Survival Became the Aspiration of My Generation

This is a Closer Look at St. Louis-based writer and journalist, Sarah Kendzior. She started her career at the New York Daily news, then she got her PhD in anthropology, studying authoritarian states in the former Soviet Union. Kendzior joins former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt to talk about “The View from Flyover Country, Dispatches from the Forgotten America," a series of essays on the economic problems in the “Heartland,” that she collected into an e-book, but after the 2016 election,” it was noticed, published and became a NY Times Bestseller, which could be because she had predicted nearly all the developments of the 2016 election, Trump’s win and much of what has occurred since.

Host: Arthur Levitt

Producer: Madena Parwana 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a closer look with Arthur Levitt. Arthur Levitt
is a former chairman of the U S Securities and
Exchange Commission, a Bloomberg LP board member, a senior advisor
to the Promontory Financial Group, and a policy adviser to
Goldman Sachs. This is a closer look at St. Louis
based writer and journalist Sarah Kenziea. She started her career

(00:25):
at the New York Daily News. Then she got her
pH d in anthropology studying authoritarian states and the former
Soviet Union. Back in St. Louis, she wrote a series
of essays on the economic problems in the heartland that
she collected into an e book. But after the two

(00:48):
thousand and sixteen election, The View from Flyover Country Dispatches
from the Forgotten America was noticed, published and became a
New York Time was best seller, which could be because
she had predicted nearly all of the developments of the

(01:08):
two thousand and eighteen election, trump'swin and what has occurred since.
She joins me now for a closer look. You didn't
set out to write a book, and you didn't expect
your collection of essays to become a guide for those
struggling to understand what happened to our country in two

(01:31):
thousand and sixteen. So how did it happen? And are
you surprised by the reaction to your writing? Um? Well,
I ended up writing these essays between two thousand twelve
and two thousand fourteen on the collapse of institutions, where
you asked to collapse of social trust in course the

(01:51):
collapse of the economy. I was writing about what I know,
and I live in St. Louis, um, a place that
never recovered from the effects of the recession, and I
felt a lot of issues were not being covered in depth,
like labor exploitation, credentialism, opportunity hoarding by elites, and so
I wanted to take those on the election of Trump

(02:13):
was said to be about the forgotten people in Middle America?
Who are they really? In your book? You right that
you object to the cliche view of the Midwest as
just angry white people. Yeah, I don't think that, Um.
The forgotten people per se applies to the stereotype of

(02:35):
a Trump voter. Um, you know, or for that matter,
a white older man who works in manufacturing or agricultural industries.
That's generally the prototype that's put forward. I think the
majority reading Americans forgotten by political elites. I think the
majority have been denied opportunity. And this is not a

(02:56):
new crisis. This is something that was building steadily basically
in Spagan era, but really, um kind of you know,
became further worsened after the two thousand and eight crash,
and at that point you did start to see geographic
income inequality. You saw certain cities like New York or
San Francisco or d C become these very expensive places

(03:18):
to live that also offered very prestigious jobs in influential industries,
whereas places like where I live in St. Louis became
bottomed out. They're affordable but hard to find a good
full time job, but benefits and so yes, you know,
there is that sense of the Midwest as being quote
unquote forgotten, but we who live here still remember um.

(03:41):
And one last thing is that, you know, the Midwest
does suffer disproportionately, but that suffering is shared by people
who voted for Trump and by people who didn't. But
on the whole it is basically just white people who
voted for Trump. In unemployment, right, tell the three point
six percent the lowest since nine. You say, if you're

(04:06):
thirty five or younger, and quite often older, you live
in the post employment economy. It isn't that there are
no jobs, it's that jobs aren't paying. America is becoming
a nation of zero opportunity employers. Could you explain this, Yes, savvy,
I wrote that I believe in two thousand thirteen, and

(04:28):
it still holds up. The unemployment statistic you know of
low unemployment, which is there during Obama's administration there during Trump's,
I think is very misleading. It doesn't account for underemployment.
It doesn't count for temporary uh you know, gig jobs,
side hustles, the kind of work that most people of

(04:49):
my generation or younger, you know, basically at disppoint people
forty or younger than that have had to have. Um.
You know, people tend to move from jobs a job,
often working multiple jobs at once just to make enough
to be able to get by. You know, the idea
of a career path which now requires much more credentials

(05:10):
than it did in the past, and much more expensive credentials,
often causing individuals to take on a massive amount of
debt just to be able to participate in the job market.
You know, that's a new thing. That's not something that
previous generations have had to contend with. Um, And so,
you know, unfortunately, what's happened is people kind of became

(05:31):
used to this. Their expectations of what employers should offer
or you know, what kind of aspirations they've had in
life or changed. Survival became the aspiration of my generation.
And that's a very sad thing to see. Recently, titans
of finance like Ray Dalio, Jamie Diamond and the Treasure

(05:55):
of City Bank of sounded alarms that they're all concerned
about increasing inequality. What are they worried about? And why
do you think they're finally speaking out? Um, you should
ask them, but my guess is they're worried that people
actually better rights, push for greater autonomy, not settle you

(06:18):
know in the way um. You know that I talked
about previously, but these managed expectations formed in the post
recession economy. You know, when you have economic inequality that
is this great that exceeds the guilded age, for example,
you have political instability. And of course we see that
political instability playing out in a number of different ways

(06:38):
across the political spectrum now in the US, based on
your studies of autocracy, what is it that eventually stops
them or turns the tied back to democracy. It's a
difficult question to answer because there's a lot of variety. UM.
You know, in the lead eighties, of course, we saw

