There Is No Surplus Elite in America
Peter Turchin’s thesis that “elite overproduction” explains America’s instability is conceptually confused and empirically false.
Yascha Mounk

Over the course of the last decade, a seductive idea has conquered the discourse: the notion that the sudden surge in political instability in democracies like the United States has been due to “elite overproduction” and the subsequent formation of a “surplus elite.”

It in many ways remains puzzling why America, and many other Western countries, are going through a period of acute political instability at a time of relative affluence and prosperity. This makes it tempting to give credence to sweeping pseudo-scientific theories like the one on which Turchin has built his renown. But sadly, his arguments don’t stand up to serious scrutiny. For a real explanation, we’ll have to look elsewhere.

Democrats Will Keep Losing Until They Cut Ties With Billionaires and Corporations
Progressive movement leader Alexandra Rojas writes for Zeteo that those in charge of the Democrats’ 2024 campaign should have been fired a long time ago.
Alexandra Rojas, Zeteo

The truth is, the party willfully ignored the left and progressives. It willfully deprioritized the economic populism that unites people across race, gender, class, and zip codes. Instead of leading a campaign against billionaires who make millions in profits while everyday people struggle, Democrats employed billionaires like Mark Cuban as a surrogate to satisfy Wall Street and Big Tech donors. Instead of demanding an end to the US funding of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and investing that money in working-class jobs, housing, and healthcare, Democrats promised to be the party of forever wars abroad while employing a family of war criminals as campaign messengers.