Us vs them, p.3
Us vs. Them, page 3
Add the migrant crisis that brought the largest influx of homeless people since World War II, many of them Muslims fleeing violence and oppression in the Middle East and North Africa, and Europeans begin to feel much less secure about the future of their nations. Recent terrorist attacks, many of them like those in Paris (2015), Brussels (2016), and Manchester (2017) carried out by Muslims born inside Europe, have added accelerant to the political fire. The financial burden of integrating so many migrants will be hotly debated for years, and many estimates of its size are politicized, but a member of the advisory council for Germany’s Ministry of Economic Affairs estimated in 2017 that the cost of integration for Germany alone would top €400 billion.21 The newest arrivals, in particular, will need access to social services that put considerable strain on welfare systems. In addition, a surge in racism is predictable when white Christian men come to see that they don’t dominate the United States and Europe as they once did. Western countries are beginning to look more like the rest of the world, and at a time when it’s fast becoming harder for a person without a university degree to earn a living, the suddenness of this trend gives it a new intensity.
More than 2.5 million migrants applied for asylum in the European Union in 2015 and 2016.22 More than 1.1 million arrived in Germany alone.23 That’s one reason why in 2017 Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the first far-right party to win seats in parliament since the end of World War II. The far right has also made big gains in Austria, in part by promising a tougher approach on borders and immigration. The backlash has transformed the political landscape. Though anti-EU, anti-Muslim nationalists like Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders have failed so far to win power, every economic slowdown, migrant controversy, and terrorist attack inside European borders will reamplify a political message that is sure to outlast their personal ambitions.
Antiestablishment parties continue to feed popular fury in nearly every EU country. Their leaders insist that unelected Brussels-based Eurocrats strip EU nations of their ability to defend themselves against all sorts of economic and security threats. As in the United States, European nationalists call for border controls, and they vilify journalists, politicians, and business leaders—groups that Italy’s comedian-turned-political-arsonist Beppe Grillo calls the “three destroyers.”
In Eastern Europe, nationalist anger and a rejection of the democratic values of the European Union have gained a much stronger foothold, particularly among the so-called Visegrád countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Governments of all four have publicly pledged to ignore an EU quota system for accepting refugees from outside the union. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was the first to close the door, and Hungary followed suit. Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has called for a referendum on the refugee question, which he knows will allow Poles to vote to keep them out. Under the EU quota system, the Visegrád Four were expected to accept 11,069 refugees. By June 2017, Slovakia had admitted sixteen, the Czech Republic had taken in twelve, and Poland and Hungary had accepted zero.24 The European Court of Justice has ruled that all members must comply, and the European Commission has threatened penalties, but the leaders of these countries, confident in the support of enough citizens to win the next elections, have not backed down.
Social values of openness and tolerance for racial, ethnic, and gender diversity are still dominant in Western Europe, but these values are increasingly called into question, even in more tolerant European countries and in the United States. During the migrant crisis in 2015, a poll published in the French newspaper Le Figaro found that a majority of people in Western Europe favored an end to the Schengen Agreement, which maintains open borders within an area that includes twenty-six European countries. That total included 53 percent in Germany, 56 percent in Italy, and 67 percent in France.25 Here again we see a poll conducted at the height of an emergency, but it shows the willingness of anxious people to reject the values said to underpin their societies when they feel they’re under some form of immediate threat. Some 68 percent of Americans who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party said that millions of illegal immigrants had voted in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, despite no evidence to support the claim, and 73 percent said that voter fraud happens “somewhat” or “very often” in the United States. Do Americans still put democratic principles before party or personalities? A majority of Republican voters also said they would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump and Republican lawmakers suggested it.26
Finally, globalism also inspires fear by enabling connectivity. The instantaneous global flow of ideas and information connects more people more quickly than ever before and gives them new opportunities for education, collaboration, and commerce. But it also gives them more to be angry about, new ways to broadcast that anger, and new tools to help them coordinate protest. It shows them terrorist attacks in real time, stoking fears of unfamiliar names and faces.
In addition, the fragmented nature of the Internet has created “filter bubbles,” the places we go for reassurance in the form of ideas and information that confirm our biases and connect us with others who share them.27 Tell me which party you vote for, and I’ll tell you which cable TV channels provide your news, which websites you like best, and which newspapers you trust. This creates an environment in which neighbors receive completely different sets of information about the world and the threats it contains. Add the online algorithms that record our searches, interpret our “likes,” and keep us in the company of like-minded friends. Social media allows us to follow those we agree with and ignore those we don’t, enabling us to deprive ourselves of opportunities to deepen our thinking and change our minds.
