“It's not easy, especially in our politically polarized world, to recog...” — J. D. Vance Quote

It's not easy, especially in our politically polarized world, to recognize both the structural and the cultural barriers that so many poor kids face. But I think that if you don't recognize both, you risk being heartless or condescending, and often both.

I don't think that the Left has a monopoly on bad ideas. I don't think the Right has a monopoly on good ideas.

For decades, scholars have studied the ways in which implicit biases affect how we perceive other people in this multiethnic society of ours. The data consistently shows that about 90 percent of us possess some implicit prejudices - and, unsurprisingly, people typically favor their own group.

When you write a book, and you argue a problem is complicated and multidimensional, it's very easy to read a slice of that book and say, 'Well, this is the part that either confirms or really challenges my biases, so that's what I'm going to say the entire book is about.'

Certainly, the human race can be fickle, and times do change, but overall, the barriers to bringing a product to market - and understanding what 'the market' wants - have remained unchanged.

Let's listen to the people and find common ground to remove barriers to job creation.

I don't think everyone should vote. If you have to be dragged into the polls, carried into the polls and smelling salts have to be used, you probably shouldn't be voting. However, we shouldn't be putting up barriers to voting that target certain groups.

Part of the problem you have is that you don't have a dialogue between elected officials and their constituents. They've built these barricades, these barriers around themselves and tried to avoid interaction with their constituents.