From the NYT, a lengthy explication of the high-low versus middle coalition:
The Future of the Obama Coalition
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.
All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.
The obvious question is whether Republicans will, in response, do anything to motivate working class whites to go to the polls other than to promise to cut taxes on billionaires?
We know what one successful campaign that mobilizes the less intellectual white voters to get off the couch and vote looks like: George H.W. Bush in 1988: Willie Horton, the Pledge of Allegiance, and other small but evocative issues that succeeded in defining, crudely but not inaccurately, Dukakis. We also know the fear and loathing this successful effort to engage mass interest in the election inspired in media elites, who have demonized that strategy ever since. We also know what an impotent Republican strategy respectful of media taboos looks likes: John McCain in 2008.
Perhaps someday, we might even see a substantive campaign to offer positive policy solutions to benefit the broad middle of the American public.
So the Democrats are basically adopting their half of the Sailer strategy.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting is that those supposedly most vested in the interests of the white working class, the unions, are among the biggest financial and organizational supporters of the party that has just written off that very demographic.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Might the interests of union leadership be divergent from the interests of union members?
I seriously doubt the Republicans will be smart enough to exploit this opening, an opportunity that has been sitting there for decades.
There is a valid ideological case to be made how Republican economic policies can provide the most benefit for the most people, but Republicans have done next to nothing to make a case as to why they shouldn't be viewed as lapdogs of moneyed interests. A little effort in making an explicit appeal to working class interests would go a long, long way in solidifying the middle class vote.
I would argue the white working class was abandoned as long ago as 1965. They just didn't know it.
ReplyDeleteGranted, Bush/Quayle won in 1988 while McCain/Palin lost in 2008. But that doesn't prove that Bush/Quayle's strategy was effective, or that McCain/Palin's was ineffective. Looking at the economic trendlines in 1988, no ticket representing the party of the incumbent administration was likely to do much worse than did Bush/Quayle, and looking at the trendlines in 2008 it's amazing McCain/Palin did as well as it did. All the more so when you think of how closely Mr McCain was identified with the Bush/Cheney administration's most unpopular policies.
ReplyDelete"We also know what an impotent Republican strategy respectful of media taboos looks likes: John McCain in 2008." Just think of the Hotelling theorem. As you of course recall, Harold Hotelling showed that if there are only two producers offering a particular good for sale, it is logical for them to make their products as similar to each other as possible. So, if the only soft drinks on the market are Coke and Pepsi, it would make sense for PepsiCo to make their product just a little bit sweeter than Coke, just sweet enough that consumers can notice the difference. While many consumers might want a dramatically sweeter drink, those consumers will likely settle for the slightly-sweeter Pepsi, as will other consumers who would not go so far. Even if only one consumer actually preferred the slightly sweeter Pepsi to an ultra-sweet alternative, in a duopoly there is no incentive to ignore that consumer in favor of those who want a much sweeter alternative.
So, in 2008, there were undoubtedly many white voters who found the prospect of some black guy who had spent his whole life in the company of the left-leaning elements of the upper-middle class as US president deeply upsetting. John McCain already had their votes. No matter how tiny the number of potential Republican voters who found the idea of a post-racial, "post-American" president attractive, they were actually in play. A Lee Atwater style campaign focusing on Mr O's ties to the Reverend Wright, the Daley Machine, etc, would not have gained McCain/Palin a single vote in the Electoral College, and might very well have driven enough swing voters away to cost the Republicans seats in the House.
"Perhaps someday, we might even see a substantive campaign to offer positive policy solutions to benefit the broad middle of the American public." That's the big question, how would the electorate respond if one of the parties broke the hypnotic trance of big money long enough to run a campaign based on a platform that really had something to offer Americans who live on their wages. I'm not holding my breath for such an experiment to be carried out, but it would be exciting.
Steve, what do you think it was about the Willie Horton ad that appealed to poor whites? Looks like you are agreeing with the Democrats that this was a hidden appeal to white racism (except you consider it a good thing).
ReplyDeleteDemocrats don't really have to win the white working class, but they have to keep their losses to manageable levels.
ReplyDelete"The 2012 approach treats white voters without college degrees as an unattainable cohort. The Democratic goal with these voters is to keep Republican winning margins to manageable levels, in the 12 to 15 percent range, as opposed to the 30-point margin of 2010 — a level at which even solid wins among minorities and other constituencies are not enough to produce Democratic victories."
Republicans will NEVER propose policies that actually benefit white working class voters, because they don't care about white working class people. White working class voters can't funnel millions of dollars into secret PACs, or even pony up a $4000 campaign donation. What losers.
Of course, the Democrats de facto abandoned the white working class back in 1972, but it's good that they are now making it explicit. If the republicans had two brain cells to rub together, the next move would be obvious, but I can't say as I'm very optimistic.
ReplyDeleteSuch a campaign (i.e. a successful one) requires a Lee Atwater in charge, whereas 2011 Rep "idea men" are typified by Mike Murphy/Peter Wehner. Mush-headed evangelical fixers have been driving since 2000...
ReplyDelete1. Eliminate the trade deficit (a $550B a year aggregate demand leakage), Warren Buffett's plan for an "import certificate market" would do this without the govt picking winners or losers.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_Certificates
2. Double fence the Mexican border, E-verify every employee, auction off (or eliminate) H1-B and other work visas.
3. Return minimum wage to 1968 level ($10.43/hr in 2011 dollars, current min. wage is $7.25/hr), adjust annually by CPI.
4. Eliminate age restriction for Medicare coverage. One reason wages have been stagnant is because employers have had to eat rising insurance costs. Were Paul Ryan not a corrupt hack, he'd recognize the cost of Medicare has grown slower than the cost of private insurance.
http://ukiahcommunityblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/i1.jpg?w=604
Sailer: thank you for commenting on this article. It's rare that the elites will admit to seeking to Elect a New People, but it's revealing when they do. As clear as day, liberals admit to aligning against most whites. Has anyone at National Review (other than your fan, Derbyshire) read this article?
ReplyDeleteSteve, it is really incredible how prophetic you are at times. The Sailer Strategy will come into being because the Democrats are now explicitly pursuing the anti-Sailer Strategy!
ReplyDeleteOf course, they were explicitly pursuing it before, but it's a real milestone to have it dispassionately recorded in the New York Times. This is the first time I'd heard that Obama lost by 30 points (!!!) among whites without college degrees.
It's interesting to think about what will happen when the student loan bubble pops. To what extent is collegiate indoctrination a causal factor for leftism? We're about to find out, as the ranks of those without useless college degrees will swell once Sallie Mae goes belly up.
In 2000 Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign Chair, said, "The Democratic Party is the party of blacks, women and gays."
ReplyDeleteI posted on Edsall's last article regarding racial voting:
ReplyDeleteRestricting Voting Rights, Race, and Future Time Orientation
The obvious question is whether Republicans will, in response, do anything to motivate working class whites to go to the polls other than to promise to cut taxes on billionaires?
ReplyDeleteHa, ha---this is a joke question, right?
But don't forget that since both parties have totally abandoned Middle America and are so unbelievably unpopular, there's a good chance that we'll see a populist Third Party candidate as well, a new-style Ross Perot figure representing ordinary working Americans who are totally fed up with rule by plutocrats and neocons and Wall Street. And his name will be Michael Bloomberg...
Its the immigration, stupid.
ReplyDeleteOh, wait... it can't be immigration because unlike all other markets, increasing the supply of labor doesn't decrease the price of labor: wages.
It must be that white working class folks are just stupid.
O's two groups know how to get things done: the upscale part controls the media, academia, etc. and the downscale part has power through groups like the NCLR, NAACP, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe others don't seem to have what it takes to make their voices properly heard. Some of them join OWS (anarchists & loons & MoveOn), others join the TPers (useful idiots for loose borders billionaires). Neither of those come close to representing the interests of most Americans but are basically just trojan horses for shadowy agendas.
The paradox being that the GOP insist on being race blind and claiming to fight the class war while the Dems have moved to ethnic spoils.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the broad middle is becoming less common, thanks to the kinds of policies implemented by the high-low coalition. The best that I honestly think we can hope for is a recognition by the higher and lowers that if they completely obliterate the middle, they'll have no one left to steal from.
ReplyDeleteDemocrats write off white working class because they voted for House Republican candidates at an exceptionally high rate of 66% in 2010.
ReplyDeleteYet, Republicans pander to a relatively low-turnout black electorate despite the fact that they consistently vote Democratic in astronomical rates: 95% (Gore), 93% (Kerry) and 96% (Obama).
In a true democracy, isn't this suppose to work in reverse? Ideally, the Dems and Rep would ignore the unwavering solid block of black voters and both pander to the relatively split white working class vote that can be influenced?
This is a common pattern amongst 'left' parties through out the world.
ReplyDeleteBritain's Labour Party did exactly the same - the Andrew Neather revelations prove that the massive uncontrolled immigration Britain suffered under Labour was inspired by the need to 'elect a new people'.
There you have it, the ragbag coalition of women, minorities, yuppies and immigrants.
Believ it or not, once upon a time left leaning parties were only concerned with one thing - workers' interests.
"small but evocative issues that succeeded in defining, crudely but not inaccurately, Dukakis"
ReplyDeleteI didn't know this until recently I researched early 20C Italian-American anarchist-terrorists, but in 1977 Gov. Dukakis went out of his way to issue a proclamation in support of Sacco & Vanzetti. Note that he did not pardon them, because to pardon them would imply that they were guilty, and we can't have that.
