Carrying on a discussion from the American Politics thread.
Why the working class has turned its back on the left
1) Anxiety over globalization and the triumph of corporate giants has left many of the losers in the modern economy hostile to the establishment. That's why they aren't turning to traditional conservative parties and politicians - they're looking to outsiders who they see as uncorrupted by the system.
Quote:
...The unsurprising result of this combination – more trade, declining unionization and more industry concentration – has been to shift political and economic power to big corporations and the wealthy, and to shaft the working class. This created an opening for Donald Trump’s authoritarian demagoguery, and his presidency.
Now Americans have rebelled by supporting someone who wants to fortify America against foreigners as well as foreign-made goods. The power structure understandably fears that Trump’s isolationism will stymie economic growth. But most Americans couldn’t care less about growth because for years they have received few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens in the forms of lost jobs and lower wages.
The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ns-us-election
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Quote:
...Going global allowed the third-way leftists to enjoy real success -in the short term. But they were not magicians. Somebody had to lose in the competition against low wage, high tech economies not burdened with much democracy and with a rough way of handling strikes. The victims in this contest turned out to be Europe’s indigenous, unskilled and semi-skilled workers and their families. These were the people the left was supposed to protect; in fact, the left was perceived to have done the reverse. The anti-immigrant, anti-trade, anti-free market right now finds itself the repository of the hopes of men and women who see relief in their policies. That they are unlikely to get that relief will lead our societies into ever more stormy waters.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-l...-idUSKBN13Y07B
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Furthermore, the educated and cosmopolitan elite may have left crude nationalism behind, but the working class have not. While the Anywheres are happy to uproot themselves to find education and work and consider themselves citizens of the world, the Somewhere still look for strong social unifying community bonds and traditions rooted in geography.
Quote:
...Those who see the world from anywhere are, he points out, the ones who dominate our culture and society, doing well at school and moving to a residential university, and then into a professional career, often in London or abroad. “Such people have portable ‘achieved’ identities,” he says, “based on educational and career success which makes them . . . comfortable and confident with new places and people.”
The rebels are those more rooted in geographical identity – the Scottish farmer, working-class Geordie, Cornish housewife – who find the rapid changes of the modern world unsettling. They are likely to be older and less well educated. “They have lost economically with the decline of well-paid jobs for people without qualifications and culturally, too, with the disappearance of a distinct working-class culture and the marginalisation of their views in the public conversation,” Goodhart writes.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politic...xit-inevitable
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