Many good people across the political spectrum are earnestly trying to create a coherent, comprehensible, and politically attractive economic agenda for working-class voters that could unite people across party, racial and ethnic, and job lines.
The other day while playing with wealth distribution numbers to see just how wealthy I am I noticed a funny thing. The top 1% have about a third of wealth, the 9% of families below them have another third of the wealth, and the 40% below them have about another third of the wealth. The bottom half of households have nothing. Something ain't right and it's not just the 1%.
The only time I've seen wages and conditions improve for that bottom 50% of workers is during early covid. The border was almost closed, many people had left and gone south because all the service industries were shut down. Supply and demand is simple, and true. The one thing I don't see on this poll of Center for Working Class whatevers is illegal immigration.
I'm not a genius like all of these NGOs doing studies but if you bring 10 million low wage workers into an economy I'd think there might just maybe be a corresponding downward pressure on wages, upwards pressure on rents, and some real busy emergency rooms being used as primary care.
Yet these low wage workers, unfussy about what jobs they did, were key to the economic health of the country as a whole. Before the pandemic my son worked as a foreman for a company that specialized in replacing the insulation in attics, after fires, water events, and wildlife Infestations. The work was hard in often brutally hot conditions, in tyvek suits and respirators in attics where the temperatures that sometimes exceeded 140°F. It paid well, new hires with no previous experience were brought on at $20 per hour and could be at $30 within a couple of months. White American citizens often flaked out after as little as a day. Blacks often took one look at the work and decided to leave after lunch. Only the Hispanics, in particular the illegals, tended to stick around.
As our native born population ages and becomes better educated, we are going to have to figure out how to find enough people to do the mind of dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs that we have been telling our kids are beneath them. Uncontrolled immigration is risky, but zeroing out immigration is a recipe for stagflation. And our legal immigration protocols take far too long to admit far too few people, which is why so many illegal indie can find so many employers willing to look the other way.
The pay is way too low. You can't expect people to do work like that for $20. Those are poverty wages. Also, it has nothing to do with race.
I've run crews in the arctic in the winter, outside crews, 16 hour days. On the reservation at Fort Peck, in the cypress swamps in east Texas. Way out offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Inuit, Indian, Black, White, all people are good workers if they have a chance to get used to a job, learn what they are doing, and above all else pay a decent wage to fit the job.
How do you think they get people to work 12 hour shifts soaking wet with diesel based drilling mud tripping pipe on drill rigs? It's dirty dangerous work, no stupid people allowed, work as a team. They pay.
We have record numbers of American Men out of the job market entirely, because some a___ole is saving a buck by breaking the law. I'd like to see serious prison time for employers who break the law. No one should brag about screwing over American workers.
Sounds like you were in the oil business. The difference is that your projects made people money; the result of your efforts was the production of a marketable product (as long as oil stays above a certain price). And, while there were hazards to my son's work, they were nothing like those associated with wildcatting. Nobody loses an arm while raking up urine soaked insulation.
My son's work was in remediation was paid for by insurance; the lowest bid wins, because the insurance companies are competing on price to their customers. If you raise your bid to pay workers more, you win less work, your workers end up staying home, and they find other jobs, and your crew dissolves.
And I don't know if you know how the insurance business works...The company doing the reconstruction has to front all the material and labor costs, while the insurer can take a couple of months to pay. You end up being their banker. If they have cut a check to the homeowner, it usually has had the deductible taken out and is based on a formula based on previous years' costs. So the homeowner is also looking for the lowest bid, so that they pay as little out of pocket as possible.
And then we have drugs, which have rendered so much of the native workforce useless. The illegals, understandably wary of doing anything that might result in contact with the law, tend to stay clean. A great many white workers tend to disappear after their first paycheck.
This happened on a job that I recently worked: I was hanging doors and installing trim alongside a husband and wife team, who we're laying vinyl plank flooring. They would finish a room and I would install the trim. They reached a previously agreed.pay point and the customer cut them a check so they could deposit it whole getting lunch. They never returned and I had to finish their work, so that I could finish mine. The wife later came back to get their tools; husband was in the hospital after an overdose. Same thing happened to a member of my extended family. After repeated rounds of rehab, he gets sober long enough to train as an HVAC tech. My sister in law hires him to install a mini split in their garage and pays him $1500 for his work. The next time they saw him was in a casket at his funeral.
