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An index of intraelite fragmentation, political polarization in Congress, shows similar dynamics. The twentieth century low point was in c.1950, but it was followed by a very gradual increase. The actual breakpoint was 1980, when the index of polarization started growing very rapidly.
Out of roughly 30 structural-demographic variables and proxies in Table 11.1, only one (life expectancy) did not experience a regime change. Furthermore, the direction of trend reversals was not random; rather they all conformed to the predictions of the Structural-Demographic Theory. This striking pattern suggests that something very fundamental changed in the American social system around 1970.
By the early 2000s, one in six American workers were foreign-born.
Another turning point was reached around 2000, when the demand curve stopped growing altogether. This remarkable occurrence was due to a combination of sluggish economic growth and rapid gains in labor productivity, which put a lid on the number of workers needed to satisfy the demand for labor.
a prolonged period of economic troubles helped to delegitimize the prevailing ideological regime
the cultural and ideological shift that Fraser describes preceded the shift in economic and state-related structural-demographic variables. This observation is consistent with the idea that cultural factors were one of the causes of the 1970s trend reversal.
Between 1977 and 2012 demand for labor increased only by 31 percent, while labor supply grew by 56 percent
In 2011 the total American work force was 153 million, of which 24.4 million workers were foreign-born (this number includes both legal and illegal immigrants). The proportion of foreign-born in the labor force is currently around 16 percent (compared with five percent 40 years ago).
In the 1970s only 40 percent of women were in the labor force; today this proportion is close to 60 percent. If the labor participation rate of native women (so that we don’t double-count foreign-born women in the labor force) stayed at its 1970s level, today there would be 20 million fewer workers—an effect of nearly the same magnitude as that of immigration.
elite submodel of the Political Stress Indicator, elite mobilization potential (EMP). As explained in Chapter 2 (Quantifying Social Pressures for Instability), EMP has two components: ε-1 (which measures the intensity of competition in the economic domain) and e/s (which reflects competition in the political domain—for a limited supply of public offices). Thus, high ε corresponds to low ε-1 and a low level of competition for economic resources among the elites. Conversely; low ε/high ε-1 indicates a high level of intraelite competition in the economic domain.
The total amount spent per House election grew even faster, approaching a billion dollars in 2010.
between 2004 and 2010 the number of such millionaire candidates nearly doubled. In summary, the empirical trends are entirely consistent with the structural-demographic prediction. Both the candidate numbers and the growing cost of running for office appear to reflect intensifying intraelite competition.
intraelite inequality explodes: while a minority enjoys runaway incomes and fortunes, a growing majority are frustrated in their attempts to attain elite status (that is, to secure the income level necessary for maintaining elite status).
FIGURE 13.4 Frequency distributions of starting full-time salaries for law school graduates. (a) The Class of 1991. (b) The Class of 1996. (c) The Class of 2000. Source: (NALP 2008).
Beginning in 1980, however, the national debt began growing much faster than GDP. This was the first time this had happened during a period of peace.
Sudden collapse of the state’s finances has been one of the common triggers releasing pent-up social pressures toward political instability, including in such well-known cases as the English Civil War and the French Revolution (Goldstone 1991).
The core of Structural-Demographic Theory is concerned, as its name implies, with how the effects of demographic processes on political instability are channeled through social structures.
A growing gap between labor supply and labor demand led to falling relative wages. This was then followed by elite overproduction, intraelite competition and conflict, and increasing sociopolitical instability.
As I wrote in 2010 (Turchin 2010), we are rapidly approaching a historical cusp at which American society will be particularly vulnerable to violent upheaval.
FIGURE 14.4 Ages of Discord: mapping the longue durée dynamics of popular wellbeing index (solid curve) and the Political Stress Index (broken curve) onto American “event history”.
we live in times of intensifying structural-demographic pressures for instability. The
