The Dems have continuously hemorrhaged middle to lower class non-urban white collar moderates (Blue Dogs, southern states...). They are still a relevant faction, but seemingly on the lost end of the progressive narrative that paints them as out of touch or something worse. I've been guilty of using that narrative because I think their entitlement angst of not feeling entitled enough is amusing (The persecuted like the early Christians!), but that neither party is addressing their situation directly and assuming their vote is guaranteed will lead us to another mess like Trump/Cruz or worse.
You wrote a lot of things which I can't touch upon due to limitation in time and to be frank, limits of my knowledge. But yes, neoliberalism isn't the cause nor is gov't really the cause - and there is nothing that really can be done. Even if taxes had remained what they are this process would still happen. America of the 60's was built upon labor having negotiating power just as you said. But so long as there are million of workers available at $1/hr, labor has no negotiating power, and stagnation is the result. Corporations are empowered now, and what we are seeing is that wages will stagnate until the whole world is on par. It's reverse colonization in a way, the revenge of the 3rd world. Their growth comes at our expense, and American corporations reap the rewards.
No, that is what historians tell everyone because it is factually what happened. Please, get an education, your ignorance is stunning.
I have to disagree, subtomic. Sure, I could be wrong, but in my opinion, it wasn't the Boomers who were "responsible" for Reagan. It was their parents.
I disagree with that being an inevitable result. Total wealth isn't always about gaining at the expense of someone else losing. The basic idea of inflation comes from the premise of continuous population growth. Ideas and innovation can create new streams of wealth previously unimagined. While scarcity is another principle of economics, wealth and value isn't necessarily tied to physical resources. North America is uniquely positioned to deal with future catastrophes. It's just that with everything being integrated the way they are, no one will be left unscathed by one. Compared to a lot of other countries, it has a lot going for it. The worry among a lot of Americans comes from a privileged and entitled view...that their future children will live off better than the excesses we live today. At this point in time, our excesses look extremely unsustainable.
Their parents also supported Reagan but both early and late Boomers were his biggest support (and there were a lot more of them than there were of the previous generations). Check this out: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/05/us/making-mark-on-politics-baby-boomers-appear-to-rally-around-reagan.html?pagewanted=all In any case, the issue isn't who voted for Reagan then, but who still supports his trickle down economics and welfare queen cheat narratives. Those who do are the people who vote Republican, and they're overwhelmingly made up of Baby Boomers now (you of course being a vocal exception). In response to Sweet Lou, Trump is not a tea party candidate. He shares many of their views, but lacks their evangelical bent.
Most everyone gets more conservative the older they get, as they take on the responsibilities of protecting their families and promoting their progeny. It's an unforgiving world out there. Some people have a different sense of scale for their responsibilities, not just family or friends but all their countrymen or everyone on the planet, or the human race's continued existence. It's an unforgiving universe out there.
The U.S. election system puts a heavy incentive in favor of a two-party setup. The country has basically had two major parties for the vast majority of its history and I don't expect this to end. Each party is an alliance of people with different interests. What is likely to happen, and what has happened before, is a shift in who belongs to each of the two parties. In the way that southern Democrats moved to the GOP after the Civil Rights Movement and the Southern Strategy, I wonder if some of the current members of the Republican party are rethinking whether it is in their interest to ally with the Trumpists as oppose to, say, the centrist Democrats like Hillary (who is, to the disgust of Bernie's supporters, pretty friendly with business and Wall Street interests).
You raise an interesting question - was the standard of living in the 60's sustainable? That time when someone could work at a manufacturing job and buy a home, a stay-at-home spouse, and 2 kids. You didnt' need a college education. Today, you need a college education and two people working good jobs to make rent in an urban center. But I am not really talking about wealth or inflation. The issue is one of competition for the labor market. The amount of wealth created in the last 30 years is incredible. Incredible. There is more wealth today than I think was imaginable 100 years ago. But that wealth is not going to average people. Right now it's going to the lucky few and to those recovering from colonialism and can work for a few dollars a day to make a living. So maybe once the entire world catches up and there is no place else for businesses to find cheap labor, labor prices will go up - and that will be inflationary and we will return to our normally scheduled business cycle. But to think that corporations are going to stop being profit driven isn't believable. Let's look at one case in point. The airline industry. It used to be that air travel was glamorous - perks, meals, legroom, etc. Now today the airline industry is doing better than ever. The last 10 years have seen the best profits ever. And air travel has declined to be the most miserable thing. It goes in one direction - towards squeezing more out of anything.
