Creative Class War - How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy.

Washington Monthly ^ | Feb 2004 | Richard Florida

[Mathlete]

I saw Richard Florida speak in Phoenix at the Orpheum Theater. He is perhaps one of the best liberal "intellectuals" out there, and certainly makes sound arguments backed up by real data. He does seem to try to remain neutral, whether he succeeds at it or not. Nevertheless, I'd like to hear any comments you have.

[Morgan's Raider]

We are the worrrrrld,
We are the chilllllllllrun...

[oceanview]

its not because other places have "nice scenery", its because workers in China make 27 cents an hour, and engineers in India make 1/3rd of their US counterparts. And we now have CEOs at large US companies that could care less about employing Americans (except for themselves and the other corporate officers of course), they just want to make profits in the US market, and employ elsewhere.

Lou Dobbs nails this every night in his "Exporting America" segments on CNN, they are very good. And this is also the reason why even in the face of massive fiscal and monetary stimulus, we can't get a decent economic recovery off the ground. For every dollar in stimulus we pump in the US, consumers buying foreign goods and companies making captial investment offshore, take a portion of that dollar to stimulate the economies of India and China.

it is certainly not Bush's fault, but unfortunately for him it is happening on his watch, and he isn't doing (or even talking) anything about it.

[cyborg]

I'd move to New Zealand because I don't want Gwyneth Paltrow living in the flat next to me. Otherwise, this is a good article.

[RLK]

I got half way through it and decided it was an irrelevant analytical system based upon focus upon a marginal variable. The dude is a globalist attempting to sell globalist analysis. I'm not buying into it.

[RLK]

it is certainly not Bush's fault, but unfortunately for him it is happening on his watch, and he isn't doing (or even talking) anything about it.... he isn't doing (or even talking) anything about it.

--------------------------

Less pleasant people such as myself call it what it is --derelection of duty.

[nopardons]

That's what CLinton did. Read the book by that title and learn something, for a change.

[raloxk]

"Less noted is the degree to which these lines demarcate a growing economic divide, with "blue" patches representing the talent-laden, immigrant-rich creative centers that have largely propelled economic growth, and the "red" parts representing the economically lagging hinterlands."

this is a totally false statement that borders on an outright lie.

It is the Red States that have faster per capita income growth: Greogia, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Tennessee.

Blue States are stagnating. Michigan, New York, California, Illinois and on and on

If what this author was saying was true, then the RED states would not have gained electoral votes after the 200 census at the expense of the Blue States.

What we have here is a liberal elite whiner who is complaining quite elequently about not being allowed to direct each and every aspect about what he no doubt considers to be our pitiful lives

[oceanview]

I can't disagree. But to a large degree, I don't think he or his economic team understands what is going on. alot of freepers poo-poo this issue too, check out the various threads on offshoring. so don't be surprised that snowe and evans are clueless. Get Lou Dobbs in there as treasury secretary, then you'll see someone who understand this issue perfectly.

[claptrap]

One of his warnings seems to me to be a little after the fact and reversed : The "Trade War with China" if that one was announced in one of Bushs speeches I missed it completely. This trade war would also be one we lost I think
just about all the crappy stuff Walmart sells is from China.
Ive never heard Bush say anything the least bit unkind about China, I think Bush is really kind of fond of China even. You know I put new rotors and pads on my van and even the expensive ones were made in China the autoparts guy said
just about everything was being out-sourced to the prison planet of China. Im sure the gloriously intelligent elite
that Mr. Florida worships in his article for their supernatural creative wonderous achievments even buy their
crappy stuff from some retailer who gets it from the Chicoms! Mr. Florida may sound reasoned and well researched to you but his theology is neo-pagan humanism as is the
so called elite he worships with a globalist agenda driven
hate for us country bumkin glock totin Ben Franklinites!

[Tauzero]

RLK, we need to talk about your flair. Nopardons wears 37 pieces of flair.

[nopardons]

What are you talking about and WHERE did you get a picture of RLK ? LOL

[Schattie]

Florida is a urbanism kook. Opinionjournal did a piece on him... he's a wacko of the smart growth/urbanist variety (Here.). In terms of real economic health (not 20-somethings drinking lattes), I think he's a real danger.

