The Meaning of the Election

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2020

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’d like to think of our societies as places with a lot of social mobility, in which individuals can climb the ladder by working hard. But by tracking families with rare surnames across the centuries, Gregory Clark, an economist, has shown that social mobility is much rarer than we’d like to think. The descendants of 14th century Florentine aristocrats, 18th century Korean civil servants and 19th century Swedish notables, research Clark conducted or inspired has shown, are much more likely to work in prestigious professions or own a lot of money in the 21st century. Why could that be? In the latest episode of The Good Fight, Yascha Mounk talks to Gregory Clark about the limits of social mobility; why some families succeed while others fail; and what implications that should have for social and economic policy. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John T. Williams and Rebecca Rashid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's nothing in social arrangements that's going to be able to guarantee that everyone wins the same amount within this society and we are in the sun but we're
0:17.6	only briefly in the sun.
0:20.9	And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.
0:25.0	Joe Biden will be the 46 president of the United States.
0:32.0	For the past... of the United States.
0:34.0	For the past days and weeks I have felt much more optimistic than many of my friends and
0:41.7	colleagues.
0:43.0	Now that Biden has won this election,
0:47.1	I am much happier than many of them.
1:00.0	And I've been trying to reflect on the reasons for this difference.
1:06.0	I think it has something to do with a very different baseline.
1:11.0	As a long time listeners to this podcast will know, I have been arguing for the past five, six years that populism is a very
1:21.1	powerful force, that it has support in many different countries around the world,
1:27.0	that it is not at all easily defeated, and that it represents a serious danger to democracy.
1:37.0	The American story of the past four years has once again confirmed these insights.
1:46.0	Donald Trump wasn't laughed out of court when he announced his presidency.
1:50.0	He made it overweight to the White House.
1:53.0	The institutions didn't easily rein him in.
1:56.0	He has managed to do serious damage
2:00.0	to the rule of law and the separation of powers.
2:04.0	And no, Americans didn't turn on him in one-wave election
2:09.0	with virtually everybody deciding that he was a terrible president.
	...

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