The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream

First, this book does not directly envision Donald Trump as President. In fact, it envisions a continuation of the pattern it sees, the complacency of the Americas... There is mention that these trends will result in a revolution of sorts, but the author clearly does not see this as imminent. That new fact, Mr, Trump, must have editors scrambling for a forward to be inserted.

This hits home when the author talks about our failure to invest in infrastructure, and specifically through private as well as public means. The reader thinks... well, maybe Mr. Trump will spend a trillion or so on this, so the corner is turned?

The larger goal here is to commit sociology, as George Will says. The sociology is backed by solid statistics. Americans move less, we divorce less, we seek challenges less, we strive less, and we are therefore more complacent. This is a bad thing, because stasis might be comfort, at first, but fosters a lack of resiliency, of dynamism, that can doom a society. It starts, not with the Fall of Rome, but with the second helping at the buffet... so to speak.

I concur with some of the analysis here, and Mr. Trump's America is still sleepy. Young men no longer train for war, they play Just Cause III. We are a nation of couch potatoes, and our public policy does not trend towards greatness. If the Clintons were in the White House, this book would be trenchant. It may still be after the Trump Revolution, or it may be the best written ill-timed book to come along in years.

I had hoped this would be a more interesting book that would define a problem and then point out some solutions. Cowan spends most of this 200 page book describing a complacent society, where there is less innovation, less risk taking, fewer people moving -- all signs of stagnation. There are lots of interesting tidbits and statistics here, but otherwise this is list of conditions that lead to greater economic and social instability. There is a lot of anecdote here but it is not clear what the implication of this is - It seems to be we are facing an uncertain future that could be more chaotic - It is only at the very end of the book (i.e., the next to last sentence) we get the message that future chaos may lead to our being less complacent, which could perhaps lead to a "perhaps ultimately beneficial process of social, economic, and legal transformation."

Although there are many interesting things in the book, it doesn't really lead to much of a conclusion or (what I would expect from a policy-oriented economist) discussion of policy options that will improve the problems - It is a bit like saying we will get old and die (with discussion of different diseases) without talking about steps that may improve the quality of our lives.

I think Cowen has hit the nail on the head by saying complacency is probably America's biggest problem. The title mentions one complacent class but he explains that means all classes (upper, middle, lower) constitute one complacent class. I think the real problem is that the elite class is complacent and the other two are resigned to the system this class has created.

The elite class does not care how big the trade deficit is or how big the national debt is. It does not care how many legal and illegal immigrants enter America. All it cares about is how it can make a profit from this system and increase its wealth. It is complacent about the decline of America as long as it can profit from the decline. Cohen identifies the first big shock that began the decline as the Arab oil embargo of 1973 which quadrupled gasoline prices overnight. This increase in energy prices then created the inflation which has continued to today. People first responded with an increase in women entering the work force to maintain family real incomes. When this was not enough Americans went heavily into debt to maintain their standard of living. This indebtedness has only gotten worse since then.

Meanwhile the increase in energy prices hurt profits and big business responded with all the policies we see today. These include accelerated automation, outsourcing jobs overseas, and bringing in cheap foreign labor to displace American workers. The result has been that the elite class has been able to increase its wealth while the middle and lower classes have endured flat real wages for over 40 years. Those not working have gone on welfare.

America has had a continuing trade deficit for over 40 years which has cost trillions. This deficit and the government programs for the victims of elite policies has been paid for with a combined national debt (government, business, personal) which is approaching $70 trillion. This does not worry the elite class which apparently thinks this system can continue indefinitely or at least as long as it is around.

The elite class which runs this country consists of six main groups. These are big business, the media, academia, government bureaucrats, unelected judges, and politicians. The last group is the only one theoretically under voter control but the main objective of about half the politicians is to support the other five groups and be rewarded accordingly.

