanied by crony capitalism and corruption. The resulting dysfunction can stymie progress and with those entrenched resisting change causing people to head for the streets.
4
"In the U.S., Washington insiders are rising up to curtail Trump’s normlessness."
It would be helpful - if it isn't essential - for the estimable Mr Brooks to elaborate at some length on this contention for this observer to understand much less evaluate it.
Also for him to compare the American rising up to those in the many other parts of the world he cites.
4
Isn't this exactly what Andrew Yang is proposing?
11
I found it insightful when the article referred to "populist/authoritarian regimes." The populist part refers to a large portion of the population that has been left behind economically; the authoritarian part refers to those leaders who prey on the fear and anger of the populists to usurp power and ultimately do nothing of value for the populists. Strange bedfellows, indeed.
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As a native of a blue state turned red enough to elect Rep. Steve King, perhaps the single worst person in Washington, I think I get what's happened.
The same masses of people "left behind" elected Trump. He, in turn, admires some of the worst, most divisive politicians on earth. In Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines, China, Russia, North Korea, and the list goes on.
If Trump is impeached or defeated, I think it will help take the wind out of the sails of these other, awful "leaders."
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"The working classes who have been supporting populists need a way to thrive in the modern economy and a sense they are respected contributors to their national project. The educated elites want their democratic freedoms protected and to live in ethnically diverse pluralistic societies.
Whoever can write that social bargain wins the future."
This from the man who sees Elizabeth Warren as an existential threat, and Michael Bloomberg as a serious possible candidate.
Color me more than a bit confused.
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@A. Moursund
Brooks wants it both ways.
He's very comfortable, only his dreams at night bother him.
How I wish the NYT's would replace this guy.
9
I’m not sure a future can be “won” — created maybe
3
Unrest throughout the world is fed by political, cultural, economic issues as described by Brooks. But I find myself wondering—-how much of the unrest throughout the world is fed and fostered by Russian propaganda? I know it sounds kinda nutty but I would like to know. They can, apparently, weaken liberal democracies without firing a shot. Pretty effective plan, unfortunately.
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The working class as you call them is devolving into an even more dire state, the ‘precariat’ - as talked about by Guy Standing. Look him up. Technology is simultaneously improving quality of life but enabling mass exploitation. Globalization has led to an unlimited labor supply, resulting in the de-valuing of labor in general. Of course the masses are angry if they are treated like they are disposable. Progressive discourse such as identity politics, although important, has been hijacked by the elite, as a form of false redemption. Morsels for the masses. Real social justice is economic justice. We need a universal basic income. If I could vote in the US 2020 election, I would vote for Andrew Yang. I think he’s the kind of leader you’re talking about
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@Landon Lim Generally correct analysis. And generally true that Yang's policy idea's are worthy. But corruption of our political system effectively prevents any real consideration of ideas like this or MFA in the actual policy arena. What has to happen first is the elimination of corruption. Then good ideas will actually be considered as possible policy. Until then, legal grift will be the law of the land.
I know Yang has good but still barebones policy for ending corruption. He needs to add the revolving door and the MIC to that. And address lobbying.
And he needs to make This his first priority. UBI won't happen without it.
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@Landon Lim My immediate thought as well upon reading Brooks column.
May it be so. I don't often agree with Mr. Brooks, who can sometimes seem (to me) to be a glib apologist for both neocon and mugged-social-conservative thinking, but his view here is spot-on.
The fruit of today's populism is poisoned, and is the apotheosis of the wobbling spirals of social and political unrest and doubt that originated in the middle of the last century.
"Populism," as defined at this moment, joins "scientific socialism" and paleofascism in mid-20th-century Europe in the rogues' gallery of failed extremist ideologies.
7
I cannot agree more, and only wish I knew what that social bargain was. A society without a solid middle class cannot possibly be stable, and yet the path to restoring equity seems elusive. I find myself cheering free trade, while simultaneously worrying that globalization can often bring seemingly insurmountable challenges. Can the Yellow Vests in France bring about positive change without drifting toward Marine Le Pen? If our two parties were more interested in dialogue than tribalism, we might just have a chance!
4
"It was too spiritually thin, too cosmopolitan and deracinated."
That seems a cheap shot at those participating in the decline of organized religion. Mr. Brooks, those who don't hold Anglo-Saxon Christian beliefs are not without their own form of spirituality.
---
Profound technological forces slicing through our economies have precipitated widespread forms of structural unemployment and underemployment. Heavy industrial automation and a globalized infrastructure have allowed global corporations to optimize to the lowest common denominator. It's incumbent upon the great minds of the world and titans of industry to recognize and understand how these major and rapid changes can be agreeable to, and compatible with, an inclusive global economy, or populism and revolt will continue to be a side-effect.
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It looks like 1848 all over again.
Then such protests arose against regimes all over Europe, today countries elsewhere are having uprisings.
In many places the autocrats held off on violence for quite some time, and then crushed utterly the uprisings.
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@Marvant Duhon
I might suggest a lecture by Steven Pinker or any other philosopher interested in things like truth. The world has never been better. We have fewer people in poverty and most of us live longer , healthier, more productive and wealthier lives.
