Trump Supporter Or Capitalism's New Slave?

"Trump voters are a coalition of the dispossessed. They have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, lost dreams. The American system is not working for them, so naturally they are looking for something else."

David Brooks

The writing is on the wall: working class Whites are feed up! America has become more like Rosanne, Married With Children, and Jerry Springer than Happy Days or Friends. It took global capitalism 40 years to do to White working class Americans what hundreds of years slavery, Black Codes, and Jim Crow laws to did to millions of African Americans: make them question their worth, doubt their ability to improve their station in life, and challenge the validity of the American Dream. Global capitalism has done more to shatter the myth of White supremacy than all of the late twentieth century Civil Rights activists and academicians combined. It's hard to feel superior to another group of people when you can't pay your bills. For the first time in American History African American and Hispanic parents are more optimistic about their children's future than Whites are. This is odd when you consider that at the height of the financial meltdown Black and Hispanic unemployment numbers were disproportionately higher than the numbers for their White contemporaries, yet survey after survey reveal more optimism inside these communities- why? I would suggest that historically oppressed people endure the psychological pain that accompanies market collapses and economic downturns better than people born into "advantageous societal predispositions". When you are the last hired and the first fired you never develop a sense of job security. When your college diploma is valued the same as a White person's high school diploma meritocracy and the American Dream are just empty signifiers.

American poverty is changing; as long as Mississippi, West Virginia, and Kentucky were thought to be the face of white poverty their suffering was seen, by many, as a deficiency in moral convictions. The lesson I take from America's global economic shift from producer to consumer is that we can't afford to look at systemic poverty through the lens of Max Weber's Protestant ethics. Market shifts have undermined or dismantled what were once considered decent middle class jobs. There are millions of people who have suffered this fate through no fault of their own. The Irony is that Trump supporters have turned to a symbol of corporate America's worship at the alter of capitalism to fix the problems caused by global capitalism. The Rust Belt wasn't created by women entering the workforce, Pittsburgh and Ohio didn't shutter steel mills because Blacks moved into upper management, and textile plants didn't send their units of production to China and India because Mexicans crossed the border. The economic pain many of Donald Trump's supporters are feeling is a direct result of people like Donald Trump and their thirst for more. If Bill Clinton had never signed NAFTA into law we still would have seen a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs. Capitalism, by default, demands the cheapest labor possible. The need for cheap labor is exacerbated when a company moves from private ownership to public ownership. The mistake many on the left make is believing a radical shift in our politics can cause a radical shift in the greed that fuels markets. The mistake many religious people make is believing that a shift in our morals can constrain global capitalism. The mistake that many on the right make is believing that instituting their policies (again) will make a difference in the lives of their constituents. The mistake we all make is believing we can change this system, in any significant way, without causing pain to those already hurting.

Capitalism is an amazing economic system until wages go up. Manufacturing leads to income, income creates new wants and needs, and new wants and needs lead to new job creation, but eventually wages go up and the system has to do a hard factory reset- usually in another land where wages are lower. The Free Market is a religion. It exists everywhere without existing anywhere. The market isn't Wall Street or brokerage houses where commodities and financial instruments are traded; they're just the temples for the worship of markets and monetization. Donald Trump will talk tough about trade, but he knows that with or without free trade agreements the powers that be are going to find a way to feed their greed. Trump knows it's easier to get some to support bad economic policies pitched by someone who looks like them than it is to get some people to embrace good economic policies pitched by someone who doesn't. Donald Trump cleared the field of his 16 Republican opponents using a Malcolm X like "By any means necessary" approach. I've watched this unfold with a sense of horror and amazement. I grossly underestimated the level of fear inside many of our fellow Americans. In the words of Goethe, "There's nothing more frightening than ignorance in action." I don't mean all of his supporters, but let's be real: the average American's ignorance of foreign and domestic policy is a pillar of political platform.

Global capitalism is the ultimate game of winners and losers; it has no racial preferences. Cheap labor is tied to deep suffering. This is a fact many try to avoid addressing. How bad would your life have to be to make you take a job making $1.00 a day? During the course of my life I've been fortunate to meet some very wealthy Black and Hispanic people, but I've never met a person of color who shipped jobs overseas. America, for the most part, was sold out by those who profess to love her the most. Donald Trump and his ilk may love America, but their actions prove they love money more. Donald Trump can't "Make America Great Again" Our country has never been great for all of us, but he has made America a little more interesting. His campaign opened my eyes to how desperate some in our country are. I'm saddened that so many people believe a man who profited from shipping jobs overseas is interested in bringing them back. Many of the jobs we've shipped away are never coming back. At a subconscious level, I believe more of our fellow citizens know this but refuse to admit it. Many of the people hurting now will continue to hurt long after the 2016 election, many of them will continue embracing polarizing figures who lie to them about the causes of their pain. Some will do it out of ignorance, but some will do it because it's easier than accepting the fact that people who look like you sold your family out for a mess of pottage.

