Absolutely! That’s the cohort who don’t save for retirement. Obviously they think they should work until they drop
Perhaps this is a reason the US has not spent much on improving infrastructure? The boost from such spending takes a while, perhaps quite a while, to be reflected in GDP Growth.
Infrastructure investment has a strong impact on economic growth, as evidenced by a 2020 GI Hub study that found the economic multiplier for public investment (including infrastructure) is 1.5 times greater than the initial investment in two to five years – much higher than other forms of public spending.
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I go into a local super market that has 130 workers. Most of them are not paid a living wage. A supervisor on the floor said their insurance is so bad the deductible is $6000. They are all living in fear of a child or spouse or themselves getting seriously sick. A total financial wipeout.
She was asked do you support universal healthcare. She point blank said no. She said she wants to shore up the ACA. People on O care can’t afford it either.
There was no point.
Yes there would have been howls by one side if she said yes. But her side would have turned out to vote.
If you really look at that she was not prepared for the question.
The answer was for the college educated. The people who pass tests and forget what was on the test. Meanwhile other people work for a living. Their ticket is not punched so the college educated use them.
She was useless.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said in a statement released on Wednesday just before Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her concession speech. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
Sanders’ analysis is not novel or inaccurate. Harris fared pretty poorly with the Democratic Party’s base, losing ground in just about every objective category that mattered.
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? … Probably not,” Sanders said.
I’m sure many will disagree with the above.
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I completely agree with the above. But I think Sanders may be mistaken in thinking that his views are the change the working class wants.
The major policy achievement of the Administration was the passage of the Build Back Better Act, rebranded to be the IRA. One of the main dramas of that fight was the conflict between Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. Sanders promoted a much larger spending package that had as its largest component a centerpiece of Green initiatives to fight climate change; Manchin argued that it was too huge a spending package given the rise in inflation, and (implicitly) that his constituency doesn’t prioritize fighting climate change, and that it was the infrastructure component (later carved out into the BIL) that was what people really wanted passed. Manchin was excoriated by Democrats up and down the party for his views.
Regardless of which position you think actually advances the priorities of the working class, which side of that debate do you think the working class thinks advances the priorities of the working class? IMHO, although most voters generally support the idea of fighting climate change, they do not prioritize it very strongly - and that support skews heavily between college-educated folks (who think climate change is a top priority) and non-college folks (who generally think it’s a very very low priority).
I think Sanders correctly diagnoses that the Democrats are perceived as being more on “Team Elite” than “Team Working Class.” I think he misdiagnoses which part of the Democratic coalition the working class thinks is on Team Elite.
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Globalization of the world destroyed many good paying jobs that had health benefits. Little was done by either political party to aid those now in dire economic straits.
The 2016 election was the first disruption. The president-elect then and now a symptom of the social-political upheaval.
Do solutions arise to aid the common worker? Or does the social-political upheaval become even more frenzied and spin out of control?
The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it’s very hard to exit.
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