Spot-on piece. But the analysis of working class Republicanism is also multi-stranded.
As much as what Republicans, if that includes Mr Trump, have done to achieve their support, the Democrats, or at least Hillary Clinton, did as much to lose it. I don't mean that they should have followed a nativist line, but rather that, in cuddling up to Wall Street, they/she appeared to care more about the rich and entitled than they did for ever-hollowing-out economics of Main Street.
The symbolic features of these alignments are telling, and those of the Democrats are distinctly frayed.
7
Krugman presents another simplified straw man view of the electorate in the US today. This makes a convenient target for him.
The picture is much more nuanced and complex. Take a look at suburban voters. You want to ascribe many rural voter characteristics to them however if look into many metropolitan areas the experiences of those folks are much more diverse than many of the liberals and progressive blowing the horn of "they're afraid of folks who don't look like them!".
My family's views on race were formed by living neither in a rural white only vacuum nor some version of Scarsdale. We lived on the near east side of Detroit (Chene Street area) and saw first hand the damage done by the shift to identity politics of the Democratic Party. Forced busing destroyed the public schools system - long before Betsy Devos.
In the early 1960s the area was just about 100% Democratic, by the time my family moved out we had learned how to be Republicans.
I challenge any white liberal or progressive to compare our experiences in the wonderland of diversity.
By the time we moved all the white liberals had long since moved on. Those folks who moved onto to places like Vermont (hello Bernie) would be the envy of many Trump supporters.
So Krugman while you're preaching the word of racial unity and denouncing racists in all corners of fly country have you been marching in protest of NYC's racially segregated school system?
That's what I thought. Keep talking...
9
Maybe the smaller town-folk think things are moving too fast, and the Democrats are technocrats. Dem's need to spend more time camping out, and the rural folks need to get enough money together so they can do some traveling. Preferably out of the U.S.
See the world that their children's teachers are telling them about. Even if that's not an option, Washington, DC has so many cultural and civic attractions you could spend months just exploring the Smithsonian. Both groups need to have a welcoming attitude. Trump wants the all the energy of the country to power his ambition, but no one should surrender that sense of unity to one man. We gave up the security of the British monarchy providing we had the strength to govern ourselves. We almost lost
the battle in the 1860's but struggled to keep the republic intact.
It has NEVER been easy, and the iPhone won't save us now from dealing with the problem- it never goes away. But it can get better.
Gotta keep on trying is all...
1
Here's a thought. Can an economic culture fundamentally formed from a slave economy, ever bring itself to believe that "the labourer is worthy of his hire". America was founded on free labour, and the mindset for this has not changed. It has merely shifted to the prison system which now accounts for a huge part of the unpaid workforce in the US
5
Rural America disproportionate supplies the man and women in uniform that keep America safe
Urban America disproportionate supplies the well to do
6
I pray for a crash. It may be the only thing that will save us from Trump.
4
There are no comments on this posting that indicate that the Trump phenomena spells the end of democracy as we know it. A few dollars today versus the loss of who we are tomorrow is what this is about. Wake up America.
3
Trump won due to racism, plain and simple. The American today is every bit as racist as it was in 1965.
11
Rural states and their small communities are losing their residents to to metropolitan areas which are becoming solidly blue because of the economic opportunities they see for themselves and their families. As they depopulate, their only political power left is the Senate and and the electoral college, and now they have become the tyranny of the few. Trump's political rhetoric has convinced (conned) them that they are second class citizens, and only he can solve their economic status. It is going to be difficult to solve the current polarization created by Trump and his enablers who represent Red rural states.
4
Popular culture and the media often give the impression that minorities (to generalise) are doing really well through some sort of privileged status, and they should be somehow exalted. For example, saying one is gay is an applause line. An awful lot of people don't care that there are gay people, but the notion that it confers some kind of higher status does not necessarily follow. (I'm saying what I see, not what I think.) The "celebrating diversity" meme is taken as a coded message by white people, particularly men, as saying "but we don't celebrate you." A negative reaction to that is understandable, and it's expression at the ballot box was inevitable. This lies at the feet of liberals who turned their backs on displaced workers, in a complete reversal of their history. In practice, democrats wanted it both ways. Politicians banged on about jobs jobs jobs and built highways that had no effect whatsoever on the places that lost the most, but they delivered nothing that actually helped those people.
Now, though, those "winners" in growing metropolitan areas are mostly white. They are the privileged people. True, the demographics are quite varied, and that's all to the good. But no white person would trade places with a dark-skinned person. But it is long past time, and maybe too late, to get *everyone* involved in the economy. There's enough to do so that no one's talents should be wasted. Listen up liberals, or you'll have a 9-0 Supreme Court.
2
I suspect pocket book issues, like capping deductions for state and federal taxes at $10,000.00 played a role as well. Although people in the "flyover" states have failed to comprehend what a bad deal the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Bill of 2017" was for everyone but the uber-wealthy, you can bet your bottom dollar that college educated women in Orange County and other upper middle class suburbs did the math a year ago. Memo to Mitch, Paul and Don... raising taxes in parts of the country which already foot the bill was a really bad idea!
12
@Betsy S who writes about the plight of Upstate NY, focusing on agriculture, concluding "The market got us into this fix. It will make it worse unless something is done"
The same is true for Upstate Cities. Syracuse, Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, where industry moved out to Mexico as soon as NAFTA was signed. In Syracuse , GM, Carrier, New Process Gear ... the list is long... all moved their
operations to Mexico. Their population is now roughly one have of that when they had a robust economy
Krugman , analyzing NAFTA , in 1993 predicted
The truth about Nafta may be summarized in five propositions. Starting with
* Nafta will have no effect on the
number of jobs in the United States;
Well, that was WRONG
According to the Economic Policy Institute, an American think tank which receives significant funding from labor unions, the rise in the trade deficit with Mexico alone since NAFTA was enacted led to the net displacement of 682,900 U.S. jobs by 2010
For more see
The Uncomfortable Truth about NAFTA:
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 5 (Nov. - Dec., 1993), pp. 13-19. Author Paul Krugman
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045808
5
Update : More Casulties in France in Rural vs Urban
A second casualty in the violent confrontation between rural regions left behind, represented by the spontaneous demonstrations of "Yellow Vest" and the urban elites, profiting from globalization represented by Monsieur Macron
« Gilets jaunes » : un deuxième mort, Macron appelle au « dialogue »
3
A most confusing article from Mr. Krugman. We must remember the diminution of income for the working and lower portion of the middle class took place largely when Clinton and Obama were presidents. The activities of corporations like Amazon certainly were active during those periods, yet the bifurcation Mr. Krugman speaks of as a determinant did not present us with the ominous swing brought about in the last presidential election. No, it was the policies of those two Democratic presidents that brought about our present distress.l
2
JFP I recommend that you read “Who Stole the American Dream by Hedrick Smith. The consolidation of wealth and the dismantling of the middle class started well before Clinton and Obama. It started in the 70,s and 80’s with the “Powell Memorandum which advocated”wedge economics”. This policy encouraged companies to maximize profits for investors and executives and minimize wages and benefits. The wealth gap is well documented from the early 70’s and continues to widen. The current tax has done little to raise wages and benefits. When we examine our paychecks, any increase in pay is diminished by increases in health insurance-if we have insurance.
6
I think lack of education figures prominently, perhaps more prominently than race and culture issues (I am not discounting their existence and seriousness, but do I think better education can help address them). If all Americans, urban and rural, had better public elementary and high school educations, we may have an electorate with better critical thinking abilities, which is especially important in this post-truth, question everything, social media age. I think curriculum changes are required in order to counteract where society is, and appears to be headed if changes aren't made. So let's see some courses in critical thinking, in politics (e.g., the difference between socialism and fascism), in American history, in economic theory, etc. Of course, it is in the GOP's best interests to prevent this from happening because the ignorant are easier to exploit.
9
Everyone says "education" ignoring the fact that people are not equally equipped to benefit from education. People used to feel some connection to place. Today not so much. The best students from rural areas and small towns go on to college and then join their peers in the city. What remains is not attractive to the people Amazon and other prosperous companies want to hire.
3
It certainly doesn’t help that Republicans keep supporting legacy industries over high-tech and green tech so that they can maintain their grip on the poorly educated, who are the only ones besides millionaires who will vote for them. Highly educated workers move out of or stay away from red states, and the self-sorting perpetuates.
6
Red State voters view immigrants and refugees as the enemy. This is ultimately a dead-end economic philosophy.
Blue State voters view immigrants and refugees as people and potential. More middle class immigrants will work hard, pay taxes and raise more stable families.
Fix the immigration stalemate in Congress.
Dead Enders vs People and Potential.
6
I live in a very small town in Idaho. We are at least two and a half hours from any sizable community. The only industries that have ever existed here are extraxtive: mining and logging. As usual, once you run out of product the company leaves town. But we do have ranching going for us, and a bit of a tourist industry because we have several rivers nearby that people love to float in the summer. Then we have fishing and hunting, as well as government agencies such as the BLM and Forest Service. We are beginning to bring job training and educational programs to our area through a partnership with a community college in Idaho Falls. While it has taken some time to adjust the local's attitudes toward education, I believe we are making inroads. I always say that it comes down to a few individuals who really believe in their community. All of us who live here know that no one is going to come riding in on a big white horse throwing buckets of money at us. We've learned that if we want to make something happen we have to do it ourselves.
10
One possibility: tax credits and any other incentives anyone can think of for major, utility-scale renewable energy development in depressed rural areas. That's new economy, it works for the more blue-collar folks, that's where the open space is for solar and wind farms, and we absolutely have to transition as rapidly as possible to renewables.
3
Here in semi-rural Maine (30 miles from Bangor!) there appears to be a direct correlation between unemployment and low-paying jobs and domestic violence, drug-related crime, drug addiction and a raft of other social ills.
It's not that any of these things didn't exist before but the almost complete demise of the paper industry and it really good paying jobs have exacerbated them.
Thirty-five years ago we never locked our house, we always left the keys to the car & truck in the ignition. Not anymore. While most of my reasonably liberal friends and neighbors don't live in a fortress, we are all well-armed because violent break-ins are commonplace.
Rural, suburban, or urban areas are all suffering from a multitude of ills that I can barely list.
If I had one, pie-in-the-sky panacea for these ills it would be education. Education gives one a sense of self-worth and confidence that no amount of money really can.
But, to a guy with a hammer the world looks like a nail.
9
Isn't some of rural America reaction to accepting food stamps, Medicare and minimum wages related to the lack of dignity associated with work that does not have meaning? If they need handouts, they don't feel that they are contributing to their communities. There should be a solution that takes these factors into account. Raising wages for jobs other than fast food minimum wage jobs to a living wage through wage subsidies, health insurance as part of all job benefits. There must be other ways to improve the dignity of work in these areas.
1
How about a program on the scale of the interstate highway system, that would run high speed internet to the small towns (perhaps we can concoct some military reason for this, to get the rich on board; that is a sad synopsis though). If workers could telecommute from the countryside don't you think some would choose to live in those iconic small towns we are addicted to watching on the Hallmark channel? I believe Clinton/Gore had something like this in mind, then the GOP got back in to screw their own supporters, the way they always do.
4
Guess the film
Ralph:
"WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO BACK EAST?"
Buck:
"THERE'S A LOT OF RICH WOMEN THERE--"
2
easy...Midnight Cowboy.
2
"Basically, structural stories come in two variants: geography and skills. The geography story says that workers are in the wrong places; the skill story that they lack the right know-how.
At this point both stories have been thoroughly debunked."--Paul Krugman, in 2012. https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/the-structural-obsession/
"You can't [create a facility with 25,000 high-skilled workers] in a small town somewhere in middle America. That's the logic that's driving regional divergence, and you can't just wish it away."--Paul Krugman, in 2018.
Moral: structural forces are mighty convenient when you want to completely write off an entire region that happens to vote differently than you.
1
“attitudes related to race and ethnicity.” Really says it all, reason Iowa sends Rep. King to Congress and is the strategy employed by Republicans, racism, from Reagan to Trump. Explains why rural Americans repeatedly vote against their own self-interests, that of their families and children, and their communities. Those in Arkansas on MEDICAID are now experiencing Trump's and Republican concern for the poor with the draconian work requirement causing the vulnerable to be denied healthcare! U.S. is increasingly an "Outlier" compared to other advanced nations as to social network. Agree with Prof. Krugman, I also doubt it!
2
There are plenty of poor people in cities who vote as Democrats. Please explain why those poor people vote for Democrats and the poor people in the country vote Republican.
4
"what distinguished Trump voters wasn’t financial hardship but attitudes related to race and ethnicity.” That is exactly how Steve King was re-elected to Congress.
4
Ron Inglehart and his collaborators do much to clarify the economic links in a new paper:
Inglehart, Ronald, Jon Miller, and Logan Woods. “The Silent Revolution in Reverse: Trump and the Xenophobic Authoritarian Populist Parties.” American Political Science Association meetings, Boston, August 31, 2018. https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/902d7d96-35d8-46f9-aed2-f938a1216cbe.
As they say in their abstract:
"... The Silent Revolution (1977) argued that the unprecedentedly high levels of existential security experienced in developed democracies during the postwar decades was bringing an intergenerational shift from Materialist values that emphasized economic and physical security above all, to Postmaterialist values that gave to priority to individual autonomy and self-expression. ... [T]hough high levels of security were conducive to these changes, short-term economic downturns brought temporary reversions to Materialist values.
"During the past three decades, a growing share of the publics of high-income countries has experienced declining real income and job security, in context with a large flow of immigrants. This has fueled support for xenophobic populist authoritarian movements such as British exit from the European Union, France’s National Front and Donald Trump’s rise to power. The Silent Revolution dynamic is still at work, but it is now moving in reverse. ..."
2
"Elites" are a creation of GOP propaganda; a way to divide us. My guess is there are more poor in the cities than in the rural areas.
So who are the elite? The 1%; who are laughing all the way to the bank with 87% of all the monetary benefit from the most recent tax break!
While the press and the remainder of America are talking of a mythical divide, Trump and his cronies are enriching themselves. Witch hunt (squirrel!), election fraud (squirrel!), Hey! look over here!
I agree with the posters who, like myself, came from rural roots, put ourselves through college, and lived, worked, and paid taxes in the more populated areas. Flyover country has benefitted from receiving more of our collective tax dollars than they paid. The statistics don't lie. Yet, they elect leadership who refuse to bring their States into Medicaid, vote for GOP members who want to reduce entitlement programs which are helping these very rural communities from bankruptcy. I don't get it. Rural communities receive federal aid whether it is welfare, food stamps, crop insurance, or other agricultural subsidies that pay farmers to not plant. It's all welfare of one form or another.
Rural kids flock to the cities for education and opportunity. Capitalism moves the means of production to the least cost labor force; overseas. Coal, steel, manufacturing aren't coming back to the midwest. Unions (socialism) brought about the middle class. GOP propaganda has won. Wake up. We're one.
2
I'm from a solid red, bible thumping rural resort town.
The smart kids go to college, see the world and never come back except as retirees.
This phenomena, over generations, leaves these areas as the shallow end of the gene pool.
The 21st century ability to work online from anyplace can start to turn this self segregation around.
But only if local leaders try to attract new talent and that is a big hurdle given the hostility of the left behind.
4
Thank you for taking the time to reply yourself to the comments. You have a very good grasp of calming some of the fears people have.
Enjoy the Holidays.
"Can this chasm be bridged?" Krugman asks. The answer is no, and Democrats should stop trying.
Voters in Krugman's rich, wealthy cities have been offering to tax themselves to help poor, rural areas for 40 years. But voters in America's poor regions are committed to the myth that it's THEY who are being taxed to support the relatively small, but much more visibly impoverished people in America's rich cities. For how much longer must Democrats keep dying on this hill?
I'd like to see National Democrats debate the merits of cutting Federal spending and actually sending the money back to the rich states where it came from.
10
I think it was more than criminal that a state has to give over a billion dollars to any company to open a facility in that state. If Amazon wants to open anywhere they should do on their own dime.
5
An economic chasm exists between the growing (mostly blue) and fading (mostly red) districts. This is from differences in each group's ability to assess their own weaknesses and improve.
Today, disparity exists between groups of people: either
• red vs. blue Americans,
• American vs. Chinese workers, or
• knowledge vs. blue-collar workers.
Each is an economic battle between groups of people.
The winner of each above economic battle depends on the skills each group possesses. Those with "better" skills will rise. Currently blue districts in the US have more educated, diverse, globally-aware, and open-minded workers. This makes blue areas prosper. And until those in red areas can confront their fears - about their fundamental lack of marketable/useful skills - they will not improve and prosper.
Today these battles are between groups of people. However in our future (in 100-150 yrs), we will face a very different economic battle: between humans vs. Artificial Intelligence.
Every expert in deep learning says it is only a matter of time before AI systems match and surpass every aspect of humans - our bodies (through robotics) and our minds (our thinking, our emotions). It will happen.
To win that future battle, we must restructure economics - to not reward profits - but to reward companies on how they develop humans. A company's "profits" (rewards) must be tied to how they benefit (in non-financial ways) their human shareholders, customers, employees, community... humanity.
Perhaps the titans of the information economy have passed rural America by. But, can you blame them? Rural America has largely reject climate change while pushing to drive the teaching of evolution out of the schools replace it with what, "Scientific creationism"? Rural America wants the right to discriminate against the LGBT community, believe in religious tests for public office, and are actively restricting a woman's right to choose. While they get significant federal subsidies for all sorts of things from agricultural price supports to infrastructure such as roads and utilities, they still decry the federal government and the 'Coastal Elites'.
'Fly-over' country has an out sized influence on the national body politic. And it's a regressive, narrow minded influence.
Why would Bezos or any other decision maker want to put a headquarters in the part of the country that was anti-science, anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-gun regulation, and generally anti-intellectual. The knowledge economy requires the best knowledge workers, regardless of who they are or their religious preferences. How are you going to attract people like that the Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma or South Dakota? The rural America has collectively chosen to close their minds. When you close your mind, you close doors as well. It's not the so called coastal elites that need to change. Are they hurting economically? I no longer care. They put democracy at risk with Trump. Forgiveness will take a long time.
14
Several of my friends share the same opinion of Trump. They all agree he's morally bankrupt but they all plan to vote for him again. Why? They credit Trump for the increase in their retirement portfolios through the Trump tax cut. I would gladly forgo a small tax break to have a president I respect. To me, it's not the money, it's the principle of the thing.
6
Since 2013, the tax code has been changed so that the burden on rich relative to the middle class has been reduced even more. However, the recent election results could possibly result in legislation that might reverse some of what Warren Buffett, was describing when he said that "through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won. It's been a rout."
With the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives and Trump's pre-election call for a middle-class tax cut, there could be legislation that reverses some of what Buffet calls a rout.
Whatever one thinks of the advisability of something that reverses the massive shift in the in the tax burden away from the rich and onto the middle class, enacting such legislation could have negative implication for the financial markets. Since shifting the tax burden from the rich and onto the middle class results in there being more funds being available for investment, reversing that results in less funds being available for investment.
The Democrats have generally been deluded in their belief that the current level of taxes on the middle-class is politically sustainable. In Hilary 's speech announcing her candidacy she said that the middle class pays too much taxes. She never mentioned a middle class tax cut again. Most politicians are not aware that, by far the best thing government could do for most middle-class households would be to lower their taxes..."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4223364
1
A parallel. The Muslim world is fractured, but many ways, and the fractures cross over each other in overlapping cracks. Arabs vs. non-Arabs, e.g. Iran is Farsi. Oil-rich vs. oil-poor nations. Dark-skinned middle easterners vs. black Africans. Urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor, conservative vs. liberal interpretations of Islam.
Similarly, America is fractured in many, overlapping ways, some of them the same. And furthermore, the fractions are often gradations of degree, not merely binary opposites. Not merely urban and rural, as Krugman mentioned, but urban, suburban, and rural. Rich, middle-class, and poor (note: no one ever draws precise boundaries between these). White, Hispanic and black (note: many are mixed). More, somewhat, and less educated (at least a BA, an AS, less). The degree to which one buys into or rejects the Trumpian view of the world, (all the way, the "like his policies but dislike his mouthing off and Tweeting", or total rejection).
Krugman's binary simplification of only a few factors belies the true complexity of our society, even as it supports his conclusions.
I think two other factors are important: Where one -perceives- oneself as standing in the social and economic pecking order (doing well, so-so, or poorly), and whether one -perceives- oneself as moving up, staying still, or moving down within it. Those in the bottom category are justifiably fearful, given our minimal social safety nets, and that's where Krugman's recommendations are correct.
The antagonism between poor whites and non-white citizens is not new. It goes back to the British North American colonial era. The switch from indentured servitude to slave-for-life laws had the effect of making slaves adversaries of poor whites and craftsmen. That adversarial relationship was maintained until the beginning of the 21th-century.
Automation and changes to the social contract between whites and non-whites placed more pressure on the less educated working and middle classes. They could no longer depend on their skin color to get them work. Now, employers are looking for employees who can bring added value to the company no matter their skin color, their sexual orientation, religious beliefs.
1
I wish this article had not been so narrowly focused on economics. Only when Mr. Krugman talks about eastern Germant does he relate "the sense of being left behind" to "second-class status." He should have looked closer to home — at the attitudes of many liberals/progressives.
Microaggressions like "flyover country", condesensions, and other disparagements of non-urban and heartland people have social and political ramifications. Shortly after the 2016 elections, CNN's Van Jones conducted an amazing set of interviews in Ohio, seeking to understand why "ordinary", unprejudiced people voted for Trump. One family, registered Democrats, tearfully said – repeatedly – of Hillary Clinton, "She *hurt* us." They couldn't bring themselves to vote for a candidate who, in their opinion, looked down on them. Consequently, three of them voted for Trump; the fourth didn't vote for President at all.
3
But what to do about the state governments in less successful regions. They choose to cut education funding, they choose to institute work requirements for medicaide that pushes more people off the safety nets, and paradoxically makes them less likely to work, and become a greater burden. They choose to pass laws that encourage discrimination against certain classes of people. They resent the success of major urban areas, yet they can't seem to grasp that they, they, not the residents of the coast, are their own greatest obstacle to their success. How do you get them to understand that?
5
Might existing rail lines to and thru more rural areas be reinvigorated and metropolitan based firms be required to relocate certain manufacturing and distribution facilities into these now well served areas? The funds spent on infrastructure would jump start the more rural economies and subsidized shipping costs would allow firms to distribute their facilities and work force.
3
Big metro areas with satellite cities can help with this. The best example I know is Minneapolis - St Paul with its nearby cities of St Cloud, Rochester, and Eau Claire WI. All are economically sound and less expensive and congested than the central region. They help connect rural areas.
So strengthening these cities and other like it can be a priority.
3
Alas, I fear it is the bitter angels of our nature that will prevail.
1
As a person living in a small town (under 5,000 population) in a very red state, this is what I've witnessed. People are distrustful of anybody with a college education. If I mention my degree to anybody, they stiffen up and say something along the lines of, "Well, I don't have a degree." A friend mentioned that her cooks and entire waitstaff were high school seniors and I said, "Oh no, they'll all be leaving at the same time." She answered, "People here don't leave when they finish high school." Of my friends in this town, none of their children will go to college. They graduate or drop out and get jobs in the fast food joints down by the highway, or they start a career of going in and out of jail.
They wonder why no factory or business wants to start up here. It could be because there are few (I'm the only one I've met) college graduates.
There are two colleges and a vo-tech school about 30 miles away. Will many people from this town go to any of them? Not on your life. Too scary.
129
There was a great article in the Times some months ago about two types of people. Ones that didn’t move and stayed put. The other a person who moves to where the jobs and opportunities are. That’s what I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you move to where the jobs are? Yes prices are higher but so are opportunities.
On a side note. Was thinking about Wisconsin and how the large cities there are democratic and how their votes don’t reflect the makeup of the state assembly. Really quite incredible considering that educated and creative types choose to live in the cities. Imagine how dynamic and competitive Wisconsin could be if it’s educated classes actually had the power to make good laws and remove ones that aren’t. The right convinces itself that dems are only looking for free stuff. This simplification is so absurd I can’t help but think middle America is where it is, economically, because of the exclusion of urban thinkers.
22
@Linda That town sounds scary, for some reason calls to mind the infamous short story 'The Lottery'...
11
Many people don’t want to leave their families behind. If their parents are elderly the parents often want to stay put in the communities they know.
A partial solution would be to have small town businesses push their workers to get training maybe setting up centers in town where people can take online classes together (hybrid course). If enough people in a region can be Trained businesses may be willing to set up satellite offices or plants.
6
I enjoy your insights very much. I try never to miss an article. Occasionally, however I do wonder if you are not caught in the same trap as many of us regarding our left/right tribalism. I'm hoping you will find the writing of another of my favorite writers, Doug Sanders, whose articles I also try never to miss. No matter the subject, he always seems to find an angle that offers a generally surprising glint of enlightenment. Here's one that I found very insightful, and relieving, with regard to the left/right knot we seem to find ourselves in. I hope you enjoy it.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-culture-war-has-been-won-so-now-we-fight-about-words/
Also check out this article of his. "... disillusioned conservative voters are reachable by left-leaning parties and can be deflected away from the temptations of the far right." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-how-to-pull-voters-back-from-the-far-right-brink-look-to-germany/
1
Millions of Bernie Sanders’ supporters (me included) who ended voting Trump, proved: THERE IS powerful common ground between leftist-progressives and the Trumpist ‘deplorables’, located in two major areas: the need to break the terrible bond between the big money and the establishments (ALL of them) - and the need for a giant (trillions $) infrastructure plan, ‘New-Deal 2.0’ if you wish. Such huge infrastructure plan is doable (e.g. see the ‘Public Service Employment’ plan offered by the Levy Economics Institute here: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/rpr_4_18.pdf. It will also be an economy game-changer, and, which is maybe the most important, it will be extremely popular in both sides of the political aisle. I believe a non-partisan organization (“the 99%ers”?) running, exclusively, on such limited, one-cadence agenda, will be (along with us the American people) the biggest 2020 winner.
2
For a different point of view regarding what motivates Trump voters: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-democrats-white-people-problem/573901/
The "left behind" story is not limited to rural areas. The suburbs have seen much sharper increases in poverty since 2000 than urban or rural counties.
(http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/what-unites-and-divides-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/)
We should be viewing this "left behind" story as a cautionary tale of the future of the professional/managerial class, rather just the sad story of the uneducated and the intransigent rural folks. The rich only need a hand full of professionals and mangers to run things. Your Phd's will not protect you from the fate of "excess" poor and middle class workers.
3
There certainly is a "tribal" element to human behavior, but it is fanned by those who accrue profit and power through division.
Minority rule demands division of the majority and the lesson learned from passing the prohibition of alcohol in the twenties was that a dedicated 10% of one issue voters could override the will of a 75% majority. The corporations and plutocrats took note.
To understand how the stage was set for the GOP, and a demagogue like Trump, to take advantage of illogic and the power of fear and hate, we must answer the question : What would the highest individual and corporate tax rate be if religious, race, guns, and social issue conflict were not diverting and enraging the "tribes".
1
The problem isn't a chasm created by an election. It's the election being decided by an antiquated electoral college. Where else in the world does the loser of the popular vote win the the highest office of the land? This guy has no business running our country, making fools of us and this once great nation. That's why we didn't elect him. The electoral college MUST be abolished!
4
Better angels don't vote for Trump , or a President or a political party that doesn't loudly and without hesitation dem=nounce the " fine people" that marched with the KKK, White Supremacists and Neo - Nazis. Better angels don't reelect Representative King from Iowa. They do not support DeSantis as governor of Florida after her has unashamedly and unabashedly tied his best to " ape" Donald Trump. Let's face it, many Americans loved the birther nonsense because they are racists and the thought of an African American occupying the White House filled them with rage and righteous indignation. Trump has shown the true American hypocrisy that has permeated our society since its founding.
1
Actually, Sanders ran very well in rural areas.
It's just that the Democrats put up the wrong candidate
https://www.nationaljournal.com/media/media/2016/04/20/capturenydem.PNG
Let's see. States with the least population are represented equally in the senate, two per state. The Senate is controlled by Republicans. The President is Republican. Many communities are gerrymandered to be Republican. The Koch Brothers and other conservatives pour money into conservative causes. Republican states abhor taxes, even if it mean trying to have better education and other social programs that help people. But now it's the fault of the east and west coast that these people constantly vote against their own good? These states woo industries that need less educated people who can be paid less wages. These states made it impossible for unions to operate there. These states mandated right to work laws, which in essence gives the businesses that settle there, the upper hand against workers. These states make it hard for poor people to a have more choices. If the poor have too many kids, it's their fault for being poor. If they want reproductive rights, hell no, it's a sin. Want birth control pills? Throw in more obstacles. Too many minorities? Seek the nazi's after them. So please. These types of states met the enemy and it is themselves for being allowed to be manipulated by politicians still living in the 17th century.
2
My peeps up the holler are angry cause' you can't make a living in the flea market no mo an Dollar General just don't cut it. How's come Trumpy ain't bringin' them big 'ol ugly steel mills back. Them boys at the diner just can't figure it out, they think it's them Mexicans stole their jobs.
1
For some reason, New England seems to be left out of the discussion of reasons for Trumpism -- or the lack of Trump appeal. Assuming Bruce Poliquin does not survive Maine's ranked choice voting, all six states, with few major cities, will be blue. In my state, New Hampshire, we have had a Congressional delegation that is all Democratic (and for the past two years, all female). What is needed in these states that the Dems have been pushing for is high-speed internet for all and lower electricity costs. They have also supported vocational training expansion to provide an attractive workforce and keep young people home. As a result, New Hampshire, for one, flipped the House, Senate and Executive Council after years of Republican domination and Republican Gov. Chris Sununu was barely re-elected.
I think Democrats should give the region more attention for ideas that will work in the heartland too.
4
I wonder how much gerrymandering, such as that found in Ohio (which has some of the strangest congressional, as well as state house, districts) has affected the inability of moderate and liberal Republicans to win primaries? Are there even any left in the party at this point, or has the party essentially purged itself of anyone willing to run to the left of Boehner?
Dr. Krugman wrote, "Businesses in the new economy want access to large pools of highly educated workers, which can be found only in big, rich metropolitan areas." But that's a misreading of Amazon's criterion for its new headquarters. As this essay notes, they wanted “urban or suburban locations with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent.”
Note "attract and retain." When Amazon exploded in Seattle during the present century, it didn't embark on a campaign to hire "highly educated workers" who already lived in the city. Instead it brought in tens of thousands of workers from other parts of the country (and the world), and that influx basically destroyed Seattle as we knew it.
Amazon doesn't strengthen existing communities and institutions -- it annihilates them to make way for its own ethos, in which life is all about working most of your waking hours for a giant corporation while buying shiny objects that are delivered almost immediately to your doorstep. We've yet to see what this new generation of techies will do to the local political culture.
2
There is a semi-successful if depressing solution to regional economic disparity: relocation. In Canada's extraction-based economy people go where the booms are. Alberta has a large population of Easterners from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland (provinces that depopulate with each census). Even worse is forced relocation. Governments and the private sector announce cuts in services. Hospitals and schools close. The railroad shuts down its trunk line and the buses stop running. In the end, no one is born with the guarantee that they can live in one place forever.
3
I hope that BIG WIGS in Washington and Wall Street read the comments submitted, this morning, by Oliver Jones,
Newburyport, MA. He hit all important NAILS IN THE HEAD.
PAUL
As a white person who’s encountered plenty of white racist, I have come to realize their scorched earth mentality leads them to vote Republican because of the white nationalist issue.
Anytime you bring up how Republicans are hurting them in so many different ways, the response I usually get is that there are too many people (aka black and brown) out there getting “free stuff”
Meanwhile the superrich are looting this country, but the bigots can’t see that because they’re too blinded by hatred and Fox (so called) News.
6
Hang on a minute. Trump’s base from these rural, deep red areas continuously call and label Democrats moochers, anti-American, enemies, thugs, mobs, communists etc. And yet some people say that it’s Democrats who need to try be nicer to red staters? I think you have that backwards.
4
Terrific column, but "Trump Rump" cuts to the quick!
Yes Trump appeals to the low information voter dedicated to FOX/TRUMP TV info along with Alex Jones conspiracy theories and hopes they will empower him to be our first dictator. Saudi and Putin will enrich the TRump family that is all that matters to Trump it should be obvious by now. It can happen here calling out the troops by Trump in a test case ,shooting civilians was suggested. Trumps family finances need to be examined to find out if his decisions are for the USA or for the Trump family financial interests.
I always wondered why those people sitting in diners were not out looking for a job instead of being there? According to Hillbilly Elegy, there were plenty of decent paying, not technology level pay but survival pay jobs and companies had problems with people showing up for work regularly! The other stereotype is that of people saying ..bring back the job I had in the mines, in the plant, etc. and not wanting to even TRY to go to where the other jobs are!-? It really is possible at 50 to learn a new skill! Or even older!
Technology jobs are not the only jobs available in these more urban areas either...SO if you want to live in a rural area you have to accept the realities of job opportunities it would appear.
It's not as if this trend to moving to urban areas is new; were the people in these diners just wishing for the trend to reverse of were they ignoring it...
2
"...many voters in lagging regions have a sense of grievance, a feeling that they’re being disrespected by the glittering elites of superstar cities; this sense of grievance all too easily turns into racial antagonism."
This needed to be said. Racial antagonism, though it has always existed as an undercurrent of American political life, is today I believe more a reaction to the nation's elites having written off the rural populace than it is the fundamental cause of the current strain of ethnic identity nationalism.
Bezos' hard choice between his good intentions and his company's bottom line is just the latest demonstration of why we the people cannot expect big business to solve our problems, regardless of its political inclinations. Our system's reliance on billionaires, liberal or conservative, to invest in politicians that will get the job done or else to do the job themselves is like a casino game where the odds always favor the house to some extent. Over time the people will lose that game because it's the only game in town, and because we don't have the option of cashing out while we are ahead.
1
"New York and greater D.C."
More correct
New York City and greater DC
New York is a state in the Northeastern United States.
New York City is a city in New York
The distinction is important, as New York got nothing out of the deal but sure to come requests for more State money to fix New York's richest city's subway systemn
3
As a college-educated, lifelong Democrat in rural South Dakota, I think Paul Krugman's views on this issue are a bit simplistic. Rural America isn't quite the monolith that coastal people seem to think it is; yes, Republicans have a majority in the red states in the middle, but it's more 60-40 than anyone seems to believe. I live in a 50-50 precinct myself, in a town of 900, in which many of the lifelong Republicans I know are uncomfortable with the crudity of the President they helped elect.
To be honest, most urban, coastal residents don't know the first thing about the world in Flyover Country; they only know what they have been told. We're not all gun-loving, slack-jawed yokels hitting on our sisters, believe it or not.
There is actually much to be said for the rural life. Outside of the occasional drunken driving charge, we have very little crime here, and our educational system is surprisingly good, with an average ACT score of 23 or 24 most years in my school district. (That would be about a 1600-1650 on the SAT.) Furthermore, compared to what I know of urban life, I live a relatively stress-free existence: I don't have to lock myself into my fortress at night, and the kids still go door-to-door on Halloween.
We've had the "series of tubes" for a long time now, and I even subscribe to the digital version of the NY Times, despite the undeniable fact that I'm a drooling, Trump-loving imbecile—as evidenced (solely, I hope) by my geographic location.
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@Frank Crisler
I think you have a caricature of urban life too! New Yorkers mostly don't "lock themselves in their fortresses" -- crime is very low these days, there are people out and about at 2 AM.
Of course rural America contains many kinds of people. Politically, however, it's much, much Trumpier than the rest of the country.
169
@Paul Krugman,
I agree with Frank. As I commented on this article, I have lived in both urban and rural America. There is resentment on both sides and I found urban America's resentment of its rural counterpart to be hateful and vicious. Since moving to rural Tennessee over 10 years ago, I have enjoyed low taxes, and a slow paced existence, which is only interrupted when I venture into the city to work. Kinda like the TV show, Green Acres. Cheers!
15
@Frank Crisler There maybe many things to be said for rural life but dynamic job growth isn't one of them. As a lifelong New Yorker I don't feel all that stressed but fortunately to have the culture of the world around me.
36
Tech companies live and die on the basis of science. They rely on a work force that is educated in and respects science. If your town is populated by people who think they know more about global warming than NASA and NOAA climate scientists, who think that evolution is a myth, and who think that the birth control pill is actually a form of abortion, then no... tech companies will not flock to you.
2
Call it for what it is, Dr. Krugman. Racism in Whiteopia. It's easier to blame color or ethnicity than the real causes, including multinationals who took jobs from from the heartland and gave them to 18 cents an hour countries with no labor safety laws. It's easier to blame color or ethnicity than to realize that capitalist "social" policy is to eliminate as many workers as possible to maximize profit.
It's also easier to hate color or ethnicity. And hate brings out the vote.
2
Why don't those terrible socialist countries like Denmark and Germany have these problems.
They don't have the poverty we have.
They have good schools for the working class.
They have faced the same globalization yet they are known for high-tech manufacturing.
After 35 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, we got an opioid crisis.
4
You contradict yourself Paul. First you say that "It doesn't seem to be about economic self-interest", but then you conclude with "So the bitter division...may have deep economic roots". This last conclusion is the correct one.
Yes, there are many Trump voters who are in fact, racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic, and they will hold onto these attitudes regardless of their economic situation. But these voters aren't really "in play", and likely nothing will get them to change their beliefs. In fact, many of them either reside in, or come from stock that originated in, the Confederate states, and even so, America once thrived despite that division. But for decades now much of America has not thrived, and that negative growth has been in the less populated areas. Still, there are many in the so-called thriving areas who have also been left behind. All of these people, rural and metro, have been hurt by policies supported by BOTH parties. And although these policies had their genesis in R-C think tanks and policies, the backlash that resulted in Trump victory was because: A) Republicans and Trump did a masterful job of covering up their con, and B) The Democratic Party was seen to have betrayed these folks who were once their constituency.
This "chasm" CAN be bridged. However, it will take a reversal of economic policies that have been place since Reagan. The Republicans won't do it. The only question is: will the Democrats?
2
How can the better angels of our natures prevail when our leaders are elected from the group of despicable deplorables of the world e,g. Donald Trump, Victor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro? To name just a few. Mr Krugman is too optimistic.
1
Anybody who believes that if Amazon built its HQ in an impoverished region of the country 25,000 engineers, designers, coders & managers would move there is a person needs to go into rehab and begin withdrawal therapy.
Educated, trained, skillful people want their lives to be as interesting as their work. They want libraries, theaters, museums, concert halls, music clubs, restaurants, cafes, bars, decent broadband, decent schools, decent hospitals, trustworthy day care, and even organic produce.
As Robert Altman used to say, "You fiddle on the corner where the quarters are."
8
In my family experience going back to when my father was a child there was a division in the the clan, the "Hill People" and the "Flat Landers". The division wasn't political, it was based on where they lived and how they extracted enough from the land to survive.
Not that this is exactly the divisions of today, but geographic location and means by which you make a living still play a significant role. Additionally you can add in all the new inventions, greater mobility and education that have changed where we live and how we live.
All this brew needed was a catalyst to identify those areas where properly placed propaganda would artificially enhance and inflame the fears and anxieties to widen the gulf faster. The purpose of a catalyst is to speed up reactions. Enter Donald Trump and his cheap tricks.
2
I don't see the attraction of big coastal cities for tech workers. Unlike the celebrity CEO's, most coastal tech workers spend every waking hour working at some unrewarding, high-stress job for not-great pay and eating fast food. If they're lucky, they pay $2000- per month to sleep in somebody's hallway and ride to work on a bus.
This is the age of the internet, FedEx, the telephone, even air travel. If people in the Philippines or India can work for tech companies, what's the matter with also locating in middle-sized American cities where young people have a chance of affording a house, car, decent school for the kids - stuff that made America a great place to live once upon a time.
Coastal cities are horrible places for all but the well-off. That bubble's gonna burst!
4
The chasm is also a political problem, the problem of a political praxis where candidates and parties seek with the aid of opinion polls and spin doctors to appear aligned with voters' opinions. And then hope to get the votes. This praxis shows people that a politician who they not agree with isn't interested in them as human. This praxis also does ignore that humans can actual change their opinions.
The chasm also exists in the perception of those voters that feel left behind, and who are indeed left behind in economic sense, so the challenge the Democrats now face is to first narrow that perceived, deeply felt chasm.
That requires a different style of politics, a style where listening to and asking challenging questions to all people affected by the negative economic realities in particular if they are not your voters. Beto O'Rourke seems to have use that style.
As an other example, in their preparation for a budget that includes government paid works, House Democrates could go to those blue state and listen to the people how they would solve their economic issues. A hearing on location, not in DC, would show them that Democrats in a practical way care much more for them than the GOP & Trump with their dramatic rhetoric.
Changing minds is done one person at a time and starts with sawing doubts.
It they take the next 6 months to plan they have 12 more months to execute it, to have a chance of some effect by November 2020.
I have read many of the comments here and I see a pattern of all the reasons why any idea will not work in rural areas. How about solutions. What would it take to bring broad band into rural areas to encourage more people to want to move those areas? Why not build vocational schools for the many jobs that really do not need a degree? What about development of products that will benefit everyone to help prevent the worst of climate change? For example building solar panels and wind tunnels in rural areas? The government could award companies contracts if they build these products in rural areas. We also have to learn other ways of farming and how we use our soil and to take better care our forests, what better place to set up new education facilities than rural america for this purpose
We need to convince the populations of rural America that The U. S. wants to help them and utilize their current knowledge by retraining them to do other necessary and extremely important work for the future of our country and the world.
People through out time have had to migrate and make changes when previous jobs have gone by the wayside.
For example blacksmiths, once automobiles became the standard mode of transportation, people who read letters to those who could not read, when public education came to the masses. I could go on and on.
Life is change, you have to think that there are solutions to problems that currently exist and stop talking about why you can't change anything.
Although I do not quarrel with Dr. Krugman's statement about economic realities, I do take issue with his characterization of these developments as recent ones. The America of the small town and the rural farm community entered economic decline more than a century ago as industrialization and technological advances created better career opportunities and better lifestyles in the rapidly growing cities. Electing a different sort of president will not change that.
The problem with this analysis is your glasses. You're seeing the world through a privileged academic lens. The jobs that Amazon brings are not what you would call elite jobs, anymore than jobs working in call centers in Mumbai are.
And that's another big piece of the problem. All our jobs are turning into versions of Mumbai call centers. Talk to a GP working for Kaiser. They are highly educated medical assembly line workers, and suitably disgruntled. It's like that everywhere but in most cases much much worse. At least the GP's are getting paid enough to live pretty well.
There are of course upper middle class people with good, interesting jobs. And you can probably find them in, or just outside of, places like Youngstown or Rochester where many more people who used to work in giant steel plants or for Kodak now can't find work at all.
So its not just a rural or small town problem. It's a problem of Capital. When we go into the next recession which will probably end up leaving the entire world in a deflationary cycle—and won't that be interesting—the so-called good tech jobs will dry up and all the smart youngish earnest nerds of the world will be in their own private Mumbai. The Trump rump will be everywhere.
We need all the obvious things, a Green New deal, an American National Health Service, but we won't get them under the current political and economic dispensation.
We don't necessary need Bernie but we do need, to coin a phrase, a political revolution.
