There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

Economic woes due to postindustrial decline and automation have caused financial hardship for many. In addition, rising healthcare and education costs make people in the US and the UK feel like systems aren’t working. Beyond economic woes, people face other hardships, such as setbacks due to geographic location, gender, and sexual orientation; in the US in particular, racism impedes people of color. While the problems afflicting modern society can feel disparate and insurmountable, Hill identifies the common thread between them: social mobility.

The lack of social mobility sometimes causes and often exacerbates economic and social challenges: When people feel that their opportunities are threatened or shrinking, people feel trapped and are more likely to act on preexisting prejudices towards marginalized groups and seek a scapegoat to blame. Hill’s book connects these insular and antisocial tendencies with the 2016 US presidential election, in which “[v]oters had little to lose, and much to gain” (175) from electing Trump, a candidate who promised simple solutions to complex problems. The nihilistic desire to blow up a broken system is an attitude towards government that makes stagnation and decline so dangerous. Hill warns that if governments (local, state, and federal) don’t make serious overtures to understand their constituents and ensure they have the means to build better lives, then voters will turn to other populist candidates since “unhappiness eventually shows up as dissent at the ballot box” (181).