The reason why so many employers break the law: they want to get the work done and today's kids, those that aren't halfway to the grave with drugs, have been told that these jobs are beneath them.
Great data. It does make me think that iit will be hard to win on what you call economic messages. I do think the developers of this survey may have missed how immigration plays out as an economic issue. However putting that aside my takeaway is that whichever party engenders trust will win and then they have 4 years to prove their economic plans help. If they don’t and more importantly if they lose trust and they are at best the same they are going to lose. I believe this is why cultural issues are so important. They are easier to quickly show the party is trustworthy than most economic issues unless you go over a cliff on economic ones like Biden and the Democratic Party. When you name a bill inflation reduction only to have inflation go through the roof you are pretty much …. Trust is really simple. You say what you are going to do, you do it and whatever you have done has at least some positive impact on the people who elected you.
Several years ago I read a letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The author said he was a retired union roofer of residential houses. He noted that up to the late 1980s the vast majority of residential roofing work in the Twin Cities was done by union contractors for (in 2025 inflation-adjusted dollars) around $27/hour plus health insurance and other benefits.
But around 1990 the number of illegal immigrants increased significantly in his area, and union contractors began to lose out on jobs. Over a few years contractors using illegal labor (now $10-$12/hour, no benefits) got almost all the jobs, putting union roofers out of jobs. Those union roofers had been doing "jobs Americans won't do" as the pro-open borders crowd always says.
Whenever college-credentialed Wokesters ask why blue-collar workers vote heavily these days for Trump and other Republicans, tell them this story. There are thousands of similar stories all over the United States.
So much this. I put myself through college working construction for $10-$12 bucks an hour no benefits roughly 35 years ago and as a “summer help college boy” I was low man on the totem pole. The senior guys had nice houses and bass boats.
While I appreciate that both Halpin and the authors of the study are trying to help, the questions highlighted from the study are ridiculously oversimplified and almost designed to solicit a partisan response.
A solid example is a blanket question of whether or not regulations should be reduced. To your average laptop class employee this means allowing companies to go back to dumping toxic waste directly into our rivers. To your average small business owner this means maybe I don’t have to hire 3 lawyers and spend months going through red tape to expand my business.
The tariffs question is another one. Are we talking about applying tariffs on a country like China so that American workers aren’t forced to compete against both real and de facto slate labor along with minimal environmental regulations. Or are we talking about trying to reduce competition with countries that have equivalent labor and environmental regulations but can produce certain goods more cheaply?
Partisan nonsense aside, you should also keep in mind that people don’t support or oppose these policies so much as how they see the cost benefit analysis working out. Given that a solid focus for any of these is to remember that our states are the “laboratories of democracy” and there are several with single party control where most of these could be tried.
Maybe the solution for regaining working class allegiance is to first understand the working class. What I see here is a cafeteria of policy items nearly all of which are magnanimously bestowed upon workers in exchange for their votes. Everyone has their price and somehow clusters and clouds of data points are supposed to convey a true picture of what it would take to bribe that population back into the fold. The majority of these policies are narrow top down approaches that require legal frameworks and bureaucracies to enact and enforce. So jobs are generated but not exactly in the target group. Two of the items stood out for me as directly benefiting the working class, cutting government regulation and enacting a buy American policy for both federal and state purchases. Note that in the former approach government jobs will have to be exchanged for working class jobs as there will be fewer regulators and enforcers. Maybe the better approach should be what can the government stop doing to benefit blue collar workers. Which leads me to a second thought.
The working class is a socioeconomic entity -you can't just address the econ and ignore the socio. Start by affirming affection for our magnificent nation and acknowledge that though flawed we have a unique and vibrant country. Show respect toward our citizens by providing public safety, effective schools, secure borders, affordable energy, and merit based hiring. Lastly acknowledge that there was a massive betrayal of blue collar families by open border policies and swear that will never happen again. Maybe as an act of absolution repeat the kneeling scene in the Senate rotunda but substitute Kente cloth with Carharts and tool belts.
