The Economic and Cultural Divide in America
For most of the last century, wages in poorer parts of America rose faster than wages in richer places, as inventions were put to work in the hinterlands. After Henry Ford invented the Model T, for example, workers on assembly lines all over the Midwest built it.
Now it’s just the opposite. Bright young people from all over America, typically with college degrees, are streaming into the talent hubs of America—where the sum of their capacities is far greater than they’d be separately.
The invention sparked inside these hubs is delivering streams of new designs and products to the rest of the world—including to other global hubs.
In return, the money pouring into these places is delivering high wages, great living conditions (museums, restaurants, cafes, recreation), and unbounded wealth.
[...]
Between 2010 and 2017, according to Brookings, nearly half of the America’s employment growth centered in just 20 large metro areas, now home to about a third of the U.S. population.
Relative to these booming hubs, America’s heartland is becoming older, less well-educated, and poorer.
The so-called “tribal” divide in American politics, which Trump has exploited, is better understood in these economic and cultural terms: On one side, mega-urban clusters centered on technologies of the future. On the other, great expanses of space inhabited by people left behind.
Notes:
Folksonomies: politics economics demographics political divide
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