
Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30 - Vannatter
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-american-dream-is-fading-and-may-be-very-hard-to-revive-1481218911
======
djb_hackernews
Compound that with the percentage of income 30 year olds spend on housing,
education, health care and child care compared to their parents and we have a
recipe for disaster.

~~~
outericky
The sense of entitlement is a lot higher these days. I grew up in a 900 sqft
house with 1 bathroom. Yet all my peers (myself included) seek out homes 2x,
3x or bigger.

Same with cars.... my parents bought used, reliable cars. Today we want fancy
things.

Growing up we had cable tv and a phone line. Probably spent $50/month total.
The family cellphone bill, home broadband, various tv services easily top out
over $300/month.

We went out to eat once a month. Tops. It was a treat. Nowadays people (myself
included go out 1, 2 or more times per week.

Earnings aside, current generations are spending way more because they want
more.

~~~
dikdik
I hear this sentiment expressed a lot, as well as the sentiment that
millennials only loaded up on education debt to fuel a 4-year party. In my
experience they are both wrong in 90%+ cases and are typically used to
invalidate any calls to pay more attention to growing inequality in this
country.

You are probably noticing the people who go out to eat and have nice cars/nice
things much more than the people that sit in their cubicle and eat their
homemade lunch, etc. Probably don't pay attention to (or don't even have a
clue about) the people you deal with on a day-to-day basis that rent a portion
of a room (not even a whole room - eat your hearts out boomers).

Also, you are comparing your parents spending WITH A FAMILY to people who are
likely single or DINKS. This is not a worthwhile comparison.

Your point with housing is semi-valid, but there are very few small homes
where I'm living in southern California. I know tons of people that would jump
at the chance to have a tiny house if it meant it was actually affordable.

~~~
Inconel
I certainly don't mean to disparage college education, particularly as someone
who has never gone to college but firmly believes that it can be a very
rewarding experience, but from my own anecdotal experience it seems that for a
not insignificant number of people it does seem to be more or less four years
of partying.

I'm fortunate to have a diverse social group with many friends who did go to
college, and even count a CompSci PhD among my close friends, but from my
interaction with them I get the impression that not all programs are of even
remotely equivalent rigor. In particular, I get the impression that for the
non science/engineering related disciplines it can be somewhat easy to coast
through the curriculum depending on the school.

Again, this is just based on my own observations as someone who has never gone
to college so it should be taken with a large grain of salt. Normally I would
completely discount my own opinion here as observation bias, the only thing
keeping me from doing so is my feeling that if college was as universally
rigorous as many say it is, and placed as great an importance on critical
thinking and independent thought as I've been led to believe, we should be
seeing a much more conscientious and knowledgeable citizenry considering we
are living in a time were more people are going to college than ever before.
I'm not sure that's the case however.

------
was_boring
What makes me upset is that the economic realities do not match what is taught
in large swaths of America. We are taught (at least in my community, and I am
30 now still living within 20 miles of where I grew up) that a very achievable
ideal is a middle class existence with one parent working, and a small house
in the suburbs. I am in the top 1% income earners for my generation and do not
even come close to this.

I think it's important for young parents to start breaking this cliche that
economic prosperity is an American standard. Instead we should be teaching
that life is hard and you should count your lucky stars if you are able to
afford anymore more than an apartment.

~~~
branchless
Life is not hard for the rentiers extracting labour for your right to exist in
said apartment.

Where is all your labour going? Food? No. Transport? No. Energy? No. Rent?
Bingo.

Why is this happening? Because we came off the gold standard and there is no
limit to the expansion of fiat money, therefore it expands via mortgage
lending to mop up all productivity gains. Get the women out to work! Land
prices up. Efficiency gains? Land prices up.

We bid for land. The more we have available after basic living costs the more
we can pass over to the rentiers.

