THE GLOBAL ZEITGEIST -- WHAT'S HAPPENING AND WHY

The dynamics of the global Zeitgeist are as follows:

1. Advanced nations (‘the North”) are in the midst of an economic transformation (the Electronic Revolution) comparable to the previous 2 industrial revolutions, having major effects:

   1. Huge increase in productivity, and, therefore, rapid increase in output of goods and services. Advanced nations prosper. 

   2. Replacement of workers with electronic laborsaving devices dampens wage increases, as does “outsourcing” of Northern production to cheap-labor countries. 

   3. Rich and powerful elite in the North rig the system (tax and corporate compensation structure) so that the fruits of increased productivity redound to the benefit of top management and shareholders creating severe inequality in the North between the rich and the rest.

   4. Workers in advanced nations, chafing at decades of economic stagnation, are resentful and ripe for “change.”

2. Emerging nations (“the South) fail to adapt to the new economic paradigm, remain relatively primitive economically.

   1. Productivity does not increase, output of goods and services lags advanced nations.

   2. Southern ruling elite rig the system, both legally and through corruption, to capture a disproportionate share of Southern wealth, aggravating inequality.  

   3. Population in the South surges without industrialization to act as a contraceptive (to reduce the birthrate as industrialization converts children from assets in the agricultural phase to liabilities in the industrial age)

   4. As a result of the combination of overpopulation, underproduction and political corruption, poverty, crime, fear and discontent increase in the South, prompting mass exodus from South to the North whose relatively prosperous lifestyle Southerners are aware of (TV, Internet), envy and seek to enjoy.

3. Northern working populations, already squeezed by automation

   1. Resent the influx of migrants from the South who exert further downward pressure on Northern wages; and are racially and culturally different, slow to adapt, and therefore, ready targets of Northern anger and fear.

   2. The ruling elite of the North hide their complicity in the stagnation of worker wages and successfully direct Northern worker fear, anger and anxiety toward immigrants, globalization and government 

   3. Motivated by anger and fear, native Northern populations, ripe for change, find comfort in:

                                                              i.       Populist nationalism, which promises to keep immigrants out, ensure nativist supremacy and reduce government “interference” in the private sector. Trump

                                                            ii.      State-active liberalism which promises to redistribute wealth from the rich to the rest and take collective measures through government to improve the lives of dissatisfied workers. Sanders

So far Populist Nationalism has prevailed as the Zeitgeist in the U.S. and is growing in power and influence in Europe. However, in politics as in physics, every action produces and equal and opposite reaction. Consequently, the current Trumpian thesis will likely be followed by a Sanders-style liberal antithesis, eventually resolving into a new political synthesis embracing the best of both worlds. That is, if we don’t blow ourselves up or crash the economy in the meantime.