A recent piece in the New York Times, titled “Global Economy’s Stubborn Reality: Plenty of Work, Not Enough Pay,” highlights what seems to The Hot Screen like a pretty central conundrum and ticking time bomb of the modern world — sluggish wage growth or outright declines in major economies around the world, at a time of relatively high employment when traditional economic models would predict higher wage growth. The article doesn’t delve into the political ramifications of this phenomenon, but worker insecurity is obviously a foundation stone of the Trumpified world we’re living in, with right-wing movements promoting a closed-border nationalism in combination with various degrees of anti-immigrant sentiment.
This concise article raises far more questions than it answers, but they’re crucial questions. Are wages stalled because we’re still digging out of the effects of the Great Recession, or did the Great Recession enable or embody a restructuring of the economy that has permanently placed workers at a disadvantage? With national economies opened to foreign competition, are there any brakes on a race to the bottom when companies have clear and rational economic incentives to hire foreign workers at a fraction of the cost of local and/or unionized workers? And what’s the point of companies trying to make cheaper products or sitting on their money when it means their workers, who are also consumers, don’t have enough money to spend in order to drive the economy forward?
The article also reminds THS of how important it is to figure out answers to these questions, and for any progressive political party to be able to provide an accurate and compelling narrative about the economy and a path forward that’s grounded in the reality of the global economy — not in the sense of accepting injustice and imbalance, but in identifying what the actual challenges are in order to chart a just course forward. Donald Trump is telling a story about the economy that has various strains of truth to it, and more importantly, which resonates with many of his supporters’ lived experience of job and wage insecurity. Big corporations have shipped American jobs to Mexico; immigrants come to America and take our jobs; other countries cheat us on trade, and NAFTA has to go; Obamacare is a drain on the economy; and Trump is going to turn all of this around and make America great again.
But it isn’t difficult to see that if Donald Trump is wrong about key parts of his diagnosis— and he surely is — it could easily end up making things worse (and this is to say nothing of the immorality of his racist, demagogic tirades against both American and immigrant minorities). NAFTA may not be a great deal — but now that it’s so deeply embedded in our economy, surely there are better ways of fixing it then just eliminating it outright, with all the economic disruption that will bring to workers and owners alike? And what if automation has been as significant a factor as trade agreements in the loss of manufacturing jobs? Needless to say, the president’s silence on the importance of revitalizing unions is deafening, though any honest analysis of economics shows us there’s a crucial need for unions not only in the U.S. but worldwide to help right the inevitable imbalance between laborers and business.
Progressive politicians need to provide an economic agenda that puts at its center the economic insecurity which exists at the heart of the American economy. You can only read so many descriptions of hard-working Americans losing their jobs after years of steady employment, through no fault of their own, and of the devastation of their cities, before Donald Trump’s election begins to seem increasingly inevitable. After all, he told voters a story that resonated with their experience; he, at least, acknowledged their insecurity. Whether he really meant it, or will do anything about it, are different questions altogether. Progressives need to fully acknowledge this same downsized economic reality, put forward an accurate and compelling diagnosis, and identify how to make it better. Not only is it immoral to leave vast swathes of our population to fall down the economic ladder, it’s also a recipe for future Trumps to come along, misdiagnose the roots of our problems, and put forward solutions that just feed the downward spiral.
Indeed, this is the dark rebuttal to arguments that Trump’s incompetence and shitty policies will lead enough supporters to abandon him, as they begin to feel the real-world effects of his policies. Instead, it seems nearly as likely that increasingly desperate people could just double-down on Trump and his politics of victimization and vengeance, at least so long as the opposing party seems not to take their struggles seriously or provide an alternative framework for why their prospects have become so tenuous. Trump, after all, can still blame his opponents for blocking his amazing plans to MAGA.