We need land value tax to suppress rentier activity.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Gold standard has nothing to do with it. What money is, at a fundamental
level, is a promise you can later redeem for real goods and services. Why
there's so much mortgage and student loan debt follows directly from the
demographic changes - the retiring generation needs promises to provide real
goods and services (both directly through saving, and indirectly through
pensions and the like), so capital markets seek out the best opportunities to
extract these promises and provide them.

~~~
branchless
No, banks are creating credit.

[https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-
inter...](https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-
intermediaries-of-loanable-funds-and-why-this-matters/)

By creating credit faster than the underlying wealth creation of an economy
banks are appropriating real goods and services and the wealth generation
later (or rather now as they lent for decades like this) and they walk off
with the goods whilst we all drown in asset inflation.

I would agree that demographics played a big part. Boomers borrowed heavily as
though the demogrpahic inversion were not a problem, and banks played along.
Now we have the money supply collapse as we have more olds than young, meaning
a collapse in credit supply which is a problem as the model requires that
principal + interest is paid back which cannot happen unless more debit is
issued into the face of loan expiry which destroys the credit but still
requires the interest be paid from some other debt source.

Why else do we need constant QE and ZIRP? To encourage more borrowing to try
and maintain the rate of credit creation to keep the money supply up as
boomers pay down at their end of life.

What a nuts system and also a terrible one as all productivity gains are
soaked up by adaptable pricing on land to capture all gains.

excited for my HN "you're submitting too fast" soon when anything about banks
or rentiers is mentioned!

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Credit is money - there's literally no distinction between the two. Precious
metal currencies are only money because it takes way less systemic trust to
believe that the bearer of precious metal coins can get things for them later.
Gold-backed paper currencies are an interesting intermediate, basically adding
trust that you can exchange them for the actual metal at banks.

~~~
branchless
Credit costs nothing to produce. Expansion can cover infinite productivity
gains to appropriate for the usurers/rentiers.

------
hollerith
People who will have children ("eventual parents" for the purpose of this
comment) are healthier, smarter and wealthier than people who will never have
children. If the question is whether things have gotten harder for the average
person, it is misleading to compare a group consisting only of eventual
parents with a group composed of both eventual parents and non-parents. A
better comparison would be 30-years-olds of today versus 30-year-olds (whether
the 30-year-old has or goes on to have children or not) of the past.

ADDED LATER. A careful study or newspaper article on the question of whether
people have it harder or easier than they did 30 years ago or 45 years ago
would try to avoid comparing populations that a reasonable person would expect
to differ for reason other than things in the country getting harder or
easier. Whether or not my sentence above containing the phrase "are healthier,
smarter and wealthier" is true, clearly one might reasonably expect _systemic
differences_ between people who have children or will go on to have children
and people who do not.

Even if the "nonparent" group were on average _more_ intelligent than the
"parent" group, that would also be a reason to avoid omitting the "nonparents"
from the older cohort in the study.

The fact that the OP does not even try to avoid those systemic differences
suggests that either the author is not sufficiently skilled at statistics to
be writing about what he or she is writing about or someone is trying to argue
for some conclusion he or she is attached to, e.g., "it is awful how hard
things have gotten in this country for the average person" or the article
author is making the headline more dramatic than the situation actually is in
order to get more clicks.

~~~
vasaulys
I agree. I've seen a lot of people who have no intention of "settling down" or
"having kids" become surprised when their peers who do exactly that become
more "successful" (earn more money, move up in job position, etc.). I think
making the decision to have kids instills a bit of discipline to get something
stable in life.

~~~
hurbledr
IIRC there are also studies that suggest employers are more likely to give you
raises, promotions, and increased hours if you have a family.

~~~
bzudo
It's anecdotal, but I think my employer does the same thing. If true, it seems
strange to reward a person for a personal choice.

------
kefka
Well. I guess the "No Politics week" wasn't going to last.

This goes to the core of socialized healthcare, Social Security, Universal
Basic Income, and the dismantling ofsaid systems that exist.

The Baby boomers pulled the ladder up when they climbed up, and left us all in
the lurch paying for them. You know, "Get the government outta my life, but
dont you dare touch my medicare".

