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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

{Trump is a symptom of} 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.

The sentence that I've underlined is interesting because it's a function of dashed expectations, not of economic growth itself (in other words, change in acceleration instead of change in speed). This is fundamentally different from pointing to bromides about inequality.

Maybe Obama raised expectations that things would be different and better, and Trump was partly a reaction to those high hopes.

At any rate, I think what you are trying to say is still not thought through. Sure, Trump is a reaction to the failures of neoliberalism, but that's like saying that the French Revolution was caused by monarchy, since the kings weren't making people happy.

Moving on, you accused me of blindly promoting thing that just make me feel good but don't accomplish anything. Whatever. This conversation is about how to explain where Trump and populism come from, not what to do about it.

Then, I said that your "losers" don't benefit from the things they see the government doing, and don't see that the government is doing things that benefit from them. In other words,



You said,

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.

Maybe that's part of it, but maybe it's more that Trump voters aren't stupid, but expect more than they are getting. Or replace "expect" with "feel entitled to". That starts to be a story about their psychology, not about their average incomes.

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.

We weren't talking about what the government has an obligation to do. We're in explaining mode. My point, with which I think you agree, is that Trump voters feel entitled to more from their government and resent that they are not getting it. In other words, it's not that they are losers. It's that they have some resentment from not being treated more like winners. Again: this is not about inequality per se, though inequality if a feature of our economy so is not irrelevant.

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.

This is backwards, and/or makes no sense. There are always economic conditions. And inequality. Always. So they are not a spark. A spark is something that ignites something in the conditions and sparks a reaction. You are right that economic conditions are relevant, because of course, but you are looking at a fire and you have not figured out what the spark was.

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.

Sure, because people making that much money tend to live in urban areas. But you're not really getting what I'm saying.

Let's make this more specific. Tulsa and San Francisco are cities. San Francisco has a lot of money, and few Trump voters. Tulsa is poorer and has more Trump voters compared to San Francisco. The Trump voters in Tulsa are more affluent than the non-Trump voters in Tulsa.

Trump voters are mostly Republicans. The more money you have, the more likely you are to vote Republican. The less money you have, the more likely you are to vote Democratic. At the same time, the states with higher incomes are more likely to vote for Democrats, and the states with lower incomes are more likely to vote for Republicans.

You're making extreme inequality the enemy of relative inequality.

You're making the English language your enemy.

And inequality is a very relative thing.

Um, duh.

I don't understand why you are so insistent about try to slap the label of "inequality" on this.

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.

This would make more sense if you expressed the same idea without the word "inequality." The worst off are in the least "equal" position, so the fact that they are not upset here should tell you that what's driving the anger is not "equality" but something else -- the something else that you describe here in your last three sentences. Trump voters have a grievance about expectations and reality, a resentment towards other people whom they see as getting more than their share. Yes! That's not about inequality. Now figure out what it is about.

To complicate things for you: People who are not white who are in the economic position you describe do not go for Trump populism. That suggests that there's something important about ethnicity going on.

Then I suggested that you have some view 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.
[more stuff I said]
This is 180 degrees from my thinking about the working poor.

I guess I didn't make myself clear. You seemed to be using "the working poor" and "the middle class" as if the former is a subset of the latter. Implicitly, there is someone poorer than "the working poor" who is not part of the "middle class", because "middle" means between two other things. These poor people presumably are not "working," because you refer to the "working poor" to distinguish them from the other poor, who are implicitly non-working. The idea that poor people just laze around may be 180 degrees from your "thinking about the working poor," but I was suggesting that's what you were implying about the people poorer than the middle class, since you seem to thinking that they are poor and are not working.

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.

And I am saying that a lot of the specific things you have said about the middle seem right, but that referring to the problem with the label of "inequality" is not right, because you are talking about voters who are more affluent than the people in their communities who are not populist. And white. They are white.

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.

Dude, I voted against it. If you want to focus on who these populists are and what they stand for, you ought to start with the fact they tend to be affluent whites, older than most of us, and they vote for Republicans. I haven't ignored shit. I didn't vote for a third-party Libertarian candidate. But again -- I'm not talking now about what to do about it, I'm just talking about what it is. I'm disagreeing with you about how to understand what is happening.

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.

Populism is not about inequality. And it's not a disease. And if you think left-wing populism is our problem, you have your head up your ass.

You advocate for finding a group to blame because this makes it easy to take a side.

No. I advocate for finding a group to blame because different people have done different things and bear more and less responsibility for what has happened.

Undeniably, my view about what has happened drives me to take a side. If you're not going to pick a side and stand for something, then you don't stand for anything, and blaming everyone is just a cop-out.

This is seeking false comfort, false certainty. It's this thinking that has led to our tribalization.

I'm not tribalized. That's a populist thing. There's a fundamental asymmetry here, which is that the right feels like a beleaguered tribe in a country they feel entitled to, and the left does not.

And then I said that globalization is not new. And you said,

Think a little critically about how then differs from now.

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

No shit, Sherlock. That is exactly the point I am making. Since globalization has been around for a long time, and this populism we have now is emergent, then you need to think critically about how then differed from now, because just saying things like "globalization" and "inequality" isn't it.