America’s Developing COMPLACENT CLASS

9781250108692_d7cfeAre Americans still movers and shakers? In his new book The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; OverDrive Sample), George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen says the answer is no. His analysis is receiving wide spread media attention.

On NPR’s Morning Edition today, Cowen argues that Americans “have grown more risk averse and are reluctant to switch jobs or move to another state.” As a result, they are not exposed to new ideas and have become less innovative. This has also brought about a new form of segregation, “wealthier people tend to live together more than before and so do poorer people.” Living in their own bubbles, they are unaware of much that is going on around them, “we see a version of this in the last election where so many people are shocked by the candidate who actually won.”

Thus far holds are heavy in just a few places on light orders, but the topic is much in the news and attention is growing. David Brooks writes about it in his NYT Op-Ed column, Cowen was interviewed in the Washington Post and featured on the Charlie Rose Show.

The following is the first in a set of videos Cohen has released.

Below, the NPR story.

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