~~~
dang
> _I guess the "No Politics week" wasn't going to last._

We ended it early for reasons I explained here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251).

~~~
kefka
Ah. I must have missed that.

------
uiri
People who are 30 now were 22-23 in 2008-9 during the Great Recession. This
particular cohort (plus/minus a year or two) of graduates will likely have
slightly depressed lifetime earnings relative to those a couple years older or
a couple years younger. I would expect this year and next to represent the
bottoming out of this trend.

~~~
djedipus
This is based on a history of recessions. Unfortunately this one is different
(really)... We've never had interest rates so low for so long. It's possible,
and I consider it likely, that those younger will be even more affected.
Consider the possibility that parents run out of money and living in the
basement isn't even an option. Also consider there is a decent chance for
another recession before this one is even over.

~~~
vibrato
The last recession ended in 2009.

~~~
234dd57d2c8db
Yes, for large corporations and banks of which directly benefited from the
FLOOD of free credit (aka money) and ballooning asset prices provided by the
FED, the recession ended. For the rest of us, all we got were higher asset
prices and more taxes.

More than 50% of people in this country do not have 1000 bucks to cover an
emergency, whether medical (LOL like 1k would do anything here) or a broken
water heater, etc. More and more people are living on the edge, while large
companies announce stock buybacks and mergers funded with cheap credit printed
by the FED paid for with our money and our futures.

Yeah, glad the recession is over.

------
hajile
About half earn more, about half earn less. Wouldn't that imply that the
average earnings are about the same? If so, I don't know that I'd complain
because that indicates stability.

~~~
dlss
> About half earn more, about half earn less. Wouldn't that imply that the
> average earnings are about the same?

Actually no, though this is a fairly standard misunderstanding of statistics.
For an easy counter-example imagine generation one being [0, 100] and
generation two being [1, 2]. Average wealth goes down, while every element is
higher than 50% of the previous generation.

~~~
mywittyname
This depends entirely on the underlying distribution of the data. In your
example, the distributions are not at all similar, so it makes sense that you
can't compare medians or averages between those populations.

I suspect that the distribution of incomes in the US remains fairly similar to
what it was 40 years ago. Thus, if the median has remained the same, then the
average probably also has.

~~~
dlss
> I suspect that the distribution of incomes in the US remains fairly similar
> to what it was 40 years ago. Thus, if the median has remained the same, then
> the average probably also has.

If the distribution of income had gone unchanged, the spread of wealth would
also be unchanged. But it has changed, see [http://inequality.org/wealth-
inequality/](http://inequality.org/wealth-inequality/) or the source of your
choice.

If the distribution of income had gone unchanged, the percentage of the
population receiving minimum wage would have gone unchanged. But it has
changed, see [http://www.weeklystandard.com/bls-percentage-of-hourly-
worke...](http://www.weeklystandard.com/bls-percentage-of-hourly-workers-
earning-minimum-wage-or-less-in-2013-falls-to-4.3/article/786466) or the
source of your choice.

I could go on... but I think that's probably sufficient. While I have you
here, quick question: why did you let yourself get away with saying "I
suspect" rather than just looking it up? It takes all of 10 seconds to do and
once you get in the habit you'll be right way more often.

> I suspect that the distribution of incomes in the US remains fairly similar
> to what it was 40 years ago. Thus, if the median has remained the same, then
> the average probably also has.

The metric in question isn't the distribution's median. It's the percentage of
children earning less than their parents.

median: sup k : { Count(xi >= k) / Length(xi) <= 0.5 }

earns more: Count(xi >= pi)/Length(xi)

These are very different values. So while I'll need to think more about the
idea that medians say something about distribution similarities, thankfully
those thoughts don't pertain here. For another example, of "earns more" not
behaving the way you're expecting: if you set the earnings of everyone's
parents to their wage - $0.01, we'd have a 0% "earns more" but extremely
similar distributions.