(06:59):
the collapse of the so Union and the collapse of
the Warsaw Pact countries, you know, in terms of the
hold that the USSR had over them. We saw reunited Germany,
and generally speaking, this was a peaceful process. It was
the result of decades of activism for example solid airnach
U in Poland and similar movements UM, as well as

(07:21):
basically the decline of the autocracies from within and people's
demand for more UM. In other cases, you will see violence.
You will see World War UM. You know, that's what
ultimately caused you know, Hitler Uh and the Nazis to
be defeated. It's it's difficult in some ways to look

(07:41):
at the past to figure out where we're going now
because so much has changed in terms of digital communication,
in terms of things like social media that spread propaganda
so rapidly and caused people to organize in different ways. UM.
And here you'll see, you know, people organizing both for
fascism uh and against it. So in some sense, I
feel like we've we've entered a new era, you know,

(08:04):
an era UM like the effect is probably even greater
than the first printing of the Gutenberg Bible. I think
the digital era is something new, is brought with it
new problems. It will continue to bring new problems, and
I think the solutions to it are going to be
impacted that by that as well, which makes things difficult
to predict. What's your most positive prediction for the country's future. Oh, gosh, Well,

(08:28):
one thing that I've I guess I'd liked seeing, though
I wish the circumstances are different, is the emergence of
a more engaged, informed citizen ry. I think people began
to recognize their rights as they lost them, and that's
a terrible way for people to get this kind of
basic education and civics at schools apparently stopped giving long ago. Um.

(08:49):
But we need to know that we need to become
better accleanted with our history. We need to become better
accleaned with our laws so that we recognize when officials
are violating them and so when we will reck cocognize
what our own rights are U when people try to
take them away. And so I've seen that. I've seen
a great deal of compassion and outreach towards the most

(09:09):
vulnerable in this country. Does anything change for the better
for people in St. Louis or other rust belt cities
of the heart land since um, I mean not in
the last few years. You know, It's hard to say,
because I think the crisis that we're facing, especially with
an administration that is deviated so enormously from past administrations.

(09:30):
You know, we're kind of in a new arena, and
you know, we in St. Louis are coping with those
problems as well. I don't think the economy has changed
for the better. I think, um, you know, a lot
of manufacturing jobs actually have gone away. That's not necessarily
just because of Trump. We have the problem of automation,
which is a serious problem you know, throughout the country,

(09:51):
but especially here. Um. We've also had a rise, you know,
in hate crimes and in violence here as well. I mean,
we're living in a time of extreme political turbulence and
a fair amount of economic turbulence as well. I don't
necessarily see us moving um in a good direction anytime soon.
I think it's possible we might eventually, um, but it's

(10:13):
not something I see on the immediate horizon. I talked
too many CEOs and government leaders about the inequality in
America and better education for the new economy jobs seems
to be a common answer to the problem. You write
that higher education is itself a rigged game. What do

(10:35):
you mean by that? Yes, Uh, the cost of higher
education that skyrocket and especially over the last two decades,
making it out of reach for the average American. And
at the same time, jobs that used to not require
a b a UM you know, like office work jobs,
secretarial jobs, you know, and other jugum as well now

(10:56):
do making it basically you are penalized if you do
not get that degree. People have a little choice in
the matter, and this kind of purchased merit is over
emphasis on credentialism, I think is locking a lot of people, um,
you know, out of the job market, and in more
prestigious industries. They tend to be very concerned with where

(11:18):
you went into school, you know, not what your abilities are,
not what your skills are, not what you've learned, even
if it can be demonstrated objectively but just the branding,
you know, the name value of saying so and so
went to Harvard, and so you end up often with
kind of scions of wealthy families who could afford um
those expensive degrees, who maybe had an epotistic connections to

(11:40):
help them get in being preferred for these jobs over
other well qualified applicants who simply could not purchase the credentials.
And I think that that's a real travesty. It's just
not good, uh, you know, for the body public as
a whole. You know, both because people are denied opportunities,
but also because we're not necessarily seeing you know, the

(12:00):
best and brightest rise to positions of power and influence
where they could be beneficial for society as a whole.
In your essay The Peril of Hipster Economics, you tell
a story about North Philadelphia that illustrates what passes for
urban development. Please tell that story and what you mean

(12:22):
by hipster economics. Yeah, I wrote that back in where
basically an artist was trying to cover up broth and light, um,
you know, so that people who are going on the
train through the city would just see her artistic work
instead of the decayed buildings. Um and the poverty that

(12:43):
was behind it. And so there's this mindset, uh, you
know that you often see during the process of gentrification,
that focus is more on aesthetics than people, that in
fact treats people as aesthetics. So somebody you know, is
going through their life, who has in poverty, who is suffering,
it's just treated as somebody who's inconvenience for wealthier people

(13:04):
to look at. She's a St. Louis based journalist, a
scholar of authoritarian states, and op ed columnists for The
Globe and Mail, and she was named by Foreign Policy
as one of the people you should be following on
Twitter to make sense of global events. She's also the

(13:27):
best selling author of A View from Flyover Country, Dispatches
from the Forgotten America, and co host of the popular
podcast gas Lit Nation. Sarah Kenzier. Thanks for joining us.
By the way, if you have comments about the show

(13:49):
or suggestions for topics, please email me at a Closer
Look at Bloomberg dot net. That's a closer Look one
word at Umberg dot net and follow me on Twitter
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