Peter Turchin Quotes

... was proposed by and further developed and tested by... investigators, including [S.] Nefedov, Turchin, [and] Korotayev et al.

Let's look at ... wages adjusted for inflation. ...In the late 1970s there was a definite phase transition. Up to that point, for the previous two generations, the wages for both unskilled and manufacturing workers had been growing quite rapidly and almost linearly... [W]ages for manufacturing workers increased... fourfold... a quite remarkable achievement... [I]t was unprecedented in human history to see such a long-term sustained increase in general well-being. Then... the wages stagnated, or even declined. So what was the reason?

I claim that ... gives us a very good theoretical framework within which we can look at many different seemingly disparate trends in the United States... they suddenly start making sense... [D]eaths of despair ...I would argue that the opioid crisis is one of the manifestations of the immiseration, and in fact... go to Case and Deaton original book (project) on deaths of despair. They make this argument very eloquently. They give a lot of data, much better than I can do, so [the] opioid crisis is part of the bundle of reasons why immiserated population (people)... results in large swaths of [the] population who are falling... and many of them take the way out by either drugs and overdosing, or... suicide, or... alcoholism... or simply become careless and die in accidents... So this is clearly, and thanks to Anne Case and Angus Deaton for their excellent work, because here we can really see... The book is excellent. They talk about social immiseration, broken families and many other things. It really is a very coherent understanding of these problems.

[T]he second condition... is absolutely much more predictive of immediate troubles to come, and that's intraelite competition which results... when elite numbers increase relative to the general population. As a result... we have too many elite aspirants vying for a limited number of positions... causes... intraelite competition, eventually conflict, and that... in our analysis of about 100... cases of past societies sliding into crisis and then out... That turns out to be the most universal and most important force.

This prediction was based on a computational model that quantified in the USA such structural-demographic forces for instability as popular immiseration, intraelite competition, and state weakness prior to 2010.

[T]he... forecast: “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe” ...was not simply a projection of the current trend in social instability into the future. ...[T]he basis for this forecast was a quantitative model that took as inputs the major SD drivers for instability (immiseration, intraelite competition, and state (in)capacity) and translated them into the Political Stress Indicator (PSI)... strongly correlated with socio-political instability. The rising curve of the... PSI... suggests a growing future socio-political instability.

We need to find ways to ameliorate the negative effects of globalization... Economic inequality, accompanied by burgeoning public debt, can be addressed by making tax rates more progressive.

The SDT is not merely a theory for understanding why internal violence outbreaks develop and spike. By providing... understanding of the deep structural causes of socio-political instability and societal breakdown, SDT... gives us tools for adopting... reforms and policy interventions that can reverse these drivers of instability.

What does the wealth pump do on the elite side..? Declining relative wages of workers set up this wealth pump that transfers wealth from workers to the economic elites... [A]s a result... a larger fraction of GDP goes to... the economic elites, which are both capital holders and top layers of administration of corporations (corporate officers). ...[T]his creates a favorable economic conjuncture for the economic elites and results in higher rates of upward social mobility. Elite numbers, as a result... grow and so does their consumption levels.

... uses the methods of data science, treating the historical record... as Big Data. It employs mathematical models to trace the intricate web of interactions...

[U]ntil the fundamental SD drivers for instability are reversed, there will be other triggering events... social turbulence may continue for years ahead.

[W]hen a state... has stagnating or declining ... a growing gap between the rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining public trust, and exploding public debt... Historically such developments have served as leading indicators of political instability. In the United States all of these... started to take an ominous turn in the 1970s. The data pointed to... around 2020... a spike in political instability. And here we are.

My colleague has expressed a pessimistic view in his book The Great Leveler... where he says the death is the great leveler so... a major violent shock is needed to reverse the economic inequality. I... look at this a bit more optimistically. Essentially entering into the crisis is relatively stereotypical, that's what our CrisisDB investigations show... [I]t's really conflict that plays a key role, together with mass organization. But the exit is usually contingent, and in fact there could be both good and bad outcomes, as indicated in this graph. Sometimes the decline is mild and followed by rapid recovery, but you... can also have complete collapse.

Look at a more traditional society in which the elites are... landed nobility. ...[T]he way the wealth pump operates there is that when elite overproduction occurs... Nobles basically oppress peasants and turn on the wealth pump. So instead of economic mechanisms that transfer wealth from commoners to the Elites, in this case you have more coercion methods. ...So this is a variation on the theme ...

So far so good. But the problem is, as in many dynamical systems, there are some delayed effects of such dynamics. ...Here are some numbers on the relative distribution of wealth in the American population. You have good data from 1983 to 2019... when we look at the percentage of households with [inflation adjusted in 1995 US dollars] net worth exceeding... Millionaires, roughly 10% of the population (7% now) increased from 3% to 7% but then growth in... classes such as decamillionaires was even more remarkable... more than fivefold, sixfold increase in the proportion of households that have 10 million dollars wealth, or more.