The Illusions of Prosperity
On “The View From Flyover Country” by Sarah Kendzior
By Nicolas Colin (Co-Founder & Director) | The Family
Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States pushed a new, strong voice onto the public stage: that of Sarah Kendzior.
Two things in particular prepared Kendzior, living in St. Louis, Missouri, to become one of the experts on this new America. The first was that she is a specialist in the authoritarian regimes of Central Asia, holding a doctorate in political anthropology. And the Trump presidency, with its corruption, nepotism, and anti-democratic tendencies, shares quite a bit with those regimes.
The second is that she lives in that part of the nation referred to as “Flyover Country”, the relatively unknown and underprivileged areas that many Americans fly over, but would never select as their destination. Before becoming famous in 2016, Kendzior was earning a living as a freelance journalist, publishing articles in places like Quartz and Al Jazeera, on what American life was in the middle of the country: long-term unemployment, low salaries, public health crises such as obesity and opiate addiction, and a profound disconnect and sense of abandonment that, in part, explains Trump’s victory.
One theme runs throughout Kendzior’s book, The View From Flyover Country (Flatiron Books, 2018): the radical divergence between the constant enrichment of the United States and the incredible fall in lifestyle for a growing portion of Americans.
As just one example, Kendzior sees the low unemployment rate as an illusion. The quality of jobs has decreased, with an increase in subcontracting and the habit of taking on multiple part-time/short-term jobs. Most jobs today are created in sectors (such as hospitality) where the salaries are low, hours are odd, management is harsh, and social protections are pretty much nonexistent. Given these conditions, more and more workers simply give up on hunting for work and are no longer taken into account in the unemployment statistics. As such, Trump can bloviate as much as he likes about a low unemployment rate, but the Americans in Flyover Country aren’t under any illusions: they see on a daily basis how their economic situation continues to fall.
In cities like New York, San Francisco, or Chicago, the situation isn’t necessarily better. Some Americans could migrate toward those prosperous metropolises to occupy the many available jobs being generated by the new urban economy. But the difficult housing market contributes to maintaining the distance between different classes of the population: artists, creators, entrepreneurs, and all those who simply cannot find housing in the places where they could be needed, seeing as they work for low wages in proximity services.
Everyone comes out on the losing end in the America described by Sarah Kendzior, both those who live far from cities, where jobs are few and those who live in cities, where housing prices have become unbearable. Prosperity in the United States, which is real, is only a dream for most workers. The engine of wealth redistribution is no longer turning.
The transition to a digital economy, unfortunately, doesn’t fix everything. The jobs in Flyover Country are linked to the old Fordist economy: they’re pretty good, whether office jobs or on the assembly lines, but they’re fewer and fewer thanks to automation and offshoring. The jobs in cities, in proximity services such as hospitality, personal care, education, and healthcare, are forced to stay where they are, as they cannot be easily automated or sent elsewhere. Unfortunately we haven’t yet imagined and built the new social institutions that can make those jobs sustainable and attractive. Trump’s America isn’t much trying, either. It’s time for us Europeans to show them the way!
(Originally published in Le Monde (in French), September 18, 2018.)
