(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Can Crypto Narrow the U.S. Racial Wealth Gap?

Tags

African Americans, bitcoin, blacks, cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, finance, Hispanics, inequality, investing, investment, Latinos, personal finance, racial wealth gap, wealth, wealth gap, whites, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Shares of Americans who say they’re “familiar” with

cryptocurrencies:

 

Whites: 37 percent

Hispanics: 49 percent

Blacks: 50 percent

 

Shares of Americans reporting owning cryptos:

Whites: 11 percent

Hispanics: 17 percent

Blacks: 23 percent

 

(Source: “Black, Latino, LGBTQ investors see crypto investments like bitcoin as ‘a new path’ to wealth and equity,” by Charisse Jones and Jessica Menton, USA TODAY, August 13, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/08/13/crypto-seen-path-equity-black-latino-and-lgbtq-investors/5431122001/?gnt-cfr=1)

Im-Politic: Crime Derangement Syndrome

Tags

African Americans, Chicago, cities, crime, District of Columbia, gaslighting, gentrification, homicide, Im-Politic, inner cities, law enforcement, Mainstream Media, minorities, murder, policing, race relations, racism, Washington Post, white fragility, whites

If you still doubt that Mainstream Media coverage of the last year-plus’ national crime wave – which inevitably affects how Americans overall think about this issue – has gone completely off the wall, check out last weekend’s long Washington Post piece about the contrasting views of Black and White residents of the District of Columbia about homicides in city neighborhoods where they make up majorities.

I should actually say “supposedly contrasting views,” because there’s no reason to think that the opinions reported amount to a representative sampling of any segment of the public. In fact, it’s far more likely that these selected views reveal how this premier newspaper’s journalists (including of course editors) regard these matters.

Specifically, the article makes painfully clear how they and the rest of a disturbingly woke national media are now regularly turning cognitive somersaults in order to pin the blame for urban violence – which takes place overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods and claims overwhelmingly minority victims – on anyone except the criminals who overwhelmingly come from these same precincts. Heading this article’s list of the truly guilty are White Americans, who allegedly only care about such violent crime when it starts threatening them and their neighborhoods.

As written by authors Rachel Chason and Emily Davies (and approved by every editor with authority over the article):

“From the majority-Black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River that have long been afflicted by gun violence to wealthier, Whiter parts of the city that have only sporadically experienced it, there is a sense that the issue is receiving more attention now in part because the violence is touching gentrified areas like 14th Street NW.”

Especially unhinged (or “less hinged”?) – the White residents so charged by the Post live in the District, which is one of the most Democratic Party-leaning areas of the country.

But don’t think for a minute that the Post believes this alleged hypocrisy is confined to the District. After all, this is a publication that since the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis, Minnesota policeman has launched a big new news beat preachily called “Race and Reckoning.” And it’s no accident that this truly national newspaper, read assiduously throughout the D.C.-based federal government and broader national policy and political establishments – ran the article on the front page of its print edition.

The glaring irony should be lost on no one: There was actually no shortage of Americans who have been calling attention to the violence-prone nature of these minority neighborhoods and its causes for years before the Floyd murder, and who have continued to flag the issue since then. And whether they’ve been indisputably liberal or progressive (as was the case with former President Barack Obama) or, more recently, conservative, (see especially any number of episodes of the Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham talk shows on Fox News, or the years of studies by Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather MacDonald, or some of former President Donald Trump’s remarks), the reaction has been typically the same. They’re pilloried as fear-mongering racists. (See, e.g., here, here, and here.)

Another favorite response to decrying the so-called obsession with Black-on-Black crime: what can only be called gaslighting. My favorite example of such “Nothing to see here” claims came here in 2016, when an apologist for inner city crime (writing, not so coincidentally, in the Washington Post) went so far as to suggest that the idea of “war-torn” South Side Chicago was nothing but a myth.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that last week’s Post piece took gaslighting a big step further that was not only downright looney, but obviously racist – except to the hopelessly woke. It came in a description of a digital exchanges among residents of D.C.’s upper 14^th Street neighborhood (which has been rapidly gentrifying in recent years and recently was the scene of a shooting that stunned its newest, more affluent residents in particular) and the nearby Shaw district (in which gentrification has been slower). It’s worth quoting the Post‘s account of it in full:

In the conversation “about violence, rowdy behavior near bars, noise from ATVs, trash and illegal parking, [White 14th Street-er Jeffrey Willis wrote] ‘We have lost control of the streets here & apparently elsewhere’….