4
@Wah
You wrote: "The jobs that Amazon brings are not what you would call elite jobs, anymore than jobs working in call centers in Mumbai are."
The Amazon jobs are projected to pay an average of $125,000 per year. Are you suggesting that this is the average wage of an employee at a Mumbai call center?
@Quiet Waiting
the key word there is "average."
1
Perception and reality may be very different and that gap may take time to bridge. While I agree that access to health care and wage subsidies are not a bad idea to help those in areas that are falling behind, education is more important longer term. Their relative ignorance is a problem. But it is them who have to be willing to learn and understand that the world is far more than a farm, a bunch of guns, Jesus Christ and white people.
1
Honestly, the honest, hardworking, churchgoing, salt-of-the earth, best in the west, independent rural trump voters do have the means to support themselves. They suffer no more than millions of other Americans. You know, the ones who don't get subsidized to actually do their jobs. The ones you sneer at, who live in cities.
trump hypocrites, answer me this: If an inner-city black kid doesn't deserve a laptop for his homework, why does a corn farmer deserve a shiny new combine? If a city school district starves one school to give prettier stuff to another, why can't counties starve farmers of their subsidies in order to fix roads?
I hear lots of republicans say that people in public housing don't deserve to live there for long; move along! Make something of yourselves! Bootstraps! Make do with less!
Do you require rural white folks to do the same? If they have what they need to survive, why are we feeling sorry for them as forgotten? Many many many American citizens get zero federal subsidies for equipment that would help their jobs. And their jobs benefit Americans every bit as much as corn. Aren't rural folk the ones who boast about how they live independently, thru all kinds of weather and challenge? City snowplow drivers, internet service providers and construction workers don't do that too. Sheesh. No, corn isn't sacred.
Methinks it's just that farmers/ranchers consider themselves better than a black student with dreams of education.
2
Heavens! A columnist-- also a Nobel prize-winning economist-- who comments on comments. His readers are exceptionally fortunate.
3
How about investing in, and giving them, a decent, robust education? No coincidence that most red majority southern states have education standards that rival the best of failing countries on the African continent, whilst blue states tend to veer towards standards set by stable democracies/developed nations globally.
Krugman: "America, then, is a divided nation, and is likely to stay that way for a while."
And, there is reason to fear it might not be resolved peaceably. If history is any guide, the deep political division in the nation will persist long after Trump leaves office.
The closest analogue in our history began in 1828 with the election of Andrew Jackson -- another near-illiterate.
By 1829 when he took office "hard cider" Jacksonians were most populous in the South and Western frontier. "Milk and cider" Jacksonians were secretly opposed to him but many were afraid to speak up anywhere but in New England, Most eventually became Whigs.
Jackson's refusal to renew the charter of the Second National Bank brought the nation to the edge of economic ruin. After Jackson's second term, not one president was reelected to a second term until Lincoln in 1864. The "better angels" of our nature prevailed only at the cost of 750,000 lives, or even more.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html
I'm not predicting a second civil war. I'm pointing out that once Trump is out of office everyone will have to work hard to heal the nation and restore our political health, or the results could be truly disastrous.
1
I just spent considerable time in 'red areas' of our country. Nice people (on the surface at least), suspicious of outsiders and content to live in their ramshackle great granddaddy's house (because it's paid for) even though there are no jobs for 60 miles in any direction. And because their church is their social world, they vote red because that's all they know to do.
"And the orthodox Republican policy agenda of cutting taxes and shrinking social programs, which is basically what Trump is following in practice, actually hurts lagging regions, which depend a lot on things like food stamps and disability payments, much more than it hurts successful areas."
In other words, they have mostly decided to all hang separately.
Excellent article. For 40 years other countries and cities have been trying to create "silicon valley" competitors and have largely failed. Seattle succeeded somewhat. India and now parts of Eastern Europe/Russia have a bit. But all those competitors that have managed it are in large urban areas. They have excellent Universities from which to hire young workers. They are places where 20-30 year olds want to live. This situation will only get worse as AI eliminates even more rural jobs (call centers, trucking, etc). We are at the start of this storm.
1
Mr. Kugman does not understand that this is world wide phenoma - or does not want to as the unrelenting proponent of globalization
From today's Le Figaro, France, where political clash has been replaced by violent clashes between rural people and Macron's urban elitism. The toll , so far, one person killed over 500 injured
Quote
"ANALYSIS - The movement of "yellow vests", is more than just a jacquerie, is a new symptom of the revolt of the peoples against the globalized society. A revolt that crosses all Western democracies.
"It's a revolt? - No, sire, it's a revolution! "For years, the same scene has been repeated in London, Washington, Rome ... Brexit, Trump, Salvini: a deep movement overthrows the established order that assists stunned to this great upheaval. And, in France, since Saturday, the "yellow vests", these demonstrators without structure or organization, succeed a spectacular demonstration of strength. They are now calling to protest "on foot, horseback or by car" on Saturday, November 24, to "block" Paris. Whether they succeed or not, the mistake would be to believe in a simple jacquerie, a cyclical phenomenon fueled by the media,
Those who have read the French geographer Christophe Guilluy, but also the British journalist and economist David Goodhart, the Italian theoretician Diego Fusaro understand that."
Alexandre Devecchio
It is clear that Mr. Krugman , claiming a "new" discovery has not read the literature
3
Yeah, that Krugman—just not much of a reader.
Therefore, greater investment in education, within the context of a meticulously though-through strategy to overhaul curricula in order to enhance the acquisition of marketable skills, would allow more of the disadvantaged households in rural communities to help push their kids into more prosperous circumstances.
Foreign languages are one of the most rewarding of skill sets that is not that difficult to improve upon. It takes an investment of perhaps five years to gain true fluency in most European languages; seven or nine years to become fluent in Mandarin, Arabic or Farsi. We need more Americans to become proficient in those languages. They can just as readily be taught to children from West Virginia, Alaska, Nebraska or Hawai'i. Moreover, once a young teen is taught how to practice a foreign language, those skills are applicable even outside the school setting -- and even to other disciplines.
Other countries do this. That is why so many people all over the world have mastered English -- a difficult language to study as a foreign communications medium.
Every young person whose mind receives the best possible opportunities to achieve its maximum intellectual potential will someday become an adult heading a prosperous, thriving household.
Fill young heads with useful knowledge. Including economics. Americans are not doing enough to make the most of the hours on end kids spend in school buildings for some 200 or more days each year.
1
The vote Republican and complain about and blame Democrats for being left behind. They blame states that care about education and social welfare, meanwhile their local GOP politicians ignore both. People in MA faced two economic hurdles the moving of mills to the south and four decades later the movement on industry to the South and Asia. Did MA. sit by and cry and blame others. Now MA is one of the best educated States with the best healthcare coverage and among the richest. We still have undeserved regions but unlike Red Stats we so not blame others. We do not look for scapegoats the state looked for solutions.
2
I agree with you , even with technology job in the last 10 years i have seen so many of them getting left behind and people like me who can keep up are doing little better but where it ends . we are just going to alienate billions of people for the benefit of few , i believe humans can exist only in inefficiency i.e earlier 20 people clicked and created report now tool does it by itself company saves 3M a year in salary and thereby increasing shareholder value but 20 people lost job and to keep up with new age job is impossible they are destined to minimum wages . we need to have conversation is it even worth to get amazon same day delivery , auto fill your online form
There's more than enough work to do in rural areas, but there aren't enough jobs.
Why? Simple. Unfortunately we in America have this ridiculous bias against jobs created by society itself as a whole, rather than by the market. If some necessary work can't be done for profit we believe, in all sincerity, that we cannot do it at all.
This is nonsense. There is plenty of work that needs to be done -- locally, even outside the large metro areas, and by real people rather than totally by machines:
- Infrastructure repair -- and then ongoing maintenance.
- Educating people young and old to to deal with the new forms of communication that, it turns out, are ever more susceptible to malicious distortions by bad actors domestic and foreign.
- Environmental restoration.
- Public transit, rural as well as urban. Lots of people outside the cities can't drive, or can't afford a car.
- One-on-one support of people with mental and emotional abilities that differ from the norm.
- Care for the injured, sick and old.
The list goes on and on. But these things cannot be done for a profit. We must do them as a society. And sorry, that means higher taxes.
The first step is to find out, honestly and scientifically, how much money is actually available for taxation. The second step is to have the political will to tax superrich people who have lots of power and will resist taxation like crazy.
3
As I hear people lament the fact that Amazon and similar companies don't help buoy economically depressed conservative areas, I am compelled to ask; Why should they? I have watched for nearly a decade as conservatives have tried to tear apart the first substantive health insurance reform in my lifetime, and hurt me and my family. All out of hate, spite, and (frankly) uninformed stupidity. We just watched a year ago as conservative politicians passed a huge tax cut for the rich on the backs of blue state tax payers. And now they want us to believe that the northeast and west coast states owe them something? They bleat that blue state companies should bail them out while they continue their assault against us at the federal level. If you want help, red states, you can start by asking politely for it, not demanding it. And you can hope we are kinder than you.
1
If only corporations would be more like the president and his family. Hotels in Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia. Real estate in Arkansas. Jewelry and clothing stores in in Kentucky and Missouri.
1
It is worth noting that many of the inhabitants of rural America (some well-to-do) worship at the shibboleth of self-reliance (a la John Wayne, not Emerson), and they chafe at the constraint of government regulation, and anything reminiscent of diabolical 'socialism'. If someone promises to blow up the government (or cripple it, as Republicans offer), they get the votes. And in their defense, they still manifest the old virtue of community mutual aid. I immigrated to rural America from high-tech urbanity, I have experienced the downside of regulation, and I understand their rationale (I still support Bernie Sanders, the only politician in USA with a working brain).
1
One solution is to start building universities with medical schools (currently in very short supply) in rural areas, as well as move federal department headquarters out of big cities. This might really help jump start the economies of rural America. The biggest problem, of course, is that this would likely mean legions of "other" (minority) people moving in to homogeneous rural areas, which could actually cause more problems than it solves.
It's hard to imagine that those with grievances who've been 'left behind' would ever embrace the idea of a cosmopolitan nation, but that is what we have.
It's an attitude that goes beyond race, ethnicity, education, and even family. It's about looking beyond the superficial and opening your heart and mind to accept our individuality and our basic humanity.
Yes, we are created equal; we do have a right to education, healthcare, and adequate housing regardless of race, creed, gender choice, and religion. It's not hard to imagine, nor is it hard to accomplish if we just look beyond ourselves and care.
I propose a trade. Let’s continue to help rural citizens with their economic concerns. Let’s start making sure urbanites get the chance to vote and let’s make sure their votes count for as much as their rural counterparts.
Lest you think that this is a snotty or unserious proposal, note that I am not suggesting changing Senatorial representation, which vastly favors rural voters. I would get rid of the electoral college, which can’t possibly serve a rational purpose in a true democracy. But the real challenge to democracy isn’t between the states - we should hear the concerns of the citizens of less populated states, of rural communities with small cities and mostly towns, of farmers and ranchers and people who live close to the land. No, the real challenge is within the states, where the rural voters count for more than their urban and suburban fellow citizens, and states where the GOP is in power, actively conspire against their fellow citizens to deny them their voices, deny them their political representation.
Some say the Democrats lack a unifying message and need a simple slogan. How about “Make damn sure every citizen can vote” and “Make sure every vote gets counted” and “Make sure all votes are equal”. I admit that’s three slogans. Let’s use them all. If we do, we can start using “Let’s resume our path forward to a better, fairer and more inclusive nation”. It’s a long slogan. But it has the advantage that its opponents would be exposed for what they are.
3
"Can this chasm be bridged? Honestly, I doubt it." Of course this chasm can be bridged. Many young urbanites would love to live in rural areas where they could afford to own a house and some land. But they won't move to rural areas if they believe they are not welcome. And they won't move without decent schools and medical facilities. Many retiring city dwellers would also choose to move to rural areas if these areas provided decent medical facilities and social interactions other than a right-wing evangelical church or a Klan meeting.
6
Those things don’t drop out of the sky. They are grown from a good tax base, a population that will organize and plan, and a forward-looking government structure.
@MKV - By the time you add schools, medical facilities, and enough infrastructure for good social interaction, you are talking about a good sized town at the very least, not rural living. Rural living means, by its very definition, being around a lot of nothing. It's been my experience that most people who want a more relaxed life would choose a nice small town over the isolation of rural living any day of the week.
One way to address this divide is either to abolish the senate, a bastion of unequal representation, or reform it so that it is representative.
A less effective way would be to rotate the speakership of the senate every three months, alternating between the two parties, so that no speaker, such as Mitch McConnell, can behave like a an autocratic king.
Another method would be to abolish the senate speakership and replace it with AI.
2
@ALM, unequal for whom?
The Senate is unequal if you in a populated state like California; however, the House of Representatives is unequal if you come from a lesser populated state.
Getting rid of the Senate effectively means that less than 10 states make all the major decisions--if you don't live in one of those states you basically don't matter--which hardly seems equal.
@ALM - Abolishing the Senate is unnecessary. All we need to do is increase the size of the House of Representatives to restore proportional representation as the Founders intended. That would also fix the problem with the Electoral College.
This 'city elites look down on rural people' talk is bogus. Let's just stick to our game plan. We vote and pay taxes(i pay a lot myself every year).What is it that we want ? We want a president who represents our values. An honest, intelligent, decent, firm, strong person who pays his taxes,and respects the constitution, law and press freedom, and who pursues progressive policies-and trump is none of these. he is the opposite-unhinged, a crook and deranged. his policies have been very destructive. He is attacking LEGAL brown skinned immigrants-chinese, indian, korean, vietnames, latino, and curtailing everything from visas and citizenship to food stamps. They are not being heard(I haven't seen a single media column about it and will never see it). I am not talking about unauthorized immigrants. Theirs is a different issue. Half the whites in this country don't do any of what trump does. Nobody is doing immigrants a favor. Immigrants vote and pay taxes, watch nba basketball, read the news, and are as american as anyone else. But many trump supporters look down on brown skinned legal immigrants, and the rest of his 40 to 45 percent base don't care. They do the same to obama and blacks.
So much concern about rural people because they carry more votes. they need to do what it takes to make a living in a competitive society and world, like everyone else. businesses are not in it for philantropy.
Our first Black president is what got these guys really mad.
6
But they will never ever admit that.
In the recent election, Arkansas Republicans won all state wide races, all congressional seats, and super majorities in the legislature. State government is planning yet another cut in the top income tax rate plus an increased gas tax---about the worst thing you can do to poor people--to pay for roads. We have a work requirement for Medicaid with an on-line reporting requirement that is successfully knocking thousands off the health care rolls each month. As one of the poorest states in the country, why do our voters support tax cuts for the rich and screwing poor people? I think I know. By most standards, e.g. percent of college grads in the population, average test scores of high school seniors, etc., we are also the second dumbest state in the country. The people being left behind in rural areas are not just economically challenged.
4
Who is "we"?
" We did not land on Plymouth Rock. It landed on us". Malcolm X
" I am an invisible man". Ralph Ellison
1
I must have fallen off the edge of sanity, because nothing I write is posted anymore. I'm on the "OK, and Yea" list. Sorry. I'm having major troubles with this country now. It wasn't just Trump. It was the whole belief that we could fix this country with money! With the Fed! We learned lessons, right? Were they moral?
There's nothing amoral about the Federal Reserve, but isn't a fix all thing that can make people behave morally again! It's just a reservoir.
I hate what this country has become. I don't even understand it any more. I kind have given up.
1
I've wondered why unemployed coal miners get a pass when Republicans generally blame the unemployed for their own predicament.
6
Perhaps those of us in blue states like California should stop paying federal income taxes now that that many rural Americans who rely on our taxes for welfare probably buy into Trump's charade Californians should have raked our forests more often.
2
Mr Krugmans assertions equating more social programs as intelligent.. those policies had tragic results in Venezuela,but does provide a path for permanent leftist power which seems to be the primary goal. Not smart.
I’d point out that a lot of the people celebrating, “rural culture,” are forgetting what happened to it, and what “rural culture,” looks like now.
A lot of what happened to it started not long after the Civil War: folks moved to cities, looking for better jobs and more fun, and that goes triple for black folks. This really got going right after the two world wars; you know, how are you going to keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?
Or as Fred Allen saith, how’re you going to keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen the farm? A lot of this Trumpist nonsense rests on lying to yourself about the back breaking work, the poverty, the lousy health, that has always been a part of the idyllic countryside.
Then came agribusiness, automation and TV and the Internet, and cowabunga. Towns emptied out; people sat around; jobs got machined away. Small stores, those quaint cafes, the churches, slammed shut. Everybody bought trucks and drove around.
Look at rural life now. Lost of sinking small towns filled with the elderly, unless they brought in immigrants. Beatrice Foods, Koch Industries. Their docs are likely to be from Iraq and Vietnam. The local tax bases go south; lots of dope; the kids leave if they have much by way of smarts.
I miss small-town and farm America, some of which is still out there. But let’s stop pretending about what it always really was, and is now.
6
Enough blaming the "coastal elites!" We would have a third world economy without them. How about the anti-intellectualism that is rampant in rural America and fueling the hatred of the big city folks? Perhaps, if the rural Republicans actually took the time and effort to understand how those people they hate are supporting them, they might have a change of attitude. Oh, I forgot, this is just more left wing propaganda!
6
I have been asking since 2010 why rural people seem to sit and marinate in their misery instead of asking experts what happened and how to fix it.
They resent that their livelihoods are gone and resent even more that those livelihoods aren’t coming back. But they would blame welfare recipients for leeching off them without noticing the irony.
2
I live in Vermont. It is the most progressive state in the nation. Bernie Sanders is our Senator and Pat Leahy our other Senator is great as is Peter Welch our Congressman. Bernie calls himself a socialist; he's really a social democrat.
VERMONT IS ALSO THE MOST RURAL STATE IN THE NATION. It only has a metropolitan area (Greater Burlington) because every state has to have one. Greater Burlington does not meet the criteria for a metropolitan area.
VERMONT IS NOT PROGRESSIVE BECAUSE HIPPIES HERE. Although it may have made it attract to some, Vermont has always been progressive.
First constitution banned slavery in Article 1 in 1777. The Revolution was really fought against New York which claimed the land.
And on and on. Vermont declared war on Nazi Germany three months before Pearl Harbor (while in NYC Charles Lindbergh and the German American Bund were holding rallies at MSG and proclaiming "America First."
Vermont has always led in democracy. All men could vote from the get-go.
The family farm is alive and well (mountains do keep huge landholdings in check)
Vermont spends the most on education and has long provided a mechanism so that poor towns and rich towns are equalized in education spending.
McCarthy was attacked by Vermont's Ralph Flanders.
Act 250 keeps the state beautiful.
The rcountry's rural areas don't spend squat on education and we settled by slave owners, Jim Crowers and defeated rebels.
Rural Sask. created the socialist CCF.
3
@Ed Weissman - Hey Ed, you forgot one of your state's most significant claims to fame; Vermont gave Abraham Lincoln his largest state victory in the 1860 presidential election, with a whopping 76% of the vote. Oh, and sorry Texas, Vermont was the first independent republic to join the United States.
@Jim
Thank you. Come up to Vermont.
One saying up here I love is the bumper sticker that says "don't Jersey Vermont"
1
Where once we could envision a beacon on a hill, knowing we never lived up to it, now there's just a stinking pile of bile.
We never were the great country we thought we were. Now we're just a pile of junk.
I hate this place, but I would still defend it along with my veteran friends. I'll stand beside you to defend this pile of bile.
I hate it here.
2
And why did attitudes about race and ethnicity change ? Paul Krugman fails to explain that instead he is trying to sell us more identity politics. In time when people suffer economically scapegoating of others increases, that‘s a very well known historical fact. In other words. It’s still the economy stupid, attitude changes don’t come out of thin air. So let‘s not deflect from that and focus on fixing our lopsided economy.
1
@heinrich,
You should re-read Mr. Krugman's column! He made your very argument. Here's what he wrote:
“As documented in “Identity Politics,” an important new book analyzing the 2016 election, what distinguished Trump voters wasn’t financial hardship but “attitudes related to race and ethnicity.” Yet these attitudes aren’t divorced from economic change.
Even if they’re personally doing well, many voters in lagging regions have a sense of grievance, a feeling that they’re being disrespected by the glittering elites of superstar cities; this sense of grievance all too easily turns into racial antagonism.”
So, Mr. Krugman is clearly stating that
1. “these attitudes aren’t divorced from economic change.”
and
2. “this sense of grievance all too easily turns into racial antagonism.”
silicon valley is among the most prosperous areas in the nation. yet there are skeptics. they say 'look at the roads in china, and in texas', and 'look at our roads in san jose in comparison, they are bad'. they blame illegal immigrants and blacks for poverty.
we do need to ensure that our schools and roads are the best, and give the poor a helping hand, so they can move up the economic ladder. every society has it's sick. they have to be taken care of. if that is socialism it can't be too bad.
1
I am not working but I could be. Want to know why? Too many decades of outsourcing, sending resumes by the thousands and hearing nothing. And I have fairly advanced computer skills. Not to mention a college degree, which I’ve been told is worthless. Will I go to work now? No, not by a long shot. It’s not worth it, even today. Sorry America, you had 4-5 decades to utilize my enormous talents and you blew it. No doubt many, many others feel this way also.
22
Your blaming *America* for not being hired?!
How about corporate elites and rightwing politicians who do corporate bidding and deregulate the economic system?
Sounds like you may have been a victim of age discrimination — laws to prevent it are a hallmark of Democratic not Republican policies and politicians!
In other words, fine tune your analysis rather than globally blame the abstract concept of the country or “America”!
12
@PC Where have you been for the last 400 years? Race and ethnic hate have always been a feature of the USA. We tried to tamp it down with civil rights legislation, but, your man Trump ripped the scab wide open. Stop feigning naivete.
6
This person, "PC", embodies the very serious issues underlying "red" America.
To put it simply, his/her statement says it all:
"Sorry America, you had 4-5 decades to utilize
my enormous talents and you blew it."
PC believes:
• America/companies do not want to hire them.
• they have "enormous talents," when it's more likely they did not upgrade their skills and so are not competitive in today's market.
• America "blew it" (it's America's fault that they do not have a job).
This sounds like what too many in "red states" say:
• they deserve everything, even if their skills are sub-par
• their economic downfall is the fault of others
• they will not improve, to raise themselves
• they expect others to cater to their wants/needs
It is a problem when a person believes that they deserve the American Dream, simply because they are American. They do not.
It is a problem when someone cannot assess their own 4-5 decades-old skills, yet considers their out-dated skills to be equal to state-of-the-art skills (what new college graduates learn).
It is a problem when someone EXPECTS others to give them a job, even if they offer sub-par skills.
It is a problem when people blame others (America/companies) for "blowing it". These workers did not improve themselves - and the world's passed them by.
They expect America to be their Welfare provider. Do they see they expect welfare from our government - the same socialism that others like them decry!
12
As always, Mr. Krugman’s analysis is lucid and, undeniably, accurate. I think though, that this piece minimizes the chasm implied by “economic” changes.
Here’s the thing: our economy is passing over millions of people, mostly but not only, blue collar men, who indisputably have no reasonable hope of ever improving their situation. What’s more, there are millions more of their kind who will be growing up in a future with little or no hope of achieving cultural efficacy.
As a former high school teacher (in a suburban, high income school) I knew these kids, and I’m convinced they are still out there and won’t be ever going away. Their strengths do not make them comfortable engaging in abstract thinking. What threatens them is the push to force virtually every student into going to college, a place where abstract thought is a necessary key to success. This causes them to become alienated with school, and pushes them to the wrong side of an economic divide.
As a culture and as a country, we must address this over-valuing of abstract thinking and find ways to make thinking concretely useful, lucrative, and important. There is still a need to work on the many things we utilize to make our economy succeed in the Information Age. We just need to find ways to stop minimizing the contributions of those whose strengths pre-dispose them to mastering them.
5
What about the proposal for a minimum guaranteed income? As the need for workers diminshes due to automation and market influences in industries, this would help people live their lives without desperation.
4
In the U.S. there is the added problem of ethnicity. Urban areas aren't just more dynamic economically but culturally. They might not be heaven but more different groups get along. Meanwhile the rural and small town areas are very White and very afraid of immigrants and crime. While an FDR like program for rural America would be great it will be opposed by Republicans. It is time to recognize that farming and coal aren't really coming back and these areas need to be brought into the 21st Century.
Fundamentally it's about dignity. Rural white blue collar workers have seen their position at the top of society eroded. Their social and economic prospects have diminished. They've lost the respect they felt was rightfully theirs.
So they need a scapegoat. Educated, coastal elites, minorities, immigrants, non-Christians, the media all make good targets. Their enmity has been fueled by Republicans, who exploit their anger to gain power while pursuing an agenda for the 1%. Donald Trump is the culmination of this "ideology."
Democrats may peel off the more "moderate" Trump voters, but it will be impossible to move the base. Rural whites are not going to regain their former status. Some will adapt to the new realities. The rest, sadly, will cling to their guns and religion, as Obama said.
Yes they should be helped. But as the United States becomes a majority minority country, progressive politics should prevail.
7
It’s All spelled out in “The Politics of Resentment” by Prof. Kathy Cramer. She saw the rise of Trumpism and found out why it appealed in rural areas.
I live in rural Northern California, not far from Paradise California. The effects of climate change in this state are going to have a much more devastating effect on this population than the changing economy will ever have. In 10 more years , shallow and baseless ideology are not going to cut it.Hopefully by that time Donald Trump will be a distant memory.
2
Look at the GDP per capita of the Visegrád countries after they joined the EU and large investments started flowing in.
These programs continue, despite deep ingratitude of those countries' leaders towards the EU net contributors.
It seems to me the Democrats are not willing to do what it takes to lift up US rural States (which may even require a parallel currency, on top of infrastructure investments).
I mainly read a lot of excuses in this column and in these comments.
2
The regional divide Dr. Krugman describes has some major immediate consequences politically. Longer term, I think another very serious divide is emerging, and will not work in America's interests.
Take a look at the country of origin composition of elite University's Phd. and post Doc candidates. Faculty at your elite institutions frequently have pictures of their grad group. What I found, in a non scientific search, there are some "white" guys, some with Iranian sounding names, many with Chinese, or South Asian looking names. But almost always, in the sciences, far more non white than white.
The best and brightest are not always the whitest. American nationalism may drive many foreign born highly educated to pack their bags and go home. Shoe number one, is the regional divide. Divide number two, in the Trump nationalist world, could be the self repatriation of these clever (non white) people.
3
The digital realm could actually unite rural and urban economies. People can — and do— work from anywhere. There's no reason why developers couldn't live in a small town, enjoying a low cost of living and an easy commute.
But these are the places that have continually voted to underfund education, who dug in their heels expecting coal or steel to "come back" and revive their economies.
Hilary Clinton honestly told West Virginians that coal was not the way of the future, and proposed education and job training programs to transition workers to the new economy. But she was vilified, and she lost the presidency.
552
@Elizabeth A I thought the same thoughts you put in your first paragraph and then had the thoughts you expressed in your second paragraph.
The workers doing best in our economy want to be able to chose the best education for their children. Even in wealthy suburbs with excellent public schools, they can afford to send their children to very expensive independent schools and often do. That level of choice is simply nonexistent in the rural areas left behind by our current economy.
34
@Elizabeth A
In talking about the digital realm, you don’t mention that broadband is not easily available in all small towns. That’s another obstacle.
28
@Global Patriot Even if you install broadband and could telecommute, the question is, would a person with advanced education and globalist, sophisticated society be welcomed into a small conformist white conservative community ? What if you were the only 'openly gay' or the only mom who doesn't stay home? What if you are secular and the community goes to a single church?
Everyone else has long roots and perhaps extended family there but you...doesn't seem appealing.
15
The dilemma we perceive is caused almost entirely by branding and tribalism, as Dr. Krugman and Thomas Frank have often written about.
There's a sneakier aspect to this which goes to the heart of the working person's problem: The demonization of labor unions. Self interest here is expressed as being against communism, socialism, and by extension, collective bargaining.
No amount of reasoning seems to match the propaganda machine which has been in place since the twenties. But when people read about the labor movement, they are often surprised by the simplicity of the concept: Work hard, and earn yourself a good living. Yes, and have a say in the company you work for. Instead, we have a perpetual machine selling us game shows, reality TV, and who wants to be a millionaire ...while all most people want is a home and a family, something which was more affordable fifty years ago, when Union membership was over 40%, compared to today's 8%. Union workers built America when it was at its greatest. Make it great again? OK. Are we going to do it by hard, fair work, or by reality TV?
976
@Sera
I agree that Republicans have demonized unions and did their best to eliminate their power. Reagan was perfect example of this with his war against the air traffic controller union.
But unions have also greatly added to the problem. (Reagan Democrats!) I just read an article about a working class UNION! white man, born and bred in his down and out area of Ohio, who ran as a Democrat after being on his City Council to take back a seat that was only recently held by a Republican after being Democratic many years. Most of the unions, including the service workers union, supported and donated big bucks and organizing to his Republican opponent who had far more money of course than a man working a service day job in a restaurant could raise. Well, the Republican won. This in a state where the Republicans have gone over and above with efforts to strip unions of bargaining power, and were only deterred by a referendum rescinding their latest attack on union legislation. And now the Republicans hold a supermajority in both state houses, so they can have a jolly old time crushing whatever life is left in the unions.
In my own district, one of the Democratic primary candidates was the "union" candidate, whose union boss mentor had endorsed Trump. Well, in my highly educated reasonably wealthy district, he lost bigly.
It really lessens one's compassion for union folk when they are so busy shooting themselves in the foot, and bringing the rest of us down with them.
38
@Sera
Labor Union lost power when the answer to request for wage increases could be met by moving the factory to Mexico.
50
@Sera
Two words can explain what's wrong with the current system.
Wealth imbalance.
Wages are too low at the bottom and too high at the top.
73
The Salt Lake City metropolitan area has a population of 1,153,340. I believe these numbers are fairly old too. We have a tech industry as well. Amazon was definitely not considering our area. Personally, I'm grateful. We don't need that kind of urban disruption. We're growing plenty.
The real reason we weren't considered however is what Krugman suggests. Utah is a Republican dominated state with excessive gerrymandering. Even if Amazon had been interested, which they weren't, Republican lawmakers did not extend a friendly welcome to a liberalizing economic force. They want LDS tech jobs, not Bezos tech jobs.
The good news however is Utah's anti-gerrymandering initiative is very close to passing. If nothing else, the law mandates procedural guidelines in the redistricting process. Republicans ignore these guidelines at their own peril. The state will be buried in lawsuits beyond the 2030 census.
Passing an anti-gerrymandering initiative is our form of urban aggrievement for unrepresentative governance. Why is the city subjected to the dominance of rural political favoritism? The Utah state legislature can suffer our fury.
3
"Why have lagging regions turned right while successful regions turned left?"
Education. I know there's more to it but this is a big part.
2
People have been migrating from one place to another in search of opportunity for all of human history. To often, it seems like folks don't want to move to were the jobs are, and they don't want to retrain. Communities that didn't exist before the factory came to town, waiting around for the factory to come back.
3
I have never supported President Trump--to the contrary, I am appalled by him and how much of a joke he has turned the United States into—but a lot of comments on this forum show why the Democratic Party is viewed as elitist.
You can criticize Trump all you want but the hard truth is there have always been economic winners and losers and the number of winners has been decreasing over time--a lot of people have not recovered from the 2008 recession.
Furthermore, as much as am in favor of education—more education is usually better—it is not a panacea. Degrees are not worth as much as they used to be and there are more than a few people who are educated but nonetheless struggling to get by—this is true in rural and urban areas alike.
If you hope to head off a populist backlash—be it from the right or the left—it is going to take a lot more than just repeating the mantra of “get an education.” Something needs to be done about healthcare—the ACA was a start, but there is a lot more to be done.
Housing affordability is a growing issue in many of the areas with jobs. A good place to start would be stop blocking the construction of anything other than single family homes--if anything there needs to be a moratorium on single family homes , and prioritize denser housing
The rural areas mentioned by Krugman, are also in need of solutions, especially for things like economic development and healthcare.
1
Correct, a lot of people never recovered from 2008. And who brought us the Great Recession of that year? Republicans. Of course. Again. If I'm "elitist" for realizing that - as opposed to being wilfully ignorant, like the Republicans who absurdly insist it was Clinton's fault - so be it.
@Debra,
The origins of the financial crisis are complicated and implicate both parties. The Republicans were in power when the financial crisis happened; however, The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Stegel and a did a number of things that would eventually set the stage for the 2008 crisis, was signed under Clinton.
Paul: Having stated that there's no fix in sight, you almost immediately invoke our better angels, as if they can work their magic without human guidance. Deadline problem?
I would prefer to give some suggestions to those better angels - suggestions of a positive message regarding government's ability to intervene and make rural lives better. Suggestions that if the Dems follow for the lead-up to 2020 will draw over more than a few disaffected Trumpsters who realize they've been had.
Example: WVA doesn't need coal jobs, but it does need a massive, coordinated approach to retraining and attracting business that only the feds are big enough to do. Imagine if the feds incented Amazon to relocate to Charleston with a big infusion of STEM training to the state's universities.
Okay, your turn ...
2
One of the best explanations I’ve read of our divide.
1
Amazon chooses locations with higher taxes (and corresponding quality of life/infrastructure) and receives generous tax breaks/public subsidies - including from its own employees who get none of these benefits, as individuals. Your thoughts on the possible role of "trickle-ism" in the company's strategy?
1
I appreciate all the comments that offered substantive suggestions for communities and government to tackle the problem which is at the root of the divisiveness in our country today. However, we must overcome the obstacles we have ourselves have created. I refer to the Editorial Board's opinion of Mitch McConnell's leadership and the new class of Democratic House freshmen some of whom made commitments not to vote for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as part of their election platform. Our democracy is more fragile than many of us realized. To restore trust in this system of government, we must reestablish and strengthen the separation of powers.At this point, our ability to do that is in doubt if we continue on our current course and don't take stronger actions to protect the Fourth Estate.
There might be room to hope that we can bridge the divide between urban and rural areas.
Elkhart County, Indiana, is a major American center of manufacturing despite being largely agricultural. Blessed with outstanding infrastructure, railroads, interstate highways and good local roads, people can enjoy the benefits of old fashioned small-town life while having good jobs within easy driving distance. There is no need to pile all the jobs in one overcrowded commercial center. It is possible to have your cake and eat it, too. You can have economic development and still enjoy a traditional small town life.
America’s early success was made possible by water transportation with a rich abundance of sea ports and navigable rivers. Today, we are no longer bound by geography. By extending our transportation infrastructure, we can bind the people of our nation closer together and counteract the forces that are driving us apart.
3
Krugman has presented a powerful explanation of the economic basis of racism in recent politics and how it produced Trumpism. While racism and racist appeals in politics, sometimes camouflaged like dog whistles, have happened before, Trumpism has inflamed the antisemitism, racism and bigotry and brought it more into the mainstream of politics.
Yet I am optimistic since many sectors of society help overcome racism, such as integrated sports, religious organizations, news organizations and other corporations that look beyond race. Fortunately, these integrated sectors are not run by the electoral politics that engender this racism. These countervailing sectors help reduce the chance of the worst evils of racism.
While some might disagree, I believe that the Trumpian animus toward immigrants fueled the Tree of Life Massacre and numerous other violent acts. This is collateral damage from the electoral politics with wildly differing worldviews, vigorous campaigning and competitive elections.
Trumpians might view the other side as a fifth column, aiding an invasion of "illegals," while the anti-Trumpians might view the other side as "fascist." Yet, understanding the fundamental ground-level economic basis of this racism can help us know what to do to vanquish it, short of dividing the country into two new ones, the haves and the have-nots.
4
Trump has popularized the sense of “victimhood” and made it a credible excuse for anger and crime. Oppressed populations don’t have to obey the rules, Trump says—they can simply follow their feelings.
Your point about swimming against the tide is well said. As a resident of one of these big cities, I long to leave and bring my talents to a smaller, more rural city, but I cannot. My skills are too specialized at this point to make a move to a small city feasible. Even if I found a job, that might literally be the only job I could do in that city. I am not exaggerating. One other thing--I don't look down my nose at residents of the "rest of America." I have deep respect for farmers, hunters, etc., and I spend all of my free time in the "country." I do, however, have zero tolerance for bigotry--and I don't think anyone, rural or urban, should excuse this behavior in the name of inclusion or reaching across the aisle.
5
So Krugman says America is transforming into two economies. One economy is that of the dying, left-behind rural regions. The other is the economy of the wealthy, metropolitan, coastal regions. Supposedly, that economy is "dynamic." And yet the manifestation of that dynamism is ... various cities competing with one one another to see which one can hand out the biggest subsidies to win the favor of a huge media monopoly, which flourishes primarily by undercutting and putting local bookstores out of business.
That's dynamism? And if these are the two economies that America is turning into, can we get a third option for "neither of the above"?
3
This is not a new divide from what I have read. Prof. Sean Wilentz's 'The Rise of American Democracy' won the Bancroft Prize in 2005, long before Trump and this latest focus on an Urban-Rural divide. Many of the current characteristics on each side of this divide were present before and during the Revolution. It does not seem likely we will bridge this separation in the future. But we have survived as a democracy and grown as a liberal democracy despite this. So there is realistic reason to hope that such growth will continue.
texas is a red state. they don't want to pay any taxes and they don't want any government, in the rural areas. houston on the other hand, voted for democrats down the line. they want good government, an educated and skilled work force, health care and the safety net, and to attract companies.
so much is said about our looking down or rural folks. the rural folks don't understand us. we don't look down on anybody.
the stock market is extremely volatile lately. it is why affordable health care is so important. it is a form of insurance.
3
I keep wondering when the moment right-wing rural folks decide to listen to the rest of their fellow Americans with a little sympathy arrives. So far, all we’re getting from Trumpists is a lot of bellowing.
With respect to the divide between urban and rural, I suspect there is some self-selection going on here. Folks raised in rural areas who are bright, ambitious, and curious about the world outside their 40 acres are not likely to stay in place milking cows and feeding chickens. The best and the brightest move to where the best universities and job prospects are located. Those who stay circle the wagons with their guns and religion. ( Read "Strangers in their own land", especially chapter 9, for a first hand account of these attitudes.) Something similar happened in Germany, with the ambitious leaving for the West and the rest staying in the East, grumbling about their plight and the West German elite. That's life.
3
Back in the 90s, China had( in addition to lower labor costs) a corporate tax rate in the single digits while the US rate was 35%. As a result, many multinationals were induced to locate their manufacturing there. Meanwhile, our government stood by and allowed China imports to enter the country virtually free of tariffs under the naïve assumption that US firms would, as a quid pro quo, be granted access to the China consumer market. Fast forward to now, this didn't happen, our IP has been stolen and our manufacturing base has been hollowed out. Along comes Trump with a Tax Act that very specifically incentivizes US multinationals to locate their operations here( our corporate tax rate now is lower than China's) and is trying his best to compel China to engage in fair trade. Also, he's trying to keep illegal immigrants out of our labor force so that economically-disadvantaged US citizens will be in a position to bid the market wages up. The result: strong economic growth, a record-breaking stock market and the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years( and the lowest minority employment rate ever!). So if you're a voter who is concerned about your economic prospects, why wouldn't you vote for Trump? It's that simple. Or, as Trump said on the midterm campaign trail, "if you're tired of winning, vote Democrat".
4
Trump is engaging in protectionism which always backfires because it artificially masks the flaws in overpaying for labor or materials. In addition, capital does not recognize borders so it goes where it has the greatest returns. When Foxconn can manufacture iPhones for a wage of $12/day, no reasonable person can criticize Cook for doing so just as they cannot defend American workers for expecting to be paid more than the global rate for their labor.
2
As part of my job, I regularly engage in a US multinational's sourcing and location decision-making processes. I can tell you from experience that the factors are now moving in the US's favor: The US tax rate is lower now, China's labor costs, although still lower than those in the US, are rising. Of course, transportation costs from China have always been a negative. The political risk and IP theft costs are tough to quantify but need to be taken into account. Finally, our tariffs on China imports swing the balance in favor of manufacturing here. So, you're right, capital knows no borders but it knows how to do the math.
@pete
Why is it that when conservatives call for America first it’s xenophobia but when liberals do it, well that’s a fair trade policy? The fact is that we are in a global economy and that the only way we can compete is to jettison our antiquated notion of US worker superiority, except where it is documented. We need to accept that while third world wages have increased, most of our wages need to be slashed to match theirs.
As immigrants, my family was always treated poorly in America. My grandfather and dad died in your factories making polluted items like Asbestos Brakes and Vulcanizing rubber.
Americans are sheep who think rich people care.
2
The rural-red Trump-rump hates foreigners because they are ambitious and are willing to move to where the jobs are, unlike themselves.
3
And they show up for work instead of sleeping off a binge or pleading pain.
I can read the writers bitterness in this article. Amazon located their headquarters in an opportunity zone. A zone that the state identified as notoriously poor. I hear no mention of this, just bitterness,.
Pssst...Krugman lives in NYC.
Trumpism is nothing more than a death wish for the whole planet. It is all bad.
12
I think it must drive some residents of my old home town, totally white (and mostly WASP) when I was in high school, completely bonkers to see black people waiting at their bus stops and black children walking home after school. Not to even mention the Hispanics!
That bonkers-ising was a large part of their support for Trump in 2016. I don't expect it to go away until they're dead.
4
Mr Krugman’s belief that nothing can be done, is a poor representation of economics and of humanity. It is an excuse not to, and will have bad polityand social results. He stands on the shore wavjng to drowning communities sying nothing can be done. In reality, it is just a choice not to, and an immoral one at that.
If the message of the Democratic Party to rural America is “sucks to be you.” They will vote against, not for you. If you’re message is that their is nithing to be done but for their communities to stumble along with lives considered of no value to a greater America and merely a sink of welfare dollars. They will vote aganst you. They will do wahtever they can for you to share the pain, because this seems more
Just to them.
This all while we give billions to Amazon for urban growth, in growing regions. Yes, rural America is watching. And when they see uplifting growth in large parts of the world that didnt used to have it. Most if east Asia since WW2, they think if they can get areas to greater growth why can’t we?
Yes, they are looking for scapegoats and looking to blame, they are also trying to hold on to what they have as their communities implode. As their pride and dignity is removed, as well as their children.
America can do more, and more ttan Trump the con man, or Krugman with no optimism, and a poor belief that past results show future gain.which is bad economics.
1
@Edward Brennan
"If the message of the Democratic Party to rural America is “sucks to be you.”"
It's a good thing that it isn't, then.
I thought Conservatives in these areas supported capitalism. The market has spoken. Many growth industries appear to prefer culturally progressive areas. Culturally regressive areas can change and attract industry or they can continue to suck tax dollars out of progressive areas...until progressives get tired of supporting red state takers.
4
A little socialism would go a long way in solving some of America's problems. Unfortunately, the Republicans have convinced a large percentage of voters that socialism has paved the road to hell. The social democracies of Europe serve their people far better than does American government. We remain the only major nation without universal health care and maybe Social Security and other social programs are next. The main force against progress in this country is the Republican Party and their low information supporters.
