Economics and history ... describing America...

I was reflecting on today’s Iowa caucuses and the current economy after reading an excellent Guest Opinion and analysis in The New York Times. That led me to comment on these texts:

THE PHOENIX ECONOMY by Felix Salmon was published in May 2023. Salmon, the chief financial correspondent at Axios, describes “Work, Life, and Money in the New Not Normal.” He spends a great deal of time noting the far-reaching impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and argues, for example that “Covid broke time,” impacting our regular habits (daily commute, annual family visits, shopping trips) in a disconcerting manner. The economic impacts, of course, were far-ranging, too, (e.g., a deep but short recession in 2020; use of Zoom and Slack; investment timeframe). Salmon writes in an engaging manner and his commentary, especially on how investment strategies and styles differ by generation (building on Kevin Roose’s concept of from ladders to trampolines) is informative and though-provoking. As we all acclimate to a post-Covid environment, this text offers a terrific (if triggering) retrospective. THE PHOENIX ECONOMY is the Winner of the 2023 SABEW (an association of business journalists) Best in Business Book Award for Investing and Personal Finance. This text was also profiled and summarized by The Next Big Idea Club.

THE VELVET ROPE ECONOMY by Nelson D. Schwartz was originally published in March 2020, and therefore probably did not get as much attention as it would have had at other times. Schwartz, a business reporter at The New York Times with close to two decades of experience, discusses “How Inequality Became Big Business,” a topic which certainly features in analyses of voting patterns and reactions to candidates. In fact, Schwartz concludes the text by writing “it's up to all of us -- including those well ensconced inside the velvet rope -- to create a less segmented society, where Americans from different walks of life actually meet one another and find common ground.” His chapters look at experiences inside (envy, exclusivity, ease, access, and security) and outside (exclusion, division, and isolation) by sharing numerous examples across industries. Perhaps one of the most vivid is the literal separation at sporting venues like the new Yankee Stadium which limits access and getting autographs to certain ticket holders. While looking at product differentiation and capacity constraints, Schwartz points to travel, healthcare, and education, saying, “as the public sector is replaced by private services aimed at the elite, the very foundation of the republic is eroded.” THE VELVET ROPE ECONOMY is well-researched, and notes represent roughly ten percent of the text. Schwartz’s examples tend to be domestic ones, but internationally, as was stated more recently on The Conversation web site: “Globally, inequality is so extreme that the world’s 10 richest men possess more wealth than the 3.1 billion poorest people, Oxfam has calculated.” Think about it.

Published in 2020, PROMISED LAND by David Stebenne chronicles “How the Rise of the Middle Class Transformed America, 1929-1968.” Stebenne, a lawyer and Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University, documents change across those four decades through an historical lens so as to tell “the story of how and why that transformation [to a predominately middle-class nation] came about, what life was like during the heyday of the middle class, and why, beginning in the later 1960s, that process slowed down and eventually stopped.” He discusses a “state of mind” and how the middle class “prized a sense of belonging, taking pride in their families, neighborhoods, communities, and country” which echoes the work of other scholars such as Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, Our Children or, perhaps, even Upswing. In addition to economic characteristics, Stebenne points to demographic (race and gender), geographic, and cultural (increase in driving, radio, television, etc.) factors in a readily accessible way. Of help to interested researchers (especially AP US students), roughly twenty percent of PROMISED LAND is devoted to notes and bibliographic references.