“Shortly after came a terse reply from a woman who said she grew up in Shaw and was angered by what she saw as a desire to over-police Black communities and a refusal to understand the Black culture long at the heart of Shaw.”

In other words, “violence, rowdy behavior near bars, noise from ATVs, trash and illegal parking” should now be seen as part of “Black culture.” In addition, it should be preserved against an onslaught of White Fragility. Now it’s always possible that this woman’s frustrations about inherently difficult changes in residential patterns momentarily overcame her common sense, and that she didn’t really mean to praise such behavior. It happens to everyone. But it’s still remarkable, and in my view revealing, that her claim went utterly without comment in the Post.

Although its origins are fuzzy, I’ve always thought that one of the most compelling ideas ever advanced is the contention that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Last week’s Post piece, and the overall direction of American thinking on race, racism, and crime, makes clear that the only thing necessary for the triumph of arrant, dangerous, and indeed racist claptrap to triumph is for sensible folks to respond just as passively.      

Those Stubborn Facts: Race, Class, and Crime in NYC

Tags

"Defund the Police", African Americans, Bronx, class, crime, Democrats, Eric Adams, Latinos, law enforcement, Manhattan, New York City, police, police brutality, policing, progressives, race, subways, Those Stubborn Facts, whites

Share of college-graduate New Yorkers wanting more police on the subway: 62%

Share of non-college-grad New Yorkers wanting more policy on the subway: 80%

Share of New Yorkers earning $50K-plus per year wanting more police on the subway: 66%

Share of New Yorkers earning less than $50K per year wanting more police on the subway: 75%

Share of white New Yorkers wanting more police on the subway: 62%

Share of Latino New Yorkers wanting more police on the subway: 69%

Share of African American New Yorkers wanting more police on the subway: 77%

Share of Manhattan-ites saying they feel safe from crime riding the subway: 65%

Share of Bronx residents saying they feel safe from crime riding the subway: 43%

(Sources: “Progressives in Denial About Crime Are Catering to Elites and Losing Elections,” by Zaid Jilani, Newsweek, July 14, 2021, Progressives in Denial About Crime Are Catering to Elites and Losing Elections | Opinion (newsweek.com) )

Im-Politic: Trump’s Decidedly Non-Racist Economic Record

Tags

African Americans, Barack Obama, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, families, family income, Federal Reserve, Hispanics, Im-Politic, inquality, Joe Biden, median income, racism, Survey of Consumer Finances, Trump, wealth gap, whites, Wuhan virus, xenophobia

Some pre-debate advice for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden: Don’t rush to trot out your charge that Donald Trump is the first racist President in American history. Because if Mr. Trump has been briefed with any competence, two recent official economic reports have just come out making clear that when it comes to African Americans and Hispanic Americans, – at least before the outbreak of the CCP Virus that has hit minorities especially hard for longstanding structural reasons – the incumbent’s economic record compares quite favorably to that of the Obama administration for which Biden rode shotgun.

The evidence we’ll look at today drawn from the latest edition of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, contains arguably the most important finding of all: The wealth gap separating African Americans and Hispanic Americans on the one hand from white Americans on the other narrowed more during Mr. Trump’s first three years in office than during the final three years of the Obama administration. (RealityChek regulars know that such time frames provide the best apples-to-apples data needed for comparisons, since they came right next to each other in the same economic cycle – in this case, the post-2009 expansion.)

This racial wealth gap is often described as the most damning indictment of the nation’s longstanding failure to generate equal economic opportunity, since the wealth created by one generation can be passed down to future generations, and thereby boost the odds that beneficiaries are cushioned against major economic and financial stress, and foster all the self-reinforcing social as well as economic advantages flowing from such achievement of the American Dream.

