It’s recently become fashionable to worry that the fabric of democracy is being undermined as people feel left behind by globalization and automation. I think these fears are to some extent well founded. But this isn’t a new problem: it goes back at least as far as the 1980s. Our failure to recognize it then, and act on it since, is why it has now reached crisis proportions.


Are there lessons we could learn from those decades-long failures of policy? Yes. Will we learn them? Perhaps not, although there are a few promising signs.

The most fundamental lesson is that to address a problem, you first need to notice it. One of the striking features of the Brexit vote, and the response in some other places to various manifestations of rising populism, has been the surprise of many voters in wealthy, cosmopolitan cities at discovering how differently some of their fellow citizens are thinking.

These tend to be people living in towns and smaller cities where traditional jobs began to disappear a generation ago and have never been adequately replaced. Whole communities have experienced their real incomes stagnating or falling since well before the financial crisis.

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