A Recipe for a Striving America
David Brooks:
We can all list the forces that contribute to this
widening divide, but a big one is this: Over the past 70 years or so, America,
without much conscious deliberation, embraced its information-age future. In
1973, the sociologist Daniel Bell wrote a book called “The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society.” Bell wrote that the leadership in the emerging social
order would come from the “intellectual institutions.” He added, “the entire
complex of prestige and status will be rooted in the intellectual and scientific
communities.”
In the ensuing decades, finance, consulting and tech
rose while manufacturing shrank. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve,
manufacturing made up 28 percent of America’s nominal gross domestic product in
1953. By 2015 it was 12 percent, and today it is lower still.