The role of big business has been to design the current system. The media and academia are the propaganda departments of this system. Government bureaucrats increasingly run the country and unelected federal judges are there to step in when the politicians or voters get out of line. The politicians have basically enacted the laws necessary to keep the system going. All these groups are well paid and thus benefit from the forty year decline of America.

This whole scenario was upset when voters rebelled and elected Trump instead of the establishment candidate. The result has been a concerted effort by the elite class to destroy the Trump presidency and teach the voters who is in charge. The only group still holding out is the GOP but its resolve is questionable.

Notice how adamant the business-news community has been about opposing Trump's efforts to reduce our trade deficits. Nearly every day there are stories about how tariffs will "hurt" American consumers. There is no acknowledgement that maybe Americans can start producing the affected products and that competition will drive down prices. Of course the real ones hurt by decreased imports will be the businesses, especially Wall Street, which are dependent on them for profits. Big business has now created an economy which is dependent on a growing trade deficit.

One thing that has become increasingly clear is how federal bureaucrats have colluded to reverse the results of the election. The main players are bureaucrats in the DOJ, FBI, and CIA, all supported by most of the media. Their main objective seems to be to show that they run the country and voters better catch on. Of course they have to do it by manipulating legal concepts and finding something that can be plausibly ascribed to Trump as a crime. This is where the current situation stands.

Not enough data to support his argument. Like a way too-long New Yorker article

Tyler Cowen is a behavioral economist and essayist. He’s a frequent commentator, blogging at Marginal Revolution and for the New York Times. His perspective might be described as built on a libertarian foundation. Cowen sees markets at play—or being thwarted—in many settings.

A current running through Cowan’s work is how to master change in our new, twenty-first century world. The internet and other technological innovations are changing our lives and work for the better. But there are winners and losers. Cowan preaches adaptability and the need for continuous self-renewal.

‘The Complacent Class’ argues that the American people have become too enamored of security. This results in attempts to shelter ourselves from change. Or, perhaps, many among us are simply immobilized by the scale of the challenge.

Cowan combines the prerogatives of writer and economist to render judgment on declining social mobility. He reminds readers that attempts to forestall change will only make matters worse in a relentlessly fast-moving global economy. He compares attitudes of contemporary Americans with those of the Chinese. Where Americans are on defense, the Chinese are on offense.

The various chapters are well written in many cases usefully provocative. The author moves into so many areas of inquiry that any reader is bound to find herself agreeing and disagreeing on various items.

Quite reasonably, Cowan sees the coming years as a period of great change. Disruption in various areas may result in chaos. Unquestionably, dynamism will be a competitive necessity.

Cowan appears to believe that the American people are declining to embrace change, that we’re retreating from creativity and risk-taking. He acknowledges that government institutions may exacerbate this tendency. A fair question is the extent to which the risk-aversion he sees in the national culture might arise in response to government policies.

Surely our governance and culture are intertwined. Nonetheless, how one diagnoses the causes of the trend toward seeking security can be important to effectively correcting the problem.

Cowan is an engaging writer, a born teacher. No matter where one comes from on the issues, reading this work can be a rewarding experience.

The Complacent Class presents a vivid argument that Americans have lost some of their can-do spirit. I’ll summarize Cowen’s book below, and then present other thoughts that reading it has prompted.

***

Americans have lost some of their dynamism. Cowen’s book discusses the reasons behind and the consequences for that decline, starting with ways to measure the loss of restlessness: Americans are moving less between states; they’re starting new businesses at lower rates; and they’re marrying and living amongst people too much like themselves.

When the pie isn’t growing, it makes sense to dedicate yourself to protecting your own share. “What I find striking about contemporary America is how much we are slowing things down, how much we are digging ourselves in, and how much we are investing in stability,” Cowen writes. I’d put it in the following terms: too many parts of society are oriented towards bottom line activities of mistake avoidance instead of top line activities of taking risk and creating value.

