"Economic Anxiety"

 Krugman looks at the recent local election in Germany that put AfD in power in Saxony-Anholt. He hits on something that has been noted before, but needs to be constantly recalled. There is a LOT of overlap between people who feel economically disadvantaged and people who rely on racism to explain why. In Europe, Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France and AfD in Germany all rely on anti-immigrant politics to try and win elections. In fact, you can go back to the pre-World War II United States and see a ton of overlap between people who were upset by what they perceived as declining status and a hatred of immigrants.

There is a superficial logic to this, as you can imagine adding workers to a workforce would mean fewer jobs for people who already were in the workforce. Except economics is pretty clear that immigration leads to economic growth. This - not tax cuts for the rich - is the rising tide that lifts all boats. 

What I find interesting is that there have been some clips going around from some Socialist convention held in the US recently, and it's a bunch of weirdo positions on things like "weight loss is health genocide" or "criticizing me is basically slavery." The original criticism of "socialists" like Bernie Sanders was that Democrats had stopped putting the needs of working class voters at the top of their priorities. Now, the DSA has disappeared down the rabbit hole of what James Carville calls "faculty room politics." Basically, if you don't want to put your gender pronouns in your email signature, you're Adolf Hitler.

It would be nice if there really was some sort of magic button we could push that unified everyone against the oligarchs who have enshittified the world. In fact, fear makes people hateful and we shouldn't be surprised that Saxony-Anholt voted for Nazis than we should that the dying small towns of America vote for Trump.