The numbers come both from the Fed’s new survey, which covers the 2016-2019 period, and its previous survey, which covered the 2013-2016 period, and here they are, starting with the growth in median family net worth (the Fed’s preferred measure of wealth) for all American families, for non-Hispanic white families, for non-Hispanic black families, and for Hispanic families.

During the final three Obama years, in pre-inflation dollars, this net worth increased as follows for the aforementioned three groups pre-tax

for all U.S. families: +16.25 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +16.80 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +29.41 percent

for Hispanics: +45.77 percent

As a result, median wealth for black non-Hispanic and Hispanic families as a share of median family wealth for their white counterparts rose as follows:

                                                                   2013                    2016

black non-Hispanic families:              9.29 percent        10.29 percent

Hispanic families:                               9.70 percent        12.11 percent

Alternatively put, black non-Hispanic families closed the wealth gap with white non-Hispanic families by 10.76 percent, and Hispanic families by 24.85 percent. No denying that’s progress.

And the Trump record through 2019 in comparison? We’ll start again with the increases in pre-tax median family net worth from 2016 until then:

for all U.S. families: +17.58 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +3.46 percent

for black non-Hispanics : +32.42 percent

for Hispanics: +65.30 percent

So during the first three Trump years, median family wealth overall grew faster than during the final three Obama years, and minority families far outgained white families in this regard. Moreover, this was especially true for Hispanic families, who belong to an ethnic group Mr. Trump is often accused of despising.

That this minority family outperformance bettered that achieved during the most analogous Obama period comes through even more clearly from the following table, which shows how minority families’ net worth grew as a share of white family net worth between 2016 and 2019:

                                                                    2016                    2019

black non-Hispanic families:              10.01 percent       12.81 percent

Hispanic families:                               12.04 percent       19.23 percent

Again, alternatively put, during the Trump years, these results mean that black non-Hispanic families closed the wealth gap with white families by 27.97 percent, and Hispanic families by 59.72 percent. So both groups made much more relative progress during the Trump supposedly racist and xenophobic Trump administration (pre-CCP Virus) than during the supposedly racially enlightened Obama administration.

The Trump record isn’t as good when it comes to another measure of economic peformance – pre-tax family incomes and their growth. But any fair-minded observer would have to agree that it’s more than respectable, especially considering the President’s reputation among so many of his opponents.

Once more, let’s start with the Obama record on this score between 2013 and 2016. (These results aren’t adjusted for inflation, either. During these years, median family income grew as follows for the groups in question:

for all U.S. families: +9.56 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +6.44 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +9.94 percent

for Hispanics: +14.93 percent

As a result, median incomes for black non-Hispanic and Hispanic families as a share of median income for their white counterparts rose as follows:

                                                                    2013                    2016

black non-Hispanic families:               56.00 percent       57.84 percent

Hispanic families:                                58.26 percent       62.91 percent

So the income gap with white non-Hispanic families shrank by 1.13 percent for black families and by 7.98 percent for Hispanic families. These relative gains generally were far smaller than those registered for wealth, but they were gains all the same

At first glance, it’s clear that the Trump record between 2016 and 2019 lagged the Obama era progress. Here’s how family incomes rose then for the groups concerned:

for all U.S. families: +4.64 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +6.00 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +7.00 percent

for Hispanics: -0.49 percent

The same conclusion flows from examining the changes in minority groups’ family income as a share of non-white Hispanic families’ income:

                                                                    2016                    2019

black non-Hispanic families:               57.76 percent      58.41 percent

Hispanic families:                                62.83 percent      58.99 percent

In fact, Hispanic families actually lost ground on this front.

And not surprisingly, the income gap between Hispanic families and white non-Hispanic families widened by 6.11 percent during these Trump years, while that between black and white non-Hispanic families narrowed by much less than during the final three Obama years (1.13 percent versus 3.29 percent).

These Fed figures hardly show that President Trump, as he likes to claim, has done more for African Americans than any President in history Lincoln aside, or that Hispanic Americans have been special beneficiaries of his policies. But they do show impressive progress for minority groups and, perhaps more important, progress that compares well with such achievements under the nation’s first African American President.

