This is an excellent article. It opens up the minds of people who many on the coasts have struggled to empathize with in light of Tuesday.
In talking about economic policies, and free trade deals that supposedly shipped jobs off to China, I wish the article (and more importantly politicans) would emphasize the importance of technology being the driver behind manufacturing job loss.
It's only a matter of time before robots replace most manufacturing jobs. The only reason they haven't full-scale yet is that wages in China are still too low to make it cost effective (but that's changing).
Otto just delivered the first self-driving truck shipment. In a few short years, the most common job in what was it, 30 or so states? It'll be all but gone.
The article hit the nail on the head with having working class economic policy being front and center on the campaign, not bathrooms. But a tariff on Chinese exports ain't it. Nobody is bringing steel back to Youngstown, and though Clinton touched on this a little bit (the renewable energy jobs for example), creating new jobs that are actually here to stay for a while -- whatever they may be (while unfortunately not seeming elite and professional) -- is the only message the Democrats can deliver if they want to win office again.
Indeed. And when all those truckers lose their jobs, that's not just going to affect their lives. They're going to be retraining and competing for your jobs next. And they don't have to be nearly as skilled as you, if they're willing to do the work for half the cost. Which they will be, because they'll be desperate to feed their families. And thankfully for employers, us programmers have been doing our best to make programming easier and easier. The people looking to take our jobs will certainly appreciate that.
We need to start talking about a post-work economy and how that will work. Because that's going to happen. If automation pushes us there without the appropriate policies in place, it is going to be absolutely devastating.
And as this article touched on, the working-class generation is going to be deeply troubled by the idea of anyone getting anything without working hard for it. The concept of "if you don't work, you don't eat" is deeply ingrained into their psyches. So it is going to be a very uphill battle.
I tend to doubt that truckers will turn into programmers. If anything programming is going to continue to be more about burning out college grads, and it'll be difficult for 40 year old established programmers to find work, much less 40 year old retrained truckers--even at half the cost.
At any rate, that would be the optimistic viewpoint, that they could actually get retrained and get jobs and compete for wages. What is likely to happen is that they'll have extreme difficulty finding any work, the income gaps will widen and there'll be even more disaffected workers.
> programming is going to continue to be more about burning out college grads
This is the product of a particular culture that goes back to how the places currently employing the most programmers are currently funded. When the bubble bursts, the macho candle-at-both-ends death march bullshit will give way to professionalism.
There also will probably be a glut of programmers by then so it doesn't help the hypothetical retrained truckers.
I mean programming was just an example for us here. I think some will go for programming, but certainly not all. They're going to be competing for every job they can get. There's going to be increased pressure on every job opening everywhere. People are going to be competing against way more candidates. And that is going to drive those wages down even more.
The safest jobs, at least for another 20-30 years, will be things like doctors, where you can't just retrain to do it. If you didn't start right out of high school in college, you're not getting that job.
> Which they will be, because they'll be desperate to feed their families.
This is one of the things we'll need to solve. Nobody should be desperate to feed their families. If someone still is, it's because our civilization still gets a failing grade.
Very much indeed. What I'm not sure is understood in these jobs calculations is that there is always a domino effect. The paper mill closes down one of their machines. This lays off 100 people. All the truckers that supplied wood for that machine also lose their jobs. There's another 25 jobs. All the logging contractors that supplied that machine have to either find other contracts or lose their jobs. There's another 25 jobs. The businesses that supplied parts and repairs for the loggers, the truckers, and the mills, lose that business. There goes some more jobs. The sandwich shops, gas stations, restaurants and everything else in the community takes the hit because of the hundreds of other people that have now lost their jobs, and some of those people lose their jobs. People leave the area. School districts downsize, the road departments and the police forces and the hospitals downsize because the population has shrunk.
We'll find new works. In the 1800s ~70% of the workers were employed in agriculture. Someone noticing the progress of technology would have predicted just like you. (In fact Keynes did make a similar prediction.) It didn't come true because they failed to see the evolution of new jobs like programmer, animation designer, cinematographer etc. Why this time is different?
