{"id":63770,"date":"2017-09-24T12:25:45","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T16:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=63770"},"modified":"2017-09-24T06:50:29","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T10:50:29","slug":"wash-post-george-will-is-complacency-thing-america-strives-for-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=63770","title":{"rendered":"(Wash Post) George Will&#8211;Is Complacency thing America strives for most?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although America is said to be \u2014 and many Americans are \u2014 seething about economic grievances, Tyler Cowen thinks a bigger problem is complacency. In his latest book, \u201c<a title=\"www.amazon.com\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1250108691\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=washpost-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=1250108691&amp;linkId=a2b57cd953f967c903e114aba4837dff\" shape=\"rect\">The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream<\/a>,\u201d Cowen, professor of almost everything (economics, law, literature) at George Mason University and co-author of the\u00a0<a title=\"marginalrevolution.com\" href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/\" shape=\"rect\">Marginal Revolution blog<\/a>, argues that the complacent class, although a minority, is skillful at entrenching itself in ways detrimental to the majority.<\/p>\n<p>For 40 years, Cowen believes, \u201cwe have been building toward stasis\u201d with a diminishing \u201csense of urgency.\u201d Americans and American businesses are, on average, older than ever. Interstate migration \u2014 a risk-taking investment in a hoped-for future \u2014 has been declining since the mid-1980s. Although there is much talk about job churn, the percentage of workers with five or more years on the job has increased in 20 years from 44 to more than 50. Declining labor mobility is partly the result of the domestic protectionism of occupational licensing. \u201cIn the 1950s,\u201d Cowen writes, \u201conly about 5 percent of workers required a government-issued license to do their jobs, but by 2008, that figure had risen to about 29 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is \u201cmore pairing of like with like\u201d (assortative mating, economically homogenous neighborhoods, segregation by educational status), and the nation is losing the capacity and will \u201cto regenerate itself.\u201d In the 19th century and much of the 20th century, travel speeds increased dramatically; since the 1970s, ground and air congestion has slowed travel. Fifty-two years ago, children\u2019s most common leisure activity was outdoor play; today, the average 9-year-old spends 50 hours a week staring at screens. Campuses, Cowen notes, are one of society\u2019s segments \u201cwhere the complacent class exercises its strongest influences,\u201d doing so to preserve, like flies in amber, its status and consensus, thereby slowing what the economist Vilfredo Pareto called the \u201c<a title=\"media.pfeiffer.edu\" href=\"http:\/\/media.pfeiffer.edu\/lridener\/DSS\/Pareto\/CIRCELIT.HTML\" shape=\"rect\">circulation of elites<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/the-thing-america-strives-for-most-complacency\/2017\/09\/22\/a6f1d382-9ef2-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although America is said to be \u2014 and many Americans are \u2014 seething about economic grievances, Tyler Cowen thinks a bigger problem is complacency. In his latest book, \u201cThe Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream,\u201d Cowen, professor<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=63770\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,209,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-americau-s-a","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63772,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63770\/revisions\/63772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}