The Blue State Model: How the Democrats Created a "Liberalism of the Rich"
This is a complex topic but the article is dead-on. Scott Alexander wrote years ago that the US has created a divide that he calls Blue Tribe vs. Red Tribe that is far deeper than Dem vs. Repub - it&#x27;s cultural.<p>Today it is extremely common for someone in the &quot;blue tribe&quot; to know no one who is in the &quot;red tribe&quot; - people who (to use a few stereotypes) are Christian, enjoy NASCAR, and unabashedly eat at chain restaurants. People in either tribe don&#x27;t encounter each other daily and as a result both tribes have little understanding of each other&#x27;s worlds or the number of people who are not in their tribe.<p>Inequality is deeply problematic and there are no easy solutions. Liberalism recognizes this. The problem is that the tribal line now runs along an economic fault line. Red tribe hasn&#x27;t been doing well - red states are full of disadvantaged people. Worse, because of identity politics they have been made &quot;the other&quot; and rendered relatively voiceless.<p>Liberalism can champion the disadvantaged but it has to approach them with solutions. As technological displacement of workers continues it is hard to see what they will be.<p>I am blue tribe but I flinch when I see my colleagues in the tech industry complain about things like the injustice of having to go to a whiteboard in an interview to get a job in a Crèche-like work environment with play-balls while people outside the industry are lucky to get jobs driving cars, cleaning tables, or lifting boxes without health insurance. We don&#x27;t see our own sense of entitlement. It is transparent to others despite our liberal signaling. This isn&#x27;t going to be a pretty ride.