The first wave of automation covered the use of our muscles, so jobs migrated to work that required the brain. Now that the brain's being automated, what do we have left to fall back on?
Two things could make this different, depending on exactly what the prediction was.
One would be that, in the 1800s, they would have been predicting _fewer_ entry-level jobs in a given field (e.g. replacing bunches of manual workers with machinery to allow one person to do the work), not _no_ entry-level jobs in said field.
The other difference, here, is that the job shift you're discussing (except, arguably, for "programmer") is into jobs which require prior training to have any likelihood of getting a position.
One additional problem - even assuming that new entry-level positions in other industries existed, that's going to be a huge loss of income for the families affected, and anything that causes that drastic a reduction of income across any significant population of people is going to have huge ripple effects.
Unless something completely unexpected happens in the next decade or two, it seems clear to me that there are only a couple of possible outcomes here:
1. Stay the course and endure further entrenchment of inequality and rising under/unemployment due to capitalism's innate tendency to concentrate wealth by favouring capital over labour (unearned vs earned income) and technological changes leading to reduced opportunities for low skilled work.
2. Bite the bullet and accept that a political solution is needed to reduce inequality (most likely through some kind of redistribution mechanism). There are plenty of historical precedents for this (Bismark's social contract, rise of the labour movement, the New Deal).
A few commonly discussed solutions are:
1. Universal Basic Income
2. Governments introducing money into the economy directly through spending on infrastructure (or UBI) rather than through assuming debt.
3. Shifting taxes away from income to assets. An example of this would be Land Value Taxes.
Personally, I am in favour of (3), with the focus being on taxing unproductive investment first. Lower income taxes and and more incentive to invest in actual businesses (rather than say, flipping houses or other speculative activity) would do a lot of good. It would be great if we had an economy where money was a bit easier to make and a little bit harder to keep. A higher velocity of money is good for an economy.
> with the focus being on taxing unproductive investment first. Lower income taxes and and more incentive to invest in actual businesses (rather than say, flipping houses or other speculative activity) would do a lot of good. It would be great if we had an economy where money was a bit easier to make and a little bit harder to keep.
Totally agree with this. People on welfare aren't parasites, unproductive rent collectors are parasites.
here in CA, All you have to do release the tens of thousand of square miles of undeveloped land (95% of CA is still undeveloped) and build houses and roads on it. That would generate a huge number of jobs. Since housing prices are through the roof, I bet the economy could support an enormous construction increase. And, even much more if building regulations were removed to allow for really low cost housing. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone: solve the housing problem and massively increase blue collar jobs.
A couple of questions come to mind: how much of the undeveloped land is conducive to development (e.g., too mountainous)? Having green space, undeveloped land also has value. What are the long-term trade offs of removing the green space?
I think it's somewhat helpful to take the author's angle to "raise awareness", but the root problem is still education. If I'm starving to death in a wheat field, teach me to make bread. Retraining programs and better k-12 are the solution, not assuaging a bunch of literally too-stupid-to-help-themselves white dudes.
I get that they don't like being too stupid to help themselves, it sucks. But cheap access to a community college and some kind of "displaced worker" program that helps keep families fed while someone gets a degree would be so much more beneficial than trying to reboot a bunch of dying industries.
Education and retraining are useful, but only if there are jobs for people to do with that education and skillset afterward. Otherwise it's largely pointless, and serves primarily to make the unemployment stats look better than they really are.
I don't believe that education is the root problem here. The root problem is the vast scale of job losses. Education can benefit some of the people affected, who can then move to other jobs and careers. But it can't help the majority if the opportunities simply don't exist. And I think that harsh reality isn't properly acknowledged. A vast number of people have been essentially abandoned without hope. The alternative jobs and careers simply don't require enough people to make up for the losses.
(I'm writing this from the UK, but there are a lot of parallels in the massive industrial decline here as well, and I don't think any good long-term solution has been found here yet either.)
I'm not who you're replying to but I'll interject anyway:
Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades. This is the program championed by Mike Rowe [0]. It also happens to dovetail perfectly with Trump's so-called $1 Trillion infrastructure plan. If he actually puts his money where his mouth is, he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated).
