Industrial Policy & The Lost Generation

The 2025 book, Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries, adds a material, economic “base” to the cultural “superstructure” described in Jacob Savage’s

The Connection: The “Lost Generation” are the victims of this decoupled fallacy. They were trained to be the “mind” of an economy that has lost its “body.” The book suggests that without a healthy industrial base, the “knowledge” sector becomes a precarious, low-productivity service sector—exactly the “disadvantageous” trap Savage’s subjects find themselves in.

3. The “Buffer” Was Actually Economic Dominance

In the previous turn, we established that the “Buffered Self” relies on insulation from outside forces.

The Book’s Insight: The book details how the US post-WWII economy was a historical anomaly of total dominance, allowing for a “Golden Age” where high wages and stability were the norm. This abundance created the illusion that individual merit was all that mattered.

The Connection: The “Buffer” that protected the Boomers and Gen X wasn’t just psychological; it was economic monopoly. When the US refused to use industrial policy to defend its industries against mercantilist rivals (China, Japan), that economic buffer dissolved. The “Lost Generation” is porous because the national economy itself became porous—open to predation by foreign industrial policies that gutted the domestic middle class.

4. From “Masters of the Universe” to “Service Workers”

Savage’s essay laments the loss of agency among white male elites who thought they would be “masters of meaning.”

The Book’s Insight: The book distinguishes between “Advantageous” industries (high barrier to entry, pricing power, oligopoly) and “Disadvantageous” ones (perfect competition, low margins, commoditized labor).

The Connection: The “Lost Generation” thought they were entering Advantageous careers (Masters of the Universe). Instead, due to the hollowing out of the economy, they found themselves in Disadvantageous labor markets (commoditized freelancers, easily replaced, competing on price/politics). The book provides the economic theory for why their labor value collapsed: they are trapped in sectors with “diminishing returns” rather than “increasing returns”.

The book argues that you cannot have a buffered identity in a porous economy. You cannot maintain a confident, meritocratic professional class in a country that has surrendered the structural economic leverage (manufacturing, supply chains) that creates broad-based wealth. The “Lost Generation” is lost because the industrial foundation required to “find” them was sold off.