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      How a ‘Golden Era for Large Cities’ Might Be Turning Into an ‘Urban Doom Loop’

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      The last thirty years “were a golden era for large cities,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate and finance at Columbia Business School, wrote in November 2022: “A virtuous cycle of improving amenities (educational and cultural institutions, entertainment, low crime) and job opportunities attracted employers, employees, young and old, to cities.”New York, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco, Van Nieuwerburgh continued, “became magnets for the highest-skilled employees and the top employers, with particular concentrations in finance and technology.” In late February and early March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit New York and other population hubs. In Van Nieuwerburgh’s telling, the Covid-19 crisis “triggered a massive migration response. Many households fled urban centers. Most of these Covid migrants moved to the suburbs.”As the pandemic endured and subsequent Covid variants prompted employers to postpone return-to-office plans, Van Nieuwerburgh noted, “Covid-induced migration patterns began to take on a more persistent character. Many households transitioned from temporarily renting a suburban home to purchasing a suburban home.”In Van Nieuwerburgh’s view — and that of many of his colleagues — what seemed like a transitory step to avoid infection has become a major force driving the future direction of urban America.Scholars are increasingly voicing concern that the shift to working from home, spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, will bring the three-decade renaissance of major cities to a halt, setting off an era of urban decline. They cite an exodus of the affluent, a surge in vacant offices and storefronts and the prospect of declining property taxes and public transit revenues.Insofar as fear of urban crime grows, as the number of homeless people increases, and as the fiscal ability of government to address these problems shrinks, the amenities of city life are very likely to diminish.Jacob Brown, a post- doctoral fellow at Princeton’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, elaborated in an email on the consequences for cities of the more than 20 percent of urban employees now working full- or part-time from home:With respect to crime, poverty and homelessness, Brown argued,One thing that may occur is that disinvestment in city downtowns will alter the spatial distribution of these elements in cities — i.e. in which neighborhoods or areas of a city is crime more likely, and homelessness more visible. Urban downtowns are often policed such that these visible elements of poverty are pushed to other parts of the city where they will not interfere with commercial activities. But absent these activities, there may be less political pressure to maintain these areas. This is not to say that the overall crime rate or homelessness levels will necessarily increase, but their spatial redistribution may further alter the trajectory of commercial downtowns — and the perception of city crime in the broader public.“The more dramatic effects on urban geography,” Brown continued,may be how this changes cities in terms of economic and racial segregation. One urban trend from the last couple of decades is young white middle- and upper-class people living in cities at higher rates than previous generations. But if these groups become less likely to live in cities, leaving a poorer, more disproportionately minority population, this will make metropolitan regions more polarized by race/class.My Times colleague Nicholas Fandos documented the damage that even the perception of rising crime can inflict on Democrats in a Nov. 27 article, “Meet the Voters Who Fueled New York’s Seismic Tilt Toward the G.O.P.”: “From Long Island to the Lower Hudson Valley, Republicans running predominantly on crime swept five of six suburban congressional seats, including three that President Biden won handily that encompass some of the nation’s most affluent, well-educated commuter towns.And on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams of New York announced plans to potentially subject severely mentally ill people who are found on subways or city streets to involuntarily hospitalization.Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford, described some of the economic forces at work in an email:In big cities like New York and San Francisco we estimate large drops in retail spending because office workers are now coming into city centers typically 2.5 rather than 5 days a week. This is reducing business activity by billions of dollars — less lunches, drinks, dinners and shopping by office workers. This will reduce city hall tax revenues.Compounding the problem, Bloom continued,Public transit systems are facing massive permanent shortfalls as the surge in working from home cuts their revenues but has little impact on costs (as subway systems are mostly a fixed cost. This is leading to a permanent 30 percent drop in transit revenues on the New York Subway, San Francisco Bart, etc.These difficulties for cities will not go away anytime soon. Bloom provided data showing strong economic incentives for both corporations and their employees to continue the work-from-home revolution if their jobs allow it:First, “Saved commute time working from home averages about 70 minutes a day, of which about 40 percent (30 minutes) goes into extra work.” Second, “Research finds hybrid working from home increases average productivity around 5 percent and this is growing.” And third, “Employees also really value hybrid working from home, at about the same as an 8 percent pay increase on average.”In the case of New York, Bloom wrote that he is “reasonably optimistic in the long-run,” and “current office leasing markets are soft but not in collapse.”That view is not shared by three other experts in real estate economics, Arpit Gupta, of N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, Vrinda Mittal, both of the Columbia Business School, and Van Nieuwerburgh. They anticipate disaster in their September 2022 paper, “Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse.”“Our research,” Gupta wrote by email,emphasizes the possibility of an ‘urban doom loop’ by which decline of work in the center business district results in less foot traffic and consumption, which adversely affects the urban core in a variety of ways (less eyes on the street, so more crime; less consumption; less commuting) thereby lowering municipal revenues, and also making it more challenging to provide public goods and services absent tax increases. These challenges will predominantly hit blue cities in the coming years.In their paper, the three authors “revalue the stock of New York City commercial office buildings taking into account pandemic-induced cash flow and discount rate effects. We find a 45 percent decline in office values in 2020 and 39 percent in the longer run, the latter representing a $453 billion value destruction.”Extrapolating to all properties in the United States, Gupta, Mittal and Van Nieuwerburgh write, the “total decline in commercial office valuation might be around $518.71 billion in the short-run and $453.64 billion in the long-run.”Their conclusions are not necessarily cast in concrete but they are bleak:We estimate that remote work is likely to persist and result in long-run office valuations that are 39.18 percent below prepandemic levels. The decline in office values and the surrounding central business district retail properties, whose lease revenues have been hit at least as hard as office, has important implications for local public finances.For example, the share of real estate taxes in N.Y.C.’s budget was 53 percent in 2020, 24 percent of which comes from office and retail property taxes. Given budget balance requirements, the fiscal hole left by declining central business district office and retail tax revenues would need to be plugged by raising tax rates or cutting government spending.Both would affect the attractiveness of the city as a place of residence and work. These dynamics risk activating a fiscal doom loop. With more people being able to separate the location of work and home, the migration elasticity to local tax rates and amenities may be larger than in the past.In a separate email, Van Nieuwerburgh warned thatAs property values of urban office and urban retail fall, with the increased importance of work from home, so do the tax revenues generated from those buildings and the associated economic activity. Since local governments must balance their budget, this means that they need to raise tax revenues elsewhere or cut public spending. The former is bad for the business climate. The latter is bad for the quality of life in the city: cuts to public transit, schools, police departments, sanitation departments, etc. As the quality of public services deteriorates, crime could increase, making public transit potentially even less attractive. More generally, an urban doom loop could ensue, whereby lower property tax revenues beget lower spending and higher taxes, triggering more out-migration, lower property values, lower tax revenues, less public spending, more crime and worse schools/transit, more out-migration.In his November 2022 paper, “The Remote Work Revolution: Impact on Real Estate Values and the Urban Environment,” Van Nieuwerburgh writes:Since March 2020, Manhattan has lost 200,000 households, the most of any county in the U.S. Brooklyn (-88,000) and Queens (-51,000) also appear in the bottom 10. The cities of Chicago (-75,000), San Francisco (-67,000), Los Angeles (-64,000 for the city and -136,000 for the county), Washington DC (-33,000), Seattle (-31,500), Houston (-31,000), and Boston (-25,000) make up the rest of the bottom 10.As major cities are caught in a downward fiscal spiral, the forces driving the process will be felt in varying stages. The loss of transit ridership fares and sales taxes is immediate; declining residential, retail and office property taxes will take longer to phase in as new appraisals are performed; drops in income tax revenues will occur as families moving outside city limits change their legal residence.