> he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated)
Trump isn't hated because he is Republican. People are afraid of losing hard won rights like marriage equality or the right to healthcare if they are unfortunate enough to have a preexisting condition. The violent rhetoric he used during his campaign doesn't help at all - condoning crowds chanting "kill her/hang the bitch/lock her up", saying that he wishes he could "smash the shit out of protesters", and offering to pay the legal costs of people who assaulted protesters. That is not normal in a health democracy and sets a dangerous precedent.
If Trump is a moderate on issues such as gay marriage and somehow manages to control healthcare costs without people losing their coverage he could be popular.
Small correction: Trump is now keeping the most popular provisions of the ACA, such as no exclusions on pre existing conditions, after his discussion with Obama at the White House.
I see Trump as a necessary evil to shake up the establishment, and I believe he will be tempered as he adjusts to the gravity of the office (as he has already started to do).
What gets you into office is it what you say once in office.
I'm sorry I am from a working class background and know plenty of skilled tradesmen. In good times they get enough work, in bad times they spend a lot of time on furlough. It simply isn't true that we need millions of more people in the trades, the supply is meeting demand just fine.
Actually many highly skilled trades were absolutely decimated by the collapse of American industry: machinists, tool and die makers, boiler makers, to say nothing of all those plant supervisors and other blue collar management positions.
And it can and probably will eventually happen to us digital tradesmen too.
The whole argument behind Donald Trump's infrastructure pledge is to create the demand for millions more of these jobs. To build or rebuild untold numbers of road, rail, plumbing, sewage, water treatment, electrical, and on and on and on. Trillions of dollars worth of this stuff, creating millions of jobs and modernizing the country's infrastructure!
Yeah Trump's infrastructure project will great for tradesmen while it lasts. Obama had a similar program if you recall, the stimulus. It was also great while it lasted.
10 years (Trumps projected duration) should be sufficient runway to match infrastructure work required with labor. Remember, millions of Boomers, especially in the trades, are headed to retirement over the next decade.
>Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades.
Are you under 40? I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate. Yes, having had life experience helps somewhat but not all that much.
It's easy to say "Just do X" but pretty much everything becomes harder to do after 40 or so.
I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate.
You don't have to retrain everyone. Retrain younger people as machinists and toolmakers. The older people can have their old jobs back, working in the same supply chain as the newly-retrained tradespeople.
Ironically, if the right weren't making a big deal about bathrooms we could just let people use the bathrooms they want and fight about how to protect workers.
> Democrats? They remain obsessed with cultural issues. I fully understand why transgender bathrooms are important, but I also understand why progressives’ obsession with prioritizing cultural issues infuriates many Americans whose chief concerns are economic.
I'm sorry, but this cuts both ways.
The Republican primary issues are social as well. Is the author forgetting that GWB won in 2004 on the back of marriage discrimination amendments in key battleground states like Ohio to entice Republican voter turnout?
I don't believe the shrewd Republican politicians at the top care about social issues anymore than the top Democrats care about reigning in Wall Street. But that is definitely how they energize their base for voter turnout. Meaning, it's what the voters care about.
And this was the nastiest election I've seen in my lifetime by far for baiting with all those buzzwords the left is being derided for using now. But if the shoe fits. No, I don't believe all Trump voters are racists, bigots, or xenophobes. But I do believe there is a line in the sand when it comes to respect and dignity for all Americans, and Trump didn't just step over it, he flew his private jet across it. I don't even believe Trump really meant all of what he siad, but he played his base like a fiddle.
If social issues aren't what's really important, and it's economic issues that won, then they could have had a sweeping landslide victory by adopting a more inclusive platform that didn't promise to stack the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade and Obergefell v Hodges. One that didn't promise to undo all transgender protection executive orders. One that didn't suggest a registry for all Muslims and to ban refugees. One that didn't run on building a wall to keep out immigrants. He could have nominated a VP that didn't believe in conversion therapy for gay teens, one that didn't enact the gay version of Jim Crow laws in Indiana.