Therefore, Biden (and other Trump opponents) could well be right about the President’s racism and xenophobia when all considerations are taken into account. But if so, he’s clearly the strangest racist and xenophobe in U.S. history – a conclusion that will be supported when RealityChek turns next to the new poverty statistics and another set of income figures just issued by the Census Bureau. .

Following Up: Why Many of America’s Widest Divides Aren’t What You Think

Tags

college-educated, Democrats, education, Following Up, Gallup, healthcare, inequality, minorities, non-college, opportunity, partisanship, polling, polls, race relations, Republicans, whites

“An anxious and divided nation cast its first votes,” the headline in the Washington Post moaned this morning.

As yesterday’s RealityChek post reported, though, some impressive evidence came out last week showing that the nation isn’t all that anxious, or fatally divided in the most general terms, after all. At the same time, diving into that evidence’s internals shows no shortage of divisions – only many of the dividing lines are pretty surprising.  (See the PDF linked at the bottom where it says “View complete question responses and trends.”)

For not only is the most important division by far the partisan split between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a gap that tends to be considerably wider than those between groups where divides in the last few years are supposed to have been especially and worrisomely gaping – between blacks and whites, between rich and poor, between the better educated and the less well educated.

For me, the big takeaway is that when Americans are in political moods, they get carried away by their emotions, with Republicans feeling awfully chipper about the state of the nation, and Democrats correspondingly gloomy. When they’re not preoccupied with politics, Americans seem more level-headed – and their outlooks are sunnier. But the unexpected findings scarcely stop there!

For example, let’s look at the internals of the headline satisfaction finding, which shows Americans’ feelings about the quality of their lives. A lofty 84 percent of all Americans told Gallup that they’re satisfied on this score, and 37 percent said they were “very satisfied.”

Republicans were the most satisfied Americans by a wide margin – an astonishing 96 percent called themselves satisfied, and 60 percent considered themselves “very satisfied.” The least satisfied group? Democrats. Their satisfaction levels were 77 percent satisfied and only 25 percent very satisfied.

But here’s what really grabbed my attention – and should grab yours. Keep in mind that the various groups of respondents overlap considerably (for example, both Democrats and Republicans include the wealthy and the poor, and the college-educated and the high school grads; and the both the wealthy and the poor include those identifying with both political parties).

The Democrats’ satisfaction levels were lower than those for non-whites (79 percent) and for Americans with a high school education or less (84 percent). That doesn’t sound very consistent with the notion that non-whites and those with relatively modest education levels are feeling especially downtrodden lately. But these readings definitely point to special degrees of unhappiness among Democrats. So does the fact that the “very satisfied” results for both these groups (31 percent and 34 percent, respectively) topped those for Democrats as well.

The partisan divide is even bigger, in both absolute and relative terms, for satisfaction levels regarding whether working hard can get a person ahead in America these days. In toto, 72 percent of respondents were satisfied and 43 percent were very satisfied with this situation. Non-whites’ overall satisfaction and very satisfied levels weren’t too far off those figures (71 percent and 37 percent, respectively). And the figures for those holding a high school degree at most were notably higher (77 percent and 51 percent, respectively).

But the Democrats’ results were completely in the dumps (only 47 percent and 19 percent, respectively).

Also interesting – non-whites, and Americans lacking college degrees are all more convinced than the college grads (68 percent) about the payoff of working hard, with respondents with a high school degree or less expressing the highest (77 percent) satisfaction level.

Satisfaction levels are much lower in absolute terms (43 percent overall) over the distribution of income and wealth in America – which should surprise no one. But again, those lacking a high school degree were more satisfied, and by a wide margin (49 percent), while the least satisfied (also by a wide margin) were the Democrats (21 percent).

The least educated were also more satisfied with the current rich-poor gap than college graduates (40 percent). But on this issue, non-white satisfaction levels were lower than the average (38 percent).

Gallup respondents were even less satisfied with the availability of healthcare in the United States, with only 37 percent expressing such views. Yet a familiar pattern emerges from the internals. The biggest gap was between Republicans (53 percent satisfied) and Democrats (27 percent). These also represented the highest and lowest levels of all the groups examined.