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesOne of the major consequences of these patterns, Jessica Trounstine, a political scientist at the University of California-Merced, wrote in an email, “has been segregation in fiscal capacity within metro areas.” In most cases, Trounstine suggested, “the people who will leave cities will likely be higher income and whiter than the people who stay. This means that prior patterns will only be amplified, not reversed.”There are a number of ways to describe the changing character of urban America and the ever-evolving nature of post-pandemic life.Tracey H. Loh, a Brookings fellow, wrote in an email that one way to view an urban downtown is like “a natural ecosystem” that has received a major shock:Prior to the pandemic, these ecosystems were designed to function based on huge surges in their daytime population from commuters and tourists. The shock of the sudden loss of a big chunk of this population caused a big disruption in the ecosystem.Just as the pandemic has caused a surge in telework, Loh wrote, “it also caused a huge surge in unsheltered homelessness because of existing flaws in America’s housing system, the end of federally-funded relief measures, a mental health care crisis, and the failure of policies of isolation and confinement to solve the pre-existing homelessness crisis.”The upshot, Loh continued,is that both the visibility and ratio of people in crisis relative to those engaged in commerce (whether working or shopping) has changed in a lot of U.S. downtowns, which has a big impact on how being downtown ‘feels’ and thus perceptions of downtown. These negative perceptions have become a real barrier to further recovery and are also shaping local elections, especially out west where homelessness is worse, such as last year’s Seattle mayoral election or the recent L.A. mayoral election.Some urban experts have a less pessimistic outlook.Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard and a co-author, with David Cutler, of the 2021 book “Survival of the City: The Future of Urban Life in an Age of Isolation,” wrote by email that “Conventional economic theory suggests that real estate markets will adjust to any reduction in demand by reducing price. Some of this has already happened in commercial real estate.” Glaeser also noted that “many businesses that thought that they were priced out of N.Y.C., San Francisco and Boston markets will reconsider if commercial prices are 30 percent lower.”In fact, Glaeser argued, whilea thirty percent drop in rents in N.Y.C. or S.F. would not lead to disaster, a similar drop in Buffalo or Cleveland might be more problematic because many landlords might just decide to walk away from their properties. In that case, a bleak spiral could begin where vacancies beget vacancies as the urban service providers that cater to local businesses shut down or relocate as well.The nation, Glaeser continued, isat an unusual confluence of trends which poses dangers for cities similar to those experienced in the 1970s. Event#1 is the rise of Zoom, which makes relocation easier even if it doesn’t mean that face-to-face is going away. Event#2 is a hunger to deal with past injustices, including police brutality, mass incarceration, high housing costs and limited upward mobility for the children of the poor.Progressive mayors, according to Glaeser,have a natural hunger to deal with these problems at the local level, but if they try to right injustices by imposing costs on businesses and the rich, then those taxpayers will just leave. I certainly remember New York and Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, where the dreams of progressive mayors like John Lindsay and Jerome Patrick Cavanagh ran into fiscal realities.In the short run, Glaeser wrote,both the reduction in tax revenues and current political impulses are likely to lead to more crime and homelessness, which will in turn create more of an urban exodus. I am sufficiently optimistic about cities to think that they are likely to react relatively quickly to that exodus and then pivot to being smarter about urban management. In this more hopeful scenario, the likely medium term effect is to create a new generation of city manager-mayors, like Mike Bloomberg, who care about inequity but fight it in a smart way.Richard Florida, a professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto, stands out as one of the most resolutely optimistic urban scholars. In his August 2022 Bloomberg column, “Why Downtown Won’t Die,” Florida asks, “Can America’s iconic downtowns survive?” His answer:Great downtowns are not reducible to offices. Even if the office were to go the way of the horse-drawn carriage, the neighborhoods we refer to today as downtowns would endure. Downtowns and the cities they anchor are the most adaptive and resilient of human creations; they have survived far worse. Continual works in progress, they have been rebuilt and remade in the aftermaths of all manner of crises and catastrophes — epidemics and plagues; great fires, floods and natural disasters; wars and terrorist attacks. They’ve also adapted to great economic transformations like deindustrialization a half century ago.What the Covid-19 pandemic has done, Florida argues, “is to accelerate a set of changes in our downtowns that were already underway. Vestiges of the industrial age, they were gradually evolving from the one-dimensional, work-only central business districts of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.”In an email, Florida wrote that many urban central business districts are “relics of the past, the last gasp of the industrial age organization of knowledge work the veritable packing and stacking of knowledge workers in giant office towers, made obsolete and unnecessary by new technologies.”Now, he argued, “Downtowns are evolving away from centers for work to actual neighborhoods. Jane Jacobs titled her seminal 1957 essay, which led in fact to ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities,’ ‘Downtown Is for People’ — sounds about right to me.”Despite his optimism, Florida acknowledged in his email thatAmerican cities are uniquely vulnerable to social disorder — a consequence of our policies toward guns and lack of a social safety net. Compounding this is our longstanding educational dilemma, where urban schools generally lack the quality of suburban schools. American cities are simply much less family-friendly than cities in most other parts of the advanced world. So when people have kids they are more or less forced to move out of America’s cities.Florida made the case in his email that cities have become critically important incubators:What worries me in all of this, in addition to the impact on cities, is the impact on the American economy — on innovation. and competitiveness. Our great cities are home to the great clusters of talent and innovation that power our economy. Remote work has many advantages and even leads to improvements in some kinds of knowledge work productivity. But America’s huge lead in innovation, finances, entertainment and culture industries comes largely from its great cities. Innovation and advance in. these industries come from the clustering of talent, ideas and knowledge. If that gives out, I worry about our longer-run economic future and living standards.While the future path of cities remains uncertain, Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton, provided an overview of the problems they face:Cities that have lost revenue from commercial activity have received substantial support from the federal government over the last few years, but that assistance won’t be sustained in the future. What comes next is not clear, but big cities have to reinvent themselves in an era when the downtown business district seems to be permanently changing. The risk that comes with fiscal distress is clear: If city governments face budget shortfalls and begin to cut back on funding for public transit, policing, and street outreach, for the maintenance of parks, playgrounds, community centers, and schools, and for services for homelessness, addiction, and mental illness, then conditions in central cities will begin to deteriorate.The result?When support for the people and the basic institution of urban life is withdrawn, people suffer and public spaces start to empty out. This, along with the rising prevalence of guns across the country, creates the conditions for gun violence to worsen, reinforcing the process of decline. None of this is inevitable, and we know that investments in the people and institutions of cities are effective in creating safe, thriving public spaces. But it’s not entirely clear to me where those investments will come from if revenue falls in the years to come.In a paper from September, “Working from Home Around the World,” Nicholas Bloom, whom I cited earlier, and five colleagues, argue that “the implications for cities are more worrisome. The shift to working from home reduces the tax base in dense urban areas and raises the elasticity of the local tax base with respect to the quality of urban amenities and local governance.”There is reason for both apprehension and hope. Cities across time have proven remarkably resilient and have survived infectious diseases from bubonic plague to cholera to smallpox to polio. The world population, which stands today at eight billion people, is 57 percent urban, and because of the productivity, innovation and inventiveness that stems from the creativity of human beings in groups, the urbanization process is quite likely to continue into the foreseeable future. There appears to be no alternative, so we will have to make it work.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Democrats Should Run ____ in 2024