If they had stuck to the economic issues: oppose trade agreements that only benefit the rich, give tax cuts primarily to the working class, provide good-paying infrastructure jobs, etc ... they would have won 'bigly.' I would have loved to vote against Clinton for such an economy-first party. As would most of the disenfranchised Bernie Sanders voters.
But I can't do that when these social wedge issues directly affect my own life (he's talking about overturning my marriage) and that of my friends in the transgender community. Basic fairness and equality is much more important to me than my paycheck size.
I'm sorry to play this card, but I think it's really easy when white, middle and upper class, cisgendered heterosexuals call for inclusivity and finding common ground with these social regressives. They have no basic rights to fear losing. The worst they're going to suffer is increased pollution (won't affect them in their lifetime anyway); but hey, those tax breaks sound nice, right? I'm not saying their economic concerns are unimportant. But don't ask the victims having their rights stripped away and peeled back to reach out and find common ground with the people trying to take them away. We're essentially being told now, "look, I know the Klan has some bad ideas around African Americans and gays, but what's really important to them are blue collar jobs. So can you please stop calling them racists and bridge the divide, LGBTs and people of color?" -- and my answer is no, sorry. I can't do that.
"Basic fairness and equality is much more important to me than my paycheck size."
That may be because your paycheque affords you a comfortable enough life on that front that you don't have to stress over it. As you said, it cuts both ways. Where you worry about the social issues that could rob you of your marriage, some of the working class worry about the economic issues that appear to be imminently robbing them of their income that feeds their family.
Yes, the straight white male tends to not care about social issues because he isn't affected by that inequality. Similarly, the upper-middle class tends not to care so much about job creation because they're afforded enough education and job security that they don't have to stress over the prospect of not having an income.
Some straight white males seem to care a great deal about these social issues. That's why they're fighting a culture war over them to distract from their anti-working class economic policies (I am of course referring to the Republican party).
Peter Theil gave a speech at the RNC and said "who cares what bathroom people use" and got cheered.
To this day I have no idea if he, or the people cheering meant: "Silly Democrats talking about bathrooms when we could be fixing the economy, we should check peoples birth certificates before they use the bathroom" or "Silly Republicans talking about bathrooms when we could be fixing the economy, just let people use whatever they want".
Either works, either side could just decide to go along with the others decision if the other topics are more important. But they don't, so it's weird to act like only one side is caring about stupid stuff unless you have strong ideas about what the 'default' correct answer is and anyone who deviates is automatically the one who should stop wasting time on it.
> That may be because your paycheque affords you a comfortable enough life on that front that you don't have to stress over it.
I won't deny I currently make a fairly decent amount of money. I'm not rich, but am somewhere around the top 20% or so of income earners at $70,000 a year or so. And I know I have that job due to both luck and privilege. Not white privilege, but being born with a brain that was well-suited to learning and enjoying computer programming. Which just happened to be the in-demand thing.
But I have been extremely poor before. I've worked full-time at Wal-Mart and near full-time at McDonalds simultaneously to afford the apartment I had to share with three roommates. I've lived for years on ramen noodles and bologna sandwiches. Believe me, I know what it's like to pay credit card interest with other credit cards, to have to finance food purchases, to dodge constant collector calls (even at work, yes even though that's illegal) and worry about a court case leading to wage garnishments. To have to drive without car insurance to afford food and have your heart rate skyrocket to 170/110 whenever you see a police cruiser on your side of the road.
If it meant we could treat all people as equals with dignity and respect unde the law, I would accept going back that far. I very much don't want to, but to me, social issues are more important.
One thing I will say is that I've never had to provide food for my children (I don't have any.) I can certainly understand how having children leads many people to be more conservative. I've seen it happen to some of my best friends I've known over half my life now.
But I can't do that when these social wedge issues directly affect my own life (he's talking about overturning my marriage)
And you don't think this affects the working class? They are losing their marriages too, with those who lack a Bachelor's degree or above having dramatically higher divorce rates [0]. Not only that, they're also losing their lives [1]. Take a look at the Mortality Gap picture in that article. Shocker of shockers, it's the spitting image of another map we all watched on Tuesday. For many people, Tuesday's election was a literal life-and-death struggle!