Like many others, Halpin is losing the forest for the trees. Tariffs are the tree. The forest for Republicans is rebuilding American industries that will generate good paying jobs. Tarrifs are a proxy for that overarching goal. Republicans support tariffs not because they are convinced of their economic utility, but because they are convinced Trump is focused on bringing good paying manufacturing industries back to America, and they'll give him latitude to do that. It's one tool of many Trump advocates to help the free market create new jobs. Deregulation and increasing foreign investment in the economy are other tools to achieve this goal. Will these efforts work? That's to be seen, but it's the focus on free market growth (in the manufacturing and energy industries, for example) that attracts working class Americans. Contrast that with the Democrats. Their approach to increasing working class prosperity is non-market based. It's focused on government policies that are aimed at redistributing wealth by increasing taxes on the wealthy and dedicating such revenues to federal and state programs aimed at subsidizing the poor and working classes. At the same time, Democrats advocate greater regulation of industry to counter "oligargic" and "preditory" practices. There are two fundementally different approaches to increasing working class prosperity. Which approach appeals more to working class voters will drive their allegiance.
***"government policies that are aimed at redistributing wealth by increasing taxes on the wealthy and dedicating such revenues to federal and state programs aimed at subsidizing the poor and working classes."***
Republicans are little different on this point now, since this is essentially what tariffs are--redistributive taxes on businesses to subsidize uncompetitive manufacturing firms and the people who work in manufacturing. In this way, the GOP has implemented one of the largest tax increases on businesses in U.S. history--more than anything the Democrats have ever passed.
Same goes for--
***"At the same time, Democrats advocate greater regulation of industry to counter "oligargic" and "preditory" practices."***
--as protectionism is just a way of regulating industry to counter the practice of importing. Both are attempts to control economic (and especially industrial) behavior, which is the opposite of 'free market' policies.
The biggest difference is that there's very little economic logic to the GOP's new protectionist policies, because, as you said, the GOP doesn't really care much about the utility of the policies themselves--they find it more important to let Trump do as he wants. Trump *is* their policy, which is a serious problem, because it's very clear the man doesn't understand how something as simple as trade deficits work, much less the nuances of international trade as a whole.
TW52 I don't think John was advocating for any particular policy with this article, just telling of an interesting survey.
I also think Trump and his advisors are not so enamored of the free market any more. Tariffs are for sure not letting the free market do it's thing. As the Republican Presidential primary candidate and "new conservative" Marco Rubio says, economies are to benefit people not people to benefit economies.
Trump, Vance, Rubio & Hawley are basically old school Blue Dog Democrats. This is what all of these “how do we rebuild the old Democrat coalition” pieces fail to understand.
No, those folks are actually a new species of authoritarian neoliberals--Blue Dogs would never have voted for the BBB and its handouts to billionaires paired with cuts to working-class social support. They certainly wouldn't have ever approved of an unelected billionaire making unilateral cuts to the government budget. Or huge reductions in government-funded scientific research, and economically-adjacent stuff like letting a patently unqualified former talkshow host run the military, or making a looney-tunes conspiracy theorist the head of HHS. And while some Blue Dogs were populist-ish, they didn't approach it like Tea Partiers. Trump, Vance, Rubio & Hawley essentially stapled Tea party Republicanism to a few populist policies--like tariffs--and authoritarian governance. (Although they had to shed the overtures to fiscal rigor to make the latter work) Whatever a rebuilt Democratic coalition might look like, new-fashioned authoritarian neoliberalism shouldn't be its basis.
Perhaps I just missed it , but how is it possible to discuss a working class economic policy with any seriousness, without any mention of 10 million 3rd world laborers, many willing to accept non Western wages, working conditions and legal protections?
A Texas friend tells the story of bidding the painting of a very large, 3 story lake house. The design of the house and the slope of the lot, renders parts of house actually 5 stories above the ground. Why not required by law, the height means scaffolding and safety harnesses have always been used in previous paintings.
He called 3 different painting companies in his area, after viewing examples of their work. The first 2 bids were $50K and $55K , the 3rd just $18K. The owner of the "new" business does not use scaffolding and safety harnesses, but rather a plethora of workers, extra long ladders, along with sprayers and brushes with extenders. A house that size and that tall, one does need Picasso level detail, because the vast majority of the exterior is way above eye level.