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      More from our inbox:A Welcome Gay Marriage Bill, But …Let’s Keep Funding Covid Vaccines Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph by Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Biden Is No Sure Thing for 2024. What About Buttigieg? Harris? Even Whitmer?,” by Frank Bruni (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 12):I was disappointed to see that you didn’t suggest Representative Tim Ryan, who lost the Senate race in Ohio, as a potential candidate for the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination. He is articulate, young, a moderate, a warrior for the working and middle class, and, like John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, perfectly suited to appeal to a broad range of Democrats and independents as a decent, reasonable choice during the current madness of the U.S. political landscape.His recent concession speech alone shows us how his values would enrich our country. He may not be well known outside of Ohio, but wasn’t Barack Obama in the same position before 2008?Glenn PetherickKingstowne, Va.To the Editor:As a Republican, I was dismayed and frustrated by the outcome of the midterm elections. If my party could not prevail in a climate of record inflation, rising interest rates, rampant crime, open borders, lousy public schools and spreading woke ideology, how could I possibly expect a better outcome in 2024?Then I read Frank Bruni’s article identifying Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Gretchen Whitmer as the most likely possibilities to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024. Thank you, Frank! You have given me renewed hope for a brighter future for my party.Joseph P. CunninghamHoustonTo the Editor:In your discussion of potential Democratic nominees for 2024, there are two other names that deserve mention. One is Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. She lost both legs in Iraq, and I’d be eager to see her in a debate with the former president who got out of military service for — what was it again? — oh, that’s right, a bone spur.The other is the newly elected governor of Maryland, Wes Moore. As a Rhodes scholar and veteran, he has already compiled an impressive résumé, and at 44 years old is the same age as Ron DeSantis. I know he doesn’t have much experience yet, but then again neither did Barack Obama when he was elected.John J. ConiglioEast Meadow, N.Y.To the Editor:While many of the possible candidates highlighted have laudable credentials, I think Gina Raimondo has most of them beat. She is well seasoned, and not only has she had governing experience as Rhode Island’s governor from 2015 to 2021, but she was also treasurer and was able to stabilize the state pension plan. Many of the elections she’s won have been by a fairly wide margin.She spent earlier years as a venture capitalist, which gives her “street cred” with the business community. Her education encompasses economics and law at top-notch schools as well as having been a Rhodes scholar. I would think this background would have broad appeal and take us in a positive direction.Bonita WagnerStamford, Conn.To the Editor:It was hard to believe that Cory Booker did not make Frank Bruni’s A list of possible Democratic presidential candidates, or even the B, C or D lists. Cory Booker is a get-things-done senator, a passionate Democrat who speaks truth to power. He was the strongest debater on the primary stage in 2020. He has serious policy proposals and credibility.I wonder if he is perceived as too progressive.John PinskerAuburn, Wash.To the Editor:My response to Frank Bruni is: We must elect our first woman president! It is an embarrassment for the United States that we have had only male leaders.There are many highly qualified women candidates, but in my opinion, the most qualified and electable candidate is Amy Klobuchar. The Democrats cannot afford to nominate a progressive like Elizabeth Warren, as she would alienate moderates and independents.Ms. Klobuchar is smart, well spoken and experienced, with a good sense of humor. In addition, she is a respected senator who has worked successfully with both parties.Amy Klobuchar is a winner!Ruth MenkenMount Kisco, N.Y.To the Editor:I would suggest that Representative Adam Schiff be added to the list. He should be close to the top. True, he is from California, white and male. But he has served as a major spokesman for committees involved with the Trump impeachments and the Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol.I find him an articulate and timely transmitter of important information on national TV, making it understandable for a broad cross-section of our population.Russ YoumansCorvallis, Ore.A Welcome Gay Marriage Bill, But …Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in his opinion in the ruling that overturned the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision that the court also “should reconsider” precedents such as the one that enshrined marriage equality in 2015. Yana Paskova/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Gay Marriage Clears Hurdle in Senate Vote” (front page, Nov. 17):Senator Marco Rubio is quoted as saying that he knows “plenty of gay people in Florida that are pissed off about gas prices.” To Senator Rubio I ask: Are gay people not capable of feeling upset about gas prices and being worried about their marriage rights at the same time? Does it have to be one or the other?You also report that Senator John Cornyn views the bill as an attempt to scare gay people into thinking that the Supreme Court decision protecting gay marriage is in jeopardy. “I don’t believe it is,” Senator Cornyn said. To Senator Cornyn I ask: Have you learned nothing from the last Supreme Court term?Michael TaubWallingford, Pa.To the Editor:This newly proposed legislation that would allow same-sex marriages in all states also allows any business to retain the right to deny “services, facilities or goods” for weddings if they so choose. State-licensed businesses such as bakers, photographers, facilities and florists could legally refuse our L.G.B.T.Q. business.This proposed law still conveys discrimination and will continue to marginalize L.G.B.T.Q. citizens, and teach future Americans that we are “less than.” Still separate and still unequal.We await our Brown v. Board of Education ruling to affirm that we are all truly equal, and that no orientation or identity is better than another.Kate O’HanlanPortola Valley, Calif.The writer, a gynecologic oncologist, is former president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.To the Editor:So 12 out of 50 Republican senators — fewer than a quarter — support letting gay people enjoy the same marriage rights as everyone else.It could not be more clear: The Republican Party of 2022 is the party of cruelty.Bruce BurgerSeattleLet’s Keep Funding Covid VaccinesWhile government funding helped to protect pharmaceutical companies in 2020 from the downsides of spending heavily on tricky vaccine research, there are no such assurances in 2022.Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Falls Behind on Covid Vaccines as Funds Dry Up” (front page, Nov. 20):The U.S. risks making precisely the same budgeting decisions for pandemic preparedness that left the country vulnerable to outbreaks in the past. Neglect, panic, repeat is no way to manage catastrophic risks, particularly for events that, like Covid-19, could cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars.Douglas CriscitelloVienna, Va.The writer was an official at the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office. More

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      How the Right Became the Left and the Left Became the Right

