Intro:
Peter Turchin, the academic of the moment, does more than that. He quantifies, cross-refers with other variables and arrives at a theory. Of all the reasons adduced for the political strife of our time, few are as novel as his stress on “elite overproduction”. Graduates have multiplied faster than the room at the top, he says, with the “lawyer glut” being especially gross. The result is a stock of nearly-men and women whose relationship with their own class sours from peripheral membership to vicious resentment. If this coincides with a bad time for the general standard of living, there is an alliance to be formed between these snubbed insiders and the more legitimately aggrieved masses.