[swilhelm73]

A remarkably poorly argued point.

Hollywood suffers from all the vises of modern crony corporatism. You get your job there by nepotism or occasionally the casting couch. The industry has leftist ideologues often willing to lose money to make pictures that promote their world view. Even so, no country anywhere in the world can even begin to match the success of the motion picture industry. Contrasting this with the rather singularly made LOTR is a phenomenonly weak argument.

And it just gets worse. America isn't losing its lead in biotech because of modest restrictions on particularly gruesome research, nor is America in trouble because some obscure third world musicians aren't coming.

Further, claiming to invent the internet or merely throwing more money down the public school black hole doesn't make a politician an expert on high tech economics.

Really, I would give this analysis a C- were the author a student.

This is especially troubling because of the obvious fact that their is some validity to the greater point, not that Democrats = good and smart, Republicans = dumb and backward that the author is basically making, but instead that America could lose its high tech lead.

As America continues to slide down the slope of socialism and does nothing to reform its failed public school system, there is no question that it will become less attractive towards businesses of all sorts.

Frankly, we've been fortunate in that the rest of the world, for the most part, has also been proceeding, and farther, towards socialism. Further, no other country has managed to provide the peaceful political stability the US does that business needs to succeed globally.

As the Democrat party and its allies have adopted ever more radical and extreme methods to enact political desires and with a growing contempt on the Left for the idea of democracy itself, this advantage is also potentially at risk.

WTO riots, lawsuits seeking to overturn election results, and legislating judges do not form a healthy or friendly atmosphere for economic growth, and frankly, would anyone here be surprised to see even more harmful methods in the offing for the next election?

To put it simply, if America is serious about economic growth the following should be serious goals;

1) Introduce school vouchers on a national scale. We have elements of this system already at the collegiate level where America education is the best in the world. Why not learn from our successes?

2) Cut government spending - dramatically.

3) Cut taxes - dramatically.

4) Cut regulations - again dramatically.

5) The public needs to turn out politicians, and judges acting like politicians,that will not abide by the dictates of the law.

6) Serious police enforcement against domestic terrorists like ELF/ALF and their enablers (and funders) in the more mainstream leftist "protest" movement.

[Schattie]

I live in a blue state (Connecticut) that voted entirely for Gore (by county) and we had anemic growth all throughout the 90's and up to the present. As a matter of fact to be honest we haven't had economic growth in this state since the defense cuts of the early 90's. Ditto for the rest of the liberal northeast like NYC and Mass... if you look on paper most of the economic growth is largely illusiory.

[RLK]

What the hell is a flair and who is the goof in the photograph festooned like a grotesque christmas tree? Is he a flair? Then I don't want one.

[Plutarch]

And, with the demand among our own citizens for elite education far outstripping the supply, we should embark on a massive university building spree, for which we will be paid back many-fold in future economic growth.

This little piece of idiocy demonstrates that the writer is far gone in his utopian fantasies. His logic is, elite universities generate economic growth, so lets go on a "spree" building elite universities. "One elite university coming up! D'ya want ivy with that one?"

There are literally thousands of existing universities, that apparently are insufficiently elite to benefit the economy. Instead of building elite universities from scratch, it would be much cheaper to re-hab designated non-elite universities into official "elite", status, and reap the resultant economic whirlwind. Within months of Prairie View A&M's official elite status designation, we can expect Waller County, TX to explode with creative energy.

[raloxk]

this guy confirms all the reasons why I intensly dislike elitists. Read the Opinion Journal Article on him link posted above, it is excellent

[AZLiberty]

In the face of Democrat hatred, Bush has implemented more of the Democrat agenda in three years than Clinton did in eight (although Clinton did make quite an effort in his last week). Democrat complaints have little to do with reality.

[Penner]

This movement of people is what the journalist Bill Bishop and I have referred to as the Big Sort, a sifting with enormous political and cultural implications, which has helped to give rise to what political demographer James Gimpel of the University of Maryland calls a "patchwork nation." City by city, neighborhood to neighborhood, Gimpel and others have found, our politics are becoming more concentrated and polarized.

Similar to a former nation whose name began with a 'Y'?