Lord knows, the GOPs have a ton of problems. But truly, the Dems go out of their way to embrace deviancy and exalt sickness.
-SevenPercent
I'm surprised that the NYT is broadcasting this since it will likely result in an increase in whites voting Republican in November 2012.
ReplyDeleteSo now it's officially a coalition of taxpayers vs. tax-eaters, and our guys are looking for the first excuse to throw the game.
ReplyDelete"The obvious question is whether Republicans will, in response, do anything to motivate working class whites to go to the polls other than to promise to cut taxes on billionaires?"
ReplyDeleteSo long as we keep buying it, why wouldn't they keep selling it?
If you're a paleocon who favors cutting taxes on the rich but who is still upset about the GOP's failure to enforce immigration, don't support the tax cuts before you get the enforcement!
You have something the rich want: support for tax cuts on themselves. Why the hell would you give that support away for nothing in return? Because after they have their tax cuts in hand the rich sure as hell aren't going to support reduced immigration.
In 2001 the first act of the Bush Administration was to cut taxes on the rich. It was one of the last "conservative" acts Bush committed in his 8 years in office.
This time it's the white working class's turn to go first.
That's news?
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats abandoned the white working class long ago. The only newsworthy aspect is that now they are abandoning even the pretense of supporting it.
A few times, you've trotted out the "tax cuts for billionaires" line. It's a reasonably popular thing to oppose, and there may be thoughtful reasons to bump up the high tax brackets, but let's not pretend it would make a fiscal difference.
ReplyDeleteTake the GDP of the US. Subtract off federal, state, and local spending. You're left with $9T or so which to a first approximation is the remaining private economy. The deficit is almost $2T. You could tax all the income of every billionaire and you'd barely make a dent.
It's not a very campaign-winning populist thing to say, but the hole the US is sitting in is larger than the pile of tax dollars remotely available to shovel into it.
That's nearly impossible Steve, because the High-Low strategy critically includes ... yes women. Obama took care of his White professional female backers, by rejiggering the Stimulus in 2009 to go away from infrastructure stuff employing "Burly Men" to stuff employing White female professionals -- health, education, welfare. Your "Nice White Ladies"(tm Steve Sailer).
ReplyDeleteThis strategy is not just limited to White professional women, but those who aspire to that status. The High-Low team-up works, because middle class White women identify with the "low" (non-Whites, see the movie and book "the Help") as part of moral status mongering among themselves ("I'm more anti-racist than thou!") and the "high" (glamorous and "important people" want this -- it must be good!)
This is why Leftist politics have dominated not just in the US, but globally, since around 1965 or so. Higher incomes, independence, and freedom for women are GOOD THINGS, but like all good things come with a cost. That cost is White women of middle class and above incomes siding with the High-Low team-up in every bit.
Let me add, declining White populations (from 89% in 1940 to less than 65% today) mandate racial unity in voting or they get screwed over. That's game theory and basic spoils politics, nothing less or more.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately victory does not lie among just greater turnout of the Whites who vote Republican: White Professional men, White blue collar men, and White Blue collar women all approve of Obama somewhere in the thirties in the last racially broken out poll last Summer, not much change from 2008. The only group to actually increase was White professional women (some college) who went up to 56% approval from 52% approval in 2008. This is also the most diligent group in voting. [Blue collar women approve of Obama the least, btw.]
This means candidates cannot afford to tick off White professional women voters: no deport illegals (that group opposes it as "mean" and "racist"), no protectionism (admission of failure against globalist Davos men aristocracy), nothing too "scary."
The difference between 1988 and today is that there are a lot fewer Whites, so the strategy of going White men (blue collar and professional) and White Blue Collar women is a failure.
You must get White Professional Women, there is no other way to win without them. And Obama being still first Rockstar, with the View and the other Media-tainment complex worshiping him as a living God, there is not much you can do. He's the Alpha male and White professional women will vote for him like he's Edward Cullen from Twilight come to life.
"It is instructive to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on...writings and comments...such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira"
ReplyDeleteAh, good ol' regular white American names like "Greenberg" and "Teixeira." You just know that they have the interests of the white goyim at heart...
(And yes, I realize I'm sounding like an Archie Bunker episode. I really don't care.)
"voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists"
This runs along the lines of that book (by Teixeira, in fact) The Emerging Democratic Majority, but for whites.
Both technological changes and the size of our federal deficit guarantee that the number of people in these professions - professors, editors, librarians, social workers, and teachers - will decline substantially in the very near future; is declining right now, in fact. Obama's economic stimulus was specifically designed to avoid job cuts for Democratic constituents, by keeping states who accepted federal stimulus aid from slashing government payrolls. That's why state and municipal government payrolls have only started falling recently.
This means an increasing number of whites will be more amenable to the conservative Republican message. Are tax cuts for billionaires going to bring them into the fold?
"Perhaps someday, we might even see a substantive campaign to offer positive policy solutions to benefit the broad middle of the American public."
ReplyDeleteNo, because:
"Obama can afford to drop to Kerry’s white margins because, between 2008 and 2012, the pro-Democratic minority share of the electorate is expected to grow by two percentage points and the white share to decline by the same amount, reflecting the changing composition of the national electorate."
The Republican Party has shown itself unwilling to challenge the policies that lead to that inexorable trend. So it will continue.
Which means that at some point the remaining Whites will be a horse that the Republican party must dismount, looking to its own future.
Whatever the Republican Party does must have an eye to not offending its future, non-White constituency, the one it will have after making a colossal turn like the Democratic Party did. And anything that favors White interests is apt to offend non-Whites if it is called to their attention, which it will be.
Therefore the idea is to obtain the votes of Whites, while doing nothing for them.
Curiously, the person who clued the Bushies into Willie Horton probably wouldn't want to help some benighted crusader against "Islamofascism" into office this time.
ReplyDeleteWow, this article is so chock full of home runs it's like watching SportsCenter highlights:
ReplyDelete“the Republican Party has become the party of the white working class,” while in Europe, many working-class voters who had been the core of Social Democratic parties have moved over to far right parties, especially those with anti-immigration platforms."
The lefties have always told us that European whites were smarter than American whites. For once I can agree with them.
"The 2012 approach treats white voters without college degrees as an unattainable cohort. The Democratic goal with these voters is to keep Republican winning margins to manageable levels, in the 12 to 15 percent range."
In other words, divide and conquer. Get enough white working class members to vote for your party so that they don't vote for the other party (that also doesn't share their interests).
"Greenberg, speaking of white working class voters, said that in the period from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, 'we battled to get them back...we didn’t know that we would never get them back, that they were alienated and dislodged.'"
Oh no, it's not the fault of a tiny handful of urban, liberal (and disproportionately Jewish) Democratic leaders and advisors. Those tens of millions of members of the white working class were just experiencing a mass delusion when they tot they taw Democratic Party lesders give them the middle finger.
"A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation."
In other words, giving away for free the necessities the white working class works to attain. The white working class does not want to live amongst shiftless lower class blacks and Hispanics. White men, unlike black men, generally can't get a mate without a job.
"One outcome could be a stronger party of the left in national and local elections. An alternate outcome could be exacerbated intra-party conflict between whites, blacks and Hispanics — populations frequently marked by diverging material interests."
Id est, the Southern pattern - the Democratic Party for minorities, the Republican Party for whites - goes national. The larger the share of the national pie that minorities insist on redistributing to themselves via the ballot box the more that whites resist. I wouldn't be shocked if in some election in the nearer-than-we-think future the GOP wins 75% of the white vote.
At last something intelligent and honest from the New York Times. Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam offered a strategy by which the Republican Party could obtain a permanent majority in America in their book, "The Grand New Party." Their novel idea was that the Republican Party should try actually doing something for the people who vote for it instead of manipulating them through their fears and prejudices and then screwing them.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I thought the Tea Party might be a movement in this direction, but it seems to have been totally captured by the Koch brothers. It is disgusting to tune into the debates and hear the candidates falling all over themselves trying to offer the Wall Street billionaires the biggest tax cut. It is hopeless. The Republican Party cannot be reformed; it must be destroyed.
The better-off wing, in contrast, puts at the top of its political agenda a cluster of rights related to self-expression, the environment, demilitarization, and, importantly, freedom from repressive norms — governing both sexual behavior and women’s role in society — that are promoted by the conservative movement...
ReplyDeleteOne advantage of campaigning on this tack is that it won't cost anything. the GOP and conservative PACs will gladly underwrite the cost of advertising this Democratic sales pitch.
The Goppers could win if they proposed outlawing the Use of Sofa Change for Controlling Public Debate. In other words they should propose a tax on billionaires, not for billionaires. Anyone with over a billion dollars as estimated by The Committee of Long-term Unemployed Manufacturing Workers, using 2011 tax returns, would be taxed to millionairedom to prevent a recurrence of the David Gelbaum, Sierra Club Sofa Change secret censorship move.