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      One of the master keys to understanding our era is seeing all the ways in which conservatives and progressives have traded attitudes and impulses. The populist right’s attitude toward American institutions has the flavor of the 1970s — skeptical, pessimistic, paranoid — while the mainstream, MSNBC-watching left has a strange new respect for the F.B.I. and C.I.A. The online right likes transgression for its own sake, while cultural progressivism dabbles in censorship and worries that the First Amendment goes too far. Trumpian conservatism flirts with postmodernism and channels Michel Foucault; its progressive rivals are institutionalist, moralistic, confident in official narratives and establishment credentials.These reversals are especially evident in a pair of prominent headlines from the last week. If you had been told at any point from, say, 1970 to 2005 that a disturbed-seeming man living in the Bay Area with a history of involvement with nudist activists and the hemp jewelry trade had allegedly followed his paranoid political delusions into a plan to assault an important national politician, the reasonable assumption would have been that his delusions belonged to the farthest reaches of the left and therefore his target was probably some notable Republican.By the same token, if you had been told in George W. Bush’s presidency that a trove of government documents would reveal the Department of Homeland Security essentially trying to collude with major corporations to regulate speech it considers dangerous or subversive, an effort extending from foreign threats to domestic ones, you would have assumed that this was all Republican overreach, a new McCarthyism — and that progressives would be up in arms against it.In our world, though, things are otherwise. The man who allegedly attacked Paul Pelosi while hunting the speaker of the House did, seemingly, belong to left-wing, Left Coast culture in the not-so-distant past. But at some point in his unhappy trajectory, he passed over to the paranoias of the extreme right — probably not in some semi-rational radicalization process in which he watched too many attack ads against Nancy Pelosi but more likely in a dreamlike way, the nightmares of QAnon matching his mental state better‌ than the paranoias of the left.His journey’s violent endpoint was singular and extreme, but this kind of left-to-right migration has more normal correlatives: the New Age-QAnon overlap, the Covid-era migration of formerly left-wing skeptics of Big Pharma onto right-wing shows and platforms, the way that all doubts about the medical establishment are now coded as right-wing, Trumpy, populist.And the political right’s response to the Pelosi attack reflects these shifts as well. The ethos of Fox Mulder in “The X-Files,” “Trust no one,” is a now dominant value on the right, which in this case encouraged a swift leap from reasonable questions about the details of the assault, based on inaccurate initial reports, to a very specific narrative about a gay assignation that the cops and the Pelosis were presumably covering up.As of this writing, several public references to this theory from prominent conservatives have been deleted. But the cover-up narrative will probably survive indefinitely as a reference point, an underground “truth,” like the left-wing conspiracies of old.One of those deleted tweets belonged to Elon Musk, the new impresario of Twitter, and it inevitably became an exhibit in the case for liberal panic over his takeover: What could be more indicative of the platform’s imminent descent into a democracy-destroying hellscape than conspiracy theories spread by the Chief Twit himself?But the alternative to Musk’s reign was clarified by the second recent illustration of our left-right reversal: a story from The Intercept, by Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein, detailing the Department of Homeland Security’s migration into the social-media surveillance and the pressure the department has tried to exert on internet companies to flag and censor content along lines favored by the national security bureaucracy.On the surface, this is not a partisan story: The Intercept is a left-wing publication, and the current version of the D.H.S. anti-disinformation effort got started in the Trump administration.But everyone understands those efforts’ current ideological valence. The war on disinformation is a crucial Democratic cause, the key lawsuit filed against the Biden administration on these issues comes from Republican attorneys general (joined by doctors critical of the public-health establishment), and the most famous flashpoint remains the social-media censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which Fang and Klippenstein suggest followed from what one could reasonably call a deep-state pressure campaign.Meanwhile, according to a draft report from the D.H.S. obtained by The Intercept, the list of online subject areas that the department is particularly concerned about includes “the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine” — mostly areas where, whether in wisdom or in folly, the populist right is more likely to dissent from the establishment position.And for the future of Twitter, in particular, it’s notable that the Intercept story first points out that a committee advising DHS on disinformation policy included Twitter’s then-head of legal policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, and then notes that Gadde was one of the first people fired by Musk. It’s a tacit nod to the left-right switch: Under Musk the social-media giant is widely seen as moving “rightward,” but that could mean becoming less entangled with an arm of what was once George W. Bush’s national security state.The point of emphasizing this reversal isn’t to suggest that either side is likely to flip back. The evolving attitudes of right and left reflect their evolving positions in American society, with cultural liberalism much more dominant in elite institutions than it was a generation ago and conservatism increasingly disreputable, representing downscale constituencies and outsider ideas.But a stronger awareness of the flip might be helpful in tempering the temptations that afflict both sides. For progressives, that could mean acknowledging that the Department of Homeland Security’s disinformation wars, its attempted hand-in-glove with the great powers of Silicon Valley, would have been regarded as a dystopian scenario on their side not so long ago. So is it really any less dystopian if the targets are Trumpistas and Anthony Fauci critics instead of Iraq War protesters? And if it is a little creepy and censorious and un-American, doesn’t that make some of the paranoia evident on the right these days a little less unfathomable and fascist seeming, even a little more relatable?Then the Fox Mulder right might benefit from recalling the thing that conservatives — or this conservative, at least — used to find most insufferable about the anti-establishment left, which was not its skepticism but its credulity, not the eagerness to question official narratives but the speed with which implausible alternatives took root. (If parts of Oliver Stone’s “J.F.K.” make you understand where conspiracy theories come from, the part where the conspiracy gets “explained” should make you a Nixon Republican.)This is the key problem with the right today, whether the issue is the 2020 election or the Covid-vaccine debate or the attack on Paul Pelosi. Not the baseline of skepticism, not being attuned to weaknesses and inconsistencies in official narratives, not being open to scenarios of elite self-dealing and conspiracy and cover-up, all of which emphatically exist. It’s the swift replacement of skepticism with certainty, the shopping around for any narrative — even if it comes from Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell — to vindicate your initial theory, the refusal to accept that even institutions you reasonably mistrust sometimes get things right.Or to put this in terms of Musk and his hopes for Twitter: The ideal virtual town square would be a place where conservatives could discuss speculative, even conspiratorial theories of the day’s events — but also a place where they could be persuaded to abandon bad theories when the evidence dissolves them.Social-media and tribal incentives being what they are, that seems exceedingly unlikely. But if I had just paid billions to own a social media platform — and become both its main character and arguably the most important right-leaning figure in American life, pending the Donald Trump-Ron De‌ ‌Santis slugfest — I would be thinking about what it would take for a spirit of contrarianism and rebellion to aim, not simply at transgression, but at truth itself.In addition to my two weekly columns, I’m starting a newsletter, which will go out most Fridays and cover some of my usual obsessions — political ideas, religion, pop culture, decadence — in even more detail. You can subscribe here.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Iran’s Protests Intensify