Decades ago, people had a greater sense of urgency. As Cowen writes, some of this wasn’t always for the good. Anxious people are no longer so seduced by ideas like communism; and it’s a good thing that we haven’t had as many domestic bombings as the 2,500 between 1971 and 1972. But society loses other things when people aren’t dynamic. Not only is it economically unfortunate that productivity doesn’t grow; politics becomes more gridlocked, businesses wield greater monopoly power, and society as a whole loses the ability to regenerate itself. Toqueville considered the United States to be a land perpetually in motion; isn’t it a shame that seems no longer the case?

Americans are getting more passive—Cowen means this in the medical sense. More people are being prescribed opiods, antidepressants, and ADHD meds, all to induce calm. And: “Of all the drugs that might have been legalized [since the 1960’s], American citizens chose the one—marijuana—that makes users spacey, calm, and sleepy.”

“You can think of this book as detailing the social roots of the resulting slow growth outcome and explaining why that economic and technological stagnation has lasted so long.”

***

After presenting various claims to argue the decline of American dynamism, Cowen identifies a country that very much has a cheerful, can-do spirit: China. “I have visited China many times over the past five years, for a different book project, and what I’ve observed there has made America’s social stagnation increasingly clear to me. That was one reason I came to write this book.”

I find claims for Chinese dynamism to be appealing. People I know who came of age during the Cultural Revolution make up a terribly interesting generation; it seems like you can pluck anyone over the age of 45 to find a totally improbable resumé. Cowen cites the examples of Jack Ma, who used to pester tourists for English lessons, and Wang Wenyin, a metals billionaire who used to live in a cement pipe. I personally know someone who never went to college and was instead a tank driver; then he was decommissioned and got into the manufacturing business; later on, he was involved in real estate, in Hainan no less; now he focuses his attentions on finance. So many other Chinese, my parents among them, have experienced swerves of similar magnitude in their careers.

Dynamism is the natural mode given 10 percent growth rates, which imply an economic doubling every seven years. If you grew up in almost any large city in China, you witnessed the construction of highways, along with the cars to jam them; the erection of skyscrapers, along with the companies to fill them; the laying down of rail tracks, along with the high-speed trains to glide over them.

I have only a bit of exposure to Chinese science fiction, and my impression is that it’s optimistic in the same way that American science fiction was optimistic in the ‘50s. That makes sense, right? Chinese society has advanced more in the 40-year period since the start of reform-and-opening than American society has between the Great Depression and the ‘70s. Authors extrapolate the growth they’ve seen in their lifetimes into the future; on the other hand, dystopian science fiction is the natural outcome of stagnant growth.

Thinking about that point makes me wonder if economists are poorly-equipped to measure how an optimistic vision can propel growth. If hipper boutiques and cafés are your only exposures to physical change, then it’s a bit more difficult to imagine a radically different future. Not so for people in Shenzhen and Shanghai. For Chinese who’ve lived through high growth rates over most of their lives, they’re right to expect a whole new world in a decade. On the other hand, if one’s physical environment never much changes, then it may be difficult to think about the future very much at all. Here’s Cowen: “We are using the acceleration of information transmission to decelerate changes in our physical world.” Must our imaginations be limited by the screen? That would be a shame.

Technologically, my optimistic hope for China is that it will propel development in the world of atoms, picking up from where developed countries left off. Maybe it can take the torch on space exploration, to Mars and beyond. Maybe it can push forward nuclear fusion; it’s already been reported that American thorium scientists who could no longer develop the technology in the United States have taken their designs to China, which is happy to encourage their work. Maybe it will take the lead on life extension science, ocean exploration, cheap energy, and all the other things.

Peter Thiel has said that Chinese society is pessimistic and determinate. He writes: “Under determinate pessimism, you’ll be like China—stuck methodically copying things without any hope for a radically better future.” If that was once true, it is no longer. I submit that in many ways it’s optimistic and determinate; instead, it is the NIMBYs of Marin County and Palo Alto who are pessimistic and indeterminate, rationing out their land without necessarily a clear end goal. (Here is by the way a sampling of police blotter reports in the town of Atherton, California, where all the VCs live.) By the way, Zero to One has sold more copies in China than anywhere else in the world.