ReplyDeleteIn the words of Richard D. Lamm former Democratic Governor of Colorado:
“But we know now that the Sierra Club was guilty of worse than a mere evasion. The press discovered in 2004 that David Gelbaum, a math wizard who made millions on Wall Street, had contributed $101 million to the Sierra Club. Gelbaum insisted he did not influence the election but admitted that he had earlier warned the club “if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”
David Gelbaum, a billionaire, (still?)had used his Sofa Change to control the policies of the formerly independent Sierra Club. The Sierra Club sold its soul for Gelbaums’s Sofa Change. They went from doubtful on immigration to silence. If this billionaire can exert so much influence, using his sofa change to secretly censor debate we now know that America does not deserve to be called a democracy, for it is secretly a sly, winking, cigar smoking Plutocracy that loathes the nation it rules.
on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists
ReplyDeleteYeah smart people only vote democratic..
I am Lugash.
ReplyDeletevoters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists
This is a really odd grouping of voters. The bulk of them are in the caring/healing/creativity fields. Only HR managers and lawyers could really be considered business people, and the number of HR managers is a tiny sliver of the pie. Librarians, teachers and social workers have steady, adequately compensated jobs, but I wouldn't say they're getting ahead.
Arguing that the 'hi' portion of the Democratic strategy is based on female or Jewish support would be much more truthful.
I am Lugash.
"A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation."
ReplyDeleteand conveniently enough this helps subsidize their nannies and formerly middle class workers.
1. It's possible that many "educated" whites are becoming quite shocked to discover that they are part of the "white working class" being abandoned by both parties.
ReplyDelete2. The GOP may make superficial, perfunctory moves to court the white working class, but of course the party is pro-globalism, anti-middle-class, from the top down.
3. There appears to be a clear path to power for a candidate willing to implement an explicit Sailer Strategy, but one never knows when such a candidate, leading in the polls, might have his campaign truncated by a tragic heart attack/plane crash/car accident. One can picture the shocked, breathless MSM bimbos now. Accidents happen. ;-)
"A few times, you've trotted out the "tax cuts for billionaires" line...let's not pretend it would make a fiscal difference." - Matt
ReplyDeleteMatt: Google "exaggeration for effect."
Let's put it this way: you may not be able to balance the budget solely on the backs of billionaires, but you aren't going to balance it by not raising taxes on billionaires, either.
"Which means that at some point the remaining Whites will be a horse that the Republican party must dismount, looking to its own future."
And hop on...what other horse, exactly? Democrats control the blacks and Hispanics. Who are Republicans going to represent, the invading Mongol Horde?
The question isn't whether Republicans are going to seek to win the votes of whites, or continue to be the white party -it's whether they're actually going to give middle class whites anything in exchange for their support.
This article in the WaPo from two days ago highlights the problem the GOP has with middle class voters: they're not raising any money from them, depsite the fact that that they are, theoretically, the one's with all the Mo.
From the article: "The DCCC has raised $22.6 million from donors giving less than $200 at a time through October. That’s more than double the $10 million they raised during the same period in 2005, the last time they were in the minority. 'When Republicans consistently protect billionaires over Medicare, it’s hard to convince small donors to give a check,' said Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), the DCCC chairman. 'The Republican’s grass-roots donors have abandoned them and our grass-roots donors are more energized than they ever have been.'"
Republicans can't get small middle class donors to contribute to them, despite leading comfortably over Dmeocrats in the small donor category through much of the 90s. The white middle class will vote for them, maybe, but they don't trust them with their cash.
The article suggests that it is the party out of power that benefits most from a surge in small donors, while big donors back the incumbents. The problem is that Republicans are the minority party - the Democrats still have the White House and still have the Senate. Small Republican donors should be enthusiastic right now. They aren't. A few days ago I looked up the share of money former Sen. Bob Bennett raised in his effort to get re-elected in 2010. He raised $4 million before the state GOP convention. Mike Lee, the Republican who ultimately won, and had to campaign at the convention and the primary and the general, only raised $2 million total. Of Bennett's $4 million, $2.2 million came from PAC contributions and $1.5 million came from "large donations" of over $200. Just $16,019 came from individuals giving less than $200.
The white middle class votes GOP mostly because it has no other choice, not because it's enthusiastic about them. If the GOP wants to solidify middle class support it needs to start giving them something for their votes.
"I would argue the white working class was abandoned as long ago as 1965. They just didn't know it."
ReplyDeleteUh, it is not like the Euro elites they fled gave a rat's rear about them either. In fact, they had to build this country to have a place to live in.
1. There is no such as "taxes on billionaires." There is, however, such thing as taxes on moderately affluent middle class (say 200-250K and up). I.e. the backbone of Republican contributors (the billionaires don't contribute to Republicans).
ReplyDelete2. Suppose you implemented a billionaires' tax. How exactly does this help white working class? Do you think that the extra money collected by the government will be transferred to poor whites?
3. Eliminating trade deficit by raising tariffs = increasing taxes on poor whites. As simple as that. Remember, (a) tariffs = taxes, and (b) foreigner manufactures don't pay American taxes, American citizens do.
4. Republican politicians don't court black or Hispanic voters. What looks to you as Republican courting minorities is actually them pandering to SWPLs. And no, you can't have your white coalition without the SWPLs.
I described this Brahmin-Dalit alliance in 2007.
ReplyDelete1965? It's difficult to understate how pwned the Democratic voters of 1932 are. Don't forget, progressivism rode to power on the votes of the "Solid South." White voters with a culturally Democratic voting tradition: Southerners, "hyphenated Americans" such as Slavic, Irish and Italian Catholics, and other non-SWPL white people. (A century ago, the SWPL white people were all Republicans.) What they got: disenfranchisement, reeducation, ethnic cleansing, etc, etc.
A Maistre or a Mencken would point out that these losers, by electing their worst enemies, got exactly what they deserved. They're still getting it, too - good and hard. Alas, the Sailer strategy bets on them somehow magically turning into winners.
I sympathize with your objectives. At least for the most part. But in order to get to where the MAJORITY controls the nation we have some obstacles to overcome. (that is what you want, right? You want the white majority to be in charge of america, right? That is what I want).
ReplyDeleteIn order to get THERE from HERE, we have to create a new culture of politics, one that is based on a fundamental understanding of what Left is and what Right is. Currently, Leftism is associated with NON-majority factions. But Leftism should be a political philosophy oriented towards carrying out the will of the majority bloc. In america, that means white working class.
The only way to get there is to disempower the federal govt by starving it, and then sending all taxation $$ to the states.
>>They put an ethnic label on the "Hispanic" underclass. Will they point out the disproportionately Scots-Irish nature of the overclass leadership?
ReplyDeleteHa, ha. LOL
Steve, what do you think it was about the Willie Horton ad that appealed to poor whites? Looks like you are agreeing with the Democrats that this was a hidden appeal to white racism (except you consider it a good thing).
ReplyDeleteSteve didn't say it appealed to poor whites.
Rev. Right: Hmm. Might the interests of union leadership be divergent from the interests of union members?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: They put an ethnic label on the "Hispanic" underclass. Will they point out the disproportionately Scots-Irish nature of the overclass leadership?
Oh, the Scots-Irish have been openly bragging about this, in their daily journals of Scots-Irish opinion, for quite some time now:
New Labor Leaders Take a Page From History
By Nathaniel MacPopper
Published April 23, 2009, issue of May 01, 2009.
MacForward.com
The Scots-Irish Daily Forward
Washington - If you want to see the movers and shakers behind the tumult in today's labor movement, the place to be is Stephen MacLerner and Marilyn MacSneiderman's modest home in Washington after sunset concludes Druidism's holiest day of the year.
For nearly 20 years now, the two longtime union officials have been holding an annual Solstice Break Fast that has drawn a growing crowd from both their neighborhood and the top ranks of many of the most powerful unions in the United States...
But the labor leaders of today are a very different breed from those of the '30s. Druidistic union leaders such as MacStern of the SEIU and MacBooth of AFSCME - along with Larry MacCohen, president of the Communications Workers of America; Randi MacWeingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, and Bruce MacRaynor, general president of Unite-Here - did not rise up from the working class. They have college degrees and are part of a new, sophisticated leadership that has come to the fore over the past decade and devised innovative tactics to battle the labor movement's long decline...
BTW, that one Scots-Irish lad, Andy MacStern, of the SEIU, was responsible for organizing a violent Scots-Irish nationalistic resistance movement, called MacACORN, and was the most frequent visitor to his cousin Barry O'Bammy's place, up in Belfast, after having personally delivered County MacNevada for his cuz', back in '08.
The obvious question is whether Republicans will, in response, do anything to motivate working class whites to go to the polls other than to promise to cut taxes on billionaires?
ReplyDeleteNo, because they don't have to.
Working class whites have nowhere else to turn, and billionaires pay for their political power:
"Schwarzman Backs Romney as Wall Street Turns"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/schwarzman-backs-romney-as-wall-street-turns-away-from-obama.html
(A century ago, the SWPL white people were all Republicans.)
ReplyDeleteA century ago, there were no "SWPL white people".
"SWPL white people" are largely a product of people being removed from the familial and religious moral authorities that were dominant a few generations ago, and being urbanized and coming under cosmopolitan moral authorities in the media and academia.
"Eliminating trade deficit by raising tariffs = increasing taxes on poor whites. As simple as that. Remember, (a) tariffs = taxes, and (b) foreigner manufactures don't pay American taxes, American citizens do."
