We are all Slave now.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

100k is not affluent, anywhere. You can’t afford to send a kid to college on that salary, no matter where you live.

You should move beyond "affluent," which you have defined in your head in a particular way, and instead work with numbers or something. Because you're getting tripped up on your subjective understanding of affluent.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

100k is not affluent, anywhere. You can’t afford to send a kid to college on that salary, no matter where you live.

This in no way addresses anything I said.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

What's inaccurate there? The current "conservatives" (populists) are asserting that the system is rigged against them. And it is. It's rigged for asset holders, and if you're a Trump voter with a $65-75k household income, you don't own adequate assets to to enjoy the appreciation in their value caused by that rigging.

Whether that is the fault of those populists, for not getting skills that allowed them to move further up the ladder, is an argument of degree. Personally, I think the angry, complaining Trump voter owns a decent percentage of his own situation. How much I don't know. But he owns some. As the author noted, he has agency. Everyone has agency.

And for "conservatives" to use the same argument with which they've pilloried Democrats for so many years is a putrid hypocrisy, distilled effectively to: "When you poor Democrats fail, it's entirely because you're lazy. When we Populist Conservatives fail, it's entirely because the system is rigged against us." Right... They can shove all that up their asses until it bleeds into their Eustachian tubes.

Jesus fucking Christ. Wait. This makes perfect sense coming from a guy who thinks "colorblind" is a thing.

This thought: "'it's not your fault, the system has it in for you'...something conservatives castigated liberals for saying to minorities years ago. And rightly so: it deprives people of agency and responsibility" is fucking offensive.

First, liberals never turned to minorities and said this shit. What was said is, "We understand the deck is stacked against you and you have more to overcome." That's not taking away agency and responsibility. I know you can't see that because we've argued ad nauseam and then some about how you think we should apportion blame to black people for the situations we find ourselves in (and I still can't wrap my head around the fact that you think that blacks (i) act as a group somehow or (ii) haven't tailored their behavior specifically based on centuries of unfair treatment).

Second, this whole, "Stop removing agency from minorities and treating them like children," mantra is a way to ignore the fact that diverse people in this country are still second class citizens while pretending like you're doing your part to treat everyone the same. It's a slick way of ignoring the problems people of color face while pretending to care about them.

Third, it ignores the fact that it isn't our fault and the system does have it in for us. Maybe less so than 50 years ago, but you have to close your eyes and ears real tight to think otherwise.

White people love to ignore both (i) all historical context as to how people arrived where they are and (ii) the actual fucking racial realities in this country and point to individuals and say, "That guy didn't work hard enough, it's his own fault." If you point out the historical context or how people are still being treated, they point at someone who was poor and say, "But they succeeded," like that's an answer. It's like a sickness.

TM

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

We have an economy right now where there are strong network effects driving good growth. The kinds of jobs that everybody wants are clustered in a small number of metro areas. Look at Amazon, choosing to expand in NYC and DC rather than any one of a number of other places. In the development sense, the rich (areas) get richer and the rest are stuck looking up at them. Fighting this dynamic is super hard. Individual places have done some interesting things, but no one has found a solution that works widely.

There is an element of truth in what you said, but just that.

Here is the BLS' list of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates (actually 11, because two states are tied for no. 10):

Hawaii
Iowa
New Hampshire
Idaho
Minnesota
Nebraska
North Dakota
Vermont
Virginia
South Dakota
Wisconsin

Are the places you identified on that list?

Here is average income adjusted for average cost of living:

http://time.com/money/5177566/averag...te-real-value/

There are actually quite a few places in the country that have been doing pretty well.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

This in no way addresses anything I said.

It does. I’m speaking in an absolute. Whether a Trump voter making $100k is affluent relative to a person earning less is immaterial in a world where $100k is not affluent anywhere.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I said Trump voters are not generally affluent. Does showing that 2/3 of them make less than $100k not make that point?

I really don't understand what goes on in your head.