***

Who are a few uncomplacent Americans? I nominate three people for embodying restlessness and a particularly American kind of success.

I’ve already written about Philip Glass. When he received prize monies from Juilliard, he spent it on a motorcycle so that he could ride around the country. He was never afraid to go into steep debt to realize his creative works. Or to drop everything to go off on trips to India, Afghanistan, and Iran. He keeps composing for new settings, like films and opera houses. He was not a “professional composer” until the age of 41—up until that point, he had worked variously as a plumber, furniture mover, and taxi driver. (One time he was almost murdered in his own cab.) Three weeks ago I attended the premiere of his 11th symphony, commissioned for the occasion of his 80th birthday.

One doesn’t have to admire Steve Bannon’s policy views to see that he’s lived a unique life. The recitation of his career path (born in Norfolk; Virginia Tech; HBS; officer in the Navy; Goldman; etc.) doesn’t sufficiently convey the diversity of his experiences. He has been involved with Seinfeld; Biosphere 2; the rescue effort of the Iran hostage crisis; a World of Warcraft virtual gold mining company; Titus (the Shakespeare adaptation featuring Anthony Hopkins); Breitbart; the White House; and surely other interesting ventures I’ve never read about.

And how about Patrick Byrne, a philosophy PhD who founded Overstock.com? His Wikipedia profile has a lot of gaps, and he’s the kind of person I wish the New Yorker would feature. After teaching philosophy, he founded a company that made industrial torches, and then another company that makes police and firefighter uniforms. He contracted Hepatitis C from a trip to Xinjiang in his 20’s; ongoing treatment has required his heart to be stopped over 100 times. More recently, he has found greater fame for his embrace of Bitcoin, making Overstock the first major retailer to accept a cryptocurrency.

***

Let me take this opportunity to register a complaint with the term “open-minded,” which is increasingly praised as an important virtue.

I’ve started to dislike the term. First of all, it’s unobjectionable—who would profess he is not open-minded? More importantly, it’s not always clear what the term refers to, and this is worth thinking through. It might indicate the state of being “soft-minded,” in which one would readily be swayed by better arguments. But often it tends to connote “empty-minded,” in which one accepts anything and retains little. Many people are indeed open to different cultures and ideas, but they’re not necessarily conceptualizing their experience, nor active in seeking new experiences out.

I would like for everyone to be “hungry-minded,” in which one realizes that there is so much to know. A hungry-minded person senses that he is expert in so few areas of knowledge; that terrible gaps plague even his supposed areas of expertise; that there are important areas of knowledge of whose existence he is barely even aware; and that he should be fixing these deficiencies, now and ravenously. My favorite people to talk to are those who look for new experiences, think about them in an analytic way, and are eager to share their thoughts.

Here’s kind of an analogy to determinate and indeterminate views of the world.

As I mentioned above, I’ve become enthusiastic for the idea that positive vision of the world is important for growth. To get to a more technologically advanced world, first people have to imagine one. That requires thinking hard about technologies of the future, and then taking the steps required to make them real. We can’t be optimistic in a merely vague way, and pin our hopes on policies that supposedly create room for innovation; instead we should be more direct.

It’s why I’m slightly skeptical of thinking that we can save the world with indeterminate policies like looser monetary policy or housing reform. Are so many companies waiting to make things happen if only we’d cut interest rates by 0.25 percent? Will so many excellent service jobs be created if rents in Manhattan and the Mission were only cheaper by $250? To me these are policies worth advocating for, but I must say that they feel so marginal. That’s especially the case with housing policy, which are disheartening if you consider construction in Asian megacities.