ReplyDeleteUnless they substitute US-made goods for the now-more expensive foreign goods (which is sort of the point). Its like Abe Lincoln said:
by the tariff system the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods, and those chiefly the luxuries, and not the necessaries, of life. By this system the man who contents himself to live upon the products of his own country pays nothing at all. And surely that country is extensive enough, and its products abundant and varied enough, to answer all the real wants of its people.
http://www.classicreader.com/book/3237/58/
Anon wrote:
ReplyDelete"3. Eliminating trade deficit by raising tariffs = increasing taxes on poor whites. As simple as that. Remember, (a) tariffs = taxes, and (b) foreigner manufactures don't pay American taxes, American citizens do."
If someone gives you something for free should you take it? Sure, the Chinese are handing us fish cheaper than we can fish them ourselves, our fishermen lose their jobs (and require handouts) and our dependency on Chinese handouts means we lose the ability to fish for ourselves. Also, the Chinese use the dollars they get from selling us stuff to buy oil and food, thereby driving up their price, a de facto tax that falls hard on the working class. Now please go back to National Review.
Great comments.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me suddenly, that the US federal gov't used to act on behalf of the White majority up until 1861. Prior to that, the Feds were taking land and conquering on behalf of Whites. Starting in 1861, the trend reversed. It fought a war against Whites on behalf of another race, and has ever since fought against the interests of Whites, whether domestic or foreign. That's a crude approximation, but it seems roughly true.
In the last few years, in France, similar ideas have been promoted by leftwing think tanks ( the best known is Terra Nova). They have explicitely urged the left in France to let go of the white working class and to focus on an electorate exactly like the described in the article. They have advocated shifting away from economic issues to cultural issues only.
ReplyDeleteI think the only hope for the American people is secession by one or more states. America has simply become too large and cumbersome to properly govern. By splitting up into states and coalition of states, it will allow a chance for Americans to really see what fails and what succeeds. States what want strict immigration controls can do so, without fear of the Federal government suing them. Those that want to enact trade tariffs will again be free to do so, without having their interests shoved aside by very powerful national lobbies.
ReplyDeleteWith the ongoing "brownification" of America, it may be the only feasible way to create majority white enclaves without ridiculously high real estate prices which impoverish the young and the expense of the old. When a society's elderly begins cannibalizing the future earnings of it's upcoming descendants to keep it's entitlements rolling, poverty will be the only result.
Provincialism will be a good antidote to the self-destructive cosmopolitanism of America's elite. It will also be instrumental in breaking the back of Jewish political power in the United States.
"It's difficult to understate how pwned the Democratic voters of 1932 are. Don't forget, progressivism rode to power on the votes of the "Solid South."
ReplyDeleteIf you were white in the South in 1932 you would've voted for the Democrats, too. Poverty and poor infrastructure was a huge handicap in industrialiazation, and it was New Deal Era programs like the TVA that helped turned the region around.
"White voters with a culturally Democratic voting tradition: Southerners...What they got: disenfranchisement, reeducation, ethnic cleansing, etc."
They who? The Southern white voters of 1932? "They" are all dead, or the vast majority of them anyhow, as we all are in the long run. It is the post-1950 Democratic Party that turned on them, not FDR, whatever his imperfections.
Political scientists say the 1988 election was determined by the fundamentals.
ReplyDelete"Working class whites have nowhere else to turn"
ReplyDeleteIn certain states a third party would come in very handy right about now, or even just a coalition of congressmen willing to hold tax cuts hostage in exchange for middle class-preferred proposals.
"Steve, what do you think it was about the Willie Horton ad that appealed to poor whites?"
ReplyDeleteWho knows? Perhaps it was the notion that letting a violent felon out of prison for a visit home wasn't really a grand idea, especially when trying to attract the votes of whites who live in close proximity to lots of Willie Hortons.
Post-Willie Horton, Democrats led by Bill Clinton abandoned many of their soft on crime positions. They were shamed into adopting an anti-criminal attitude. It's frankly amazing how many fewer people are around today making excuses for criminal behavior.
In Whiskey's world, pointing out that women don't really have the wiring for what he attributes to them is "White Knighting." Seriously! :D
ReplyDelete"It strikes me suddenly, that the US federal gov't used to act on behalf of the White majority up until 1861. Prior to that, the Feds were taking land and conquering on behalf of Whites."
ReplyDeleteConquering the South was done on behalf of whites, too - Northern ones, anyway.
And the federal government still managed to do quite a few things to the benefit of whites post-1865.
No, it was the rising political and economic power of certain segments of the Great Wave immigrants, the feminization of politics thanks to the 19th Amendment, and the infantilization of politics due to the rising infuence of the visual media that turned the tide.
A century ago, there were no "SWPL white people".
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brook_Farm.
I have two points to make: one is that I view the GOP as being increasingly vulnerable. A serious taxpayer, nationalist third party with good financial backing (from some billionaire) could wipe out the GOP next year. Too many people are wise to the game the GOP is playing. If the GOP continues to not do its job, its days are numbered.
ReplyDeleteThe second point is that while Obama may call them "voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment," I call them tax-eaters and parasites.
Basically the Obama coalition consists of high-paid parasites and low-paid parasites vs. the host.
I am not Lugash but he is correct.
ReplyDeleteThe Democratic party is interested in social workers and teachers? But why would they even pretend to be courting such evil people? Social workers disproportionately harass and bully parents of certain demographic groups by continuously showing up and threatening to take their kids away. Not only that, but social workers also disproportionally allow kids of those very same demographic groups to be abused and neglected by their parents. As for teachers, they are such bigots that they refuse to help students of certain demographic groups achieve even when faced with severe penalties for being evil.
ReplyDeleteDid I hear something about other "nice white lady" fields? By healthcare, did you possibly mean nursing? As someone who personally knows many nice white girls who completed nursing school in the past three years, let me assure you that all ain't rosy. Sure most of those who are willing to move absolutely anywhere for a job (like Alaska) can still find employment. Otherwise, there is always Taco Bell. There is such an endless supply of nice imported Filipino ladies, that many nice white ladies can't even get an interview to let the boss know that they are willing to work as cheaply, at this point. Young nurses are defaulting on their student loans left and right. Isn't it common knowledge that when the government allocates billions to healthcare, education and social services, it doesn't actually trickle down to the nurses, teachers and social workers? Liberal policy and affirmative action might benefit women in corporate offices and law firms, but the both parties show nothing but disdain towards those who work in the front lines of public service.
"A serious taxpayer, nationalist third party with good financial backing (from some billionaire) could wipe out the GOP next year."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I thought Donald Trump took exactly right angle of attack last spring.
“I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade… We lose $300 billion a year dealing with China. That’s not the kind of free trade that I’m talking about.”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42269
Having said that, Romney has been stronger on immigration (border fence/E-verify) and trade (threatening tariffs on China) than any candidate since Pat Buchanan.
If Romney locks down conservative on social issues (and it sounds like the Democrats will handle that for him) and addresses working class economic issues (trade, immigration, trade, Medicare) it won't matter what tax breaks he offers the rich, the Democrats will get blown out up and down the ballot.
Cap'n, Was the Civil war really for the benefit of Northern Whites? Who did it help up there? At least 620,000 Whites on both sides died - much more "help" like that and they wouldn't exist. It may have helped a very few industrial elites, however, so I can see that point.
ReplyDeleteNow, did the Feds help Whites after 1865? Well, not much as Whites. They may have been helped as American citizens, but not specifically as Whites. And even in the general sense, there was a big dropoff in doing much that benefited the general American population after that War.
Prior to that, the Feds were buying land for Whites (Louisiana Purchase), conquering new lands (war with Mexico taking California and Texas). Now since that time, we have welfare programs and entitlements that may or may not have helped Whites, but generally took money from them and gave it to others.
I am still thinking 1865 marked a turning point. That was when Whites were first abandoned by their own government - not totally to be sure, but that is when it started.
Tony Blair did the same thing with Labour after Lord Levy and some other financeeres convinced him that their support did not matter- as long as he opened the floodgates of immigration and attacked Iraq he'd be assured the only support that mattered- their money.
ReplyDeleteIt is the post-1950 Democratic Party that turned on [the Solid South], not FDR, whatever his imperfections.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Anderson.
The kind of taxes that need to be pushed are wealth taxes, not income taxes.
ReplyDeleteIncome taxes are designed to distract the public from the fact that, at a sufficient level of wealth, income can be whatever you want it to be. The household making $100,000 a year in income and paying taxes on it is vastly different from the household with a $100 million net worth making $100,000 a year in interest income.
This cannot be understated.
A true middle class party would impose a 50% wealth tax on all wealth above $50 million, including all unrealized capital gains.
Would Buffet would pay $30 billion in taxes in his first year alone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brook_Farm.
ReplyDeleteNice try, but they weren't like today's SWPL white people, who are urbanized and under the sway of cosmopolitan moral authorities in the media and academia.
Superficial trappings don't mean they're the same. Unless you think Japanese hip-hoppers and breakdancers are the same as the original black breakdancers from the 70s and 80s.
(A century ago, the SWPL white people were all Republicans.)
ReplyDeleteWhy do you keep repeating these falsehoods? You've been debunked repeatedly:
"New England political thought a century ago"
http://racehist.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-england-political-thought-century.html
http://racehist.blogspot.com/2009/11/boring.html
"Matt said...
ReplyDeleteA few times, you've trotted out the "tax cuts for billionaires" line. It's a reasonably popular thing to oppose, and there may be thoughtful reasons to bump up the high tax brackets, but let's not pretend it would make a fiscal difference."