Your constant point about Trump voters is that they voted the way they did because they are being left behind. You point out how they are not affluent (read: make less than $100k or whatever your personal definition of "affluent" is) as a way to support your contention. When it is pointed out to you that Trump voters generally make more than Clinton voters, you start arguing anything and everything that carries you away from the following conclusions:

1. Trump voters are more affluent than non-Trump voters
2. There are many people who aren't affluent who did not vote for Trump, which renders the "I feel left behind" argument flat-out wrong unless you also add in the fact that
3. Trump voters are overwhelmingly white--and the fact that what everyone considers to be "working class" somehow has become defined as only "white working class" is completely lost on you

People didn't throw a bomb into the system because they're being left behind economically. If that were the case, all non-affluent (any definition) people would have voted for Trump. White people felt left behind because they don't feel like they're in control or as important as they used to and Trump makes them feel like they are.

TM

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It does. I’m speaking in an absolute. Whether a Trump voter making $100k is affluent relative to a person earning less is immaterial in a world where $100k is not affluent anywhere.

They are absolutely racist, if you want to speak in absolutes.

$100K really isn't that bad in, say, upstate NY. Taking into account the cost of living, it's like making $225,000 in Boston. Which means a Trump voter in Corning making $100K is affluent. https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-l...ning-ny/225000

God, you are a moron.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It does. I’m speaking in an absolute. Whether a Trump voter making $100k is affluent relative to a person earning less is immaterial in a world where $100k is not affluent anywhere.

Never mind.

[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.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You don’t know this. That’s entirely conjecture.

Try to find where the cities are:

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

There is an element of truth in what you said, but just that.

Here is the BLS' list of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates (actually 11, because two states are tied for no. 10):

Hawaii
Iowa
New Hampshire
Idaho
Minnesota
Nebraska
North Dakota
Vermont
Virginia
South Dakota
Wisconsin

Are the places you identified on that list?

Here is average income adjusted for average cost of living:

http://time.com/money/5177566/averag...te-real-value/

There are actually quite a few places in the country that have been doing pretty well.

Those are smaller states, except for Virginia. You probably have smaller states at the bottom of that list too, because they will fluctuate more. California contains both San Diego and Bakersfield. New York contains both Brooklyn and Buffalo. My point is that the economic drivers of the national economy are large metro areas: LA, the Bay Area, Seattle, Chicago, DC, NYC, Boston, and some others. Some other places are doing well, but those are the places driving growth. On a smaller scale, small towns are doing poorly and regional hubs are doing well. A lot of small cities and towns in South Dakota are emptying out, but Sioux Falls is doing well. Ditto Idaho and Boise. If you are somewhere else watching this, it's hard to know what to do about it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Whether a Trump voter making $100k is affluent relative to a person earning less is immaterial in a world where $100k is not affluent anywhere.

I think this is really, really wrong. A person making $100k is doing better than most of his neighbors in a lot of places, and he knows it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

We don't know that stat as to Trump voters. You're assuming Trump voters mirror the general numbers.



I said Trump voters are not generally affluent. Does showing that 2/3 of them make less than $100k not make that point?

Dude, Trump inflates shit cuz it Tuesday- your winning argument here is to just say "when his supporters were asked at exit polls they lied their incomes up." It's as plausible as the theory that Flower's behaviour has something to do with a penis handicap issue.

Am I the only here using the law degree?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

They are absolutely racist, if you want to speak in absolutes.

$100K really isn't that bad in, say, upstate NY. Taking into account the cost of living, it's like making $225,000 in Boston. Which means a Trump voter in Corning making $100K is affluent. https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-l...ning-ny/225000

God, you are a moron.

I live in an upper middle class D burb. 100K is comfortable here, I am pretty sure. Maybe can't eat out every night, or jet around private, or send their kids to private schools, but all that aside, these are comfortable people.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

They are absolutely racist, if you want to speak in absolutes.

$100K really isn't that bad in, say, upstate NY. Taking into account the cost of living, it's like making $225,000 in Boston. Which means a Trump voter in Corning making $100K is affluent. https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-l...ning-ny/225000

God, you are a moron.

The only person who could make 100k upstate NY would be Walter White if he moved there.