Trump didn't go on Fox News and promise to stack the Supreme Court with conservative justices specifically to overturn the ruling that allowed straight people to get married, because, like long golf putters, he doesn't think they are natural.
> For many people, Tuesday's election was a literal life-and-death struggle!
As it was for all the people who are only alive due to the Affordable Care Act allowing them to get medical treatments for their pre-existing conditions. And possibly for the 20 million Americans that stand to lose their coverage. Whether or not he actually repeals it, that's what he claimed he would do in his first week.
conservative justices specifically to overturn the ruling that allowed straight people to get married
Typical bluster from Trump. As a public figure, he acts in a very unprofessional way. This is part of his appeal to the working class, who have been chastised by professionals for years and then forced to pay for it out of their own pocket. I honestly believe that working class folks do not care if gay marriage is here to stay forever, as long as they get their jobs and their dignity back.
Whether or not he actually repeals it, that's what he claimed he would do in his first week.
Trump's already walked back his promise on that. I think he realizes he hadn't really thought that one through. His heart was in the right place when he promised it though. The people within his base saw their health insurance premiums continue to go up under the ACA. They were rightfully angry that the rich created a program to help the poor and then pushed all of the costs onto the working class. This is exactly what the article talked about.
A YUGE part of the whole debate over Trump can really be summed up by the pithy statement: "Take him seriously, not literally."
The problem is, it won't be up to him. He's not going to nominate socially liberal justices. Especially not with Pence by his side and congress stacked with social conservatives.
Once he replaces Ginsberg, or Breyer, or Kennedy (it'll only take one), it's game over for social rights for the next 30-60 years. All of the replacements from both Bush and Obama have been much younger. Once those guys are out, it's going to be a generation before the court is refreshed again.
And once social issues are no longer rights, I guarantee the social conservatives will continue to use them as wedge issues to turn out the vote. And we'll see that every 8-16 years, rights keep getting restored and then taken away at the start of new (president+congress) or (super-majority congress) flip terms.
They've never given up on Roe v Wade. That one's gonna be gone for sure. We might have had a chance if we could uphold marriage equality for another 30 years. Just as there's no way they're overturning Loving v Virginia at this point. But it's too soon. Conservatives are still too riled up on this issue. If it gets overturned within the next 10 years, that'll doom us to a lifetime of fighting for marriage as a "privilege" instead of as a right.
> Trump's already walked back his promise on that.
It's not really going to be up to him, though. He says he wants to keep the pre-existing condition provision. But that only works if you keep the insurance mandate. It's like saying people should be able to get car insurance after a wreck.
Congress has tried, what, 170 times now to repeal the ACA? They're going to try it again, and what's Trump going to do? Veto his own party? What if they try and attach it to something important that he can't veto?
I'm not convinced they will repeal it, but I'm also not convinced they won't.
> The people within his base saw their health insurance premiums continue to go up under the ACA.
Oh yeah, the ACA is bad law. It's only very slightly better than what we had before. Rates are indeed sky rocketing still, since it's still a purely for-profit system; and the USSC helped undermine it by allowing states to opt-out of parts of it, leaving half of the people it was supposed to insure, well, uninsured. And the ones who aren't signing up now tend to be the ones we needed in the system to make it work. So now we have too many old people and people with pre-existing conditions, and not enough young and healthy people in the system to make it work.
But the alternative is that people with pre-existing conditions are told to just go die if they can't afford care. So, yeah.
Health Savings Accounts are going to be much less effective than the ACA.
This means: everybody, take all the things Donald Trump actually said, and replace them with the specific things you personally wish he said instead. Then you can all feel better!
>> conservative justices specifically to overturn the ruling that allowed straight people to get married
> Typical bluster from Trump.
As has been pointed out elsewhere on this page, it may be bluster from Trump himself, but his VP is one of the most virulently anti-queer politicians on the national scene. Pence is going to have a large role in picking out the cabinet, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's also extremely influential in picking Scalia's successor as well as any other judicial appointments that come up.
