Randall Parker links to a very interesting post by someone named Greg Ferenstein, not previously known to me.

From Randall's summary:

Split In Democratic Party Between Old School And Tech Democrats

Very insightful article by Greg Ferenstein about the developing split between the highly affluent tech Democrats and the old school union-supporting Democrats. The tech Democrats are winning a lengthening list of battles and the old school Dems are losers. On some subjects rich Silicon Valley company founders are more libertarian than the average libertarian and yet on other subjects they are more interventionist than the vast majority of Republicans:

"So what do tech founders want? They have a unique mix of extreme beliefs in meritocracy, competition, collectivism, and novelty-seeking (Poll)."

They have a much greater faith in the power of education than is warranted. They do not appreciate just how much less smart the vast majority of the public is compared to them.

That's a very common non-appreciation in our cognitively stratified society.  If you are a principal in a new-tech form you have essentially zero close encounters with ordinary not-particularly-smart people.

Randall is despairing over the impact of continuing mass immigration, of which the tech-firm overclass is of course massively supportive (Ferenstein's 5th chart):

The Republicans are willingly letting themselves get wiped out by immigration. So they are not going to matter much in the future. The tech Democrats are going to become the most powerful force in politics if they aren't already. In recent years all new billionaires have come out of tech. I think Wall Street's power is going to wane though not as severely as union power or Republican rural and suburban power.

Meanwhile, how will all those not-particularly-smart Americans support themselves?

I am curious to see how the tech Democrats try to handle rising unemployment in the lower cognitive strata as the problem finally becomes too big to ignore. Mind you, the problem of unemployed less bright folks has already gotten amazingly large without getting accurately described in the mainstream media. The unemployment rate is highly misleading and yet still gets all the attention. But at some point this problem has got to get some recognition. What will the tech Dems decide to do about it?

Fix The Schools! of course.  We do know how to do that, don't we?

I'm more curious than worried. I'm not a member of the elites or the tiers right below them who advise and support them. The people who I would consider as my (shrinking) faction matter less and less every day and so do our potential allies. So I see myself increasingly as an outsider in someone else's country.

I think a lot of us feel the same way.

I have just one stylistic quibble, though.  Saying "folks" when you mean "people" is a politician's rhetorical trick, intended to soften/feminize/emotionalize discourse whose truths lie hidden in objective research and cold numbers.

Human beings are, in our nature, already sufficiently averse to research and numbers (at any temperature).  This aversion does not need fortifying.

The group thus rhetorically softened is generally one the speaker is afraid to be interpreted as having negative emotions about.  Barack Obama uses it when talking about prole whites; Pat Buchanan uses it when talking about blacks.

I've know Randall for 15 years; I don't think he consciously intends it that way.  These rhetorical gadgets slip out into general usage, though.  This one should be resisted.