Are people really arguing about whether the Southern strategy happened or not? The mercantilism point of view of trade, where one "loses" and another "wins", has unfortunately gained steam in this globalization period. Trade is a mutual gain action. It's another economic activity, and the majority of industries face more competition domestically than internationally. Only 2 percent of the layoffs in the past five years are affiliated with outsourcing. This includes all outsourcing categories - IT, manufacturing, etc. The U.S. created & destroyed around 30 million jobs in 2003 (last numbers I could find), based on Business Employment Dynamics survey of the Bureau of Labor statistics. Estimates say that job outflows account for about 1% of the job destruction. More evidence suggests that workers are able to find another job similar as to if they were laid off in other fashions (believe the stats are 2/3 similar pay, 1/3 pay reduction). Realize protectionism is also, to simplify, tax payers paying for the support of some people's jobs. If you were to be asked on your returns "Would you want to donate $50 to support the sugar farmers in Florida?", how many would check the box? Supporting these jobs are inefficient; it costs tax payer money, and lowers purchasing power (goods are made cheaper overseas), and empirical evidence suggests workers are able to transition effectively to other employment. Some people worry that because net gains *may* go to the capital owners, it'll increase income inequality. We can address income inequality in other areas to off-set this. If the GOP keep trumping this horn (louder than the Dems), it'll keep driving away more conservative economists, something already in affect. Taking more losses.
Spoiler That depends on where the family wants to live and whether they can afford its cost of living or moving to another city. It also depends on what the family spends on to make due. There are indeed more than a sane amount of families taking in food assistance from the government, but what exactly are they spending on to make due? It's a very conservative point of view, but if you can't make rent in a neighborhood in sf while earning 70k a year, you could do pretty damn well in almost any other city in the US if the same job is there. On the point of inequality, it's more fluid and dynamic here than in a place like Japan or Western Europe. We also have to consider mobility, which hasn't been doing well lately. Spoiler I will not likely own my own island or a house perched on top of a scenic mountain, but thanks to my parents, I will live a standard of living far better than they initially did. A lot of Americans have reaped benefits and luxuries from globalization. I have more credit cards than I possibly need if only to raise my total limit and cash in on their bonuses. There's now decentralized automated lending that bypasses traditional banks. Your iphone is a technological and logistical marvel that graces the pockets of average people. In it are parts shipped across the world with specifications with less than a thousandth percent degree of deviation. It's totally under appreciated and I can't imagine owning another Microsoft brick phone that was hammered in like parts from a Detroit assembly line. Even it's hand me down phones like a Galaxy class phone boasts competitive specs without the price tag attached to a status symbol. People have more distractions and toys than ever before. Televisions and appliances are far cheaper than their previous prices even when unadjusted for inflation. An average wage owner can buy a toy helicopter, pilot it with their phone, take video and pictures with it, and play it either on their phone, laptop, or television. Unfortunately these same people are the voting public who want the giant boats, golden toilets, and other ridiculously useless status symbols to the point where there's enough to vote against their better interests. If we were a little bit less selfish and covetous, maybe we'd give a **** about voting for decisions that benefit poorer people. But maybe they're potential new neighbors diluting a protectionist's already precious supply of labor. We should keep a watchful eye on that and build a wall to sort that out. Spoiler First, I will guarantee that the world will never normalize in labor costs. From a cynical pov, we have had the means to solve world hunger 30-40 years ago. But much like labor hasn't normalized within the US despite sharing the same currency, the world would be a bigger jumble of actors that'd make Merkel visibly shed a tear. Second, corporations can be less profit driven. Europeans have an entirely different conception of work, business, and standards of living. Even without the Sanders-esque Europe pitch, which hard working puritanical Americans would consider a sinful practice in idleness, the current way corporations operate today is different than it was in the 60s. This hbr article proposes a third era of consumer driven capitalism. Money and finance will become more abstract and more left in the control of automation. Evil fatcat bankers might be a 2 dimensional black and white caricature in a couple decades... Spoiler Air travel is a bad case in point against profit driven corporations and deregulation because more people are flying it and the tickets are the cheapest its ever been. http://www.theatlantic.com/business...50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/ Heck, a ticket purchased 30 years ago adjusted to inflation would cost a first class ticket that would entail glamorous perks, meals, drinks, legroom, etc... From a purely old school economic POV, deregulation benefited a lot of sectors more than it harmed some others. For something like air travel, we now have to consider externalities such as carbon emissions that affect public goods and impact the price of the individual. It's been an interesting segue. I guess it can be a side topic about the GOP losing the intellectual focus on the economy from which it had a stranglehold over until the Clinton era. It's like they've been suffering PTSD since elder Bush's utterance of "No New Taxes" and have retreated into safe padded corners drawn by the likes of Grover Norquist anytime it's brought up in a reasonable discussion. These assholes are treating tax proposals like the NRA's positions on gun regulation. The sad fact is that leadership from both parties worship globalization and free reign of corporations to sneak in dick moves like moving plants to other states or countries to cash a fat tax check paid in part by taxpayers or future taxpayers. There's no real discussion about why this is a legitimate economic stance or practice. Without that, you'll have people voting in the Trumps and Sanderesses because they might not be able to explain the bull**** but they can smell it a mile away.
