In Quillette, Kotkin argues home ownership - the traditional route to upward mobility and financial security - is intentionally being made off-limits by the simple expedient of pricing it too highly for working and middle class young people to afford. A key graf:
Three-quarters of American adults today predict their child will not grow up to be better-off than they are, according to Pew. These sentiments are even more pronounced in France, Britain, Spain, Italy, and Germany. In Japan, a remarkable three-quarters of those polled said they believe things will be worse for the next generation. Even in China, many young people face a troubling future.And Kotkin's conclusion:
A strong landowning middle order has been essential in democracies from ancient Athens and the Roman and Dutch Republics to contemporary Europe, North America, and Australia. Now with fewer owning land, and many without even a reasonable expectation of acquiring it, we may be entering an era portrayed as progressive and multicultural but that will be ever more feudal in its economic and social form.We see socialism becoming popular with these same frustrated young people. That very well may be an underlying motive for coerced urbanization.
Soylent Green looks more prescient with every passing decade, check out the Charlton Heston film or if you've a strong stomach, the book from which it was adapted. That book, Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, gave a young science fiction fan (me) nightmares.
