Yes, this is my assessment as well. The working class went for Trump because he offered disruption not populism. For people who have given up and see no one in their corner, blowing it all up has a mighty appeal.
There might be a bit more to that. My wife and I were foster parents of a couple of teens in the nineties with whom we kept in touch. Their kids grew up seeing us as grandparents. We also adopted one and she has kids too. All of them work in low-paid working class jobs so I have a sense of how this portion of the working class is doing in my locale in addition to the statistical evidence. As I describe below, the situation for these folks when Trump was in office was somewhat better than under Biden.
Since these low, entry-level wages define the value for undifferentiated labor and since employee turnover rates are very high these wages are truly market-set things unlike college-level wages that are a mix of market and culturally set. So what happens to these unskilled wage rates sets the tone for working class economic prospects, by establishing the floor on which higher wage working class jobs are built off of.
The data I present below interprets working class support for Trump as not economically irrational from a past experience standpoint, which when combined with deeply silly Democratic cultural stances makes the case.
What do you think about working class prospects during a second Trump administration? It seems all the populist noises they were making have been muted in favor of the counter-elite efforts to defund progressives across the board.
I don't think Trump gives a shit about working class folks and never did. My point was it just so happened that things were somewhat better for low wage earners during the Trump administration, mostly because Trump did not know what he was doing and so did relatively little. Today he and Musk are taking a MUCH more active role in policy and will make things a lot worse. I suspect this is why they are trying to seize as much power as possible before the country turns against them.
The Reagan administration was not a genuine project of decentralization but instead a masterful exercise in political and economic centralization under the guise of deregulation and free-market rhetoric. While it used language of shrinking government, in practice, it selectively dismantled regulations that inhibited corporate consolidation while reinforcing federal power in ways that favored economic centralization. The airline deregulation authority, for instance, actively prevented local areas from subsidizing their airports under the supposed ideal of no "market interventions" while deeply hypocritically working with the localities where the newly cartelized industry wanted to place their hub-n-spokes to subsidize them there, effectively destroying smaller regional hubs and further concentrating economic activity in select national centers, they, in effective terms, acted like something not to far off from a soviet industry planning organization for the airline industry and used the awesome powers of the federal government to do it. And thats far from the only area they did that. The administration's industrial policy was just as real as anything Walter Mondale proposed, but it was carried out through defense contracts, financial deregulation, and selective market interventions that empowered large corporations while gutting regional economic diversity. It was not the absence of industrial policy, it was centralized industrial policy that masked itself as its opposite. In fact, the Bayh-Dole Act, in practice, may be at once one of the most centrally directed and resource intensive AND harmful industrial policies ever implemented.
Also, your statement towards the end regarding Republican Party having always been simply a tool of the rich and a disguised continuation of the Whigs is wrong and it retrojects the modern Republican Party’s structure and interests onto its pre-WW2 incarnation, ignoring the fact that, until the mid-20th century, the Republican Party was fundamentally a small "r" republican party, not a conservative party in the modern sense. While it had pro-business tendencies, it was not simply a vehicle for capitalist elites but a genuinely decentralized mass-member party with strong regional and ideological diversity, including progressive, moderate, and conservative factions. Unlike today’s highly centralized parties, the pre-WW2 Republican Party had robust state and local structures, often operating independently with meaningful internal contestation. Even during the Gilded Age, its policies were shaped by a complex interplay of industrial, agricultural, and reformist interests, rather than being a monolithic tool of "the rich." This decentralization allowed for significant internal competition and ideological shifts, as seen in figures like Robert La Follette, who led an influential progressive insurgency within the party. It was only after World War II, and especially with the rise of the Neoliberal Era, that the party transformed into a more rigidly structured vehicle primarily serving corporate and elite interests, losing its prior decentralized, mass-member character.
The trade deficit benefits financial asset holders and their managers. Why? Because the trade deficit must be balance by a capital surplus - capital flowing into the USA and purchasing assets. We can argue whether tarrifs are good, but it's clear that Trumps focus on trade deficits "losing us money" is about the working and middle class, as they benefit relatively less from a capital surplus.
Yeah, there could be some small benefits, but Trump has backed down from his 60% tariffs on China to 10% and even that is probably going to go away if Musk has his way.
