Great post, Diana. Perhaps this is in agreement with your thesis, but I feel like Americans are on the whole not processing the experience of the pandemic at all, at least not directly. Instead they have displaced the anxiety and trauma of that time -- of some danger that we didn't see coming (in that case, a novel virus) and that we could not immediately contain -- onto other perceived threats, like, for instance, urban crime and disorder. Don't get me wrong -- these are often real issues that need to be addressed, but also ones that are wildly exaggerated. Even the media talks incessantly about "vibes", as if feelings have become the only things that matter, even if they bare little to no relation to the realities on the ground.
That's how I account for the results of the 2024 election, which should not, in my mind, be viewed as some paradigm shift in American politics but rather, as a reflection of how we're trying (or not trying) to process the pandemic years -- indirectly at best, incoherently at worst. There's a ton of denial going on: indeed, it is shocking to me how little of our national conversation even references the pandemic, almost as if it never happened. I find myself thinking about that every time I walk through an airport terminal and see countless people coughing or sneezing without even bothering to cover their mouths.
One of the greatest impacts of the pandemic may turn out to be the accelerated departure from the workforce of many older workers and the loss of decades of experience and institutional memory, leading to declines in skilled service across many industries and professions (including construction trades at a time of severe housing shortage). But this tipping point seems to have escaped the attention of the Executive Branch as they seek to incentivize mass resignations of civil servants (in the name of “efficiency”) which will only exacerbate the knowledge and experience gap in government.
It made me think of several other inflection points from my career:
- peak interest rates 21.5% in December of 1980 as I was preparing to graduate from college and look for a job
- The Tax Reform Act of 1986 that pretty much ended the syndication of real estate tax benefits and totally changed how private real estate was capitalized.
- Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIREA)which formed The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to oversee the disposal of assets from failed savings and loan crisis. This resulted in a collapse of liquidity and another massive change in how real estate is capitalized, leading to the institutionalization of real estate. It also created a decade of shrinkage in many real estate-related professions and talented young professionals shifted to finance and tech jobs which were still booming.
- The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 which you wrote about.
- COVID which brought both cyclic change and tremendously accelerated secular change that was already underway.
Thank you for adding these other inflection points! I honestly didn’t know these ones from the 1980s and that’s the whole point- we forget many of these major shifts too easily.
Great post, Diana. Perhaps this is in agreement with your thesis, but I feel like Americans are on the whole not processing the experience of the pandemic at all, at least not directly. Instead they have displaced the anxiety and trauma of that time -- of some danger that we didn't see coming (in that case, a novel virus) and that we could not immediately contain -- onto other perceived threats, like, for instance, urban crime and disorder. Don't get me wrong -- these are often real issues that need to be addressed, but also ones that are wildly exaggerated. Even the media talks incessantly about "vibes", as if feelings have become the only things that matter, even if they bare little to no relation to the realities on the ground.
That's how I account for the results of the 2024 election, which should not, in my mind, be viewed as some paradigm shift in American politics but rather, as a reflection of how we're trying (or not trying) to process the pandemic years -- indirectly at best, incoherently at worst. There's a ton of denial going on: indeed, it is shocking to me how little of our national conversation even references the pandemic, almost as if it never happened. I find myself thinking about that every time I walk through an airport terminal and see countless people coughing or sneezing without even bothering to cover their mouths.
Such a great connection between the anxiety over urban crime and the sense of not being able to control the pandemic.
I realize it's a little bit of pop psychology but my vibes tell me there's something there... :)
One of the greatest impacts of the pandemic may turn out to be the accelerated departure from the workforce of many older workers and the loss of decades of experience and institutional memory, leading to declines in skilled service across many industries and professions (including construction trades at a time of severe housing shortage). But this tipping point seems to have escaped the attention of the Executive Branch as they seek to incentivize mass resignations of civil servants (in the name of “efficiency”) which will only exacerbate the knowledge and experience gap in government.
Diana, I love this. It is great perspective.
It made me think of several other inflection points from my career:
- peak interest rates 21.5% in December of 1980 as I was preparing to graduate from college and look for a job
- The Tax Reform Act of 1986 that pretty much ended the syndication of real estate tax benefits and totally changed how private real estate was capitalized.
- Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIREA)which formed The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to oversee the disposal of assets from failed savings and loan crisis. This resulted in a collapse of liquidity and another massive change in how real estate is capitalized, leading to the institutionalization of real estate. It also created a decade of shrinkage in many real estate-related professions and talented young professionals shifted to finance and tech jobs which were still booming.
- The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 which you wrote about.
- COVID which brought both cyclic change and tremendously accelerated secular change that was already underway.
If you have not seen it, you might enjoy Christopher Lee's series on this: https://www.celassociates.com/onlinenewsletter/good-old-days-sa-k021622.pdf
Thank you for adding these other inflection points! I honestly didn’t know these ones from the 1980s and that’s the whole point- we forget many of these major shifts too easily.