5
There is no such thing as a “little” socialism. That’s one of those doors that once you open it, there’s no going back. People love stuff that other people pay for. Always have. Always will. The flip side of the free market that made Bezos the world’s richest is that it will also make millions poor. A floor on poverty just ends up placing a cap on wealth/success. When Andrew Carnegie liquidated his assets, his resulting worth was equal to about $300,000,000,000 in today’s dollars. However, today’s richest person is only worth about one third of that because we have shamed and punished and confiscated and taxed and regulated achievement nearly to death. Those who can best compete in capitalism deserve to reap the benefits.
1
I repeat: The bosses have always known that if they can get the white working stiff to hate and fear the black or brown working stiff they will be able to steal from both much easier.
F(alse)ox not news deserves a lot of blame for this divide.
You can't have a debate with people who make up their own realities.
4
@Bob Laughlin: "I repeat: The bosses have always known that if they can get the white working stiff to hate and fear the black or brown working stiff they will be able to steal from both much easier."
"President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.""
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-white-man/
"You can't have a debate with people who make up their own realities."
That sounds like a fair assessment of most of the media.
Hmm. Amazon says, “we will go to areas run by Democrats, conditioned on an exemption from Democratic policies.”
But you’re absolutely right – surprisingly – although you – unsurprisingly – get the blame precisely backwards. The divide among “white” Americans is clear: if you’ve ever set foot in a gender studies classroom – and are stupid enough to believe the drivel served up therein – you’re a Democrat. If you’ve ever seen a cow or been to church, you’re a Republican. If you really, passionately CARE about identity, you’re a Democrat. If your identity is “American”, you’re a Republican.
There is no “white nationalist agenda” of any substance. But there is clearly a backlash to identity politics. When you’re incessantly told that you’re the enemy, “privileged”, an oppressor, who didn’t build that; when leftists are openly rooting for you to die off; when leftists expressly disqualify you from support because of your race (Joe Crowley, call your soon-to-be-former office) you might, perchance, get a little peevish.
The left openly advocates that “minorities” vote on the basis of their identity. Now, you’re concerned that the folks you’ve spent decades insulting are starting to take it personally?
Group-think is poison. The Russians, attempting to foment division, understood that identity politics is just the ticket. If you’re advocating for the policies which Putin believes will undermine the US, perhaps it’s time to reconsider your ideology.
3
I greatly admire Professor Krugman. But I don't always agree with him. He is certainly right that our political chasm derives from economic disparities. But I think there are ways to bridge it. It's just a matter of political will. And money. What globalists like Krugman often overlook is that no administration (including Democrats like Bill Clinton) has ever undertaken a comprehensive -- and seriously funded -- program of job retraining in rural areas for displaced workers (with the exception of Appalachia, where a job retraining program benefiting displaced coal miners was recently eviscerated by Trump -- that great champion of coal miners). There is no economy -- and never has been -- that is not a political economy. In the end, there are no great impersonal economic forces which cannot be resisted (as Krugman suggests). There are only economic forces which flow from political decisions. The policy decisions which currently grossly favor the 1% can be reversed, or at least mitigated to redirect the flow of money downwards where it can be used to benefit rural workers with greatly intensified job retraining and wage subsidies. This would go a long way to bridging the political chasm. And what about a revived WPA to help rebuild infrastructure? It worked in FDR's time to put our grandparents back to work.
2
Actually Paul Krugman said that Trumpism wasn’t well explained by rural white folks wanting economic help, because there wasn’t any. He then went on to argue for doing much more to help out the rural folks who’ve been left behind by globalization.
The problem is Krugman who said we should forget about vertical inegalitarianism and concentrate on horizontal to Democratic identity groups whose wages were stagnant under Obama.
In a normal system, we would have a Democratic Party that, like the Democrats from 1935 until the 1960s combined the low and middle income both white and minorities.
The current Democrats are a coalition of Westchester and Harlem with anyone under the top 5% (250,000 family) guaranteed freedom from an increase in taxes.
The Democratic gains in the affluent suburbs resulted from Trump's decision to limit their deduction for property and state taxes. His Krugman-like fiscal stimulus is raising wages, and the rich suburbs knew it would pop the stock bubble that zero interest rates produced. It knew that a raise in wages would cut into Target's profits and that stock price would fall like the 11% today.
And, of course, when Joe McCarthy-Schiff's attack on Trump's peace policy as treason extended to the nothing Facebook games, it helped drive Facebook down 40%
The NYT needs an economist who does not deny that economics is unimportant to everyone but stockholders.
1
The political power of the rural Trump voters is based on the structural problems of our political system. We are far from having majority rule in this country. The Senate and electoral college favor the small, rural states and the Republicans have succeeded in gerrymandering the House Districts in many red states. We do need to enlarge the House which would help restore the balance of political power in this country. Constitutional amendments would be required to address the problems in the electoral college and Senate. Politicians and political commentators on all sides at least need to be reminded of the inequities caused by the in balance in political power in this country.
@Anne So your answer is to undermine any day that rural states have in the governing of America rather than working to compete for their vote? This is exactly why the senate and electoral college should remain as is. Democrats held 57 senate seats in 2008 with 2 others caucusing with the Democratic Party so it is not at all impossible for Democrats to control the senate. We don’t have to break an essential part of our government system to get progress.
@Anne,
The bicameral system was a compromise, one which has worked pretty well over time, balancing the power of small states versus larger states.
Having everything based on population means less than 10 states effectively make all the major decisions--if you're in one of those states you basically don't matter--which is is not a good way to run a country.
Everything that Professor Krugman has written in this op-ed is correct; I agree with him. Now what are the coastal elites going to do the bridge the chasm between urban and rural America? Will they run candidates who disparage rural Americans for owning gun and believing in God? Will they run candidates who label us deplorable?
The last time I brought Obama’s criticism of rural voters for holding fast to their guns and Bibles up in a comment, someone replied with entire context in which that comment was made. It was not so much a criticism as it was an explanation of the result of rural America’s reaction to the social and economic changes that seem to have left them behind. What did Obama do, as president, to curb these changes, to improve the lot of rural America? Nothing as far as I know. In fact, his administration everything in its power to undermine rural America through regulations to protect the environment. Obviously, Obama and the coastal elites favor urban communities over rural ones.
As long as the Democrats appeal to urbanites and ignore rural America, the gulf between them will grow wider, and more resentful. The resent comes from both sides, as the urban elites look down upon the rural masses with utter contempt, which was plainly evident in 2016. I have lived in both worlds and I know that the contempt urban America has for its rural counterpart is hateful and vicious. For that reason, I side with rural America, and rue the city. Thank you.
2
@Southern Boy Sorry, but I don't see how every environmental protection regulation is a defacto burden for rural Americans. Limiting runoff from pig farms, for example, protects nearby farmers, doesn't it? For what can be done in the future, how about big investments in farm tech, ala EV cars. Do you know any farmers who would be eager to have a discount on some of those Australian robotic farm vehicles?
2
@Southern Boy As someone who grew up on the farm, I would suggest that you do something about the situation, not wait for the "coastal elites" to do it. Don't take sides, take action!
@Paul Stokes,
I did Paul. I voted. That's all I can do besides lead a rebellion against the coastal elites. Thank you.
More insight that the economic and intellectual losers just want a Bully to break something. As if that works out well.
What I want to understand is how they ever thought the party that trashes labor, defunds education, and promotes medical bankruptcy was ever going to be their champion.
Call me out of touch, but I still think the union of the envious haters and the greedy elite is deplorable.
6
"Bypassed"? The intent for genocide is blatantly obvious. The bitter vitriol is bad, but the blatant calls for the destruction of rural cultures betrays the passion of the progressive agenda.
1
Americans need to be repeatedly reminded that hatred, racism and bigotry is our Achilles heel and that only education and enlightenment will keep us from falling into a fascist abyss.
The Republicans efforts to sustain and support ignorance among Americans is no different than tobacco companies efforts to addict young and vulnerable people to poisonous tobacco.
Republicans have turned themselves into truly evil people.
6
It is probably true that people in economically lagging areas may feel disrespected by the elite, but not so much by the white elite but by those of brown elite. As an example, in one of those red states, in a bar, a white man approached a south Asian and asked him ‘why do you think you are smarter than I am’ and then shot and killed him. The white man moved to another bar few miles away and bragged about it. That tells me the racism, white supremacy and hate all coexist in these people in economically lagging areas. It is not all economics, several factors contributed to this such as ignorance, uneducated and lived most of their lives in a white community. This is the fundamental reason they often vote against their own interests. The divergence between elite cities and economically lagging areas may continue, but there is a hope that internet will eventually integrate all of us.
1
The opportunity to unite lies with the progressives. I believe economic improvement can eventually erode the Trump divide which, I agree, has deep roots in other issues. If federal help to poor America improves schools and roads, installs high speed internet, and focuses on improving economic opportunities, I suspect that Trumpism will descend into a fringe movement. I wonder if affluent America is up to the challenge of whipping Trump's rump into shape.
1
Was that billboard a Halloween display intended to scare children and animals?
There was a politician with plans to bring economic development into rural communities.
Those rural communities voter for her opponent because they bought his lies. They bought his lies because...racism.
2
A White identity crisis plagues the ignorant rural areas of the nation. They are not exposed to the diversity of the population centers and therefore vote from a place lacking the enlightenment of immigration by non-white citizens. They have a problem without sympathy from the rest of us.
2
Very true reference to the East German "Ossis".
1
Thank you, again, for clearly stating the obvious.
@Paul Krugman
You write well and tell it like it is.. I get it and the people who buy a monthly subscription to the NYT get it.... but let's call a spade a spade!
60% of America resides in rural trailer parks and/or run down housing.
20% of this nation still consider the Souths' civil war loss as an "early withdraw" ...
Our country is under educated and ill informed. Trump is the savior of this nations' ignorant and NOTHING will sway their opinions. Why believe in truth when lies promise more?
3
This past election has turned a few red States purple, rural states like Nevada.
Amazon would have moved to a rural are, but the areas could not offer the incentives that urban areas offered. A State and City Government giving away tax payer money for what will be low-paying jobs. Packers do not make a lot of money. None of the States and Cities that bid demanded a list of what jobs would be offered and what they would pay.
Amazon is founded on Capitalism just like every other Corporation. They receive Corporate welfare. God forbid those incentives be put into programs to help the working citizens.
Two perfect examples of Corporations receiving tax incentives that have not delivered what they promised to the City and State they settled in are GE and the late Digital Corp.
The latter when out of business 5 years after they moved to Roxbury Mass, even thought they received massive incentives to settle there. All of the jobs never came to fruition and those that did were lost when Digital failed.
In the case of GE, the jobs have not come to fruition as of yet and now they are suffering huge losses on the Stock Market because of bad management decisions. Meanwhile Boston and Massachusetts gave GE huge incentives to move there.
It really has nothing to do with red or blue areas, just very poor judgement on the part of our Politicians. Rural areas will eventually turn blue as soon as the voters realize that Republicans do not care about the working class.
1
Unless you are like me, and out in the free market trying to hire basic labor, you are missing the reality. Finding people smart enough to do a mostly physical job, but requiring a small measure of reading and math skills (about 6th grade level) plus reliability, to show up every day, every day, every day, is bordering on impossible. There is a percentage (5% to 15%) of our population ( both rural and urban) that simply has limited skills, minimal trainability, and very poor reliability. In more physical times those people could find work on farms and factories. But of those types of work have disappeared.
These people have both found a political party or candidate, red or blue, to define an enemy, rally the masses, and promise them hope. But neither party has the guts to face the reality, that this segment of our population will be marginally employable in todays economy. 32 million adult Americans can't read and High school drop out rates are still at about 20% in our adult workforce. The parties have no fix, they just want the votes.
Over time, both parties have staked out geographic territories, but have accomplished little to change the trajectory. Detroit, Cleveland, the steel mill towns, the coal mine regions, and rural Kansas have all been in a downward trend for 50 years. Promises are easy, but if your only retirement savings plan is a lottery ticket, the promises sound pretty good.
5
What could help some of the disparity rural/red state areas is citizens there acknowledging they are going to need higher levels of education. The era of the 12th grade education has been gone for decades as adequate in the United States. Face it, and move on. This may sound arrogant but it's not. It's a lot of what you read and witness. People do not have to be top scholars to complete a two year junior college degree Would people do it it offered community college as Democrats have here in California and elsewhere for a while. If offered in Indiana, would it help? I honestly do not know, does anybody?
2
The whole red and blue state notion is outmoded. Houston, Nashville, Atlanta, Salt Lake City are doing very well. The rural- urban divide exists everywhere and is an intra state phenomenon. Go to Bakersfield California.
4
I suspect the House will stay blue for some time as more and more people in prospering regions vote for reason and sanity.
But the Senate, which gives a substantial advantage to white, rural states-- Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and on and on will be harder to change.
Of course, who occupies the White House will be essential to a future that is likely to be deeply divided for many years to come.
1
Trump isn't failing his staunchest supporters. They voted for hate and they are getting it in spades.
6
Never going to happen, but it would be less destructive if corrupt politicians and right-wing media would stop fanning the flames of divisiveness and victimization.
3
The American government has a history of racism and bigotry. Can you consistently reject the fruit, yet support the tree of democracy that produces this fruit? A dilemma for those socialized into believing democracy to be legitimate, but accept that racism and bigotry are illegitimate.
Paul Krugman cites the "Idenity Politics" view that the nasty racism and bigotry that put Trump and his party in power is not due to economic deprivation. Krugman claims that their racism is rooted in economics without citing any proof.
While it still glorifies evil slave-owners on Mt. Rushmore and in other ways, the American democracy is recalcitrant and truculent about restitution to the victims of slavery and obstructs returning the stolen land to the Native Americans. It has created its Muslim ban and separated and caged immigrant children. This is not limited yet to American democracy.
The anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant bigotry that led to this type of government in Austria, Hungary and other countries, has been growing worldwide for decades. With a growing extremist Zionism in Israel, it is used to deny equal rights for all Palestinians.
In countries where the vile reprehensible bigotry and racism permeate society, democracy produces racist and bigoted government. When we see the racist fruit of democracy, we can easily recognize its ethical illegitimacy.
3
If you can get someone to believe an absurdity, you can get them to commit an attrocity. Trump not the first person in history to utilize powerless scapegoats to deflect responsibility and none of these movements have ended well. Urban areas have actual exposure to the minorities to the minorities that are vilified by conservatives and we know they are a pack of despicable lies.
What a nice Thanksgiving close. Here's to our better angels. Maybe ugliness can be stuffed back under the rock it crawled out from 2 years ago.
1
One element missing in this analysis is the recent development of propaganda. The attitude of rural America would not be the same if it was not fed daily by FoxNews and Facebook with horror stories of costal elites hating them, and aliens coming to steal from them. Not only is there a political party that grows on US division, but it also actively feeds this division, as it is an ingredient of its success. With only national television that was more difficult, but cable television and internet have allowed creating cultural bubbles. Rural America lives in a different world. And I would say this world is fake. How do I know the same is not happening on the left, and that NYT and WaPo are not creating their own fantasy land for liberals? Well, because I’m not living in the US, and when I read local news (or even check Facebook) I get the similar info and opinions as from mainstream media like NYT and WaPo. So I feel they must be more reliable, as the other explanation would be that the whole world is fake and only rural America holds the truth (which is probably what many over there are thinking).
4
Fundamentally we don't understand the other side. I don't intend to try. I'm eager to learn from people I disagree with, but have no interest in anybody who supports a self proclaimed nationalist. These are not normal political disagreements. Historians can study the causes of this takeover of America. But we cannot normalize it now. This is not the time to reach out to white nationalists and try to help them. An extremist nationalist has taken over. He has repeatedly used identity politics to divide America. We don't know what the fight will look like, and it may not end up being so bad, but as of now the fight is not won. Maybe there will be a time to understand the other side. I doubt it. Nobody tries to understand slavers or Nazi's. We study how it happened and the technical steps of reversal, but we don't consider the opinions and feelings of the average American slaver as worth understanding. The average American Trump supporter is not worth understanding anymore than trying to understand why people believe in ghosts.
3
We should stop referring to those 'left behind' and instead refer to those 'who aren't keeping up.'
3
Our country's history does not necessarily support appeals to "our better angels." As Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash" makes clear, the rural white sub-class is older than the nation.
Remarkably, this class has come to define our politics; nevertheless, the idea that education can wish away social class remains in the realm of wizards and magicians. College graduates tend to be self-selecting -- they don't value education because they got a degree, they got the degree because education was already something they valued.
1
I was born and raised in Orange County, California. The neighbor across the street was a member of the John Birch Society. I worked as a volunteer in Tom Hayden's run for Senate in 1976. You can imagine how much fun that was. If anybody wants to stop by here in Minnesota (maybe wait until spring) and knock me over with a feather, let me know...
3
We'll vote blue.... for the sake of those in the Red states who most need it....
And sometime soon, I hope, we'll also raise taxes. It's the right thing to do.
1
The Trump base consists of bigots, xenophobes, and the willfully ignorant. They are my fellow citizens,so I will vote for representatives who will try to help them, you know, the elites that they hate. But listen to them? Why?
2
The chasm of which you speak should not be bridged. Not now, not ever.
At least, not with my taxes, not by my representatives (I am a liberal).
I will not sit on the same table with the MAGA set again. This is not just jobless rustbelt people, but suburban Americans who live well, drive big cars, and have over a million dollars in their 401K - who thought children at the border were MS13, and were sure that it was time for someone like Trump to show the likes of me about who is in charge here.
Never mind the overweight bearded guys in MAGA hats that wanted the likes of me gone, it was the non-MAGA hat wearing suburbans who spoke of nonsense grudges after eight years of Obama ("I have to apologize for being white.') who want me six feet under.
Not just Amazon, it would be great if all job creators moved to big city. As you (and others) call it, MAGA was less about economic anxiety, more about religious-ethnic nationalism. Now my Jewish Community Center has a full retinue of guards to prevent a crazy person from coming to shoot us up. Immigrants like me have seen violence and harassment escalate. Gurdwaras have to issue statements saying 'we are here, and going nowhere.' These things should not happen in 2018; and they do because of Trump, and because half of American voters are indistinct from religious-ethnic nationalists and acting out their brown-shirted instincts. Call them for what they are.
Chasm? Sure. I will cast my vote to starve this beast.
4
Amazon should have put one of its two new headquarters in the Midwest in a city such as Dayton.
I think we should be asking a slightly different question: how can we raise the skill levels of the people who have lost out to low-wage countries like China? The rural folks in the Red states feel alienated, economically and socially, because the business environment in the US no longer needs people who were C-minus students in high school. Their skill set is available for $0.50 an hour in other countries, and those jobs aren't ever coming back here.
The disaffected might feel differently if they could hold their heads up in jobs that paid a decent living. That's going to take training. We need to invest in them just as we need to lower the cost of a college education. The problem can't be solved over night, but programs that provide a path to self-sufficiency and self-respect can give hope to those who currently feel that there are no options. That will blunt the tendency to blame minorities and foreigners for the problems, and move us in a healing direction. I don't see any other option.
@Bill McGrath
I agree with your premise that there is a need for training.
But I have sadly come to realize that the very people that need the training the most, already had a 12 year opportunity and they blew it. I have also learned that many of them still see no need for learning in any form (even when unemployed). This small (+or- 10 %) group of Americans regard education as a waste of time and effort and actually have a distain for learning which sometimes transfers to their children. It is a sad reality and I don't know how we can tackle that problem.
1
@Ed
Good points. I don't know the answer, either. There is a certain contempt for knowledge and learning in some segments of our society. Until that attitude changes, that population will remain virtually unemployable in the 21st century's marketplace. It's a bootstrap problem that won't be solved by idolizing someone like Trump.
I'm not sure if subsidizing the flyover regions is going to help. Both of my children are graduating from college and will probably lead decent lives here in expensive SoCal. All of there friends who are also graduating, but came from these rural, heartland areas say they are never going back. The reasons they give are two. Lack of opportunity and intolerance to new ideas or people who do not look like them. Whats funny is that a few have said that opioids is the great cleanser of these areas. Pretty sad.
2
Fair enough description of current state. I'm not sure, though that rural area cannot participate in the knowledge economy if they want to. Remote collaboration over the Internet is easy these days. It doesn't really matter where you live. I collaborate all day long with software developers in other states and countries. Really I think if there is a problem it is one of attitudes and culture in rural areas.
2
@mt and education, the great leveler.
Trumpism makes racists proud of their disgusting attitudes. That's why some people support him to their own harm.
4
You speak too soon, professor. Farmers whose livelihoods depend on exports are learning it doesn't pay to farm in Trump country. Manufacturers who use steel and aluminum complain of rising costs due to his tariff wars. Stock market investors are having second thoughts about the economic wisdom of a businessman who bankrupted casinos. And the Great Unwashed who believed his promises to reopen coal mines, build a Wall, bring back white supremacy and make them all rich are beginning to suspect they've been conned.
2
Simple people simply acting against their own best interests and feeding their emotions.
Hard to welcome the hate-filled folks with values that are simply un-American. But those who have combined their lack of courage with their ease of gullibility offer opportunities for compassion.
1
Professor, When we disconnected our democratic ideals from our economic model we instituted a race to the bottom.
Everyplace in the world we are seeing free markets with people that are not free. Everyplace else we see places where people make things while polluting rivers and air and soil. Everyplace else we see no Freedom of Speech, no real Rule of Law, no way for people to complain about horrible working conditions or child labor.
Americans are hypocrites. We want low cost and we are willing to turn a blind eye to the world to get it.
We could turn back the tide. Simple make and consume everything right here in the USA and/or only with those societies that actually share out ideals.
Only when we back up our ideals by only trading with people who share them can this selling of our national soul be stopped.
Interestingly California has the same rural divide as illustrated by the “state of Jefferson” movement in rural counties. The Jefferson “state flag” contains two X’s Which represents how rural areas have been double crossed. Rural counties in CA are subsidized by rich urban counties but somehow there’s a notion that seceding will result in lower taxes. One would think that the fires over the last few years would dispel that notion as the state as a whole picks up the firefighting tap and reconstruction costs. But old prejudices have legs even in a blue state like California
3
Ignoring the Middle West is not new. It's been in trouble for over twenty years and ignored by the NAFTA and other trade agreements. They feel they have nothing to lose and they have dug in as survivors. The national stage is their entertainment and they like the chaos they've stirred up with Trump. But if you want to see success in the MidWest go to Oklahoma and look at the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma's business and welfare plan. There is something happening there and it could help the dominant society but they would have to give up their "conquest" model and get down to some serious thinking about it. Otherwise the Cherokee or Chinese Model will be the only alternatives since the GOP is hopeless. REH: New York City Conductor, Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. and from Oklahoma.
1
Mencken wrote about the urban/rural mindset divide about 100 years ago in a much cruder and sarcastic format, of course. Who even remembers the Mann act, which he claimed would have incriminated Geo. Washington had the law been in place during the 1790's
The divisions are inflamed by continual bombardment from talk radio, evangelical blather, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and scurrilous disinformation on web sites, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Spencer media. A rotten appearance of consensus and widespread disgust defines reality and crowds out real discussion and common sense.
This inescapable propaganda machine is what has to be stopped to allow reason a chance to be heard.
8
Dr. Krugman misses a bit point here. Voters in "Rumpland" cling to Trump not merely because they agree with him on all issues, since he's not consistent enough on issues to make him a credible figure. Moreover, they don't cling to whatever it is they cling to merely or only because of racism or white nationalism, which many of them have given up or never had. They cling to him because they simply don't like the vision of America they see in the Democratic Party and its sexual radicalism, its hostility to traditional religion as they understand it, and what they perceive as its hatred of men and the traditional family. No analysis of this phenomenon that ignores these facts is going anywhere, if rural America really means anything to the Democratic Party. And I say this as a local citizen who publicly ripped into the Republican Party and its congressional candidates deep in my own place in rural America.
3
if my interactions with trump voters in my area are any gauge? they are more tentative in their support. they have gone from certitude in their belief to allowing themselves to say somewhat negative things about trump and ...... making weak excuses for his ignorant statements. even suggesting that i ignore trump and "work to get things done". well, you cannot and should not ignore the president of the unites states and as long as actual science and facts are not part of trumpism? there is no other side to work with.
Isn't this similar to the status of the South from Reconstruction until at least the 1980s? It may in part explain some of the resistance to changes in race relations.
1
@Zosimus
Read Joseph Ellis’s “The Quartet”. Nothing has really changed in 230 years.
Rural racism will be exceptionally difficult to resolve. However, a lot of failing infrastructure exists in rural America, and a jobs program hiring local folks to restore and maintain that infrastructure would provide a much needed economic boost to those areas, and might even draw bipartisan support.
1
@CV Danes
That and a shift back to natural farming methods that don't use massive amounts of chemicals which wind up in our streams and our bodies. Natural farming method would require a much higher population per acre of cultivated land.
I grew up on a farm that employed 20-30 permanently and 100's seasonally. Modern agriculture methods now farms that with 1 person for over 2000 acres. The town nearby has nearly disappeared from loss of people and economy shifts.
Rural life is just on a steep decline due to how agriculture works today.
2
Paul Krugman is a Whig at heart. He believes in the marketplace and the beneficent things it brings about - even when the flip side of those things destroy the welfare and dignity of millions of human beings. He sees these market forces as creating an ineluctable current of progress that cannot, in fact should not, be resisted. This is why he believes rural America will languish and suffer, and the best we can do is offer a few tax breaks, and, of course, moralistic lectures to those who foolishly remain there against all reason. The other side of this Whigish view requires relentless austerity for urban working class people, but acknowledging that part is uncomfortable and runs against the idea that Trumpism can be politically isolated in the declining countryside without affecting those shining tech-driven cities that mesmerize Krugman. This is Krugman's, and neoliberalism's, blind spot.
1
@john riehle
I came out of one of those rural areas in Arkansas through a combination of the draft during Viet Nam and a realization that the future of farming was changing. Our cotton plantation employed over a dozen families in my childhood. It employed hundreds of part time cotton choppers and pickers.
Various economic factors and agricultural advances have reduced that number to 1. One person now leases the land and farms it with equipment that cultivates 32 rows at a time. This has led to a reduction in population to the point that the school that I graduated from has been shut down, along with most of the town it was in.
Lest you think this a negative comment, those families now live in cities where they have running water, heat in the winter and indoor plumbing. That and a lot better chance for their children to do better.
The change in those clinging to country life is part of the 'progress' that we have all asked for.
2
Economics and race have always been different sides of the same coin. Middle-class jobs went overseas and the right is parading Cadillac-Driving Welfare Queens. Job retraining? We can't even properly educate all our kids.
Wages are in a frenzied race to the bottom, and we're bombarded with Muslim Terrorists Destroying America. Worker rights and minimum wage increases? We're destroying unions while the courts are rolling back labor protections.
Capitalism destroys our children and adults with opioids, guns, and junk food, then gets big bucks for doing so. Meanwhile, the kid in back cutting the lawn is Mexican murderer and a rapist. Antitrust enforcement and responsible regulations for social good? Regulations destroy American jobs and another predator is set loose as the wall comes down between commercial and investment banking.
We passed the point of no return on these and other problems long ago, when something could still be done. And now we are facing the prospect of soon losing most of the jobs that remain without a clue as to what comes next.
Middle America has gotten a rotten deal for 40 years and we can't blame them for being angry. Sadly, the rotten deal is made and delivered by their own party.
1
We are fast approaching if not already at the point where the only thing preserving GOP national power is the gerrymander. How long can it be before other red states learn the Kansas lesson.
3
Here's a thought experiment: Suppose Amazon had moved one of it's new headquarters to Wyoming or Montana. Both states have relatively small populations (about 700,000). With the influx of enough new "Amazonians" they could a red state to blue and maybe change the balance of power in the US Senate! Think about it Mr Bezos.
1
We ain't seen nothin' yet. On the front page of the Times a few months back, McKinsey (not Bernie) projected that by 2050 fully 47% of all American jobs will be wiped out by tech. That's a net loss. "New jobs" will be part of the 53% remaining, but what about the 47% out of work? And not just in the rural areas, folks. Unless we get a great leader like Bernie to start telling the truth to the American masses and re-engineering the American political economy to allow all Americans to profit from the tech revolution we're living through, almost half of us will be living the Hunger Games up close and personal, for the entertainment of the cruel rest of us.
2
Why conservatives vote against their economic interests, is their belief that white is superior. That is their STARTING POINT. From there conservative weirdness propagates and morphs into all forms of negative thought. To marginalize the "minority", as Krugman does, may be short term expedient, however, only the realization that pigment (and for that matter genitalia) does not control human relationship, is the answer.
"America, then, is a divided nation, and is likely to stay that way for a while. But the better angels of our nature can still prevail."
They did not in Weimar Germany, nor will they I'm afraid, in the current situation. And yes, in a general way, history does seem to repeat itself. Professor, perhaps you could come up with a Fourier series of trig functions that would show that?
2
"Can this chasm be bridged? Honestly, I doubt it."
Suits me.
2
could it be that rural folks don't want our help or broadband or anything else and are happy to live just as they did almost a century ago? I'm not a fan of rural culture myself and I see no reason to help the most vile and hateful people in this country but I believe I understand them well enough having married into a rural family over twenty years ago.
Here is my advice: stop trying to change them. Let them wallow in their own misery because that's actually what they want. The challenge for the rest of us is to find ways to circumvent or isolate their political misadventures.
1
"...small towns and rural areas have been bypassed..."
This is how the passive voice is typically employed to relieve someone of responsibility. "Mom, the milk got spilled!"
Small towns and rural areas have consistently voted against their own best interests for a long time. With a will and some hard work, they could've joined the 21st-century economy even after their best and brightest split town for the city. They could at least have affordable health care and money to retrain those who want to work rather than sulk about the past. But no, they had to vote Republican because the Republicans go to church more often than the Democrats.
3
Republicans are caught in a vicious and destructive cycle. Their main policy position is no taxes, but taxes pay for all the things that make an area attractive to new investment. Schools, parks, roads, libraries, good health facilities, even museums and cultural venues. While it is not clear what all the pundits mean by “elites,” it is clear from Amazon’s choices that these kinds of amenities are what make “elite coastal” cities attractive to the workers his new headquarters will need to attract. As long as these regions are governed by no tax Republicans, they will fail to train and educate their own citizens and they will fail to attract new investments because of it.
10
Some oversimplification here. Yes, rural areas and small towns are suffering drastic declines (all over the world, in fact), thanks to phenomenal ongoing improvements in agricultural productivity, which are key to more general economic growth, but there are plenty of cities 500,000-1,000,000 (about 50 in fact in the US, and very few of them coastal) where there is plenty of action and potential for economic growth (see Neil Irwin's article today), if the economists would pay attention. But they don't. Distribution of income, wealth and investment by population and geography has long been at the bottom of their agenda.
It’s hard to believe Amazon needs to be in an area with population > million for anything other than lowering shipping costs. After all, what are most of their jobs? Sorting, packaging, shipping after uploading photo and product descriptions online - not very high tech once it’s set-up. They would have done a greater service to America by locating where they really needed the jobs - but that’s not what capitalism is all about, is it? Mostly it’s all about convenience- for them - while everyone else has to adjust. If we can’t adjust, we’re left behind.
4
@Carolyn C
Your sentiment is ok. But Amazon is building an HQ. Headquarters(2). There won't be distribution or shipping there. Only think-workers. Plus equipment.
1
Let's revisit some facts: the median income of trump voters was $72,000; the median income of Clinton voters was $58,000. Economics was NOT the reason for trumps presidency. trump won the electoral college because 100,000 "progressives" in MI, PA, and WILL voted for Jill Stein. So, what's the ACTUAL problem? The electoral college is controlled by conservative, mostly small town/rural states whose populations are middle class, white, and not hot on diversity. What Bezos should have done was site his new campuses in states like Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, focusing on small towns within 50 miles of those states' urban centers. Then, give one-time bonuses for tech staff to move to these cities. In this way, the GOP control of the electoral college can be diluted. Right now, too many blue voters live in blue states which strongly skews the college to trumpville. Liberal-leaning corporations could revamp the electoral college by assisting with the redistribution of blue voters.
6
@GariRae Well, not really. The only thing in Michigan that changed from the previous election was about 250,000 blacks did not vote like they did when Obama ran. And Trump won by 10,000 here.
It might be helpful to look at the Facebook enabled voter suppression campaign aimed at black voters in Michigan. They were told time and again that Clinton thought they were super predators and Obama had not "given them anything". Many of these ads apparently disappear as soon as you view them. I would suspect the digital experts were behind these highly targeted ads. Once again, using race as a wedge hurt America. Same old story, new technology.
Well, you're correct that the black vote in critical electoral college states stayed home in 2016. The truth of the matter is that Clinton wasn't black enough for Blacks and not leftie enough for the alt-left. Here's another truth: if Clinton had been black with the exact same policies, she would have won in an electoral college landslide. Blacks and Berniecrats would have come out in droves.... "progressives" would have kicked Stein to the curb. In others words, both race and alt-left ideological purity gave us trump.
There is money available for national security. Access to energy is often considered a matter of national security. We have thousands of super-fund cesspools, mostly in the left behind states, that could double as solar farms without need for environmental review. Instead of the worst infrastructure investment our country could ever make, a wall.
12
And the fact is that it doesn't have to be this way!
The all too obvious way forward for the ours and the world's energy needs are renewables: wind and solar. Both of these energy sources (and the steady, decent paying jobs they produce) come from rural areas. Wind farms and solar arrays can go a long way to replacing the agricultural and manufacturing jobs lost over the last few decades. Yes, our electrical grid will need to be re-designed and extended (more jobs!), but the whole concept is a no-brainer.
10
@Mikeweb Agreed, it is a no-brainer, but the US government needs to force individual utility firms to cooperate with small energy providers (they are very hesitant to do this now) and there needs to be some government investment in infrastructure. After the wasteful Trump Tax Cut and the ensuing deficits that will follow, this is more difficult.
5
@Mikeweb Your comment seems very hopeful, given the pessimism of what Krugman laid out as inevitable. No other source of rural wealth comes t mind, especially given the sorry state of our small farm support. The change we have been seeing for a couple of generations, people leaving rural areas for the cities, will not help this matter, only giving additional voting power to the few who stay behind. But is your proposed solution really happening. Some rural states (e.g. Kansas and Texas) have lots of installed wind power. In some cases these states are looking more purple than red, but is that about rural jobs? Florida, Georgia and Misissippi have no wind turbines, yet they are also stirring on the voting front.Maybe we need more time to figure this out.
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Jobs/Wind-Turbine/--in-Kansas
3
Sounds like a pre-revolutionary situation you are describing - one where the rural poor revolt against the luxury and folly of city living. Rome experienced the fall of its republic because they were unable to solve this dilemma.
Marx had a theory about it. Europe, China and India are imbued with it, but over here there is such a prejudice against socialism that it is not even discussed as a possible solution.
Where is patriotism or national identity in a situation that pits town against country?
The most pressing issue for the USA is how to convert to a carbon free communication system that allows for free communications and travel of all citizens. The people need to control the movement of service and goods.
2
It seems to me that the only way out of this is for business, industry and government to invest heavily in education and retraining of people in the "lagging areas". If Trump really wanted to make a difference, the tax code could have conditioned tax breaks to corporations on their investment in under served areas, so that Amazon, for example, would have been encouraged to open a second headquarters somewhere other than New York and Washington where the populace could have benefited from retraining and new job opportunities.
6
I visit southern California several times per year to take care of aging parents. I often go to Home Depot (HD) or Lowes for home repair items to maintain their residence.
In the spring I shopped at HD there were 3 checkout lines with HD cashiers. In the fall (Thanksgiving week), there are zero (0) cashiers and all checkout lines now have a handheld scanner device that all shopper use and is overseen by one HD person.
My point - if it is not already obvious - is that decent jobs that are found in the rural regions are being automated away and this trend will only continue.
I flew through Frankfurt Germany and the check-in and baggage handling was the same way - I checked in, I placed the ticket on my bag, I placed it on the conveyor and there was only one person working for the airline (Lufthansa) that monitored 10-15 (previously manned) check-in counters.
It will only get worse from here for jobs not only in rural America, but in the cities as well.
13
@ZigZag, I refuse to use the automated checkouts here in NYC until I get an employee discount for doing so. That's not "automation", it's forcing your customer to do your work.
4
@David F
I completely agree, but I had to repair their washer......
1
@David F: It works too. They're increasing their profitability at your expense. Automated telephone answering systems do the same thing. They waste your time with numerous selections that a human could process in seconds.
Not all rural, mining areas in the country are red. I was happy to see the Minnesota Iron Range still blue. It has a long history of radicalism and socialism, fueled by Finnish and other Scandinavian immigrants. However, that Congressional seat (MN 8), once a permanent Democratic seat, did switch to red. But a quick analysis of results showed it was the exurbs (the outer-tier northern suburbs) of the Twin Cities metro region that produced these Republican votes. I know a little bit about this area and it was also Jesse Ventura's strongest voter base. There are swing voters who live there and, if given better information and less propaganda, could be turned blue. Republicans for decades have targeted these low-information swing voters, especially in opportunity areas (small states where they get more bang for the buck), with simplistic narratives scapegoating liberals. There's no reason Democrats can't learn from this tactic, find these opportunities, and change these districts blue.
8
Thank you for calling the Republican Party what it actually is: a white nationalist party. The media needs to stop referring to it as something it no longer is: a 'conservative' party.
At this point, we have major parties for white nationalists, and constitutional republicans. I have to hope the white nationalists will wither into irrelevance, but while that happens the constitutional republicans can have a robust policy debate within the Democratic party.
The constitutional republicans may someday want to split into conservative and liberal parties, but for the time being all of us who believe in America are together, because the white nationalists are a threat to the survival of the American republic (if not the Earth as a human-friendly biosphere).
17
@Sam:
Essentially, the GOP is a rehash of the antebellum South.
You had an incredibly wealthy elite who put their privilege & wealth above all things including the well being & freedom of people who were unfortunate to have been entrapped in slavery to their estates & they stoked the perpetuation of their wealth, power & privilege by stoking racism.
As F. Scott says the rich aren't like you and I. They make messes of other people's lives & then retreat back into their money & leave it for others to clean up the messes.
It's a wonder that we allow huge concentrations of wealth & property to maintain a sacredness about it, given the immorality is spawns
Life is hard, painful & severe, for all of us but if you have huge masses of wealth you can avoid most of the harshness & severity of life, & then shift the burden on to other's shoulders
That's what rich people do
They are aware & fear the harshness of life & will do absolutely anything to avoid it
In the case of the Antibellum Southern rich they were more than willing to tear their nation apart allow hundreds of thousands of poor to fight & die for the maintenance of their wealth & privilege, & the U.S. is the only country that went to war to end slavery
Why would these people be any different than they were then?
FDR gave us a new better more enlightened social contract & it created the modern world of mass middle class but the rich never hid their hatred for what he had done & have worked to reverse it ever since
8
@Tim Kane you are very insightful here.
the media out lets in these less enlightened areas are too often owned by groups of wealthy folks whose ideological bent is very conservative and it is to their desire and interest to program news and venues which pander to influence to believe as they do
'Lagging regions' have hardly any manufacturing jobs left. From such jobs the folks there got a decent standard of living despite their 'lower education'. And this kept their resentment under some control. But now almost all economic growth is urban, and the non-urban folks get the crumbs.
Trump harvested this resentment to his advantage. Cause of Trumpism is economic and educational chasm in the country, which Trump is also exacerbating, as so many scholars and journalists have been writing about. Racial and other prejudices are exacerbated by the economic insecurity which Trump understood and took advantage of.
At the most elementary level, the Republicans have gone too far with their free market thinking. American capitalism of the type we see today is causing the political crisis we see today. A return to some of the old style free market - to make it a little less 'free' for some elites, is what we need. Every one needs to feel a respected participant in the system.
14
Other than Britain all the developed places of the world were practitioners of Hamilton's "Standard System" for economic development+Universal Education
Hamilton laid out a system to help the US catch up to Britain. At the time Britain's productivity exceeded the rest of Europe's combined
It had 3 legs: Investment in infrastructure to facilitate a national market, a national bank to provide credit to new industries & fund infrastructure & high tariffs to protect infant industries
A 4th leg was added: quality universal education
The 1st practitioner was Prussia + neighboring states creating the Zollverein (customs union). Prussia had already created a model universal education system. France soon followed. Then the rest of Europe followed. Eventually Japan, too
Mexico adopted the Standard System but with 1 caveat: it didn't adopt universal education. As a result Mexico stayed poor
A 2nd ind revolution began after 1869 driven by chemicals & electronics in which Germany took a huge lead over Britain. Britain's mass education was shoddy & its workforce couldn't keep up.
Back in the US the North made the investments in infrastructure (Erie Canal) & education per Hamilton & developed. The South embraced Jefferson's laisse faire pastoralism & didn't.
The civil war was an extension of the Hamilton/Jefferson rivalry: in a sense Hamilton was the war's 1st casualty but in the end Hamilton won.
The key for rural (& all) America then is a big investment in quality education.
20
..., one wonders how well universities-for-profit can prepare both young and old for meeting the requirements of the Amazon work place?
However, by that standard, only those, who are better off can likely ever aspire to joining the Amazon ranks. That’s actually limiting the talent pool, and not only for Amazon.
In this day and age; in the the richest country, in the world, the notion that an education is not a human right, and not a national aspiration tells you quite a lot, doesn’t it?
How can one ever pursue a perpetual knowledge and capability economy, when one from a values point of view decline to offer the basic building blocks to all?
6
Add educational opportunities to your list of needs for rural areas and you may find a winning strategy. So many workers now telecommute. Get the infrastructure in place so rural America has quality internet access and you change the dynamic.
4
Another element I miss in the discussion is the value of the US Dollar. Dr. Krugman was quick to point out how the strong Euro and fiscal austerity were hurting countries like Spain and Greece after the 2007 economic crisis.
The same is true for States like West Virginia and Mississippi.
There really aren't many differences. In fact, one could argue that Spain, after the 2007 crisis, was in a better place compared to, say, Mississippi because it had more levers to work with, such as own labor laws and a corporate tax rate.
Italy may eventually have to drop out of the Eurozone to restore economic growth by devaluation. To see it as unthinkable that poor US States would do the same is to admit how much nationality and identity thinking is clouding our own views. To deny the poor States a way out of their trap of a strong Dollar with few levers to turn around their economy has a cruelty to it.
3
How about a Marshall plan for the rural areas? Provide high speed trains to make a lot of rural areas closer to the jobs in the larger cities. Provide economic incentives to encourage businesses near centralized hubs that more rural people can reach.
Decriminalize drug addiction and use those resources used for law enforcement to provide actual drug addiction cures.
Invest in more rural areas.
Invest in access to higher education for all. Make higher education affordable.
I could go on and on. The problem is that the rural people are supporting a Republican party that has no intent of helping them. The more educated people in the cities have figured that out.
Let's get this country moving again.
7
Why not finally integrate rural America via real broadband Internet everywhere? Fiber to every small town so that any of the skilled labor may choose to live and have a better life in the small towns. Big corporations still have the "plantation" mentality and force people to waste time, energy, and life to have them working in offices using a laptop and smart phone that they carry home. Most of these high skilled jobs can be done from home without any "lack of team participation" excuses. Having city people migrating to small towns can create all the jobs needed and stop the divide, just an idea.
4
@memotech I, for one, think yours is a good idea. The appeal of small towns, especially those within an hour's drive of big cities, is especially appealing, particularly if the nearest large town has a problem with crime and if houses are affordable in the small nearby towns. I know many people who work at home using the net and I am certain they are just the tip of the iceberg.