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      Plus Myanmar gets closer to Russia and a dire climate report.Iranian mourners walked toward the cemetery where Mahsa Amini is buried.Eurovision Social Network/Via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Iranians mourn Mahsa AminiTens of thousands of demonstrators in Iran gathered yesterday to mark the 40th day of the traditional Islamic mourning period for Mahsa Amini, whose death in police custody set off protests across the country.The mourning was marred by violence as security forces attacked and shot at demonstrators across the country. By evening, demonstrations had spread across the country to many cities and university campuses, with large crowds in the streets clapping and defiantly chanting the mantras of the protests: “Women, Life, Freedom” and “We will fight and take Iran back,” according to videos on social media.Security forces attacked protesters with tear gas, beat them with batons and in some places, like Tehran, Qazvin and Saghez, opened fire on them, videos showed. Some crowds in the capital fought back, chasing security forces and setting fire to their motorcycles.In Tehran, women tossed their head scarves onto bonfires in the street, shouting “Freedom! Freedom!” videos showed. In many places, the protesters condemned the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and chanted for his death and removal.Analysis: The protests that unfolded in recent weeks were more scattered and smaller in recent days, but the revolt may inject new energy into the demonstrations.Culture: The Times spoke with Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who fled Iran in 2008, and won the best actress award at Cannes this year. She stars in “Holy Spider,” a timely Iranian story of female resistance in the face of male violence. “I saw these images of three actresses throwing away their hijabs, saying we don’t want to lie anymore, we don’t want to hide ourselves,” Ebrahimi said, “and I figure if they arrived at this point, the whole of society is kind of there.”Myanmar’s junta sees itself as part of a new world order led by strongmen ideologically opposed to democracy.Nanna Heitmann for The New York TimesMyanmar cozies up to RussiaMyanmar’s junta, ostracized by the West and by its neighbors, is deepening its ties with Russia.Myanmar is the only Southeast Asian country to endorse Russia’s invasion, and the Kremlin has referred to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the junta, as the “prime minister,” a post he gave himself that no other major country recognizes.The relationship has mutual benefits. Myanmar gets Russian oil in the midst of a fuel shortage exacerbated by the junta’s mismanagement, as well as ammunition and a powerful ally at the U.N.More on the Protests in IranA Women-Led Uprising: Casting off their legally required head scarves, Iranian women have been at the forefront of the demonstrations, supplying the defining images of defiance.Prison Fire: The causes of a fire in the notorious Evin Prison, in Tehran, remain unclear. But witnesses and families of prisoners say that the authorities there had been bracing for potential unrest.The New Faces of the Protests: Two 16-year-old girls who were killed by the Iranian security services in a crackdown on protesters have become a symbol of the uprising.Economic Despair: While Iranians have a range of grievances to choose from, the sorry state of Iran’s economy has been one of the main forces driving the protests. Strikes by oil-sector workers joining the protests could damage it further.Russia gets revenue as Western sanctions squeeze its economy. Moscow could even eclipse Beijing as Myanmar’s top supplier of weapons, which have been frequently deployed by the military against civilians since it took control of the country in a military coup in 2021.Ukraine war updates:A hydroelectric dam could be a linchpin in the looming battle for Kherson. If Ukraine retook the dam, Russian soldiers would have nowhere to retreat, but Russia could breach the dam to slow Ukraine’s advance.Ukraine’s government urged displaced people not to return this winter, acknowledging that the country faces hardships in the cold months ahead.A new propaganda push by the Kremlin frames the war as a counterterrorism operation.Earth is heading toward more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and species extinction.Feisal Omar/ReutersClimate pledges are falling shortOnly 26 of 193 nations that agreed to climate action plans have followed through, increasing the likelihood of an environmental catastrophe, according to a U.N. report.Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the document said, the planet is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels, by 2100.That’s far higher than the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set by the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, and it crosses the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts significantly increases.The U.N. report comes less than two weeks before nations are set to gather for climate talks in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, to discuss unfulfilled promises and the fight to stave off a catastrophe.Details: The world’s top two polluters, China and the U.S., have taken some action but did not pledge more interventions this year; climate negotiations between the two have been frozen for months. Toll: Emperor penguins have been listed as a threatened species by the U.S. government. Experts predict that 99 percent of the birds will disappear by 2100 without a significant reduction in carbon pollution.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificThe fossil was taken in broad daylight. Bryan Le Dantec /Getty ImagesTwo men with a rock saw and a chisel stole a cherished 23-million-year-old whale fossil from a remote riverbank in New Zealand. Shanghai began using an inhalable form of the Covid-19 vaccine, China Daily reports.Anne Jakrajutatip, a transgender Thai billionaire and celebrity, purchased the Miss Universe Organization for $20 million, Reuters reports.Medibank, Australia’s largest health insurer, said a hack had compromised the data of all its customers, Reuters reports.Around the WorldMarkets were unruffled by Rishi Sunak’s announcement, but the Labour Party is on the offensive against him.Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesRishi Sunak, Britain’s new prime minister, delayed the announcement of a major economic plan, saying that he needed time to make the “right decisions.”A measure tracked by Wall Street signaled that the U.S. could be heading toward an economic slump.This summer, Mexico’s government said it had finally solved the mystery behind a mass abduction in 2014. Since then, the case has fallen apart.Other Big StoriesPresident Biden thought he had secured a secret pledge from Saudi Arabia to increase oil production. He was wrong. Nablus, a city in the West Bank, has been under a semi-blockade for weeks by the Israeli Army. Residents are furious. A small trial suggested that some breast cancer patients could skip surgery and be treated with chemotherapy alone.A Morning ReadMadhur Jaffrey’s 1985 children’s book, “Seasons of Splendour: Tales, Myths and Legends of India,” is being reissued next month.Adrianna Newell for The New York TimesMadhur Jaffrey introduced Indian food to the West. Now, at 89, she continues to publish recipes and articles and give interviews. Her first cookbook, “An Invitation to Indian Cooking,” will be reissued next year. “She inspired an entire generation of Indians,” said Chintan Pandya, 42, the chef at New York City’s Dhamaka who was named the best chef in New York State this year at the James Beard awards. “She planted the seed.”TAIPEI DISPATCHTaiwan’s autocratic relicsSouth of Taipei, there’s a museum dedicated to Taiwan’s not-so-distant authoritarian past. It’s become a surprising tourist hot spot.Once the site of a secretive military detention center, the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park has seen an increase in visitors since Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. House speaker, met there in August with pro-democracy activists who have criticized China.“Now, Taiwan is already a free and democratic country,” said Chen Chung-tong, 85, a physician who was held there for a decade until his release in 1979. He said that Pelosi’s visit to the site was a reminder that Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, “used to rule Taiwan this way, like the Communist Party rules China now.”Political dissidents were prosecuted at the detention center during the four decades until 1992 known in Taiwan as the White Terror, which began when the Kuomintang fled to the island to escape the Communist revolution in China. During that period, the Kuomintang targeted people seen as threats to its rule over the island.For many, the site has a new resonance as China increases its military intimidation in a bid to pressure Taiwan into unification. The site also carries echoes of China’s autocratic present under Xi Jinping — and a potent warning of one possible future. Some fear the past may be a prologue.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRyan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.Delicata squash has an edible skin, so you can roast it without having to peel it.What to ReadBooks to take you through Istanbul.Ask WellDo statins, which lower blood cholesterol, increase the risk of diabetes?Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Taxi (Three letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Lindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic, is joining The Times. Her brand-new newsletter will recommend new songs (and older ones, too).The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the subpoena issued to Donald Trump.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Should Candidates Be Transparent About Their Health?