His walk back of Obamacare is incoherent. He claims he will keep the pre-existing condition stuff while ditching all the bits that make that economically viable. Which would lead to mass defection from insurance for healthy people and skyrocketing premiums for the ill, causing a vicious cycle that would destroy the whole market.
Or was I not supposed to take that literally either?
If he actually wants to make it better he should talk to his buddies in the GOP and get the states who have refused to play ball onside.
- Manly dignity is a big deal for most men. Trump promises to deliver it.
- Brookings Institution argues that men must resign themselves to working in “pink collar jobs” — those known by the acronym HEAL, for health, education, administration and literacy. Not manly
- WWC women voted for Trump over Clinton by a whopping 28-point margin — 62% to 34%.
- WWC men want stable, full-time jobs (not minimum wage) that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that.
- Obamacare delivered health care to 20 million people. WWC see it as just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor
- Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling opioid use
- Free-trade deals bring net positive GDP gains, but overlook the blue-collar workers who lost work as jobs left for Mexico or Vietnam
- Massive funding is needed for community college programs linked with local businesses to train workers for well-paying new economy jobs. Clinton mentioned this but didn't stress it
- Don't write off WWC anger as nothing more than racism. It's more class cluelessness
- If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap, when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, Ohio, the consequences could turn dangerous.
Exit polls suggest that those worried about economic topics voted Clinton. Those that worried about immigration and terrorism voted Trump.
It doesn't seem to be talked about much, but something that stuck out for me in the election coverage was that Islam was the connecting thread eg Clinton got donations from Saudi Arabia which is suspect because they are Islamic, Clinton wants to support Syrian refugees which is bad because they're Islamic, Clinton has an aide called Huma Abedin which is bad because Islam and so on.
Lots of people say Obama got elected so America can't be racist, but even then the big slur thrown at him was that he was a secret Muslim, working in concert with ISIS to undermine the USA.
I wouldn't rule out this as a decisive factor. Clinton (and Bernie for that matter) wouldn't stoop to the levels required to benefit from this xenophobia. Trump lied about banning Muslims completely (which presumably even he knows would be ridiculous and unworkable).
Yes, absolutely. I think as well that the immigration debate has more than one angle, which have (in my opinion) these most vocal arguments:
a) Immigrants are bad people and they cause crime and change our culture. Bad bleeding-heart liberal ideas that I disagree with are bringing in people with different norms who don't care about my culture or country. Those people should just go back to where they came from, I don't like 'em one bit.
b) Immigration should be re-evaluated, after all, shouldn't America be helping our own? Also, a lot of these people are working under the table, and when they go the hospital it's my taxes that pay for it. I can't help but think those liberal elites are screwing over the little guy. They are so out of touch. For example, look at how Obama wants to bring in even more. And those free trade agreements smell mighty corrupt to me - just look at those jobs we sent to Mexico.
The Democrats focused on 'debating' or "combating" A. B would've been the right thing to address, to respond to, with an actionable platform. I feel a parallel is happening in Europe today, a similar disconnect.
"If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap, when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, Ohio, the consequences could turn dangerous."
Steel isn't coming back to Youngstown because the steel industry moved South to break the unions. The industry built new plants, and automated. US steel production is about where it was in the 1980s. But it's gone from downtown Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Youngstown, and Bethlehem. (Still at Gary, though.) [1] The growth has been south of the Mason-Dixon line. Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, North and South Carolina now have big steel plants. Wages are much lower than in the union days. Plants employ far fewer people. There's much more steel recycling, too; most US steel plants run on scrap now, not iron ore. About 40% of steel is recycled.
US steel imports are about 30% of US internal sales, and mostly from Canada, Brazil, and South Korea. China isn't even in the top five. Trade restrictions are holding China down there. The US exports steel, but less than it imports. Stronger import restrictions would either hurt Canada or be ineffective.
