Richard Reeves (British Author)

Richard V. Reeves (born 4 July 1969) is an Anglo-American writer and scholar and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative.

Early life and education

Reeves was born in Peterborough, United Kingdom. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Warwick.

Career

In summer 2010 Reeves left Demos, joining the office of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democrat, as a Special Advisor. In 2012 Reeves urged the Liberal Democrats to choose to become a radical centrist political party, "a hard-driving radical liberal party of the political centre", continuing his campaign for centre left Liberal Democrats to leave, "Any attempt to position the Liberal Democrats as a party of the centre left after five years of austerity government in partnership with the Conservatives will be laughed out of court by the voters – and rightly so. Anybody who wants a centre-left party will find a perfectly acceptable one in Labour. The Liberal Democrats need centrist voters, "soft Tories", ex- Blairites, greens".

Until 2012 Reeves was Director of Strategy to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Previously he had been director of the London-based think tank Demos. Reeves has held positions including Director of Futures at The Work Foundation, a British non-profit organisation, Society Editor of ''The Observer'', Economics Correspondent and Washington Correspondent of ''The Guardian'', and policy adviser to Frank Field when he was Minister for Welfare Reform.

Reeves is Director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative at Brookings, working principally on issues related to intergenerational mobility, inequality and social change. In 2014, he published a Brookings Essay, ''Saving Horatio Alger'', along with a video in which he used Lego bricks to illustrate levels of social mobility in the U.S. In May 2014, he appeared in a ''Daily Show'' segment satirizing how the complaints about the plight of the poorer members of the top 1% distracts from solutions to social mobility.

Reeves has published four books, including ''John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand'' (2007), a biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician, ''Happy Mondays'' (2002) about job satisfaction, and ''Of Boys And Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It'' (2022). He co-authored ''The 80 Minute MBA'' (2009) with John Knell, a condensed business management book.

Reeves appears regularly on radio and television as a political commentator, and writes for a variety of publications including ''The New York Times'', ''The Atlantic'', ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer''. He is also a regular contributor to the online 'Think Tank' section of ''The Wall Street Journal''. In 2005, he co-presented the four-part BBC2 series, ''Making Slough Happy''. He writes regularly in British newspapers and magazines on politics, well-being, work and character. In 2008 he argued in ''The Guardian'' that social-liberals majority of Lib Dem membersshould not be involved with the Liberal Democrats, but the Labour Party.

In June 2017, Reeves published a widely circulated ''New York Times'' op-ed, "Stop Pretending You're Not Rich".

Reeves's 2017 book is ''Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do about It'' (). The book argues that America's upper middle class – what he defines as the top 20% of America's economic class as a whole – is the biggest beneficiary of income inequality in the United States, preferential college admissions and the housing market, and argues that they are "hoarding" the American Dream. It also says that focusing on the top 1% of Americans is a mistake, arguing that this group has been scapegoated for inequalities in the US so that they convince themselves they "are in the same boat as the rest of America". This characterization has led to criticism from the left, including ''The New Republic'' writer Rachel M. Cohen, who argues that this "steers the conversation in a direction any plutocrat would love—away from Wall Street, CEOs and the owners of capital". ''Vox'' writer Mike Konczal says the book ignores deeper structural issues in its analysis. The book has also been criticized on the right by ''National Review'' Patrick T. Brown for promoting " big government" intervention to alleviate societal problems.

On September 22, 2022, he released the book '' Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It''. In the book, Reeves argues that the advancement of women's rights and the changing job market, which now values cognitive skills over physical strength, have left some men feeling insecure and uncertain about their place in the world (i.e. without ontological security).
The book also highlights the difficulties boys face in education. It suggests that boys are not performing as well academically as girls (with women outperforming men in various academic and professional domains), which can affect their future opportunities and contribute to their overall sense of frustration. It also notes the struggles faced by men in fulfilling their roles as providers and fathers, citing research which says that men in the US are now more likely to feel socially excluded and less likely to be successful after divorce. Reeves says that these challenges have particularly hit Black men the hardest, as years of higher incarceration rates among Black men have severely limited their prospects in life. Similarly, men without college degrees have experienced declining wages, notable drops in life expectancy, and increased rates of family disruption. He notes that aspects of hypermasculinity promoted by popular culture is off-putting to modern men, and says that efforts towards achieving gender equality should now prioritize addressing the needs and concerns of boys rather than exclusively focusing on girls and women.

Personal life

Reeves is a dual UK-US citizen, having been naturalized in October 2017 as a US citizen. He lives in the U.S. state of Maryland.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Reeves, Richard
British male journalists
British reporters and correspondents
British non-fiction writers
Institute directors
Living people
Liberal Democrats (UK) officials
Radical centrist writers
Nick Clegg
1969 births
People from Peterborough
English emigrants to the United States
Naturalized citizens of the United States
English expatriates in the United States
Writers from Maryland