***

The prescriptive antidote to The Complacent Class is a book like Tim Harford’s Messy. The most striking thing I learned from Harford is that the most success-oriented teams are usually the most miserable teams. For example, the amateur investment clubs that generate the highest returns are usually composed of people who don’t know each other well—it’s the only way to generate pushback on ideas that aren’t well thought through. Clubs composed of friends will find it more important to keep friendships intact rather than focus on returns.

Success often entails putting oneself in uncomfortable situations, like improvising during an important speech or flying a plane manually instead of relying on autopilot. Living a life that’s not so well-ordered can improve skill-acquisition. Both Harford and Cowen are somewhat critical of dating algorithms, although they argue that algorithms are overrated in different ways.

I’ve recently read another excellent book about a decidedly non-complacent people: La Place de la Concorde Suisse, by John McPhee, It’s a slim 1985 account of his being embedded in a French-speaking unit of the Swiss Army. The people take the army seriously—at least in 1985—by offering heavy support for conscription, permitting army practices to encroach on daily life, and regularly maintaining the elaborate system of hidden demolitions around the country. It’s odd to me that a country that hasn’t experienced warfare for centuries would maintain such a militarized culture. The book makes it feel that being Swiss is the civic religion of Switzerland, and the service in the army is the annual demonstration of faith.

I’m not sure the practice encourages dynamism, exactly, but it’s one way to ward off complacency.

***
Some final thoughts:

The part of the book I found the least compelling was the final chapter, in which Cowen says that sooner or later people will snap out of complacency. But his case isn’t well built-up. The longer that people have been complacent, the more stultified they are; will dynamism be easy to re-learn? Can we readily imagine that Europe will be so dynamic again? I’m not sure that it’s easy to make people dynamic, though China has successfully ordered restarts a few times in history. I’m happy to be pointed to discussions of this topic.

When Cowen says that “our political system has creaked to a standstill” or that “people are used to the idea of a world that more or less looks the same,” he’s not being contrarian. Instead he’s being reasonable. Still, I suspect that some people will accuse him of insufficient awareness of tech. The biggest objections to this book will come from those who haven’t been steeped in Thielian arguments for techno-pessimism.

I’ve long felt it unfortunate that the word “plastics” has been a putdown when people discuss ambition. Plastics are important, why do we make fun of that innovation?

Little things matter when you read Cowen. The chapter titled “Why Americans Stopped Rioting and Legalized Marijuana?” is about how courts and bureaucrats have conjured legalistic tactics to reduce mass incidents. “Bureaucracy, whatever its other goals may be, is firmly on the side of the complacent class.” The chapter never explicitly mentions pot, except in the title. By introducing little oddities in the text, Cowen makes room for claims that are too difficult to baldly state; in other cases, watch for occasions in which he’s offering commentary on something other than what he’s directly writing about.

I haven't read Tyler Cowen's book but have read parts of it at his website and his summary of his book written by him on other websites. I don't believe Cowen's thesis is defensible and I believe the underlying theoretical basis of his thesis needs disclosed (even to Cowen).

First, this isn't a book of social science but of journalism and "pop" or tabloid economics. Journalists typically find a compelling metaphor that will sell their book even if the metaphor is not apt. There isn't really any economic analysis in the book but rather a bunch of connecting of dots and loose associations. One of the main corollaries to his thesis is that the American working class doesn't move anymore even when industries have been shut down where they live and jobs are available elsewhere.

Cowen may be a reputable economist but he is a poor sociologist. People have social ties to a place because they may have to take care of elderly parents. Two earner families make it very difficult to pack up and move to a new job, say, 1000 miles away when one of the two spouses still has a job. And what about the hold on people that an expected inheritance can have on keeping them from moving? And just how a Midwestern former worker in a manufacturing plant is going to just pick up and move to, say, San Francisco and afford the housing there is never explained by Cowen either. Cowen is blind to what sociologists call "social capital" and community as part of American values. Cowen never tries to refute (falsify) his own thesis, so this is not a book of social science. And I would like to ask Cowen whether he would like giving up his cushy academic tenure any more than an Midwestern assembly line worker would want to have to move to a big city only to find having to work two part time jobs for less money?