~~~
randomdata
_> If the distribution of income had gone unchanged, the spread of wealth
would also be unchanged._

How so? Let's say I build a popular, free, social media network. My income
from the free service is zero, but the popularity has investors (which could
even be average Joes pooling their money together) quite willing to buy it for
millions of dollars. My wealth has now increased by millions without a
respective change in income.

~~~
dlss
If you click on the only link in the article, you will see they are measuring
children’s and parents’ pre-tax incomes at the household level. This
absolutely does include retirement account investment income.

While I have you here: why didn't you check that before replying? (I'm
actually really confused why this seems to happen constantly on HN. These are
really easy things to check before posting.)

~~~
randomdata
I'm not sure I follow? The point is that wealth can be created out of nothing.
It does not require income to amass. As such, income can go unchanged, while
wealth can concentrate among those producing specific things of value.

Your link does not help clear up my understanding of your premise. Perhaps it
would pay to be more specific when composing your comments?

------
blakesterz
This chart from the article is rather painful:

[https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
RD331_CHETTY_1...](https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
RD331_CHETTY_16U_20161208111711.jpg)

(I think that'll work without the workaround)

~~~
infogulch
That chart is the core of the article and answers several questions from the
comments here: yes it's inflation-adjusted, the ratio has gone down over time
(90% of people born in the 1940's earned more than their parents at 30, and
it's gone down to 50% now).

~~~
refurb
Is that really that surprising? People born in the 1940's would have lived
through a massive economic upswing post WW2. While their parents probably
experience the Great Depression through their 30's.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It would be interesting to see the same chart extended back another 50
years...

------
somecallitblues
How can they earn more when all the money is at the hands of Trump and others
who make up 1%? The current capitalism is not distributing the wealth very
well and it's certainly nearing a disaster. I wish the left had an answer but
they don't. They're stuck with political correctness and more extreme are
can't see that they don't have an answer to capitalism and that everything
they've tried in the past has failed, and working class have found a
billionaire to be their champion and think that migrants and non-white and
non-Christian people are to blame for their suffering. And nobody is willing
to attack the current system and inequality it's created. Especially in US.

~~~
humanrebar
> I wish the left had an answer but they don't.

The left is the 1% as well. How much money do the Clintons have? A lot. How
much Wall Street support did Obama have? A lot. If Hollywood isn't the 1%,
what are they?

> ...working class have found a billionaire to be their champion...

Thiel is interesting partly because he's a business leader that talks about
politics and isn't explicitly liberal. That is, he's an exception that proves
the rule.

> ...and think that migrants and non-white and non-Christian people are to
> blame for their suffering...

Some do. But most have more complex motivations involving economics,
democracy, and fighting (in their minds) corruption and hypocrisy. The Left
won't make any positive progress here unless they try to understand their
neighbors.

This is why "Love Trumps Hate" rings really hollow to most of the people I ask
about these things.

~~~
ionised
The problem is the political landscape has lurched so far to the right that
we've hit a point where some people actually consider Obama and Clinton to be
'left'.

~~~
humanrebar
Nationalized healthcare has always been on the left in America.

And I'd argue that Trump has much more in common with progressive-era
Democrats (like Wilson) than he does with "the right" in modern America.

If this isn't the election where we throw away (or at least officially
redefine) the concept of "left" and "right", I'm not sure there will be one.

------
h4nkoslo
Of course they don't; every time wages rise in a particular sector, this is
seen as a "labor shortage" that has to be corrected. In order to differentiate
themselves into a higher "class" of labor equivalent to what their parents
were doing, those same 30-year-olds were forced to spend another 4-8 years in
expensive schooling before they could enter the job market.

The solutions in the article are laughable. "Better education", ie more
expensive & longer. More transfer payments (how does this address wage
growth?).

Reduce entrance to the labor pool and allow people in that labor pool access
to jobs regardless of the paper they hold.

------
Infernal
Is it just me, or does this seem like an effort to spin positive news
negatively? Why not "Median income for 30-year-olds has increased since their
parents were 30"? Or "Over Half of 30-year-olds earn more than their parents
did at 30?"