Ultimately the homeowner took the middle bid out of liability concerns, but many people will not. How does a painting contractor, compete against other providers, willing to forego regular safety precautions, whose costs make up a large portion of the bid? The short answer is, they do not. At least, not for long.
The first two bids sound lower than here, but then it's Texas. I would also assume both of the higher bids also used illegal labor, but they paid comp and withholding. If you don't pay comp, and withholding, sooner or later a disgruntled worker makes a claim and you are screwed. Also a business needs enough profit to cover all the incidentals. Here all painting is illegal workers except usually one guy who talks to the homeowner and can also speak Spanish. The fumes are pretty bad and no one wants to paint.
I suspect the $18K guy was very new to the business. Often they pay a daily rate and work them 12 hours plus.
Forget about working class, or any class. Think about Americans. Lots of people move through all the income quintiles over their life.
For example, my brother finished high school, worked on the farm, became a mechanic, took courses to qualify as a diesel mechanic doing warrantee work, lost his job, and was unemployed for weeks. He was married with three young children. He began serving former customers. When he got too busy he’d hire another person. Now in his 70’s is looking to sell a very valuable business.
What do Democrats offer that high school graduate just now starting out? A short term fix or a path to a lifetime of opportunity?
Absolutely agree on banning members of congress from stock speculation and for eliminating the SS tax. With AI on the horizon, the strongest effort possible to move large numbers of people, especially young men, into trades and blue-collar electrician, car repair, plumbing, and other mechanical jobs not suited to AI is a winner. Just no "minimum wage" laws as in Kollyfornia, where it's hurting the economy & sending millions fleeing. Wages dramatically improved for all under Trump 1. Unfortunately, Rutabaga's evil Covid inflation is making it harder now to replicate that.
My grandson tried college for a year, then transitioned into a electrical union program (mixture of classes and paid on-the-job training). Five years later he's a journeyman electrician, husband with stay-at-home wife, father to young child. No student loans. Edited to add: They are on their second house.
Are you seriously claiming the jobs you listed are 'not suited to AI?' Goodness you are in for a rude awakening.
I'd recommend obtaining an elementary of an understanding of a subject--especially something as weighty as the ways AI can be applied to labor automation--before opining on it.
To improve the lives and livelihoods of the working class, it would help to include the many small businesses who hire them in this discussion. Too much focus is put on big companies and not enough consideration goes to the itty bitty businesses that provide employment. Instead, all businesses get lumped together to the detriment of everyone.
My general rule of thumb for today is polls are worthless. There is nothing equal that makes answers of the left and intendants any more accurate, because they have never seen what Trump offers these days. The polls can't judge attitudes, opinions, today because the Republicans, Trump, have only been in office 9 months. Then Dems had the last four years, and the actual truth about what they did is still coming out. You want tl get elected, go spend massive amounts of time with those you represent to see what they said face to face.
If I polled my employee on that they wanted, they would all poll as wanting to be paid more, have more paid vacation, to be able to work from home, and work fewer hours and have fewer work responsibilities and stress.
And if I gave all these things to them, the company would fail and they would lose their jobs.
Sure politics has to factor voter interests, but the reason we have a representative form of governance and not a pure democracy is because people will vote for what they want and not what they need.
Real leadership will move forward an agenda for what constituents need. Many will be dragged kicking and screaming toward the changes that result in positive outcomes.
I think the challenge here is that the media, the fifth branch of governance that used to help explain complex ideas to the masses of low attention span people, is not only NOT explaining things... but they are purposely fomenting confusion, conflict and misinformation. That then makes the challenge of real problem-solving leadership even more difficult. Because the people need to be explained how a politic direction will target outcomes that would benefit them in the long-run.
With our media being so broken, our system of democratic representative governance is broken. That is why a command and control communist system like China starts to look more appealing. The Chinese get things done because they don't care what the people want, and work to give them what they need.
However, this comes at a great cost of the loss of individual autonomy and liberty. What we need in this country is media reform or some other public service that explains the complex political concepts to the people. For example, tariffs are short-term pain for long-term gain supporting re-shoring of US industry and manufacturing and reducing the massive US trade deficit.
The other day while playing with wealth distribution numbers to see just how wealthy I am I noticed a funny thing. The top 1% have about a third of wealth, the 9% of families below them have another third of the wealth, and the 40% below them have about another third of the wealth. The bottom half of households have nothing. Something ain't right and it's not just the 1%.
