Andreessen: Western cities form top-plus-bottom political coalitions, ejecting the middle class
Marc Andreessen · From ChatGPT to Billions of Robots: Marc Andreessen’s Prediction · Joe Lonsdale · Jul 3, 2025 · at 15:04
Marc Andreessen discusses the demographic and political stratification of Western metropolitan areas with Joe Lonsdale.
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“What happens is from a political standpoint is the cities that are run right there in, in, in, in their local democracies, it's these super high end kind of, you know, very progressive elites. And then it's sort of the clientele underclass. Right. That you know, of, you know, in the U.S. It's Hispanic immigrants or African Americans. You know, in Europe it's, you know, their, you know, their other kind of clientele underclass that they've developed in places like Paris. And so you've got this high plus, you've got this kind of old political kind of structure of, you know, sort of top plus bottom, you know, kind of configuration, which you've done is you've squeezed the middle and you've ejected the middle out of the cities into the countryside, but you've de-industrialized, and so there's no new economic activity happening in the countryside. For all the middle-class people to do.”
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