Proof that Dr. Krugman can be wrong is present in the massive automobile manufacturing plants in semi-rural Southern US. They are not in major metropolitan areas because the cost of living for the workers is less.
In principle, the economic divide can be repaired ... with true leadership among politicians who support rural areas. In the 21st Century world of internet communication, there is no reason that employees can't work from "rural" rather than work from home. Leaders can create that world in semi-rural areas and then sell it to major companies.
Unfortunately, Dr. Krugman is right because we have almost no leaders. Leaders would much rather get themselves elected by appealing to the worst instincts and fears of the rural voters rather than identifying the real problem and fixing it.
4
@dpaqcluck Not proof at all, just evidence of different business priorities. Auto manufacturers want guarantees that they can keep wages low, unions weak or nonexistent, workers powerless to resist corporate desires. The dominant political ideology in the semi-rural South makes realization of these priorities likely, if not inevitable.
7
@dpaqcluck
The auto transplants in that region went there for low wages, for Toyota, BMW, Nissan and the like, those places pay lower wages than their home plants do, plus they also enjoy in the TVA region cheap electric power and other benefits. It also works because the manufacturers invested a lot of money and time in education of the workers, because of the huge gaps many of them had in basic skills, as well as advanced learning in quality control and the like.
That said, it is a model, but the problem is that manufacturers in the US aren't going to spend that kind of money on training. Likewise, while having broadband internet in rural areas is a great idea, it won't transcend the skills and education gap in those areas. Fundamentally the real problem with rural areas is they are the victim of many years of 3rd rate schools,places that refused to pay for them, and the kinds of relatively well paying jobs that worked with their education are long gone. Semiskilled and unskilled labor is a thing of the past; as shown by the auto transports, manufacturing requires skills, either provided by education or by the company.
1
@dpaqcluck Auto manufacturers went south for several reasons: much lower wages, huge tax incentives and local governments willing to spend a fortune on infrastructure improvements. The sad truth is that the missing elements were always a well educated workforce. BMW has an ongoing struggle trying to attract people capable of doing the high tech work in South Carolina. There's lots of people willing to do the work, but they don't have the education to do the jobs.
1
Paul, I think that you are providing only half of the story as to the division of our country. The smallest 13 States with barely 10 million people control 26% of the Senate while the largest 6 States with almost 150 million citizens control 12% of the Senate. In effect half of the nation is powerless in controlling or influencing the polices of our country.
I believe that the United State will split into two nations, The Northeast/Mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean States will join Canada to create a new economic powerhouse. The new nation will have MIT, Cal Tech, All the Ivy League colleges, Wall Street, the Big Banks and the largest dairy and wine state in the Union.
What will prevent the break up of the United States? The smallest States must agree to accept a single Senator and the largest States will each have 3 Senators and restoring power to nearly half the nation.
It is our choice. And I like both options.
5
@gerald The split is not regional, it is rural/urban. Atlanta Georgia, Salt Lake City Utah, from the south to the west the individual "red" states are divided within themselves, and the rural areas are increasingly dependent on the urban/sub-urban areas.
3
@John Griswold
I understand and there will be casualties in the ‘other country.’ That said, we have been fighting a Cultural War for 150 years and it gets us nowhere.
Good column in particular about the "aggreived" and reasons for said feelings which of course reflect those in the many belts where jobs, wages and life has passed by leaving only detritus much like that floating around in outer space. Detritus. Junk. How'd you like that to be your place in the world when alll around you nannies and dog walkers prance for those in high rises or McMansions or the real ones where the important thing is to be white, slim, with dazzling white teeth. If one has teeth, that's positive, and whether yellow or not, better than none. Where there is public transportation, it is eschewed by most as Austin as most cities in Texas grew wildly and even with plenty of urban planners, they can't out buy the car dealerships and Zachry's of road building fame. We'll drive here n big trucks and cars until the wells run dry. We'll continue to provide hefty incomes for lawyers who help clients who've been smushed by giant trucks or heedless drivers, or create new medical fields for neonatal babies, orthopedic surgeons, and face-lift plastic ones. It's a wild, uneven world. Trump has made it worse by literally building walls between ideas and concerns for those who need a helping hand, for a government that doesn't want to create another government agency for space control a la Ronnie Reagan's STAR WARS.
My wife and I pursued second careers as Lutheran pastors after high-tech careers in Cupertino. After seminary, we were called to an exurban small town in North Carolina that was still locked in the NAFTA recession created by the departure of the cotton mills and textile industry to Mexico and Asia. Huge manufacturing facilities in the middle of town still remained shuttered as visible ghosts of what had once been reliable access to the middle class for generations of local families. Many of these same families traced their roots back to colonial land grants and placed a high value on geographic location, heritage, family and quality of life . They were not being recalcitrant in refusing to abandon their roots for Charlotte or some other big city. In fact, the small town milieu afforded them certain quality of life advantages over urban living that drew many of their children back after college. I fear your analysis of the Trump phenomenon confuses correlation and causation. Something much more complex and profound is taking place across the western nations, those built on Enlightenment promises of progress and political liberalism. That alignment of values seems to have passed its "sell-by" date and is increasingly responsible for the ills that threaten human existence on the planet. Perhaps rural America has something to teach us about an emerging alignment of values that is more sustainable and family friendly.
1
@Jack
The problem with your conclusion is that city living, with density, public transit, and the like, is objectively more sustainable and family friendly than the car-centric rural areas you seem to desire.
4
@Jack
The companies that once existed in these places had jobs that were semi skilled or unskilled and existed to tap into cheap wages (those mills and factories once were in the northeast, when wages got to high up here, they were 'exported') to the south. These were company towns in other words. Problem is, other places could do it for a lot cheaper, and like the south being the low wage alternate to the north, the jobs moved on..and modern manufacturing doesn't require the large labor pool, and what it does is skilled.
The rural areas have never been known for solid education systems, and that basically ruled out industries not willing to spend a lot of money and time training, like the auto transports. In terms of higher skilled jobs, tech workers, the gap is even larger.
You also leave out that modern companies work with people from all over the world and the country, would these rural, clannish places welcome those different than themselves? Would they be happy with South Asians, Asians, Eastern Europeans, IGBT people? Companies want to be able to attract skilled talent from a broad talent pool, and if an area is welcoming only to people like themselves, it limits it. When companies were hiring unskilled, cheap labor, that didn't matter.
2
Good Grief! There is more than enough wealth in this country; if the disparities among the classes were closer to fifty years ago, there would not be such anxiety about and hatred for 'the elites.'
The economics are so simple, it's appalling that we argue about anything else when discussing the economics of individuals and families.
Had we any vision, Coal Country would have been trained away from fossil fuels and toward renewables, factories re-outfitted, CEO's, bankers, and their ilk taxed like the 1950s etc, ...
Fostering business in rural America is possible, but the government needs to incentivize it or the government needs to remove corporate lobbying. Allowing $ to influence politics is the Pandora's Box of Capitalism. We've let her out, now we either put her back in or find a way to contain her cascade of dominance.
8
@james
Hear, hear. I couldn't agree more.
1
The best students go on to college and then move to the city where they can find the best jobs. It has been going on for generations. Rural areas have experienced a brain drain and an adventure drain. What's left are the "uneducated" and the timid and the resentful.
4
What would greatly aid the rural areas is the rolling out of broadband. Just like rural electrification, which didn’t roll out to most of rural America until post-WWII, broadband companies won’t roll out their services to areas where the immediate financial return is far less than the cost of rolling it out. Until broadband is seen as being as important as electricity or water for the economic wellbeing of rural areas, they’re still going to lag, and the divisions will continue. Rural America feels left behind because, once again, it has been.
7
Investing in higher education in these states would help produce the workers that Amazon and others want.
5
“The better angels” will have to work hard. Big cities are also where inequality is the greatest.
2
Change the payoff matrix. Move from manufacturing predominant politics to a balanced agriculture/ manufacturing paradigm. Declare rural areas as needing healthcare support by establishing long-term infrastructure. Funnel educational aid by having loan payback by rural teacher jobs in low performing counties. Make a course correction. Promote new ideas, over the long term to make it work.
3
Acemoglu et al demonstrated quite convincingly that the jobs slump in the 00's was tied very closely to imports from China that drained 2.5 million jobs from the US, with devastating impacts on local communities if you account for spillover effects. These were largely in the heartland.
Yes, Trump et al took advantage of this distress to preach a Nationalist doctrine that dominates the media. But had the underlying economic pressure not been there would that have worked?
It's so easy to say racism won the election for Trump. In fact, it was due to the misguided application of neoliberal trade policies that resulted in massive imbalances and job loss, rather than the gain in efficiency and growth that was advertised.
How many academic papers have you given in Geneva, and Boston and Cambridge and Shanghai? How much time have you spent in Erie, and Akron and Flint and Gary?
Yes Trump et al rose by appealing to the racist instincts of poorly-educated whites. But these folks are right about one thing: the coastal elites are arrogant, and they have demonstrated quite clearly that when it comes to jobs and trade, they have no idea what they are talking about.
5
@Rich888: The US is the only country in the world that hasn't standardized on the Metric system. That, and courts that are playgrounds for extortion by legal fees, and lack of any public health plan for working age people, all drove manufacturing out of the US.
6
@Rich888
Nonetheless-- the evidence suggests that votes for the lower income brackets favored the Democrats in the 2016 election and the typical Trump voter was often solidly middle class. The GOP has actively excluded a broader coalition representing the mass of America and suffering the consequences.
I'm not sure how starting a random trade war helps those people, nor what specific plans the GOP has proposed to help/fix the problem besides tax breaks for wealthy real-estate developers. Preferring to live on the Coasts does not make concerned disagreements about the course of our nation wrong.
@Rich888
I grew up in Gary in the 1950’s and 60’s. The city was corrupt from the beginning. The air was so polluted that if it rained, women ran to take laundry off the clothes lines, not because the clothes would get wet, but because the drops falling through the dirty air stained the clothes.
As the Japanese rebuilt their industries, their mills and factories were efficient. US steel manufacturers seemed never to figure that out. Rather than renovate, they just left the rusting hulks and poisoned ground.
Though the town gave my immigrant grandparents a foothold in this country, and my parents good jobs, we Boomers left Gary, followed by our parents when they retired. Anyone who could get out did so.
3
There absolutely is a way to help the lagging regions. President Obama and Hillary Clinton both had plans that would work. Developing alternative energy and its infrastructure could solve those problems, but the oild industry prevents it. China is now taking the lead. Should this country put the resources into alternative energy that it put into the space race, we could take the lead. It is an industry that cannot be exported, and will need an infrastructure constructed in every area, not just cities. It also would relieve our dependence on Middle East oil. So, who is against it? The oil industry. That's it. How about an economy where everyone benefits? How about one that doesn't poison the air, or contribute to climate change?
24
@ATronetti, thank you. I believe you're correct that a massive re-tooling of our energy infrastructure is all we need to be talking about now. You're also correct that it's only the fossil fuel barons that are holding us back from this progress. Keep talking!
2
I think Roosevelt's rural electrification program, which endeared him to people in the small towns for generations, might be a model for helping those in remote areas to become integrated in the modern economy. It would cost money but high speed rail, affordable high speed internet and other technological improvements which would bring the struggling hinterlands closer to the vibrant cities might help convince disaffected voters that they're not being written off in "flyover" country.
18
We see the same pattern in many other countries around the world where right wing political parties are rising. It's more about totally misplaced race and religious identity than economic issues. This growing left vs right divide is ultimately bringing down the society and the country, More liberal and often left leaning elites must take the initiative to bridge the gap. And this chasm surely can be bridged by being more aggressive and honest to our duties in whatever we do, mainly in education and public policy sector.
2
Mayor Bloomberg has the right idea. Make sure that smart, ambitious poor kids get to the education they need.
163
@Believer in Public Schools
Improve education in rural areas, so their kids can qualify for good jobs in the city. That is good, but it doesn't fix the problem.
2
@Believer in Public Schools unfortunately because of the dynamics of migration patterns it is unlikely to be much help in rural areas. Austin, NYC, Atlanta, Minneapolis, San Francisco, etc. will attract the well educated rural kids. It will improve their lives and opportunities, but will do little to improve the economy of these rural areas. The Ecosystem in rural areas provide very little opportunity for those with high levels of education.
5
@entprofYe, sure some will flee. But others will return as doctors and teachers. Etc.
1
Don't you wish that Jeff Bazos the world's richest man would choose to put his new super Amazon HQ office
on the border of North and South Dakota. The office could create a vibrant community full of young intelligent workers and managers and the thousands of donut shops, chain restaurants, drug stores and gas stations to support those workers out in the middle of the high plains.
Even a medium size city the size of Poughkeepsie would dwarf the rural population of these entire states?
Why are there two Dakotas anyway? The literal map of the so called United States is an absurd gerrymander.
5
@Curtis North Dakotan, here. I've been saying something similar for years. It seems that Amazon can export goods everywhere, but is incapable of importing talent. Couldn't these tech giants build the city they need and bring workers to it? A giant hub right in the geographic center of North America would be helpful for product distribution, and the influx of talented, educated labor could turn these red states blue. A tech town straddling the Dakotas could net the left 4 more senators and 2 representatives, greatly enhancing our ability to change the course of the nation. Plus, since most Americans seem unaware, it's absolutely beautiful out here; these vast open and fertile lands could be a liberal utopia: marijuana fields studded with wind farms, bountiful free-range meat, organic produce, easy transit to either coast... the opportunities are endless. If only liberals would learn to come to the center, they would find there's room to create the utopias we dream of.
@Curtis: The states of unequally protective law in competition with each other clearly are a fossilized gerrymander.
This is a fake democracy that treats its fatal flaws as immutable divine revelations.
1
@Eric, Amazon and other large firms have no desire to locate in the center of the US and build facilities there when they can locate in an urban area that offers tax incentives. Likewise, there is no airport, interstate highways, schools, etc. to attract workers and keep them entertained. Second, folks in the rural areas do not understand that we are all competing in a global market that requires knowledge and expertise. Possessing a world class education is a necessity, even though too many folks like to believe the opposite!
The problem is public education. Red states spend little on it and so you have a work force that is not able to do today,s jobs. So the right the type of votes it wants and business does not want.
3
@ed
Amazon could have located bear a big university town in any red state. There would lots of young, skilled workers in these blue islands.
All subsidies like the ones Amazon will be getting should be outlawed by Congress. Pitting one state or locale against another to get taxpayer subsidies for a very profitable corporation is an abomination.
There oughta be a law!
5
@Jack Toner: The US states are in perpetual competition with each other because the Congress doesn't even understand the whys and wherefores of the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. I don't recognize the English language as spoken by Republicans.
1
@Jack Toner I think it's just a business decision on the part of the locality. They have to figure their investment in the subsidy will bring in more revenue in the long run than they would have gotten if they had not given the subsidy. I don't see anything wrong with it.
Nothing the NYT columnists suggest to fix any of the issues they write about will be implemented until Citizens United is reversed. Big money owns both parties now and has changed our democracy into a plutocracy. We are a terribly broken country and money did it.
90
@Rick
That's weirdly despairing. Under Obama 20 million people gained health insurance; taxes on the top 1 percent hit their highest level since 1980. And Dems are substantially more progressive now than they were in 2008-10. So why say nothing will happen?
108
Optimism. Glad to hear it. I take heart that the midterms are a turning point for the Democratic party. A Democrat took Mark Sanford's seat in Charleston SC. Trump worked his magic and cost the GOP a reliable seat.@Paul Krugman
4
@Jadedwilliam
I hope your optimism is justified. Instead of getting down to business, Democrats seem determined to repeat the messy intra-party fighting we saw in the selection of Paul Ryan, instead of continuing with a successful and experienced legislative leader in Nancy Pelosi. At least my House rep is on the right side.
8
Krugman's waxes on about how his tribe -' the "glittering coastal elites" -- are such winners that they make loser middle Americans turn racist out of jealousy. This bizarre theory makes no sense to begin with. But it's also based on erroneous facts.
First, the economies of the interior states have actually been growing faster than the coastal blue states for some time now.
Second, Krugman falls for the "money illusion" fallacy by failing to account for the blue state cost of living. When that is taken into account, it is solid blue California that has the nation's highest poverty rate, not Mississippi.
Finally, it's not everyone's dream to be a childless, workoholic "elite" in a sprawling megalopolis. The self-styled liberal elite can keep that lifestyle. They may eventually wake up to the fact they are not the superior "winners" they think they are.
@Wienet Dog
Some of the interior cities have been attracting "coastal" workers who no longer want or can afford the urban lifestyle. If the redder states would make the much needed investment in education, the equilibrium of the nation might be restored. The population has grown, doubled in my lifetime, and spreading out onto parts of the country with the potential to grow could be a good thing.
The anti-intellectualism, however, doesn't help. Just call it the need for a good basic education. And if the heartland wants the jobs, they need to stop starving the educational system. The recent stories about the horrible shortages of buildings and school supplies across the country are a disgrace. And unbearably sad.
It is time to shut down the Betsy DeVoses and anti-historical and over-zealous religionists and start caring about our children and their futures again.
Are all politicians con artists? Many would argue that they are. But never have we seen a more unqualified elected official con more people that DJT. The fact that he still receives support from many shows the effectiveness of his con.
3
I agree that Trumpism is motivated in significant part by race-baiting and stoking the xenophobia of rural white voters, but I think this is eclipsed by the thought-programming of 30 years by conservative pundits, Fox News, and the subset of Republican politicians that have risen to ascendancy (e.g. Graham). The unflinching Trump supporters have the flames of their hatred of liberals constantly stoked by his rallies and their media, and the message there for 30 years has been "They are destroying everything you hold dear; they are thoroughly corrupted (but not us); they want to spend spend spend and tax tax tax (though Trump joined Bush in ruining tax revenue and launched us on massive and useless spending sprees); etc". I think this anger and anxious belief that the Democrats want to destroy their version of America (which was always an awkward shibboleth of a cover story, but it's so deeply programmed as to be a truism in red country) and run wild on Capitol Hill is the larger motivator for most T-people--the racial animosity is internal to this larger outlook (e.g. "the Blues just want to give handouts and fight to put illegals in high places" as coming out of this hatred of the "liberal order") rather than outright "I hate Mexicans" or "I hate African Americans".
3
I understand Trump voters. It’s not just about economics. It’s not just about jobs and healthcare. It’s about a way of life. Trump voters tend to live in smaller towns where people rely on their family, friends, and neighbors for most things. If you need a job, it’s not the government that gets you one. It’s your uncle who owns a welding shop in town who has a customer who knows a guy that is looking for someone. That guy gives you a job. But, the Democrats want to raise the minimum wage which might cause that guy to decide he can’t afford to hire you. Then, if you need a lift to work, because your truck is in the shop, the bus comes once an hour if there is one. Your best bet is to call your sister to pick you up and take you to work. But, the Democrats don’t want her car on the road, because it doesn’t get enough miles per gallon. Then, there’s the gun debate. Many of these people have had guns in their families all their lives. They cannot remember a time when they didn’t have a gun. Their dad had a gun, their grandpa had a gun, and their great-grandpa had a gun. Telling these people that they need to fill out all these forms and go through these checks because of gun violence in Chicago makes them angry. But, most gun violence is in the black community. So, telling these people that they need to change because black people are killing each other in the city makes them angry with black people. And, of course, Democrats.
2
It is extraordinarily facile, inaccurate, and cynical to dismiss the entire Republican party (or any more than a sliver) as "white nationalists," and Trump voters as people with a "grievance." As if Dems don't have grievances! From illegal immigrants to transgender activists and feminists who rail against "the patriarchy," the Democratic party is an amalgam of grievance groups.
Having abandoned workers and the poor during the Clinton years, Dems now push Identity. Activists put down the anti-Pelosi faction as "#FiveWhiteGuys." Bernie Sanders (who, unlike Hillary, could have actually beaten Trump) was constantly derided by Dems as an "angry old white guy." Today on NPR I heard a black woman explaining her politics based on her desire to avoid being a "race traitor." The mainstream of the Democratic Party now finds it acceptable to express hate against whites and men; black folks find it perfectly acceptable to put their race ahead of their country.
In this brave new era of Dem Identity Politics, whites, men, and straights are labeled the enemy.
Is it thus any surprise that whites and men have been leaving the Democratic Party in droves (even in "blue" states)? Do the women and people of color in the party even recognize their own racism and sexism, when they loudly criticize and deride white men?
They say the Republican Party has lost its way. But so has the Democratic Party, which has paradoxically become the party of racism and sexism.
6
There's an episode of Late Night with David Letterman circa 1982 where Dave goes out into the audience and picks a random guy from Arizona.
"So, what brings you to New York?"
"I'm in sales."
"Mind if I ask you what you sell?"
"Software."
Dave looks around the audience: "Does anyone know what this guy's talking about?"
Fast forward 35 years.
When this reality show nightmare is finally over, we need to get serious about how the human race is going to proceed. We need a leader who is angry about how many poorly educated Americans there are, not this "Uneducated, huh? Step right this way! Now see that voting booth . . .?"
If California now has a 24/7/365 fire season, can the next dust bowl be very far behind? The time is rapidly approaching when we may have to prohibit people from building in tinderbox forests and on sea cliffs just because they can afford to. That means "regulation." And that means deciding what, and who, and how much.
In order to approach these issues we need to stop allowing ourselves to be divided. These tired old saws of "tax and spend liberals" and "borrow and spend conservatives" have got to end.
Michael Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.Com, just created the position of Chief Ethical Officer for his global company of 32,000 employees. The US government's ethics office has been a bit absent of late.
We can no longer afford to be red v. blue v. white v. black v. corporation v. government.
We need to start being human, right now.
Spread the word.
7
Yes, what PK said is true, but after two years the red color across out nation is going to wane. They are slow, but finally seeing their self proclaimed stable genius POTUS Trump is not fulfilling his promises. But more importantly is the latent force of immigration that is beginning to show its face, as well as women replacing men in political positions, nationally and locally. The dominant white, kind of racist male is going to become more angry of the change. He doesn't see the changes as positive, but negative, a driving force that is bringing him down in the social ladder. The black, Asian, Latino influence is suddenly everywhere, and that rural, white chauvinistic male is going to have to move over and make room for the better future.
Public health care and decent education for all. That's all that's necessary to bridge the divide. A healthy educated White person in Appalachia can move to where the good jobs are. That's what Americans have traditionally done.
1
It took Trump only 2 years to reverse what Obama accomplished in 8 -- restore the Democratic party. Under Obama it was decimated and on the edge of extinction, but Trump has given them a new lease on life.
It seems the left has misunderstood this election result. No one was voting FOR Democrats -- they were voting AGAINST Trump. Menendez (censored by the Senate!) won in NJ with a campaign that never once talked about any of his accomplishments - he has none -- but simply on a platform of "stop Trump". College educated want freedom from the Democrat's oppressive redistribution economics as much as anyone else -- they just don't like Trump's rhetoric.
Oh, and so much the myth the left has been promulgating about gerrymandering. Democrats won about 53% of the votes nationwide and will hold about 54% of the House seats. They won in what the claimed were Republican gerrymandered districts. Imagine that.
1
Isn't there just the tiniest possibility that people who vote against the Democratic party aren't all ignorant racists (which PK endlessly repeats)? This is almost half the country you're condemning. Isn't it just possible that the course that the Democratic party has mapped out for the country isn't well suited for non-urban areas, and that the Democratic party might just be wrong and have to adjust policies? Perhaps the country's vast number of conflicting social programs should not all be run directly from Washington, D.C.? How about a little subsidiarity? No matter how many elections Democrats like Paul Krugman lose (about half of them), there is never even the hint that they might be wrong, that they might just need to change. The self-righteous arrogance is clearly deafening because Democrats surely must be deaf if they haven't heard the message by now. I haven't supported Republicans for a while now, but I despair at the Democratic party. It is led by too many like Krugman.
5
I believe Dr. Krugman is right. But, even if a population's material needs are addressed, as he pointed out, it does nothing to dissipate the sense of grievance which is largely borne of tribalism. Keeping bellies full and providing health care to the masses will not quell the fact that many Americans do not believe in the god of Calvin ---or any other god. Nor will it make believers out of those who think climate change is a hoax or that evolution isn't real---even as they step up to get their flu shots which is necessary because pathogens evolve. No, American's wounds are deep and intractable. I am not optimistic that the chasm can be bridged.
2
We residents of coastal “blue” states have been looking down our long patrician noses at people in places that went for DJT 45 in 2016. We’ve been looking down our noses so long we’ve forgotten we’re doing it. We puzzle over why “they” vote against their self-interest. We don’t understand why “they” aren’t more like “us.”
But “we’ve” been taking “them” for granted for a long time. The 2004 presidential election was a contest between two socially indistinguishable candidates. Kerry and Bush Jr. are both members of Yale’s ultra-elite Skull and Bones secret society. The vast majority of prominent politicians in the last half-century, both Bushes, both Clintons, and Obama, have been highly trained technocrats from “our” coastal blue states.
We might argue that highly trained technocrats make for good government. But the problem is this: “our” good government has not benefited “them.” Much the opposite. Seattle and Sili Valley’s vast companies are soaking up everybody’s money and hoarding it. So are Wall Street’s bankers. Those Yale and Harvard educations simply make “us” better at money grabbing. Good technocratic government is pure fraud to the young adult whose Dad made a good living at a factory, but can only find low-wage work packing cheap imported stuff into cardboard boxes at an Amazon distribution warehouse.
It’s no wonder people cast protest votes. It’s a long way back to real good governance, both in business and government, from where we stand today.
93
@Oliver Jones. Great comment. It counterbalances Krugman’s always good analysis with the observation that it’s not just rural vs. schooled urban populations. It’s fundamentally about the dignity of work and the smug elitism of the schooled. Note: schooling is a big part of the problem. The country needs more education, less, or at least different, schooling.
12
@Oliver Jones
Bill Clinton was twice governor of Arkansas, hardly an elite coastal state and from an impoverished background. He won a scholarship to Oxford University. Surely you are not arguing that smart people should have no role in Government?
17
@Oliver Jones So the problem is that we have people who are well educated, experienced in government, thoughtful, and indeed respectful of our constitutional government.
And you think that's the problem.
Then we have a group of people who don't want health care and other elements of social service every other high income country provides, and believe that if you aren't white and Christian you don't belong, and, finally, love Ayn Rand.
Really?
24
May be Dr. Krugman's conclusion can be clearly illustrated in 2018 Midterm election in Texas. Democratic senatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke won handily with commanding margin in all big cities in Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio), but still lost the race to Cruz. The resulting map shows 4 large areas representing the big cities in blue but surrounded by a sea of red.
3
The divide is not just a matter of education or association with non-rural industries. Inequality has also affected urban areas. The 1% have been getting richer at the expense of almost everyone else. Those with a college degree have been doing better than those without, but a degree is far from a guaranteed path to wealth. Urban areas include a great many non-whites, who do the low-paying jobs that have taken the place of the well-paying manufacturing jobs. Over the last century blacks have migrated to cities from rural areas in the South. But non-whites are locked into supporting Democrats because of the deliberate exploitation of white racism by Republicans. Of course identification with both parties has decreased and ratings of both continue to decline - this is not just due to racism.
If the growth of economic inequality is not reversed we may be seeing a lot worse things that the incompetent fake populist Trump.
2
@skeptonomist
Exactly. I've lived in NYC for 20+ years now, and was making a decent salary until about 10 years ago.
The wage stagnation/ income inequality crush isn't a rural phenomenon, it's a nationwide one.
Both urban and rural voters need to start making the government work for them. A good start would be strong and strongly enforced campaign finance laws, that punish both the recipients and the donors.
It's hard to attract the best people for jobs when said jobs happen to be in states that have slashed educational spending, rejected scientific thought, actively degrade the environment, and/or pass draconian laws affecting women's health issues.
Quality of life issues aside, and there are benefits of living in the slower moving lifestyle of flyover states - as I often hear, 'it's a great place to rise a family,' but some companies may be forward looking enough to consider the impacts that 'conservative ' states might have on attracting 'the best' employees. As such, a state trying to be a 3rd world country in itself might not be the right place to locate their operations. On the other hand, there will always be companies that will follow the money and set up their business anywhere offering a rebate or subsidy.
The question to me is, would I want my children living and working in a state like Ohio or Alabama both of whom are in the process of passing fetal heartbeat 'pro life' legislation? Or perhaps a state like Oklahoma that has schools that can only operate three to four days a week?
Deep red states have more than location issues working against them.
14
Why were these communities left behind? Free market capitalism left them behind. What do the left behind claim they hate more than anything? Socialism.
Then how does the government provide jobs for the left behind? By interfering with free market capitalism. And what is that? Socialism.
Capitalism always seeks the lowest cost of production, always has, always will. Decades ago, big companies built factories all over small town America because at the time, these locations provided the lowest cost of production. Property taxes and labor costs were much lower than in the big cities.
The world has changed since then. The lowest cost of production moved offshore. Once corporate America was done exploiting small town America, they left and sought out other population centers they could exploit at lower cost, all in other countries. This exactly how market capitalism is supposed to work.
As the economy changed from low skilled production to the high skilled "knowledge economy", only the big cities had the educational infrastructure and large enough population base to create the needed workforce. Small towns have neither. They cannot compete.
Mr. Krugman is then correct. This problem cannot be rectified, especially since the injured population will always vote for politicians and policies that prohibit the socialist policies that will create jobs for them. Small town America will continue to empty out, and become more impoverished.
995
@Bruce Rozenblit
Quite insightful about the impact of U.S. companies going offshore on the small cities in rural regions that had manufacturing jobs and the metropolitan advantage in the knowledge economy, but don't get hung up by making it into socialism vs. capitalism. Offer needed federal help and programs to "left behind" voters and regions and watch them respond favorably, e.g. voters in four red states vote to expand Medicaid their state governments wouldn't.
91
"Build it and they will come."
11
Bruce you hit it out of the park with that one!! keep writing
93
Too bad Amazon couldn't do a remarkably good thing for itself and the nation: pick two economically depressed areas to energize.
Placing a headquarters in West Virginia and one in Mississippi would have created an influx of high earners, created a demand for new housing and infrastructure, attracted other economic development, stimulated education and changed the direction of the faltering economies in these states.
Amazon could have benefited in many ways: they could pay employees lower salaries which would still be very attractive, extremely high incomes in lower cost of living regions; they would have lower infrastructure costs, lower local/state taxes and they would benefit from the goodwill of local residents and the respect/admiration of the rest of the nation. Yes, they would have lost out on big dollar incentives which only the wealthier regions could offer, but in the long run they would have a dedicated, appreciative, dependable workforce.
Investing in the lagging economic regions of America may be the only way to reunite America.
145
Privatization of social engineering by a hegemonic corporate behemoth. That's a mouthful.
9
@jabarry, your suggestion mirrors what has actually happened in Arizona. People who could no longer afford California with their old economy skills moved to where they claim the cost of living and taxes are lower. However, Jeff Bezos picked somewhere that benefitted HIS bottom line with local and/or state "give-away" incentives and attracts higher talent, which can afford to live anywhere they choose.
22
@Jabary Maybe "investing in the lagging economic regions of America may be the only way to reunite America." Maybe. However, as @Rozenblit observed, that is not free market capitalism's (Amazon for the purposes of this discussion) motivation.
The state and local government scramble to attract Amazon to their jurisdictions is a worthy case study of the premise that our lagging economic regions "... lost out on on big dollar incentives which only the wealthier regions could offer ..." Maybe. But not too much has changed in 40 years since the publication of "The Last Entrpreneurs: America's Regional Wars for Jobs and Dollars" by Robert Goodman. So much wasted effort for so little net good. Sad.
14
What I find puzzling is why all tech jobs gravitate to metro areas. I always thought the prediction was that access to high speed internet in rural areas would entice more techies to move to the country where they could commune with nature and still "telecommute" to their high-tech jobs. Didn't happen.
2
@sam It is a bit hard to hook your kid up to the internet and show him the future when you then have to send him off to school the next day where he is taught evolution is a hoax, climate change is a worldwide conspiracy by scientists or at best they don't understand it (but hey, if it does appear and JC doesn't fix it, the scientists will somehow be smart enough to do so).
I'd love to live in a small town with low prices and a tight community, but I just can't handle the cognitive dissonance.
It did not have to be this way, but seems self-reinforcing sorting patterns have now taken over.
I don't particularly feel close to my college town walking woke denizens either. But at least I can picture them growing up over time.
4
@fc123. Gee whiz, fc123, dontcha think “small town” people deserve just a little more criedit?
1
@sam Instead of techies moving to the country, a lot of those jobs moved to India and China. telecommuting is a double edged sword.
New ? ??????
Peter Drucker in 2001: The Next Society
On Demographics
" Politically, this means that immigration will become an important—and highly divisive—issue in all rich countries. It will cut across all traditional political alignments.
On Societal Change
Its three main characteristics will be:
•Borderlessness, because knowledge travels even more effortlessly than money.
•Upward mobility, available to everyone through easily acquired formal education.
•The potential for failure as well as success. Anyone can acquire the “means of production”, ie, the knowledge required for the job, but not everyone can win.
Together, those three characteristics will make the knowledge society a highly competitive one, for organisations and individuals alike.
On Protectionism
The decline of farming as a producer of wealth and of livelihoods has allowed farm protectionism to spread to a degree that would have been unthinkable before the second world war. In the same way, the decline of manufacturing will trigger an explosion of manufacturing protectionism—even as lip service continues to be paid to free trade. .. Even more likely, regional blocks will emerge that trade freely internally but are highly protectionist externally.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2001/11/01/the-next-society
Peter Drucker was the founder of modern management theory
4
An interesting column, but ignores basic issues. Companies like Amazon are basically putting large parts of the country out of business with the help of "liberal” politicians and journalists. The so-called resentment against them is actually quite logical. Sooner or later it will make itself heard.
FIRST YOU SAY YOU DO AND THEN YOU DON'T
Early on, Prof K appears to level with us and the news isn't good: "So the regional economic divide becomes a political chasm. Can this chasm be bridged? Honestly, I doubt it."
And he goes on in that vein: "So the bitter division we see in America- the ugliness infecting our politics -may have deep economic roots, and there may be no practical way to make it go away."
But in the penultimate paragraph he writes - "...the ugliness doesn’t have to win. Most rural white voters still support Trumpism, but they aren’t a majority, and in the midterms a significant number of those voters also broke with the white nationalist agenda" -apparently doing an about face.
And then he concludes - consistently with that reversal - by combining a declaration with an exhortation to soldier on: "America, then, is a divided nation, and is likely to stay that way for a while. But the better angels of our nature can still prevail."
Huh?
Come on, Prof K! It's long since been way too much that PT answers so many questions with "yes, no, maybe, probably AND we'll see." That's the last thing you are.
1
Thinking that tech workers need to be in the city where the business is located is such a 20th century concept. Move into the future Paul.
2
@Timothy Wingfield Technically you are correct, except what we are seeing here is that tech workers overwhelmingly want to live in urban centres, and are not interested in suburbia, or rural towns.
@Timothy Wingfield Cities offer more than jobs... culture, restaurants, bars and clubs, transportation hubs etc.
@Brewing Monk While true it really has nothing to do with my premise. A programmer who prefers fishing to bar hopping doesn’t necessarily want to live in a metropolitan area and that has nothing to do with their abilities
Look at the fiber optic infrastructure map of the U.S. Amazon needs to be fiber connected then overlay where digitally intense high tech workers are located. GOP voting (and ever self destructive) Buffalo is closer to Amazon's Toronto facilities and might have been in the running but has poor high volume fiber optic connectivity. Compared Buffalo to Canada which is booming across the border. Did I mention visa availability for all those high tech Ph.D.s?
2
Finally, a pundit who speaks truth to the pundits. I have grown so tired of listening to the pundit narrative that democrats must start listening to the grievances of those left behind in our society---nonsense. Those cheering crowds at a Trump rally are nursing deep psychological and economic wounds from a century that has past them by---which, in turn, has developed into a continuum of racists-nativists beliefs that have become embedded in their DNA. While I believe that policy makers should make every possible effort to alleviate the economic pain of these regions, at the end of the day, they will hold the "other" responsible for their plight.
7
Also a Precision Chasm. Trump hates precision because it's the truth. It's why he doesn't want to listen to the Khashoggi Tape--it's precise evidence, Maybe the better angels will prevail or just maybe let's enact precision by eliminating the Electoral College. Precision - Trump's Kryptonite
3
I hope flyover country is not as intractable as bemoaned here. I live in a questionable city, smack dab in rural flyover country but finally turning the tide retaining more graduates from the several in our city than are moving away. I hear city leaders on NPR bragging about all they are going to do to try to make the city a place they want to be. They never mentioned the things though that make New York, Chicago, Boston and DC the magnets they are, namely investment in culture. Indianapolis has not one single independent bookstore, art shows are really the same family friendly event with the same people, both artists and attendees, half the year all about football and getting drunk. Nor does it have the continued adult ed for fun and profit growing cities offer.
In short, it does not feed the adult mind presently. If the Midwest and rural areas want to keep their people, they must build a life that does not end with just having kids, staying home and becoming fat and fossilized mentally.
8
Does anyone remember the test the NYTimes did by putting immigrant actors in the metro stations in mostly white affluent areas of the city - measuring tolerance before the actors replaced, and the decrease in tolerance after the white people had to deal with "the other" concretely, instead of in abstract?
Do all these commenters bashing red states for being "uneducated and ignorant" have any answers to how you fund education for large numbers of non-English speaking students and still challenge bright students? Do any of you in the Northeast see any hypocrisy about these criticisms and your own heavily tilted private prep-school, Ivy League culture?
And those who say that education that secularizes people to believe in science - well, that has been going on since the 1970s. People went to college to "lose their faith." The Baby Boomers were the most college-educated American generation ever.
And look where that got us.
I don't understand why you demonize Trump voters when you look at the trajectory of the quality of life for both urban and rural over the past thirty years. The glittering promises of secularism and capitalism have become nightmares for many people in a globalized world where bottom lines triumph over every other human value.
2
Excellent column as usual, Professor Krugman. In particular, several of your hyperlinks in this column took me to illuminating sources of corroboration to your cogent insights.
Specifically, in your eleventh paragraph, there is a hyperlink indicated by the blue font highlighting the words "being disrespected". That link took me to an article from Vox by an academic who's been studying rural alienation for the last decade, which includes the following quote:
"But perhaps most significantly, the people I talked with thought that they were not getting their fair share of respect. They perceived that in the rare cases that people in the cities paid any attention to people in places like theirs, they ridiculed rural folks as uneducated racists."
I get it. Rural white folk feel disrespected when "urban elites" condescend to them (whether falsely or not) as "uneducated racists". I would too.
But then these same people (filled with resentment over being disrespected as "uneducated racists") - go out and overwhelmingly vote for the candidate who is by far the most vulgar, ignorant and uneducated racist to ever grace a presidential ballot in our nation's history.
The irony here is almost beyond words. But I'll try:
1) "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." (Mark Twain)
2) "Actions speak louder than words." (anon.)
3) "By their fruit Ye shall know them." (Matthew 7:20)
QED.
4
That's weird. The downtrodden "welfare queens" and entitlement seekers are now rural folks, and the self-sufficient elites live in big cities. Wasn't it supposed to be the opposite not fifty years ago? But the weird part is that both the downtrodden and the elites are still waving the same political placards.
1
@R. Adelman. It seems we just can’t live without “victims.” It just doesn’t seem to dawn on people that “welfare queens and entitlement seekers” might better be seen as neighbors, with all the rights—and duties—asked of any neighbor. I’m not so sure about those “political placards” you mention. Those votes that elected Trump were largely, rather non-political, protest votes—as even the latest election shows. A lot of the “victims” we have aren’t political at all—they don’t have time to be political—they’re too busy being victims.
IS it gauche to assert that Amazon is a monopolistic monster, consuming every competitor in its gigantic maw, that Bezos is a consummate hypocrite and a danger to democracy, that rural citizens are neither backward nor naive, that flyover cities and states may survive and address climate change more effectively than coastal elites, that rich Republicans financed the right wing takeover of the party of Lincoln, that one is just as likely to see a Trump bumper sticker on a sleek Mercedes SUV as on a redneck pickup truck, that the 2016 Democrats sold out their historic mandate to advocate for the poor and working classes, that the tech revolution should benefit struggling communities as much as it enriches the secure and established ones, that a little human kindness and respect can go a long way to heal the divisions in the country, and that yes, the better angels of our nature can and will prevail over the fear, avarice, and selfishness that plagues us and keeps us from building the beloved community?
2
Every day that passes I dislike Trump and his supporters even more. I'm tired of them blaming me for their problems. Then I have to deal with Donald Trump insulting a retired Navy Seal involved in the tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden. Not to mention the "Tax Cuts for the Rich". (I don't overlook the fact that Democratic good for nothing governors of New York and Virginia gave Amazon and Jeff Bezos a pile of money).
3
Venom and hate is the glue that binds all the Trump
voters together. Businesses need customers and
there is no reason to put a headquarters in red
states where the work force, shall be say is older
and less educated.
When the bottom falls out of the economy, look
for Trump to blame Obama.
Trump's attack on McGraven shows the man
has no honor. Lies a lot too.
1
This article is an all time Paul Krugman masterpiece! Exceedingly well done sir, and thank you.
2
Democrats get elected and consumer confidence falls. Businesses won't expand, tax collections will plummet and unemployment with rise. Progressive???
While the article was generally good, there is one assertion that doesn't make sense. Mr Krugman claims "what distinguished Trump voters wasn’t financial hardship but “attitudes related to race and ethnicity.”" when referring to the book Identity Politics.
But in the next paragraph, he writes "... this sense of grievance all too easily turns into racial antagonism." This directly contradicts the former statement about race & ethnicity, since the latter statement says the racial antagonism is caused by the sense of grievance, meaning race is not at the core of their disaffection.
The difference is important, because many of the people who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump, which means they voted for Trump despite his racism, not because of it. This does not, of course, apply to those who are racist, and voted for Trump because of that. But to portray all who voted for Trump as racist knuckle-draggers who speak in grunts merely alienates those whom it is possible to win back, and whom we'll need to convince if we want to defeat Trump in 2020.
City slickers and hicks, farmers and hunter gatherers, Cain and Abel, the rule of law and the outlaw. Its the origin story, repeated over and over. Scarcity breeds tribalism, breeds hoarding, breeds inequality, breeds envy, breeds greed, breeds conflict.
4
The better angels of our nature will never prevail as long as Trump stokes division and spews endless lies. Trump has never been about substance. It has always been about tone. The last election should have been a wake-up call for the president to change his ways if he wants to be re-elected. But that hasn't happened.
The lies continue. (Who knew raking would prevent forest fires?) The sophomoric behavior has worsened ( Adam Schitt...). The pouting is more obvious. (Rain prevents honoring the millions of soldiers killed in WWI). To the informed and better-educated, he looks like a child badly in need of a time-out. For the willfully uniformed and poorly educated, he tells like it is (isn't....to the rest of us).
He is little more than a snake-oil salesman with a big chip on his shoulder.
1
The important book by our friend John Sides is *Identity Crisis*, not *Identity Politics*.
What rural Trump fans fail to see is how dependent their own lives are on the federal "giveaways" that they resent so much. Welfare, food stamps, unemployment and disabilitly benefits, tax breaks, Obamacare subsidies, Medicare and Medicaid ... all of these programs pour money into red-state Trumpublican strongholds.