The only time I've seen wages and conditions improve for that bottom 50% of workers is during early covid. The border was almost closed, many people had left and gone south because all the service industries were shut down. Supply and demand is simple, and true. The one thing I don't see on this poll of Center for Working Class whatevers is illegal immigration.
I'm not a genius like all of these NGOs doing studies but if you bring 10 million low wage workers into an economy I'd think there might just maybe be a corresponding downward pressure on wages, upwards pressure on rents, and some real busy emergency rooms being used as primary care.
Yet these low wage workers, unfussy about what jobs they did, were key to the economic health of the country as a whole. Before the pandemic my son worked as a foreman for a company that specialized in replacing the insulation in attics, after fires, water events, and wildlife Infestations. The work was hard in often brutally hot conditions, in tyvek suits and respirators in attics where the temperatures that sometimes exceeded 140°F. It paid well, new hires with no previous experience were brought on at $20 per hour and could be at $30 within a couple of months. White American citizens often flaked out after as little as a day. Blacks often took one look at the work and decided to leave after lunch. Only the Hispanics, in particular the illegals, tended to stick around.
As our native born population ages and becomes better educated, we are going to have to figure out how to find enough people to do the mind of dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs that we have been telling our kids are beneath them. Uncontrolled immigration is risky, but zeroing out immigration is a recipe for stagflation. And our legal immigration protocols take far too long to admit far too few people, which is why so many illegal indie can find so many employers willing to look the other way.
The pay is way too low. You can't expect people to do work like that for $20. Those are poverty wages. Also, it has nothing to do with race.
I've run crews in the arctic in the winter, outside crews, 16 hour days. On the reservation at Fort Peck, in the cypress swamps in east Texas. Way out offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Inuit, Indian, Black, White, all people are good workers if they have a chance to get used to a job, learn what they are doing, and above all else pay a decent wage to fit the job.
How do you think they get people to work 12 hour shifts soaking wet with diesel based drilling mud tripping pipe on drill rigs? It's dirty dangerous work, no stupid people allowed, work as a team. They pay.
We have record numbers of American Men out of the job market entirely, because some a___ole is saving a buck by breaking the law. I'd like to see serious prison time for employers who break the law. No one should brag about screwing over American workers.
Sounds like you were in the oil business. The difference is that your projects made people money; the result of your efforts was the production of a marketable product (as long as oil stays above a certain price). And, while there were hazards to my son's work, they were nothing like those associated with wildcatting. Nobody loses an arm while raking up urine soaked insulation.
My son's work was in remediation was paid for by insurance; the lowest bid wins, because the insurance companies are competing on price to their customers. If you raise your bid to pay workers more, you win less work, your workers end up staying home, and they find other jobs, and your crew dissolves.
And I don't know if you know how the insurance business works...The company doing the reconstruction has to front all the material and labor costs, while the insurer can take a couple of months to pay. You end up being their banker. If they have cut a check to the homeowner, it usually has had the deductible taken out and is based on a formula based on previous years' costs. So the homeowner is also looking for the lowest bid, so that they pay as little out of pocket as possible.
And then we have drugs, which have rendered so much of the native workforce useless. The illegals, understandably wary of doing anything that might result in contact with the law, tend to stay clean. A great many white workers tend to disappear after their first paycheck.
This happened on a job that I recently worked: I was hanging doors and installing trim alongside a husband and wife team, who we're laying vinyl plank flooring. They would finish a room and I would install the trim. They reached a previously agreed.pay point and the customer cut them a check so they could deposit it whole getting lunch. They never returned and I had to finish their work, so that I could finish mine. The wife later came back to get their tools; husband was in the hospital after an overdose. Same thing happened to a member of my extended family. After repeated rounds of rehab, he gets sober long enough to train as an HVAC tech. My sister in law hires him to install a mini split in their garage and pays him $1500 for his work. The next time they saw him was in a casket at his funeral.
The reason why so many employers break the law: they want to get the work done and today's kids, those that aren't halfway to the grave with drugs, have been told that these jobs are beneath them.
Stop the government benefits for people that can work but refuse, and these jobs will begin to look a lot better to them.