And the theoretical underpinning of his book is Marxist materialism, even though Cowen would disavow this. But Cowen says that the Working Class is complacent and sedentary because they want to exert "an illusion of control" over their lives. But don't even those who move for economic reasons want to maintain control? So his thesis is never proven. Moreover, Cowen's concept of "an illusion of control" sounds a lot like Karl Marx's concept that the proletariat had "false consciousness" - a sociological term expounded by Marxists "for the way in which material, ideological, and institutional processes in capitalist society mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors".

Cowen also asserts the American Dream is meaningless and has no basis in reality for the working class who are not willing to move or take two menial part times jobs in, say, Silicon Valley, California, and still couldn't afford to own or rent even an apartment there. The steel mills may not be coming back to the Midwest but man still doesn't "live by bread" (or materialism) alone". Cowen is a materialist who cannot see anything beyond money that makes life meaningful to people. Cowen arrogantly calls this the "self defeating" behavior of the Working Class. Thus, Cowen's underlying theory is sort of like the doctrine of Nihilism (nothingness) of the extreme Russian revolution party of 1900, that found nothing to approve of in the established order and thus it had to be overthrown by violent revolution. But the American Working Class hasn't embraced any sort of revolution except Constitutional democracy.

It is clear that Cowen is out of touch with the realities of those he writes about. The book oozes with condescension and a know-it-all attitude. The only thing I could say is Cowen's book proves his complacency thesis in regard to his writing of it. But buy the book if for no other reason than to understand how the Knowledge Class views the "deplorables" in the Working Class.

All over the place not focused enough. but raised some interesting ideas.

Here we go again. The affluent, most of whom have acquired their wealth through legitimate means, don’t want change. What most of us refer to as the middle-class, have gotten stuck economically because of Them and of course, those who according to the author were never given a chance, the lower class, are treated inequitably and should be given what belongs to others. Same old classism nonsense that’s been bruited around on campuses since the 19th Century. Same old hatreds for people who have accumulated wealth as a result of their own effort, skills and perhaps even genius.

And the inevitable demand for revolution to achieve Utopia.

Cowen seems to believe that street riots are a metric of positive social change. I got the feeling that the youth riots of the 1960s, when Cowen was under 10, seem like a wonderland. They weren’t and an objective review of what was actually accomplished hovers close to the zero mark.

Overall, not awful, but it didn’t hold my attention. I’ve read all this stuff before elsewhere – long before Cowen was born, as a matter of fact.

Jerry

Although an enjoyable read, this is heavy on opinion and light on proof...in fact, some of the suppositions blatantly fly in the face of "the numbers". A couple of quick examples - the author makes the point that we (as a society) are changing jobs less frequently (with the exception of "The Mexicans" etc) however, research has repeatedly pointed to the exact opposite...rather than remaining at a single job for 30 years or more, most Americans hold 5-7 jobs over the course of their career(s). Likewise, the author claims that we are moving less frequently yet again, the average American moves about every 5-7 years statistically...and those that do not, often reap financial rewards since the cost of financing a new mortgage cuts into profits. Speaking of jobs and relocation, the author totally dismissing the impact of telecommuting and/or distant work locations but instead, assumes it is complacency rather than convenience or smart personal financial planning. As someone that worked on the West Coast while Living on the East Coast for several years, it was anything but self-defeating. These are just a few examples of problematic opinions, assumptions and erroneous conclusions but provide a glimpse into the main problem of the book...the author has a mindset and uses information and examples to support that premise without regard to conflicting information. Having said that, this is an enjoyable read with ample points of interest even for those that may not agree with each and every conclusion.