Demographics

Westerners tend to identify China’s coming political crisis with developments such as the brave, educated, and often English-speaking protests in Hong Kong. Although they undoubtably pose an annoyance to Xi Jinping’s regime, the real existential challenge to the regime derives not from China’s middle orders but from the very classes that gave birth to the Communist regime.  read more »

Chances are at some point in your life you have been turned off by a discourteous hotel receptionist, an indifferent server at a restaurant, or a poorly trained salesperson at a clothing store. As a result, we might complain to our friends or on social media – or possibly notify the management of our bad experience. We may take our business to competitors with the expectation of receiving better service. However, we would rarely indict all hotels, restaurants, and clothing stores as deficient and needing reform as a result.  read more »

For virtually all of its history from statehood in 1850 to 2000, California was a magnet drawing households from the rest of the United States for better lives. Indeed, in a nation that had its "American Dream," California had its own "California Dream."  There was no Oregon dream, despite its mountains , seashore and proximity to California, nor was there a Maine or South Carolina dream.  read more »

Although there is a perception by some that the state of Illinois is in decline, the reality might not be quite so bad, at least at the moment. Estimates indicate that the population of Illinois has declined by about 1% since 2013. However, the population of the state is still larger than it was in 2000.  read more »

In the ever-intensifying battle between red and blue, the consultants, fixers and self-serving media thrive, but America suffers.

Now we seem destined to face a graphic battle of extremes between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, two self-styled populists best suited to exacerbating polarization while both sides toss around charges of “treason” and embrace the idea of an inevitable civil war.  read more »

What do you picture when someone refers to the “Trump’s base”?  read more »

As a recently released Organization for International Cooperation and Development (OECD) noted, house prices have been generally rising far in excess of incomes in a number of nations (Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class). OECD finds that these rapidly rising house prices have been a principal contributorto rising cost of living that has already resulted in economic reversals for the middle-class.  read more »

The next great political civil wars won’t be over race, the nation-state, religion or even class. They will be generational, pitching the Boomers, who still dominate the global economy, against their offspring, the Millennials, who assuredly do not.  read more »

The intellectual class across the West—encompassing its universities, media, and arts—is striving to dismantle the values that paced its ascendancy. Europe, the source of Western civilization, now faces a campaign, in academia and elite media, to replace its cultural and religious traditions with what one author describes as a “multicultural and post-racial republic” supportive of separate identities.  read more »

As a college professor who teaches courses about politics and geography at an extremely progressive liberal arts college, my students regularly want to talk about the narratives surrounding deep urban-rural divides which routinely make the news or the seemingly endless stories abound about urban renewal and its proclivity  read more »