So, this is going to be my big elevator pitch to Trumpers. There's a lot of talk about Trump wanting to "make America great again", but what does that really mean? If you ask an SJW, they'll say it's about going back to an era of white supremacy where Jim crow was in effect, women were in the kitchen, and gay people were persecuted. While there are many conservatives who do want some variation of those things, and Trump has not exactly disavowed them, that doesn't explain his winning coalition in 2016 and 2024. That explains the conservative die hards whose minds cannot be changed, and are outright conservative culture warriors who want to go back to the past.
No, what draws people to Trump, especially newer voters and more independent voters is, basically anomie. It's basically a disconnect between our society, its norms, and its values. It's the loss in living standards that we've engaged with over the previous forty years of globalization. It's the loss of economic security. Fifty years ago someone could graduate high school, go down to the local factory, get a job there, work at it for forty years, retire with a nice watch, and they were basically set for life. Nowadays, you gotta apply to like 100 jobs on indeed, not hear back from 90 of them, get strung along on 9 of them, and then basically get one offer, which offers wages you can't live on, no economic security, no healthcare benefits (and Obamacare does little for you...), no stable schedule, etc. But you better kiss your bosses butt or they'll fire you in a heartbeat for one of the many willing and desperate workers wanting to replace you.
Trump promises you a way forward. He's going to take on the corporations who ship jobs overseas by putting tariffs on them and encouraging "America first" manufacturing, an he's going to deport all of those darned illegal immigrants who are stealing your jobs.
But the fact is....these issues are only a small part of the problem. The core problem is capitalism itself. I know that this isn't something people always want to hear, but while capitalism is a great wealth creator, it's a horrible wealth distributor. It is an inhuman and inhumane process of production that while terrifyingly efficient, is also terrifyingly cruel and merciless to the workers who make it happen. This is because in capitalism, the working classes do the work that was generally regarded as what the slaves and serfs did in prior systems. You're all little people, the wealthy control everything, and they want to keep you enslaved forever while they increase their profits year after year. They dont care about you. They don't hire you out of the goodness of their hearts. Jobs don't exist for the workers, they exist for production.
The left understands this. I'm not going to go full Marxist or communist on you. We all know that crap doesn't work, and should never be repeated. Replacing the market with an all powerful all knowing government doesn't solve everything, but makes the problem worse. I am, ultimately, a capitalist, but I am a liberal capitalist. A social democratic capitalist. A human centered capitalist. I understand the struggles you face in your lives, the economic precarity, the oppressive bosses, the feeling that the system isn't working for you, and I want to fix it. But to fix it, you gotta come at these problems from the left.
The earliest forms of capitalist resistance came from the unions. If one worker quits, the wealthy don't bat an eye, they'll just replace you with another willing and desperate worker, if not here, then somewhere overseas, but if everyone quits at once, they all lose their minds. Unions are organized resistance to capitalism and oppressive employment conditions, and they base their resistance on their power to quit and strike, forcing employers to improve conditions. I'm not saying unions are perfect. They can be corrupt, in bed with special interests, not representative of the people. But they generally do the job. It is because of the unions you have the gains that you have. 40 hour work weeks, relatively safe working conditions, weekends, decent pay. Without unions, capitalism would suck a lot more than it did.
If anything, the reason your jobs and lives suck so much now is because of the destruction of the unions 40 years ago, between Reagan being anti union, and free trade agreements shipping all of those anti union jobs overseas. Trump pandered to unions in 2024 just now, but is he actually going to do anything for them? I don't think so. He's still a conservative. he has the same ideology as Reagan, just with nationalist characteristics. He offers you nothing. If anything, Biden did much of what you said you wanted through things like the CHIPS act. Create jobs in America. Bring industry here. But it isn't about the jobs, is it? If they arent in the right place, and aimed at those with the right skill level (and many people left behind in the past four decades don't have the right qualifications), then it doesn't matter. It also doesn't matter if inflation is running amok either, right?
Well, under capitalism, you must choose. Unemployment, or inflation, choose one. If you have truly full employment, you start to have inflation. Remember the "nobody wants to work any more" stuff back in 2021 ans 2022? yeah, we had too many jobs post COVID, and not enough people to fill them. Instead of blaming people for not filling the jobs, blame the economy for producing them. We can produce as many jobs as we want. We can incentivize the government to create more than enough jobs for everyone. But then if we did that, inflation would be the result. Wages would go up, the cost of living would go up, and that would lead to workers making wages go up. So you can't win either way.
So what do we do? Well, for conservatives, they just think if you give the rich people more money, they'll create more jobs. But the rich already have more money than ever, why aren't they creating jobs? Because jobs aren't in their interest. And we do control how many jobs are created through the fed rate in the federal reserve. Higher interest rates means businesses create fewer jobs, lower rates mean more. We can create tons of jobs. But the jobs we create often suck. They're not gonna create factory jobs in an era in which they can either automate that stuff, or ship it overseas. The fact is, they dont want to give you that standard of living again. And even if we did do it, that just means higher costs here, meaning more inflation. You understand that for all the complaining you guys did about Biden causing inflation, that trump's policies are highly inflationary right? Normally it's not too much of a problem, because we're normally on the unemployment side of the phillips curve. But we already have full employment now post COVID, we just got over that initial wave of inflation, and basically, Trump is gonna put tariffs on everything, making everything more expensive....and causing more inflation. Oops. Regretting your Trump vote yet?
