This essay sets up a straw man. The "creative class" was originally defined, in the book "Rise of the Creative Class," as people working in industries "from tec

This essay sets up a straw man. The "creative class" was originally defined, in the book "Rise of the Creative Class," as people working in industries "from technology to entertainment, journalism to finance, high-end manufacturing to the arts."[1] The essay focuses on the worst performing of these industries to imply the whole "creative class" failed. Here's the actual core argument: "For those who deal with ideas, culture and creativity at street level — the working- or middle-classes within the creative class — things are less cheery." By which he apparently means "book editors, journalists, video store clerks, musicians, novelists without tenure" -- but especially journalists, since that's what the author is. But it's all an exercise in tautology. Of course "the working class" of the creative class is worse off. If they weren't, we wouldn't call them the working class of the creative class. Put another way: Professions are cyclic, and this guy is saying the creative class is a fraud because some of its included professions are on the down cycle. But that's what a cycle is - up and down. In 2001, after the dot-com bust, there were articles about how no one was majoring in computer science any more, and Bill Gates actually went around to colleges encouraging people to do so. [2] Of course now programmers are very much in demand again and well paid despite overall high unemployment. Likewise, finance workers were far better off in 2007 than in 2001, and are much better off today than they were in late 2008. And, just to throw in a random creative class stat to show how unpredictable things get, there is for some reason a run on stand up comedians right now! [3] So it's harder to be a journalist now than it was 10 years ago. So what? It was harder in 1994 than it was in 2000. And also: "Video store clerk?" Was that ever a great job? I must have missed the big video store clerk hiring bonanza. Ditto musicians and novelists. Hemingway lived in France because, back then, it was actually really cheap. If you're going to knock "Rise of the Creative Class" for anything, don't knock it as a lie. It's not. Any time you take professions as disparate as bond trading, lawyering, "high end" factory work and playing rock guitar and bundle them together, you can prove whatever you want. No, the creative class is crappy theory not because it's wrong but because it's so broad as to be meaningless. This journalist feels betrayed because he read the original book and thought it was about him. He conveniently skipped the bits about how it was also about people on Wall Street and corporate law offices. Whoops. [1] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.... [2] http://www.pcworld.com/article/118029/two_words_from_bill_gates_computer_science.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/118029/two_words_from_bill_ga... http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-10-12-gates-computer-science_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-10-12-gates-computer-... [3] http://splitsider.com/2011/10/due-west-a-roundtable-discussion-on-new-yorks-ongoing-comedy-exodus http://splitsider.com/2011/10/due-west-a-roundtable-discussi...