Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Alright, so folks wanted me to expand on this idea, so here we go. Elite disaffection and the return of the American Left.

As you may have noticed, we're seeing an upsurge in young Americans who reject capitalism. Why? forbes.com/sites/victorli…

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1040682489302310912

2/During a Bloggingheads discussion today, my interlocutor, a 29-year-old Jacobin writer, said something very interesting.

She said that interest in socialism wasn't just about destitution, but about "disappointment".

3/Like most younger Millennials, she graduated when the economy was still struggling to emerge from the Great Recession.

She described doing two unpaid internships and one underpaid internship before becoming a Jacobin writer.

4/Her mention of "disappointment" made me think of @mileskimball's theory of happiness as the difference between what you got and what you expected to get.
econ.yale.edu/~shiller/behma…

5/It also made me think of the old idea of the "revolution of rising expectations", where people whose high expectations aren't met get really mad.

encyclopedia.com/social-science…

6/In the 1990s and early 2000s, when the economy was doing great, there was a surge of college graduates going into the humanities.

To me, that suggests that educated young people expected there to be jobs for humanities (and social science) graduates.

sappingattention.blogspot.com/2018/07/mea-cu…

7/What were those good jobs?

Well, law was probably one of them.

But the Great Recession seems to have done long-term damage to the market for lawyers.

theatlantic.com/business/archi…

8/Another might have been finance. Recall that Michael Lewis was an art history major before he became a bond salesman.

amazon.com/Liars-Poker-No…

9/But of course Wall St. too is on the wane, in the post-crisis world.

nypost.com/2017/11/27/wit…

10/Of course, not all elite humanities and social science majors expected to make the big bucks as a lawyer or banker. Some aimed for a more humble, fulfilling job in academia.

Well, the Great Recession clobbered that too.

cbpp.org/research/state…

11/Now, pursuing that academic dream might mean sleeping in your car as a desperate adjunct.

bloomberg.com/view/articles/…

12/And don't even talk to me about the teaching profession!

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1040338809504886785

13/Meanwhile, those younger Millennials are saddled with ridiculous amounts of student debt, which they took on in the expectation of getting those jobs that dried up.

My Jacobin writer interlocutor mentioned student loans, and with good reason.

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

14/Who is hiring? Big tech companies. Obviously some people who had expected to be lawyers or teachers are switching careers into that field, but "suck it up and learn to code" is the stuff of which upper-middle-class humanities-major nightmares are made.

15/It's tempting to dismiss the disappointment and angst of educated younger Millennials as inflated expectations. And indeed, some people just mock them.

waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-ge…

16/But mock disaffected upper-middle-class educated young people at your peril.

They have the brains, the anger, and the spare time to make life very difficult for the capitalist elite who sailed through the crisis with golden parachutes intact.

17/One day you're mocking disappointed young elites for having inflated expectations, and the next day 10-term incumbent politicians are losing primaries to Democratic Socialist candidates.

18/Disaffected young elites are the people the establishment should fear the most.

The destitute masses don't have the bandwith or the resources for extended, effective political action to overthrow the system.

Educated elites do.

19/And note that even if you don't care about the fate of jilted history majors, this elite anger could be a very good thing.

It could provide the political oomph necessary to force those in power to do things that actually help the poor and working class.

20/It might be that the disaffection of the petit bourgeoisie is powerful enough to make government do things to relieve the suffering of the lumpenproletariat.

It might be the *only* force powerful enough.

Let's hope it works!

(end)

BTW, I forgot to mention that journalism jobs have also been vanishing...
pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018…

And government jobs as well...
bloomberg.com/view/articles/…

Basically, all the traditional career paths for humanities and social science majors (and quite a few other folks besides) are crumbling all at the same time...