Freeman Dyson scoops David Brooks

A few days ago, I stumbled upon this quote from Anglo-American physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson:

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status. As a child of the academic middle class, I learned to look on the commercial middle class with loathing and contempt. Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher, which was also the revenge of the commercial middle class. The academics lost their power and prestige and the business people took over. The academics never forgave Thatcher and have been gloomy ever since.

I feel this is the dividing line in upper-class America has well. David Brooks said it this way in a more recent column:

Political analysts now notice a gap between professionals and managers. Professionals, like lawyers and media types, tend to vote and give Democratic. Corporate managers tend to vote and give Republican. The former get their values from competitive universities and the media world; the latter get theirs from churches, management seminars and the country club.

The trends are pretty clear: rising economic sectors tend to favor Democrats while declining economic sectors are more likely to favor Republicans. The Democratic Party (not just Obama) has huge fund-raising advantages among people who work in electronics, communications, law and the catchall category of finance, insurance and real estate. Republicans have the advantage in agribusiness, oil and gas and transportation. Which set of sectors do you think are going to grow most quickly in this century’s service economy?

The shift here, I speculate, has to do with how engineers break. Engineers and technical workers used to work for industrial firms (GM, factories) in the Rust Belt. Now they program and type for media, internet, and technology companies (Google, Intel, etc.) in the Sun Belt. The Rust Belt engineers vote Republican. The Sun Belt ones vote Democratic.