« Sleep 'reboots' the brain for creativity and problem solving, says study |
Main
| Weak ties make for stronger innovation »
January 27, 2004
The politics of the creative class
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
Our brother Corante blogger Jonathan Peterson sent me a link a couple of weeks ago that I’m just now getting to – the thought-provoking piece “Creative Class War” by Richard Florida. The article is pegged to the current Presidential election we’re _______ (depending on how you feel about politics, fill in the blank with the appropriate verb phrase: slogging through, dealing with, struggling with, being entertained by, following passionately….!)
There’s a lot of very interesting stuff going on in this article. But because it’s framed in terms of the current campaign it’s impossible for me to ignore the politics, so I’ll point my comments in that direction. I actually think that Florida bashes the GOP a little too much here and doesn’t place enough responsibility on the Democrats. If in fact the Clinton years were the political and power zenith for the creative class, then it was the Democrats’ to lose. And they did. It's irresponsible to whine about election-stealing – it shouldn’t have been that close in the first place. Nor do the Democrats have any really good plan for getting the power back. As Florida so aptly points out, “The challenge for Democrats, if they want to win, is to find ways of reaching out to the rest of the country, to convince at least some of its many regions that policies which operate to the interests of the creative class are in their interests as well.”
I would add that this “reaching out” can’t be palliative, patronizing or pandering, which looks to me like what most of the Democrats are doing. This is as bad as “sneering at the elites,” which Florida accuses the GOP of doing (an accurate accusation, to my mind). If Democrats are truly the party of the creative class, then where are the innovators in the current slate of candidates?! And if the Democrats are only the best choice for the creative class because they’re not the GOP, then where’s the innovative third-party alternative?!
Comments (3)
| Category: Law & Policy
- RELATED ENTRIES
- › Innovation Of A Tradition
- › We Hear Them, But Do We Know What They're Saying?
- › Farewell from Renee -- but check out the new IdeaFlow blogroll!
- › Supernova 2007 blog conversation: It's all about innovation and value
- › Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum cancelled!!!
- › Join us at the first-ever Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum, Thursday, April 26
- › Jack’s Notebook: A Business Novel of ‘Deliberate Creativity’
- › Models for crowdsourcing -- now, FLIRT
Renee Hopkins Callahan started IdeaFlow and serves as chief blog-wrangler. She is 
1. Tom Kinsey on February 2, 2004 4:12 PM writes...
I think his piece misses a huge point that goes far beyond what cultural values make American "creative" types feel warm and fuzzy, and has almost nothing to do with political propaganda from either Democrats or Republicans.
Florida is correct in writing that U.S. industry is heavily dependent on foreign talent, but doesn't address why.
Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has an idea:
http://truthnews.com/comment/2002_04_hutchinson_engineers.html
"In 2000, America produced 62,500 bachelor's level engineers and 10,500 computer science graduates. But to meet demand, American industry had to recruit 115,000 engineers from abroad.
"Why are we behind and what can we do? We have failed to reach our students at an early age - before they enter high school - and show them the opportunities an engineering degree can offer.
"Today, only 15 percent of our nation's high school graduates have the requisite math and science courses to qualify for an engineering program. And if they do qualify and enroll, only 40 percent of them will actually finish and graduate with an engineering degree."
That's a huge national problem, and a worthy challenge for Florida's "creative class." If it has some innovative answers that go at least a bit beyond tossing more money at mediocrity, Democratic Party defenders of the educational status quo obviously didn't get the memo. Republicans haven't been revolutionizing the educational establishment either, but then, according to Florida, they couldn't if they tried, right? So, I guess it's up to those "creative" Democrat-leaning minds to deliver the country. Heaven help us.
Foreign workers in U.S. industry make cultural adjustments that have very little to do with the values of middle-class American "elites." Eventually, they'll choose to stay in their native countries when enhanced economic and social opportunities give them a choice. When that happens, either the U.S. will be able to produce domestic brainpower, or our talent pool will be inadequate to meet the international
Permalink to Commentchallenge. If our "elite" institutions aren't doing elite work by then, it won't matter who's president or in control of congress.
2. David Locke on February 9, 2004 9:11 PM writes...
Sorry, but no, the American's graduating from engineering and computer science classes has nothing to do with the so-called failure of K-12 education. It has more to do with the actions of state universities in the early eighties when they decided that they couldn't afford American professors and opted for cheaper imports that couldn't speak English or barely so. Once,this change occurred, the foreign student was favored and it was like going to a foreign university. You had to teach yourself.
From here on out though, the issue is going to be different. It's going to be one where parents tell their kids up front that a career as a programmer or engineer is not a career, but a short-lived series of jobs that ultimately will have you laid off, and out in the streets.
There is a spin going around now about how economic theory will grant us the locus of "higher value services," while all the design jobs go overseas. But, economics is a theory about aggregate behavior. The programmers and engineers that were laid off are not going to be the ones participating in those higher value services. They will be rendered by someone else.
Then, on blaming the Clinton administration, this just forgets who controlled Congress back then.
There is nothing wrong with our brainpower. The middle class is not, and has never been "elite." And, the talent pool won't matter when all the money is in the hands of the few. The bust was lengthened for political purposes and for the benefit of those few.
Smart Americans become master plumbers. The executive class will find out soon enough what the future holds.
Permalink to Comment3. razorsedge on May 10, 2004 11:23 PM writes...
In the Heraclitean Flux, where everything changes and nothing abides, the only constant is change itself and its novel apprehension by an eternally valid logos (Whitehead). Yeah, alright... so maybe its raining, or maybe that's somebody urinating on my back... either way, I'm getting wet here.
Kinsey responds above with Hutchison's numbers and its wrong. For an awareness of why the numbers are wrong see a blog by John Dvorak at:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1573102,00.asp
Permalink to Comment