~~~
pessimizer
If your child is two feet six inches tall at two years old, and two foot seven
at 32 years old, they did get taller, but at a far slower rate than you would
expect.

It's as if there had been no productivity gains in 30 years for the poor
median 30 year old, while the fictional average 30 year old is doing better
than ever.

------
Klockan
Note that the median income for males have been in decline since the 70's, it
isn't strange that they get frustrated with the current situation.

[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/the-
uncomfortab...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/the-
uncomfortable-truth-about-american-wages/?_r=0)

------
BuckRogers
Well, I just tried to get a job in my company's QA department writing unit
tests. Come to find out, my company ONLY hires non-leadership/senior positions
in Belarus and Bangalore. I have friends in management, they can't bypass it.
Rule was set high up.

The job I interviewed for is managing teams over in those places, and I'm not
entirely qualified because I haven't worked in QA. So I'm just left no where.
I always thought if I worked hard and did the right things, I could get ahead.
It's not true.

I don't know if I'll ever achieve my goals without moving to India to get a
job, then working my way back to the USA. But it certainly might be related as
to why only half of 30 year olds earn more then their parents did. I'm going
to keep trying but I've worked so hard and have a great reputation at work.
I've done so much on my own time.

I for one, am fairly demoralized.

------
gragas
Suppose 30-year-olds make exactly the same as their parents did at 30. Then
_we would expect_ that barely half of 30-year-olds earn more than their
parents did at 30.

This title is stupid. It implies "oh hur dur the economy is so bad" when in
reality it says nothing.

~~~
Retric
Economic growth is not 0.

So, really it says that 1/2 the population is flat our worse off. Further, _a
rising tide lifts all boats_ is a complitly false analogy, and anyone using
that phrase to talk about the economy is lying.

~~~
gragas
>Economic growth is not 0.

The numbers are in real USD, not nominal. So in reality, it's a huge fallacy
to say that we're so much worse off that in the 1970s. We're almost _exactly
the same as the 1970s_.

The main difference to point out here is that the 1970s 30-year-olds made much
more real USD than their parents' generation, while 30-year-olds today are
making almost exactly the same. Just because income isn't growing as much
doesn't mean the 30-year-olds today are worse off.

~~~
Retric
If the economy was static then zero real growth is fine. However, not all
costs rise 1:1 with inflation. Housing for example requires land which _is_
zero sum so when people fall behind they really are worse of in real terms.

Remember, if 1/2 your costs double then it does not matter how much the rest
of your costs decrease. AKA the inverse of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law)

~~~
gragas
You make a good point. I agree.

------
LeanderK
never got behind the paywall, so i have to ask: What about the distribution?
Is it more of an general stagnation or did the wealth concentrate more? Also,
if the gap widened, got the few lucky (high-earners reproducing itself) or is
social mobility intact?

------
vacri
Isn't this to be expected? That overall, the population will maintain its
purchasing power _relative to itself_ , and inflation will rise to match in a
relatively stable environment?

------
cnnsucks
This is WSJ red meat political controversy stuff. The story devolves into the
usual "tax the rich" and anti-welfare state debate as any other political
click-bait. I thought HN wasn't doing that for a week...

I actually agree with the premise and many of the conclusions, and if it
popped up on Drudge or Breitbart or whatever I'd be fine with it, but why
here? Why must every popular site devolve into either a virtual political cage
match or another addition to the echo chamber?

~~~
giardini
Just a note: you _have_ to "tax the rich". Nobody else has enough money to pay
the bills!

The question isn't whether to "tax the rich" or not - it's "How should we tax
the rich" and How much should we tax the rich?" that we need to answer.

Meanwhile the correct answers are:

\- Bring back heavy estate ("death") taxes to prevent wealth from being passed
from generation to generation,

\- Create heavy wealth taxes so that persons who are merely lucky don't
monopolize the wealth.

Both the above should be done b/c goverment needs the money. Of course the
other thing we need to decide is how much should the government spend, but
that seems to have no limit these days.