Appliances, though... The US could have an effective push to make more appliances of all types in the US. Some US appliance makers that used to outsource have already moved production back to the US. But anybody who builds a new appliance plant is going to make it very automated. Only old plants are labor-intensive.
> If You Want to Connect with White Working-Class Voters, Place Economics at the Center
She means jobs for the white working-class, not economics. Every economist values free-trade. Consumers will get higher quality products at lower prices if we pass more free-trade deals.
Sure, we can create price floors and impose high tariffs on imported goods to increase jobs for the white working-class. We'll just have to raise taxes for the people who actually earn their jobs. This is a ludicrous argument. We would never say something similar to create jobs for under-represented minorities.
We need alternatives to Silicon Valley in the rural areas of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida. Stanford graduates have to think about moving to Iowa. If we can create great companies elsewhere, the white working-class would start to see different opportunities. Once their financial situation isn't at risk, they'll start to engage in politics in a more meaningful way - in a way where we'll actually talk about who is fit to be President and not the person who's just saying all the right buzzwords.
Oh please. As someone who grew up poor, whose parents had to climb up and deal with racism. I'm just going to spit on this when they say, this isn't about racism.
Look, everyone else had to work differently, and accept things like education, creativity and sensitivity as values. Why does the WWC think it's entitled to keep on going as they are? You like directness? Well I'm just going to say it for what it is.
um, what? Boomers pummeled education into their children as an essential part of success. Now they get to witness their children with a lower standard of living despite "investing" many more years and dollars than they had to.
If I had kids, I would be feeling pretty ashamed if they were being setup to have a crappier existence and shittier jobs that "require" a greater investment in education.
They do accept education as a value and just like the parents of the author try to send their children to colleges. Although the skilled tradesman career path can potentially be more lucrative so there's that.
Speaking of "sensitivity" - from my experience minorities (blacks, latinos) are actually more conservative/pragmatic and less "sensitive" in general. The only time they play the "sensitive" card is when dealing with whites, appealing to "white guilt" etc when justifying THEIR entitlement.
I find it curious that people talk about the "economic uncertainty" as a center piece, but somehow "Blue collar resentment" doesn't seem to manifest itself in the same way with non-whites. As if to say that non-whites are doing better.
This article has all of the hallmarks of something cranked out as fast as possible to ride the WTF wave, with little to show and mostly a collection of anecdote and refs to the work of others. As you note, non-whites are invisible (apparently they are not "working class") as well as women and really anyone who is not white male with resentment issues.
I don't agree with everything in the article but it's angle is obviously trying to figure out the reason for Trump's popularity with "white non-college educated males".
I don't think anyone, anywhere at all questioned his appeal to "white resentment" for the past year. It has been a given. As for why he has this appeal, it is not much different than prior Republican appeal for this same demographic; Republican policies are manifestly bad for this group and yet they have continued to vote in a counter-productive manner since the 80s. There is nothing new to figure out here and this paper presents rehashed arguments cloaked in personal anecdote plumped up with vague references to other people's work and then presents the whole thing as though the author was making some sort of profound discovery.
I was specifically replying to your "non-whites are invisible" remark. Just because this article clearly concentrates on the white non-college educated demographic that doesn't make non-whites "invisible".
It's become "the narrative", but it has some obvious problems as you note.
Sometimes the explanation that gets shoved in front of your face is the one that has driven the most readership (or clicks), rather than one that matches what actually occurred.
There are some interesting points being made in the article but some of it is crap.
> Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.
Isn't this just the same attitude applied towards Clinton/liberals? Wearing carhartts could be dorky, Trump not releasing his tax returns could be arrogant, listen to conservative media for a while and you'll hear similar insults about the intelligence and sexism of liberals.
> Trump’s blunt talk taps into another blue-collar value: straight talk. “Directness is a working-class norm,”...Of course Trump appeals. Clinton’s clunky admission that she talks one way in public and another in private? Further proof she’s a two-faced phony.
Straight talk? Or blatant lies that anyone with critical thinking can see through - Trump has already walked back from of some of his proposals. Trump is also an absolute master of doublespeak and using it to say outrageous things - "Those second amendment folks could do something about it" etc. Plenty of business people are also very direct. Aren't people from places like Chicago and New York even known for being direct/blunt?