Yes, this is my assessment as well. The working class went for Trump because he offered disruption not populism. For people who have given up and see no one in their corner, blowing it all up has a mighty appeal.
There might be a bit more to that. My wife and I were foster parents of a couple of teens in the nineties with whom we kept in touch. Their kids grew up seeing us as grandparents. We also adopted one and she has kids too. All of them work in low-paid working class jobs so I have a sense of how this portion of the working class is doing in my locale in addition to the statistical evidence. As I describe below, the situation for these folks when Trump was in office was somewhat better than under Biden.
Since these low, entry-level wages define the value for undifferentiated labor and since employee turnover rates are very high these wages are truly market-set things unlike college-level wages that are a mix of market and culturally set. So what happens to these unskilled wage rates sets the tone for working class economic prospects, by establishing the floor on which higher wage working class jobs are built off of.
The data I present below interprets working class support for Trump as not economically irrational from a past experience standpoint, which when combined with deeply silly Democratic cultural stances makes the case.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/some-observations-on-the-election
What do you think about working class prospects during a second Trump administration? It seems all the populist noises they were making have been muted in favor of the counter-elite efforts to defund progressives across the board.
I don't think Trump gives a shit about working class folks and never did. My point was it just so happened that things were somewhat better for low wage earners during the Trump administration, mostly because Trump did not know what he was doing and so did relatively little. Today he and Musk are taking a MUCH more active role in policy and will make things a lot worse. I suspect this is why they are trying to seize as much power as possible before the country turns against them.
Thanks for your reply.
The Reagan administration was not a genuine project of decentralization but instead a masterful exercise in political and economic centralization under the guise of deregulation and free-market rhetoric. While it used language of shrinking government, in practice, it selectively dismantled regulations that inhibited corporate consolidation while reinforcing federal power in ways that favored economic centralization. The airline deregulation authority, for instance, actively prevented local areas from subsidizing their airports under the supposed ideal of no "market interventions" while deeply hypocritically working with the localities where the newly cartelized industry wanted to place their hub-n-spokes to subsidize them there, effectively destroying smaller regional hubs and further concentrating economic activity in select national centers, they, in effective terms, acted like something not to far off from a soviet industry planning organization for the airline industry and used the awesome powers of the federal government to do it. And thats far from the only area they did that. The administration's industrial policy was just as real as anything Walter Mondale proposed, but it was carried out through defense contracts, financial deregulation, and selective market interventions that empowered large corporations while gutting regional economic diversity. It was not the absence of industrial policy, it was centralized industrial policy that masked itself as its opposite. In fact, the Bayh-Dole Act, in practice, may be at once one of the most centrally directed and resource intensive AND harmful industrial policies ever implemented.
Also, your statement towards the end regarding Republican Party having always been simply a tool of the rich and a disguised continuation of the Whigs is wrong and it retrojects the modern Republican Party’s structure and interests onto its pre-WW2 incarnation, ignoring the fact that, until the mid-20th century, the Republican Party was fundamentally a small "r" republican party, not a conservative party in the modern sense. While it had pro-business tendencies, it was not simply a vehicle for capitalist elites but a genuinely decentralized mass-member party with strong regional and ideological diversity, including progressive, moderate, and conservative factions. Unlike today’s highly centralized parties, the pre-WW2 Republican Party had robust state and local structures, often operating independently with meaningful internal contestation. Even during the Gilded Age, its policies were shaped by a complex interplay of industrial, agricultural, and reformist interests, rather than being a monolithic tool of "the rich." This decentralization allowed for significant internal competition and ideological shifts, as seen in figures like Robert La Follette, who led an influential progressive insurgency within the party. It was only after World War II, and especially with the rise of the Neoliberal Era, that the party transformed into a more rigidly structured vehicle primarily serving corporate and elite interests, losing its prior decentralized, mass-member character.
The trade deficit benefits financial asset holders and their managers. Why? Because the trade deficit must be balance by a capital surplus - capital flowing into the USA and purchasing assets. We can argue whether tarrifs are good, but it's clear that Trumps focus on trade deficits "losing us money" is about the working and middle class, as they benefit relatively less from a capital surplus.
Yeah, there could be some small benefits, but Trump has backed down from his 60% tariffs on China to 10% and even that is probably going to go away if Musk has his way.