~~~
maxxxxx
I don't think you necessarily have to tax the rich. Their share of income
should be reduced to the share they had maybe 40 years ago. Stronger unions
would help for example. Having the owner class deciding they need more and
more money can't work in the long run.

------
jbattle
I wouldn't be surprised if large number of parents of the 30-in-197X'ers were
massively impacted by ww2.

Imagine growing up during the great depression and 'losing' 2-4 years of your
young adulthood in the army. You'd expect that'd set you back earnings-wise by
the time you hit 30.

It'd be a surprise if the folks turning 30 in 1972 _didnt_ make more than
their parents, if you compare depression+world war to the postwar rebound
(especially in the USA)

------
shados
I know it's not what's happening...but if we were to close the salary gap
between the rich and the poor (so poor people made more money, and rich people
make less), instead of keeping the gap the same but shifted up, or widening
the gap...wouldn't this happen?

So in theory, it wouldn't be that bad a thing. Now, if it's just that the gap
stays the same but things are shifted down, well obviously that's bad.

------
randyrand
Could my parents afford an iPhone? No of course not. Among many other things.

$$$ isn't the only quality of life indicator.

When doing this calculation, you of course adjust for these things. an iPhone
would cost billions of dollars in 1970. Is that the figure we should use?
Probably not. But it means that these calculations are largely arbitrary since
we don't know the true value of an iPhone to a person in 1970.

~~~
qntty
Who cares about iPhones? They could afford education, healthcare and housing.
These calculations are far from arbitrary. We have a reasonable idea of the
sorts of things that people need to live a decent life, and these things have
gotten more expensive. (Ok, so another commenter pointed out that maybe
housing isn't as expensive as it's made out to be, but it's certainly not
cheaper.)

~~~
randomdata
_> They could afford education_

To be fair, they could afford it _because they didn 't care about it_. The
degree attainment rate has doubled since 1980. If the student population
reverted back to those levels, price would plummet.

------
godelski
I always forget, what is the workaround for WSJ?

~~~
DanBC
Right click the web link to open in an incognito window. Open the top result
of the resulting search.

~~~
godelski
Actually worked without incognito for me.

------
____nope
It's really frustrating that articles like this never state if they are
comparing inflation-adjusted numbers or not.

~~~
jat850
"In our baseline analysis, we measure income in pre-tax dollars at the
household level when parents and children are approximately thirty years old,
adjusting for inflation using the CPI-U-RS."

It wasn't easy to spot but was mentioned.

~~~
drcode
So essentially this whole debate centers around how realistic one thinks the
CPI-U-RS rates are... If you think they underestimate the purchasing power of
money in 2016, then you'll disagree with the conclusions of the washpost
article.

------
labster
_sigh_ This week of political detox on HN is not really working out, is it.

~~~
detaro
it has been cancelled...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)

------
dbg31415
Screen capture for those who had trouble with the pay wall.

[http://i.imgur.com/9eihuWG.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/9eihuWG.jpg)

~~~
joeblau
Click "web" under the article and to the left of "comments" then click the
first link on Google.

------
crazy1van
Is this in inflation adjusted dollars? Maybe I missed it, but I don't think
the article specified.

~~~
godelski
It does mention that it is adjusted for inflation. And as a side you
wolframalpha is great for checking. You can do searches like "1 1970 dollar"
and you get $6.34 back.

------
rdlecler1
And then this generation needs to pay for the entitlements (and debt) that
their parents enjoyed.

------
philip142au
This statement means that they earn the same as their parents, right?

