In an environment in which inflation has drained away the ordinary person's ability to feed their families and make their bills, it's no surprise that only the rich can really donate to political campaigns. The rich are sure about where their interests lay, too, which is with the Establishment -- they may differ or perhaps not even care about which party, but the Establishment for certain.
The class difference is understandable. The real wages of average Americans did better under the real estate guy than they'd done in decades (a fact willfully obscured by including the Covid collapse in his numbers). This occurred because of two signature policies: cracking down on illegal immigration, which depresses the wages of working class Americans; and the full-throated embrace of the shale oil boom that gave America back its energy independence -- even making us a net exporter again.
Average Americans found their gasoline bill was down, which meant all their bills were down: fuel to transport goods to market is baked into the price of everything. Meanwhile, their employers were forced to pay Americans to do the jobs that they needed done in America. That was more of the jobs than expected, too, thanks to the death of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would have helped ship more jobs to Asia, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which also kept jobs home instead of abroad.
It's no wonder those who run major corporations would rather have an Establishment figure in office, one who will keep the borders open and costs down. They have little to fear even from Biden's environmentalism, as he has quietly allowed shale to trickle back up to where it was before.
It's also sensible that working class and middle class Americans would prefer to keep that particular tap shut, not merely for economic reasons but for more basic reasons of human meaning. The economics are aligned with their interest in stable communities, relationships, neighborhoods (as shown by the exact similarity in the complaint against gentrification as against mass immigration).
Marxist analysis would suggest that this is obvious: economics drive history, they say. It's the most basic of their analytical tools. Yet for some reason we don't really hear people talk about this in these terms: people on both sides prefer a cultural overlay to the economic analysis. It flatters the left to think that they're on the side of progress and their values, rather than the side of importing people who will be paid less and granted no worker protections in order to suppress the wages of fellow Americans in service to the rich. It flatters the right to think they are standing up for Christianity and Western traditions instead of a fair wage and a better life for their family (those selfish things!).
So we end up talking about what everyone wants to talk about instead of this important aspect; and we end up casting aspersions on each other that are not the ones most genuinely deserved. The most true and applicable complaints are left out of the conversation.
7 comments:
Well, you won't have to worry about that filthy petroleum much longer, as Bai-Den will make EV purchases almost a mandate by 2050 (or sooner, like 2040).
Speaking of which, you mentioned that petroleum seeps into the cost of everything. Since retiring, I've taken up driving a school bus for a relatively small district in SE Wisconsin. The District contracts for 13 busses for its children; routes are relatively compact, but the busses are also used to transport the little darlings to athletic contests and field trips to the Big City.
My bus alone burns about $300.00 in diesel every week. 13 busses? $3900/week. 40 weeks of school? $156,000.00 every school year. Just for fuel.
Yeah, we were going over the budget at the local fire/rescue squad. Fuel costs for those trucks are around a quarter of the total operating costs.
I'm convinced that Haley is hoping for a timely plot-twist that suddenly ends Trump's candidacy and leaves her as the defacto front runner thereby getting her acclaimed at the convention.
Such a thing is far from impossible.
I'm convinced that Haley is hoping for a timely plot-twist that suddenly ends Trump's candidacy and leaves her as the defacto front runner thereby getting her acclaimed at the convention.
Could happen on either side, or oddly, both.
However unlikely, Trump could be convicted of some accusation plausibly characterized as a "high crime and misdemeanor". In roughly in the same timeframe Biden might finally black out from a stroke and fall down the steps of Air Force One, completing his disability.
Could be a race between two relatively unknown candidates chosen in the very old fashioned process of smoke filled rooms.
Weirder things are recorded in western, if not American, history.
Oil gas drilling guys tell me they could bring gas down to $2.00 at the pump for all Americans if they could get the govt out of their way. And they point out that in the long run EV batteries pollute way more than gas and oil. - Greg
The laptop class is shocked to find out that when you ship jobs overseas for cheaper labor costs, the lower prices of goods matters very little to the person out of work or getting paid a pittance for work here, and they want trade protection. The white collar laptop class just sees lower prices (supposedly, now not even that) as their stock portfolios continue to grow, and can't understand what the problem is.
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