Won’t offer a ton of commentary here. The idea is pretty simple: When America has seen rising per capita incomes, it’s a more generous and open and happy and thus inventive place. But when incomes have stagnated or declined, America’s gets awfully nasty, awfully fast—especially toward immigrants.
A timely reminder for today.
Friedman writes well, but he’s an economist, so it can feel like a bit of a wading. When he goes off to other countries, I got bored, but when he kept to American history, it was an eye-opening romp that made sense to me instinctively.
I advise people to read it simply to get that core thought deeply embedded in their thinking, because it reminds us all that we have a great democracy here because we have a great economy—less so the other way around. Our democratic “civilization” is just a few years of stagnating income thick, meaning it does not take that much to strip it away.