Economist Enrico Moretti believes the best indicator of income is not your profession but rather whether you live in a region with a high degree of college graduates. Five Western states, including Colorado and Montana, feature the lowest unemployment rates in America, writes Richard Manning in the latest issue of Harper’s.
Manning speculates that the combination of high concentration of college graduates and lower wage workers employed in forward-thinking industries makes for an especially potent force against unemployment and poverty.
In his article, “Political Climbers,” Manning discusses the collective mindset of Western states regarding environmental issues. Over the last few years concerns over the environment have affected elections in Colorado, Utah, and Montana. Candidates focused on identity politics suffered losses while those who speak out on climate change and land perseveration persevere.
And when elected officials threaten selling off public lands to private interests—think Jason Chaffetz and Ryan Zinke—the backlash is harsh and immediate.Collective action is an important political and social driver. In Los Angeles, where I live, the reverse occurs: people pay little attention to environmental issues such as water conservation because we don’t live near the Colorado River or the Sierra Nevada, nor do we endure extreme droughts inland farmers suffer. We only get mad when avocado prices skyrocket.
Unfortunately humans tend to only notice what’s immediate, which makes sense in tribes but creates substantial problems in nations legislated by one government. It promotes a thrust toward individualism in which the concerns of the few become more important than the welfare of the many. It becomes—America. And America is spreading.
More generally, the “Western” value of individualism is spreading, according to new research published in Psychological Science. Examining fifty-one years of data covering seventy-eight countries collected for the World Values Survey, authors Igor Grossman and Michael E.W. Varnum discovered that it’s not only Western cultures becoming more individualistic.
As Science Daily reports,In general, individualist cultures tend to conceive of people as self-directed and autonomous, and they tend to prioritize independence and uniqueness as cultural values. Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, tend to see people as connected with others and embedded in a broader social context — as such, they tend to emphasize interdependence, family relationships, and social conformity.
According to the authors, Cameroon, Malawi, Malaysia, and Mali showed a substantial decrease in individualistic practices, while…
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