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      More from our inbox:Revised Drone RulesLiving in Political FearPreparing for Future PandemicsHow Fossil Fuel Donations Sway Climate PoliticsLt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania greets supporters following a Senate campaign rally.Kriston Jae Bethel/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Candidates Must Disclose Medical Issues,” by Lawrence K. Altman (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 30):Dr. Altman correctly calls for the full disclosure of medical issues by major candidates, especially presidential. He has championed this cause for years, but his voice has gone unheeded.The most famous candidate health cover-up was J.F.K.’s adrenal insufficiency, Addison’s disease. But John McCain’s recurrent melanoma, Bill Bradley’s atrial fibrillation, Joe Biden’s cerebral aneurysm in his 1988 campaign and Bernie Sanders’s significant coronary disease requiring a stent were all either downplayed or denied.The most egregious example of health misrepresentation was in 1992, when Paul Tsongas and his physicians declared he was cured of his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when he was not. If he had been elected president rather than Bill Clinton, he would have required ongoing cancer treatments while in office, which would have compromised his ability to fulfill his duties. He died on Jan. 18, 1997.With the likelihood of one or more candidates over 75 running for president in 2024, the case for full medical disclosure is more compelling than ever. The country would be well served to remember the advice given by William Safire in 1987, when he wrote, “The president’s body is not wholly his own; that is why we go to such lengths to protect it.”Kevin R. LoughlinBostonThe writer is a retired urologic surgeon and a professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School.To the Editor:I would like to respectfully disagree that candidates owe their voters full medical transparency. Confidentiality of medical records exists for good reason, and to throw it away — citing confusion over John Fetterman’s health in the Pennsylvania Senate campaign — is the wrong approach.For example: Does a female candidate owe it to voters to reveal whether she has ever had an abortion? Some would argue yes, she should. I would argue that it’s none of the voters’ business.What else should a candidate reveal? Therapist’s notes? Past substance use?A real-life example is Thomas Eagleton, who was tapped to be George McGovern’s running mate in 1972 until it was revealed that he had undergone electroshock therapy for depression 12 years earlier. Because of this, he was dropped from the ticket.In the U.S., we are extremely fortunate to have the rights we have, including a right to privacy. We should not be looking for ways to chip away at these rights.Gregory FedynyshynMalden, Mass.Revised Drone RulesAn Air Force Predator drone, right, returning from a mission in the Persian Gulf region in 2016. The new policy suggests that the United States intends to launch fewer drone strikes away from recognized war zones.John Moore/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Rules on Counterterrorism Drone Strikes, Eased by Trump, Are Tightened by Biden” (news article, Oct. 8):Are we supposed to be assured that the United States is now acting ethically, legally and judiciously with President Biden’s revised drone assassination policy?Our clandestine killing of terrorist leaders outside conventional war zones only provokes greater risk for American citizens and soul-searching trauma for drone operators thousands of miles way. It deeply stains our own sense of national righteousness.This is not a policy that needs to be reformed. It’s a policy that should be abandoned for ethical, tactical and practical reasons.Dave PasinskiFayetteville, N.Y.Living in Political FearHouse and Senate leaders have their own security details, including plainclothes officers and armored vehicles, but it can be more difficult for others to obtain such protection.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Lawmakers Fearing the Worst as Intimidation Tactics Grow” (front page, Oct. 2):The appalling acrimony and threats directed against duly elected representatives have a chilling trickle-down effect to citizens as well. I recently received what I considered a banal lawn sign from the League of Women Voters. One side states, “Vote — Our Democracy Depends on It,” and the other, “Vote 411 — Election Information You Need.”In other election years, I would have placed it on my lawn without thinking twice. But after the Jan. 6 insurrection, I’m hesitant. Even though I live in a mostly progressive, blue-voting Westchester community, I know that many of my neighbors hold other political beliefs. There are a surprising number of “Blue Lives Matter” banners and “1776” flags in my neighborhood, which make me wonder how many of these neighbors doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election.I worry that displaying a message that our democracy depends on voting would be more of a red flag than a civic reminder.And I am ashamed that in our current fractious, and dangerously degraded, political climate, my fear will keep me from exercising my political beliefs.Merri RosenbergArdsley, N.Y.Preparing for Future Pandemics Brynn Anderson/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Unprepared for Covid and Monkeypox. And the Next Outbreak, Too” (news analysis, Oct. 1):Apoorva Mandavilli highlights an important issue when she writes that the United States “remains wholly unprepared to combat new pathogens.”Governments do need to be ready for future pandemics when they hit, but their priority must be preventing them in the first place. We know that most infectious diseases can be traced to pathogen transmission between wildlife and people, particularly in our increasingly degraded and exploited natural world.Governments across the globe must prioritize efforts to reduce the risks of future pathogen spillovers, including via trade and at wildlife markets.A critical first step is recognizing the intrinsic links between the health of humans, animals and the ecosystem, and acknowledging the foundational importance of an intact and functioning environment to our well-being.A new international treaty or agreement can help bring governments together to catalyze needed change. With several hundred thousand yet undiscovered viruses in wildlife that can potentially infect humans, this is not the time to ignore the science and avoid action.The adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is now truer than ever.Susan LiebermanChris WalzerDr. Lieberman is the vice president for international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Walzer is its executive director for health.How Fossil Fuel Donations Sway Climate PoliticsFrom left, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and two senators, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, in 2019.Kevin Lamarque/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Talk About Rebuilding, but Not the Cause of Climate Change” (news article, Oct. 5):Large political contributions from fossil fuel interests are blocking federal action against climate change even in Florida, one of the areas most vulnerable to hurricanes. Its vulnerability is fueled by warmer oceans along with storm surges worsened by rising seas and downpours increased by a warmer atmosphere that holds more moisture.The United States could become the world leader in battling climate change, inspiring and helping other countries to do more while creating millions of jobs. Incredibly, Florida’s Republican governor and two senators have voted against action to mitigate climate change.Why? “If you’re from Florida, you should be leading on climate and environmental policy, and Republicans are still reticent to do that because they’re worried about primary politics,” Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from South Florida, is quoted as saying.That is, Republicans who stray from the fossil fuel line will face a primary opponent well funded by fossil fuel interests.Public funding of election campaigns must replace big contributions if we want our democracy to stop being distorted. Indeed, if we want to safeguard our planet.Richard BarsantiWestern Springs, Ill. More

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      There Are Two Americas Now: One With a B.A. and One Without

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      The Republican Party has become crucially dependent on a segment of white voters suffering what analysts call a “mortality penalty.”This penalty encompasses not only disproportionately high levels of so-called deaths of despair — suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse — but also across-the-board increases in several categories of disease, injury and emotional disorder.