From Our Future
It seems that lots of media/political/business people "on the coasts" don't get how big a deal trade played in Tuesday's election.
Sold On Free Trade
In the late 70s the country was told that "protectionism" is bad for the economy and was sold "free trade" as a way to bring prosperity and jobs. "Trade" in this usage meant one and only thing: close a factory here and lay off the workers. Open a factory "there" to make the same goods, bring those goods back here to sell in the same stores to the same customers. It's called "trade" because now those goods cross a border. The "sell" was that all those laid-off workers would be "freed up" to get better jobs.
Well, they never got better jobs -- those were also outsourced or privatized or relabeled as low-wage "contractors" with no protections or benefits. So instead they had their homes foreclosed, their local stores forced out of business and their downtowns boarded up. Local and state tax bases dwindled so schools became terrible, infrastructure crumbled, public services cut and cut and cut. Meanwhile the investor class that pushed this and executive class that managed it pocket the wages these regions used to generate for themselves. (They also got huge tax cuts.)
Entire Regions Bled Dry
In the decades since entire regions have been bled dry of ways to make a living, their cities and towns and downtowns left behind to crumble, their aging former factory workers scrambling for Walmart jobs and turning to opiates for relief.
Take a few days and drive around the regions once known for manufacturing or steel production. See what this kind of "free trade" has done to them,
"As you drive from town to town in Michigan and Ohio you see one after another a ring of the 'big box' stores and national chain stores around each city. You also see the 'brownfields' of rusted-out, closed factories, empty, falling-down buildings. Then you go to the downtown and you see boarded-up houses, empty storefronts, deteriorating and deteriorated communities, idle people standing on corners. As you drive into these towns you can just see what is happening in a nutshell."
Bled dry. First by "trade," then by Wall Street-owned chains and banks then by the Wall Street collapse that sucked away the remaining assets. And then Wall Street got bailed out by their taxes but they didn't. These regions never got any help from the government, even as they watched the Wall Street types and executives and coastal elites living it up -- on their money.
Wall Street was bailed out. But for decades this country allowed entire regions and populations to deteriorate and die, and inequality to soar, and didn't do a thing about it. No one fixed it.
"I Alone Can Fix It"
Tuesday a lot of righteously angry people with nowhere else to turn got fed up, took things into their own hands and voted for the lying, insulting, women-groping demagogue who promised that he and he alone can fix it. "I am your voice ... I alone can fix it."
Pick a former manufacturing area, and look at how that area voted in Tuesday's election. Key "swing" states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin were hit hard by deindustrialization and little to nothing was done to help the people there. And they voted for Donald Trump because he promised to "fix" it.
Trade Mattered Where The Votes Mattered Most
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