"Oligarchy" rings very hollow when ranted by stock-trading members of congress.
Great data. It does make me think that iit will be hard to win on what you call economic messages. I do think the developers of this survey may have missed how immigration plays out as an economic issue. However putting that aside my takeaway is that whichever party engenders trust will win and then they have 4 years to prove their economic plans help. If they don’t and more importantly if they lose trust and they are at best the same they are going to lose. I believe this is why cultural issues are so important. They are easier to quickly show the party is trustworthy than most economic issues unless you go over a cliff on economic ones like Biden and the Democratic Party. When you name a bill inflation reduction only to have inflation go through the roof you are pretty much …. Trust is really simple. You say what you are going to do, you do it and whatever you have done has at least some positive impact on the people who elected you.
like this-- "You say what you are going to do, you do it and whatever you have done has at least some positive impact on the people who elected you."
Several years ago I read a letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The author said he was a retired union roofer of residential houses. He noted that up to the late 1980s the vast majority of residential roofing work in the Twin Cities was done by union contractors for (in 2025 inflation-adjusted dollars) around $27/hour plus health insurance and other benefits.
But around 1990 the number of illegal immigrants increased significantly in his area, and union contractors began to lose out on jobs. Over a few years contractors using illegal labor (now $10-$12/hour, no benefits) got almost all the jobs, putting union roofers out of jobs. Those union roofers had been doing "jobs Americans won't do" as the pro-open borders crowd always says.
Whenever college-credentialed Wokesters ask why blue-collar workers vote heavily these days for Trump and other Republicans, tell them this story. There are thousands of similar stories all over the United States.
Same with carpenters.
So much this. I put myself through college working construction for $10-$12 bucks an hour no benefits roughly 35 years ago and as a “summer help college boy” I was low man on the totem pole. The senior guys had nice houses and bass boats.
"Quirky and somewhat incoherent." Good definition of America for the last 250 years, John!
While I appreciate that both Halpin and the authors of the study are trying to help, the questions highlighted from the study are ridiculously oversimplified and almost designed to solicit a partisan response.
A solid example is a blanket question of whether or not regulations should be reduced. To your average laptop class employee this means allowing companies to go back to dumping toxic waste directly into our rivers. To your average small business owner this means maybe I don’t have to hire 3 lawyers and spend months going through red tape to expand my business.
The tariffs question is another one. Are we talking about applying tariffs on a country like China so that American workers aren’t forced to compete against both real and de facto slate labor along with minimal environmental regulations. Or are we talking about trying to reduce competition with countries that have equivalent labor and environmental regulations but can produce certain goods more cheaply?
Partisan nonsense aside, you should also keep in mind that people don’t support or oppose these policies so much as how they see the cost benefit analysis working out. Given that a solid focus for any of these is to remember that our states are the “laboratories of democracy” and there are several with single party control where most of these could be tried.
Maybe the solution for regaining working class allegiance is to first understand the working class. What I see here is a cafeteria of policy items nearly all of which are magnanimously bestowed upon workers in exchange for their votes. Everyone has their price and somehow clusters and clouds of data points are supposed to convey a true picture of what it would take to bribe that population back into the fold. The majority of these policies are narrow top down approaches that require legal frameworks and bureaucracies to enact and enforce. So jobs are generated but not exactly in the target group. Two of the items stood out for me as directly benefiting the working class, cutting government regulation and enacting a buy American policy for both federal and state purchases. Note that in the former approach government jobs will have to be exchanged for working class jobs as there will be fewer regulators and enforcers. Maybe the better approach should be what can the government stop doing to benefit blue collar workers. Which leads me to a second thought.
The working class is a socioeconomic entity -you can't just address the econ and ignore the socio. Start by affirming affection for our magnificent nation and acknowledge that though flawed we have a unique and vibrant country. Show respect toward our citizens by providing public safety, effective schools, secure borders, affordable energy, and merit based hiring. Lastly acknowledge that there was a massive betrayal of blue collar families by open border policies and swear that will never happen again. Maybe as an act of absolution repeat the kneeling scene in the Senate rotunda but substitute Kente cloth with Carharts and tool belts.
