Photo Credit: Liz West
A friend I haven’t heard from in many years since he left the USA wrote me. He closed the letter in an unusual way, saying:
PS — USA has gone completely bonkers these days? or what the heck is going on over there? would love to pick your mind over a glass of wine. someday!
I’m not intending on writing on politics as a regular habit at Aleph Blog, and most of what I am going to say is economics-related, so please bear with me. Hopefully this will get it out of my system.
To my friend,
There are a lot of frustrated people in the US. Though you’ve been gone a long time, you used to know me pretty well; after all, I trained you on economic matters.
Let me give a list of reasons why I think people are frustrated, then explain how that affects their political calculations, and finally explain why they have mostly misdiagnosed the issues, and won’t get what they want regardless of who is elected.
The electorate is frustrated because:
Living standards have declined for the lower 80% of society.
Many people lost jobs, homes, pensions, etc., during the recent financial crisis… those assets are not coming back anytime soon. Much of the fault was theirs, but they don’t recognize that, preferring to blame others for their problems.
Many formerly attractive jobs are disappearing either due to technological change or offshoring (whether corporations or subsidiaries).
The economy muddles along, and economic policies that average people don’t understand dominate discussion. Many wonder if anyone is seriously trying to improve matters. They generally distrust the Fed.
It doesn’t seem to matter who gets elected, Democrat or Republican — the status quo remains because business interests support the Purple Party, which is the consensus of establishment Republicans and Democrats who duopolize politics in the USA.
Nothing good seems to happen in DC, and what few significant pieces of legislation have occurred in the Obama years have turned out to be bad (Obamacare) or useless (Dodd-Frank to the average person who doesn’t get it).
Immigration issues get short shrift, also trade issues.
Moral issues have basically disappeared from the political agenda in any classical form. Everything is pragmatic, geared to serve the Purple Party.
In general, the candidates are pretty lousy, and the moral tone of the campaign has been poor. That said, negative campaigning works, and the candidates that focus on being negative are doing better.
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