"… education is now a sharper differentiator of expected years of life between 25 and 75 than is race, a reversal of the situation in 1990." 1/
"In the early 1980s, median wages of prime-aged (25 to 54) workers with a 4-y degree were 40% higher than those without. This college wage premium had soared to 80% by the late 20-teens…" 20-teens? come on guys. 2/
"In the early 1980s, 6% of prime-aged men without a BA were not participating in the labor force. This grew to 14% by the late 20-teens. By comparison, men with a BA experienced a much smaller (3 percentage point) reduction in labor force participation over that period." 3/
"In 1980, 80% of adults without a BA were married at age 40. By the late 20-teens, that figure had dropped to 60%." 4/
"American adults without a BA are increasingly more likely to report pain in midlife to the point that those now in middle age report more pain than the elderly, something not observed for those with a 4-y degree." 5/
"These forces work to deprive working-class life in America of meaning and social structure, conditions that since Durkheim have been seen as fertile ground for self-destruction through suicide, alcoholism, obesity, or drugs." 6/ [since Durkheim?]
B/C Covid, "educational divide in mortality is likely to widen further given those without a BA are more likely to be at risk through their occupations while many of those with a BA or more can work remotely and safely." 7/
The whole paper can be read off this graph. Working-class whites are the only demographic whose life expectancy has been stagnant or falling for two decades. In the past decade the decline has spread to working-class blacks as well. 8/ 
The main causal channel is: 'New Hourglass Economy –> economic stress & psy trauma -> instability of the working class family -> deaths of despair.' Each of these causal vectors is well established. 9/
The same process of brutal downward mobility is responsible for Populism. This is why Trump won. That is why the best predictor of the Trump swing is drug overdose deaths. So that's one causal effect that we must add to the causal diagram in 9 above. 10/ policytensor.com/2019/10/03/why…
The main question is on the other end of the causal chain in tweet 9 above is — what caused the New Hourglass Economy? How and why did the occupational structure shrink in the middle? 11/
Why have jobs expanded for prestige-schooled meritocrats and unskilled day laborers, and vanished for skilled manual workers? @DSMarkovits has argued that the rise of the meritocracy itself is responsible for the hourglass. 12/
He argued in The Meritocracy Trap that, in effect, highly skilled elites, presorted on SAT scores, hollowed out the middle of the labor market by absorbing not only income and prestige, but also the work itself. 13/
I replicated @DSMarkovits's computations. Here's right about elites working harder than the masses. It's an astonishing inversion from the historical pattern. policytensor.com/2020/06/27/asy… 14/
So how did we get to this strange world where prestige-schooled 'winners take all'? The economists have a euphemism: 'skill-biased technical change' — an exogenous shock that is supposed to have transformed the labor market. 15/
It may be exogenous for economics, but it is certainly not for historians. Some have tried to blame foreigners — above all, China. @adam_tooze fell for the Autor et al. story of the China shock. But as I explained then, it doesn't add up. policytensor.substack.com/p/does-the-chi… /16
Then Adam Curtis fell for the China story too. I tried to debunk it again, hoping he would see it somehow. It was part fan boy, part scold sort of intervention. policytensor.substack.com/p/no-adam-curt… /17
Guys: this is endogenous to elite-mass relations in the United States. China's big. But it's not that big. Blaming China may help you pass a corporate welfare bill through Congress, but it's not going to prevent further instability. Stop blaming foreigners. /18
The real question is what institutions, what structures of power, are implicated in the vertical polarization of work, income and prestige. How did they emerge? Why and how do they reproduce? and how can they be dismantled? /19
One suspect is suggested by Nick Lehmann's history of The Big Test. It was by design, not accident, that we began sorting elites on cognitive test scores and allocating jobs, work, income and status on school prestige. /20
Further down, 'the diploma divide' opened up between the BA-haves and BA-havenots, as C&D note on income, mortality and morbidity. It extends, they rightly infer, down to psychological feelings of self-esteem. /21
Adolph Reed Jr. follows Christopher Lasch in asking why we should organized society in such a vertically polarized manner — and why progressive thinkers obsess over horizontal (ie interracial) inequity more than vertical inequity. /22
Following one too many others, I have laid out a more pointed critique that says, as @tedfertik put it, that neoliberal institutions are responsible for the mess, not some exogenous shock, whether automation or China. /23
These institutions were built up in response to a systemic crisis; they can be dismantled and remade in response to this one. Dismantling them will be hard. But it seems to me that elites are becoming more and more convinced that they must. /24
The best news right now is that the Fed has adopted an explicitly empirical stance of waiting for inflation instead of tightening in anticipation. If the Fed's reaction function has indeed changed, that's one down. /25
If the economy can be run hot, then perhaps broad-based growth can be delivered after all. The re-adoption of this mandate by elite managers in the US requires rethinking the question of fiscal and prudential responsibility in the context of the general crisis. /26
New understandings of fiscal and prudential responsibility is called for by this general crisis of authority, under the shadow of the hockey-stick of doom (graph) to boot. This is the effective constraint on state action on climate and shared growth. /27
The new ways of thinking about monetary, financial and fiscal discipline must be leashed tighter to reality – we must embrace the New Empiricism. /28
Intellectual revolution among some elites doesn't cut it however. There is an irreducible political element. Indeed, our present conjuncture with its series of escalating crises is a Schmittian emergency. /29
I bring in the ghost of Carl Schmitt to remind political authority of the vast possibility space opened up once the question becomes the reconstitution of the politico-economic order. /30
The new equilibrium need not be "close by" in the realm of ideas and practice. It will only be judged by history whether it measures up to the moment. The Biden elites have so far failed to come up with a credible plan for the climate crisis. /31
I am convinced that no political economy solution will, in fact, be available until we reach a new understanding of fiscal and prudential responsibility with the Democratic Party. /32
@70sBachchan and I want to talk about three things: climate policy, fiscal discipline, and China, all in the context of the crisis of elite-mass relations. Coming soon. ~end of rant~ 33/33
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