What If Politicians Studied the Social Fabric Like Economists Studied GDP?
One of Washington’s most conservative legislators on an age of polarization, inequality, and fragmentation
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah is worried. He is worried about the country’s economic trajectory, given rising inequality, the shrinking of the middle class, and the persistence of intergenerational poverty. And he is worried about its social trajectory, based on growing political and regional polarization, rising distrust in institutions, falling rates of marriage and churchgoing, the dearth of mixed-income neighborhoods, and declining voter turnout.
While he and other legislators seemed to have a decent understanding of the former, Lee told me, sitting in his Senate office last week, they
