Kotkin explains why Democrats no longer support policies directed toward economic growth. He means the sort of growth that would create good jobs for middle and working class Americans who have been left behind in the current economy.
There’s the reality that blue states—with all the usual progressive policies—suffer the widest gap between the classes.The left does the poor few favors by putting them on the dole, a move that entrenches dependency and destroys initiative. What the poor need is not a hand out, but a hand up to a real job paying a real wage which requires them to expend real effort on their own behalf.
A recent Brookings report found the greatest income disparity in such bastions of progressivism as San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Washington D.C., New York, Oakland, Chicago and Los Angeles. Oddly enough, minorities seem to do better, relative to whites, in states that have had more conservative governance, in part because they also tend to have lower costs of living.
This disconnect between progressive aims and reality stems from the shift in the Left’s class and geographic base. Once dependent on industrial and construction workers, many of them unionized, the party increasingly depends for support from green activists, urban land speculators, and “creative class” workers in expensive regions where regulatory constraints tend to discourage industrial and housing growth.
Kotkin wonders whether either party can meaningfully address the need for real economic growth, which isn't always green enough to earn Sierra Club approval. COTTonLINE shares this concern.
