The Trump Voters

They want respect, and here’s how to give it to them:

…trade and immigration haven’t been so costless for everyone. Those things provide the most benefit to cosmopolitan people who enjoy global travel (and have the means — professional or personal — to do a lot of it), who can hire nannies and landscapers to do work that other people have to do themselves, who have a taste for strange foreign foods, who are not directly competing with immigrants for jobs, because their jobs tend to be highly language-intensive, or rely on U.S.-specific social capital, in a way that’s hard to outsource. Immigration and trade have been worse for people who compete with immigrants, or tradeable goods and services, and who value a particular community and place over novelty.

Elites, then, tend to give themselves too much moral credit for their position, overlooking the fact that it is always easier to be in favor of enhancing the welfare of others if those enhancements do not cost you anything. But I think that’s not the only thing they overlook.

For one thing, they often seem oblivious to the fact that people care more about their role as workers than they do as consumers. If you go from having a relatively high status and secure job to lower status, lower-paid, and less secure work, the psychological stress of worrying about your future and feeling that you have lost ground may not exceed the psychological benefits of cheaper stuff.

Want to get more Trump? That’s how you get more Trump.

3 thoughts on “The Trump Voters”

  1. The gulf between the sides appears to be getting bigger every day. Progressives aren’t going to quit until they the pain they’ve inflicted on their nations brings a deadly backlash. Maybe not even then, the mental processes required to believe what they do seem to be self-reinforcing. Nothing is their fault.

      1. Which they suck at. It is one thing to pick fights with cops who are paid to not do anything and another thing to pick fights with people who don’t wear skinny jeans or have chicken arms.

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