It's no wonder that Trump and his enablers - and their allies in Fox state media - lie to them so relentlessly and so shamelessly: these voters, in particular, must be kept ignorant of the truth at all costs.
3
The irony here, perhaps we can call it a bitter irony, is that the Democrats who would be affected by tax cuts for the rich, and elimination of the social programs, but with wealth less so, are fighting for the very social programs and wage increases that will disproportionately help the Trump voters in rural areas. So, which party cares about all the people not just the rich?
7
I don't think this is quite right. Our booming tech industry grew out of government investment, especially in the internet and I'm sure other things, too--like, say, the military and the surveillance complex, no? What we have now was never an inevitable or "natural" state of affairs, but rather is a particular social trajectory borne in part of political decisions. What if, instead of giving into the naturalist fallacy, we were to consider how we might steer things in other directions, especially since the benefits of tech are often dubious--consider the political and privacy implications of facebook, not to mention the now well-documented effects of screen time on depression, anxiety, alienation, isolation, etc. What if we decided to invest in small-scale organic farming? Dispersed, worker-owned, sustainable manufacturing? Ecological restoration? The possibilities are endless.
4
Paul, you are missing some of the key points here. Inequality also exists in the metro areas - some of the worst poverty is concentrated in the urban cores. Many post-industrial cities are still failing economically. But furthermore, while larger and larger shares of income and wealth are concentrated in some major metro areas, the rural areas still account for America's agricultural output and natural resource extraction. Are these areas, the majority of our country by area, reduced to resource colonies of NYC and DC (and of the larger globalized world economy)? And are the urban ghettos and postindustrial cities just extra space to herd economically unnecessary populations into?
Is capitalism working for us?
2
Trump and the GOP haven't truly done anything to help rural areas. The tax cuts do not begin to encompass the needs of rural Americans. If anything our taxes ought to have remained the same with more money going to upgrading services we all need. Rural areas need to have access to a modern internet connection, better medical care, a good education with a variety of opportunities offered, including staying and working in the area. But people who want to stay are often forced to leave because they cannot make a living in rural America.
Trump did a huge disservice to coal miners when he said he'd save their jobs. He can't. No one can. Those jobs, like so many others, are gone and to say otherwise is to feed a futile hope. It would be smarter, economically and otherwise, to offer excellent retraining programs for miners as well as every other unemployed adult who wants to work. Rather than viewing unemployment benefits as encouraging dependence, which they do not, (and what does a salary encourage if not dependence?), they need to be looked at as a serious replacement when jobs disappear.
There is a rural urban divide in America. Part of it exists because neither side understands what it needs the other for. And part of it exists because our politicians are not working for all Americans, just those that elect them and that is very divisive. We're all Americans whether we're located in rural or urban areas, no matter what color our skin is or how much we earn.
4
@hen3ry: Very well-said! I read your comment and then looked at your name...of course, it is you hen3ry! I love to read what you write. Thank you.
The telecoms have resisted bringing high speed internet to rural areas due to lack of profitability for twenty years. Even here in NJ, there are areas in the Northwest and Southwest where the cost and logistics to run even a small business without wired high speed internet are prohibitive. I am sure it’s the same in many hard hit areas around the country. Why move or start a business there? This must be addressed in any infrastructure bill that the Dems pass. Sadly, our establishment pols take donations from the same telecoms who don’t want to change the status quo where they get to charge huge premiums for data in unwired areas.
35
@Bruce
Not sure it would change the dynamics, but for sure we should have an information version of the rural electrification programs of the New Deal.
58
@Bruce - Not a minor point ! We have personal knowledge of a now-widely-used pharmacy fulfillment operation that moved from a (relative) suburb to a larger city 40 miles away because they could not get any telecom to lay high speed fiber optic cable to them; they had to go to where they could have access. The owners had the local talent, and were desirous of staying, and still invest in their homes in the smaller city, but the business's main location was dictated by that communications issue.
Similarly, that same smaller town does now (20 years later) still does not have high speed internet connections available to many citizens - no AT&T Uverse, no Charter, not telecom - unless citizens want to pay to stream media to their TeeVees, etc. with the air-time of their monthly wi-fi/phone bill.
Worse, the telecoms sometimes provide such services to locations 2 or 3 blocks from citizens they leave 'in the dark', because the telecoms want to reach a nearby business.
If you're in a strictly residential area that's not densely populated, the telecoms will bypass you even when they do provide some local streaming services to others - and it's not something that's corrected by political entities, since the people that are bypassed can include County Commissioners and School Board presidents.
The telecoms who want to merge must must must be forced (subsidized ?) to provide equal access to every American neighborhood.
5
@Paul Krugman
Just want to thank you for caring about people's
comments and answering them. Wish the folks
in Washington did as much.
4
As I read this, I kept expecting a roadmap for ensuring that our "better angels prevail". Given my expectations, the entire article seems a bit weak.
2
@Howell: See,that's the thing, there isn't a roadmap. He himself says "Can this chasm be bridged? I doubt it."
He's saying our better angels can prevail in the sense that the economically active majority may be able to elect better leaders, just because they are a majority, and drag the resentful rural areas along, helping them out like during the Obama years -- but the resentments will probably still fester and grow, cultivated blatantly by the Limbaughs and Trumps, and somewhat more respectably by the Bushes and Romneys. Not a pretty picture.
2
@John Bergstrom: Exactly...sadly...
@Howell You need your own roadmap.
People in rural states don't want their regions to grow. If they did, they'd elect governors and congressional representatives with the vision and the ability to attract jobs and that would concentrate on expanding educational opportunities in their areas. But, they don't. Rural states are more interested in electing people who will keep immigrants out, who will pass laws allowing discrimination against gays and others and who will restrict abortion. These are the issues that matter in rural areas, and as long as that's true businesses will not locate there and their bright young people will continue to leave. The world only turns one way, and that's forward. If rural states don't turn with it, they will continue to be left behind.
13
We did just that in New Mexico. Our state now is nearly entirely blue - all Democrats in Congress, and at the state level including Ms Lujan-Grisham as the incoming Governor. The previous Governor Martinez attempted to help the economy along, by what? You guessed it, tax cuts for corporations, her "job creators". What happened is the same thing as Kansas, except New Mexico was already at the bottom. Did corporations rush to New Mexico to create jobs? You guessed it again, nary a one. We still have near or the highest unemployment, and the highest for a blue state. Again, Democrats have to pick up the pieces from the scorched earth give it all to the rich Republicans.
@Ms. Pea I think it's very interesting to draw a comparison between the EU and the US here. The newest Eastern member countries of the EU have a very similar voting pattern to Red America, let's just keep it at that.
Now, people there are free to relocate to e.g. Germany or Denmark to live and work should they wish to, just like someone from Mississippi is free to pack up and move to NYC or Boston. Polish and Romanian workers, for example, have been very mobile in the EU and many of them live in places like Britain, Germany and Belgium. As an aside I think there is an element of fairness in this right of Greek and Spanish people to move to countries with better economies that was often missed in discussions about austerity after the 2007 crisis.
Anyway, the mechanism of solidarity, i.e. the large investments by net contributing EU members into the new member countries is very transparent and understood. Despite political differences none, and I repeat none, of the new members even remotely considers leaving the EU, and this includes leaders like Victor Orbán.
So perhaps a New Deal could be the last resort to keep the 50 States together if it comes to that, but as the EU has shown us it would require a lot of patience and a thick skin.
2
Paul Krugman's analysis of the deep divide between rurality and metropolitan areas, betweeen the" left behinds" and the "elite" could apply word for word to the recent disgruntled movement in France that goes by the name of "Yellowcoats", (a mix of road blocks against gas price rise and all sorts of other gripes). That means that globally, in our wealthy western world, in spite of the various social policies, financial aids and subsidies set up for the lower-income part of the population, people feel aggrieved by what they tend to see as huge injustice and unfair privileges of urban areas. Though claiming to be independent from any political party, their protest is candy for the extreme and alt rights.
But also true, these aids how generous they are don't replace the vanishing public services and social drain of some areas, mostly rural.
With the general distrust of medias at large (press, associations, NGO, unions, political parties etc..) there is a risk that these leaderless movements spin out of control.
A tendency at work in our rich western hemisphere.
4
@Candide001 There is no deep divide between urban and rural. The urban world is fighting within itself. The rural world knows what it is and what it values, which is individualism, self determination, freedom, nature, and open space. It’s the urban world that is at war with its own prosperity.
@John I would say the urban world values those very same things, but those who live in it understand the interdependence of the myriad vital elements of a successful country which can only progress through cooperation. Unless urban and rural can, as Krugman points out, recognize the value each brings to that success, we will continue to fight the Civil War, which really never ended.
1
@John
Yep, I see it every day.....individualism expressed in tattoos rather than dental care, determination not to learn the basics of reading and math despite the schools best effort, freedom to trespass on my property to deer hunt without permission, love of nature, to disrupt the quiet of a summer morning with motor noise that echos through the valleys from their trucks and cycles without mufflers. Open space to clutter with garbage and junk cars, while they sit inside and flip through 500 channels.
I hear this individual freedom argument all the time and when I ask what it is that you are not free to do.....the reply is usually that they want to ride their motorcycle without a helmet, or not be forced to have health insurance, both of which just transfer a high cost burden to society.
1
What Krugman relates in this column is nothing new. Throughout history, people with curiosity or ambition have left rural settings and gone to cities. The problem now is that those who stayed behind now feel left behind in a way they never have before.
Society is advancing too quickly in terms of gadgets and new ways to make a living, but the cost to our society is tremendous. Throw in the divisions deliberately sown by the likes of Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, along with the seemingly endless willingness of many on the right to believe whatever garbage they are fed on the internet, and you have the extremely dis-United States of America, 2018.
As for Krugman's hope that "the better angels of our nature can still prevail", I'm not so sure. We tried that after the Civil War - "with malice towards none and charity for all" - and the result is that we're still fighting battles we thought we won decades ago.
9
@Vesuviano
It indeed isn't new. Through the first half of the twentieth century, intelligent people in the South would give up fighting local dictators and migrate north, leaving the South all the more depressed and corrupt. It was called the brain drain. As a result the South was a drag on the rest of the country, not just financially but morally as the dictators wielded their power in the Senate.
The difference now is that it isn't just the South. It is huge areas of the West away from the coasts. And they aren't just a drag; they comprise enough people to elect idiot officials like Trump.
1
@Vesuviano Yes. This battle may go on and on. We thought we had won, and realistically we made some gains -- even with the new Jim Crow etc, Black people are better off than under slavery -- but we might never see any simple victory. We might have to come up with something to replace the "Promised Land" myth, after all. (And the Triumph of the Working Class myth, for all you Marxists out there.)
1
The problem is the Constitution, through the Senate, gives those declining rural areas a disproportionate share of political power. So does Republican gerrymandering and voting suppression - as per Florida and Georgia. The GOP runs on the politics of resentment and will run the country into the ground on them. Until the Republican Party is destroyed or otherwise rendered impotent, they will resist every move to unite the country.
This is one reason Democratic campaigning on healthcare is proving a potent issue.
A political base organized around resentment, race, and paranoia is also a base that is aging and under economic stress - which leads to increasing health issues. The party that can deliver affordable healthcare to them with the ACA and protect Social Security and Medicare is the party they can’t live without - literally.
6
@Larry Roth Or we could fix the stalemate in the Senate by granting statehood to DC (more people than Vermont or Wyoming) and Puerto Rico (more people than 20 different states including Iowa).
7
@Flora or dividing California into three states, which would still leave each sub-divided state with a greater population that the current 5th largest state (Illinois). The Senate is an important point since 7 states have more senators than members of the House of Representatives (Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming), while 5 states have as many senators as representatives (Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island). However, this is not really a Red/Blue issue since 12 senators are Red and 12 are Blue (counting Sanders and King in this group). The presidential candidate selection tradition in the U.S. also panders to this small state in the Presidential elections with the Iowa caucuses (pop 3.1 million) and the New Hampshire primaries (pop 1.3 million).
The folks who will be hurt the most from Trump's policies are his staunchest supporters. In a recent NYT article a woman who will be laid of as a result of Trump's trade polices still think that Trump's policies will benefit her. Even when there is empirical evidence to suggest other wise. So how do you help someone who does not want to be helped and will in-fact fight for policies that will hurt him/her?
11
@Sherlock
It is interesting to see the interviews with the soybean farmers in Iowa and other states who are still Trump supporters talking about the "sacrifice they are making now so their children will be better off." The farm states will stay farm states, and I am sure there are plenty of children there that can be college educated to enter the active economy.
1
While Mr. Bezos did not want to travel too far to work, he could have built a home in a rural area, along with an airstrip and a helipad.
In addition he might have created a "learning center", or if you will some schools, to help the citizens of that rural area to get the skills that he needed in his new "headquarters".
But, he would not have received billions in tax credits, nor would he not have to invest in education and infrastructure that would benefit his workers.
2
@Marc
Here's something nobody mentioned in the middle of the fuss over Amazon.
The logical place for a new Amazon headquarters was the geographic center of the country, where the costs of shipping would be minimized. The need for a big metro area wasn't a problem. They could have chosen Chicago or St. Louis or Kansas City. Instead both their old and new headquarters are on the periphery of the country.
1
What Bezos would not have been able to do is young employees to move there. If bathroom bills, gay marriage, restricting birth control, building border walls, etc. is more important, that’s the trade off. If Tim Cook is ever looking for a place to expand, for instance, I just don’t know how competitive a bid places like Mississippi or Alabama can make.
@Marc Bingo. When the richest areas of the US start handing out tax breaks and subsidies, the poorest ones have no leverage left. They are just stuck as losers in the strong Dollar zone.
Democrats keep scratching their heads as to why Red State folk keep voting against their supposed self-interest, but I am yet to see a Democratic plan to revive the economies of poor areas.
1
Unless the Democrats and the erstwhile (pre Trump) Republicans make efforts to re-industrialize the heartland and spread the crumbs of prosperity around, the masses in the hinterland will continue to be restive. With rapid advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence and automation, many jobs will be lost. Indigenize the supply/value chains. Prevent corporate chieftains from rent seeking by locating their factories off-shore, and selling in the local market place without paying tariffs. Replace China as the world's factory. We can do it if we have the will and the commitment.
3
While free trade and open borders have helped elites immensely, it has devastated the middle and lower classes. (Being able to buy cheaper stuff at Walmart won't help you much if you've lost your job and can't get another one.) Cities like Detroit have suffered destruction comparable to being defeated in a war. Despite Trump's craziness, he appears to be among the very few who actually plan on doing something about this. Regardless of whether his plans actually work, he is at least doing something.
It seems that many would like to simply write off huge regions of the country as irrelevant and ignore them. Capitalism produces winners and losers, they should accept their fate as losers. Unfortunately in the real world, if too many people feel they have been written off, candidates like Trump start winning elections and violence enters the picture.
17
Are you serious? what has Trump done for anyone, besides himself, and maybe other billionaires? What is that plan you're talking about to help rural America? The mandatory use of coal?
15
@marcus What answers can you provide to skilled tradesmen who, prior to NAFTA & China's entry into WTO) were very productive in setting and maintaining specialized machines, but remain unemployed or grossly under-employed because their livelihoods (factories) have been moved to Mexico? Retrain on their own dime to become a healthcare worker?
5
@John Chenango: Excuse me? Detroit suffered major setbacks due to the collapse of the auto industry, here - years ago. Since then, the city itself has made major important changes. Midtown is thriving as it is the center of the sports arenas, new small businesses, several colleges (including Wayne State) and a thriving cultural center, including one of the three top art colleges in the country. Detroit (of all places) is also now investing in public transit. In fact, Detroit was considered by Amazon for one of the new HQ locations but was not chosen because our public transit is still in process and has a ways to go for completion- but we're getting there. So there you sit, in San Diego, making false statements about Detroit being comparable to a war zone. Knock it off buster.
17
Great analysis, but appealing to the angels of our better nature is not a sound conclusion. Something of a Marshall plan for the underdeveloped parts of the country are more in order. The question is who will pick up that hot potato.
17
@Philanthroper
Unlikely we'll get a Marshall Plan, but even if we did, it probably wouldn't work. New Economy employers don't want to locate in low-education small towns. You'd have to do such a huge push that you create critical mass -- and even then it could only be for a few places.
26
@Paul Krugman
Think of all the dumps where NASA is located. What was Los Alamos before the Manhattan Project? Where there is a will, there is a way to revitalize middle America.
3
@Paul Krugman On the other hand, an infrastructure bill would help the working class, uneducated or otherwise, a great deal. And Trump has done nothing about that, nor has the GOP. They can't afford it after they gave themselves massive tax cuts.
11
I see a lot of commenters discussing why rural voters are staying behind. I feel that, although these comments may describe on the outside what we see, it probably doesn't explain adequately WHY these voters feel the way they do.
It is easy to use the term deplorable, or uneducated to describe these people. But that is not what we need to do. What we need to do is bring health care and education to these people in an affordable manner. Each human being wants to grow to the best he or she can be. But if everyone keeps telling you that you don't matter, then at some point you may start to believe it.
Just look at the knee-jerking reactions to newly elected congress woman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We need more people in congress like her, and less of the GOP representatives that scream about the elitists of the democratic party.
These GOP representatives hurt their constituents with horrible measures like taking away their health care, voting rights while handing out tax breaks to the 1% for the sake of their wealthy sponsors.
Let's stop talking rural voters down and understand why in their desperation they voted for Trump in the first place. And then let';s start fixing that.
Voting the president and his GOP lackeys out of office sounds like a good start to me.
9
I worked for a college in NE PA located in a county where no more than 19% had an education beyond high school. Attempts to link the college to economic development repeatedly failed year after year because the local power brokers could not envision the area ever migrating from manufacturing as the income driver. They were stuck in the past, nostalgic for what was, not what could be. As a consequence, the area continued to decay. Store after store shuttered. Even when Cabela’s planned to build a new mega-store at the intersection of two nearby interstates, the county trustees would not budge on negotiating tax incentives, prompting the chain to look for another location (in West Virginia of all places). These fools forgot that 50% of something is worth more than 100% of nothing.
The college’s graduates flock to other states. And the area continues to spiral downward.
America is a divided nation in part because places like this are filled with scared and proud people who silently recognize the futility of their plight and need someone to blame for it. Trump feeds their fear and that’s why they love him, ignoring the reality that his policies are actually accelerating their descent.
13
"We can and should do a lot to improve the lives of Americans in lagging regions. We can guarantee access to health care and raise their incomes with wage subsidies and other policies..."
Really, why? This is elitist arrogance.
We shouldn't condescend to them by assuming that we know better than they, that in fact affordable health-care or wage subsidies would benefit them.
We should respect their wishes and do what we can to eliminate -for them only - Obamacare, wage subsidies and the like, and instead try to ensure that they have a steady supply of opioids.
That would be a long absent signal that we respect them and take their wishes seriously.
5
@spindizzy
Well? I guess creating a dystopian dreamland is a solution. Fuzzy memory about Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Maybe it is time to refresh that book.
I concur with your analysis that the Republican Party has become a white nationalist and Religious Right Party. It gets its votes by appealing to ethnicity, racism, anger and resentment, and the religious right pro life, state’s rights and NRA agenda. Yet it still adheres to its simplistic formula of tax cuts for the rich and corporations and deregulation of environmental and financial rules and the objective of eventually decimating the social security net and federal health care support. This dichotomy of purpose ironically hurts the majority of its supporters but it reveals the Republican Party’s obligations to its rich donor class of fossil fuel magnates and oligarchs. This formula would not work except that our Republic favors over representing small states in the Senate and gerrymandered rural areas in the House. It is unpopular and undemocratic rule at its worst and greatly harms the future of our country!
7
I have read a lot of articles about "why people voted for Trump," but it seems like these articles always ignore the fact that the election of 2016 wasn't a referendum on Trump, it was a choice between Trump and Clinton.
As for the future and whether Trump will get re-elected, if the democrats lurch further and further to the left, a lot of people will hold their nose and vote for Trump. A lot of people detest Trump, but they also think the policies the democrats are offering the country would be disastrous.
9
@Marty This is the problem. They may think democratic policies could be disastrous, but it's clear that trump's "policies" ARE disastrous.
I think in two years, it could be a Blue Tsunami.
13
@Marty
Which are the policies Democrats push that people detest? All the polling says that the public wants higher taxes on the rich, guaranteed health care, and expanded core social programs. That is, on the issues we're a center-left country; the right only wins by distracting people with racial animosity and so on.
125
@Marty
Are you talking about the policies the democrats ARE offering or the policies the supposedly nose-holding Trump Voters THINK the Democrats are offering? Big difference in FOX NEWS land.
When I see videos and photos of Trump on the road, when I travel in Georgia recently, I do not see loads of nose holding Republicans. I see fanatic, paraphernalia decked Trumpists, by the way.
19
I had to think about your essay a few hours this time before ideas to respond engaged in me. So after a second reading for greater insight and inspiration, I can heartily disagree with you on the premise that the ethnic and racial aversions of country people are their own nationalistic leanings. In fact, after considering the years leading up to the campaign and election of Trump it began, in which conservative political people rang the bells of nationalism and bigotry. It's a given that all people possess tribal and ethnic attributes. As the old saying goes; "Birds of a feather flock together".
Nationalism and ethnic pride were always with us but the dog whistles of the Republican rabble rousers emerged early on in many ways most egregiously as white power bigots that simmered just below the surface, reigned in to a degree by the civil rights movement and resulting legislation in the sixties. The tribal bigotry has been with man forever. But then, along came the proven housing discriminator and birther story proponent Trump straight from his Television showman training to take the stage with his hatred of all things not white.
Trump has generated hatred and anger against Hispanics, Muslims, Blacks and seemingly anyone non-white. He cultivated hatred and anger to a fever pitch every day. Good country people were manipulated by the universal language of psychology. Trump drove good people whose bigotry was just a skin deep trait to full blown hatred and anger.
3
It was always there, I believe we all were complacent in regard to racism and isolationist attitudes. We thought we had moved on from the civil rights movement, made progress over the past decades and in many ways society had done so, but those who always hated equality, who live with a chip on their shoulder, who believe in white only were always there, then the right came along and used the hate to advance their agenda.
The only good thing about Trump, if it can be said at all is the exposure of these crass, rather inhumane attitudes, we now know never to become complacent again, never let the Republicans win with their divisive hate filled agenda. As the article said, these attitudes, often cloaked with hypocrisy through religion are in the minority, surely the majority can send them packing.
2
Healthcare , housing , inequality and dwindling quality of life are significant problems in Blue areas as well. Let’s not smugly act as if all is well .
A small percentage thrive and prosper but desperation and grinding insecurity is the norm.
I’ve no interest in making excuses for the , at the very least , far too ready tolerance of the bigotry and racism espoused by Trump in Red areas -I just think it appropriate to point out the glaring shortcomings in Blue Democratic regions as well.
2
Let's not be politically correct. President Obama was right when he said "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
An answer to his observation could be Mike Huckabee's " God, Guns, Grits, & Gravy "
God, guns, grits, and gravy are preventing these poor benighted people from entering the 21st-century.
It's really their own fault.
4
@Matt Olson: I agree.
Trump Nation was already perfectly characterized fifty years ago by Bob Dylan as only a "pawn in the game". And little wonder after having been so carefully conditioned for generations by right wing media and unscrupulous politicians with wealthy backers to believe the advancement of the other was an existential threat to themselves, that Trump Nation votes were there for the taking the first time anyone with a right wing media profile, an acceptable skin colour, and a eagerness to cater to racist paranoia came along. Trump's presidency must either be taken as timely warning that requires and receives most urgent attention, or it will spell the end for anything that even faintly resembles democracy in America.
I'm really worried. We are in a move back to a large metropolitan area, and we cannot reverse it because we have school aged kids. 10-11. They're the age when school matters most, and I'll sacrifice everything to make sure their lives are good.
America looks terrible to me. It shouldn't be this hard to find good schools! Yuck, were dying!
Holy moly, we're dying as a nation. Fine, put me into upper management. I can do well there, but I can't fix this country from there. This is not looking good to me.
1
Here again is the false narrative defined by standard single right to left dimension. Other things to bear in mind include: The chronically low approval rating of congress, regardless of left or right. The profound influence of corporate owned media left and right in defining the "tribes" and setting them against each other. That is absolutely a two way street. In poor rural areas the level of education is shockingly low. The process of science is not on the radar except as a vague threat by uppity know-it-alls. Civics and history are a mishmash of lies, disinformation and brainwashing. Logic is whatever you think it seems like it should be according to the bible.
Despite this people still "get" that the rich get way richer while they fall behind. And those who don't fall behind still feel the threat, the insecurity that pervades our current economic and policy system. The flyover "rubes" are not wrong about democratic party financial elites. They are wrong not to understand republican financial elites as the same and worse. But there is Nowhere to turn that offers any kind of integrity. That is why Trump was elected. Sanders offered integrity and was undermined by the Party Elite. Contemplate where we would be right now with a President Sanders. Vs. our reality. The Democrat financial elite made sure their weak candidate was put forward to lose.
Pundits still refuse to get it. The financial elite who taint the democratic party can't hide for 2020. It's Class Warfare.
2
I know this suggestion isn't going to be popular, but maybe we just let those Trump voters in rural areas and small towns sink or swim. Your example of the former East Germany is an apt one. Despite every effort by the German government, they're still resentful and voting for right-wing nationalists.
In America, Trump voters aren't even struggling economically as much as we assume. They are just resistant to change, and they are rallying around their resentments related to "race and ethnicity."
I'm not really sure Democrats could help these people even if they knew how. That would require bowing to their irrational racism and xenophobia.
Maybe we're moving forward. Maybe instead stepping back into a racist past that we all hoped was behind us, we may be seeing its last gasp as the nation moves on without these people.
1
trump supporters aren’t looking for solutions to problems they are looking to blame ‘others’ specifically minorities, feminists, LGBQT people and immigrants. They are willing to lie about the nature of reality if they believe ‘others’ will suffer more. Cruelty is the point. Frankly, I’m done trying to win them over. Stacy Abrams, Ayana Presley, Beto O’Rourke and others have the right idea-expand the electorate, reverse voter suppression. They all didn’t win in November, but this is the winning strategy going forward.
2
Trump’s childish behavior, incompetence in nearly every aspect of his presidential duties, support for failed republican policies(aka-tax cuts in the face of huge deficits), racism abetting and pathological lying makes it difficult to imagine compromise with his supporters who feel this is acceptable. Trump can’t go to an international commemoration of WWI honoring our soldiers without embarrassing us by idiotic behavior. How hard can it be to stand or sit , while the Secret Service holds an umbrella over your toupee? Does anyone really believe Trump is a successful businessman, after watching the litany of dumb appointments and revolving door at the White House? Trumps lackadaisical style and disregard for truth and information makes it easy to see how he went bankrupt. The question is will we let him get another 4 years to do the same and our country?
2
If want what you had the typical response is to do what you’ve done. When you’re poor and not getting better, it hard to think beyond what you’ve known. There is plenty of research to show that creativity is killed by the way we do school and the need for creative thinkers is tantamount to get these non coastal out of their downward spiral. Too many of the more talented creative among them are lured to the big cities, so they need to be really committed to whatever producing as much creativity and talent as possible. They simply have get out of what they’ve been doing get to work with the basic stuff.
1. This chasm between cities and farms goes back to the 1890s. People have been leaving rural America, and in fact rural anywhere, for cities, well, since the dawn of time. Think Rome, Dublin, London, Moscow, Cairo, Beijing.
2. What happened to the experiment that was Gateway computer, whose headquarters and assembly were in South Dakota? Was it, I dare say, lack of talent?
3. There have been pockets of rural success. Raleigh Durham South Carolina, Austin TX, SLC come to mind. Oh, but they tended to be less racially intolerant.
4. So, is there a correlation between racial tolerance and economic success?
How about Amazon being a good corporate citizen and relocating to Tulsa or Detroit? Maybe take a hit to the bottom line to benefit the country. Would talent move from New York to Tulsa for a good job? Perhaps not but perhaps Mr Bezos should spend less on rocketships and more on bridging the social divide. That's what I call innovation.
"America, then, is a divided nation, and is likely to stay that way for a while. But the better angels of our nature can still prevail."
Well, of course, America is a divided undemocratic nation, and that's the way it was intended by the Founding Fathers. Even back then, when we were still primarily a rural nation it was clear that urban areas would eventually gain controlling majorities.
That's why we have this undemocratic representation of the vox populi in the House and Senate where, for instance, Wyoming and California, with 70 times greater population, are equally represented in the Senate. It's a joke, but its worked for 240 years, up to now that is. But with urban/suburban areas expanding while rural areas contract, who knows how much longer.
As to our better angels, Donald Trump Jr. took those as a trophy on a recent hunting trip .
1
@GerardM Our founders understood that an unchecked majority is tyranny and that still holds true. It’s not by accident that our nation is a Republic that has a strong constitution. Our founders also understood that limiting the power and scope of government was essential to the promotion of true liberalism. Our nation and all nations that have followed this model have prospered as a result. The poorest nations in the world continue to be those that did not adopt capitalism, individualism, property ownership, and limited government. China is rising precisely because they are reforming to a more capitalist society. The greatest increase in billionaires in the world is in China. The middle class and lower classes are improving greatly as well because of these reforms.
The anger is real and very personal. For over 30 years anybody with drive and a few brains escaped rural America. Their smartest, hardest working sons and daughters, their pride and joys, left for San Francisco, New York, Minneapolis, LA, etc and left them behind with the sons and daughters that simply were barely capable of functioning in a modern knowledge driven society. The skill short fall between rural areas and metro areas has become a vast canyon. Investment in education in these areas will not help because those that get an education will continue to leave because there simply is no comparable economic opportunity in rural areas for highly educated workers.
5
One thing that can reinvigorate these small communities would be immigration. Especially in rural areas where agricultural work might be attractive to immigrants, it would at least increase the population and plant some seeds for growth. The problem of course is that this would mean change and adapting to other languages and culture.
4
Originally from a farm in SD and having spent most of my 30+ year professional career in urban areas, I have a perspective many do not.
For me, there is not a large divide between the ‘voters in lagging regions have a sense of grievance, a feeling that they’re being disrespected by the glittering elites of superstar cities’.
Quite the opposite, my rural relatives and friends are not bitter. They feel they have the superior lifestyle and none or little of the big city negatives to deal with. Many of them visit cities frequently and appreciate the urban amenities and then get to go home and have the best of both.
It is a misnomer to classify ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states. The majority of the electorate is independent and or apathetic. The ‘red’ or ‘blue’ portion is only about 20 percent each of the total.
Cities do not produce what they consume. People in cities need the rural people to provide the basic life needs of food, clothing, infrastructure and energy.
Rural people know they need the people in cities. That is their market and basis of economy.
6
Well, for things to change somebody will have to invest.
The EU has a great history of lifting up poor member countries through investment and opportunities. This started with countries like Spain and Portugal which were developing countries in the 80s after their dictatorships. Now, the same template is used for their new Eastern EU members. Some of the best and newest highways in the EU can be found in places like Poland. But... the rich, net contributing, EU member countries are not exactly getting political gratitude in return from any of the new members.
Is Blue America willing to go through this?
3
It is a problem but then the drift to the cities has been going on since the late 18th century when modern mass industrialization got underway in Britain. Personally I've never seen the attraction of the boonies but I recognize many people are committed to this way of life by temperament, family connections or economic circumstances. And as Krugman says the supreme irony here is that rural communities are massively dependent on the federal government in a host of different ways despite their support for a party that wants to shrink government programs with the exception of ag subsidies. It's probably going to take generational change and the departure of these folks kids for an urban environment to effect a shift in attitudes.
3
@John The vast wealth of the urban centers is a direct result of the raw materials and goods that come from the rural areas that urbanites disparage. Urban areas are not self sufficient in the least. Whether it be food, building materials, fuel, a place to put trash, etc., it all comes from or goes to a more rural area. Cities are as dependent on rural areas as rural areas are dependent on cities.
1
@John
Actually much if not most of the raw materials and finished goods consumed by urban areas (leaving aside that a lot of city economic activity revolves around activities like government and intellectual property) comes from overseas just as much of the output of these rural areas (soybeans, corn, sorghum, oil, ores, etc.) is marketed overseas. Your description is, just let's just say, somewhat over simplified.
1
Essentially, Mr. Krugman illustrated how much capitalism has benefited large metropolitan areas. The wealth, standard of living, and low poverty rates are directly as a result of the capitalist system. Of course large cities have their own drawbacks such as overcrowding, higher rates of pollution, high cost of housing and goods, travel congestion, etc. The rate of poverty in rural areas isn’t much different than in urban areas and the cost of living is considerably less. You don’t have to have the same level of income or wealth in a rural area to survive and thrive. We have less crowding and congestion, less air pollution, better scenery, fresh water that doesn’t need to be treated to drink, affordable housing, cheaper goods including food, etc.
There is nothing about living rurally that leaves me feeling left behind. While large urban areas (Democrats) fight against the source of their wealth and prosperity, rural Republicans enjoy their lives of individualism and self determination. You can say all you want about rural people voting against their interests, however, there are lots of disparate interests and we have the right to choose which ones we most value.
1
@John
". . . rural Republicans enjoy their lives of individualism and self determination."
Yeah, right. I'll remember that the next time I'm driving through rural Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, looking at run-down farms with broken farm equipment strewn about, which are interspersed with billboards that laud Trump and vaguely threaten harm to people who dislike him and his policies. And then there's the rural opioid crisis . . . exactly how does that embody "lives of individualism and self-determination?" Maybe things are different in Virginia.
@John - While raw materials and natural resources (especially energy) are of course necessary to support the net consumptive cities, it is naive and inaccurate to say rural areas are the 'source' of metropolitan wealth. New York is the financial capitol of the world, and finance and financial services are something like 20% of the U.S. economy. The 'source' of that wealth is global markets and global capitalism, not soybeans in southern Illinois. Land is not people. When cities need energy, it is taken from rural areas largely by migrant workers and automation on public lands. The number of people in farming has been dramatically reduced by mechanization, and agriculture policies that favor agribusiness interests (headquartered in cities) over rural communities. That resources come from rural areas does not mean they are produced by the hard labor of rural residents. Rural residents have been taken advantage of for a long time, most egregiously by politicians (by now uniformly conservative) who know they can play on their anxieties and prop up scapegoats like immigrants and 'liberal elites' in order to stay in power. I need to live in a rural area myself - definitely retro, not metro - but to delude oneself that metropolitan people "need" rural people is folly.
Please refer to Geoffrey West's book, "Scale", for a mostly non-technical discussion of how and why the big get bigger. Hint: It has to do with the division of labor.
They are ways to spread the economic wealth of our country to the poorer regions. First we need to diversity our federal governmental offices. Because of the heavy concentration of federal offices in the Washington area the suburbs of DC are the richest in the country. We can have regional offices of the federal government in our poorer regions because everybody is connected by the internet. Secondly, we can invest heavily in the infrastructure of our poorer regions and supply jobs. For example we could rebuild the bridges in these areas and the roads as well.
We should not forget that these people in the poor areas are our brother and sister Americans.
5
@Saggio The Federal Government is not a welfare program. The Federal Government is in a battle to attract talent as well, and the security of America depends on it. Most government jobs are highly skilled and Federal employees do not want to live in some depressed, poor area. You cannot just play games with the government service that is already struggling to attract employees with pay and benefits under assault and wages that don't keep up with inflation.
1
@Todd The EU assigns its Institutions fairly over all its countries. A pair of golden handcuffs will go a long way to relocate people.
2
Barring natural resource extraction, the children of the rural areas are continuing to leave rural america but not all locations. https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/2393-rural-america-is-losing-young-people- https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/06/the-three-rural-americas/561791/
Agriculture is changing, becoming more mechanized, more automated and more efficient. In 1980, the american farmer fed 18 people. In 2010, the same american farmer fed 44 people. Agricultural labor needs have dropped by more than half for the major commodities. Rural and small town manufacturing suffer from transportation access for materials and finished products as well as labor shortages.
Rural residents that feel grievance with city dwellers is misplaced and false. The welder in small town america is the same as the welder in the suburbs. The same goes for teachers, trades and any number of other occupations. The demographics aren't going to change anytime soon and as soon as rural dwellers realize they have counterparts in cities, the better.
4
Mr. Scott Mooneyham, you have hit the nail on the head. Not only does the lack of broadband internet stymie growth in the countryside, it also hampers and limits education. Young people don’t want their children limited. So they move to places that offer better education and that, these days, means places with broadband internet.
4
I'm happy with my current living arrangement. I have education and my fingertips, allowing me to listen to two or three lectures a day on my days off, which doesn't seem to interest some people I am around.
I would like to have an income that actual allows me the means to support my local economic environment, friends, and family but I do support what I consider my intellectual community.
As for Amazon I would have built in Rural NYS or PA. I like having access to the city but I would not want to live in the city.
Many solid points. However, Mr. Krugman misses one major one: Many rural communities have natural resources that make them attractive to a variety of people. And those people can be connected to the rest of the world -- for work and play -- like never before. The hidden hand blocking that from happening in so many places is Mr. Pai's FCC, their bogus Broadband maps, and his friends the giant telecoms that are blocking public investment at the local level and throwing up roadblocks to small entrepreneurial companies. Had the current crowd been in charge in the 1930s and 40s, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Rural America would be nothing but farmland because the Rural Electrification Act never would have been passed.
31
@Scott Mooneyham: What other country forces people to pay for unwanted TV channels to get internet service?
1
@Scott Mooneyham Like Nicole Lepoutre-Baldocchi, above, I applaud that you point out the lack of broadband in rural America. If the only radio you can listen to is conservative talk radio, well that's what seems real and right. And yes, the FCC is the culprit.
1
The usual excellent analysis from Mr. Krugman. His interest and expertise in economic geography reflected well in the analysis.
No bridging of the political views of the more or less rural/small town so-called left-behinds and those of people living in large or largish metropolitan areas? Hard to say.
From my perspective educational level clearly tends to play a role in all this. That specifically has to do with the ability and interest of individuals to make the most basic separation of the wheat from the chaff with regard to relevant facts about any issue. The, to my mind at least, rapid uptake by many people of the time-wasting afforded by carrying around and staring at an ever-more powerful, networked computer in the form of a PDA/mobile phone unit plays a significant role in the overwhelming amount of chaff that well hides any wheat, in the form of relevant facts.
The interest in staring at mobile devices at all moments may well dissipate among many people, while persisting among those who now spend inordinate amounts of time watching the near-endless drivel long offered up by television.
3
One of the many factors involved in the erosion of rural America’s economic activity is the concept of outsourcing - including outsourcing manufacturing jobs, technology jobs and even farming. Also referred to as globalization, it is at the heart of the ever widening gap between rural and urban America. As India, China and now numerous other countries work to grow a middleclass, our industries, always in quest of greater profitability, are incentivized to move to those countries where the labor is still cheap and infrastructure is improving, not deteriorating. There are benefits we all get from outsourcing, like it or not, but those benefits are slowly losing their punch. A great leveling is occurring, albeit, slowly, that is making outsourcing less viable. The rising cost of foreign labor, shipping, energy and ecological damage are all working to reduce the benefits of outsourcing. A relatively new concept is taking shape called rural sourcing that can revitalize small (not all) towns and cities where labor is still cheaper than in our urban centers. The trick is that the government needs to do its part in promoting this gradual development of rural sourced industries, industries that will migrate back to America if the price is right and the needed infrastructure established. Unfortunately our government is frozen in time, led by a conman who instead of finding solutions is manufacturing scape-goats to feed his hunger for power and notoriety.
14
We need to raise wages, not provide a tax credit. Tax credits subsidize the Walmarts and Amazon's underpaid workforces.
11
Amazon provides a digital information service. It's difficult for information workers to get scale from supplying service. One can only process so many lines of code, orders and packages in a day. The digital service economy is the new Medieval serfdom. President Trump is correct to emphasise manufacturing. Krugman is wrong.
2
@Private: "President Trump is correct to emphasize manufacturing. Krugman is wrong."
And so, Private, what is Trump doing about it? Besides lying about it? All Trump does is talk, talk, lie, lie. That's it.
1
Economic factors pale in significance to racial issues. The "divide" is not about jobs, or taxes, or any economic policies. It is about race and, to a lesser part, religion. Core Trump supporters will never be convinced to accept complete integration or science. I fear that several generations will have to pass before any real change occurs.
12
@Disillusioned: Republican religion is millenarianism: a global death wish.
If a big tech industry moved to Detroit or Toledo, the techies would flock to the jobs there. They'd enjoy the lower cost of living and the greater benefits of their income in a location that does not suck them dry.
It is self fulfilling, not inevitable. Does anyone imagine Amazon couldn't find people, couldn't make job offers?
8
@Mark Thomason Over how much time? How many years? Why would Amazon wait? They're not a charity. You go where the resources exist, not where they "might eventually be gathered"
The resources businesses need have to be built from the ground up in these communities: good schools, strong universities, modern thinking, etc. Too many smaller cities think they have what Amazon needs because they are unwilling/unable to realize how far behind they have gotten. Lake Wobegon Days.
6
@Mark Thomason lovely thought but in reality it’s not reality. It’s about the available labor pool and attracting the top talent in an extremely competitive market for labor. Sure, some techies would move to Detroit. But many more would not, and maybe many of the best and brightest would not. Why? Because they do not have to. They are in demand in the places they prefer to live. Thriving robust cities with lots of other highly talented and educated people.
7
@Mark Thomason Perhaps Detroit but not many other places in the South or Midwest. Why do you think young people leave if the cost of living is so attractive? It is a matter of cultural difference. You could not pay me, a techie, enough to live in a small town/city in the highly religious Midwest. I would not be welcome in a theocracy. Nor would I want to raise children in an underfunded school district that teaches Genesis in science class. The market has spoken.
Despite the words of Dr. Krugman, I increasingly doubt our ability to provide health care for all, especially in the most rural communities. Even if the ACA is fully buttressed or if, mirabile dictu, single payer emerges from our governments, the rural medical infrastructure is tissue-paper thin.
Doctors, like corporate behemoths (e.g. Amazon), want to live in prosperous areas for a better life themselves.
There is a common perception having a doctor in your community solves any health care problem you might have. Doc Adams in Gunsmoke in his small Dodge City office extracting a bullet might be a persistent meme but it is not a realistic one.
Except for Albert Schweitzer, no doctor works alone. A doctor needs a pharmacy, a proximate hospital and a cadre of available associates for consultation and referral. Without a sufficient medical nidus, health care withers and dies. Adequate medical infrastructure (and not adequate medical insurance) is a necessary but not sufficient component of a successful community.
Failure to expand Medicaid, the contraction of rural hospitals (a major employer in small towns), the loss of absolute numbers of jobs and the tools making large farming operations insufficient to employ those who previously worked the land all contract the ability of the heartland to support both the medical and non-medical infrastructure.
We are at the cusp of deciding whether red rural America lives or dies. Cross your fingers.
16
@Douglas McNeill Large farming operations are never going to make up the employment loss in rural areas. Just as manufacturing of all sorts needs fewer and fewer employees as it modernizes, so did agriculture. You need far fewer workers per acre for most cash crops than you did 20 or 30 years ago. And fewer local support services need employees as that part of the business consolidated into regional or statewide businesses.