What is conservatism? There is no direct connection between social/religious conservatism ( traditional biblical social order) and financial conservatism (low tax, low regulation). Financial conservatism conflicts with resource conservation. I guess this is how a basic conservative principle became liberal cause. It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world,.
Where is the party that is fiscally conservative without all the religious nutcase leadership?? Sign me up.
The buying power of 70K today job vs the buying power of an equivalent job 30 years ago is less overall. Yes, electronic goods are more accessible. Most imported good are. But if you look at the things that make up a growing expense for people - housing, healthcare, and education - it's far less. If you had a manufacturing job in the 60's paying you $20/hr and it is now replaced by a service sector job paying you $20/hr - you're doing a lot worse off. And that's how globalization has had a negative impact. An engineer could make $50k in the 1980's coming out of school. 30 years later, they might $75k. So while prices have doubled overall, their income has only increased 50%. Mobility is restrained also by where you can find a job. Most people have to follow their work. I think people are not stressed about boats and status symbols but things like cost of health care, education, and rent. So you agree that our stagnation may be inevitable - what else would lift us out? I just can't see that happening. Europeans also have much more accessible and affordable health care and education - which takes incredible pressure off of them and makes their standard of living higher. The U.S. is so anti-socialism I can't see how we'd ever get there. The irony is that everyone talks about deregulation and letting business do what is best and capitalism will make the best decisions. Isnt' that what globalization is? It's no wonder that Trump is ruffling so many Republican feathers with his anti-globalization stance (and why it can appeal to many labor folks) - he is essentially saying that American companies shouldn't be allowed to get cheap labor over seas. People need to make a choice about how their country should look. Right now people are so upset about people getting gov't handouts they don't realize that those handouts count for drops in the ocean of what is out there - and that there is more than enough wealth to provide for a better life for them for all the hard work they have put in, but they simply don't get how little they are getting compensated for all that hard work. or maybe it is dawning on them and that's where all this anger is coming from.
Is This the Libertarian Party's Moment? http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/libertarian-election-clinton-trump/481719/ Probably not since libertarians shun organization by doctrine.
Spoiler I agree in principle. My point was about the excessive lending from people who didn't have the wages and used the value of their houses as collateral. At that point in time, it wasn't about healthcare, education, and rent. It's that culture, where spending is your patriotic duty, that's part of the rot gripping our gilded society. We believe in the lies media experts and advertisements tell. Spoiler Stagnation and wage depression is not inevitable. It's not even certain China will escape the middle income trap. What I mean from my reply is that companies look for many things in choosing destinations: tax situation, cultural history, labor sophistication, government safety net, government stability, existing infrastructure, location, employee values,etc... Why is it that wages in Appalachia aren't the same in Denver Colorado? Their dollars are as good as yours. This might seem contradictory to what I wrote before, as I'm pro tax enforcement and for limiting corporations on certain things. The difference is that those two are one among many other factors the U.S.is very competitive in. Or was... if we keep tearing apart those foundations we take for granted. The people have been led to believe by both parties that those two factors are the only ways to keep competitive and being pro business. Shareholders punish market cap because of those weighted decisions. Media pundits and experts never question why they're the only basis in order to be competitive. Spoiler The hours Americans work is relatively brutal compared to the rest of the industrial world outside Japan. I think many Americans are starting to feel that hard work is not enough and ridiculous wealth is sometimes either underserved or disproportionate to what the billionaire contributed. Spoiler Yup. While that globalization train had left the station, Europe and rising nations are dealing with the problem in their own ways sometimes rejecting our system outright. Total agreement that the people gave to demand the change outright. Hopefully we'll still believe in demonstrating and protesting rather than assuming they're all cleverly executed false flag operations. The alternative is much scarier.
A large enough portion of white men had consistent work and prosperity from college education, corporate employment and then expanding retail and domestic manufacturing that they didn't expect to rely on welfare, which meant a larger portion of it went to blacks and loose women; who they never stopped marginalizing.
