A Bailout For Yuppies
17th May 2009
Joel Kotkin limns how the interests of the current ruling class are not identical with the interests of the common weal.
A yuppie stimulus differs from the more traditional approach, which aims to get the front-line, blue-collar types back to work. Instead, it would channel public funds away from those grouchy construction workers – some 30% of whom may soon be out of work – to better heeled, and, in their minds, more deserving “creative” professionals. After all, what stake do the netroots have in making things better for Joe the Plumber?
In contrast, the yuppie bailout focuses on a sure-fire Democratic constituency, the well-educated urban professional. One advocate of such an approach, pundit Richard Florida, has urged President-elect Barack Obama to eschew crude investments in traditional production and a renewed housing market in favor of goodies directed to what he calls “the creative industry.”
Florida sees any focus on restoring manufacturing and housing as a misguided rescue of the “old industrial economy,” in which Americans actually made things and other Americans consumed them. Instead, he suggests, “the first step must be to reduce demand for the core products and lifestyle of the old order.”
So let’s stop worrying about what happens to Detroit, or the crisis in the housing market. In Florida’s view, cars, of course, are demonized as woefully bad for environmental reasons and not particularly friendly to the preferred dense urbanity so attractive to advocates of “hip cool” cities.