As Population Growth Slows, Populism Surges
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's not unusual, of course, for localities to give large companies tax incentives to build factories, warehouses, or even data centers, but those tax incentives are very expensive, and they don't tend to bring better-educated, higher-earning workers into the area. Trying to attract a larger number of much smaller businesses might be a more fruitful approach in the long run, if a way can be found to do it.
A better move might be to pay people to leave dying counties. I've heard it discussed for Coal Country in West Virginia, and in parts of Kansas that have been shrinking for the last century.
As farms and rural industries mechanize, and as cities become the primary focus, why swim against the current?
Purely monetary incentives don't work. You have to look at the full range of what incentives people to move to a place. And companies are still run by people who are swayed by those same incentives.
Even in the Bay Area, companies with large campuses and competitive pay are opening offices in San Francisco because their talent is demanding it.
How about we include their own list of real needs (not just “More jobs” rhetoric) in the real debates rather than going in circles with hypotheticals on social media
Maybe the government can start there
Cause I grew up in a rural area. The aren’t luddites. But they also don’t want YOUR context pushed on their ways
Read some Paulo Freire
If you have a better idea for a solution, by all means, tell us.
What "real needs" do you have in mind?
In the world’s largest cities, where populations are densely concentrated and growing, economies are generally thriving and cosmopolitanism is embraced. Where populations are sparse or shrinking, usually in rural places and small cities, economies are often stagnant, and populism sells.
What does "thriving" mean here? GDP? Do any countries track GDP by city? I haven't heard of that if so. This paragraph is vague but if by "thriving" they mean lots of economic activity, that's a circular definition - "thriving economies are where lots of people are". By this logic cities have always had more "thriving" economies than rural areas and always will, by the very definition of what a city is.
Also, whilst they define populism, they do not define "cosmopolitanism". If populism is the feeling that a small group of elites do not represent the needs of ordinary people, then what is cosmopolitanism? The idea that elites don't exist at all? Or that they do and that it's a good thing if they rule?
As youth have continued to migrate from rural areas to cities, their movement has widened not only the median age gap between rural places and cities, but also gaps in attitude, since the young, regardless of where they live, tend to associate more with urban outlooks.
More circularity. Cities are dominated by the young, therefore the young associate more with urban outlooks. This is restating the premise in different words.
One movement extols the values that are a practical necessity in dense, interconnected cities: interdependence, internationalism and the embrace of “diversity” (defined along multiple dimensions)
This is stated as if it's obvious fact, but I don't understand why. Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities? Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited eastern European or Russian cities? Or African cities?
Overall I find this analysis weak. It's basically a big correlation/causation fallacy, written by academics in the NY Times (elitist intellectuals writing in what is practically the official newspaper of such people), who are non too subtly arguing that smart young energetic people and places are people who agree with academics, and old decaying declining people and places are people who don't.
But there are many other ways to explain contemporary political shifts. I see no reason to link it to demographics.
>Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities? Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited eastern European or Russian cities? Or African cities?
These cities are far more interconnected, both internally and externally, than the countryside.
Also, I hate it when someone claims they have an alternative explanation, but don't present it so that we can examine it critically.
Industrialization might have correlated with population movements from rural areas to the cities in the past. It's not so clear it still means that now. And as for falling fertility rates, that's surely more related to improvements in healthcare. You can say those improvements wouldn't have happened without industrialization, but that's just redefining industrialization as progress in general. In which case "cosmopolitanism is caused by progress" becomes the argument: an opinion, surely.
These cities are far more interconnected, both internally and externally, than the countryside.
You're talking about interconnectedness, the first thing the article's authors specified, but I was talking about internationalism, the second. The term "interconnectedness" is too vague to discuss; if it means people depending on each other, well, I've seen many claim over the years that cities are isolating and true communities where neighbours rely on each other are a suburban and rural phenomenon. I have no data either way. It seems easier to reason about internationalism, and that claim is dubious.
Also, I hate it when someone claims they have an alternative explanation, but don't present it so that we can examine it critically.
I didn't pick any specific explanation because there are so many to pick from.
For instance, if we drill into the definition of "populism", whereby it sets "ordinary people" against "elites", the most direct and simple explanation is that maybe in recent times there have been transfers of power away from ordinary people towards elites, and "populism" is simply politicians reacting to the concerns that this has caused. Obviously power being held by elites is a feature of many eras in history, has never been popular with the common man, and has nothing in particular to do with population growth or decline.
That's very recent, and it effects only a very small portion of the population.
Industrialization might have correlated with population movements from rural areas to the cities in the past. It's not so clear it still means that now.
The article is about trends that we have seen so far. You are speculating about the future.
And as for falling fertility rates, that's surely more related to improvements in healthcare.
Not just healthcare. Having a lot of children is economically beneficial to farm families, it is a great expense for modern urban ones, and so they have greatly reduced how many they have.
but I was talking about internationalism
Cities are booming because factories and big businesses are located there, and these are all involved in economic activity involving the nation, and usually other nations too. Internationalism is the philosophy that this is a good thing.
For instance, if we drill into the definition of "populism", whereby it sets "ordinary people" against "elites", the most direct and simple explanation is that maybe in recent times there have been transfers of power away from ordinary people towards elites, and "populism" is simply politicians reacting to the concerns that this has caused.
I agree with that. The thing is, for most of history, wealth was in the land, and the elite were landed aristocrats. With industrialization, wealth has moved largely to cities, and so that is where the elites live, and the people in the countryside have become much poorer, and so they often become populists.
But of a very specific sort: improvements in access to contraception. It's also strongly affected by women's access to jobs outside the home.
Falling fertility is our great victory over Malthusianism, it should be celebrated more.
(Just re-read the article to check something, and isn't it going to a great effort to avoid saying the word "race"?)
Given that most cities have large commuting penumbras I think that's a reasonable approximation. You can clearly identify e.g Paris, and infer that Dublin and Aberdeen are largely responsible for the prosperity of their regions.
"Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human beings belong to a single community, based on a shared morality." - or so says Wikipedia.
> Why is internationalism a practical necessity in cities?
A city is, at its heart, a trade nexus. Even a town is usually built around some key market or industry. More people == more opportunities for trade and networking; Metcalfe's law for humans. Having foreigners around means more trade routes. Nobody's seriously tried to close their cities to trade since the Qing dynasty.
> Are there no cities in the world with quite ethnically homogenous populations? Have the authors visited eastern European or Russian cities?
If you're going to talk about Eastern europe, then there are two things you need to be very careful of: one is miscategorising everyone as the same ethnicity because they all have pale skin (e.g. Magyars are not the same ethnicity as Slavs), and the other is overlooking the realities of genocide and ethnic cleansing that forced populations apart across the 20th century. Poland looks a lot more ethnically homogenous after the 10% of its population that used to be Jewish was exterminated.
Most of the Austro-Hungarian empire was cosmopolitan and multi-lingual in its cities, for example.
When people talk about "elites", they need to be very careful to identify their target as being the actual people with money and power. Otherwise this ends up collapsing to mean "jews" or "liberals" (remember "rootless cosmopolitan" is a subtle anti-semitic slur). It's particularly ludicrous when you get e.g. UK cabinet ministers who come from wealth and private schools complaining about "elites interfering with brexit" when what they actually mean is "journalists pointing out problems".
Webster defines it as:
populism - the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite
In the US, I’m pretty sure it’s because ppl can’t afford to have kids.