(10-02-2016, 10:43 AM)Dan Wrote: http://www.salon.com/2016/10/01/breaking...socialflow
Quote:As the 2016 campaign reaches fever pitch, the more heat there is and the less light is shed. Which is why evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin’s new book comes as such a breath of fresh air. “Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History” is not about this year’s presidential election, per se, but it’s a quantum leap forward in illuminating the disintegrative trends that America has experienced over the last several decades that are currently driving our politics.
Everything from skyrocketing inequality and political gridlock to white working class angst and the rise of mass shootings and other troubling signs of our times — these are all interconnected reflections of where America is in a cyclic historical process: social integration followed by disintegration, discord and violence. Turchin and others have observed this pattern repeatedly in civilizations from ancient Rome and early Chinese dynasties up to the present day...
http://www.salon.com/2016/10/01/breaking...socialflow
Yay, its finally out. I just texted my wife to send through the Amazon order. I read a portion of this book in manuscript and have been pestering Turchin asking when it was going to come out for a year (he took the manuscript down more than a year ago and I lost the printout I had of it).
In this book Turchin maps out how he sees the American secular cycles, the first time the concept has been applied to a post-industrial society. Secular cycles are aligned with cycles in economic inequality. The driver for the pre-industrial cycle is demographics and the associated inequality cycles are consequence of this, and don't always show up.
I suspect Turchin is still thinking of a demographic driver for the modern cycles, although clearly it doesn't show up as cycles in population. He relates these to cycles in population well-being and levels of immigration. What I am interested in is his take on how does a cycle shift from the "up" phase when inequality (presumed due to demographic factors) is rising to the "down" phase like happened during the first half of the twentieth century. The population did not fall over this time nor does trends in population growth rate explain things. For example Turchin points out the sharp drop in immigration rate in 1924 as a key demographic factor associated with the shift from rising to falling inequality.
Population growth rate did take a dip, the trailing 20-year population growth rate was 1.8% in 1918 and 0.8% in 1945, shown an significant demographic effect of immigration. But this growth rate was restored by the Baby Boomers (the value was 1.7% in 1965). After this immigration was restored and 20-year population growth rate peaked in 2013 at 1.1%. Demographics doesn't seem to be a particularly powerful explainer. The story is somewhat stronger if you look at labor force, but I don't have the data handy right now. There is an argument here (which is why I see efforts to restrict immigration more favorably than other liberals) but it it's not as strong as proponents think.
What I really want to see is how you can get a HUGE reduction in inequality like that seen in the 1340-1450 period or in the 1930-1970 period without massive population decline (which induces labor shortages that drive wages up) or a massive reduction in elite number through war attrition (that allows a greater fraction of economic output to flow to the lower orders). If demographics are key its pretty much one or the other.
As a potential solution I have a manuscript ready to go that just awaits a literature review of Turchin's book, which I cannot do until I read it. It is also possible that the finished book is very different than the manuscript I read, maybe he as already come up with the stuff in my paper--he's a really smart guy.