The Economic Realities Politicians Rarely Talk About

How does a producer decide whether to employ additional units of a resource? This question is posed in the 6th edition of a textbook titled "Economics: Private and Public Choice". We (the collective labor force) have been reduced to "units of a resource".

Another midterm election cycle is upon us and candidates from both parties have "on schedule" started repackaging the same truncated arguments from the last dozen or so election cycles. While our economy has added jobs for 52 straight months most of those jobs are low paying and offer no benefits. As summer turns into fall our television screens and mail boxes will once again be filled with partisan political rhetoric offering solutions to our current economic situation. Tragically, most of the solutions offered won't address the root cause of these problems: the labor force (at all levels) has been relegated to being nothing more than an appendage. This problem is systemic and can't be solved from Washington D.C.

One political party is offering wholesale deregulation: get rid of the minimum wage and cumbersome regulations and watch the economy grow. I'm sure the unemployment rate would be close to zero if the minimum wage was $2.00 an hour. Just think of the money that could be saved on hard hats and safety glasses in the manufacturing sector of our economy.

The other party is calling for unrealistic wage hikes and regulations that most small businesses can't afford. Sure it would be nice if the minimum wage was $15 dollars an hour, but how many businesses would be able to stay open? Who would take the risk of starting a business if your labor force is going to make more money than you?

I believe that we are at the tail end of a fundamental shift in business ethics. The same middle class Americans who would have led the marches and protests are now sitting on their hands and keeping their mouths shut. Their fear is rational in context to their eroding status in our society. In the professional sector productivity is at an all-time high due to the 70 plus hour work weeks; while low skill jobs have seen their wages stagnated for the better part of a decade. We have lived for 30 plus years with a business ethic in place that reduces work in all of its forms. Seeing labor (people) as "units of a resource" who exist for the sole purpose of generating revenue is a problem that I'm almost certain we won't see addressed in the majority of the political ads coming our way.

My fear is that we (as a country) are too distracted by the spectacle of pop culture: Duck Dynasty, Real Housewives of (insert your favorite city) and technology, and too fragmented over social issues: abortion and same-sex marriage to correctly identify and work towards solving the economic issues we are facing. So remember this fall when candidates A and B are "debating" the issues, the odds are they are both competing for the same campaign dollars from people who view you as "additional units of a resource".

A Sad Truth About The Minimum Wage.

It would be easy to raise the minimum wage and pull millions from poverty. There is, however, an unintended consequence that comes with doing this: a small percentage of the people who need the most help would be hurt as some jobs would be eliminated. There's enough Prima facie evidence for us to admit that low wages and depressed living standards are a structural part of our capitalists economy. Many industries are dependent on the supply of low-wage, unskilled and immobile labor. It's not a coincidence that the rise of capital markets occurred in coordination with the demise of labor markets.

As Americans, we tend to ignore the plight of the developing world. When we think of capitalist countries we rarely consider Mexico or Nigeria. The developing capitalist countries and the Asian countries who practice a mix of capitalism and communism have benefited from the offshoring of our manufacturing base. The relaxed labor laws combined with overall poverty levels have made those countries very attractive places to do business. As we continue the 30 plus year run of Neoliberal and Neoconservative economic policies I wonder: what's left for America? The move from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy wasn't a smooth one, but teaching farmers to work in factories has proven to be easier than teaching factory workers to work in information technology.

With so many multinationals feeding off of the poverty in the developing world, it's conceivable to think one day everything produced by companies with a few hundred million dollars in market capitalization will be made offshore.

Karl Marx was right in the Philosophic Manuscript of 1844. We have elevated the market to idol status. At the highest levels of a manufacturing and production based economy the function of money is to produce more human labor, who produce more goods, which leads to more capital. This isn't the case for investment banks and equity firms. The function of money is to produce more money. The interests of workers have been replaced by the interests of investors.

Just today I was watching international news. Parts of Spain are experiencing severe civil unrest and disobedience. I wonder: how long before this hits our shores? The idea that we can continue on this path without a negative reaction is as big a daydream as believing the market forces at play can be contained under the constraints of our current system. This monster is out of the cage and without any viable alternatives or remedies to fix this system, we could be living in the last days of the capitalist economy.

The sad actuarial truth is that a hike in the minimum wage would lift millions out of the category of the working poor, but it would also hurt smaller businesses with fewer resources. If the decision were made under utilitarian principles alone, the choice to help many over the few is a no-brainer. The tragedy of our current economic reality is that millions are working their fingers to the bone with no chance of getting out of poverty. The minimum wage can't keep up with inflation, but every little bit helps.