This is why if you want to solve problems, you gotta move left. If you wanted the perfect laissez faire economy with full employment and...at least after 2022, relatively low inflation, we already got it. Biden's economy accomplished that. But we don't actually want that, do we? So what do we do? We gotta move left. The New Deal is what made America great in the first place. It's what gave us that booming post WWII economy, where incomes of those at the bottom and middle grew and we boasted the highest standard of living in the world. Abandoning that is what caused the decline. Which means bringing back the unions. It means regulations to improve working conditions. It means raising wages. It means social programs. Keep in mind, Medicare and Social Security made America great for seniors. The Great Society, while controversial, established a basic safety net that, that while not perfect, is better than literally nothing at all. High taxes on the rich forced businesses to invest in their companies, creating more jobs and paying people more. Trickle down economics does work, it just works like a pinata. You gotta hit it a few times before the good stuff "trickles down."
And you know what? Even if we did all that, and made America Great Again, you guys would still complain. Because the New Deal Era, while it has its own nostalgia to it, wasn't that great. The government programs were inefficient, bureaucratic, and created resentment. People felt like government couldnt do anything right, or make anything simple. The jobs you worked at really werent that great in the first place. They were boring, slow, monotonous, and unfulfilling. People were miserable even during the era where America was great, because as it turns out...it never actually was that great. Sure, it was better than it is now, but it wasn't that great.
As such, we gotta go further. And this is why I advocate for a universal basic income. People worry about people not working with a UBI. Well, the social science shows that's not a huge problem, but I'll argue something controversial. Some work refusal is a GOOD thing. because it keeps employers honest. Every person sitting on the couch is a person who makes it easier for you to get a job. Keep in mind, what drove the new deal era was unions, and when unions quit, or "striked", they could get more concessions from businesses. UBI would make every person a union. Everyone could have the right to say no. And the work reductions wouldnt be enough to threaten the stability of society. We could even use the phillips curve and the federal reserve to ensure that unemployment remains high enough to keep things stable, while also ensuring people can actually quit jobs effectively and demand for better conditions when they have to. We would have a higher equilibrium in favor of workers, if that makes sense.
A basic income would also pass on the income and wealth created over the past 40 years that went to the top. It would functionally redistribute it from the top to the bottom and middle. If you're actually middle class or lower, you would actually benefit from UBI. And because it is universal, you'd have no reason to resent another. Normally you think you're paying taxes so someone else gets free stuff. No. You're getting free stuff, unless you're in the top 25% or so of income earners. And free stuff isn't a bad thing. If you wanna know why our economy is so unequal, and everything is so screwed up, it's because relying on jobs to distribute income to the population is a terrible idea. Because rich people dont care about you. They are literally incentivized to keep as much money as possible for themselves, NOT have it trickle down, and work you as hard as possible, throwing you away when you're done. So let's get over this illusion that jobs are there for your prosperity. They're not. You're basically just a glorified slave under the current system, and I'm offering you your liberation.
Healthcare isn't working for you. Despite obamacare, you still gotta spend hundreds of dollars on healthcare a month, only to get slammed with thousands of dollars in out of pocket expenses when you do get care. And that's if you can afford insurance, Around 1/6 of the population has NO insurance. A universal healthcare system would ensure everyone is covered and keep healthcare bills affordable. With single payer, yeah, you'll pay more taxes, but once again, unless youre wealthy, you'll be paying a lot less in net than you would if you had health insurance. And even with a public option, which wouldnt likely eliminate out of pocket costs or premiums entirely, costs would be controlled, you'd be paying a lot less, and everyone would be covered.
I could go on and on down the list of various programs I propose. The point, is, my ideas might sound crazy and utopian to you, and unworkable, or maybe "communism", but I've researched them for over a decade and I believe that they can work. So that gives us a choice. Do you trust donald trump to actually "make America great again?" Because Trump is a good salesman, sure. But is he a good politician? Not really. He actually bungled his way badly through his first term. The only reason the economy was good was he inherited Obama's post 2008 economic expansion. And even then, as I already established, it wasn't actually that great. He did little to alleviate the problems with the system. We just happened to have a historically long period of time between recessions. And when COVID did crash the economy, Trump managed the crisis badly, and hundreds of thousands died needlessly. And when the economy reopened under Biden, the variables that normally keep it in check were out of whack, which was why inflation happened. By the way, you know that most inflation was corporate price gouging right? True story, look it up. And at this point, I believe the answer is to focus on raising living standards, through my policies than on actually turning back the clock on inflation. Because the clock never goes backwards. Deflation, if it happens, is a bad thing. You always get some inflation, it's just keeping it in check, which is important. And the best way to do that is...through austerity. But austerity is what's killing you. Austerity means fewer jobs that pay worse. It means going back to recession. Again, you can't escape the phillips curve. You can only work around it through government action. I would even go so far to say presidents do little to control the economy. What matters is what they do to react to how the economy is operating. The right believes in doing nothing. The left believes in doing things to improve things for the people.
With all of that said, if you wanna make america "great again", or, dare I say, make it greater than ever, you gotta embrace the left. At the bare minimum, it means re-embracing the new deal like Bernie Sanders wanted. But if you wanna go even further, you gotta embrace policies like UBI, universal healthcare, free college, public housing, and reducing the work week. That's how you not only make America great again, you make it greater than it ever was.
Or you can keep choosing between corporate democrats who tinker around the edges and blow hards who promise change but can't deliver. Your choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment