Election 2018

[Eric the Green]

This article does seem to confirm Bob's perception of the information age in conflict with the industrial age, much as two saecula ago the conflict was between the industrial age and the agricultural age-- and involving many of the same states on the progressive and regressive side. Today the red industrial age side is blocking the progress brought by the blue information age side, whereas before the previous civil war the gray agricultural age side was blocking the progress brought by the blue industrial age side.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenu...ovr6VXM5WU

Excerpts from the article:

The sharp political divide that surfaced in 2016 between the densest, most productive and future-oriented portions of the economy and the rest of it—between what Jim Tankersley of the New York Times has called “high-output” and “low-output” America—remains a revealing, disconcerting fact of modern economic and political life.



As of the midterms, there are now two divides. One divide will continue to play out in the next two years in the House; with a Democratic majority that factually represents 60 percent of the economy, with its most productive districts and industries containing high shares of workers with college degrees. In this chamber a modest urban and suburban majority should be able to prevail in narrow votes articulating key agenda points relevant to high-output America.

However, the other divide—the one in the Senate now exacerbated by the Republicans’ net gain of between one and three seats—looms much more consequentially. With new GOP gains in the chamber, 21, mostly rural, low-output—ranging from Arkansas to Wyoming—now host two Republican senators and are poised to serve as an even more reactionary veto on the projects and priorities of the high-output America. These 21 states will easily be able to outvote the 19 states with two Democratic senators, even though the Republican 21-state caucus represents just 30.3 percent of the nation’s output....



The midterms have in fact ratcheted up an economic, as well as social, stalemate in the nation. Even more now, a rurally oriented Senate majority representing “traditional” agricultural, energy, and production economies stands ready to block efforts to address the needs of an urban and suburban “knowledge” economy. That latter economy is more oriented to future-learning digital services, and thus depends on solutions to major issues like R&D funding, worker reskilling for a digital age, immigration, health care, income inequality, and international cooperation. In that sense, what journalist Ron Brownstein calls the “prosperity paradox” remains as true as ever. Even as economic growth is concentrating in thriving urban and suburban communities, Republicans rooted in non-urban places remote from those future-leaning ecosystems continue to wield disproportionate power in Washington.

That’s a problem, as Brownstein wrote last week: The two parties even more this fall represent “what America has been and what it is becoming”—and they are at a standoff. Going forward, the question is whether a nation that fails to support the needs of its core, high-value economy can truly thrive.