Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, November 30, 2018

Underappreciated Story

This is a bigger deal than it gets credit for.  It's not Climate Change level of importance, but it's among the more important economic stories of the past decade.  The author hedges his bets as to why workers have not gotten appreciable raises, but he fails to mention the stagnation in the minimum wage.  While he mentions the decline of unions (and that is another important factor), the lack of growth in the minimum wage is a scandal.  It works hand-in-glove with the GOP tax bill that rewards companies for paying executives more and squeezing workers.  The recent cuts in jobs by GM is a good example of this dynamic at work.  GM executives will see their stock options increase in value, while blue collar workers are immiserated. 

A lot of these workers jumped to Trump in 2016 and there is some evidence that some of them flipped back to Democrats in 2018.  If Democrats can make the case that the GOP is screwing them over (which wouldn't be hard if it weren't for the alternative reality of Fox News and basic civic and economic illiteracy), they could see even greater gains in 2020. 

Trump ran on "I'm too rich to be corrupted."  That has proven laughably absurd (though it was in 2016, too).  A combined message of Trumpist personal corruption with stagnant wages can hopefully continue to cement the GOP as the party of Scrooge McDuck and Ebeneezer Scrooge.

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