Creative Class War

[OneBlueSky]

it's not only blue collar and white collar jobs that are fleeing our shores . . . here's a disturbing article about how BushCo's anti-elitism is also chasing the creative class offshore . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0401.florida.html

How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy.
By Richard Florida
Washington Monthly
January/February 2004

(snip)

What should really alarm us is that our capacity to so adapt is being eroded by a different kind of competition--the other pincer of the claw--as cities in other developed countries transform themselves into magnets for higher value-added industries. Cities from Sydney to Brussels to Dublin to Vancouver are fast becoming creative-class centers to rival Boston, Seattle, and Austin. They're doing it through a variety of means--from government-subsidized labs to partnerships between top local universities and industry. Most of all, they're luring foreign creative talent, including our own. The result is that the sort of high-end, high-margin creative industries that used to be the United States' province and a crucial source of our prosperity have begun to move overseas. The most advanced cell phones are being made in Salo, Finland, not Chicago. The world's leading airplanes are being designed and built in Toulouse and Hamburg, not Seattle.

(snip)

Obviously, this shift has come about with the changing of the political guard in Washington, from the internationalist Bill Clinton to the aggressively unilateralist George W. Bush. But its roots go much deeper, to a tectonic change in the country's political-economic demographics. As many have noted, America is becoming more geographically polarized, with the culturally more traditionalist, rural, small-town, and exurban "red" parts of the country increasingly voting Republican, and the culturally more progressive urban and suburban "blue" areas going ever more Democratic. 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. The migrations that feed creative-center economies are also exacerbating the contrasts. As talented individuals, eager for better career opportunities and more adventurous, diverse lifestyles, move to the innovative cities, the hinterlands become even more culturally conservative. Now, the demographic dynamic which propelled America's creative economy has produced a political dynamic that could choke that economy off. Though none of the candidates for president has quite framed it that way, it's what's really at stake in the 2004 elections.

(snip)

But the bigger problem isn't that Americans are going elsewhere. It's that for the first time in modern memory, top scientists and intellectuals from elsewhere are choosing not to come here. We are so used to thinking that the world's leading creative minds, like the world's best basketball and baseball players, always want to come to the States, while our people go overseas only if they are second-rate or washed up, that it's hard to imagine it could ever be otherwise. And it's still true that because of our country's size, its dynamism, its many great universities, and large government research budgets, we're the Yankees of science. But like the Yankees, we've been losing some of our best players. And even great teams can go into slumps.

- much more . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0401.florida.html

[DBoon]

1. USA: First country to move from the first to the third world

Thank you mr. *, for giving us the plantation economy back.

(See Michael Lind's "Made in Texas" for more on this)

[slappypan]

2. Germany in the 30s

In the 30s, many writers, composers, filmmakers, artists and actors fled Germany for America. Kurt Weill came to Broadway to score musicals and Marlene Deitrich came to Hollywood. Germany's film industry, perhaps the most innovative in the world in the 20s, never recovered.

[DBoon]

6. Too true

And don't forget the scientific talent that emigrated. This talent propelled the US into a world power.

Also, it was the more rural, undeveloped areas of Germany that supported the Nazis (Bavaria, etc.). The large cosmopolitan urban areas never did. The Nazis railed against these "decadent cosmopolitan" centers for not being German enough. In a way, "Jew" was a code word for "urban dwelling cosmopolitan".

[midnight armadillo]

7. Manhattan Project

The nuke would never have been developed without European scientific talent.

As it is overseas students coming to the US for graduate study are experiencing extreme difficulty with visas.

In my physics dept we lost 3 excellent Iranian students to Canada (couldn't get into the US), and we have 7 students stuck overseas in China who now have visa trouble and can't return after being here for 1-3 years.

These students will switch to Europe, Canada, and Australia if this keeps up, and the US brain drain will start to become terminal.

[DBoon]

8. And most of that talent would be considered suspect these days

Many of the Europeans involved in the bomb had left wing sympathies. Under today's immigration rules, these folks would not be allowed into the country - much less allowed to work on such a sensitive project.

[SanchoPanza]

11. Most of that talent was considered suspect in THOSE days

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead physicist on the Manhattan Project, was insinuated to be a traitor by many for donating money ($150/yr) to the CPUSA until 1942. As was Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and others. Even Einstein's "loyalty" was questioned in a few far-right circles because he published an essay entitled "Why Socialism?". And this was AFTER such scientific lumanaries had gifted the U.S. Military with the most destructive force known to humankind.

Even today there are still those on the far-right who drag Oppenheimer's and Fermi's names through the mud. But you don't hear them call Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz traitors for their own Communist loyalties.

[ithacan]

3. this is SO important

and really confirms that the US is behaving politically like any other country.

As in Europe, both east and west, the right wing ideologues who rely on fear, who pursue bully-boy policies, who lie and deceive, are those that have the support of the least productive parts of the economy and country, those who are supported by old industries. The red states won by Bush.

The most economically creative and productive parts of the country are also the most progressive: the blue states that Gore won, and I'd venture to bet that if you looked at a breakdown by county, it would be even clearer.

This is also scary, because it's the pattern set for the rise of neofascist forces in Europe as well.

But it's much more dangerous for the US because of our electoral system: the winner-take all single member congressional districts, and the electoral college.

In Europe, most countries have proportional representation, so the 35 percent of the population who are susceptible to neofascist appeals rarely are able to get a majority. In the US we may be doomed, because of our antiquated electoral system, to have neofascist forces dominant to such an extent that they drag the entire country down the tubes. Bush certainly is targetting all of the sources of US economic vigor and creativity and of course all of the blue zones in the country...

Thanks so much One Blue Sky for posting this!

[ithacan]

13. kick

this is important stuff!

[PATRICK]

4. Oh no

who is left for the BFEE death squads?

[liberalhistorian]

5. Well, as someone

who plans to move to Vancouver or Dublin if the BFEE remain in power next year, and who considers myself creative, not only is this no surprise to me whatsover, but I say the hell with the red areas, they're getting what they asked for and deserve.

This is fast becoming a country I no longer recognize, and it just breaks my heart to see all of this happening, things I NEVER EVER in a hundred million years thought would happen.

[HootieMcBoob]

9. Excellent article

Richard Florida is right on target here. Great article.

[info being]

10. Read up on the WTO / World Bank, etc.

"The Best Democracy Money can Buy" is a good start. It highlights exactly how there is money to be made by the elite in the destruction of a county. That is what these organizations do: systematically destroy countries for profit.

I can't help but wonder whether are intentionally using the same policies on the US.

[OneBlueSky]

12. kick . . . another good read . . .

for those who haven't seen it yet . . .