Closing the inequity gap: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) in dialogue with Tim O’Reilly and Peter Hirshberg
What happens when a representative of the new Democratic party from Ohio meets with the thinkers, doers, and funders that have built Silicon Valley?
a) Fireworks?
b) Great policy ideas?
c) An enthralling discussion?
d) All of the above?
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In the wake of Tuesday’s election drama in Georgia–which saw Jon Ossoff losing to Karen Handel by a margin of 3.8 percentage points or 9,700 votes–there have been a backlash against Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and calls for the Democratic party to reshape itself around younger leadership and a new set of ideas designed to lift up geographies and people in the middle of the country, especially people who do not count themselves as members of the creative class.
The notion is that the country is at a crisis point, deeply divided by geography and ideology between productive areas and non productive areas. We’ve written about this before here and here. But now we want to turn our eye to the historical roots of this divide.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and it took generations to destroy the American dream, by which we mean the idea anyone could climb into the Middle Class through a combination of hard work and education.
Today, geographies and people in the middle of our country are being squeezed by declines in real income coupled with a crushing burden of debt, most of it happening as a result of college loans. Indeed, starting in about 2003, progressives began to shift away from policies that protected the Middle Class — like unions — in favor of policies that encouraged entrepreneurship and the rise of the Creative Class.
From a focus on the Middle Class to a focus on the Creative Class
The Creative Class is an idea popularized by Richard Florida starting in 2002 that cities and our economy would be dominated by people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. Florida wrote a best selling book on this topic in xxxx.
Starting in about 2013, Richard Florida began to concede that his idea — that members of the creative class could remake our cities and towns for the better was just plain wrong:
Florida himself, in his role as an editor at The Atlantic, admitted last month what his critics, including myself, have said for a decade: that the benefits of appealing to the creative class accrue largely to its members — and do little to make anyone else any better off. The rewards of the “creative class” strategy, he notes, “flow disproportionately to more highly-skilled knowledge, professional and creative workers,” since the wage increases that blue-collar and lower-skilled workers see “disappear when their higher housing costs are taken into account.” His reasonable and fairly brave, if belated, takeaway: “On close inspection, talent clustering provides little in the way of trickle-down benefits. — -
Now a new generation of progressives are working to undo 15+ years of decline in cities and towns in the middle of the country, cities and towns that have been all but hollowed out. In pursuit of profits, manufacturing moved offshore, to take advantage of low-cost and in many instances non-unionized labor. And major companies moved out of the Midwest to the two coasts, to better participate as part of the innovation economy.
New Generation Progressive Leaders
Among the new Democrats worth keeping an eye on for 2020 is Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) who in 2016 challenged Nancy Pelosi for leadership of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives.
Rep. Ryan argues that companies should look to move their operations to his district out of self interest, to access new sources of talent at a lower price point than available in Silicon Valley. Ryan wants to create an economic development office for Ohio, to encourage high-growth companies to move to Ohio. Businesses call this type of move “near shoring” as opposed to offshoring to China, India, or the Philippines.
At the same time, there is growing evidence that before a company can near shore its operations, there needs to be a considerable investment in people, to stand up a talent base and a workforce. Consider, for example, this article that points out the talent gap in one Ohio town.
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Tim O’Reilly believes — in contrast to Rep. Ryan — that 30 years of capitalism has got us to where we are today and that making economic opportunity more inclusive will require consider policy change. Some place the blame for inequity in our economy squarely on Harvard Business School which has churned out generations of leaders focused on shareholder value:
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O’Reilly is working on a new book entitled XXX which will challenge business leaders to change the metrics of success, focusing on the role of corporations in creating jobs and work that enable people to earn a living wage as the barometer of corporate success? Would such a focus lift up our cities and towns and create economic opportunity for people that today feel (and are) left out of the American dream?
Watch the video (above) to view highlights of their discussion. And check out this annotated transcript to catch up on highlights from the discussion which was attended by 60 people and happened at The Fact0ry, a historic mansion in Alamo Square (San Francisco) in May, 2017.
Relevant Links
- Meet Tim Ryan, the Ohio Democrat challenging Nancy Pelosi to lead House Democrats — Washington Post — November, 2016
- Why the Creative Class is Taking Over the World — Business Insider — July, 2012
- Harvard Business School and the Propagation of Immoral Profit Strategies — Newsweek and NPR — April, 2017