Fine. Let's not pretend that raising taxes on the wealthy would send the country off a cliff either. The top marginal income tax rate in the 1950s was 88%. JFK pushed for, and succeeded in getting them lowered to.....wait for it......73%. And yet somehow, America during the 50s and 60s managed to NOT be like Portugal.
I'm not advocating confiscatory taxes, and I don't think Steve is either. His point is that policies that benefit the wealthy are the ONLY thing that the Republican party ever goes to the mat for. Everything else is negotiable. New government agencies (DHS, for example)? - well, okay, but just one. Civil liberties (Patriot Act, the TSA, the even now this-week impending repeal of the Posse Comitatus act)? - well, okay - it's for "national security". Gays in the military? Gay marriage? Well, after all, Dick Cheney's daughter is such a nice young lady, and, anyway, a lot of our Republican Congressman are a little light in the tassled-loafers themselves. Immigration? America is an idea, blah, blah, blah.
But if a tax increase is even mooted, then it's every Republican to the barricades. They shall not pass!
What the Republican party offers the traditional, white middle-class voter is usually just a big FU.
"All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition...."
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's time that Thomas Frank wrote a new book: "F**k Kansas!"
"Prior to [1865], the Feds were buying land for Whites (Louisiana Purchase), conquering new lands (war with Mexico taking California and Texas)...I am still thinking 1865 marked a turning point."
ReplyDeleteI'm not downplaying the damage done by the war - neither the reduced birthrate nor the 6% of Northern men and 18% of Southern men (ages 13-43) who died because of it. But the country was still fairly unapologetic about pursuing the interests of its white population base well after the war.
There were probably a lot of changes that lead to the change in attitudes - rapidly increasing industrialization, the age of the robber barons, the nationalization of the press, and a shift from an era of scarcity to one of abundance. The Civil War didn't cause those, though it may have accelerated some. They were already occurring.
You also have to remember that after the War with Mexico there wasn't much lightly-settled land left to conquer. Where was the next Louisiana Purchase-sized morsel supposed to come from? Mexico? White, English-controlled Canada? And even if we took it, did we have the population to settle it and defend it?
But we did buy Alaska in 1867, and we spent several decades after the Civil War subduing the Indian population and, as I mentioned, we were pretty unapologetic about enacting quotas in 1924 and limiting Asian immigration all the way up until 1965.
The key years seem to be 1950-1965. Obviously events were happening before then, but it was in those years that the nation turned from being run for the benefit of Europeans to one where such attitudes became crimethink.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete4. Republican politicians don't court black or Hispanic voters. What looks to you as Republican courting minorities is actually them pandering to SWPLs."
This is quite right (I think Steve has discussed this in the past), at least as it pertains to black voters. The Republicans had no intention of picking up any black votes with their 2000 "rainbow convention" - the whole intent of it was to convince those progressive Republican women and swing voters that Republicans are not "mean". As for hispanics, I'm not so sure. Karl Rove acts like someone who thinks that the hispanic vote can be won by Republicans. Whether it is because he is stupid, or because he expects the US to become so mexicanized that they will be the GOP's only hope, I don't know.
"If Romney locks down conservative on social issues...the Democrats will get blown out up and down the ballot."
ReplyDeleteThen all that's left to discover is what Romney really stands for. Neither his Issues page nor his official blog say a thing about illegal immigration or his plan for enforcement. The only mentions of immigration on his Issues page is unending praise of legal immigration and support for ever more visas.
I'm hoping the issue is hot enough that Romney is forced to spell out his agenda completely, because it's the closest we'll ever get to locking him down.
"Democrats abandon white working class"
ReplyDeleteAfter all this debate I am just now realizing how preposterous is the title of this post. His blue-eyed wife bore blue-eyed John a passel of brown-eyed, dark-skinned kids, stopped sleeping with him 50 years ago, ran out on him 30 years ago, and he's just now coming to the realization that she left him. Suddenly I'm reminded of Jim Carrey's character in "Me, Myself & Irene."
Good points, Cap'n. I was throwing out there to get feedback, appreciate it. I do think the Civil War was a tragedy, but the Federal Government didn't become as operationally anti-White until much later, I would agree.
ReplyDelete"New England political thought a century ago"
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wentworth_Higginson.
What's cool, or uncool depending on your point of view, about Higginson is that he was both a member of the Secret Six and a co-founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. The latter begat the awesomely named League for Industrial Democracy, which begat the SDS. I trust you can take it from there.
Yes, that's a continuous thread of SWPLness from Nathaniel Hawthorne to B.H. Obama. Sorry if American history isn't what you wanted it to be.
"Steve, what do you think it was about the Willie Horton ad that appealed to poor whites?"
ReplyDeleteWho knows? Perhaps it was the notion that letting a violent felon out of prison for a visit home wasn't really a grand idea
Yep, I was thinking the same thing. This was Republican candidate stressing his anti-crime position, which is not the same as pro-white-working-class position. Incidentally, you can't replicate such tactics now. In this area, the GOP fell victim to its own success--crime is no longer an issue.
I do think the Civil War was a tragedy, but the Federal Government didn't become as operationally anti-White until much later, I would agree.
ReplyDeleteThat's the key term right there, "anti-white."
Imagine a politician asking, "Is this really anti-racist, or is it just anti-white?"
When he's asked to explain himself: "We know there's a lot of anti-white sentiment out there. Whites aren't even treated as people. Pressure groups can push policies that hurt whites but whites aren't allowed to complain because they're not treated as people. That's anti-white. So it's entirely appropriate to wonder out loud whether some policies really are anti-racist or whether they're just anti-white."
Silver
a member of the Secret Six
ReplyDeleteAgain, you've been debunked about this before:
http://racehist.blogspot.com/2010/07/reply-to-mencius-moldbug-on.html
Sorry if American history isn't what you wanted it to be.
Sorry that your shell game has been exposed. I'm sure you were counting on everybody just mindlessly accepting the narrative you've been relentlessly pushing. It's too bad that people can now just easily check your absurd claims against the facts through a few links.
"New England political thought a century ago"
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wentworth_Higginson.
What's cool, or uncool depending on your point of view, about Higginson is that he was both a member of the Secret Six and a co-founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. The latter begat the awesomely named League for Industrial Democracy, which begat the SDS. I trust you can take it from there.
Yes, that's a continuous thread of SWPLness from Nathaniel Hawthorne to B.H. Obama. Sorry if American history isn't what you wanted it to be."
Thanks for pointing out one of the most pervasive, yet curiously underdiscussed strains of American intellectual history. Anyone who looks up Unitarianism, Trancendentalism, the "Chautauqua" arts/lecture movement, and the like will see how SWPLdom has been with us for a long time, and has thoroughly influenced American life, a subject easily worthy of a Tom Wolfe book. Being from a region where this stuff never really existed until recently, I've always been fascinated by it, and surprised how little mention it gets.
New England SWPLdom in the 1930's meets an outsider:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z1pPyarKhA
Map: "A true middle class party would impose a 50% wealth tax on all wealth above $50 million, including all unrealized capital gains.
ReplyDelete...Buffet would pay $30 billion in taxes in his first year alone."
Why stop at 50 million? If we're going to legalize Mugabe-ism, we could confiscate Buffet down to to a buck and a half directly.
Gilbert P.
Captain Jack -
ReplyDelete(And yes, I realize I'm sounding like an Archie Bunker episode. I really don't care.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lear
You've internalized their message.
-uh
Silver,
ReplyDeleteWell done. I may use that as boilerplate in social concourse. "So, ummm, I heard yer a waciss?"
incipit soliloquium
Mencius,
Anything to deflect, huh? I agree, however, that there is a thread of unbroken SWPLism in American country — after all 'twas the Puritans who founded the place, and who, as Gore Vidal wrote, wished to be free not from persecution, but to persecute.
In this respect your angle touches neatly with Hunter Wallace's at OccidentalDissent, who's been going on about "Yankee Transcendentalism" and mercantilism as the root-stock of your tribe's grafted tikkunolammmery and money-changing perfidy. Obviously it can't be either/or, and you're enough of a thinker to be ashamed of asserting as much.
Or are you not? I know you don't sink to challenges from the lowly goyim who shower you with attention, but just this once, perhaps, you shall prove to us how modern American identity has been shaped by this one variably only — which sure seems convenient given your race.
-uh
Poor blacks drive out diversity, affluent whites drive away from diversity.
ReplyDeleteSo, all black neighborhoods and all white communities.
Captain Jack:
ReplyDeleteRomney will tell us what he firmly believes in his heart, as soon as the next polling numbers come out. And he will be totally committed to those beliefs, until such time as they become inconvenient.
There was a discussion about univision coverage awhile back. One thing that's well covered on Univision is Obama's record of deportations--his administration has deported far more illegal immigrants than Bush did, apparently. (I'm not sure if that's per year or in absolute numbers.) Another is the anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric of the Republican candidates. (In general, the Republican candidates seem to me to be unable to even pretend to be sensible people wrestling with a hard problem--they offer nothing but catch phrases and tough talk because they have nothing else to offer. This doesn't distinguish them much from Obama on this issue. As far as I can tell, Obama's strongest argument for reelection is his opponents, who range from amoral botoxed gray man) Romney) to washed up whore (Gingrich) to whack job (Bachman) to crazy old uncle nobody listens to even as he's telling the truth (Paul).
