The Great Class Swap is an amazing cluster of suggestions and possibilities. It is intriguing but also deeply frustrating. I'd like to offer a few points towards developing the thought experiment.
The US is bifurcating into distinct economic zones. Some are socio-economic disasters in which deindustrialization and managed decline have created conditions of enduring underdevelopment and reverse development. Others are redoubts of civility, productivity and viable future development. Whatever Class Swaps might take place will vary greatly depending on the character of particular regions and the needs of regionally dominant classes. IMHO pro-natalist ideology will most likely be used to justify/subsidise the class privileges of the upper middle class while leaving the masses in chronic economic insecurity as before.
At the same time the population is divisible into a triune caste system. There are those that can contribute towards the future development of a technocratic social order. There are those who can function well enough under present conditions. And there are those who struggle to remain functional and who add no value. No Class Swap will address the needs of all three simultaneously.
So far the Great Class Swap assumes a degree of autarky at a national level. In reality any swaps take place within an economy that is being integrated on a planetary scale. America will not get to choose what Swaps it makes. It will get to make choices depending on what global markets will accept. From a planetary perspective there is no pressing need for the US to maintain an expansive mass middle class and no need for the US to provide the economic security necessary for family formation on a mass scale. The birth dearth can be made up by replacement level immigration.
Class compromises historically took place within the context of inter-state competition, civil war and revolution. It is unclear that the conditions for sustainable class compromise exist in the US. At the moment.
Finally, fertility crisis in the US is downstream from the failure of post-Cold War capitalism to offer a secure or dignified life for many, if not most, of its sub-elite. This is the underlying and irresolvable issue.
If a Great Class Swap of any kind ever takes place it will do so to further the aims of triage economics only.
The Great Class Swap is an amazing cluster of suggestions and possibilities. It is intriguing but also deeply frustrating. I'd like to offer a few points towards developing the thought experiment.
The US is bifurcating into distinct economic zones. Some are socio-economic disasters in which deindustrialization and managed decline have created conditions of enduring underdevelopment and reverse development. Others are redoubts of civility, productivity and viable future development. Whatever Class Swaps might take place will vary greatly depending on the character of particular regions and the needs of regionally dominant classes. IMHO pro-natalist ideology will most likely be used to justify/subsidise the class privileges of the upper middle class while leaving the masses in chronic economic insecurity as before.
At the same time the population is divisible into a triune caste system. There are those that can contribute towards the future development of a technocratic social order. There are those who can function well enough under present conditions. And there are those who struggle to remain functional and who add no value. No Class Swap will address the needs of all three simultaneously.
So far the Great Class Swap assumes a degree of autarky at a national level. In reality any swaps take place within an economy that is being integrated on a planetary scale. America will not get to choose what Swaps it makes. It will get to make choices depending on what global markets will accept. From a planetary perspective there is no pressing need for the US to maintain an expansive mass middle class and no need for the US to provide the economic security necessary for family formation on a mass scale. The birth dearth can be made up by replacement level immigration.
Class compromises historically took place within the context of inter-state competition, civil war and revolution. It is unclear that the conditions for sustainable class compromise exist in the US. At the moment.
Finally, fertility crisis in the US is downstream from the failure of post-Cold War capitalism to offer a secure or dignified life for many, if not most, of its sub-elite. This is the underlying and irresolvable issue.
If a Great Class Swap of any kind ever takes place it will do so to further the aims of triage economics only.