We have fewer people dying in conflicts than at any time in history. "Perception is reality" Voltaire
These are hard times for those of us who believe data and empirical evidence.
Everything is getting better at least that what the numbers shout. It is not a zero sum game and things have never been better here. One million marchers marched with Greta because as good as we have it we know things can get better.
5
So easily said when tummies are empty, what we need is a new monetary system where the playing field are even. This will allows the ones left behind to rise by education, the working class to value what their working is worth, and the elite to work on philosophy, poetry, and the arts. I don’t think any country in this modern world thinks killing people for there own self interest is worth it. You can’t eat money, you can’t sustain your body on air and water alone, you can’t live in your fortress, and you will not live forever.
6
How is democracy in Bolivia doing? I've heard the Army that didn't want to confront the crowd under Morales, has no such problem under the new leadership firing the live ammunitions at the protesters who protest against the new Government that they views nothing but the result of the coup? Is that how the capitalistic democracy supposed to work? Isn't it the existence of populist the testimony that Democratic capitalism may bring the growth ( although I am not sure about that because of Russian experience when the economy shrieked two- fold under Yeltsin), it definitely does not deliver goods to many people? And if the Democratic capitalism doesn't figure out how to distribute the gains more equally, the danger of populism will be always there.
8
It reminds me of the process by which multiple societies independently began worshiping the sun in ancient times at around the same epoch. Then societies together went through periods of feudalism and eventually some segments of society started advancing faster than others, with luck and the tools of logic, story and science. Intermittently throughout, barbarism became justified again and certain societies grew at the sake of other segments of society and other societies. Now our serendipitous, simultaneous invention seems to be mutual awareness of this process, and the calls are for freedom, economic investment in non-elites, good government and accountable leaders.
2
@David
There is only one candidate who wants to reform capitalism, the government and give more freedom to individuals, part of which is through rebalancing the distribution and opportunity for wealth.
That is Elizabeth Warren.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to her.
She is not some leftwing populist as people are trying to portray her. She is not against wealth or capitalism. But the economic system, as well as our governments, has been corrupted from working as it claims: for the benefit of all.
Warren recognizes that "Nobody makes it on their own. Nobody." And the true beneficiaries of a society should be willing to pay back so that others can live good lives as well.
When they don't; when they promote a self-serving ideology of rugged individualism or cowboy capitalism they are not only telling a lie about how the world really works but they lay the grounds for its destruction.
Saying that "we create the jobs and wealth" sounds ridiculous when people don't have them, are starving and live are being destroyed by climate change..
14
@Christine That very well may be. Currently I see the primaries as full of good candidates, Sen. Warren one of them. However, I also think the best ideas will win out. You saw Warren pull back a bit from her health care plan. I think you will similarly see ideas proposed and reshaped to fit the will of the voters needed for victory next year. The Democrats get this much: the little guy is not getting a fair shake from Washington.
3
Democracy is the only political system that is inherently moral.
Furthermore, democracies don't fight wars against other democracies--a fact that has gone unnoticed.
Democracy accepts the fact that every human being is unique. Consequently, people will always disagree. On the other hand, Karl Marx looked forward to the day when everybody would think alike, so that the state could wither away.
4
This article doesn't mention the increased concentration of the world's resources -- money -- on the few and the rich.
All anyone wants when you get down to it is a decent living, a fair wage for their work, a safe home. Figure out a way to give them that, you will have a lot more peace.
Sadly, the wealthy of today don't see the common good of all as being worth losing their huge fortunes in exchange for more modest fortunes.
In revolutionary France such people ended up on BBQ spits being fed to their wives. Perhaps mandator study of economic history would be useful in world education systems.
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@Charles Trentelman
The students in Hong Kong are amongst the wealthiest most privileged people on the planet. Somehow we believe things that are simply totally wrong. Santiago's university students are not lacking for anything. It isn't the peasants revolting in Caracas.
It is 2019 and economic history is hotly debated as the economic anthropologists tell us things like there was never a famine in Ireland only a shortage of potatoes, an economic genocide, and a culling of the peasant herd while economic departments get rid of their economic historians.
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@Charles Trentelman
I think the whole point of Brooks's article is that people want more than just "a decent living, a fair wage for their work, a safe home". People need a non-shallow culture in which to embed themselves. The last however many years have not been good at providing this.
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@Charles Trentelman
The world's wealth is concentrated, but this concentration is not increasing. According to Oxfam, global wealth inequality actually fell a good amount from 2000-2009, has only been increasing since 2009, and the global 1% still own a smaller share of global wealth now than they did in 2000. https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/file_attachments/ib-wealth-having-all-wanting-more-190115-en.pdf.
Let's continue to fight inequality, but let's not glorify the past that was even more unequal than today. Let's also remember that the main reason for the decline in global wealth inequality from 2000-2009 was not rich people giving away their money or paying higher taxes. Instead, it was the economic boom in emerging markets. Thus the most effective way to reduce inequality is to develop the poor, not take from the rich.
4