> At a deeper level, both parties need an economic program that can deliver middle-class jobs. Republicans have one: Unleash American business. Democrats? They remain obsessed with cultural issues. I fully understand why transgender bathrooms are important, but I also understand why progressives’ obsession with prioritizing cultural issues infuriates many Americans whose chief concerns are economic.
How the hell is healthcare not one of the unnecessary burdens we place on businesses in America? Why does a small business need to worry about providing health insurance to their employees? I work for a medium size company and we have a whole department of people managing health insurance, HSA's, VEBA's, and various health related tax deferment programs. Does any other OECD country have that additional burden?
This is Brilliant. The Clintons did a good job in the mid 90s bridging this gap, but when you are in the middle you get shot at from both sides. The recent progressive coalition tended to not recognize a middle.
So the issue is outdated ethics that no longer apply to the real world? And the solution is to ignore the ethics and somehow fix things? Seems like traditionalism self destructing.
Completely ignoring the democratic party's platform as usual. It's starting to look like this "right-wing base" is obsessed with identity, and it's preventing them from actually understanding the other people who want to help them. The rest of us just want everyone to get along and be happy.
This article makes it sound like working or middle class people are dumb as shit. My neighbors aren't dumb. They didn't vote though.
Hmm, yeah. I'm struggling to understand the difference between the WWC and the poor outside of identity. Is it ideological in the sense that the WWC are people who want to work but can't find work, and they perceive the poor as people unwilling or unable to work.
This is the best explanation of the psyche of the white working class I have seen on here yet. Every point in here rings true to me, thinking about the way I grew up and the people I knew, and still know back home in a dying blue-collar resource-extraction and manufacturing economy.
> Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
> Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
> Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
> If You Want to Connect with White Working-Class Voters, Place Economics at the Center
> Avoid the Temptation to Write Off Blue-Collar Resentment as Racism
And then this is the real kicker, to me:
> One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,”
The article didn't explicitly say so, but this is counterposed by urban liberals who commonly admire professionals (thinking that they possess valuable expertise that should be respected) and are suspicious of the rich (thinking that they likely became rich by exploiting people, by doing something unethical or illegal, or through cronyism).
It's not exactly the same cultural contrast, but I remembered this thing that David D. Friedman wrote back in 1995:
> I have been arguing politics for a long time. In arguing with people on the left, I find it is very hard to come to an agreement on the assumed facts surrounding the situations we are judging. My imaginary capitalist has capital because he worked hard clearing part of the boundless forest while his employee to be was being lazy and living on what he could gather—so it is entirely just that the capitalist gets part of the output of his land and his employee's labor. But the leftist doesn't like that hypothetical. His imaginary capitalist inherited his capital from a father who stole it. I don't like that hypothetical. I conclude that our moral intuitions are similar enough so that the same assumed facts push both of us in the same direction—and since we want to go in opposite directions we want [to] assume different facts.
I never thought about the "working class resents professionals but not the rich". But looking back, I've gotten a lot more snide remarks when people find out that I live in the affluent 'burbs "without doing a hard days work" than I do about being Black.
In talking about economic policies, and free trade deals that supposedly shipped jobs off to China, I wish the article (and more importantly politicans) would emphasize the importance of technology being the driver behind manufacturing job loss.
It's only a matter of time before robots replace most manufacturing jobs. The only reason they haven't full-scale yet is that wages in China are still too low to make it cost effective (but that's changing).
Otto just delivered the first self-driving truck shipment. In a few short years, the most common job in what was it, 30 or so states? It'll be all but gone.
The article hit the nail on the head with having working class economic policy being front and center on the campaign, not bathrooms. But a tariff on Chinese exports ain't it. Nobody is bringing steel back to Youngstown, and though Clinton touched on this a little bit (the renewable energy jobs for example), creating new jobs that are actually here to stay for a while -- whatever they may be (while unfortunately not seeming elite and professional) -- is the only message the Democrats can deliver if they want to win office again.