HERE TO STAY
Whatever happens to the current wave of political leaders elevated by public fear and frustration in Europe and the United States, the trends that have given them an audience will only gain strength. Whatever the headlines today, this week, or this year, the battle of us vs. them will only become more intense.
First, there is little reason to believe that a decades-long trend toward greater inequality and a greater sense of economic unfairness, particularly in the United States, will be reversed anytime soon. According to a study published in December 2016 by the independent National Bureau of Economic Research, incomes for the bottom half of earners in the United States remained flat between 1980 and 2014, while income for the top 0.001 percent of the richest Americans surged a jaw-dropping 636 percent. The top 1 percent of U.S. adults earned 27 times what the bottom 50 percent earned in 1981. By 2016, it was 81 times higher.28 Politicians, economists, and ordinary citizens will continue to debate why that is and whether widening inequality is fair. But no matter who is right, the wealthy are unlikely to persuade those struggling to get by that their gains are entirely the result of superior talent and hard work. That’s a problem that will plague U.S. politics long after Donald Trump has left the stage, and Trump’s “tax reform” plans appear likely to make matters worse.
Nor should we expect a sudden narrowing of economic strength between the wealthier countries of Northern Europe, where unemployment is relatively low, and the poorer countries of Southern Europe, where unemployment remains stubbornly high. Resentments over bailouts and austerity will create new opportunities for new politicians to exploit in years to come. In addition, the turn toward identity-driven nationalist politics in Eastern Europe will make it difficult for Germany and France to sell the sorts of EU and eurozone reforms that might make European institutions stronger, more resilient, and more accountable.
Widening inequality further, those who do get work will probably see their taxes rise. The wealthiest companies can continue to use their political clout to push for tax rules that allow them to move money across borders to exploit tax advantages. As Rodrik has written, governments will then depend more heavily for revenue on taxing the wages and consumption of individual citizens.29 That trend will extend the transfer of wealth and widen inequality further.
Nor is there good reason to believe there will be fewer immigrants in the future. In 2016, there were 65.6 million men, women, and children around the world living as refugees, the highest total since World War II, and the inability or unwillingness of political leaders to do much about it says this problem won’t soon be solved.30 President Trump may build a border wall, in one form or another, especially since more than 70 percent of those who voted for him say they want it, but that won’t keep out every immigrant who takes to the road in search of a better life. Nor will it end public anger about immigration when a first- or second-generation American commits a heinous crime or an act of terrorism.31
The free movement of people remains a crucial element of the European ideal. Citizens of EU countries will continue to cross internal borders for as long as the European Union continues to exist, and opportunistic politicians will blame them when unemployment is high. There isn’t going to be a comprehensive Middle East peace plan or a surge in prosperity across North Africa in coming years that would persuade migrants to surrender the dream of life in Europe. The flow may slow, but they will continue to try to reach Europe, by boat or on foot, and many will bring their children.
There is evidence that inequality is a source of violence. A FiveThirtyEight analysis of publicly available data from the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center found that income inequality “stood out as a predictor of hate crimes and hate incidents.” Data from both before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election showed that “states with more inequality were more likely to have higher rates of hate incidents per capita.”32 Other studies have found that links between inequality and violence exist in both developed and developing countries.33 No society will ever be perfectly fair. Inequality of outcomes is a fact of life. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult for those falling from the middle class to believe that an equal-opportunity country could produce these kinds of results. Even if you think they’re wrong, we shouldn’t expect politics to remain immune to the political pressures created by inequality on that scale, and there is little good reason to expect a dramatic narrowing of inequality in the United States anytime soon.
Terrorism is unlikely to subside. ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other militant groups around the world will continue to target Europeans and Americans both at home and abroad. These groups may not occupy large expanses of territory, as ISIS once did in Syria and Iraq, but the defeat of ISIS fighters in those places will return a significant number of radicalized, battle-tested recruits to attack the countries they come from. For reasons both geographic and demographic, Europe is at much higher risk than the United States, but neither can ever fully contain the threat posed by those who would use a car, a truck, a gun, a knife, or any other easily available weapon to kill strangers at random. Politicians will continue to make empty promises to do something about it. They will continue to fail. Citizens will hold them accountable.
Cyberspace is another arena in which government will become increasingly less able to provide basic public protection. During the Cold War, the reality of mutually assured nuclear annihilation made it unthinkable for NATO and Warsaw Pact countries to start World War III. Instead, the people of Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and other developing countries paid the price as East and West fought proxy battles against enemies, real and imagined. Today, there is no country in the world that can match U.S. military spending. When Donald Trump became president, he asked Congress to increase U.S. defense spending by $54 billion, an incremental increase that tops the entire 2017 Russian defense budget.34 Over time, a lower oil price will push Russia’s military spending still lower. But attacks in cyberspace are much less expensive and not nearly as dangerous as conventional attacks, because it isn’t always clear who is responsible. That’s why we can expect a lot more of them—and for their sophistication and scale to grow.