The Republicans are intellectually three decades behind the times. Many are only just now feeling at ease with Milton Friedman circa 1978. "Let's get rid of these pesky taxes and regulations, for the Gipper! Do you know the wonderful story of free enterprise? We all need to help the [insert NAM]. Let me tell you about the ant and the grasshopper." That's the gray-headed rank and file (the youngsters are neocons who want to bomb Iran), but apparently the leadership isn't any less clueless, only more corrupt.
ReplyDeleteWho earns like Episcopalians and votes like Puerto Ricans?
ReplyDelete>Eliminating trade deficit by raising tariffs = increasing taxes on poor whites.<
ReplyDeleteFalse. The current poor whites would be employed manufacturing goods that would be less expensive than tariffed goods. Those (formerly) poor whites would be working for renumerative wages, as opposed to being unemployed and sitting around the crib with a Xbox they got from China-Mart.
I seriously doubt the Republicans will be smart enough to exploit this opening, an opportunity that has been sitting there for decades.
ReplyDeleteThey can't. They are beholden to their pro-immigration corporate paymasters & overlords. They will make the occasional sympathetic but insincere noise, but they will never dare bite the hand that feeds them.
I can't believe there are still conservatives who think the Republican party will save America from becoming a multicult latifundio.
There is something that is hidden here, which is that American party politics has become something more like European party politics. There is a party that most people in the white working class, the Republicans, vote for. Socialist and Labor parties elsewhere struggle to get the sort of percentages the Republicans are getting among the white working class. Meanwhile, the Democrats have the voting profile of a conservative style party, the elites and assorted minorities.
ReplyDeleteWe even have the elites moving into the central cities and the suburbs sinking into slum territory, just like in Continental Europe.
However, the Democrats have been playing their role as the conservative party. You haven't seen genuinely new ideas coming out of Democratic congresses and administrations in quite some time. They oppose various Republican proposals to make this or that change, then push through watered down versions of them when they get into power.
But the Republicans obviously don't fit the profile of an economically left wing party, in fact their leaders don't seem to much like the people who are voting for them. And their rank and file denounces the Democrats, an obviously conservative party, as "socialist" or "radical". So you have this big disconnect.
I've dug up some pictures of one white working-class Democrat, a guy named WWCD, from over the years.
ReplyDeleteHere's one taken about 46 years ago. WWCD is the one holding the baby, his newborn son. His wife, maiden name of Johnson, is there on the delivery table, fresh from the throes of giving birth.
Here's another of WWCD about 28 years ago, with his three beautiful sons now all grown up.
And here's one from last year with the therapist who finally helped him to accept the fact that his wife has left him for good.
Rumor has it though that his new wife, a horse-faced Republican named McConnell doesn't respect him all that mcuh, isn't faithful, but claims to be pregnant with his child. Ms. McConnell is working hard to convince WW not to bother with a paternity test.
Pretty realistic for the NYT, The only time the MSM is openly rational is when they are talking votes and elections, otherwise forget it, they must keep the benighted hoodwinked. The best way for the GOP to win would be to give the nomination to Ron Paul, who despite constant proclamations to contrary from both the left and right establishments, actually has credibility as an anti-establishment candidate. Witness the snide op-ed article about him in the NYT by one of their resident feminists lefties, Gail Collins. She apparently thinks Paul being elected would be the modern equivalent of the Visigoths sacking Rome, because Ron Paul wants to return us to 1789!!!!!
ReplyDeleteBasically the Democrats are the party of the lower class, welfare and Section 8, and their (democrats) rich patrons from AIPAC, lawyer, elites.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans are the party of the rich billionares, full stop.
Having that choice, the self serving white middle class voter has one option - do not vote.
Personally, I would vote Democrat because some crumbs from the pie will fall into my lap in some programs, while the Ayn Rand 1800's kids must work Republicans will reach out and take those crumbs from deep inside my throat.
So vote, middle class - Shaniqua or Rosensteiner?
Which one picks your fancy?
Steve, what do you think it was about the Willie Horton ad that appealed to poor whites? Looks like you are agreeing with the Democrats that this was a hidden appeal to white racism (except you consider it a good thing).
ReplyDeleteWhy is it racist for a politician to deal with the problem of black crime? The reality is that black criminals have turned cities like Detroit and Newark into unlivable hellholes.
uh: but just this once, perhaps, you shall prove to us how modern American identity has been shaped by this one variably only — which sure seems convenient given your race
ReplyDeleteYou know, in reading through this little exchange, it suddenly dawned on me that maybe Mencius MacMoldbug honestly does NOT think of himself as American - that if he finds himself involved with us in a discussion about "American identity", then necessarily [from his point of view] we must be talking about yankee transcendentalism & unitarian-universalist nihilism, and that [again, necessarily] we could not possibly be talking about the alien Scots-Irish/Druidistic influence in all of this [since, from MMacM's point of view, his is a tribe which is, at best, merely a group of wandering, itinerant observers of the American nation, and which could not possibly be considered active participants in forming this nation's "identity"].
I.e. it could be that MMacM and his fellow Scots-Irishmen [like Jonah MacGoldberg, when
writing about Woodrow Wilson] use the word "American" in much the same way that the Scots-Irishman Ron MacRosenbaum uses the word "White".
A good test of this would be to see if you could get MMacM to comment on whether the Scots-Irishman Adam MacWorth was an active participant in helping to form the American [or the broader English-speaking world's] "identity", circa 1893, or whether the Scots-Irishman Alexander MacBerkman and the Scots-Irishwoman Emma MacGoldman were active participants in helping to form the American "identity", circa 1892, or again, circa 1901.
I am Lugash.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans are intellectually three decades behind the times. Many are only just now feeling at ease with Milton Friedman circa 1978. "Let's get rid of these pesky taxes and regulations, for the Gipper!
Nonsense.
The GOP leadership has been slavishly devoted to the tax cuts/deregulation/no-tariffs ideology since 1980. The Democratic leadership has been on board since 1992.
The GOP base, including the working class, has been just as on board as well until the meltdown, and there are still diehards who believe.
I am Lugash.
uh,
ReplyDeleteThere are real tribal Jews in the US: Lubavitchers, Crown Heights people, etc, etc. What do they have in common with SWPL Jews? Basically nuffin'. What's the difference between SWPL Jews and SWPL Wasps? You need a DNA sequencer to tell them apart. I exaggerate, slightly.
I suppose it's possible that Jewish or rather Ashkenazi DNA correlates with some kind of personality type. It certainly correlates with intelligence. But the overlap with general European traits is huge.
As for culture, to call a SWPL of Jewish or part-Jewish descent a "Jew" is basically a misuse of the English language. "Communist" would be more accurate. In general you'll find some ancestor in the family tree of this individual who grew up culturally Jewish and did everything he could to cleanse his world of Jewiness. Much the same way an "Oreo" is made. For the descendants of this individual, even if they opt to return to cultural Judaism, they're basically converts.
Capt. Aubrey wrote:
ReplyDelete"The key years seem to be 1950-1965. Obviously events were happening before then, but it was in those years that the nation turned from being run for the benefit of Europeans to one where such attitudes became crimethink."
Those years coincide with the rise of television, a very powerful communications medium that has always been controlled by a group that Rick Sanchez once mentioned and got fired for mentioning.
Sanchez said, "everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart."
Sanchez was fired for that crimespeech.
I suppose it's possible that Jewish or rather Ashkenazi DNA correlates with some kind of personality type. It certainly correlates with intelligence. But the overlap with general European traits is huge.
ReplyDeleteDo fish know they're wet?
Jewish personality traits are quite different from general European traits.
It might be hard to notice this if you're in cosmopolitan environments with significant Jewish influence and presence. Certain personality traits will have trouble expressing themselves and will be dominated by others that set the tone.
Similar to how white kids in very black environments become jive talking, hip-hopping, pseudo blacks while certain traits get suppressed.
In general you'll find some ancestor in the family tree of this individual who grew up culturally Jewish and did everything he could to cleanse his world of Jewiness. Much the same way an "Oreo" is made. For the descendants of this individual, even if they opt to return to cultural Judaism, they're basically converts.
ReplyDeleteIt's called group hypocrisy.
It doesn't mean merely behaving contrary to your beliefs but rather preaching to non-kin groups contrary to the behavior of your kin group. This means your kin-group's preachers-to-others may behave quite selflessly and non-hypocritically. The key is their ability to spread biologically toxic memes to non-kin groups to which the kin group is relatively immune.
What's the difference between SWPL Jews and SWPL Wasps? You need a DNA sequencer to tell them apart. I exaggerate, slightly.
ReplyDeleteReal SWPLs could never pull off the stuff Ashkenazis get up to. Like the whole, "ethno-state for ourselves, but smash anyone of European stock trying to get the same thing for themselves" thing? Fuggedaboutit. Or the "closed borders for Israel, open borders for America, hysterical manipulation for anyone who thwarts us" thing. Or the "criticize Whites and their culture non-stop, but never tolerate any criticism of ourselves" thing. Then there's White Guilt (brought on by White ethnocentrism, and which does not apply to Ashkenazis) vs. Jewish Guilt (brought on by a lack of Ashkenazi ethnocentrism), which are opposites. Whites can't pull off the lachrymose thing either; a SWPL would be embarrassed by whining about being the richest American demographic, what with all those poor starving children in Asia and Africa, whereas it doesn't bother Ashkenazis one bit, apparently.
I can keep going, if you like.
"Having that choice, the self serving white middle class voter has one option - do not vote."
