http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=2

The Genteel Nation
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 9, 2010

Most people who lived in the year 1800 were scarcely richer than people who lived in the year 100,000 B.C. Their diets were no better. They were no taller, and they did not live longer.

Then, sometime around 1800, economic growth took off — in Britain first, then elsewhere. How did this growth start? In his book “The Enlightened Economy,” Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University argues that the crucial change happened in people’s minds. Because of a series of cultural shifts, technicians started taking scientific knowledge and putting it to practical use. For example, entrepreneurs applied geological research to the businesses of mining and transportation.

Britain soon dominated the world. But then it declined. Again, the crucial change was in people’s minds. As the historian Correlli Barnett chronicled, the great-great-grandchildren of the empire builders withdrew from commerce, tried to rise above practical knowledge and had more genteel attitudes about how to live.

This history is relevant today because 65 percent of Americans believe their nation is now in decline, according to this week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. And it is true: Today’s economic problems are structural, not cyclical. We are in the middle of yet another jobless recovery. Wages have been lagging for decades. Our labor market woes are deep and intractable.

The first lesson from the economic historians is that we should try to understand our situation by looking for shifts in ideas and values, not just material changes. Furthermore, most fundamental economic pivot points are poorly understood by people at the time.

If you look at America from this perspective, you do see something akin to the “British disease.” After decades of affluence, the U.S. has drifted away from the hardheaded practical mentality that built the nation’s wealth in the first place.

The shift is evident at all levels of society. First, the elites. America’s brightest minds have been abandoning industry and technical enterprise in favor of more prestigious but less productive fields like law, finance, consulting and nonprofit activism.

It would be embarrassing or at least countercultural for an Ivy League grad to go to Akron and work for a small manufacturing company. By contrast, in 2007, 58 percent of male Harvard graduates and 43 percent of female graduates went into finance and consulting.

The shift away from commercial values has been expressed well by Michelle Obama in a series of speeches. “Don’t go into corporate America,” she told a group of women in Ohio. “You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. ... Make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry.” As talented people adopt those priorities, America may become more humane, but it will be less prosperous.

Then there’s the middle class. The emergence of a service economy created a large population of junior and midlevel office workers. These white-collar workers absorbed their lifestyle standards from the Huxtable family of “The Cosby Show,” not the Kramden family of “The Honeymooners.” As these information workers tried to build lifestyles that fit their station, consumption and debt levels soared. The trade deficit exploded. The economy adjusted to meet their demand — underinvesting in manufacturing and tradable goods and overinvesting in retail and housing.

These office workers did not want their children regressing back to the working class, so you saw an explosion of communications majors and a shortage of high-skill technical workers. One of the perversities of this recession is that as the unemployment rate has risen, the job vacancy rate has risen, too. Manufacturing firms can’t find skilled machinists. Narayana Kocherlakota of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank calculates that if we had a normal match between the skills workers possess and the skills employers require, then the unemployment rate would be 6.5 percent, not 9.6 percent.

There are several factors contributing to this mismatch (people are finding it hard to sell their homes and move to new opportunities), but one problem is that we have too many mortgage brokers and not enough mechanics.

Finally, there’s the lower class. The problem here is social breakdown. Something like a quarter to a third of American children are living with one or no parents, in chaotic neighborhoods with failing schools. A gigantic slice of America’s human capital is vastly underused, and it has been that way for a generation.

Personally, I’m not convinced we’re in decline. There are strengths to counter these weaknesses. But the value shifts are real. Up and down society, people are moving away from commercial, productive activities and toward pleasant, enlightened but less productive ones.

We can get distracted by short-term stimulus debates, but those are irrelevant by now. The real issues are whether the United States is content with gentility shift and whether there is anything that can be done about it in any case.

That was posted in the college thread awhile back. I thought/continue to think it's a very weak piece.

you're a weak piece.

Personal attack!!

So does the author expect everyone to go against their parent's wishes (as well as the societal zeitgeis) and aspire to more blue collar jobs? I just don't see that happening and I don't think it's necessarily healthy either.

Why do you think it's not necessarily healthy? I don't think it's ideal, but if the demand is there, and the job pays well, what's the problem?

Blue collar jobs stifle little Sheffield's or little Kayden's creativity and self esteem. Enlightened souls do enlightened, emotionally productive work. We can always import brown people to that work anyway.

It doesn't make sense to me that you'd make this post after everything that'd you've said in the college thread.

Independent points. Obviously I'd rather have a nation of intelligent people that are more oriented to scientific/white collar fields. But we're not discussing that. We're talking about a nation with 9.5% unemployment where we can't even get people to go into self-supporting fields simply because of their stigma.

Well, my (and others) point in the college thread was that college isn't for everyone, and if you can make a good living that requires education other than traditional college, then it shouldn't be a big deal. That seems awfully close to the first post of yours I quoted, hence the confusion.

That brings up the problem with the article, that I talk about in the College thread. The article talks about a shift but fails to take into account supply and demand (instead deals with the more abstract concept of "productivity" with no reference to wage). Also, there's no evidence presented for any shift.

I think you'd agree that most parents want something more for their children. That is one of the big motivators in terms of the creation of a "genteel nation." If you're a skilled laborer you generally want your son/daughter to go to college and get a "better" job than the one you had. I think many of them would see it as a failure if their kid ended up with exactly what they had.

Tru' nough. But someone still has to do those 'blue collar' jobs and removing the irrational stigma from them will help bring pride back to those careers.

I remember a theoretical discussion with some coworkers over a beer about what we do if America were to collapse. I came to the shocking realization I had no real skills. Software development and system engineering have no place in the post-zombie apocalypse world. While people who can fix engines, build houses, farm, they are useful. The would use someone like me as zombie bait so they can escape. We don't want a nation of nothing but zombie bait.

By the way, I kinda fall in this category, although I have a real pleasure when Im able to fix/setup some device.

You should read the college thread more closely. My argument for sending everyone to college extends far beyond the creation of a scientific/white collar society. My comments here are more, "we gotta walk before we can run," type stuff.



It's a lot easier to not be zombie bait and have a white collar degree than it is to be a plumber or a mechanic and not have a white collar degree. You can very easily learn those skills on the side in your own time. You can learn to fix your car, plant a garden, fix your roof, unplug the toilet and live in a post zombie-apocolypse world.

I have this thought more often than I'd like to admit.

Is teaching considered a skill?

You have to be able to project some of these trends.

The reality is that the major drivers of employment in this country for the past few decades (housing, financial innovation, etc) have been built almost entirely on the back of pyramiding credit. The monetary and fiscal authorities' ability to marshal and expand credit have contributed to economic "growth" more than any other economic factor. Like anything else, the ability to expand credit has finite limits. It's my opinion that we've reached these limits (negative return on marginal productivity of debt).

Understanding how bubble-driven industries (and credit-driven growth in general) will unwind allows one to project future production and consumption trends, and hence where employment is likely to ebb and flow.

It is easier for a more intelligent person to learn a skill with a lower learning curve than it is for a less intelligent person to learn a highly technical trade. I agree, but you are talking about IQ differences, not about college degrees.

Perhaps, but that is neither here nor there. If you are really concerned that you couldn't take care of yourself in a meltdown, go to Home Depot and get a few books. Start turning some wrenches, plant a garden, instead of calling a plumber or a carpenter, try doing it yourself. If you have the IQ for the white collar job, then you have the ability to acquire these skills with a bit of practice.