There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

by Fiona Hill

Russia’s fate over a twenty-year period shows how a country’s political path can turn away from democracy toward autocracy. No state, no matter how advanced, is immune from flawed leadership, the erosion of political checks and balances, and the degradation of its institutions. Democracy is not self-repairing.

there is one message that I hope to convey more forcefully than any other, it is that opportunity does not materialize from thin air and no one does anything alone. Barriers to opportunity and social mobility are personal and universal. Any individual success is a team or collective effort. Delivering greater opportunity for America in the future will be the product of hard work on multiple levels. The federal government, states, local communities, schools, colleges, companies, families, and personal and professional networks all help form the infrastructure of opportunity. When opportunity vanishes, it is because this infrastructure has eroded or even failed.

Race is a deeply embedded, all-pervasive structural barrier to opportunity in the United States.

Sunderland was so rich and renowned that American president Ulysses S. Grant came to preside over the laying of the foundation stone for the city’s combined library, museum, and art gallery in September 1877. It was the first UK public library and museum outside London.

In all the time I spent in Roddymoor, I never really had a proper conversation with Granny. There was little to talk about when you never left the house and every day unfolded and ended in the same way, with no opportunity for something new.

There was also the chance to study with an inspiring teacher. Dr. Marshall, the school English teacher, had a PhD from Durham University. He had decided to come to teach in the benighted comprehensive school system, where he thought he could be most useful, instead of at a private school or university. Education was a calling for Dr. Marshall, not a job. He was the best-qualified teacher at school. His classes were well prepared and compelling. The rest was sometimes a roll of the dice.

In a 2018 book, The Forgotten Americans, Belle describes how families and schools become the early determinants of future opportunity for children in the United States. Family structure—whether children have two working parents or not—is particularly important in shaping opportunity.

Just as I had rarely been to the UK’s capital when I grew up in County Durham, kids in East London may have never visited central London. Their lives follow the same pattern as mine did in a small faraway town.

In populist settings you frequently end up with crony capitalism. Those who have personal ties get preferential treatment and rise to the top of the economy. The grabbing hand of the state becomes the grabbing hand of the head of state.

Inevitably, cronyism bolsters the desire for authoritarianism, retaining power by any means to keep you and yours in charge of the state and its spoils. In the end, this trend leads to economic stagnation. Democracy and growth are clearly correlated in Europe as well as in the United States. When democracy slides, so does the economy.

Almost 49 percent of students at private schools in England had received an A grade, in comparison with just under 22 percent of students in the state system.

Although the education secretary at the time, Gavin Williamson, had gone to a comprehensive school, 64 percent of Boris Johnson’s cabinet in 2020 had studied at private schools, in contrast with only 7 percent of the overall population.

As of April 2021, the U.S. super-rich, a total of 719 people, had seen their collective wealth increase by over 50 percent since mid-March 2020, to $4.56 trillion.

Generation Z (those like my daughter who were born between 1997 and 2015) have objectively less opportunity than their parents and grandparents.

Between 2000 and 2010 the pace of urbanization was so high that China was constructing a new million-strong city practically every month.

I should not have had to leave my family, friends, and hometown behind in order to make a meaningful life for myself.

For someone like me in the North East of England, it was simpler to move to Australia, Canada, or the United States than it was to relocate to the South of England, where you knew no one, you might face class or accent discrimination, and you were priced out of the housing market.

Real relationships offer support and mentoring and improve well-being. They provide “best interest,” not just “self-interest.” They give individuals contact with people they care about. They make them feel as if they have a future. There can be no collective progress without this individual progress, just as there can be no national progress without local progress.