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I'm finding it interesting that all of the comments so far seem to have drawn very different conclusions about what the article was about. I think this article

I'm finding it interesting that all of the comments so far seem to have drawn very different conclusions about what the article was about. I think this article has many unique viewpoints that people aren't used to and think of the point that stuck out to them the most as "the point" of the article

Barrin92 5y ago
yes it's a good piece. As a non-American reader I'm kind of impressed with the stuff they're putting out because they're representing a much missing view in US discourse which is a Marxist economic point of view for a Conservative audience, basically what you'd call a 'Red Tory' in the UK or a 'Christdemokrat' in Germany. It's getting people to think and at the same time it's also a reasonable antidote for the 'culture-war' steeped people.
fullshark 5y ago
To me it’s clear in the concluding paragraph: > The situations of Asian countries and the United States differ substantially in the details, but both face the same core problem: how to offer as many people as possible a decent job with a family wage. The argument is everything stems from this failing (declining birth rates, cutthroat testing culture, woke language games to signal elite status etc)
pydry 5y ago
The article itself lurches all over the place and takes some bizarre turns - e.g. the weird conspiracy theory thrown out about how attempts at more egalitarian college admissions are simply a backhanded dig at Jews and Asians, the barely concealed indignation at anything "woke" and the re-definition of elite to mean "literally anyone with a college degree". The views he holds seem pretty average among worried Beltway center-right elites (actual elites), although not in any way representative of average Americans.
- ctchocula 5y ago
  Agree with most of your analysis. However, one place I take issue with is your claim that "the weird conspiracy theory thrown out about how attempts at more egalitarian college admissions are simply a backhanded dig at Jews and Asians". Given that we have it on good historical evidence the up and rising Jewish population in elite colleges in early 20th century made Caucasians in those institutions feel threatened, which caused them to change applications to add extra-curriculars as a metric, which was the mechanism to decrease the number of Jewish students admitted---given it's played out this way before where a rising racial minority group has been discriminated against in favour of White applicants, surely you cannot blame people for suspecting the admission process is again being made (a) less meritocratic, (b) decreasing number of Asian and Jewish admissions, and (c) increasing White admissions all in the name of racial equity?
  - pydry 5y ago
    Except A) there's no evidence for it and B) it's not the early 20th century any more. Other than that, yeah, I guess it's a cast iron indictment of woke politics. Or at least the most scathing indictment the author was intellectually capable of.
spiznnx 5y ago
As a leftist Asian-American who recently went through US university, I found much of it to be alarmist and incongruent with my own experiences and observations. I was unsurprised to see it was written by a European conservative think-tank. It's definitely unique, but I wouldn't say it's convincing. There was no "wokeness" at my midwestern engineering state university. In my opinion, the best solution to the increasingly out-of-reach American dream is just to build millions of apartments in cities where housing is very expensive.

Barrin92 5y ago

yes it's a good piece. As a non-American reader I'm kind of impressed with the stuff they're putting out because they're representing a much missing view in US discourse which is a Marxist economic point of view for a Conservative audience, basically what you'd call a 'Red Tory' in the UK or a 'Christdemokrat' in Germany. It's getting people to think and at the same time it's also a reasonable antidote for the 'culture-war' steeped people.

fullshark 5y ago

To me it’s clear in the concluding paragraph: > The situations of Asian countries and the United States differ substantially in the details, but both face the same core problem: how to offer as many people as possible a decent job with a family wage. The argument is everything stems from this failing (declining birth rates, cutthroat testing culture, woke language games to signal elite status etc)

pydry 5y ago

The article itself lurches all over the place and takes some bizarre turns - e.g. the weird conspiracy theory thrown out about how attempts at more egalitarian college admissions are simply a backhanded dig at Jews and Asians, the barely concealed indignation at anything "woke" and the re-definition of elite to mean "literally anyone with a college degree". The views he holds seem pretty average among worried Beltway center-right elites (actual elites), although not in any way representative of average Americans.

ctchocula 5y ago
Agree with most of your analysis. However, one place I take issue with is your claim that "the weird conspiracy theory thrown out about how attempts at more egalitarian college admissions are simply a backhanded dig at Jews and Asians". Given that we have it on good historical evidence the up and rising Jewish population in elite colleges in early 20th century made Caucasians in those institutions feel threatened, which caused them to change applications to add extra-curriculars as a metric, which was the mechanism to decrease the number of Jewish students admitted---given it's played out this way before where a rising racial minority group has been discriminated against in favour of White applicants, surely you cannot blame people for suspecting the admission process is again being made (a) less meritocratic, (b) decreasing number of Asian and Jewish admissions, and (c) increasing White admissions all in the name of racial equity?
- pydry 5y ago
  Except A) there's no evidence for it and B) it's not the early 20th century any more. Other than that, yeah, I guess it's a cast iron indictment of woke politics. Or at least the most scathing indictment the author was intellectually capable of.

spiznnx 5y ago

As a leftist Asian-American who recently went through US university, I found much of it to be alarmist and incongruent with my own experiences and observations. I was unsurprised to see it was written by a European conservative think-tank. It's definitely unique, but I wouldn't say it's convincing. There was no "wokeness" at my midwestern engineering state university. In my opinion, the best solution to the increasingly out-of-reach American dream is just to build millions of apartments in cities where housing is very expensive.