ReplyDeleteBefore the discussion bogged down into the usual iSteve obsessions, it occurred to me that the political strategy of individual members of the white working class (WWW) was pretty good, given the situation they found themselves in.
The WWW is confronted with two parties that are both hostile to them at least economically, both pretty relentlessly, and with no alternative party on the horizon. There are two plausible approaches to take to this situation.
One is to not vote, not participate, try to avoid listening to political news (mostly propaganda anyway), and try to limit the involvement of the government, which is definitely not on your side, in your life to unavoidable obligations such as taxes, jury duty, etc.
The other is to participate, at least to vote, but to just vote to whichever party seems better on cultural or national security issues, or generally more competent and honest, even as they are screwing you economically.
And as it turns out, that is what members of the WWW do politically, either they try to opt out altogether, or if they do vote they vote Republican on the famous cultural or national security issues. They tune out economic-based arguments completely since they know they are going to get screwed no matter what.
This is a tough choice if you are a member of the WWW and happen to live in a central city or are non-religious, or have some other affiliation that at least makes you the target of Republican political rhetoric (though I think the "conservative" hostility to central cities is an artifact of the decades when their population was mainly minority; this is changing and the rhetoric will probably catch up some day). But that explains why the Democrats are still able to get a significant minority of WWW votes.
Basically the Democrats are the party of the lower class, welfare and Section 8, and their (democrats) rich patrons from AIPAC, lawyer, elites.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans are the party of the rich billionares, full stop.
A common misconception on the left, but no. In fact Americas billionaires are liberals and Democrats almost to a man.
3. Eliminating trade deficit by raising tariffs = increasing taxes on poor whites. As simple as that. Remember, (a) tariffs = taxes, and (b) foreigner manufactures don't pay American taxes, American citizens do.
ReplyDeleteat least they'll have a job
4. Republican politicians don't court black or Hispanic voters. What looks to you as Republican courting minorities is actually them pandering to SWPLs. And no, you can't have your white coalition without the SWPLs.
SWPLs are created through educational and media brainwashing, know nothing, are effeminate, and are a minority of adults.
Those years coincide with the rise of television, a very powerful communications medium that has always been controlled by a group that Rick Sanchez once mentioned and got fired for mentioning.
ReplyDeleteOne must never speak ill of the Scotch-Irish.
"There are real tribal Jews in the US: Lubavitchers, Crown Heights people, etc, etc. What do they have in common with SWPL Jews? Basically nuffin'. "
ReplyDeleteBy the same token Israeli's and American Jews have nothing in common; yet that doesn't stop American Jews from supporting Israel, including things like segregation, repatriation of immigrants, anti-miscegenation laws, et cetera, for Israel while preaching the tenets of SWPLdom here.
The SWPLest of all Jews, guys like Norman Finklestein aren't popular among American Jews. Even on J-Street.
So Jews are expected to be SWPLs in America; but not when it comes to the Jewish community and Israel.
"Jewish personality traits are quite different from general European traits."
ReplyDeleteTrue. Try spending some time in continental Europe. The absence of Jewish verbal quickness is quite noticeable if you're an American from the East Coast. Or just go to Minnesota.
It doesn't mean merely behaving contrary to your beliefs but rather preaching to non-kin groups contrary to the behavior of your kin group.
ReplyDeleteHow intricate!
Is this effect genetically mediated, or culturally? If a little Jew baby is adopted by Wasps, does it still work? Does it change matters whether or not the Jewlet knows of his Jewish DNA? If he learns in adulthood, does the effect suddenly turn on?
You might notice that in reality, human tribalism is exclusively cultural - a Cheyenne baby adopted by Sioux will identify as a Sioux. I'm curious as to whether you think this statement is false only in the case of Jews, or in general.
"What they got: disenfranchisement, reeducation, ethnic cleansing, etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteA Maistre or a Mencken would point out that these losers, by electing their worst enemies, got exactly what they deserved."
Yea, but they didn't know they were voting for that, did they? Who was talking about civil rights or increased immigration in 1932?
As for culture, to call a SWPL of Jewish or part-Jewish descent a "Jew" is basically a misuse of the English language. "Communist" would be more accurate.
ReplyDeleteAre these Communists who are being skewered by Anne Applebaum in the neocon New Criterion ? :
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/oldcliches-applebaum-3340
(...)
Stranger still was the write-up which Europe: A History received in The New York Times. Theodore Rabb, in a long, humorless, and surprisingly nasty review, unaccountably dismisses the main of the book (“as it happens, he redresses the East-West imbalance only occasionally”) and goes on to describe it as having “inaccuracies, on average, every other page.” Yet if this is so, Rabb hasn’t done a very good job identifying them. Some of the “mistakes” are subjective judgments—Rabb describes, for example, Davies’ account of Copernicus as “misunderstood” without explaining why. Sometimes Rabb is simply incorrect: he complains that “William Harvey does not make it into the book” when in fact he does, on page 1,272. And while plenty of other reviewers noticed mistakes, most forgave them, as did one reviewer, on the grounds that “any book of this scope and this scale, written by a single author, would contain some errors in those fields which were not the author’s special subject.” While Oxford University Press is at fault for not assigning special fact-checkers to this book, and doubly at fault for having had it copy read in India (a new fashion in publishing, I am told), the real interest of the book is its style and its brilliantly sustained thesis—a thesis, as I say, that Rabb hardly mentions in his review. In any case, a new error-free edition is already due to appear in June.
But if my guess is correct, Professor Rabb’s motivation for attacking the book is not its errors. The real motivation must lie in Professor Rabb’s obscure comments about Jewish matters. Among other things, Davies stands accused of “singularly and irrelevantly” describing the historian Simon Schama as Jewish, the “equating of the now notorious German police battalion in the Otwock ghetto in 1942 with the role of Jews in the postwar Communist security forces in Poland,” as well as a “skewed” discussion of usury and “errors about the origins of ghettoes.” Why it is wrong to describe Simon Schama as Jewish, since he is Jewish and writes about being Jewish; what exactly is skewed about Davies’ discussion of usury or the origins of ghettos, both of which have struck other historians as perfectly acceptable; none of this is explained. Rabb, it seems, is fond of making vague and unsubstantiated accusations in reviews, and has been caught doing so on at least one previous occasion.
As for the accusation concerning Battalion 101 and its behavior in Otwock, these were also picked up in a series of letters to the editor of The Times Literary Supplement by the historian Abraham Brumberg and a woman named Esther Kinsky, who even took it upon herself to send a plaintive form letter around London, asking supporters to “contribute your opinion on this matter and to help instigate a public debate.” What all appear to object to was Norman Davies’ description of Nazi atrocities and Jewish postwar cooperation with Communist atrocities in the same capsule. Nothing Davies writes is untrue, but Brumberg feels that describing the two on the same page “helps to camouflage the unique nature of the German holocaust.”
(...)
Davies was denied tenure under curious circumstances by Stanford in 1986.
Hey, lay off my main man Mencius. He's got one of the most intelligent and entertaining blogs out there. So he chooses not to acknowledge the role that some of his relatives played in spawning this monstrous new religion called Liberalism. What do you expect from him? Breast beating and anguished mea culpas? Give the guy a break; he's on our side.
ReplyDeleteHow intricate!
ReplyDeleteIt isn't intricate at all. It's actually quite mundane. These kinds of behaviors and strategies are ubiquitous in nature. It's a big world out there - go out in the field or open an ethology book.
human tribalism is exclusively cultural
No, tribalism is not "exclusively cultural".
I think both parties take orders from ASIPAC (American-Scotch Irish Political Action Committee). Remember when Netanyahu slapped Barack Obama around over those 1967 borders? Then he got thunderous applause from both parties?
ReplyDeleteHow intricate!
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to, say, one of your essays, which are TLDR even for your fans.
What do you expect from him? Breast beating and anguished mea culpas? Give the guy a break; he's on our side.
ReplyDeleteReciprocity would be a great start. For all I know he's got a clause tucked away somewhere but that possibility aside, I've never seen him afford Whites the same rights Ashkenazis claim for themselves.
As for who's on my side, depends on what you mean. Ideologically, maybe, but my side isn't defined solely by ideology.
It would be too much to expect an Ashkenazi to police his own tribe though, I agree.
"3. Eliminating trade deficit by raising tariffs = increasing taxes on poor whites. As simple as that. Remember, (a) tariffs = taxes, and (b) foreigner manufactures don't pay American taxes, American citizens do."
ReplyDeleteat least they'll have a job
Not so simple. Yes, the employees of an industry protected in this way will have jobs. But their customers will have to pay higher prices. Which means that they will have less disposable money. Which in turn means that they will have to cut down on something else. So the sectors of economy that produce this "something else" will have to downsize and fire people.
So what's the net effect? More jobs or fewer jobs? Hard to say. But if I had to bet, I'd say fewer jobs. Just because the consumers overall have less money in their pocket.
A real life example: an increase in the oil prices (doesn't matter from tariffs or other reasons). A great proportion of this windfall actually either stays in the US or goes into economies that buy a lot from us: Canada, Mexico, etc. Right now there is an enormous boom in the oil sector. Lots of jobs are being created--white working class jobs. All those people are, as you say, employed; and good for them. But what's the effect of high oil prices on the overall employment? You know what it is.
"
ReplyDeleteFalse. The current poor whites would be employed manufacturing goods that would be less expensive than tariffed goods. Those (formerly) poor whites would be working for renumerative wages, as opposed to being unemployed and sitting around the crib with a Xbox they got from China-Mart."