~~~
metaobject
I suppose it means they earn as much as, or less than, their parents.

------
rqebmm
I object to the subtitle "It becomes harder to reverse this trend" like it's
an inexorable march without any possible cause. Just look at the difference in
context between today and the 1972 reference date for the start of the study.
Globalization and automation have taken a huge chunk out of the manufacturing
sector, but the US economy has by now (at an aggregate) replaced those
positions with knowledge/retail/service sector positions. What did those
manufacturing jobs have that the new jobs don't?

Powerful unions, a strong social safety net, and a government that
accomplished both because it didn't think taxing rich people was heresy.

United States political parties used to split along Labor/Capital lines until
the Civil Rights movement in the 60s shifted politics to a racial fault line.
Over the last 50 years Capital quietly co-opted both parties while the
populace was duking it out over things like segregation, voting rights, and
Affirmative Action, and people have finally realized what happened while they
weren't paying close attention.

Trump didn't win "because racism". It's not an accident that a significant
subset of voters "somehow" liked Obama, Bernie Sanders AND Donald Trump, while
hating all of Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, AND Ted
Cruz.

These people are tired of Capital (aka "globalist elites" or "corporate
overlords" depending on the side of the aisle you sit on) winning every
battle. They viewed the entire election cycle as a dog-and-pony show between
hand-picked corporate surrogate A and hand-picked corporate surrogate B. They
chose Option C. "Literally Anyone Else, Yes Even That Guy".

~~~
soundwave106
The problem with Trump from that perspective is that Donald Trump is not
exactly on the side of powerful unions, strong social safety nets, and taxing
rich people. He did leverage anti-elite sentiment, but he did it unfortunately
with walls and "keep the Muslims out", not unions, safety nets, and
progressive taxation. Donald Trump as far as I know is largely anti-union, not
on the side of more progressive taxation, and not on the side of strong safety
nets.

I do agree that people _are_ aware of the economic problems (hence the Sanders
crossover in particular), I just think that identity politics right now is
more powerful than economic politics in the United States. It seems like the
issues that dominate the media headlines on "the left" and "the right" \--
and, in fact, the angry rants on my Facebook feed, anecdotally, are very
identity politics oriented. Unfortunately I think politicians take advantage
of this. A classic example of this being North Carolina's "transgender
bathroom" controversy. In my opinion, the provision that was far worse of that
law was the aspect that limited individual cities from raising the minimum
wage (economic politics). But it did not dominate the headlines, the identity
politics did.

You are right that people are tired of Big Capital / globalist elites. They
have reason to be. But to reverse this trend, we need stronger protection of
the service industry (which is in effect the new manufacturing job) and we
need stronger education systems to promote knowledge work. As long as identity
politics obscures economic policies, I'm not sure how this is possible.

~~~
wmil
> Donald Trump as far as I know is largely anti-union, not on the side of more
> progressive taxation, and not on the side of strong safety nets.

Actually a big part of his appeal was that he was strongly for attempting to
keep existing safety nets. Particularly when compared to the Paul Ryan "true
conservative" wing.

His tax policy is a little more mysterious because it's fairly clear from his
speeches that he wasn't reading any of the proposals that his campaign was
putting out.

He worked in construction, real estate, and running hotels / casinos. And he
tried to avoid hiring illegals. So he has a history of working productively
with unions. Although I'm sure there are some nasty disputes in his past.

So I'd say he's more pro-union and pro-safety net than a typical Republican
nominee.

~~~
rqebmm
> he's more pro-union and pro-safety net than a typical Republican nominee.

That would be true if he had the first interest in actually governing. So far
his approach appears to be "Hand off decisions to existing Republicans and
talk shit on Twitter".

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barrkel
While this is interesting, technically it's political.

~~~
dang
It is, but having learned as much as we were going to, we ended the no-
politics experiment early:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251).

Back to the normal guidelines now.

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lasermike026
WSJ, I heard they did news once.

