A class guide to the 2020 presidential election: Joel Kotkin

America’s electorate in 2020 has been dissected by race, region, cultural attitudes and gender. But the most important division may well be, in a nation that has become profoundly unequal, along class lines. All politicians, from Donald Trump to Elizabeth Warren, portray themselves as “fighting for the middle class and working families.

Yet our increasingly neo-feudal America is best broken down into four broad groups: the oligarchs, the clerisy, the yeomanry and the serfs. The oligarchs dominate the economic realm, including control of information media. Below them are sometimes allied members of the clerisy, the well-educated middle class who set the country’s intellectual and cultural context.

Below them are the two most numerous classes: the property-owning yeomanry and, most numerous of all, expanding the new serfdom. Understanding these groups provides a valuable insight into 2020’s realities.

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chuckiechan said:

Outline - Read & annotate without distractions
The article explains, but does not teach.

Although I’m not a serf, the ones I know have a similar problem. They are underemployed by choice, often in trouble with credit cards as if it were a right of passage, or have student loans for impractical degrees. IMO, the debt burden takes away their mobility, because they feel they don’t want to get too far from family in case they fail. And yet, the same starving masses don’t bat an eye at paying $5 for a flavored coffee. All I can say is “Honey, you aren’t broke enough.�

In a nutshell, lack of mobility can be a serf maker�. Coming up, most of my the good jobs were “Must relocate. IOW, “Must leave safety net and warm embrace of your high school chums.�

Sorry, I don’t know what these little “text gadgets” are replacing punctuation, but I deleted them and they came back.

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