4
@Douglas McNeill: Thanks should be given this November 22, by all, for the people who expand knowledge, elevate civilization, and wish well for everyone. People like Paul Krugman for one. In the long run there will be much less illness and more effective health care. Right now we have the most people with the worst health practices and diets, the most chemical contamination, the poorest medical compliance, and whose genes were determined by reproductive roulette. Thankfully, the most able people will help all they can. That is how we survived and got human early in evolution. Evolution continues. Less by deathly deselection, more by humanistic enlightenment. The unthankful few are being nudged to deselection by a very few unsentimental old-school Darwinists, unlike Paul Krugman who wishes for all in our cave to eat, be warm, to live, and to live better. As populations level out and economics adapt to uniform demographics inequality will moderate, conflicts subside, and "New Frontiers" beacon.
@Douglas McNeill: The war on family planning has become health and cultural devolution in the US.
Heard this story recently (and have no reason to think its not true): a company was thinking of moving some of its operations out of CT and there was a meeting to discuss possible locations. There was a location in Arkansas and when it was brought up, people just laughed. Even with the high cost of living in CT and the winters, nobody wanted to live in Arkansas. I've never been to Arkansas and I'm sure that there are nice places to live, but I've never felt an urge to live there. Boston, on the other hand, or Portland, ME or Newport RI, I'd move there in a heartbeat. There is just more to do in those places.
21
Cleveland to New York is approximately 500 miles. A TGV (high speed rail) could travel this in a little over 3 hours stopping at Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg etc. But, this is infrastructure. Where is the plan? If we had such infrastructure the "rump" could be reconnected and perhaps in some cases younger and educated people would prefer not to live in the major conurbations.
37
@Marianne you must live in Texas. To build high speed rail, you need a very straight right-of-way. Those don't exist in the NE Corridor. You can't build a high speed rail through NY/NJ without paying billions of dollars to displace thousands of people, destroying millions of dollars in existing infrastructure. Etc.
1
Professor Krugman and Professor Sartwell in his piece on the shape of history are probably both correct. History is a spiral loop (driven by things like the dialectic), but no one knows how big the loop will be or whether we are headed toward the trough or away from it. History is the present, so we are making that decision now, in real time. We need serious leaders and shared goals to make the turn. We currently have neither, but there are some lights on the horizon. Let's hope they reach us in time.
5
Very good column.
"But the ugliness doesn't have to win."
As we see from the recent election, the Democrats can win the House of Representatives and many Governorships. And the Democrats could win a majority in the U. S. Senate if can get their act together. If might be difficult or impossible to win many deep red states, but there are several "purple" states which already have one Democratic Senator.
A major problem for the Democrats is always voter turnout. They have many chances to win if they can get their supporters to vote.
The Good Professor is correct also about many of The Con Don's faithful. Across the South and some parts of the Midwest and the West, there is a substantial part of the republican vote that is based purely on racial antagonism. It has nothing to do with programs or political principles or anything else; people talk about economics, deficits, and other issues, as cover but for many race is the most important factor. And it has been since the Civil War. That is why in many parts of the South, a majority of the white voters are never going to vote for a Democrat, it makes no difference about the candidates ability, track record, proposals, etc. The only way to deal with this situation is for the Democrats to win on election day where ever they can.
7
The rural Trump folks need to remember that the wealth they seek is not coming their way. They wholeheartedly embraced the tax cuts which allowed the majority of the savings to go to people who live nowhere near them. And they want the wall....to prevent immigrants from taking the jobs they desire, but aren't willing to relocate for. They don't want to pick lettuce or clean hotel rooms. They just don't want to let immigrants do that. Finally, if the wall is built, that unstable bridge over the highway, the highway that bypasses their town, won't be rebuilt unless they are willing to pay for it. I really don't get all this talk about a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Who is going to pay for that? Are we really going to borrow another trillion to pay for it? If we do you might as well kiss the great economy Trump supposedly created sink. It's going to anyway, but that will speed it up. We certainly won't move any money from the top to the bottom of the income ladder. Just like we aren't going to move money from the wealthy parts of the country to the poor parts. And the infrastructure that needs repairing will be done in wealthy places first. No matter who is in charge of the Congress.
6
Unfortunately, with the electoral process being what it is, those to the right of the chasm--mostly rural--have as much say in electing the senate as those to the left, even though they are greatly outnumbered.
Representation?
6
@David: Equal protection of the law begins with equal representation in the negotiation of law. This country will never have it under its existing system of government.
It should be noted that these economically disadvantage rural areas have incredible political clout granted to them by the Constitution. The 25 least populated states have only 18% of the population, but control half the Senate. The Electoral College system also favors low population states, most of which lean conservative. Long term, this furthers the polarization, because a left-leaning total population is angered by a right-wing Supreme court, largely picked by Electoral- College-elected Presidents, and confirmed by the right-leaning Senate. Therefore the laws of the land will not represent the wishes of most of the population.
37
@Max4: The US Constitution is a formula for ethnic and cultural apartheid that drives internal segregation.
2
Prof K, I think you have to give Trump more credit as a "communicator", in the same way that Ronald Reagan charmed the masses.
Do people really respond to policy arguments, even though the policies can have enormous impact on their lives? I think people respond to what they actually hear from politicians who speak to them.
Speech writers write speeches, and we credit politicians for the words, but really that's not authentic.
Trump speaks the basic language, and I don't mean racist, although that's what everyone wants to blame it on.
Being on TV, gave Trump an 'ear' for reading his audience in a live setting. Trump has trained to communicate for decades, in a way no democrat really has, up to and including the great President Obama.
Trump's policies could have been about anything. It's his jokes and his stick that people are responding to, and latching on to.
No amount of policy can dent the belief that people recognize in Trump, one of their own, who's on their side, and speaks for them. Even if he isn't, and doesn't.
The democrats need someone who can compete in the arena of communication. Bernie Sanders is an example, for the same reasons.
6
@Oh: I find it interesting that you think Trump, who does nothing but lie but has great 'shtick' and jokes is a Great Communicator. What it really says, at this point, because we all know that he does nothing but lie and spout divisive gibberish, is that there is a large number of people in this country who swallow his message without question. And that is very, very dangerous for our country.
A Great Communicator always has a special style, but if all they spout is The Big Lie, then, in my book, that person is not a Great Communicator but a Great Liar.
And nobody can trust a liar. Nobody. Not one person, not a country of persons.
2
@Oh
If 'the base' is responding to "Trump's... jokes", then they are responding to a vacuum.
I live in a red town in a red county in Upstate NY. From my perspective as an old lady who has lived in other places is that places like this are caught in a downward spiral.
Young people are leaving. Our high school graduated only 25 students last June. When my husband attended the same school in 1956, there were 56 graduates. That was before the baby boom.
The dairy industry, which was the backbone of the local economy since the region was settled, has changed so much that it's no longer possible to raise a family on a small farm. Both my husband and I grew up on dairy farms milking less than 30 cows. It was hard work and a struggle, but we managed. That life is gone.
Most of the people who live in this town have similar histories. They see the housing stock deteriorate and wonder if it's possible to keep the community from becoming a ghost town.
This part of NY has hard winters, but there is plenty of clean water and beautiful scenery. There is a tourism industry built around the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
That is not enough to replace agriculture. Besides being seasonal, most jobs are low pay.
The other industry is healthcare and we all know that is struggling in rural areas. It almost seems to Republicans are trying to kill it.
We have a serious drug problem and the petty crime that goes along with it. Bragging about the great economy doesn't ring true here.
The market got us into this fix. It will make it worse unless something is done.
160
@Betsy S
I visited your part of the country last year after a 25 year absence. The decline I witnessed speaks volumes as to the gap between vibrant urban areas and dying rural life.
9
@Betsy S
I spent my early childhood in Utica, and try to keep tabs on upstate NY. Revitalizing it is really hard. Winters are harsh, it's not close to major markets, and the forces that used to promote manufacturing are mainly gone. In the end, there will almost surely have to be a lot fewer people living there, no matter what we do.
35
@Paul Krugman How about jobs via the internet ? Progrmming, marketing, etc.
2
Of course we can bridge the gap and we don’t need to offer government handouts. People and businesses head for the cities because of infrastructure. As the planet warms in the decades ahead this trend will continue unless we work to combat it. This means water projects across the middle of the continent. We are losing rainfall, reservoirs are half full and ground water is being exhausted. Anyone who cares about dinner wil want to build infrastructure out there. Also, as fossil fuels continue to run out (look it up) we will become much more dependent on mass transit that can run on renewable electricity which needs infrastructure investment. Thus all of the country can unite around infrastructure which will be a huge economic driver, more than many Amazon HQs.
9
Some regions seem to be less adaptable than others and many of those regions (but not all) are in rural areas.
Consider two adjacent towns in central Maine -- each home to thriving paper mills for many decades. Then the paper mills died thanks, in no small part, to vulture capitalists but also to a changing world demand for paper.
A consultant "from away" was hired and wrote a short, sensible report listing a few things that could be done to rejuvenate the area.
Both towns are on the way to the very popular Baxter State Park, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
Obama creates the Katahdin Woods and Waters (KWW) National Monument which has the potential of attracting even more people to the area to spend dollars.
What happens? A firstorm of protest about "losing our woods", "can't cut down trees anymore", etc., etc. The Republican governor (soon to be gone to Florida) vows never to put up road signs on state roads directing people to the National Monument -- the governor apparently knows nothing about GPS.
Visitor statistics are hard to come by and internal improvements (roads) are slowly being made. Anecdotally, traffic to KWW is increasing.
Rather than see possible gains, all many could see is actual loss.
Surely there are similar stories from the old "rust belt" of the Midwest.
22
@Fred: Thanks, Fred, for writing the comment that I thought about writing, but you explained it a lot better than myself. Yes, the 'big no' to a new recreational area was just baffling to me. I guess they wanted to 'conserve' ......what? No paper mill to conserve. And I saw no other entrepreneur coming in with any other ideas.
Maine is the oldest (as in population) state in the nation and there's only about a million of us, about the same as at the end of the Civil War. Young people are leaving in droves. Our past 'conservative' governor, who is now fleeing to Florida, thank goodness, did nothing to stop the out-flow and certainly didn't want 'immigrants' coming in.
I am so happy that, with the exception of Susan Collins (who will be gone in two years), our state has Democratic control in the governorship, and both chambers, and both Congress reps, with Angus King, (I) who caucuses with Democrats. Maybe now we can actually see good things happen for the people of Maine, instead of constant obfuscation, stubbornness to a ridiculous, hurtful 'conservative' ideology.
I have hope for the first time since LePage entered our state, carpetbag in hand, supported by those wealthy people who created the Tea Party.
1
Sure the cities and rural regions differ economically, but so does the respective cost of living in each region or city. You get paid more in the city and pay more as well.
3
@Shakinspear
There's also the fact that there's more employers. As a software developer in a big city, I have my choice of jobs. If I leave one I know there's 100s of others to apply to. If I lived in a small or even moderate sized town my choices would be far more limited.
4
WHEN I SEE PEOPLE In deep blue areas of the US give thanks to Trump and willingly accept the great sacrifices they have to make to pay for the largest transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% thanks to Trump's tax rip-off for the 1%, I wonder why they believe that disregarding their own interests is somehow patriotic, godly, or inherently good. I watched a piece on TV last night about the thousands Medicaid cuts in Kentucky. The head of the program spoke with fervor, truly believing that sending people off to sicken and die is a way to improve their lives. One lady pointed out that if those being removed from Medicaid rolls live in areas where there simply are not enough jobs to go around. What can you do? She asked. Has it become the role of GOPper government officials knowingly, and with malice aforethougth, calculate justification for heartlessly removing thousands in rural red areas from the lifeline that Medicaid provides? The GOPpers had shown ads about "death panels for grandma." But they were referring to the Democrats. As it turns out the GOPpers have cut people off of Medicaid, using death panels to decide about grandma, grandpa, mom, pop, aunts, uncles, cousins, children and babies. All of those people slashed from Medicaid cannot pursue Life, Liberty or Happiness as promised in the Declaration of Independence as unalienable human rights. Their lives are being shortened and sacrificed so that the GOPpers can easily transfer money from the 99% to the 1%
55
@John Jones Absolutely true. Yet, the people who live in the areas most impacted by the cuts will dutifully head to the polls in 2020 and vote for donald trump who will, in turn, continue to further reduce their standard of living.
24
@TRKapner: But Trump sticks it to people of color, women, immigrants, liberals and for that they will never leave him. As long as those 'enemies' are being hurt, even if they themselves are hurt, they are happy. A very strange way of living, but it seems that they are really stuck in hatred.
5
Another reason businesses can’t operate in rural areas is lack of good infrastructure specifically high speed internet and mobile. The EU recognizes this problem and aims to insure that everyone in the EU receives high speed internet.
If we want to start attacking the issue we need a modern Rural Electrification Act. With internet and mobile connectivity, we need to bring fiber access and 5G wireless to everyone in the country.
Then to attack the other side of the problem, we need to pour money into education and make our education system the envy of the world again. The GOP has been sabotaging and attacking education for so long we have forgotten it was once the envy of the world, and an important part of our success as a nation. In recognition of the fact that it requires more education to compete in the Information Age we need to provide At least free college or vocational training for 2 years past high school.
69
good column. we should remember that roughly two thirds of Americans now live in the cities which are mainly Democratic. So the majority of Americans live in Dem areas. And in rural states with high proportions of blacks and Latinos, there are still high levels of support for Dem in places like Mississippi and Alabama. So yes there is a lot of Trump support in white rural areas, but these are a minority of all Americans.
I also agree with other comments that weaker or non-existent labor unions today explains a lot of white worker support for Trump. Unions educate their members about their own economic needs and which politicians support workers. Unions are inclusive of all workers and bridge racial and ethnic differences.
14
Dr. Krugman needs to take into account that Big Ag and Finance also exist in rural America. According to a recent Washington Post article, my town is as far as you can get from a major city, yet we have a lot of wealth. The wealth is dependent on Big Ag and Finance. These sectors voted for Trump for a variety of reason. Most have to do with racism and how they will look to their neighbors if they voted for a Democrat. There is no dirtier words here than Hillary or Obama, yet the locals have nothing to back up their disdain. I'm waiting to see how the tariff's affect this county in the next general election. In the midterms the county was still red. The big money here is also somewhat insulated from the service industry sector that suffers and the jobless. Why? It is due to the work that the town and churches do with low income housing and charity. Thus, the big money has the luxury to look the other way because it does not have people on the streets to deal with. The other reality is that it is too cold to be on the streets. Ultimately, the story has many layers.
14
Those reporters interviewing the economically anxious diner patrons should spend more time in the glittering urban centers. People in cities aren't all doctors, lawyers, and CEOs. There are also nurses, cab drivers, food service workers, administrative assistants - all the support workers for those at the top. Boston may be a hub of the knowledge economy, but it is also a hub of economic inequality. We have more in common with the rural working class than they may think. And we don't look down on the people in flyover country - many of us come from there! We vote Democratic because Democrats represent the only policies that can actually help working people, urban or rural.
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@Rugosa
Yes! If you look at what happened in Nevada, or Michigan, or lots of other places, it wasn't just the college-educated women; it was a lot of service workers, including quite a few working-class whites, who realized that trickle down isn't for them. And up-close-and-personal reporting just ignored this reality, even though polls were predicting pretty much what happened.
45
@Paul Krugman I'm constantly amazed when talking to people, especially upper middle class people, how little they understand about the economy and the army of lower paid workers that keep it going. That army is much larger than the one doing the high tech stuff but vitally important. And on the immigration front few realize just how vital those immigrant workers on the farms really are and that there is no native replacement workforce for them. I used to work out in rural areas and I know all about it.
15
We should have no more sympathy for an unemployed coal miner who is forced out of West Virginia by the economics of mining than we do for a lifelong Brooklynite who is forced out of the borough due to the economics of gentrification. Neither is owed residence a place of their choice, particularly if that choice must be secured with tax dollars.
7
@From Where I Sit
Don't you mean as much sympathy, and I might add empathy as well, for an unemployed coal miner who is forced out of West Virginia by the economics of mining than we do for a lifelong Brooklynite [sic] who is forced out of the borough due to the economics of gentrification?
After all, much of where you sit was made possible by them. The one built up the real estate you saw fit to buy out from under them and with rentier tax and capital advantages and have enjoyed good health especially in winter from a life lived until recently from heat made from coal powered utilities.
It would be prudent to amend your attitude as backward thinking, regressive, snobs like those holding perspectives like yours are becoming a liability that will get you as pushed aside by the future generations as that coal miner or Brooklyn person you have no sympathy for.
1
This really is about curiosity and the search for knowledge, pretty much throughout human history the societies that encouraged this were much more successful than those that did not. This is not rocket science or rather I guess it is, if you see no use in knowledge for just the sake of knowledge then you are doomed to stagnation and being left behind by more progressive societies.
Insular inward looking societies are really just fearful of change and forward movement, that is why they embrace conservatives who want to stifle progress. This will not turn out well for them as human history has borne out a thousand times in the past.
12
Good pieice, thank you. The German example -- ie, loud grievances without deep grief -- can also be seen in France where socialized medicine, universal pre-K, and other "progressive" items are the norm and on offer to all, but those material items -- as important as they may be -- do not prevent those in the country's smaller cities and towns and villages from feeling looked down upon and considered useless by Parisian elites. It's an old story, but in the Internet age sparks can fly in a hurry and real violence ensue... as we see in the recent episodes of "yellow vest" protestors.
Bread and circuses and universal health care are not enough -- people need and want meaningful lives: a path to build them and a non-toxic habitat to live them out.
IMO, reinvesting in public education (including proper teacher salaries!), especially the humanities, would be a good part of that yellow brick road.
31
These conditions may in the long run move the Democratic party toward a kind of fiscal conservatism. The party ethos would remain progressive and redistributive, but its thrust would turn regional, and focused on the state level.
The common form of the question is "why do rural residents vote against their own interests?" If Dems in productive, wealthy areas continue to watch their tax dollars flow to regions that disdain their progressive culture, then these Dems will eventually start asking themselves the same question, and ask "why would we vote to send our tax revenue to a federal system that then gives it to those who hate us?"
The solution will be to support a party that favors raising state taxes while lowering federal contributions. If the Dem party moves in this direction, then progressivism would flourish, but at the state and regional level.
3
@McDonald Walling I am not at all interested in leaving behind all the good folks in red states. I wouldn't support letting Texas secede nor do I support your ideas.
Check out the election results. Look at how many Texans voted for Beto O'Rourke, how many Georgians voted for Stacey Abrams. That's the way forward. Once we take back the Senate and the Presidency we can enact legislation that will help folks in those states and, of course, all the rest.
Then when Republicans run on their tired tax cuts & deregulation agenda we'll point to the concrete measures we've past.
Texas doesn't have to stay red, nor Georgia, nor a bunch of other places.
6
@Jack Toner
There are a few things I should have phrased differently, but to clear one thing up: My comment was not intended to be a recommendation, or to represent a desire, but to point to a possible longterm development if present trends -- such as a figure like Trump rising through the GOP primaries let alone winning the Presidency, or those inscribed in the new tax code -- continue.
The New Paradigm sees two different uses for political parties—one uses the media to drive false equivalences, ignoring policy, only counting seats and election wins. The real story of our politics is not numbers, but context: for one group, the party is a means to drive divisions/slash freedoms/lie and kill. The evidence is plain in a female Mississippi senator's invitation to her black opponent to attend a “public hanging.” She is an exhibit of a new generation of racists who use racism, fear, and threats of violence as a gateway to power.
Their power, as empowered their followers--so we see displays of bias and prejudice. Amendment nine in the constitution is abridged by these state-supported aggressions.
New Paradigm observers see these ideological/rhetoric/racist threads in recent deaths; a wave raising from the Orlando shooting to a school, to a concert, to churches and courthouse steps--to recent examples at a shopping center where two grandparents killed; a CA club, where two survivors of the Seattle shooting were killed; and a synagogue shooting--where a 95 year-old Holocaust survivor was killed.
Public outrage is turning into war! Small scattered actions some want to describe as disconnected from party politics--yet party politics are the loudest voices for its fear and blame, growing a fringe of single extremists who share symbolism, ideology, and goals.
The party denies it, but they are the party's creation.
11
@Walter Rhett The Democrats identity politics is not a unifying message. It is as much responsible for cultural violence as anything that comes from the right. This is the sort of thing we see when parties veer toward socialistic change.
1
@John Which Democrat used direct racist language--not the language of race, as in a discussion--the deliberate use of history, images, word meanings, ideas, and pet white supremacist phrases?
That language historically assigns violence toward blacks, restrictions, discrimination, and even death. Match the emails, compare the jokes, conduct an etymology, counts the times denied.
Quit with the false equivalency! Enough! A diverse agenda is NOT a racist agenda. A Georgia candidate offered a diverse platform--small businesses, rural healthcare, lower student loans, extended kindergarten--the other candidate offered racism repacked and denied. His concert of actions say different, esp. disenfranchising some 53,000 voters.
No, John, history tells us you are wrong--absolutely wrong! Name one top 25 country economically in GDP that does not have those "socialistic" changes you say we are "veering" towards--as you overlook real, honest failures and issues that demand progressive change; here's four: housing (try finding working class housing in NYC or San Fran), healthcare, red states rural hospitals are closing at alarming rates; wages; justice reform.
John, take note: check facts, cite solid details, avoid cliches. Especially, the "socialist" bone!
2
The "Democratic Identity Politics" label is a canard, the Democratic Party is very diverse. The Republican Party is the party of white Identity politics.
1
The United States has been divided from the beginning. But for most of those years rural communities were content with subsistent living, buoyed by strong bonds. Local economies were strong and small towns thrived. When agribusiness became the norm and small family farms were decimated, young people left these communities, small businesses could not survive...and, well, the rest is history. Rural America is in a depression, there are no margins for error, there are few options, so it makes sense that people living in those regions will lash out any way they can. It's human nature. And demagogues like Trump understand this and take advantage. Unfortunately, many people have not seen through this con man yet. Hopefully, they will before 2020.
11
The focus on 'bidding' for Amazon headquarters, highlights clearly a certain argument that is not stated clearly but used increasingly by policymakers around the world : "The best way to enhance the budget and resources for implement socialist ideas for the constituency is to cater to the capitalist requirements of corporates."
3
Sadly the technical talent in the knowledge economy is becoming overwhelmingly male and will eventually alienate women. Offices are returning to the Mad Men era. Don't confuse highly educated workers in big, rich metropolitan areas with being liberal.
2
@Vivien -- Well educated recent women tech graduates have complained to me that the widespread use of H1 visas to bring in foreign tech workers is bringing men who are abusive to these women. The work environment is toxic for women inside much of the tech industry.
2
Will the better angels of our nature prevail?
A good barometer is the popularity of Fox "News", without which there would be no president Trump. As long as that propaganda operation draws the ratings it does in its current form, there is no hope.
14
@Alan R Brock As loathsome as it is, Fox News is not the only media culprit. Donald Trump has been a Godsend for the mainstream media. Broadcast TV, cable networks and newspapers cover Trump so obsessively, and virtually ignore issue coverage, because Trump is so easy, effortless and cheap to cover. Even the media outlets opposed to his policies make Trump the all day, every day, 24 hour feature story. The coverage excites Trump's Republican base and inflames the Democratic base and it just cannot be ignored. Trump is not deprived of the opportunity to tweet and is assured that his tweets will be broadcast and rebroadcast until his tweets and his message have reached every voter several times every day.
It's the Democrats who cannot get coverage.
2
The point made in this article may be true but it leaves out the fact that these people in rural areas have more power than they should because of the electoral college and the face that states w/ small populations have outsized representation in the senate. As a California, I see 80 cents on every dollar paid into federal taxes (which will get worse under the new tax law) and my vote for senators is worth almost 1/100th of someone from the Dakotas.
Trump wants to end the 14th amendment, I say “sure” let’s re-open a number of issues in the constitution. He wants to examine the 14th. I would like to look at the electoral college, number of senators /state, and the 2nd amendment.
16
@Citizen
It's not just their electoral power. A year ago, the Economist magazine had an article on the "left behind", which featured a photo of an obese, begrimed coal miner. He looks funny, right? Unfortunately, I told a student: he's bigger than you, he's stronger than you, and he has more guns than you. He'll beat you to death, shoot you to death -- and then eat you.
1
I wonder what the education gap is between urban and rural.
If democrats want to transform the country , strategically speaking, they might do well to support a national service program that sends young college graduates into rural areas to help support the public education system, full stop.
Maybe Teach for America did this.
But, honestly, the way our school funding is set up is so class biased that the benefits of education are circulated among those with enough property taxes to fund good schools, i.e., the rich.
Overturn San Antonio v. Rodriguez, distribute funding based upon numbers of children, not property taxes and incentivize service in rural areas. It's a start.
11
Why shouldn’t education go to those who can afford it rather than the cost being artificially subsidized in pursuit of a nonexistent utopia. My boss pays over $30,000 in property taxes here on LI with nearly 80% of that going to schools and another $10,000 in property taxes on his summer home in Maine. When my parents sold their Queens house ten years ago, their property taxes were less than $2,000. Why shouldn’t my boss’ kids have an education that is fifteen times better than kids from the neighborhood where I grew up? And fifteen times better opportunities? His kids now run the business making the cost of education a solid investment for him. He and his wife have earned that for their kids.
@From Where I Sit. I thought equality was the key to our way of government. I thought public education was the great equalizer. So you believe some people are more equal than others?
12
They've "earned it"? By owning two expensive homes? No words.
Basically, the USA are divided between those who are willing to adapt to change (educate, move to where the jobs are…), and those digging in their heels and refusing change (I guess that's why we call the GOP conservatives).
The same happens all over Eastern Europe: the country side empties due to emigration to cities or Western Europe. Those left behind turn bitter and vote for the extremists.
16
The gap is there, and you may be correct that the chasm can't be bridged. It certainly won't be with a politics based on bad faith and divisiveness, as practiced by our fake president and the Trumpist party. What can be done? Let's start with a solution to the growing income inequality. That too is chasm. Roll back the tax cuts from last year that benefited the rich and corporations. Increase the marginal rates in the top deciles. Reduce the payroll tax rate. Reduce the cost of health insurance. And, then, let's reduce the cost of health care. It is too large a share of GDP, period.
14
Because of our interest and commitment to bluegrass music and the location of a summer home we inherited, we spend a great deal of time in rural America, while having lived in medium-sized towns and suburbs all our married life. We see the beauty, simplicity, and adherence to many important American values in rural areas. We've met some of the best people we ever knew, when we could compartmentalize the racism and excesses of warped religious belief.
We also have seen the farms gone fallow, the mills tumbling into piles of broken brick, and availability of ways to make a living disappear. The disappointment in the dream becomes manifested as anger and disillusion. Hunting for subsistence and pleasure has become "gun culture."
Meanwhile, the Internet is sparse, yet, at the same time, completely necessary for lifting this population into the world of online work, while providing knowledge beyond Fox. Our Constitution did not anticipate this move to the city, nor the devolution of farming, the basis for rural America. What we see, to often is despair. And we can only wring our hands!
12
I spoke too soon when i said that a republican had won an assembly seat in the district i live in. as it turned out, democrat rebecca kahan, who i backed, edged out republican catharine baker, by a little over 2000 votes after trailing by 3000 on election night. my vote made a difference in the race. the cities and suburbs have changed, and so has orange county. there are many more like minded educated whites, blacks, latinos and asians who want people of integrity who will represent their values and serve their interests as their representatives in government. we were all repelled by trump. it is true that too much money is spent on election campaigns, money that could instead be used for education, infrastructure and social programs. the supreme court is to blame for the citizens united decision though, and a situation where five billion was spent by both parties together on the mid term election. the majority concluded that the democrats are the better choice. 39 seats were flipped by democrats in the house. 23 democrats are now governors. the senate terrain favored republicans so they gained two seats, though vote stealing and supression played a major role. why rural voters support trump, a billionaire who has only served himself always while they fall further and further behind economically is a question only they can answer.
5
There is a widely believed myth about the stock market that holds that it values stability and predictability in the nation’s political affairs above chaos and confusion.
In actuality, investors ordinarily favor chaos and confusion because they like the idea that there is no steady hand at the till of government preventing businesses from doing anything and everything they want to do.
When Trump came along, businesses and well-to-do people saw a man who would give them lower taxes; was promising to spend lavishly on the military and the infrastructure; had no interest in controlling budget deficits; would cast a cold eye on the need for common sense gun control regulation and health and safety measures in the workplace; and would ignore the effects of climate change.
And they liked what they saw and rewarded him with political support and financial contributions; and themselves with a stock market boom.
Almost two years having passed, the stock market is now seriously faltering and showing many signs of heading toward a monumental crash.
Chaos and confusion aren’t everything they are cracked up to be.
7
What we are seeing is the logical denouement of Reagan/Thatcherism, what I call the Reagan Restoration. It has both the UK and the US extremely anxious, internally divided and distracted from the power takeover by the oligarchical, robber baron plutocrats and kleptocrats who owned both Reagan and Thatcher (and all - all - of their successors including New Labor under Blair and these centrist "Democrats" who are Rockefeller Republicans in sheep's clothing).
The plutocratic, oligarchic class was restored to power after an interregnum of Western democracy and now again dominates our countries by intentional divisiveness, electoral manipulation, deregulation and extremely skewed tax cuts and many other policies favoring the wealthy and corporate. That's resulted not just in economic inequality, but political inequality as well. Now there is a window in the US with this Democratic turning of the tide.
But changing brands is only a surface treatment. The real turn of actual substance can only come from reforming the Democrats as well as what may remain in sanity of the Republican Party. Only a transcendent politics of substantial fairness, justice and strong and lasting implementing reform will heal the divisiveness and inequality that have rent this nation's fabric. That is necessary not only for an equitable society but for our nation's health and indeed survival. For history has shown that cultures that descend into oligarchy almost inevitably fail not too long after.
19
@Rocky. Spot on. And now we‘ve got a Fearless Leader who‘s building on the neo-liberal fallacies of the right and the „left“. Welcome to Pottsylvania.
The economy is built on education. If local property tax is the only source of funds for education, then the poor rural areas will have poor education.
Separate but equal is not equal in educational finance. Equal educational resources should be provided to all students nationwide. The talent currently starved for educational resources would more than pay for the expense.
Equal education will bridge the gap.
Economic segregation is a violation of the 14th Amendment. Unequal education is dividing the country.
12
@Robin Foor contrary to your view, we are all not going to the little school house after we've finished picking crops in the morning. We are highly educated and leave our rural roots for more rewarding careers. You should ask yourself what flaw in HRC resonated with us that we found her unacceptable.
Also, look at how the Democratic Party has abandoned its working class roots. How the media depicted us during the 2016 Election was far from accurate. We're tired of the endless entitlements programs and believe in jobs and the economy. What passes as acceptable in California does not fly in the heartland.
We still embrace the Jeffersonian ideals!
1
@Robin Foor
Doesn't work that way. I grew up in rural southern Indiana spent and most of my working career in the NYC and DC areas. I got to know dozens, maybe hundreds of folks working in sophisticated high-paying jobs during those years. Nearly all had a story like mine -- they didn't start out in DC or some coastal area. Many grew up on farms in places like Ohio and Iowa. But they had the gumption and skills and open-mindedness to migrate to places where their talents were rewarded with highly paid jobs and where they found people like themselves. This is not to say we shouldn't have good schools everywhere, but it won't stem the marginalization of rural areas. The good ones will just move on to the cities, where the action is, and leave the others behind. And contrary to @George, most vote progressive -- I'm sure most of my old DC rural-transplant friends voted for HRC. I think Jefferson would have as well.
7
The reality is that not everyone requires a high school education much less college coursework to satisfactorily accomplish their jobs. I read somewhere that only about 30% of jobs truly require the training and education that come from a college degree. Look at any big box store and price to me that out of perhaps 100 people employed there, that more than 5 need any more than the knowledge, skills and abilities learned by the sixth grade to do the majority of the tasks performed. Why is the taxpayer expected to pay to put those remaining 95 workers through six years of school at a cost (on LI) of more than $20k/yr if the ROI is nonexistent? That represents a back of the napkin waste of $11,400,000 per Walmart, per Home Depot, per Costco for every location in America.
At least we're not talking about trying to abolish the Electoral College or altering the number of senators from each state, both of which are hardwired into the Constitution.
Democrats need to win elections if they want to work to reverse gerrymandering and voter suppression as well as the nuclear option for confirming judges in the Senate. And they cannot enact a progressive agenda if they do not win.
As far as the presidency is concerned, Democrats would be foolish at this point to try to flip deep-red states like Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, or Alaska. But they need to be able to win states like Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. They need to win enough Electoral votes -- not all of them.
Democrats lost in heartbreaking fashion in 2016. They are on the defensive despite winning the House this month. With the Senate and Supreme Court in GOP hands, it is unclear where Democratic subpoena power will lead us in terms of ousting Trump.
Democrats should play things conservatively leading up to 2020. I wouldn't get overly creative if I were in the party leadership. For example, a white male candidate for president might have the broadest voter appeal. Such a candidate could *still* work effectively for both racial and gender equality. But a candidate who does not get elected can do neither of those things.
Stick to the script and play it safe. Slow and steady wins the race.
2
These nether regions Dr. Krugman describes would be suffering depopulation and decline irrespective of present racial and ethnic dynamics. And non-whites who live in those regions are no less affected by the economic dynamics. What's tragic is that our business and financial elites would rather import skilled workers educated in far off lands--at no expense to them--rather than invest in educating people here for jobs of the present and future; while at the same time exporting unskilled and semi-skilled jobs in their never ending quest for cheap labor. More tragic is that our Constitution gives disproportionate political power to areas that have become economic backwaters, leading to, among other things, two of the last five presidential elections being won via the Electoral College rather than the popular vote. Perhaps even more tragic, if not potentially disastrous, is the stark reality that one major political party--the GOP--clings to political power by pandering to and exploiting ignorance, hate, and fear. When you have but one of seven declared GOP presidential candidates daring to declare his belief in science, as happened in 2012, in effect abandoning the scientific method in favor of Creationism, you are leading this nation on the same path of decline and irrelevance that afflicted and ultimately destroyed imperial Spain and the Ottoman Empire, to name just two examples.
8
In response to Sera The Village6h . On the loss of power of labour unions
Industrial Labor Unions lost power when it became possible, for factory owners, to legally respond to demand for wage increases, to move the factory to Mexico
Public Labour Unions's loss of power is more complex, but it's root is that they fell down as campaign contributors to SV and Wall Street.
Nance Pelosi, Fundraising, 2017 - 2018
Top Contributors
1. Facebook Inc
2. Salesforce.Com
3. Amazon.com
4. American Hospital Assn
5. Alphabet Inc (Google)
Charles E Schumer, 1989 - 2018
1. Goldman Sachs
2. Citigroup Inc
3. Paul, Weiss et al
4. JPMorgan Chase & Co
5. Credit Suisse
See any Unions - NOPE
8
Turning right "doesn’t seem to be about economic self-interest," and Trump has sold red states a pack of lies, but what have the likes of Cuomo, de Blasio, and Gillebrand sold us in blue New York? Giving Amazon nearly 2 billion dollars of our money for higher real estate prices and greater congestion is just the latest in a host of actions by blue state Democrats benefiting the wealthiest at the expense of everyone else. The current Mayor and Governor pay lip service to the housing crisis yet do nothing, and multi-billionaire Bloomberg, the greatest champion of the State-Corporate Complex which made New York City unlivable, runs for president.
If the narrative is that red state Republicans are at best misguided, what does that make blue state Democrats? As of 2018 homelessness in New York City is at the highest level since the Great Depression. There are over 63,000 homeless, mostly families with children, sleeping each night in the New York City shelters. Families now make up a staggering three-quarters of the shelter population, a 77 percent increase from ten years ago. Families enter shelters from a few clustered zip codes in the poorest neighborhoods, but originally come from every zip code in NYC prior to entering those neighborhoods. It means New York's poorest neighborhoods are ghettos into which all working poor and working class New York families are driven before they finally can't afford to live there and wind up in the shelters. Blue state Democrats did this.
6
I’ve always had to chuckle when I hear a Republican politician talking about “intellectual elitist” progressives as if they (the Republicans) all attended 2-year community colleges or small state colleges rather than the Ivy League universities most of them attended. Their ludicrous attempts to be “just folks” is laughable.
19
I think I am finally understanding Trumpism's appeal. It is mostly about how Trump makes his supporters feel. In simple terms, he makes them feel better. He assuages or vindicates their anger and fears. His outrageous actions and words empowers them, and provides a sense of justified vengence for perceived injustice. Trump is a genius in terms of his ability to perceieve his supporters aggrievements and to capitalize on them. Any attempts to counteract Trump's connection to his supporters on a cognitive or rational level will fail.
15
When NYC is paying Amazon huge amounts of its public purse to move to Queens the perversity of our political economy is transparent.
We pay for the privilege of having a living wage to our capitalist overlords with our public purse.
It's really a grotesque arrangement.
11
Re: "that is what we see, for example, in the former East
The historical record is the Professor Krugman does not understand Germany.
Consider
Why German Kant Kompete
"Well, here's my theory: The real divide between currently successful economies, like the U.S., and currently troubled ones, like Germany, is not political but philosophical; it's not Karl Marx vs. Adam Smith, it's Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative vs. William James' pragmatism."
Paul Krugman , 1999
Germany subsequently rose to the Worlds leading exporter
beating China,that has 15 times its population
2
The only way out of this mess is a radical improvement in the way we educate both children and adults.
Our system of education was designed in the 19th century to produce factory workers who could follow directions. Inertia and dogma ignore what modern neuroscience has revealed about the process of learning. It's no wonder that less than 10% of students reach their full potential.
For too many, the onset of employment means the end of education. Given the rate of change in technology, there's a retreat into ever less productive and satisfying jobs. Aggressive education must continue until retirement.
The most valuable natural resource on this planet is a well-educated human mind. Such minds can be developed everywhere.
14
Thank you for the honest writing, Mr. Krugman.
One thing I’d like to tell you is that this kind of chasm happened always historically and it has been always resolved violently by war, riot, revolution or whatever before modern democratic nations settled.
And, what I am most worried is our democracy might be similar to California’s fire fighters. Recent uncontrollable wild fires are happening because of the world best fire fighters in this state. While they suppress small fires, bushes and trees are growing denser and bigger and becoming better resources for bigger fires.
Democracy is supposed to resolve conflicts of people peacefully by periodic refreshments of governance by majority rules but it seems not working as intended when the people are divided severely while many of elites are not refreshed at all for a long time.
You are telling about benefits of meritocracy but is it really a solution for this kind of divided democracy? I am not sure.
Nature of human mind is similar to nature of forest in dry land. Equilibrium needs fire from time to time, small or big. Don’t you think Trump is a small fire pursuing equilibrium among people in natural way? If the old democratic rule suppresses the fire too fast, we might have to face real inferno in the future.
3
Cool...Paul I think you have it right. I come from Red America but now live in NY and I have been saying to my NY friends that this is not about economics but about race.
I remember the ugly epithets my Midwest friends used in reference to Obama when he was elected and expected this blowback for years, and was not surprised when Trumps hate won.
But now, the 2016 mid-terms are a hopeful sign of a realignment, and perhaps the end of Trumpism, but we all have remain vigilant and continue to vote.
19
Trump did not start the bigotry and hate, but he did exploit it and in so doing helped reveal how deep it runs.
19
"Rich metropolitan areas have gotten even richer, attracting ever more of the nation’s fastest growing industries. Meanwhile, small towns and rural areas have been bypassed, forming a sort of economic rump left behind by the knowledge economy."
Economic growth is never equal, socially or geographically. And it always doesn't take the federal government to fix things.
"...but the backlash against Trumpism has turned its growing regions solid blue."
Typical of midterm elections. Did you talk about "backlash" in the same terms when the Dems lost the House by a wider margin in 2010 or the Senate in 2014?
"We can and should do a lot to improve the lives of Americans in lagging regions."
Who is "we", Paul? At what point do you quit calling parts of the country as "lagging"?
"We can guarantee access to health care and raise their incomes with wage subsidies and other policies..."
That's right, Paul. Show everyone that the only way to success is through our all-knowing, all-caring and all-controlling government. And let's raise taxes to pay for it.
"So the bitter division we see in America — the ugliness infecting our politics..."
The bitterness is fueled by two warring political parties and their sycophants in the media, Paul.
Trump’s solution was also government. Wall building, trade wars, jawboning companies...
What is private industry doing about the problem?
8
@Bruce Thomson: "Trump’s solution was also government. Wall building, trade wars, jawboning companies... What is private industry doing about the problem?"
The same thing they do with any political party - curry favor. The Dems are not immune to this, either. How many large corporations and their CEOs are liberals? Do they not also try to get government to help them? This is crony capitalism and was not part of the plan the founders had. If we truly believe in capitalism, then at least the federal government should stop with subsidies, carve-outs, import quotas and protectionist tariffs. Eliminate the Export-Import Bank. Quit making the taxpayer foot the bill for corporate largesse.
Professor, what you describe as the "... cumulative, self-reinforcing process at work " is in fact the ghastly effect of Extremist, Law of the Jungle, Robber Baron Capitalism.
And until the U.S.A. experiences an epiphany, and remodels itself on the principles of northern European capitalism (which is actually 'capitalism with a human face'), the gap between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, will only widen.
Those self-serving Americans who persist in disparaging European 'Socialism' are only digging their own graves because, as the reverse of the saying goes, a sinking tide sinks all boats, including eventually the yachts.
23
American politics is reaching a breaking point due to our antique electoral system, one suited to the agrarian 18th century, but wholly inadequate to our current needs. This is made abundantly clear when the nearly empty rectangle that is North Dakota sends an equal number of people to the Senate as does populous California. Or when twice in five elections the popular vote loser is seated in the White House. The Presidency should not be awarded by acreage but by the votes of all. (And all should be provided their fair right to vote!) Rural America has long been a locus of anti-intellectualism, bigotry and elite-envy. Nothing new there. What must change is the outside electoral clout wielded by all those empty acres.
22
No other economist has done as much damage to working Americans with such little understanding
Let me quote
"I guess I should have expected that this (pro outsourcing) comment would generate letters along the lines of, “Well, if you lose your comfortable position as an American professor you can always find another job–as long as you are 12 years old and willing to work for 40 cents an hour.”
Such moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization–of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries and the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports:
Paul Krugman , In Praise of Cheap Labor
Note:
1. Zero understanding for working American that lost their jobs due to outsourcing.
2. Instead , accusations of "moral outrage" to those who
lost their jobs to those willing to work for less overseas
It is Mr. Krugman's now proven wrong theories that brought about the current political split.
Those laid off, liberated their "moral outrage" voting Trump
My economic specialty is studying the economics of Syracuse once a prosperous city, with GM's Fisher plant, Carrier Air Conditioning, Magna Gear Works. Devastated by the outsourcing Mr. Krugman championed.
They left and moved to Mexico in search of cheap labor
GM circle was rechristened Military Circle. All that is left of Carrier is its name on Carrier Dome. Magna Gear works shut down.
Mr. Krugman theories of free trade has been a disaster for working Americans
7
@Woof
Robots and outsourcing decreased the number of unskilled factory workers ( more robots than outsourcing). GM used to have 350K workers in late 80s , now it has 180K workers with higher productivity & better salaries/benefits ( esp. healthcare cost). We used to have a textile industry in NC ( same unskilled work can be done in the third world for a small fraction of labor cost )
Unemployment is very low and if the laid off unskilled employees train for a better paying job , it would be better for themselves , their communities and the country .
