> “The left,” Tabellini concludes, “has underestimated the fact that culture can matter more than income. But as long as it insists on talking only about inequality, without addressing the identity theme, it will continue to lose out among its own former constituency.”
Is an interesting conclusion, since that seems askew from the kind of left which has predominated recently. Though it may amount to analysis of the modern left which says that they permit cultural identity to be the most salient political factor if you're one of their favoured "oppressed identities" whereas, if you arent, then you have to be analysed in purely economic terms.
I'm not entirely convinced by the analysis. Is a politics of identity displacing traditional "economic politics" -- or is it that economic politics has become a matter of identity? Eg., consider that 20-year-olds today face a society economically designed to privilege certain identities through corporate affirmative actions and the like. Policies who could only plausibly morally target the older generations where salary gaps exist -- yet have a disproportionate impact on younger groups with no such disparities (or the converse, as in the UK where young women slighly out-earn young men).
And eg., do people feel immigration has created economic deprivation at home (and so on) -- is all this just not a displaced class analysis?
We might assume not because, by economic analysis, immigration cannot really explain the "economic concerns" which are attributed to it -- but do the public know this? Or is the failure of the welfare state, of popular government policy and regulation really just misattributed to immigration (or, to these "other" identities)? Is this just a matter of spurious correlation: as western birthrates plummet, goverments are heavily endebted and unable to provide high quality services, the public observe increased immigration?
This analysis fails to realise the degree to which these "identities" have become specailisations of economic classes by policy, law and accident.
Is an interesting conclusion, since that seems askew from the kind of left which has predominated recently. Though it may amount to analysis of the modern left which says that they permit cultural identity to be the most salient political factor if you're one of their favoured "oppressed identities" whereas, if you arent, then you have to be analysed in purely economic terms.
I'm not entirely convinced by the analysis. Is a politics of identity displacing traditional "economic politics" -- or is it that economic politics has become a matter of identity? Eg., consider that 20-year-olds today face a society economically designed to privilege certain identities through corporate affirmative actions and the like. Policies who could only plausibly morally target the older generations where salary gaps exist -- yet have a disproportionate impact on younger groups with no such disparities (or the converse, as in the UK where young women slighly out-earn young men).
And eg., do people feel immigration has created economic deprivation at home (and so on) -- is all this just not a displaced class analysis?
We might assume not because, by economic analysis, immigration cannot really explain the "economic concerns" which are attributed to it -- but do the public know this? Or is the failure of the welfare state, of popular government policy and regulation really just misattributed to immigration (or, to these "other" identities)? Is this just a matter of spurious correlation: as western birthrates plummet, goverments are heavily endebted and unable to provide high quality services, the public observe increased immigration?
This analysis fails to realise the degree to which these "identities" have become specailisations of economic classes by policy, law and accident.