“Red states are now less healthy than blue states, a reversal of what was once the case,” Anne Case and Angus Deaton, economists at Princeton, argue in a paper they published in April, “The Great Divide: Education, Despair, and Death.”Case and Deaton write that the correlation between Republican voting and life expectancy “goes from plus-0.42 when Gerald Ford was the Republican candidate — healthier states voted for Ford and against Carter — to minus-0.69 in 2016 and –0.64 in 2020. States classified as the least healthy voted for Trump and against Biden.”Case and Deaton contend that the ballots cast for Donald Trump by members of the white working class “are surely not for a president who will dismantle safety nets but against a Democratic Party that represents an alliance between minorities — whom working-class whites see as displacing them and challenging their once solid if unperceived privilege — and an educated elite that has benefited from globalization and from a soaring stock market, which was fueled by the rising profitability of those same firms that were increasingly denying jobs to the working class.”Carol Graham, a senior fellow at Brookings, described the erosion of economic and social status for whites without college degrees in a 2021 paper:From 2005 to 2019, an average of 70,000 Americans died annually from deaths of despair (suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning). These deaths are concentrated among less than college educated middle-aged whites, with those out of the labor force disproportionately represented. Low-income minorities are significantly more optimistic than whites and much less likely to die of these deaths. This despair reflects the decline of the white working class. Counties with more respondents reporting lost hope in the years before 2016 were more likely to vote for Trump.Lack of hope, in Graham’s view, “is a central issue. The American dream is in tatters and, ironically, it is worse for whites.” America’s high levels of reported pain, she writes, “are largely driven by middle-aged whites. As there is no objective reason that whites should have more pain than minorities, who typically have significantly worse working conditions and access to health care, this suggests psychological pain as well as physical pain.”There are, Graham argues,long-term reasons for this. As blue-collar jobs began to decline from the late 1970s on, those displaced workers — and their communities — lost their purpose and identity and lack a narrative for going forward. For decades whites had privileged access to these jobs and the stable communities that came with them. Primarily white manufacturing and mining communities — in the suburbs and rural areas and often in the heartland — have the highest rates of despair and deaths. In contrast, more diverse urban communities have higher levels of optimism, better health indicators, and significantly lower rates of these deaths.In contrast to non-college whites, Graham continued,minorities, who had unequal access to those jobs and worse objective conditions to begin with, developed coping skills and supportive community ties in the absence of coherent public safety nets. Belief in education and strong communities have served them well in overcoming much adversity. African Americans remain more likely to believe in the value of a college education than are low-income whites. Minority communities based in part on having empathy for those who fall behind, meanwhile, have emerged from battling persistent discrimination.Over the past three years, however, there has been a sharp increase in drug overdose deaths among Black men, Graham noted in an email:The “new” Black despair is less understood and perhaps more complex. A big factor is simply Fentanyl for urban Black men. Plain and simple. But other candidates are Covid and the hit the African American communities took; Trump and the increase of “acceptance” for blatant and open racism; and, for some, George Floyd and continued police violence against blacks. There is also a phenomenon among urban Black males that has to do with longer term despair: nothing to lose, weak problem-solving skills, drug gangs and more.The role of race and gender in deaths of despair, especially drug-related deaths, is complex. Case wrote in an email:Women have always been less likely to kill themselves with drugs or alcohol, or by suicide. However, from the mid-1990s into the 20-teens, for whites without a four-year college degree, death rates from all three causes rose in parallel between men and women. So the level has always been higher for men, but the trend (and so the increase) was very similar between less-educated white men and women. For Blacks and Hispanics the story is different. Deaths of Despair were falling for less educated Black and Hispanic men from the early 1990s to the 20-teens and were constant over that period (at a much lower rate) for Black and Hispanic women without a B.A. After the arrival of Fentanyl as a street drug in 2013, rates started rising for both Black and Hispanic men and women without a B.A., but at a much faster rate for men.In their October 2014 study, “Economic Strain and Children’s Behavior,” Lindsey Jeanne Leininger, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and Ariel Kalil, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, found a striking difference in the pattern of behavioral problems among white and Black children from demographically similar families experiencing the financial strains of the 2008 Great Recession:Specifically, we found that economic strain exhibited a statistically significant and qualitatively large association with White children’s internalizing behavior problems and that this relationship was not due to potentially correlated influences of objective measures of adverse economic conditions or to mediating influences of psychosocial context. Furthermore, our data provide evidence that the relationship between economic strain and internalizing problems is meaningfully different across White and Black children. In marked contrast to the White sample, the regression-adjusted relationship between economic strain and internalizing behaviors among the Black sample was of small magnitude and was statistically insignificant.Kalil elaborated on this finding in an email: “The processes through which white and Black individuals experience stress from macroeconomic shocks are different,” she wrote, adding that the “white population, which is more resourced and less accustomed to being financially worried, is feeling threatened by economic shocks in a way that is not very much reflective of their actual economic circumstances. In our study, among Black parents, what we are seeing is basically that perceptions of economic strain are strongly correlated with actual income-to-needs.”This phenomenon has been in evidence for some time.A 2010 Pew Research Center study that examined the effects of the Great Recession on Black and white Americans reported that Black Americans consistently suffered more in terms of unemployment, work cutbacks and other measures, but remained far more optimistic about the future than whites. Twice as many Black as white Americans were forced during the 2008 recession to work fewer hours, to take unpaid leave or switch to part-time, and Black unemployment rose from 8.9 to 15.5 percent from April 2007 to April 2009, compared with an increase from 3.7 to 8 percent for whites.Despite experiencing more hardship, 81 percent of Black Americans agreed with the statement “America will always continue to be prosperous and make economic progress,” compared with 59 percent of whites; 45 percent of Black Americans said the country was still in recession compared with 57 percent of whites. Pew found that 81 percent of the Black Americans it surveyed responded yes when asked “Is America still a land of prosperity?” compared with 59 percent of whites. Asked “will your children’s future standard of living be better or worse than yours?” 69 percent of Black Americans said better, and 17 percent said worse, while 38 percent of whites said better and 29 percent said worse.There are similar patterns for other measures of suffering.In “Trends in Extreme Distress in the United States, 1993-2019,” David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J. Oswald, economists at Dartmouth and the University of Warwick in Britain, note that “the proportion of the U.S. population in extreme distress rose from 3.6 percent in 1993 to 6.4 percent in 2019. Among low-education midlife white persons, the percentage more than doubled, from 4.8 percent to 11.5 percent.”Blanchflower and Oswald point out that “something fundamental appears to have occurred among white, low-education, middle-aged citizens.”Employment prospects play a key role among those in extreme distress, according to Blanchflower and Oswald. A disproportionately large share of those falling into this extreme category agreed with the statement “I am unable to find work.”In her 2020 paper, “Trends in U.S. Working-Age non-Hispanic White Mortality: Rural-Urban and Within-Rural Differences,” Shannon M. Monnat, a professor of sociology at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, explained that “between 1990-92 and 2016-18, the mortality rates among non-Hispanic whites increased by 9.6 deaths per 100,000 population among metro males and 30.5 among metro females but increased by 70.1 and 65.0 among nonmetro (rural and exurban) males and females, respectively.”Monnat described these differences as a “nonmetro mortality penalty.”For rural and exurban men 25 to 44 over this same 28-year period, she continued, “the mortality rate increased by 70.1 deaths per 100,000 population compared to an increase of only 9.6 among metro males ages 25-44, and 81 percent of the nonmetro increase was due to increases in drugs, alcohol, suicide, and mental/behavioral disorders (the deaths of despair).”The divergence between urban and rural men pales, however, in comparison with women. “Mortality increases among nonmetro females have been startling. The mortality growth among nonmetro females was much larger than among nonmetro males,” especially for women 45 to 64, Monnat writes. Urban white men saw 45-64 deaths rates per 100,000 fall from 850 to 711.1 between 1990 and 2018, while death rates for rural white men of the same age barely changed, 894.8 to 896.6. In contrast, urban white women 45-64 saw their death rate decline from 490.4 to 437.6, while rural white women of that age saw their mortality rate grow from 492.6 to 571.9.In an email, Monnat emphasized the fact that Trump has benefited from a bifurcated coalition:The Trump electorate comprises groups that on the surface appear to have very different interests. On the one hand, a large share of Trump supporters are working-class, live in working-class communities, have borne the brunt of economic dislocation and decline due to economic restructuring. On the other hand, Trump has benefited from major corporate donors who have interests in maintaining large tax breaks for the wealthy, deregulation of environmental and labor laws, and from an economic environment that makes it easy to exploit workers. In 2016 at least, Trump’s victory relied not just on rural and small-city working-class voters, but also on more affluent voters. Exit polls suggested that a majority of people who earned more than $50,000 per year voted for Trump.In a separate 2017 paper, “More than a rural revolt: Landscapes of despair