1
I guess that means the scientists responsible for discovering the effects of climate change are responsible for causing the symptoms.
Unfortunate that Dr. Krugman and the Democratic Party aren’t focusing more attention on bringing prosperity to economically lagging areas and people.
Such efforts have been at the heart of the Democratic Party’s biggest successes, including FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society and Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
When the Democrats turn away from shared prosperity, they lose focus, mission and their party’s soul.
12
Red American has not been "left behind." Instead, red America has refused to get on board. I've personally experienced how red Americans treat customers with different skin colors and nationalities. How could they expect to compete in a global economy while laden with obvious prejudices? If they don't refuse to engage with folks who are different in marketplace, their attitudes will turn the market off. They reject education, they reject ideas that originate elsewhere and out of ultra-nationalist presumption take a pass on the synergy of cultures interacting - in contrast to the coasts, which have always embraced trade both in commerce and knowledge.
So to answer the question "why have lagging regions turned right while successful regions turned left," if one measures left and right on a scale of tolerance -> racism, it is obviously the wrong question. Successful regions are successful precisely because they are "left."
40
" may have deep economic roots, and there may be no practical way to make it go away."
Wow. So its not racism. as PK claimed in the past
" and there may be no practical way to make it go away"
Maybe the rural Americans just should block the roads, like the French rural inhabitants are doing right now.
Casualties so far : 1 Dead , 528 injured of which 92 are police
Or maybe the rural folks should just stop delivering food to the urban elite
2
@Gerhard. Quite true. Of course, urban elites could turn off internet access, block the delivery of parts to fix farm equipment (mostly made overseas or in urban areas) or decline to allow access to ports to sell food to other countries among other things. Oh yeah, also being rich urban areas they could buy enough imported food to feed their people. I have heard there are farmers overseas still...
2
To a large extent, exportable goods come from middle America, not from large cities and not from the coastal, expensive, and hard mega-city life. My city (not rural) has 55,000 residents, and is home to Eastman Chemical Company, my employer. We here have big houses, cars, boats and a community with great (free public) schools due to our large concentration of Ph.D.s (like me). We also have commutes of 10 minutes. Eastman uses 99% domestic resources and exports roughly 30% of our output. You make a good point, Paul, but have made the mistake of painting with a broad brush over the facts. The dollar would be pretty much worthless without middle America (Caterpillar, John Deere, corn, soybeans, chemicals, etc.).
8
@Tim Nolen The U.S. exports a great deal of services and sortware, almost all of those are urban and coastal. And a great deal of those farm exports come from California, Texas, Florida and the mid-Atlantic regions, which are clearly coastal.
3
'Lagging' rural areas, and 'Lagging' states voted for trump. They are the people most likely to complain about taxes - They also use a disproportionate amount of taxpayer dollars in the form of social programs, subsidies and infrastructure.
Kind of ironic, huh.
Why should taxpayers dollars from urban areas be used help rural trump supporters who complain about paying taxes, complain about the cities, and who vote for people who oppose programs that benefit their communities ?
9
@S B: "Why should taxpayers dollars from urban areas be used help rural trump supporters who complain about paying taxes, complain about the cities, and who vote for people who oppose programs that benefit their communities?"
Why, indeed? This is an excellent reason for getting the federal government out of redistributing wealth via social programs/entitlements/welfare. Let states set up their own programs. Then you can take your argument to your state legislature.
Dr. Krugman asks: "Why have lagging regions turned right while successful regions turned left?"
It's easier to blame other people than to look in the mirror at the person most responsible. It's even easier when they have a different skin color or national origin and the President is saying its OK to blame them.
This was never about economics. Which party raised taxes on the top 1% to fund healthcare for the bottom 40%? Yep, Democrats. The ACA transferred about $21,000 from the average top 1% family to provide $600 in subsidies to the average bottom 40% family, according to CBO, covering 20 million more people in the process. Conservatives were for Heritage Foundation healthcare before Obama implemented it, and then they were against it, because he wasn't a white guy.
Just imagine if Obama had a unified Democratic Congress all 8 years. We'd have even higher taxes on the rich, lower inequality, more subsidies for healthcare and education, a big infrastructure stimulus program, and a lower deficit trajectory than under Trump, currently $13.7 trillion in debt additions over 10 years vs. $9.4 trillion under Obama.
Of course job creation was faster in Obama's last 21 months than Trump's first 21 months, real wage growth was higher, inflation and mortgage rates were lower.
Ah, the good old days! If only Republicans were rational and fact-based. But then, they'd be Democrats...
50
@David Doney.....the Dems raised taxes to fund ACA, but still the plan is that our taxes go to subsidize insurance profits, so they can cover more people. Profits 1st priority. Big insurance donates to elections.
In other democracies, if they do use insurance mandates, the govt regulates the cost of premiums so all can afford h/c. Less profit for big insurance!
Here that's off the table---for politicans and media to discuss.
I just heard a caller to cspan say he and his wife can no longer afford their steadily rising insurance premiums ---over 2000/month. So starting Jan, his wife will have insurance, but he will not. They just can't make the payments. Presumabley they don't qualify for subsidies. This is how our politics divides people and creates problems of income and class stratification.
This is acceptable in the US.
There are democrats who want to just 'improve or expand it' ACA. Their generalizations sound humanitarian. But they leave it at that.
Krugman doesn't explain how to fund truly universal h/c as dozens of other nations do. The media avoid it.
We'll see how the Repubs react to the next Dem president who is white, so the racial issue will be eliminated. Will they find ways to insult and oppose him/her in everything?
3
"So the regional economic divide becomes a political chasm.
Can this chasm be bridged? Honestly, I doubt it."
I doubt it as well. If people are willing to ignore their own economic interests and vote instead for a party that massages their feelings of aggrievance with a "Leave it to Beaver" fantasy about a USA that never existed, then no, we will not be able to fix that economic divide. One cannot help people that will not help themselves, and that is what the vote of 2016 proved.
8
I have just been reading a biography of Linus Pauling, one of America’s most accomplished scientists, with two Nobel Prizes to his credit. He was born in the small town of Condon, Oregon, which was then (as now) a long distance from any major center.
Most of his career was spent at CalTech, but he began his studies at the Oregon Agricultural College. His family was not well off, and he worked hard to support himself and to pay for his studies.
I could go on, but surely it’s obvious that young men and women have always left the smaller places in search of their ambitions. If there were more of them, perhaps, the families left behind might feel differently about the world their children have come to inhabit.
Others have commented that the present day youth in America’s small places do not move outward in the way they once did. This is the problem that we need to tackle, and it’s not easy. There is no system of tax credits or transfer payments that can magically create ambition in a young person’s heart. Indeed, the dissatisfaction that drives ambitious people often makes them poor candidates for welfare schemes of any kind.
But if we can’t create the ambition to climb, we can at least make sure that the ladders are visible, reachable, and climbable.
Linus Pauling never forgot the first teacher who encouraged his interest in science. Her name was Pauline Geballe, and she taught at Washington High School in Portland. These are the people we need to find more of.
16
Just a thought on the comparison of superstar cities and rural America. Just imagine if Apple hadn’t outsourced the manufacturing of its iPhones and computers to China and instead made them in the rust belt. Instead of Apple profiting 100 billion perhaps they would have profited only 50 billion instead. That to me is a very sad fact of American capitalism.
24
Even if they brought those jobs right now, they would quickly lose their customer base to low-cost competitors like Samsung.
You can’t fool Mother Nature.
1
The 'Country Mouse/City Mouse' construct has been around forever, and Fox News, RNC, Evangelical Christian Con Artists have been exploiting it to the detriment of the country for decades now. The facts are that many young people from these areas leave, either before or after college, for the big cities where they can find work that suits them. If everyone stayed put, they wouldn't be rural or small anymore, would they? It's a lifestyle that some embrace and are content with, and others (most it would seem) are drawn to a more diverse and dynamic environment. Doesn't make either one bad or good, right or wrong, just different. And that's the beauty of our country, we're free to make those choices, IF YOU HAVE A GOOD EDUCATION. Driving a wedge between city and country folk has been a winning strategy for republicans for a long time, and I don't see it ending anytime soon. At least we (the people) could try to show each other some mutual respect, and don't fall for the divisive rhetoric. Everybody has a part to play here, no matter color or creed or religion or gender or sexual orientation. The Constitution says so, and I know/hope/want it to be true.
7
The main reason for the urban rural divide is federal tax policy. Businesses should be allowed to deduct a standard per square foot cost for factory and office space per year regardless of location or actual cost.
Why does a business get a subsidy (I.e. tax deduction) for locating in an expensive location? This unfairly penalizes a cheap location and the deduction is a very expensive one for federal revenue.
3
The Trump tax cuts didn't help rural America, getting rid of Obamacare was popular, but expanded medicaid and laws that protect preexisting conditions are popular in rural areas. So it is not economic but "cultural".
3
Instead of thinking about the economic gap between red and blue states, it’s more accurate to think of red vs blue districts. The Brookings Institute has a report on the 2016 election that showed that the approximately 500 districts that Clinton carried constitute 64% of the gdp, while the 2500 that Trump carried amount to only 36%.
www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2016/11/29/another-clinton-trump-divide-high-output-america-vs-low-output-america/amp/
6
"America, then, is a divided nation, and is likely to stay that way for a while. But the better angels of our nature can still prevail."
A quaint thought, Dr. Krugman. However, a plethora of psychological studies have shown that it is virtually impossible to change a person's mind once it has been made up, particularly when that person is surrounded by like-minded thinkers. (See, e.g., R. Chialdini, "Influence"; D. Kahnemann, "Thinking, Fast and Slow").
What that means for our politics is this: there will be a shift back to Blue as voters in urban and suburban areas get more and more fed up with the ruinous "policies" of the Republicans (tax cuts for the wealthy, continuous attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no intention to replace it), and finally go to the polls to vote. These voters will eventually cast enough votes to take back the Senate, and the Oval Office. Rural voters (most especially white males) won't change their minds. They'll continue to vote against their own self-interest, along racist lines. But, if we're lucky, they'll be overcome by enough urban and suburban educated voters to prevail over the grossly-slanted election playing field established by our flawed Constitution and abetted by Republicans who have made, and continue to make, voter suppression one of their top priorities.
38
@ALB Gerrymandering, purging voter rolls, creaking and broken voting machines, lack of sufficient polling places....these issues need to be tackled NOW at state and federal levels as millions will continue to be disenfranchised.
7
It’s education. Pure and simple. Make rural education world class and the divisions will steadily lessen. Impoverished parts of the very blue cities could stand a dose as well. Why don’t we insist on that?
25
@Paul Because we don’t want to pay for it. Because rural areas don't especially want world-class education — not when it means a commitment to empiricism (which it does) and demythologizing history (which it also does). Because the last thing the rural politicians who control state legislatures want is for the people of color who comprise most of the urban impoverished to receive a world class education.
7
So why are the goods that are produced in rural areas of so little value? You can live without digital videos, but you can't live without food and clothing. Out of all the goods sold on Amazon, practically nothing is manufactured in Washington or New York City. You won't see any fields of wheat or iron mines anywhere near those cities, but they're all eating pastries and living in steel skyscrapers.
Nor would I say that people living far from cities are particularly unskilled. There are many farmers, many machinists, and many engineers who are with advanced degrees who are able to create and run high-tech farms and factories. Out in the middle of nowhere, they design and develop jet engines, electricity-generating turbines, and computerized elevators, something that would be totally impractical in crowded cities.
7
@Jonathan
I visit rural areas quite often, and meet pretty of talented folks. Yes, they work hard to put food on our table and clothes on our backs, mostly for real wages that have actually declined these past few decades. It’s the diverse urban concentrations where the great universities and research facilities and artists gather to innovate and prosper, where the giants like Amazon want to have their footprints. This is where modernity and globalization has brought us, and there’s no turning back.
6
@Jonathan Perhaps it is because the family farm now has to compete with the factory farm. CAFOs, intensive livestock concentrations, specialized, with their efficiency on the one hand and damage to the countryside around them on the other, may make life more difficult for rural America.
7
@Jonathan Rural areas are getting larger geographically but declining in population. Farms are getting bigger, more mechanized and people are migrating to the urban areas.
5
With the wonders of animation, the shaping of our world through the movement of land masses of ancient times into the continents of today reveal how Gondwanaland became Australia, Tasmania separated off to the south, and our cousins in New Zealand became forever separated from us by 'the ditch'.
Watching America from afar, I see similar tectonic shifts in the social and cultural shape of your nation as outlined by Prof. Krugman and others who highlight the separation between your cities, your urban, suburban and rural communities. What I see is the world of the 'The Hunger Games' being formed right before my eyes complete with fire, lightning and smoke providing the backdrop behind a leader, standing in the burnt out ruins of a town whose name he could not even get right.
11
What has surprised me the most about modern Republicans is how comfortable they are with authoritarianism. I wonder about Krugman's reference to the people left behind in Eastern Germany after reunification. If you read German, you might be interested in a book "Cabo de Gata" written by Eugen Ruge in 2013. Written in the first person, it describes a youngish former East German who feels rootless and disconnected in the new, more modern Germany. He spends a winter in an isolated beach community in Spain. He seems especially disturbed that people aren't telling him what's right and wrong. He at one point even expresses nostalgia for his political doctrine classes. Finally, he turns to religion to give him the external moral guidance he longs for.
8
@Grindelwald My understanding is that 'conservative' (that is, resistant to or suspicious of change) people tend to be more accepting of hierarchies and authorities in general. Perhaps they are less likely to want to leave home to go to college or to travel, etc. Eventually those desiring change or questioning 'traditional ways' will leave the area that 'time forgot' or remain and be shunned or excluded. At least, that's what happened where I grew up, and left as soon as I could.
3
How many people in the unemployment line, directly because of GOP policies, are wearing Trump pins and MAGA hats?
I guess they feel it's better to support a loud-mouthed, back-stabbing racist then to be gainfully employed.
And, frankly, if you don't believe in socialism, then I feel you shouldn't benefit from any of it's myriad forms in this country today. Forms such as: unemployment insurance, the ACA, retirement benefits, public roads, public schools, public libraries, public police forces, etc, etc, etc. Actually, pretty much anything with the word "public" in it. As that word, in and of itself, is socialist in nature.
And, BTW, if your house ever catches on fire, you should be forced to pay the fire department BEFORE they put the fire out.
53
I recently watched — lord this is embarrassing— a Hallmark Christmas movie, then compulsively binged on two more. The themes are the same. In small town America where the closest thing to a university is a 1950’s style soda shop, tiny non-chain businesses thrive, no economic base is necessary, whites rule with disturbing gentleness, and the only villains are workaholic visitors from “the big city” who wanna ruin the paradise that is small town USA.
Education is always suspect. People with advanced degrees earn the moral high ground by becoming unemployed wives or mechanics. Here is the idealized version of Trump’s America, the folks busy making us great again. It’s sad, really.
One silver lining, though. Absolutely no one says Happy Holidays. It’s Merry Christmas or get out of town. Needless to say, not a single Jew shows up in any of these movies.
58
I encouraged my children to locate to a better place to raise their children and provide themselves with financially rewarding careers. I did not explain to them that many of the third tier cities are extremely stratified and the local grand poobahs stifle the upwardly motivated who must escape. Ninety miles away is enough to provide a different culture. And that culture cultivates. I hope that my home starts thinking about the future rather than worship the past.
18
My observations are most rural people are raised in a community where they do not experience the multi cultural experience of the cosmopolitan crowd.
They may have a good education in math and science, but they are not exposed to the social sciences, they do not see and understand the diversity of different cultures. The Hindu culture seems strange to them,it is Idol Worship. They have not read Kipling, Shakespeare, heard Rossini, Verdi, been to Rome, Paris.
How many have read Plutarrch's Lives?
They live in a sheltered community where religion is a community affair, any contradictions are passed off by their leaders as Liberal anti Christ, they do not even know the Jewish roots of Christianity.
Politicians are considered opportunist, it is not a profession, they do not meet the standards set by the founding fathers.
they grow up amid a conservative philosophy, liberals are seen almost as enemies. They have been taught liberals are closet communists that only want to tax them to pay for the welfare of those who do not work, or who want to destroy their lifestyle.
These are powerful beliefs, when challenged in a university cause cognitive dissonance, and even anger, all they need to know is hard science for their farms or businesses, none of that Liberal propaganda.
At one time it was considered necessary for a rural family to own an Encyclopedia Britannica, reading and writing were emphasized, rural folks were more liberal then, no TV they read the classics.
38
@David Underwood
Interesting thoughts. I live just up hill from you in a rural-ish community--a highly educated refugee, native from DC area.
Likely my neighbors are nowhere near as liberal or "educated" as I am but I like it better than downhill in town.
I enjoy a peaceful co-existence without political strife--I appreciate my neighbors' capabilities and v.v.,
a benefit of CA even though Placer County is most conservative in CA!
1
@David Underwood I recall a college classmate who dropped out as a freshman due to being shocked by biology class materials. She asked us (dorm mates) if we 'believed that stuff' (evolution) - we said we did - then left school that weekend without saying goodbye.
7
@Ivy
El Dorado County is even more conservative than Placer. Towns like Lincoln and Rocklin are getting bay area refugees, but they are still conservative. Tea Party is popular in Penryn and Newcastle. But these are not like those Midwest farming towns in Iowa, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and the famous Kansas, where those small communities have long term families that go back to homesteading days.
The biggest city in Placer is Roseville still conservative but getting less so. However if you look around the biggest churches are fundamentalistic ones. Citrus Height is pretty conservative, voted for Dishonest Donald. education and income below the median for Sacramento County. My little neighborhood is mixed, several retired school teachers, among others, but it is primarily conservative.
2
Periods of rapid economic change coincide with (produce) social conservatism. The 19th century in England and America experienced probably the most accelerated economic and technological change in history, but we tend to think of it as a period of social conservatism, even political reaction. If we're experiencing the same thing now (Trumpism) it's probably that change has temporarily outrun our ability to assimilate it--the key word being 'temporarily'. There's something a bit frenetic about liberalism, the idea that we know more than we do (liberals always self-identify as intelligent and educated), that every problem someone identifies is real; a reflexive conviction that we must act, now, before it's too late (climate change, anyone?). Maybe the best answer to a lot of social problems would be a little more of Mr. Moynihan's 'benign neglect'.
1
@Ronald B. Duke
Neglect is never benign.
I thought digital connectivity was supposed to promote population dispersion and economic redistribution as people were freed to do remunerative jobs far from the madding crowd.
The idea was not that people outside the population centers would somehow jump from traditional, largely physical, occupations to ones that can be pursued online, but that people in such portable occupations would go where they wanted to live. This trend would, I take it, tend to enrich local economies and governments, thereby opening new paths for the people native to the area.
I know some workers have actually made the move, but now we have Amazon presupposing the need for a concentrated pool of "strong technical talent" for headquarters jobs. I assume we're talking about more than hardware maintenance.
Is connectivity out and commuting in, after all?
3
@Longestaffe
Connectivity is a farce--but does need to be fixed for large numbers of people.
In rural but very close to urban CA I lose cellphone (and mobile hotspot) a few feet from my back window.
I am fortunate many people have no connection at all.
Yet within 25-30 miles of Sacramento the Capital.
And 120 from Silicon Valley.
My last house the best, only reception was at end of neighbor's diving board. People came over to make calls.
And this is CA.
I travel cross country and often in flat areas have better connectivity.
@Ivy
Wow! Thanks for that.
Now that you mention it, Richard Ojeda, a Democratic nominee to Congress from West Virginia, made a similar observation about Internet service there and said his district was technologically living in 1945. I didn't realize it was such a widespread problem, though.
In this article, he author is changing his narrative. Up to now he has been saying that Trumpism has its roots basically in identity politics, and not in the stresses caused by globalization (The reader may see some citations in https://nyti.ms/2Duc480 for support of the globalization thesis). I am glad he finally recognizes the economic roots of Trumpism. His comparison to the situation in East Germany, is on target. Trump and the Republicans have been good at stoking fears and racism in those left behind by globalization. But, if we liberals had succeeded in dealing with globalization, beyond saying platitudes such as retraining and education, we had not suffered Trumpism and its devastating consequences.
There is a very distressing affirmation in this article, namely that the cleavage between the metropolitan and rural areas cannot be bridged because that will imply "swimming against a powerful economic tide." This affirmation was repeated many times when globalization began to reshape the social and economic structure of this country for the worse.
3
Mr. Krugman writes: "many voters in lagging regions have a sense of grievance, a feeling that they’re being disrespected by the glittering elites of superstar cities" -- I believe he is right, but at the same time am curious. What, specifically, did the glittering elites DO that created this feeling? Maybe if we, in the superstar (though not super enough for HQ2) could figure out what we did to offend, we could start reversing that and bring the lagging regions into the fold of a countrywide community of common interest that could actually address some of the issues we -- collectively -- face?
4
@FTurrin
What did the elite do? Look for Kevin Williamson's brilliant essay in National Review in 2016. He argues that those dying areas were doomed and/or did it to themselves, but they prefer to whine and blame others.
1
",,,there is little if any support in voting data for the notion that “economic anxiety” drove people to vote for Trump."
Just hang on a second there, Nobel Boy. Trump plodded into office with the promise of tax cuts. If he lost. and the potential cuts evaporated, THERE was your economic anxiety among the more affluent people who voted for Trump, who is a tool and a fool but knows how to demagogue.
Furthermore, anxiety about foreigners threatening their economic situation (and therefore their social status) by competing for their jobs (H1-B visas, outsourcing, etc.) wasn't racism per se. It was preemptive financial self preservation necessitated by past bad trade deals, predatory corporations who only care about maximizing shareholder value (by busting unions and outsourcing jobs), and the questionable cost/benefit of going into hock for advanced, overpriced degrees that saddled people with debt into retirement in order to compete against younger, cheaper labor, foreign or domestic.
The racism-not-financial-anxiety study that your seem to reference to explain Trump voters was myopic and misleading. The ivory tower academics who designed the study should check their work. They may find that a do-over is warranted.
4
Paul, your column is the closest I have seen the progressive left admit that they, too, do not have an economic plan for working class America. Sure, the government can hand out some health insurance, increase minimum wage a few bucks, maybe pump up the earned income tax credit, etc., but the bottom line is working class America will now be forever dependent on government welfare programs just to survive in a knowledge based economy. And neither party has an economic solution to fix it, so both parties largely just ignore the working class economy problem. And we wonder how someone like Trump could ever be elected. Well, bless our hearts.
6
Most of Krugman's observations in this piece may be correct, but his assertion that "the better angels of our nature can still prevail," is made without supporting evidence.
5
What laid the groundwork?
Congress and presidents ok'd US business sending millions of our jobs to low wage countries. The resulting profits increased mega donations to election campaigns, shutting out the voices of the average citizen on politics.
So millions of citizens lack both a political voice and decent jobs.
Outsourcing jobs deprived millions of citizens of decent livelihoods and financial security---and pensions and employee health insurance---and removed supporting businesses from many towns. It has unbalanced our democracy, removing the political influence of citizens.
Competing for big money donors, politicians have been representing the rich--- legalized by the S. Court. Business can dictate terms for tax breaks in cities.
The well known study of congress by Princeton’s Gilens and Page showed that average citizens’ opinions on issues hardly influence lawmaking, VS the influence of big donors.
The upshot --- corporations regulate govt's laws, instead of govt laws regulating corporations. The media ignores cause/effect. Increased inequality enflames resentment as people compete for crumbs. Enter Trump.
Jimmy Carter-- "we veer to oligarchy since it takes millions to run for any office."
What's healthy for any democracy is public funding of elections with limits on private money---common abroad, but not even discussed here.
Yet, voters and many politicians want election finance reform. It can’t happen if our media avoids connecting cause/effect.
27
Schools here have twenty-year-old books held together by duct tape. There are too few books to send any home with children to read or do homework at home. School roofs leak and kids sit on floors because the desks and chairs are falling apart. When I was an adjunct at a community college, students told me they didn't have books at school but were given one or two page handouts to read.
If you had a big high-tech corporation looking for a new headquarters, would you want to be in a state where students didn't have books, or have science books that are twenty years out of date? These are the kinds of schools you get in states where people don't want to pay taxes.
290
@Linda And this in an era where it is technically feasible to give each kid a tablet or Kindle and load not only the textbook, but secondary sources as well, all up-to-date with the latest information. But this isn't just a problem in rural areas; urban school districts suffer from the same issues.
What I do believe is that there is no reason beyond the profit motive, ideology and parochialism for kids in rural and exurban areas to have an education any less than that in the best and most affluent districts. But it is hard to provide a good grounding in science when your school board is stacked with people who think the world is 6000 years old!
What gets me is that there was a time when rural Americans valued education. My great-grandfather was an Ohio farmer and I inherited a part of his library, which is filled with classic literature and general knowledge reference books. This was a man who, nearly a century ago, put all seven of his daughters through college. Now, he was perhaps unusual, but there was a great tradition in America of a Jeffersonian agrarian culture that valued knowledge and education as a worthy end in itself, but also as a key to good citizenship and participation in public life. We have lost that and now are in a society that far too often revels in ignorance.
64
@Matt....good post on your great grandfather and education!
One problem is we fund most local schools with local property taxes. It's a small pool. Very counter productive. This reduces funding sources and adds to class stratification and inequality. Then an exploitive for-- profit college like Trump University cheats students. What a system.
Countries with better education outcomes use more national funding for basic education and also for standards and consistency. Then they fund low cost college tuition.
And countries with more fair and secure elections also don't leave it up to states to set the rules and get away with whatever they want.
This is a pattern.
17
@Linda Your comment reminds me that Bill Maher, who criticized Amazon's decision to go to NY and DC, suggested a better move would have been to Tulsa.
5
Ross Douthat reached a different conclusion, and he actually has some numbers to back it up.
"Which brings me to the recent midterms, which offered a natural experiment in the race-versus-economics question — because, as president, Trump has been more plutocratic than populist on many issues, even as he has kept up the tribalist provocations and, just before the midterms, used the migrant caravan as an excuse for race-baiting.
If the Obama-Trump voters were primarily motivated by racial anxiety, you would expect his approach to consolidate them for the G.O.P. — especially with a strong economy, with the Democrats putting up lots of minority candidates, and so on.
But white identity politics failed to hold Trump’s gains. Some of the biggest swings against the G.O.P. were among middle and lower-income Americans, not just among affluent suburbanites. The Upper Midwest swung back toward Democrats. And among whites without college degrees, Democrats improved on Hillary Clinton’s showing by eight percentage points — identical to their gains among college-educated whites."
7
@Ian Maitland
The turning blue of Orange County further proves the limits of white identity politics. It also proved the validity and reach of the Progressive message.
A little reality about geography people! By a large margin, even out in flyover country, most people do not live in "rural" areas per se but in urban areas. Republicans win a lot of elections in these areas but there are millions upon millions of democrats in these regions. Painting it all with this broad brush is nothing more than ill-informed and lazy thinking. Amazon located in NYC and DC because it is a massive company and needs more people than it thinks it can obtain in outside the east or west coast corridors.
11
Another good example for Paul’s article. The surrounding counties of Atlanta have turned much bluer this midterm, just today another Georgia House Representative, incumbent Republican Betty Price, lost to Democrat Mary Robichaux. It was a particularly good win, Ms. Price is Tom Price’s wife. Remember him Health and Human Services Secretary that had to resign over a multitude of ethics violations.
The economy is doing well, and though Trump has touted that, it works against him. The beneficiaries are the metro areas not rural, and metro is turning bluer and bluer, and growing and growing.
Looking forward to 2020.
7
I think another source of grievance has its origins in high school. It's the resentment that average or below average students have toward the brainiacs. Subsitutute "glittering elites of superstar cities" for "straight A students in the National Honor Society," and I think you have a rich source for the native resentment that people in lagging regions feel toward those those living in "big rich metropolitan areas." I think that resentment spurred Bush to victory over Kerry. Bush was a guy you could have a beer with. Racism aside, I think it partly explains why so many Trump supporters despise President Obama. He's a brianiac elite. What does he know??
6
@GK Good point. Forty years after graduating from high school, I discovered and became enthralled by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on TV (now I'll follow Joss Whedon anywhere, from Shakespeare to The Avengers). What the show made me realize was that we never quite leave high school--teenage traumas and relationships color our perceptions and the way we see the world throughout our lives, even when we become mature enough to recognize and try to overcome their effects. Maybe fixing the political traumas we're experiencing now means we need to improve the way schools deal with teens, and give students a stronger and smarter start on adult life.
5
gk,
It is not just that tech companies are run by smarter people. They don't seem to care about anyone. They are not good citizens. Take Apple for an example. They outsource their entire manufacturing process, thus removing opportunity for gainful employment for thousands in the USA. And they avoid millions in taxes through financial gimmicks. I dont call them smart, as Trump would, I call them deadbeats.
1
No matter how over-the-top those who flock to Trump's rallies are, the reality is a bunch of promises made, which he can't deliver: a border wall, deportation of all illegals, new manufacturing jobs, cutting regulation, a balanced budget, a "beautiful" health care system, and rebuilding America's deteriorating infrastructure.
Trump spins his failures as great success but having both House and Senate kowtowing to his every whim, he was unable to kill Obamacare outright and Ryan and McConnell gave away billions in free money to corporate CEOs, big investors and the ultra-rich.
There may be a small contingent of his fan club who are absolutely devoted to Trump and it doesn't matter to them whether he delivers on what he promised. But all the dog whistles, fulminations, policy by tweet, nod and wink for white supremacists, an enemy of the week, a Temp agency Cabinet and flash in the pan diplomacy don't add up to affordable healthcare without prior conditions or living wage jobs. Even those who gambled on Trump feel like they were dealt a stacked deck and their bet is costing them.
The iron rule of political science is the correlation between the economy and social unrest. A high tide of racism and hate comes with economic disruption and uncertainty. The tide turns when the economy is stable.
Trump got it wrong. It's not America First people want. It always has been me first. Trump of all people should know this.
The harder Trump is, the harder he falls.
14
@Yuri Asian
The majority of Trumpsters are solid because when Trump fails they blame the liberals who will not allow him to succeed. I've been told this by multiple Trumpsters. Sometimes they go on about the Deep State being the liberal elite. Apparently it's part of their programming.
@Fourteen
You're probably right that they're intoxicated now. But the highway sign says rough road ahead and these are the folks who'll pay the price for hitching a ride on the Trump Express, which runs without shock absorbers.
Right now his people confuse fighting with winning. When his tax cut means no action of infrastructure, and a few prominent Trumpers turn on him, the splashes around the SS Trump will be the rats jumping ship.
He'll always have a core of Lost Boys who stand by their man but it won't be a critical mass for him to steal the 2020 election.
The economic catastrophe of 2008 changed the world but the fundamental problems remain and will be harder to fix with American trade wars alienating major economic players that wom't show up next time.
There's the $1 trillion in student debt and a credit card overhang big enough to sink the Titanic. Interest rates are climbing so debt will weigh even heavier. With the deficit exploding there will be no easy federal bailout this time without printing more money and triggering massive inflation.
Trump is the personification of bankruptcy. America First is where we'll be standing in line at the soup kitchen queue.
The solution is easy. Every American works for Amazon or the US military
3
We need to unload our target cities, such as D.C. and NYC because a nuclear weapon or even a "dirty" bomb would be catastrophic.
Face it Professor Kugman. We don't have democracy in the US. The Constitution was written by rich white male, slave owning, men, for the advantage of their peers. This is democracy-denying nonsense, related to your family as it grew up on Long Island , and which you have bought into.
Madison's mistake is that he assumed the transitional government in London, that existed in 1787, was a government to be modelled. It was a government in transition, and certainly not something to be modelled.
Madison's mistake is that he kept the king, and we now see this in spades. Ronald McDonald ias now our president/king.Are you happy with this?
Excellent, balanced commentary. The elephant in the room is Trump
3
"As documented in “Identity Politics,” an important new book analyzing the 2016 election, what distinguished Trump voters wasn’t financial hardship but “attitudes related to race and ethnicity.”
What a polite way to say 'racism and bigotry'. The only thing left out is religion... of course, antisemitism and anti-Islam are very embedded in the "ethnicity" code word. Trump's campaign (and presidential rally) language speaks all the code words, strums all the chords that resonate with these alienated not-yet-winners. Two years into Trump's reign, have they started asking why they aren't "winning" economically yet...? I wonder if Trump can string along his hard core base long enough to contend in 2020, or if there's a limit even to his ability to incite and divide the country. Well, "we'll see".
5
Maybe we should take that right wing advice of "starving the beast"... Empty the countryside by taking away their subsidies. Make them come to the cities and find their way like so many other immigrants...
7
It's interesting to try to imagine what the country might look like with the same economic trends and the same political structure (Electoral College, Senate, etc.) but without the GOP being a disciplined and dishonest party of plutocrats. What would policy look like?
Amazon may be free to relocate wherever it pleases, but the government can exert a lot of control over where defense contractors are located. And it wouldn't just be pork barrel stuff. Rural broadband would be so much better by now, for one thing. And maybe we'd have a federal property tax to subsidize poorer schools?
One issue is that urban wealthy Americans used to know that food isn't produced in grocery stores but in rural America, many don't anymore.
And among those aware that avocados doesn't grow in guacamole boxes, many prefer to import one produced 5000 miles away because it's labelled organic and fair trade, than buy one produced by the farmer living next door, regardless of the impact on climate warming.
3
No offense to your theory, but Trump is ruining farmers livelihoods because of his tariffs, not because I choose to buy an organic avocado. We are now having to subsidize our farmers to make up for the losses Trump is causing. Why should I have to subsidize farmers, who chose this racist pretender? Let them eat their white grievance.
If the improving economic facts on the ground do not match the operative, lingering resentments and aggrievements of these rural Trump regions, then short of a massive federal program of therapeutic counseling, what realistically can be done. For starters however, the collapse of the Trump Republican Party would certainly be a step in the right direction, removing the source of so much incitement, divisiveness, and propaganda.
8
One thought I've had that may allow "the better angles of our [human] nature to prevail" would be a national cultural exchange program.
Folks from rural America need to spend some time living among urban folks to understand their issues. City folk need to live with ranchers and other rural folks. I'd like to see that.
6
It's all about the Constitution vs the Articles of Confederation (AoC).
The AoC was written for an agrarian society of farmers. The Constitution was written to pave the way for the industrial revolution migrating from England. Rural towns were only capable of handling the necessary tasks for supplying farmers and moving their produce to the markets. The introduction of new and improved farming techniques and tools meant more could be produced with less so farm hands were being dismissed and migrated to towns and bigger cities to find work. What's more those towns and cities were transportation hubs which were ideal for new industry to anchor to. So the issues that created the Constitution are still with us today ... you have farm communities in the rural landscape and industry surrounding the transportation hubs. Thus red state, blue state. And the problem still remains ... as farming finds more innovative ways to produce more with less, it creates a class of unemployed individuals. What's more, there's little to no incentive for a business to relocate to a rural area that's lacking the necessary resources, like people, talent and inexpensive transportation of goods in and out.
There'a more to say but I'm outta time.
3
When you say "We can and should do a lot to improve the lives of Americans in lagging regions. We can guarantee access to health care and raise their incomes with wage subsidies and other policies..." you suggest you don't know what else we can do that we haven't already implemented. If you do, provide details. Ohio seems to be turning redder (although Franklin County is getting bluer). Should we be providing huge federal tax incentives and job training bucks for companies investing in our rural county seats? Or is that a lost cause? Are these former farming and manufacturing towns economically doomed? If we have little to offer these folks, who can fault their anger? But how do we show it is capitalism they should blame instead of Democrats?
8
If metropolitan areas with large populations is where wealth and economic activity is concentrated why do they have less political power than the rural areas? The cities are where the talent goes and fast growing industries spring up but they have less of a say in the political decisions of this nation than the rural sparsely populated areas of the country.
4
@Jay
Two contributors to the political power imbalance between urban and rural citizens are the electoral college, which gives considerable advantage to rural voters, and the limit of two senators per state no matter what the population of each state may be. Thus California, with nearly 40 million residents has the same number of senators as Wyoming with under 600,000 residents. For California residents to have representation proportionate to Wyoming it should have over 60 senators.
4
@Jay Wyoming has 1/2 million people, and since each state has 2 senators, 2 senators.
California has 30+ million people, 2 senators.
The Senate is the most powerful branch of government, aside from the President, and the President is elected by the undemocratic "electoral college" where a candidate can lose and win, with less votes.
The US Constitution was written in this manner to placate the southern slave states, which didn't want more economically powerful and populous states determining national law.
5
This sad fact makes me wonder if these red states wouldn’t be in the position they’re in had they elected educated and urban residents. Why wouldn’t Ohio want to have people from a dynamic and creative city in their government, and in the party in charge? Surely they would at least make their large cities more attractive to the worlds corporations.
Now, a young Ohioan with a college degree would probably have to leave even its large cities.
1
Regional economies may be getting worse, but Americans in those areas can get something that will remind mind them of the Donald and make all their grief disappear like magic.
Trumpy Bear
www.google.com/search?q=trumpy+bear+youtube&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS794US794&oq=trumpy+bear&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j69i60j0l4.8490j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
"True, Trump promised to bring back traditional jobs in manufacturing and coal mining — but that promise was never credible. And the orthodox Republican policy agenda of cutting taxes and shrinking social programs, which is basically what Trump is following in practice, actually hurts lagging regions"
Paul, this is only true in the reality-based community. Talk to any Republican voter in the lagging regions. What they hear on the TV channel they watch, what their friends are saying, what the pastor of their church tells them, is all the same -- the Republicans are trying to save the country and the Democrats are trying to ruin it. Do you think on Fox their admitting the truth of what you said? Hardly...
57
@Mike T.
Spot on re many pastors now, particularly of evangelical churches. When I graduated from high school in 1956, separation of church and state seemed to be a cornerstone of our beliefs. What was preached was the Bible and not politics. Good example was Billy Graham whose 1952 crusade in Chattanooga I attended.
4
So ironic considering how most jobs are in cities and their suburbs. And most of those cities are doing quite well. Want to look at ruin? They should look in their own back yards. In deep red states especially.
3
America was built by people willing to leave their homeland/hometown and move somewhere else for a better life. (It was also built on slavery - that's a different conversation). This is part and parcel of the bootstrapping conservative mantra, at least in theory. Why isn't this happening in practice? There are reasons to stay put, yes. But if you subscribe to conservatism and capitalism the reasons to stay put are, in theory, much less important.
4
@Peter- Moving isn't always an option. Business leaders should realize they can move, but their employees often cant'. This fact should be taken into account when decisions are being made.
@Darsan54 I understand this, however that sort of empathy doesn't compute in the bootstrapping mantra of conservatism. If you truly believe in earning your own path, you've got to move. Where there's a will there's a way. At some point you take a walk, you get picked up hitchhiking and you're on your way. A sick family member or an empty bank account is no excuse to not earn your keep and do what you need to do so. The westward expansionists would be disappointed in today's conservatives refusal to take a risk.
I suggest that those aggrieved states start their own country immediately. As someone who lives in a Blue State, I personally get no benefit from being in a country that includes the former confederacy. Those states have been a drag on everyone else for centuries.
53
The US is an experiment in reconciling capitalism of the north with mercantilism of the south.
@APO i totally agree. Theywould be no better than a developing nation of the kind that sends migrants here.
1
@APO
Amen to that!
1
I am so happy Mr.Trump does not read the NYTimes. Otherwise, he might decide to fund a huge federally funded incentive program to draw high tech jobs to the red states (and away from the blue states). Free electricity to power your servers? Free land for the staff to have custom homes built on acres and stocked with chickens and such to serve as petting zoos for their young kids? Hiking and Bike trails leading to farms where organic Kale and avocados are being grown?
7
@AP917 How about more subsidies for alternative energy manufacture, installation, and maintenance. We're totally missing the boat here, flyover states have traditionaly lower cost labor and property taxes. This is where our alt-energy manufacturing could be taking place. The Chinese subsidize their solar and wind energy business, and our country has done the same for mining, oil and gas for a hundred years. What's the problem? (Oh, yeah, oil, gas, and coal lobbyists) Promote alternative energy now. We're already 50 years late.
52
@JP: "How about more subsidies for alternative energy manufacture, installation, and maintenance."
It's not the role of government to pick winners and losers in the economy. We don't have free market capitalism any more - it has turned into "crony capitalism", where favored industries get help from the government. Both parties play this game and taxpayers foot the bill.
1
@AP917
Actually, the programs Democrats advocate deliver huge benefits to red states: food stamps, Medicaid and the ACA, disability insurance, Earned Income Tax Credit. Those are exactly the programs Trump is trying to kill.
And we already know that he won't spend directly on infrastructure, and that Republicans in the Senate would block him if he tried. Just doing stuff for people isn't in their DNA.
80
Right but not completely. Big Platform companies like Amazon are concentrated on the west coast, where coders like to live. But Amazon distributes thousands of products made all over the country, including in many red states and regions. Krugman and many others take it for granted that it is only natural that the platform companies keep most of the money for what they sell. If laws and policies change to push more money to product makers rather than to tech/platform owners, this will change. It's not true that we can't do anything about the concentration of money in the big Platform companies. It's a social / political choice -- not a fact of nature.
9
The current political situation is a direct result of the Bush Recession. Authoritarian governments ascend during economic hardship.
4
I believe there is a religious component to Trumpism as well as an economic one. The Kavanaugh hearing climax coincided with the reversal of leaders in the Tennessee Senate race. Many of the strong pro-lifers are devout Christians, socially conservative. Preference for Trump's policies overcomes their repulsion for his personal qualities.
6
@Meadowviewite To live happily in a small town may require a different mindset than to prefer a large city. What might seem like 'friendliness' or 'comfortable conformity' to one person could feel like a stifling lack of privacy and autonomy to another. Yet my feeling is that the small town conservatives want the rest of us to admire and ape their lifestyles and beliefs as the 'true America'.
@Meadowviewite
Trumpsters are often single-issue voters.
The TV interviews with Trump supporters and Trump rally attendees further validate the Dunning-Kruger Effect. David Dunning and Justin Kruger, research psychologists at Cornell University, identified this effect in their 1999 study.
These researchers concluded: The unskilled, unintelligent, undereducated and uninformed “not only . . . reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.”
In brief: The more incompetent, unintelligent and uninformed among us are likely to believe themselves very competent, highly intelligent and well informed.
On a daily basis, Trump himself—to the nation’s detriment—further corroborates Dunning’s and Kruger’s major discovery.
How could his supporters and enablers not follow suit?
69
“The better angels of our nature can still prevail. Really?
The choice of Amazon for New York and Washington is a dire metaphor for our political divisions. Rural areas can’t be genuinely considered for relocation by forward-looking companies because they’re stuck in a time warp. They represent a rich and fertile field of resentments for whites angry about having been left behind. And Donald Trump has gleefully mined the bitter harvest.
It’s not a difficult leap. A minimum of a bachelor’s degree is the deep and widening pool from which the “knowledge industry” feeds. For generations, whites without a college degree depended upon terrific union wages in the metals and automotive industries without ever imagining that those wells would run dry. That Republicans (hello, “government is the problem” Ronald Reagan!) undermined organized labor seems never to have occurred to this now unhappy and economically impotent demographic who their real enemies were.