In addition, while nuclear weapons are held exclusively by a few governments, cyber weapons are available to anyone with the skill and ingenuity to develop them. At very low cost, individuals and small groups of thieves, activists, and amateur troublemakers can inflict the kind of harm on the world’s most powerful governments, companies, institutions, and individuals that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. That’s why it will only become more difficult over time for the U.S. and European governments to protect critical infrastructure, citizens, their identities, their data, and their money against attacks from criminals, anarchists, terrorists, or other governments. It will become more difficult to contain the expanding flow of false information that shapes opinions in the twenty-first century and to safeguard the integrity of elections in open societies. That too will feed the public’s sense of vulnerability and create political opportunities for those offering simplistic solutions.
Another factor that’s likely to exacerbate inequality: next-generation automation. The technological revolution in the workplace has only just begun. A 2017 study published by the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis found that nearly every major American city will see half of its current jobs replaced by robots by 2035. It’s not a surprise that most of the endangered jobs are in the administrative, sales, food preparation, and service sectors. Truck drivers will become a thing of the past as well. But the study also forecasts that advanced technology will replace workers with machines in the offices of doctors, lawyers, schools, and universities.35
Even more sobering is the work of MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and Boston University’s Pascual Restrepo for the National Bureau of Economic Research. In a study published in 2016, Acemoglu and Restrepo predicted that the net effect of automation and other technological changes in the workplace would ultimately prove positive as they created new kinds of jobs that paid higher wages to replace existing lower-wage work. But in 2017, they revised their views based on more detailed research. They found that industrial robots were responsible for as many as 670,000 lost manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007, that this number was likely to rise as the number of robots quadruple in coming years, and that other sectors weren’t creating enough jobs to offset the losses in manufacturing.36 “The conclusion is that even if overall employment and wages recover, there will be losers in the process, and it’s going to take a very long time for these communities to recover,” according to Acemoglu.37
This isn’t simply a story about robots sending workers home. As in the past, new technologies will create new jobs—and new kinds of jobs. But the increasing automation of the workplace, advances in machine learning, and the broad introduction into the economy of new forms of artificial intelligence will ensure that jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of education and training. As anyone now paying tuition—for themselves or someone else—knows all too well, the price of higher education in the United States is rising faster than for almost any other service. College tuition has risen by about 6 percent per year, according to Vanguard, a money management fund. If the increase continues at that rate over the next generation, a four-year college degree for an American born in 2017 would reach $215,000 at a public school and $500,000 at a private one,38 further compounding an already growing student debt crisis in the United States.39 Those who can pay will get the education, and those with the knowledge and skill set will have opportunities for good-paying jobs that those without them won’t have. “If you’ve worked in Detroit for ten years, you don’t have the skills to go into health care. The market economy is not going to create the jobs by itself for these workers who are bearing the brunt of the change,” Acemoglu warned.40
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Human beings want security, opportunity, and prosperity, and governments want to claim credit for providing these things. Both the government and the governed want to believe they have the means to retake control of their circumstances when they believe these things are threatened. This is the battle line between us and them. Nationalism grows from a need to reassert control by declaring shared solidarity. It promises to confront the forces that are believed to breed disorder and that compromise both personal and national sovereignty. It pledges to build strong walls to keep “them” at bay.
Despite much-improved economic performance in the United States and around the world in 2017 and 2018, the battle between us and them continues in every country where fear of change is on the rise. As we’ll see in the next chapter, this is not simply a story of Europe and America. This struggle is set to go global.
CHAPTER 2
WARNING SIGNS
It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.
—VLADIMIR LENIN
For seven years, Mohammed Bouazizi supported a family of eight with cash earned from an unlicensed vegetable cart in Sidi Bouzid, a town 190 miles south of Tunisia’s capital. On December 17, 2010, a police officer confiscated his produce and told him he could no longer sell. Desperate, Bouazizi went to the town hall for help. No one would see him. He then drenched himself in gasoline and lit a match. In the eighteen days it took him to die, Al-Jazeera broadcast his story across the Arab world. Public anger grew, and protests swelled. Bouazizi died on January 4. Ten days later, the twenty-three-year dictatorship of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was brought to its knees. In Tunisia, change came gradually and then suddenly.1