and the 2016 Presidential election,” Monnat and David L. Brown, a sociologist at Cornell, argue:Work has historically been about more than a paycheck in the U.S. American identities are wrapped up in our jobs. But the U.S. working-class (people without a college degree, people who work in blue-collar jobs) regularly receive the message that their work is not important and that they are irrelevant and disposable. That message is delivered through stagnant wages, declining health and retirement benefits, government safety-net programs for which they do not qualify but for which they pay taxes, and the seemingly ubiquitous message (mostly from Democrats) that success means graduating from college.Three economists, David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson of M.I.T., the University of Zurich and Harvard, reported in their 2018 paper, “When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage Market Value of Young Men,” on the debilitating consequences for working-class men of the “China shock” — that is, of sharp increases in manufacturing competition with China:Shocks to manufacturing labor demand, measured at the commuting-zone level, exert large negative impacts on men’s relative employment and earnings. Although losses are visible throughout the earnings distribution, the relative declines in male earnings are largest at the bottom of the distribution.Such shocks “curtail the availability and desirability of potentially marriageable young men along multiple dimensions: reducing the share of men among young adults and increasing the prevalence of idleness — the state of being neither employed nor in school — among young men who remain.”These adverse trends, Autor, Dorn and Hanson report, “induce a differential and economically large rise in male mortality from drug and alcohol poisoning, H.I.V./AIDS, and homicide” and simultaneously “raise the fraction of mothers who are unwed, the fraction of children in single-headed households, and the fraction of children living in poverty.”I asked Autor for his thoughts on the implications of these developments for the Trump electorate. He replied by email:Many among the majority of American workers who do not have a four-year college degree feel, justifiably, that the last three decades of rapid globalization and automation have made their jobs more precarious, scarcer, less prestigious, and lower paid. Neither party has been successful in restoring the economic security and standing of non-college workers (and yes, especially non-college white males). The roots of these economic grievances are authentic, so I don’t think these voters should be denigrated for seeking a change in policy direction. That said, I don’t think the Trump/MAGA brand has much in the way of substantive policy to address these issues, and I believe that Democrats do far more to protect and improve economic prospects for blue-collar workers.There is some evidence that partisanship correlates with mortality rates.In their June 2022 paper, “The Association Between Covid-19 Mortality And The County-Level Partisan Divide In The United States,” Neil Jay Sehgal, Dahai Yue, Elle Pope, Ren Hao Wang and Dylan H. Roby, public health experts at the University of Maryland, found in their study of county-level Covid-19 mortality data from Jan. 1, 2020, through Oct. 31, 2021, that “majority Republican counties experienced 72.9 additional deaths per 100,000 people.”The authors cites studies showing that “counties with a greater proportion of Trump voters were less likely to search for information about Covid-19 and engage in physical distancing despite state-level mandates. Differences in Covid-19 mortality grew during the pandemic to create substantial variation in death rates in counties with higher levels of Trump support.”Sehgal and his colleagues conclude from their analysis that “voting behavior acts as a proxy for compliance with and support for public health measures, vaccine uptake, and the likelihood of engaging in riskier behaviors (for example, unmasked social events and in-person dining) that could affect disease spread and mortality.”In addition, the authors write:Local leaders may be hesitant to implement evidence-based policies to combat the pandemic because of pressure or oversight from state or local elected officials or constituents in more conservative areas. Even if they did institute protective policies, they may face challenges with compliance because of pressure from conservative constituents.For the past two decades, white working-class Americans have faced a series of economic dislocations similar to those that had a devastating impact on Black neighborhoods starting in the 1960s, as the Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson described them in his 1987 book, “The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy.”How easy would it be to apply Wilson’s description of “extraordinary rates of black joblessness,” disordered lives, family breakdown and substance abuse to the emergence of similar patterns of disorder in white exurban America? How easy to transpose Black with white or inner city and urban with rural and small town?It is very likely, as Anne Case wrote in her email, that the United States is fast approaching a point whereEducation divides everything, including connection to the labor market, marriage, connection to institutions (like organized religion), physical and mental health, and mortality. It does so for whites, Blacks and Hispanics. There has been a profound (not yet complete) convergence in life expectancy by education. There are two Americas now: one with a B.A. and one without.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Fact-Checking a GOP Attack Ad That Blames a Democrat for Inflation

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      In a Nevada tossup race that could help decide whether Republicans gain control of the House, a super PAC aligned with congressional G.O.P. leaders recently mounted an economically driven attack against Representative Dina Titus.In a 30-second ad released on Saturday, the Congressional Leadership Fund accused Ms. Titus, a Democrat who represents Las Vegas, of supporting runaway spending that has exacerbated inflation.Here’s a fact check.WHAT WAS SAID“Economists said excessive spending would lead to inflation, but she didn’t listen. Titus recklessly spent trillions of taxpayer dollars,” the ad’s narrator says, and, later: “Now we’re paying the price. Higher prices on everything. Economy in recession. Dina Titus. She spent big … and we got burned.”This lacks context. The implication here is that Democrats’ policies led to inflation. We recently put this question to our economics correspondent, Ben Casselman, who said: “True, although we can argue all day about how much.”He explains: “Here’s what I think we can say with confidence: Inflation soared last year, primarily for a bunch of pandemic-related reasons — snarled supply chains, shifts in consumer demand — but also at least in part because of all the stimulus money that we poured into the economy. Then, just when most forecasters expected inflation to start falling, it took off again because of the jump in oil prices tied to the war in Ukraine.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.“Now, inflation is falling again. Overall consumer prices were up just 0.1 percent in August, and a separate measure showed prices falling in July. But a lot of that is because of the recent drop in gas prices, which we all know could reverse at any time. So-called core inflation, which sets aside volatile food and energy prices, actually accelerated in August.“All of which means we don’t know how long the recent pause in inflation will last, and we definitely don’t know whether Biden will get credit for it if it does.”Backing up a bit, it’s worth noting that not all of the stimulus spending was at the direction of President Biden and Democrats. The first two rounds were approved during the Trump administration. And, economists were not united in warning about inflation.As for the economy being in recession? “Most economists still don’t think the United States meets the formal definition,” Mr. Casselman wrote in July, and he said that remained true as we head into October. But such calls are only made in retrospect. “Even if we are already in a recession, we might not know it — or, at least, might not have official confirmation of it — until next year,” Mr. Casselman said.What was said“Tax breaks for luxury electric cars.”This is true. The Inflation Reduction Act contains a tax credit for electric vehicles. Their final assembly must be completed in North America to be eligible for the credit, which, indeed, extends to several luxury automakers. The list includes Audi, BMW, Lincoln and Mercedes, but also non-luxury models like the Ford Escape and Nissan Leaf. What about Tesla? It made the list of 2022 models, but it has already reached a federal cap of the number of vehicles eligible for the credit, according to the Energy Department.What was said“Even a billion dollars to prisoners, including the Boston Bomber.”This is exaggerated. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of helping carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, received a $1,400 Covid-19 stimulus rebate from the federal government in June 2021. The money was part of the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law after it passed the House on a mostly party-line vote, with Ms. Titus supporting it.But what the Republican attack ad failed to disclose was that Mr. Tsarnaev was required by a federal judge to return the money as part of restitution payments to his victims. Another glaring omission was the fact that inmates were previously eligible for Covid-19 relief payments when former President Donald J. Trump was in office, though the Internal Revenue Service and some Republicans had later tried to rescind the payments. A federal judge thwarted those efforts, ruling that inmates could keep the payments.Those nuances haven’t stopped Republicans from latching onto the issue of inmates receiving Covid-19 payments against Democrats in key races across the nation, including Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. More