That minority and immigrant applicants compete for these highly-skilled and lucrative positions also gives Trump added ammunition to assail “coastal elites.” It’s quite the cultural hot button/red meat issue that Trump feeds his followers while distracting them from his own failed promises.
The resultant hate has deepened and widened and coarsened our national “dialogue.” It keeps Trump in the news as the champion of white hopes while disparaging all others.
“Better angels?” I wish that I could be as sanguine, Dr. Krugman.
14
"Most rural white voters still support Trumpism, but they aren't a majority..." True, but there are millions of them, and they are well armed, extremely angry, have nothing to live for and far outnumber our standing army. Trump's recent slights to our armed forces suggests that he knows he can't count on our military to back him up in a final constitutional showdown. That's the good news. The bad news is that in order to stay out of jail Trump will have to foment an armed rebellion of his base.
This holiday season will be the cruelest since Pearl Harbor. Expect Trump to make his move before the new Congress forms in January.
7
@WDG
He can't count on the military? The military has become Appalachianized, infused with the values of the Confederate states. They also love the dollars right-wingers lavish on them.
I wouldn't be surprised if they stage a coup someday to prevent the election of a Democrat or to ensure the perpetuation of a right-wing nationalist president.
2
@Lanier Y Chapmanher
I'm still in shock after leaning there's such a thing as the" CSA" (Confederate States of America) -- who says we're not on the verge of another Civil War?
We keep hearing here in AZ that lower taxes will attract companies and jobs. Yet Amazon picks two of the highest taxed areas for their new HQ.
14
@Claire light: "Yet Amazon picks two of the highest taxed areas for their new HQ."
I don't believe Jeff Bezos had any intention of putting HQ2 into any place other than the heavily populated/wealthy areas he selected. In the circus that was the so-called selection process, Amazon collected a ton of social and economic data from every contender. A win-win for Amazon.
8
@Claire light
It's not Amazon who will get taxed. They are getting mass tax breaks and will use fancy corporate tax avoidance schemes to make sure their revenue isn't subject to NY income taxes.
4
wienet dog,
No incorporated company pays income tax, which is a personal tax paid by individuals. Companies pay taxes on their profits, also called corporate taxes.
For once we are totally on the same page. The divisions/ divide cannot be healed/ mended. This is a permanent problem that only a long time will correct.
2
Dr. Krugman,
Your columns provide insight and well-thought reasoning.
I take great umbrage with the adjective “college-educated” that is being used to describe folks that did not vote for Trump with the converse often implied being "non-college educated" folks just aren't intelligent and hence would vote Republican and for Trump policies.
I find the use of the phrase “college-educated” in this light as elitist and demeaning to those who did not have the money, desire, or for other reasons did not attend college. Those people were my parents. Those Americans were also talented and smart. Those people were trying to raise a family.
Dr. Matthew Picklo
8
@Matt Krugman gets that "college educated" idea from the polls which are trying to find out where Trump's support comes from. It has nothing to do with whether the people who vote for Trump are intelligent or not.
8
@Matt
Maybe "college-educated" isn't the right word for it, but maybe we don't have a word for it. How about "open-minded and not afraid of change or new ideas or new people due to external or self-education that has broadened a person's horizons"? That's too much of a mouthful. I wish we had a word that encompasses those traits.
I know people who never went to high school, never mind college, but they are well-educated nevertheless. They are self-educated because they read voraciously and extensively.
4
The small working class town I live in just voted for the GOP in the same proportion it voted for Trump in 2016. This is Trump country. I call many of these people friends and not a few are relatives. I point out to them in conversation that the programs that help them stay in the middle were all passed by Democrats.
My words have zero impact. As a matter of fact I've been met by seething anger since the election. A relative blames the media and the left ( me?) for brainwashing people and turning on Trump. I agree with Dr. Krugman. This isn't going away in my lifetime.
74
@Chaz Proulx
Do you plan on dying before 2020 or 2024? Once Trump is out of office, the competing forces of Trumpism and Trump-hate will dissipate.
Some new conflict will probably take its place, though. And everyone will be complaining about that.
@Wienet Dog The seething anger Chaz Prouix mentions was there long before Trump, and it will be there long after he leaves the stage. If you do not live in a Red State or Red region of a Blue State, you may not have seen it up close; but in my Red State I have witnessed that tribal anger simmering among hardcore neoconfederates and evangelicals for generations. Trump simply took the lid off the tea kettle. Even if someone temporarily puts the lid back and tries to turn down the flame, the hatred will influence American politics for many years.
Krugman asks, "Can this chasm be bridged?", and answers "I doubt it."
The chasm COULD be bridged if the Republican leaders wanted to renounce both white and nativist identity politics and build economic infrastructure while reducing the debt that they love to increase. But that would be political suicide for them.
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the bulb has to really want to change. These bulbs DO NOT want to change for the better.
10
A Bloomberg article recently cited two journalists:
1st) David Wasserman of the NYT noted that the majority of the Senate represents a mere 18% of the U.S. population.
2nd) Philip Bump of the Washington Post examined another gee-whiz statistic about the Senate — that by 2040, 70 percent of the population will live in just 15 states and thus select only 30 percent of U.S. Senators.
I sincerely believe that we are literally living under the tyranny of a minority of our fellow citizens. And, frankly, I don't care about their priorities, nor am I inclined to try and understand their "way of life" when they lord their undeserved political power over the rest of us.
Of course this will never happen, but there needs to be a constitutional convention to alter the power of the Senate, expand the size of the House and eliminate the Electoral College.
Hey, I'm all about "freedom," and if people want to live in rural America, that's fine with me, but their "geography" should not grant them greater political power. State lines are, after all, merely abstract borders and no one forces us to live where we don't want to.
231
@mrfreeze6
Agreed. I have serious doubts about whether there will be a United States by mid-century. Let the red states go, and see how long they last without blue states carrying their financial water.
10
@mrfreeze6 hear, hear!
3
@mrfreeze6 You don't need any Constitutional changes to increase the size of the House. That can be done tomorrow, if you had the votes in Congress. It's statutorily set.
6
Hmmm... let's paraphrase this a bit: "Despite huge financial aid, affirmative action and generous social programs, minority voters feel aggrieved by what they see as second-class status, and they have given many of their votes to the extreme left-wing agenda." How does that sound?
2
@Kai Name one extreme left-wing policy that has been enacted in the last 40 years. Just one.
4
@Kai Examples? Be specific please.
@Kai
"Left wing agenda"??? You mean like Social Security and Medicare? Minimum wage? Student loans?
That "left wing agenda"?
Another wonderful Krugman column but it ignores one vital piece of information. Most Americans don't vote and poor Americans don't vote in overwhelming numbers. It is not at all about economics it is about psychology and sociology.
Trump voters are white and they are an older generation. They have their medicare and their privilege. I am 70 and at one time was a tech guru today I am a fossil. I knew math and science before kindergarten, that is when you make scientists. Modern societies recognize that the most outstanding characteristic of success is gender. Women are better at the skills we most admire. Our medical schools are totally merit based and 70% of new doctors and 70% of new medical students are female or at least in Quebec for the last decade. When economics are not a factor and they aren't in Quebec gender is the leading indicator of what is a merit based system.
I have lived in fly over country and the people are just as smart as the city people who think they are smart because of academic achievements. Really smart people seldom think themselves smart it is not smart to be smart.
The time you needed higher taxes and huge investments in education Reagan came along and convinced you government of the people was an enemy.
Where conservatism flourished well being declined. 19th century religion and 19th century economics gave the USA as unequal society as exists in Western Democracy. Too many Americans won't adapt to a future that is neither white nor homogeneous
7
Rural white voters, even those doing reasonably well, see their communities crumbling, their culture despised, and their government helping immigrants while ignoring them.
Is it any wonder they lash out, and look for scapegoats; it’s only human nature. Goodness knows, urban liberals do the same, denouncing such people as "racists," and blaming them for all our troubles. We all live in glass houses, a fact that should give us pause before we make judgments.
Several articles appeared in The Times this year about programs in the most severely depressed regions designed to attract industries and train residents to staff them. I don’t have the time now to dig them out, but surely Krugman can ask his editor for the references, and spend some time writing about what IS being done, instead of spreading his appalling negativity.
Stanley Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, had a piece in The Times this week confirming that Trump’s base is indeed eroding, especially among women, but also men. It’s time we found a way to offer them some encouragement instead of repeating the old liberal saw that, "Those jobs have gone away and aren’t coming back." http://tinyurl.com/y9t2uls4
8
@Ron Cohen
But they just aren't suited for the future and those jobs will not be coming back. What they most want is to live in the past. They just can't accept that the good old days are over and now they're face-to-face with natural selection. So they blame the Liberals and immigrants and the Chinese for for their deteriorating situation. I imagine the dinosaurs did the same.
5
@Fourteen,
Re: "But they just aren't suited for the future"
China is full of low skilled workers, doing jobs once done in US.
Do you think *your* economic well being - and that of generations to come - is assured, just because you are more skilled? Maybe. But the low pay and high unemployment wasn't caused because those low skilled jobs weren't needed: They were, and are, needed. They just went to China, and the ones that remained, are now done for wages which are not livable - due to lack of bargaining power. Your job may be next.
This is not a skills issue - low skilled jobs still exist. It is a political issue, where the interests of workers have been compromised, by bipartisan policies to destroy the New Deal. Divide and conquer is how this has been done, and blue collar workers are just the first. In Wisconsin, first, private sector unions were decimated. Then those low paid private sector workers were turned against public sector workers. The same will happen, turning blue collar workers against white collar workers. Don't believe that? You'd better.
The mechanism used to maintain the divide, are wedge issues of identity, abortion, guns, immigration - and arguing against extremist straw men on both sides.
When they say it isn't about the money? It *is* about the money. The 1% is stoking the fires of this divide.
Unless you are one of the 1%, keeping workers - with collars of *all* colors - divided on wedge issues, is a game which will destroy this nation.
2
@Fourteen
Pretty sure the dinosaurs didn't blame Liberals, immigrants, and the Chinese.
Just sayin'.
1
Jobs are scarce for blue collar workers, and don't pay enough.
40,000 Apple corporation employees (Managers, Marketers, programmers, and engineers, etc) in Cupertino, needed 750,000 blue collar workers to build their phones. They went to China for all of them - instead of Detroit, Janesville, Pittsburgh, etc. Because they *could* - And to get the latest gizmo two weeks sooner, and $20 cheaper, at higher profit.
Imbalanced trade has another downside, in addition to blue collar unemployment and low wages: Repatriation of US dollars. Foreign nationals buying up prime real estate in London, New York, San Francisco, etc - whether they need it or not - as an investment. This does not make those cities more livable, nor more affordable.
Foreign companies also use repatriated funds to buy up US technology companies, including their IP. This isn't hype. Talk to people in technical businesses. China is becoming the world technology leader. And, In a global economy - where multinational corporations are obviously influenced by actions of foreign governments - being beholden to corporate donors becomes a national security issue.
No one in the US government is minding the store, in terms of US interests, least of all the interests of US workers.
Higher wages, and balanced trade, would go a very long way in fixing all of these problems. But the donors control think tanks, the press, and our government, and they don't want these kind of changes.
24
There was a time, maybe 15 or so years ago, that many predictions were made about the affects of wider cellphone distribution and easier and faster internet access. Many of these predictions said cities would decline because telecommuting in many industries would become the norm. People no longer had to aggregate in one place. Now you are trying to establish an irreversible presumption that cities will grow and get richer while everywhere else will lose population and get poorer. I don't take these kinds of projections seriously, because you, like all human beings (including this commenter), think you understand the world far better than you do and far better than it is possible for any of us to make sociological predictions. History does not move in straight lines or continuous curves, it moves in jumps and falls--what is called in mathematics a step function.
5
Paul Volcker, on the economy
"He wondered how many lectures and presentations he had sat through with economists “telling us open markets are wonderful, everybody benefits from open markets.”
Eventually, Mr. Volcker said, someone in those lectures would always ask, “What about that poor manufacturer in my town?” But that concern was dismissed too easily, with talk of worker retraining or some other solution far easier said than done.'
So, Mr. Krugman, after cheer leading the devastation of free trade on US workers what is your solution ?
Writing
"Yes, may have deep economic roots, and there may be no practical way to make it go away."
Is a cop out
10
@ Donegal. I agree with your perspective, in part. Having spent much time in the old East Germany, I know that not all Ossis feel aggrieved nor see themselves as second class citizens. In fact it is a minority that do, and that minority is primarily rural, just as in the States. In spite of many free government programs offered re job training , etc., this group is so frightened by rapid change that they hunker down, lash out at the other, and want to return to authoritarian rule where right and wrong is absolute, and obedience to an authority negates dissent or critical thinking.
I also think that it IS important to recognize that times of rapid change ARE scary and do lead to exploitation by Robber Barron's and their multinational corporations, while leading to increased impoverishment of ordinary citizens - just as it did in the Industrial Age. These threats to democracy do not subside until serious reformists , muckrakers, and new leaders arise to challenge the injustices that rapid change can cause. There were many reformers during the Industrial Age - and leaders, like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt.
Increasing income disparity is a serious threat to democracy, and should be addressed as that by all Americans, not just the 'left behind' folks.
11
I hope economists and others can build into their analyses, the following observation. I have spent my life on the coasts, but, from my business experience, I believe that Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Omaha, Denver, Boise, Spokane, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Nashville, Bozeman, Albuquerque, several cities in Arizona, several cities in Texas, and many other inland cities are good places to grow up, go to university, and find gainful life long employment. True, they do not have the huge numbers of jobs that the large coastal cities have, but many people there attend university, find employment, and live really quite wonderful lives. In some of the smaller cities that I listed people enjoy nice-sized houses with nice yards, nice public parks, easy access to nature, decent public schools, many simple pleasures (gardening, bar-b-ques), and categorically less traffic. In many of these cities, people are thriving. Not sure where this fits in, but often analyses seem to just ignore this observation which I am quite convinced is true through my own substantial experience with friends, family, and business contacts.
24
@Paul Those places are turning blue too, or bluer at any rate. I'm all for encouraging growth in those areas, although not to the point of turning them into Manhattan. There are downsides to the coastal cities, crowding and cost among them. We do need to spread the economy around a little more than we do.
But there have to be terms. Decent funding for schools and public services shouldn't be negotiable, and that includes teacher pay. If companies are going to locate in interior cities, it's got to be clear that full civil and social rights for employees who are not white, heterosexual, Christian men are also non-negotiable points. And the gun nuttery has to be curtailed. Nobody wants to go to the mall if they're going to have to deal with some nimrod who thinks open carry is a great idea.
19
@Paul We too live in an oasis of blue in a purple state. It is quite wonderful. We too have the urban rural divide but that’s is changing. People are leaving the dairy farm as it becomes a corporate farm, needing fewer folks to run. Now looking wage labor is on the farm, not the family. The family has moved to town and gone to the university or tech school. They either move to bigger cities, or if lucky, catch on with one of the manufacturing companies, service jobs, health care jobs or the education establishment. I say lucky because this small urban area in the agricultural heartland is a wonderful place to live and raise a family. The one big downside is a long winter but even that can be overcome with learning how to play outside in the cold.
2
In recent decades the divide was between the north and the south. Now it is morphing into a urban/rural, battle. It is the same story with different geography and different economic assets in play, but still people voting against their own self interest and cementing themselves into poverty.
7
I enjoy reading Mr. Krugman columns; however, this one is quite interesting, for it agrees with my understanding of the sorry political situation in which we found our republic. To be specific: The analogy made with Germany regarding the "Ossi" perception of belittling by the Westiss is, my opinion quite insightful.
4
1. The divide is NOT a new discovery. Christophe Guilluy a
French economist has written about it for years.
Acknowledgement of his work is missing.
2. The divide is the result of globalization. Krugman
promoted it with constant denial that it had to lower
the wages of US workers exposed to it to the world
wage average. Specialization would rescue them
he claimed
3. That turned false. IBM has now more
employees in India. More basically, China can
specialize in any economic activity, it wishes
to. More outsourcing to come, unless trade war
interrupts it.
3 area where it is now ahead
A.I, big data, supercomputers, quantum
entanglement based satellite communication
3 It is NOT confined to he US, but operates just as well
in France and the UK. See today's Le figaro
So Trump is not the cause
3. How did we get Trump ? If you believe in the
"It's the economy stupid" of the Clinton campaign
with the help of Professor Krugman
During the all important election period, in 2016
Mr. Krugman endorsed the economic policy of
Trump, writing in the NYT "Trump Is Right on
Economics"
For readers interesting about how this fracture is playing out, right now, in France, I recommend today's LeFigaro
article
"Christophe Guilluy: «Les “gilets jaunes” attestent la révolte de la France périphérique»"
6
Another article from the Time’s resident economist arguing that economic self-interest isn’t a motivating factor for Trump voters
That’s a comforting message for all those who are fine with the economic status quo, which includes far too many leaders within the Democratic party.
4
Republican governors and state legislators perversely opposed the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion. In Kansas, Republican extremists cut taxes, and as a result eviscerated public education. In Appalachia, miners would rather die from black lung than consider the reality of climate change and figure out how to get into green technology. Rural America can only be competitive and progress if the people there want to be part of the 21st century.
17
@MEM
Coal miners with a high school diploma or less can, if they can find a coal mining job, go to work in the mines for upwards of $90,000 a year. Do you know of any comparable jobs in green technology? Then I don't think you have the ability to persuade coal miners to accept the inevitable death of the coal industry without a fight.
3
@Andrew Zuckerman Sir: Your numbers ($90, 000) do not stand to careful scrutiny, for the gross income you described is the one for a worker in an open pit mine in Cheyenne Wyoming. The number of jobs the industry provides is not comparable to those jobs that renewable energies could provide. Having said all of that, your point should be taken and ponder; it is reasonable for our government to provide a path to transition the families depending on these industries to the ones, that in in my opinion, should provide a better future for their families and our republic.
5
@Andrew Zuckerman Many unemployed people may yearn to regain the jobs they lost, perhaps (then) positions that were highly paid due to seniority, were of higher status or required skills no longer in demand. The number of mining jobs has surely declined due to many factors - more automation, competition with natural gas etc.
Big fan of Krugman but this is not one of his best columns. "Economic anxiety" defined as fears about future prospects for themselves and their children and their traditional way of life is very present in the "left behind" regions. Adults see their children moving away to better their career chances. Don't give too much weight to the 2016 correlation with race and ethnicity. We saw a chunk of white Trumpies in red states and rural areas peel away in the midterms. And BTW take a look at how many ethnic immigrants are now going to rural small towns and farm jobs.
2
I'm curious if investment in education would help bridge that chasm? Not that that would happen, given the deep partisan divide we live in. But, theoretically, could significant investment in education help these states that have been left behind economically?
4
I think I understand workers who feel they produce real goods but the rewards go to those who own the businesses and to financial and technology sectors.
7
Whereas I agree with the overall analysis, i disagree with the conclusion, i.e. that we can do little to change this trend.
Rural America suffers from lack of economic opportunity. Old industries are dying and traditional industries (farming, mining, etc.) are automating.
However, state and local governments can work with communities to create hubs of local businesses, government institutions, and industries. Knowledge is the key commodity of the 21st century and technology has made this commodity more distance independent than ever. High speed internet nationwide is the TVA of the 21st century. Universities in smaller cities and towns can act as hubs for such knowledge. States governments and the federal government can foster satellite sites
Also, advances in shipping mean product delivery can be better distributed nationwide. Corporations can take advantage of available labor and cheap land near highway and rail intersections and hubs. Sioux City, IA, offers an example. They are becoming a transportation hub by improving their highways that link east to west and north to south, cutting miles off of truck routes and fostering growth.
Now, can all smaller cities and towns be like Sioux City or Tallahassee, FL, or Iowa City, IA, or Lincoln, NE? Why not?
There are many actions state and local governments can take to bridge the rural-urban divide. A rural oriented Marshall Plan is needed. Then food stamps and government supported health care may not be needed.
17
@M. Pippi
Certainly, but that is 'socialism', and thus unacceptable to too many who would be the beneficiaries of such policies, and who don't want their little communities 'ruined'.
In a knowledge economy, access to knowledge is key. This is the big dividing factor in modern day America. Something that gets a lot of lip service these days is rural broadband: bringing high-speed internet to the rural areas of which Mr. Krugman speaks. Something akin to the Rural Electrification Authority is what's needed.
8
@giniajim I tend to see the knowledge economy as an hallucination. Economy is really about food, clothing, and shelter. We've made life too complicated. Not complex--complicated. It's why there is so much drug addiction and porn. Anything to ease the pain of living a purely abstract life.
2
@Mark Bittner Review Maslow's Hierarchy in which food, clothing, shelter are at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs. For the great majority of us, those are met. At least in the developed countries. The higher levels of need begin to require interaction with others and the rest of society, which leads to the need for good communication (i.e. broadband). And of course medical care, entertainment and transportation are major components of a modern economy.
1
The years of purposeful ignorance by the Right has yielded short-term legislative and judicial gains but the long-term costs are coming due for areas of the country unable to compete globally or domestically.
Regions aren't turning Right just because they are lagging; they are also lagging because they bought into the Right's message.
The cost of demonizing science and education and expertise by selling easy lies wrapped in religious pieties and cultural fear mongering is not just that the "buyers" are left behind, entire regions are largely uninhabitable for those who have those scientific, educational, expert skills, and cultural openness the Right has demonized.
People who earn a good living because of what they know are not likely to want to raise a family in a state or county that thinks creationism should be taught in schools as a science course and that teachers should be paid at poverty levels. They are not going to put their children's future at risk.
Expertise is mobile and it pays better than grievance.
419
@LT.
"Regions aren't turning Right just because they are lagging; they are also lagging because they bought into the Right's message."
Bingo! You put the blame where it belongs. And demonizing the"other", whether it be liberals, immigrants, or the press,etc, brought us this president. The republican party should build a statue to rush limbaugh who has done their dirty work for them for decades now.
10
Corporations love large metro areas because of the geographic concentration--the--density, of talent. But not *just* that. Such regions have the necessary *diversity* of talent: experts in corporate management, HR, intellectual property, corporate real estate, marketing, sales, distribution, public relations, production, corporate IT, .... And I haven't even mentioned engineers and software developers and chemists and ..... Modern corporations are complex beasts that require a large diversity of skills.
Such metro areas have also organically grown large transportation networks, and have the necessary infrastructure.
Rural areas and small to medium-sized towns in the heartland simply can't support the number and diversity of employees necessary for a large corporation. Moreover, because of the extremely low density, they are far from transportation hubs.
And, it's only going to get worse. As PK says, there is no fighting extremely powerful economic forces.
Let's focus on making the rural areas excellent at what they are already good at. It's still possible to build regional hub cities with core expertise in agriculture. Policy can assist with this. Smaller towns will continue to depopulate. But the transition costs of moving to a regional hub can be subsidized.
If we're honest about where the economic forces are driving things, we can work to get there in a humane way, and maybe even shape it to be a little more humane.
20
But in the large Metropolitan areas, there are many pockets of poverty, just as in the large areas of regression there are small areas of wealth so the divide is really more intense for it. Such nearness to the other extreme grates at the wound and makes the pain greater. Trump, of course, is a master at focusing the pain for the 'left behind'. Thankfully, Trump is a one time phenomenon, that can not and will not be repeated. Maybe once the President of the United States is no longer picking at the wound for his own purposes, it will heal.
5
Re: "We can guarantee access to health care and raise their incomes with wage subsidies"
Wrong strategies.
EITC (wage subsidy), encourages low productivity jobs - jobs which should disappear. And forcing middle and upper class workers to subsidize overpriced health insurance, is a political loser.
The answer is what worked before: Increase aggregate demand, and balanced trade.
If ordinary workers were in sufficient demand (scarcity), then companies would be forced to locate in the places those workers preferred (or can afford) to live.
Making blue collar labor more scarce, drives efficiency (productivity growth). Productivity growth soared during the years 1932 to 1980, when demand side Keynesian policies dominated. Supply side gluts (particularly of labor), promote inefficient use of that labor. There is currently a plethora of low-productivity jobs, which are not needed. A classic example would be night clerks in a convenience store. If labor is more expensive, these low productivity jobs go away, and overall productivity increases.
It was foreseen in the post WWII era, that as efficiency increased, wages would rise, and work weeks would shorten. The failure to allow wages to rise, is what has prevented this from happening. Putting US blue collar workers in direct competition with low paid workers in China, has had the predictable effect of lowering US wages and productivity.
Work should be valuable and valued. EITC is "make work", and is exactly the wrong cure.
7
@A Populist
This much is wrong:
"And forcing middle and upper class workers to subsidize overpriced health insurance, is a political loser."
See: the comment below, regarding four red states voting to expand Medicaid.
See: growing support for the ACA.
See: More support in US Senate for "Medicare for All."
Political winner, recently, subsidizing health care.
8
I wish I could put 16 likes.
The better angels? Where are they?
Trump shooed them violently away,
Lincoln’s reference
At the time made much sense
Will they ever be put back in play?
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Yes Amazon chose New York, but New York has over a million kids in their school system, most of whom are not destined to be superstar coders. So, what does any Mayor of the city propose to do with these children when they graduate high school - if they graduate high school? New York, with all its self-indulgent wealth, was ripe for a resurgence in boutique manufacturing, supplying the needs of its insatiable overclass and furnishing well-paying jobs that could have been filled through apprenticeship programs and on-the-job-training. Bloomberg ensured this will never happen by rezoning the entire swath of manufacturing footage along the East River and doling it out to his vassals in the real estate mafia for luxury towers. Now, manufacturing in the city is corralled into a couple of Brooklyn theme parks like "Industry City" and the Navy Yard, which more resemble Colonial Williamsburg than Detroit at its zenith. Bloomberg essentially terraformed this whole area so that the Bezos mothership could land. I wouldn't doubt the two were in constant contact.
What politicians like Cuomo, Schumer, Bloomberg and de Blasio have been working towards is a two-tier system of extremely well-off people, whose taxes pay to keep a massive, uneducated underclass at bay through generous social subsidies.There will eventually be nothing left in the middle, and New York is the model for all the other "Democratic" cities Dr. Krugman lauds.
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@stan continople. The very rich have always depended upon the abundance of the poor.
@stan continople Amazon employs far more than whiz kid coders. They'll be hiring construction workers, maintenance teams, managers, clerical staff, human resources people... Most of their staff never write a single line of code.
There is no cure for this because we still need farmers. You can't farm digitally (yet). We also still need open spaces, stars at night and a lot of things cities can't provide. Maybe we don't think we do but fortunately the coming climate catastrophe will clear all this up in about 50 years.
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@Jean Campbell
We may still need farms, but not that many humans to do the farming. That's technological progress. Those aging hicks will end up in the equivalent of glue factories for superfluous horses after cars took over from carriages.
Certainly forms a nice juxtaposition with the 1-to-1 correlation between opioid afflicted portions of the country who voted for Un-indicted Co-conspirator in 2016:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/06/23/622692550/analysis-finds-geographic-overlap-in-opioid-use-and-trump-support-in-2016
Instead of GOP'ers pushing the idea that 'people on welfare' should have to pass drug tests (see: Rick Scott - Fla.) it looks like voters need to pass drug tests before they cast a ballot, to be sure their judgement isn't impaired and that they aren't "under the influence".
Indeed, considering some of the GOP'er "rabid ferrets" (hat tip Gail Collins) we've long thought that legislators need to be drug tested before they vote in state capitals or D.C.
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I hate to appear simplistic, but the lack of investment in basic education, where critical thinking skills (i.e., being able to see through Trump's lies and cons and to recognize the lies and cons we make on ourselves) have a chance to be learned, is the single most important factor in our current condition. When education is implemented poorly, the solution is not to disinvest in it, but to improve it.
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Where are the Vo-tech programs in High School? It seems they have been pushed into community colleges.
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@Jerry Price Agreed. Media Literacy should be basic education.
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While I agree with you I’m afraid these people fell victim to a demagogue. Even intelligent and well meaning people can fall prey to a cult. How else to explain their suicidal tendencies? I think they’d rather see America destroyed than have trump impeached.
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I agree with most of the author's conclusions and surely agree with him regarding the unwanted incursion of Amazon into our overburdened city. However, when we speak about those regions "being left behind", I'm going to say plainly and honestly what I believe which is that there are millions of Americans living in those "left behind regions" who are never going to get with the program which could lead them to more prosperity. There exist, to be more blunt, people that lack the desire and motivation to turn their lives around. We assume it's strictly about rural vs. urban and yet millions of Americans have migrated to urban areas because the crave the dynamic environment and cultural oasis that cities provide. This doesn't mean that rural MUST result in backward or ignorant people. The State of Vermont, to cite one example, is proof enough of that. But there are multitudes that are happy to complain about their lot and yet don't take personal responsibility for informing themselves about how to REALLY improve it and this results in their continued hatred of those "city folks" and their entrenched and myopic values that, the more the world seems to PROGRESS around them, the more they retreat into their little hamlets where American flags fly all around but only represent, to them, the old fashioned values of WHITE Protestant America dominated by office managers who are men and whose wives stay at home baking cookies all day long when not out shooting squirrels for dinner.
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Similarly, Britain's left-behinds were the backbone of the vote to Leave the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum. The millionaires behind the campaign told people in the UK's -- and indeed Europe's -- most deprived areas that snooty technocrats in Brussels and "out-of-touch elites" in London were the authors of their misfortunes, deflecting blame from years of the Conservatives' low tax for the rich/no welfare for the poor approach. And just as the most desperate have been hit hardest by Trump's policies, guess who will suffer most from Brexit?
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@solidisme....well said----the Brexit issue looks so complicated in the news! It's 'blame deflection'.
Will PM May be forced out?
Why have so many in her party quit?
Will they have another Brexit referendum?
Let's mention that despite the Tories and budget cuts, the British still have their universal single payer health care, started in the 1940s, which the US still can't achieve even with ACA in the 21st Century.
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The only hope I see for rural "left behind" areas is if global warming-induced natural disasters drive many people out of the vulnerable coastal areas and into the hinterland. In order to make that attractive, there would have to be a major investment in development, in order to make these areas attractive. Educated people don't just want houses; they want restaurants, shops, cultural opportunities, world class medical facilities, good schools, libraries, and communities that are welcoming to them. All of this could be done in a rural area, but it would require a lot of money to bring high-speed broadband, rail transportation, and a critical mass of professionals to the area. Perhaps if some of these areas really invested in their state colleges, those could become the center of a hub. But unless the people there decide that's what they want, it will never happen, and they will continue to turn to opioids, anger, and excuses.
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Build it and they will come
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@WA Apples
That's the "cargo cult" mentality.
And let's never forget the role of Fox News in exacerbating the sense of grievance and disrespect from "elites." If only the lagging regions realized the incredible cynicism behind their right-wing heroes, who have made untold millions keeping them ignorant.
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@CarolSon
I used to work in different rural areas and stayed at the best local hotel ( 3-3.5 stars). They always had Fox TV on at public areas in these hotels .
Fox TV was Trumpist years before Trump entered politics ( even before Sarah Palin ). Fox lies shamelessly, practices tribalism and brainwashed the rural population ( or validated their biases). The owners of Fox are raking billions of dollars. I don’t expect things to change
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@CarolSon And none of the FOX HEROES live in rural America the love too much.
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Economic issues continue to be the sham cover for the racists and white Evangelists who adore Trump and consider him to be one of them. They are the majority of his fans. No person truly interested in the economic future would want a bumbling, ignorant TV clown like Trump to manage their financial affairs.
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@jefflz Not unless they were graduates of Trump University.
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@Ali G.
Graduates of Trump U. realized they were scammed and sued and won a multi-million settlement from "I never settle" lying Trump. so unlikely they are big fans.
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"Guaranteeing access to health care" is not the same thing as guaranteed, universal, single payer health care. And the vast majority of Americans (70%) who now support Medicare for All know it. They even include those "deplorable" Rust Belt voters who refused to come out for Hillary Clinton, despite many having cast their votes for Barack Obama in 2012. Clinton announced on the campaign trail, in no uncertain terms, that single payer "will never, ever come to pass."
Nothing attracts desperate people like telling them they'll just have to "shop around" each year for ever more restrictive, expensive private insurance. And even if they do scrape together the premiums, there's no guarantee that they'll be able to afford the co-pays and deductibles, which can reach thousands of dollars annually. As it is, 63% of us don't even have $250 in savings.
It was George Bush who once snarkily observed: "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."
Sure, and then you get an exorbitant bill. You can still go bankrupt if you get sick or hurt, even if you do have insurance. And 30 million Americans still don't.
Democrats will have stop sounding like Republicans if they want to win hearts, minds and elections. Marketing wonkish incremental policy proposals didn't work in 2016, and it won't work in 2020. There was a reason that many incumbent Dems lost this month, and it wasn't because they were too progressive or radical.
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@Karen Garcia: Hillary Clinton was talking about the single-payer system that Bernie Sanders ran on in 2016. Bernie called it "Medicare for All," but it far beyond Medicare's coverage. Bernie's plan was also much more ambitious than any single payer system anywhere in the world. He promised no deductibles and co-pays. Medicare has both. Bernie threw in free dental and vision, and nursing home care as well. Medicare doesn't cover any of those. Bernie said his plan would pay for everything. In fact, every universal system I have looked at anywhere in the world is designed to pay 80 - 85% of total healthcare costs. The rest is either paid by the patient or a supplemental insurance policy. In 2016, Bernie's plan would never have become law. The fact that a paired down ACA barely passed Congress was a miracle, and it was paired down more by the USSC, and lately by Trump and Republicans. Hillary's plan was to build on the ACA with things like a public option, a buy-in to Medicare, and drug pricing legislation, which would have a chance of improving things, and take us closer to universal coverage once people see how well they work. Instead, Bernie divided the Democratic Party, we got Trump, and we will still be playing defense on healthcare for at least two more years.
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@Karen Garcia...Dems will have to stop sounding like Republican? And liberal columnists will have to stop making excuses for those Dems that do.
The Dem party promoted a candidate who:
Firmly asserted that single payer will never ever come to pass.
Who refused to tell Americans whose votes she wanted what she told the big banks who paid her millions for speeches. The same millions of voters were still reeling from the effects of the Crash.
And Hillary refused to restore bank regulations her husband/GOP had repealed, which had helped protect the country since the 1930s. That was a coup for the GOP in the 90s.
For 2020, there's a big Dem field out there. We'll see how brave they will be to heal America, but most of them won't make those mistakes.
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@Karen Garcia
The reason many incumbent Dems lost this month had nothing to do with incremental health care and everything to do with running in deplorable voter suppression states like South Dakota, where the Supreme Court gave the ok to disenfranchise Amerindians living on reservations, who usually vote Dem, weeks before the election so nothing could be done to solve the problem, which was caused by the state of South Dakota in the first place.
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Great piece. Thank you, sir. Middle America has not adapted. It will succumbed to Donald's rhetorics as panacea. The coast states will move on to preserve this nation.
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Dr. Krugman shows us, in the most concise and clearest way, how demographics, economics and politics are linked.
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That connection is the basis of his Nobel prize.
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It seems to me, based on extensive research, that "identity politics" built on grievance and resentment involves the need for an ego defense against self-perceived failure. People want excuses more than they want solutions. There is a motivational inertia that sets in when a system that once worked disappears from the landscape. Russians had to swallow the reality that "mother isn't coming home" when the Soviet Union collapsed. Most people lack the imagination or motivation to solve problems that may require moving to another region, starting a business or going back to school. Change is hard, especially when you developed an identity around well established cultural and economic assumptions that were handed down by people who loved and reared you from childhood. As Krugman concedes, "the dog barks, but the caravan moves on."
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Your colleague David Brooks recently wrote a piece on anywheres and somewheres. I'm an anywhere.
I perfectly well understand the urge of somewheres: to be close to home, family and friends.
I also perfectly well understand the imperative to get an education, fill up on gumption (thanks again, Mom!) and go to where the work is. This, after all, is me.
I don't know what to do about those who deny this imperative.
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@Dave T.
What’s more frustrating is that Mom moved heaven and earth to allow me to go to college and would have left town with a bag over her head if I hadn’t gone...then got mad when the education for a career made me an “anywhere.” Who did I think I was? I obviously was looking down on them by not moving back to the hometown and doing the same things.
They want you to go, they don’t want you to have gone.
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Accompanying the economic stagnation in parts of the nation that could be referred to as Trumpland has been a rise in anti-Semitism and a blaming of the Jews who are believed to secretly control the USA economy We have seen George Soros being blamed for everything from the Caravan to attacks on Facebook The murders at the Chicago synagogue may be the most horrific example to date but there has been a 60% increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes since Trump took office
Trump's support among white nationalists and Neo Nazi's is well documented His "very fine people" remark after the Charlottesville riot is a case in point
As parts of America stagnant economically and existentially they are falling prey to the scapegoating propaganda of the new brand of White Nationalist who blame an age old target of bigotry-the Jews
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@Martin: They also hate, demonize and scapegoat feminists. Sexism is as virulent a force among Trump conservatives as racism is.
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@Martin
Right-wing Republicans have been following the script for years - first they came for the "trade unionists" (and demonized and tried to break unions) then they came for the "socialists" (and targeted squishy liberals who support a minimum wage and equal opportunity), then they came for the "elite intellectuals" (and tried to delegitimize science, truth, and the free press). Then they incited the bigotry of anti-Semitism.
Right-wing Republican extremism is getting uglier by the day.
3
I suspect that if by some miracle we got a president who addressed economic inequality head on, we’d see the chasm start to close. If the top marginal rate on income were to double over the next decade and passed down people at the lower third of the income scale, if unions and collective bargaining were strengthened, and there was an industrial policy that made technical education a priority and more manufacturing jobs created here, there’d be more of a feeling of shared prosperity. The problem is that rural block thinks it’s Socialism.
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Why don't the Dems call it the Bush Recession? I know he can't take all the credit but he has to take a large share when it happened at the end of his eight year term.
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Frank....it was a Depression, not a recession.
The Bush-Cheney Depression.
Republicans are reckless economic nihilists.
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@Frank Walker
I've always called it The Second Republican Great Depression.
Depression, recession, go for the jugular.
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@Socrates
Let's call it that, then!
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US elections are fought between the 48 and 52 yard lines at the presidential level. Trump won because of a few well placed voters in a few medium sized states. If he had lost, we would not have been talking about the primary motivations of his voters. There may have been a few factions of a percent that came out for Trump that formerly didn't vote because of his attitudes about race and immigration, but by and large his voters were standard GOP voters. Small effect at the margin gave us Trump. Not a big swing in any bloc.
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@Djt - your point reflects something I have wondered about for years - why are elections (almost) aways so close? It's as though people just toss a coin! Can anyone point me to a statistical analysis of this?
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@retiring sceptic
I've been wondering the exact same thing for at least as long. It's absolutely insane how it's always so down-to-the-wire ridiculously close.
To rationalize it, you have to believe that some malevolent force (perhaps the media, or the election consultant industry?) with a vested interest in creating and maintaiining close elections somehow maneuvers itself into influencing the voting public and the electoral system via various nefarious ways in order to engineer nail-biting results.
Statistical analysis certainly would be welcomed!
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@Djt Except that Trump was an outrageous and ugly candidate even for the GOP. The question is why did so many Republican voters stay with him anyway. A deep commitment to the GOP?
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Dr. Krugman is right to doubt that the chasm between Democratic cities and rural America can be bridged. He also rightly notes that rural Americans do not vote their economic interests. But there is much more behind why they consider race and religion their the only meaningful "interests".
Higher education leads the vast majority of people who attain it to believe in science. It leads them to believe in tolerance for others of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. It leads them to understand facts and to credibly assess sources of information. It leads them to develop abilities and skills in this new economy that help their families flourish.
Rural Americans want none of this. Education, to them, is a dirty word. Anyone with a post-secondary education is now an "elitist". To this sixty-something American, this concept is one of the most absurd of all Trump voters' views. I came from a working class family and put myself through college and law school. I had no family money to fall back on, and no "legacy" admission opportunities. And yet they now label me as an elitist.
In the era in which I was raised, people who accomplished what I did were respected for their perseverance and hard work. Rural America no longer values these qualities. They value their own religion and their own race -- precisely because these qualities require no effort on their part to do anything meaningful or constructive with their lives. And their "president" reflects these beliefs.
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@Donegal
Odd I live in a rural area, have one of the highest levels of education available, definitely vote my economic interests (low taxes), and haven’t found anyone in my rural area that has race and religion as their only interest.
Most of my rural neighbors are quite tolerant, but they don’t want to support other folks. They work to take care of those they love.
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@Donegal
Bless you and thank you, from another 'elitist.'
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@Donegal These broad stereotypes are difficult to square with Idaho, Nebraska and Utah voting for Medicaid expansion. I live in Seattle but spend a lot of time in rural Oregon--very conservative. There is a lot more potential for finding common ground than widely believed, but not if the "urban educated elites" don't take some time to understand people from rural areas, and the difficult economic problems they face. For starters, calling people intolerant and unable to understand what is in their best interest is unlikely to win over the many people living in rural areas who are open to alternatives to Trumpism.
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Just as much as there needs to be social floors (minimums) across the country as far as federally mandated minimum wages, benefits and the like, there should be also one for state taxes.
It is a continuous rush to the bottom, that not only are red states ''competing'' (poaching) businesses and jobs via promoting little or no taxes, but it is starting to show up between blue states.
We have seen the disastrous Kansas experiment play out, where they were forced to reverse course and raise taxes to pay for things. I do not want to see that happen to the blue states.
There are a couple of red states (Texas as an example) that have stayed ahead of the curve, because they have have had massive net population gains (along with businesses) keep them somewhat solvent. That is changing as well, as the demographics move in one direction, and people demand more than the bare basics (or less)
''Can this chasm be bridged? '' - Aye, I think it can. (look at Orange county - as you point out)
What it takes is a close proximity of good and effective Democratic governance, whereas the voters in an adjacent district, county or state sees that marked difference between it and their own republican rule (being woefully inadequate)
Just a few more election cycles.
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@FunkyIrishman
Texas is a state with state income taxes. There going to be a lot of unhappy taxpayers come April 2019 when they find out just how much losing the SALT deduction is going to hurt them.
As long as the coasts and large metropolitan regions support the economy with their taxes and bear the greater economic burden while the smaller rural areas elect the President, it is hard to see how this division can be resolved. Our better angels have clipped wings and are sorely challenged these days.
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@White Rabbit
Excellent observation! It harkens back to Dr Krugman's column of a week or so ago, where he discussed the unfairness of representation in the Senate. From there to the Electoral College, as you say. It should be possible, albeit difficult, to modify the Constitution to get the president elected by direct popular vote, not the EC. It will be much harder to break up the "superstates" and consolidate the small/sparsely populated states to produce a Senate that's more representative.
Or maybe it could just be abolished.
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And, red staters hate taxes but love federal subsidies.
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@zandru.....but in earlier column on unfairness of the senate Krugman stopped short of discussing the effects of the electoral college in damaging our democracy. Why-- is that too 'controversial' even for the conscience of a liberal now?
The EC should be discussed in depth by columnists and Cable TV news in terms all can understand. It's pushed under the rug by the media. Why?
When will some of our NYT columnists grapple with it instead of avoiding it?
Now, the small states fear domination by big states, and big states by the small. What's the reality?
America is not working. How many more Trumps will get into office?
The Constitution is amendable.
8