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[sebastian_dangerfield]

It's not either/or, and he is absolutely a symptom. Symptom of what, is the question.

Neoliberalism and unrealistic expectations. Our middle class from the Depression through the 60s was an aberration. It concentrated gains in the US in a manner that delivered so well for all tiers of US society that we now expect that indefinitely. Neoliberalism has no plan for addressing the losers in a system that is across borders at exponentially speed.

1. Definitionally, redistribution is taking money away from you and me to give to your "losers," so it actually *is* giving up something.

You net the cost of placating the underclasses against the cost of upending the status quo. If we move toward nationalism and protectionism, it hurts you and me, but theoretically helps the losers in our economy. Theoretically, they 'git thur jobs back.

2. Expanding safety nets in a way that actually expands the safety nets for "losers" doesn't just *feel* like doing something, it is doing something.

Fundamental misunderstanding of Trump voters, I think, is that they want handouts. Some do, but just as many actually want opportunity.

3. On regulation, that's not what I think or what I've said, but if you need to pretend it is so that you can say something stupid and think you are responding to me, knock yourself out.

If we regulated the things that are doing the "disrupting," we could do so in a manner that would not create such rapid and extreme job losses in old line industries (See: NY cabbies). We don't.

I don't think we should. I love the efficiencies. But there's a compelling argument that the govt should intervene to make the lard landings softer and slower, so the losers can acclimate.

I think the issue here is that your "losers" are well enough off that they don't benefit from things we think of as redistribution or the safety net (e.g., SSDI), and they don't think of the things they benefit from (home mortgage deduction, defense spending, subsidizing roads over mass transit) as redistribution or a safety net. They see a government that talks about helping people who aren't well off, but isn't helping them, and they want some of that too. They feel entitled to this, so they feel aggrieved.

I agree with this completely. We've done a piss poor job of explaining all of the "stealth" transfers along the lines of those you listed.

Instead of pretending that redistribution, the safety net and regulation don't do anything, your better argument is that what the government does in those areas doesn't do much for the concerns of your "losers." That's the issue, right?

I don't think the govt has an obligation to do more for them in terms of safety nets or redistribution. I think the govt has an obligation to find a way to provide them with greater opportunity. Perhaps, among other methods, by breaking up larger corporations to create more market competition.

No. I wasn't advocating for anything. I was saying that your explanation of Trump & populism as a symptom of inequality doesn't work, because you see lots of places where there is worse inequality and no populism. Your model is underdetermined. I was trying to point to other things that lead to populism (and Trump).

There are a lot of things that lead to populism. Ignorance, xenophobia, etc. are rampant in populist movements. But the spark is always economic. Inequality is that spark.

I'm mostly with you here. Although I think you are missing something important, which is that Trump voters' incomes look better when you compare them to the averages where they live, rather than the country as a whole. Coastal cities and suburbs are doing better, have higher incomes, and do not strongly support Trump. Hardcore Trump voters tend to come from exurbs and rural areas where the average income is lower.

I don't think that assumption can be made with much confidence. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the Trump voters making over $100k (1/3 of them) were concentrated in or around urban areas.

We have an economy that is doing very well for cities with well trained workers. People in the hinterlands feel left out, and worry about their future. You are describing facets of that, but the slogan you keep using, "inequality," is not the right word for what you are trying to describe, in part because the people who feel inequality the most -- the poorest -- don't tend to be Trump fans. His supporters are people in the middle. If you want to explain populism, you need to grapple with that, instead of repeating that populism is a disease, etc.

You're making extreme inequality the enemy of relative inequality. And inequality is a very relative thing. I can't prove this, but I'd wager the dirt poor don't think much about inequality. They're just struggling to survive, and the idea of being wealthy is just a fantasy. The people in the middle who are being arbitrarily washed out of the economy are the ones feeling acute inequality. The American Dream was within reach, perhaps even in their grasp, and economic changes and policy decisions have taken it away from them. The economy no longer delivers for them. And they're mad about it, and resentful toward those for whom it does deliver.

I suggested that populism comes when people feel that the major political parties are not speaking to their concerns, and turn somewhere else.

I agree with this.

The working poor and the middle class are two different things, and when you use them as synonyms, you unintentionally show that you have some concept of the lower class as being poor people who don't work.

I assure you that inference is way, way off base. I hate that GOP talking point.

Presumably they just laze around, eating Cheetos all day and being poor, and then at night they go off to commit crimes. Seriously, there's this implicit status consciousness to what you say that implies that what defines the people you care about is that they are more deserving than the faceless poor below them.

This is 180 degrees from my thinking about the working poor.

You talk about inequality, but it's very important to the kind of people you talk about that they are more equal than the poor, who don't deserve help. They care about equality for themselves but not for others, which actually is more like a form of inequality than a reaction to it.

I think the poor should get help and do, and the middle is ignored. I don't have a favored horse in that race. My point is to explain why populism has arisen. And it has arisen from the middle. So I was telling you what was going on with the middle, and how you and I were ignoring it.

If I ever say those things, we can talk about them here. Until then, why don't we just stick to what I *am* saying.

It's impossible to figure out what you're saying. You're just as slippery as I can be. But what I do know is, you don't think much about how relative inequality between the middle to lower class losers in the economy has led to populism. And you don't seem to like my indictment of people like us for ignoring this rising populism, which has been bubbling up for many years. You seem to prefer to duck it using Harry Frankfurt's argument that, "we should only focus on helping the absolutely destitute." Okay. I can abide that approach. But understand, this populism thing - arising from relative inequality - is not going away any time soon. It is a disease. And as long as our middle class continues to hollow, the only question is how it manifests itself: Left or Right? Trump 2020, or more Ocasio-Cortezes? Or both. In any scenario, it's not good, because Left or Right, these people are idiots.

It's a bromide because it says nothing. If it's everyone's fault, it's no one's fault. If you really want to find fault with someone, you need to narrow it down a little.

It's not a narrow problem. You advocate for finding a group to blame because this makes it easy to take a side. This is seeking false comfort, false certainty. It's this thinking that has led to our tribalization.

And please think a little more critically about what you are saying. The economy has been global for a *long* time, and there have always been losers as a result. I just read the Lords of Finance, about the economy in the 1920s (good book, very well written). The UK pegged the pound to gold too high, and as a result industries in the UK got crushed by foreign competitors. Ninety years ago, shipbuilders in Liverpool were losers in the global economy. Foreign capital rushed into the NYSE, and companies like GM and RCA saw massive valuation increases -- which is to say, they raised capital from international investors and used it to hire people in places like Detroit. Those GM workers were winners in the international economy. The economy is always changing, creating new winners and losers. But the populism we have seen in the last ten years is different from the decade before. I'm not saying the global economy has nothing to do with it -- quite the opposite. I'm saying that bromides like "globalization" don't explain much.

Think a little critically about how then differs from now.

Interconnectedness via the internet ain't like interconnectedness by steamship and telegraph.