Why Your Barista Has a Master's Degree

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when a country produces more graduates than it has elite jobs to give them? According to Peter Turchin, the Russian-American thinker behind End Times, that's exactly the moment civilisations start to crack. This week, we get into his theory of "elite overproduction" and ask whether Ireland is staring straight into it. We unpack the stats: most educated population in the EU, master's degrees doubling in 15 years, and nearly one in three graduates working in jobs that don't need a degree. We talk about why the barista with a first-class honours and the barman with an economics master's are not just funny anecdotes, they're leading indicators of political instability. We look at how the public sector is quietly absorbing the overflow that the private sector can't, why AI is about to pour petrol on the fire, and why historically it's not the abject poor who revolt, it's the relatively rich and bitterly disappointed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Coming up on the podcast, Elite Overproduction,
0:03.3	what happens when we produce too many graduates
0:05.7	and the economy doesn't produce the jobs that are commensurate
0:08.5	with those graduates?
0:09.7	Do they get frustrated?
0:11.2	Do they become a volatile constituency?
0:13.9	And if so, what happens next?
0:15.7	It's all about elite overproduction.
0:17.7	It's coming up in a couple of minutes.
0:21.1	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
0:27.4	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
0:33.2	How you doing there? It is time for the podcast. And the podcast today is going to be about a book
0:38.7	that I'm reading at the moment, which is a book by a fella called Peter Turchin. It's called End Times.
0:44.5	Now, John, it's not the most uplifting title. Elites can't release the path to political
0:50.2	disintegration, John. But it is really... I feel so energized now, Mac.
0:56.1	I know, I know. Just...
0:57.5	Don't I bring you all the good times? Don't I bring you all the good tidings?
1:01.4	But no, it is interesting because in the context of what Cheneidore...
1:06.1	In the context of what Cheneidot, Sullivan has been saying in the last couple of weeks
1:10.7	and people's
1:11.3	talking about Ireland and talking about the States and talking about the general sense of
1:17.0	disharmony, the general sense of, yeah, things are going well on paper, but in practice,
	...

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