Precisely, higher wages approximate to higher status, while cheaper goods do not.
"You will think I am hot about this matter but it is I feel one which is going to bring great trouble on the United States when the judgment of history is recorded on the part we have played. It is very largely our fault that Bolshevism has spread as it has and I do not believe we will be found guiltless of the thousands of lives uselessly and cruelly sacrificed in wild orgies of bloodshed to establish an autocratic and despotic rule of principles which have been rejected by every generation of mankind which has dabbled with them."
ReplyDelete-- Capt. Montgomery Schuyler, Vladivostok, 1919, to Col. David Barrows. (Source.)
From the same letter:
"It is probably unwise to say this loudly in the United States but the Bolshevik movement is and has been since its beginning guided and controlled by Russian Jews of the greasiest type, who have been in the United States and there absorbed every one of the worst phases of without having the least understanding of what we really mean by liberty..."
I am quite confident that both these passages are more or less correct, although it's a matter of record that by 1940 these cosmopolitan Old Bolsheviks had gotten pretty much what they deserved - if not more.
I'll give you a deal, Jew-haters: I'll feel race guilt for Felix Frankfurter (et al), if you'll feel race guilt for John Reed (et al). Any takers?
It's also historically important (for Jew-haters) to recognize that well into the '50s, Israel was at least as much a Communist cause as a Zionist one. The 1948 war was fought with Czech weapons against the British-officered Arab Legion. The genuine nationalists of Jabotinsky's Revisionist movement never had any significant international support, nor were they ever in the driver's seat - not even when Begin became PM. Scratch a Labor Zionist and you find a Communist. Indeed, do you even need to scratch?
ReplyDeleteIt took the reptile brains who got rid of Rhodesia, South Africa, Portugal, Spain, Greece, etc, a few decades to realize what awesome Nazis the Jews would make if they actually had an actual state of their own. But don't worry, they're working hard on it as we speak. I don't give Israel much of a chance in the long run.
Maybe they need somebody whom the nomenklatura hate because their appeal to the white working class is so deep. Wasn't there somebody called Palin....
ReplyDeleteMencius:
ReplyDeleteGoogle "Without Herut and Maki". With an emphasis on the second half.
Say what you will about them, but the party of Ben-Gurion, Eshkol (instigator of the Six Day curbstomp) and Golda Meir ("There is no such thing as a Palestinian people") was not a Communist party.
I'm pretty sure that the old Labor establishment was in fact fairly terrified of Soviet influence.
More here: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=abSD4lYSzMEC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=mapai+was+anticommunist&source=bl&ots=raWJuy8Zzu&sig=Kt4OADO9VygNGUnKi0_ZafzWb0U&hl=en&ei=J3nWTuHiEI_G-QbwoanDCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Here is an excerpt from one of the highest rated comments.
ReplyDeleteBe sure to read, "criminal, on welfare and poorly educated."
"(working-class whites) often do dislike "minorities." I teach their children at an inner city school and their parents convey attitudes distrustful of illegal immigrants who they perceive -- correctly -- as driving down working-class wages.
Whites are, indeed, fearful of blacks, who they perceive -- correctly -- as having a rate of incarceration six time that of the general population and a drop-out rate among high-school students of more than twice that of whites while the out-of-wedlock birth rate among blacks is also twice that of whites.
They fear, in short, a population that is much more likely to be criminal, on welfare and poorly educated. This is not racisim -- it is a realistic assessment, confirmed by the government's own statistics.
Working-class may also perceive that liberal free-traders sold them out with NAFTA and other "progressive" ideas that gutted manufacturing jobs.
They don't "fear loss of value" in their homes -- they KNOW it has happened. Since, for many of them, this is their only real asset they are desperate.
Their children are bitter and bewildered because "liberal" educators (the Predatory Pedagouges) have jacked the cost of even community college through the roof. They are faced with ruinous student debt while "minorities" swan into colleges on "affirmative action" money and admission policies.
The Democratic Party has for some years, now, been in the hands of a snobbish group of liberals who loathe Joe and Jane Six-Pack and dote on gays, minorities and women. Like "Tom," they dismiss the working-class as unknowing Yahoos. And, increasingly, that class returns the contempt!"
Moldbug, no one cares about your feelings. We care about your actions. And those actions largely consist of blaming the victim.
ReplyDeleteI'll give you a deal, Jew-haters: I'll feel race guilt for Felix Frankfurter (et al), if you'll feel race guilt for John Reed (et al). Any takers?
ReplyDeleteIt's not about "guilt". It's about the truth. Any sort of "deal" regarding the truth should be at best an agreement to disagree, not a compromise of the opinions involved with the inevitable result of trying to twist the compromised narrative to favor one side over the other.
The working class, as Moseley apparently understood, has always had a (largely non-verbalized) mental set that cuts across the traditional left-right spectrum
ReplyDelete(so "familiar" the chattering cocktail crowd on campus). The working class tend to be, bottom line, more "conservative" than "liberal". The Demos, accordingly, can't depend upon them.
Whelp, no answer from Lord Moldbug today; maybe he'll deign tomorrow. Maybe I'm being uncharitable, and he hasn't had a chance to read my comment yet?
ReplyDelete>All those people are, as you say, employed; and good for them. But what's the effect of high [...] prices on the overall employment? You know what it is.<
ReplyDeleteYes, the effect is good. When the value of labor goes up, everyone who is a laborer benefits.
Laborers with more spending money in their pockets, in a country with a significant amount of economic independence from international bankers. The money is kept at home. The remaining problem is technical: producing things more cheaply, so that purchasing power goes up. All this seems alien only because our economy is so abnormal now, and so are our economists.
If a nation (such as the USA) has an apparently large, persistant and intractable trade deficit, then that nation is gradually bled of cash and thus bled of wealth.
ReplyDeleteDeflation ensues, this manifests in stagnant and low wages, high unemployment abd depressed prices generally. Basically the whole nation, including 'white collar professionals' gets pooerer.Hardly a desirable economic outcome.Despite what certain 'economists' try to tell you all this shit about 'mercantilism', 'Adam Smith', and 'no zero sum games', what I have outlined above is basic, basic arithmetic, matchstick counting stuff, axiomatic basic facts except to a 'clever economist' who will quibble and quibble and quibble away about all sorts of 'clever little points' and side effects that me in my ignorance can't see.
Furthermore American workers made unemployed by imports aren't paying any tax - thus the public sector (teachers etc) is eventually destroyed.Basic stuff, but beyond the imagination of elites, I'm afraid.
Anyone can 'be clever' and import as many goodies from the rest of the world as possible, allsorts of lovely gee-gaws from diamonds and elephants to barbie dolls and socks.The difficult bit is not running out of cash to pay for it, just like any worker can freely blow out money from his credit card on all the goodies he sees in the mall, with the idea in his head that his credit card will be magically replenished by the 'gods of free trade' (ie 'the Chinese made all my goodies, so they'll employ my labor, right?' - err no, in fact).
ReplyDeleteA real life example: an increase in the oil prices (doesn't matter from tariffs or other reasons). A great proportion of this windfall actually either stays in the US or goes into economies that buy a lot from us: Canada, Mexico, etc. Right now there is an enormous boom in the oil sector. Lots of jobs are being created--white working class jobs. All those people are, as you say, employed; and good for them. But what's the effect of high oil prices on the overall employment? You know what it is.
Pay modestly higher prices, while everyone has a decent job? Sounds good to me.
In addition, our capital will be kept in this country instead elsewhere.
Free trade only helps the superrich increase their bank accounts while impoverishing the nation, weakening its ability to excel, and ultimately destroying it for good, especially if combined with unrestricted immigration.
ReplyDeleteThese particular superrich really are a parasite class. They would be at home in a stone age society if only they could extract rent.
We are being squeezed between the parasites of the upper class and the parasites of the lower class.
ReplyDeleteNot so simple. Yes, the employees of an industry protected in this way will have jobs. But their customers will have to pay higher prices. Which means that they will have less disposable money. Which in turn means that they will have to cut down on something else. So the sectors of economy that produce this "something else" will have to downsize and fire people.
So what's the net effect? More jobs or fewer jobs? Hard to say. But if I had to bet, I'd say fewer jobs. Just because the consumers overall have less money in their pocket.
A real life example: an increase in the oil prices (doesn't matter from tariffs or other reasons). A great proportion of this windfall actually either stays in the US or goes into economies that buy a lot from us: Canada, Mexico, etc. Right now there is an enormous boom in the oil sector. Lots of jobs are being created--white working class jobs. All those people are, as you say, employed; and good for them. But what's the effect of high oil prices on the overall employment? You know what it is.
Free trade is a scam, as all that can be had from the third world is slave labor. Therefore, that is what we will get - driving down of prices yet impoverishment of the country. As well, the wholesale stripping of industries and capital to other countries leaves us unable to compete when it comes to doing real things. Do not presume to speak for the good of America when you want to outsource all the jobs. How can this be good for America? What will everyone do?
Should they just be like you? Consider then that you would have too much competition. Your advice doesn't make sense, and so it is either mistaken, or manipulative.
And what sort of nation would we then be, once we no longer make, or do anything? A free floating nation of financial manipulators, hmm.. add in some punditry, hmmhmm
Mr. Anon 8:19 - I'd go with "Kansas Is Just Not That Into You"
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ReplyDelete