Like many others, Halpin is losing the forest for the trees. Tariffs are the tree. The forest for Republicans is rebuilding American industries that will generate good paying jobs. Tarrifs are a proxy for that overarching goal. Republicans support tariffs not because they are convinced of their economic utility, but because they are convinced Trump is focused on bringing good paying manufacturing industries back to America, and they'll give him latitude to do that. It's one tool of many Trump advocates to help the free market create new jobs. Deregulation and increasing foreign investment in the economy are other tools to achieve this goal. Will these efforts work? That's to be seen, but it's the focus on free market growth (in the manufacturing and energy industries, for example) that attracts working class Americans. Contrast that with the Democrats. Their approach to increasing working class prosperity is non-market based. It's focused on government policies that are aimed at redistributing wealth by increasing taxes on the wealthy and dedicating such revenues to federal and state programs aimed at subsidizing the poor and working classes. At the same time, Democrats advocate greater regulation of industry to counter "oligargic" and "preditory" practices. There are two fundementally different approaches to increasing working class prosperity. Which approach appeals more to working class voters will drive their allegiance.
***"government policies that are aimed at redistributing wealth by increasing taxes on the wealthy and dedicating such revenues to federal and state programs aimed at subsidizing the poor and working classes."***
Republicans are little different on this point now, since this is essentially what tariffs are--redistributive taxes on businesses to subsidize uncompetitive manufacturing firms and the people who work in manufacturing. In this way, the GOP has implemented one of the largest tax increases on businesses in U.S. history--more than anything the Democrats have ever passed.
Same goes for--
***"At the same time, Democrats advocate greater regulation of industry to counter "oligargic" and "preditory" practices."***
--as protectionism is just a way of regulating industry to counter the practice of importing. Both are attempts to control economic (and especially industrial) behavior, which is the opposite of 'free market' policies.
The biggest difference is that there's very little economic logic to the GOP's new protectionist policies, because, as you said, the GOP doesn't really care much about the utility of the policies themselves--they find it more important to let Trump do as he wants. Trump *is* their policy, which is a serious problem, because it's very clear the man doesn't understand how something as simple as trade deficits work, much less the nuances of international trade as a whole.
TW52 I don't think John was advocating for any particular policy with this article, just telling of an interesting survey.
I also think Trump and his advisors are not so enamored of the free market any more. Tariffs are for sure not letting the free market do it's thing. As the Republican Presidential primary candidate and "new conservative" Marco Rubio says, economies are to benefit people not people to benefit economies.
Trump, Vance, Rubio & Hawley are basically old school Blue Dog Democrats. This is what all of these “how do we rebuild the old Democrat coalition” pieces fail to understand.
No, those folks are actually a new species of authoritarian neoliberals--Blue Dogs would never have voted for the BBB and its handouts to billionaires paired with cuts to working-class social support. They certainly wouldn't have ever approved of an unelected billionaire making unilateral cuts to the government budget. Or huge reductions in government-funded scientific research, and economically-adjacent stuff like letting a patently unqualified former talkshow host run the military, or making a looney-tunes conspiracy theorist the head of HHS. And while some Blue Dogs were populist-ish, they didn't approach it like Tea Partiers. Trump, Vance, Rubio & Hawley essentially stapled Tea party Republicanism to a few populist policies--like tariffs--and authoritarian governance. (Although they had to shed the overtures to fiscal rigor to make the latter work) Whatever a rebuilt Democratic coalition might look like, new-fashioned authoritarian neoliberalism shouldn't be its basis.
This does some work explaining how folks ping pong back and forth in voting patterns. It’s a well done study.
Perhaps I just missed it , but how is it possible to discuss a working class economic policy with any seriousness, without any mention of 10 million 3rd world laborers, many willing to accept non Western wages, working conditions and legal protections?
A Texas friend tells the story of bidding the painting of a very large, 3 story lake house. The design of the house and the slope of the lot, renders parts of house actually 5 stories above the ground. Why not required by law, the height means scaffolding and safety harnesses have always been used in previous paintings.
He called 3 different painting companies in his area, after viewing examples of their work. The first 2 bids were $50K and $55K , the 3rd just $18K. The owner of the "new" business does not use scaffolding and safety harnesses, but rather a plethora of workers, extra long ladders, along with sprayers and brushes with extenders. A house that size and that tall, one does need Picasso level detail, because the vast majority of the exterior is way above eye level.
