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instead of defusing the crisis, popular elections in which Abraham Lincoln won the presidency triggered the conflagration.
They gleefully wrecked the Union, without realizing what a heavy personal cost that would mean for most of them.
In the 1860s, Americans learned that large-scale complex societies are actually fragile, and that a descent into a civil war can be rapid.
the vehemence and the disregard for the consequences of failing to compromise are the same.
Just because we cannot imagine our actions leading to disaster, it doesn’t mean that such a disaster cannot happen.
Cliodynamics, from Clio, the muse of history in Greek mythology, and dynamics, the science of why things change
the American political leaders who allowed the Civil War to happen had no idea of the magnitude of the disaster they were about to experience.
A well-meaning intervention to fix one particular problem is likely to have unexpected and, often, undesirable consequences (although, one hopes, not a disaster on the scale of the French Revolution and Terror).
There is a marked tendency among policy-makers to deal with economic or political crises of today as though they were completely new and unprecedented. Such blindness to history often leads us to repeat old mistakes.
Structural-Demographic Theory
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one of the most reliable predictors of state collapse and high political instability is elite overproduction
The elites (in both agrarian and capitalist societies) are consumers of commoner labor. Low labor costs lead not only to declining living standards for a large segment of the population (employees, especially unskilled ones), but also to a favorable economic conjuncture for the elites (more specifically, for the economic segment of the elites—employers).
the elites become accustomed to ever greater levels of consumption. Furthermore, competition for social status fuels “conspicuous consumption”
the numbers of elites, in relation to the rest of the population, increase.
A favorable economic conjuncture for the employers enables large numbers of intelligent, hard-working, or simply lucky workers to accumulate wealth and then attempt to translate it into social status. As a result, upward mobility into the ranks of the elites will greatly surpass downward mobility.
the twin processes of declining living standards for the commoners and increasing consumption levels for the elites will drive up socioeconomic inequality.
elite overproduction increases the probability of violent intraelite conflict.
Elite overproduction leading to intraelite competition and conflict is, thus, one of the chief causes of political instability. Two other causes are popular discontent resulting from falling living standards, and fiscal crisis.
one common tactic employed by the counter-elites is to mobilize the masses against the established elites, something made possible by deep-running popular discontent.
the dominant role in internal warfare appears to be played by elite overproduction leading to intraelite competition, fragmentation, and conflict, and the rise of counter-elites who mobilize popular masses in their struggle against the existing order. (Turchin and Nefedov 2009:314)
During the early decades of the Republic the immigration rate was at a very low level, so that before the 1830s less than two percent of the population were born outside the country (Figure 3.2b). This changed dramatically around 1840.
Including estimates of illegal immigration suggests that the proportion of population born outside the US had reached the levels of the late nineteenth century by 2005
If the future looks bright, people tend to marry earlier, and the proportion who never marry declines, compared with times when economic prospects are dim.
the history of the United States since 1780 can be divided into four phases; two during which popular wellbeing increased, and two during which it declined.
between 1780 and 2010, the factors affecting labor oversupply and indicators of popular wellbeing generally moved cyclically and in opposite directions.
negative relationship between labor supply and indices of wellbeing, as predicted by the labor oversupply principle.
Michael Mann (1986) distinguishes four sources of social power: military, economic, political (or administrative), and ideological.
fact, at the top levels many politicians and senior bureaucrats are themselves members of the economic network, moving back and forth between government and industry positions in a “revolving door” fashion.
Calavita’s (1984) structural model of the capitalist state, which emphasizes the role of the state in managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie, to be a valuable refinement of Domhoff’s theory.
The share of the national wealth held by the richest one percent of households declined from a high of 44 percent in 1929 to a low of 20 percent in 1979
until 1830 the scale of the largest fortune grew at a rate that only slightly exceeded the growth rate of wages
Largest fortunes
Miklionaires wealth gap
between 1900 and 1950 the proportion of millionaires decreased (by a factor of 4.3). This is the same pattern that we have already observed in the dynamics of the Extreme Value Index, providing further support for the usefulness of the EVI as an index of economic inequality.
TABLE 4.4 The number of millionaires (in constant 1900 dollars) in the United States, 1800–1950 (data from Shouter 2010).
during the post-war period (1947–2008) the proportion of young adults going to the law school approximately doubled.
Between 1971 and 2007 the numbers earning the MBA grew sixfold in absolute terms and almost fourfold in relative terms
FIGURE 4.7 Annual tuition at Yale expressed in terms of manufacturing worker annual wage. The dotted line indicates the overall mean of oscillations. Data for Yale tuition: (Pierson 1983, Waters 2001), supplemented by the Office of Institutional Research, Yale University. Blue collar wage: (Officer 2010).
FIGURE 4.9 Elite fragmentation (proxied by political polarization) in relation to labor oversupply (proxied by percent foreign-born) and elite overproduction (proxied by the wealth inequality index).
immigration results in a larger proportion of population who are both poor and cannot vote. This facilitates the move to the right and away from redistributive policies, which then causes income inequality to rise.
Over the course of American history elite overproduction and popular wellbeing have moved in opposite directions, tracing out a characteristic “double spiral” predicted by the Structural-Demographic Theory (Figure 4.10b).
FIGURE 4.10 Summary of inequality and elite competition dynamics. (a) Standardized variables reflecting the fluctuations of the three elite proxies. The gray curve is the average of the three data series and a proxy for the general process of elite overproduction. (b) A comparison of elite overproduction curve (from Figure 10.4a) to the average wellbeing curve (from Figure 3.7).
FIGURE 5.1 History of the US federal finances: (a) revenues as percent of the GDP, 1791–1999; (b) public debt as percent of the GDP, 1791–2012.
Even on the eve of the Great Depression, local governments collected more than half of all tax revenues in the United States
During the New Deal and World War II the US financial system experienced a radical change. The federal revenues increased by an order of magnitude, jumping to 18 percent of the GDP by 1950, and then growing more gradually to c.20 percent by the end of the century (Figure 5.1a).
By 1848 the area that would be later organized as the 48 contiguous states was acquired by treaties with European Great Powers and Mexico (although many Native Americans would dispute the legality of these arrangements). This was followed by the purchase of Alaska in 1867 and annexations of various Pacific islands (most notably, Hawaii in 1898). Continental expansion of the US involved four major conflicts, taking place between 1785 and 1848
High levels of inequality, which are characteristic of disintegrative phases, are destructive of cooperation. The prevailing “partisan” social mood (see Chapter 2) is not conducive to shared sacrifice. The wealthy segments of the population are primarily interested in reducing their taxes. The political elites do not send their children into the military. Impoverished commoners and frustrated elite aspirants, likewise, withdraw their cooperation by dodging the draft and avoiding taxes. The legitimacy of the state is low and patriotism is trumped by sectarian attitudes.
4th turning
FIGURE 5.3 Public Trust in Government: 1958-2013 (moving average of multiple polls, plotted every five years). Source: Pew Research Center.
rising and falling murder rates are strongly influenced by “the legitimacy of the government, the degree of unity and fellow-feeling in the nation”
there were two peaks in American nationalism, the first in 1820 and the second in 1960 (both dates are approximate). These two peaks coincide with the periods of American expansionism (and periods of high popular wellbeing, as well as low economic inequality).