Ultimately the homeowner took the middle bid out of liability concerns, but many people will not. How does a painting contractor, compete against other providers, willing to forego regular safety precautions, whose costs make up a large portion of the bid? The short answer is, they do not. At least, not for long.
The first two bids sound lower than here, but then it's Texas. I would also assume both of the higher bids also used illegal labor, but they paid comp and withholding. If you don't pay comp, and withholding, sooner or later a disgruntled worker makes a claim and you are screwed. Also a business needs enough profit to cover all the incidentals. Here all painting is illegal workers except usually one guy who talks to the homeowner and can also speak Spanish. The fumes are pretty bad and no one wants to paint.
I suspect the $18K guy was very new to the business. Often they pay a daily rate and work them 12 hours plus.
Forget about working class, or any class. Think about Americans. Lots of people move through all the income quintiles over their life.
For example, my brother finished high school, worked on the farm, became a mechanic, took courses to qualify as a diesel mechanic doing warrantee work, lost his job, and was unemployed for weeks. He was married with three young children. He began serving former customers. When he got too busy he’d hire another person. Now in his 70’s is looking to sell a very valuable business.
What do Democrats offer that high school graduate just now starting out? A short term fix or a path to a lifetime of opportunity?
Absolutely agree on banning members of congress from stock speculation and for eliminating the SS tax. With AI on the horizon, the strongest effort possible to move large numbers of people, especially young men, into trades and blue-collar electrician, car repair, plumbing, and other mechanical jobs not suited to AI is a winner. Just no "minimum wage" laws as in Kollyfornia, where it's hurting the economy & sending millions fleeing. Wages dramatically improved for all under Trump 1. Unfortunately, Rutabaga's evil Covid inflation is making it harder now to replicate that.
My grandson tried college for a year, then transitioned into a electrical union program (mixture of classes and paid on-the-job training). Five years later he's a journeyman electrician, husband with stay-at-home wife, father to young child. No student loans. Edited to add: They are on their second house.
It can be done.
Are you seriously claiming the jobs you listed are 'not suited to AI?' Goodness you are in for a rude awakening.
I'd recommend obtaining an elementary of an understanding of a subject--especially something as weighty as the ways AI can be applied to labor automation--before opining on it.
To improve the lives and livelihoods of the working class, it would help to include the many small businesses who hire them in this discussion. Too much focus is put on big companies and not enough consideration goes to the itty bitty businesses that provide employment. Instead, all businesses get lumped together to the detriment of everyone.
My general rule of thumb for today is polls are worthless. There is nothing equal that makes answers of the left and intendants any more accurate, because they have never seen what Trump offers these days. The polls can't judge attitudes, opinions, today because the Republicans, Trump, have only been in office 9 months. Then Dems had the last four years, and the actual truth about what they did is still coming out. You want tl get elected, go spend massive amounts of time with those you represent to see what they said face to face.
If I polled my employee on that they wanted, they would all poll as wanting to be paid more, have more paid vacation, to be able to work from home, and work fewer hours and have fewer work responsibilities and stress.
And if I gave all these things to them, the company would fail and they would lose their jobs.
Sure politics has to factor voter interests, but the reason we have a representative form of governance and not a pure democracy is because people will vote for what they want and not what they need.
Real leadership will move forward an agenda for what constituents need. Many will be dragged kicking and screaming toward the changes that result in positive outcomes.
I think the challenge here is that the media, the fifth branch of governance that used to help explain complex ideas to the masses of low attention span people, is not only NOT explaining things... but they are purposely fomenting confusion, conflict and misinformation. That then makes the challenge of real problem-solving leadership even more difficult. Because the people need to be explained how a politic direction will target outcomes that would benefit them in the long-run.
With our media being so broken, our system of democratic representative governance is broken. That is why a command and control communist system like China starts to look more appealing. The Chinese get things done because they don't care what the people want, and work to give them what they need.
However, this comes at a great cost of the loss of individual autonomy and liberty. What we need in this country is media reform or some other public service that explains the complex political concepts to the people. For example, tariffs are short-term pain for long-term gain supporting re-shoring of US industry and manufacturing and reducing the massive US trade deficit.