In addition, non-whites (41 percent) were more satisfied than whites the overall total (37 percent), and much more satisfied not only than the Democrats but than college grads (31 percent). The same held for Americans without high school diplomas (also 41 percent satisfied).

Finally, let’s look at a particularly explosive issue – race relations. Or at least it’s supposed to be particularly explosive. But according to the Gallup survey, there’s much more dissatisfaction than polarization – except among Democrats and Republicans.

Overall satisfaction levels are low – coming in at 36 percent. But the widest gap by far is between followers of the two parties, with 51 percent of Republican identifiers declaring themselves to be satisfied compared with only 24 percent of their Democratic counterparts. (Actually, Gallup also measured satisfaction levels according to political ideology – liberals, moderates, and conservatives. I’ve left these findings out due to the assumption because these results closely track the political parties’ results – which include independent voters. But according to this gauge, the conservative-liberal gap is somewhat wider, at 52 percent-17 percent.)

Most significantly, this partisan divide is far wider than the racial divide, with 35 percent of whites expressing satisfaction with the state of race relations and 39 percent of nonwhites so stating. Also doubtless significant: The next-least-satisfied group is college graduates, of whom only 28 percent expressed satisfaction. Further, their “very satisfied” levels (3 percent) were by far the lowest along with the Democrats’. And they were only one-third the nine percent “very satisfied” levels of non-whites.

Is the country indeed anxious?  To some extent, sure.  Is it divided?  That’s where the answer gets especially complicated.  And this complex picture indicates that, especially in this presidential campaign year, all Americans should beware of pundits and others bearing sweeping generalizations. 

Following Up: Trump and Hate Crimes: What the Data Say

Tags

African Americans, anti-semitism, bigotry, Following Up, hate crimes, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, political violence, racism, Trump, whites

If you’re one of those who believe that hate crimes against Jews and other religious or racial or ethnic minorities in America have reached unprecedented levels, and that President Trump’s too often offensive rhetoric is solely or even mainly responsible, here are some numbers to consider:

5,938

5,446

4,869

4,563

4,461

4,200

4,150

4,862

These numbers represent the FBI’s figures on the annual number of reported religiously, racially, and ethnically motivated hate crimes in the United States in the year 2005, and then annually from 2010 through 2016. The FBI won’t be reporting its 2017 results for at least a few more weeks, but these statistics indicate that the incidence of such transgressions has been falling recently, not rising. (I chose these years assuming that, by 2005, much post-September 11 anti-Muslim and anti-Middle Easterner sentiment had cooled, and then listed annual numbers in 2010 because that’s our last beginning of a decade.)

It’s true that there’s been a major rebound between 2015 and 2016, and that Mr. Trump declared his presidential candidacy in June, 2015. So maybe that accounts for the increase? Possibly. But then how to explain the considerably higher numbers in 2005 and 2010 – and the slightly higher number in 2011? Were dog whistlers occupying the Oval Office then?

Blame-Trump efforts look even weaker when the makeup of the 2015-16 increase is examined. Here are those data, by reporting/victim group, along with the statistics for the previous year’s change, to provide some context:

percentage changes                         2014-15                   2015-16

blacks                                                -0.09                          0.86

whites                                                 7.64                        15.21

Jews                                                    6.87                       17.92

Muslims                                          107.43                       26.38

Hispanics                                           -9.26                       23.21

In other words, a case can be made that Trump rhetoric played some role in prompting a significant number of hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and Hispanics. But the President is widely accused of being a racist, too. Why, then, was there virtually no change in the incidence of hate crimes against African Americans? The rate of increase in hate crimes against whites, moreover, nearly doubled. What’s up with that? And although the numbers of such offenses against Muslims rose strongly between 2015 and 2016, they rose at more than four times faster the previous year – in fact, more than doubling. Did more extremist bigots decide to tune in to Mr. Trump on Hispanics between 2015 and 2016, as opposed to his Muslim remarks? And if so, what could explain that development?

Saturday’s Pittsburgh synagogue shooting justifies a special focus nowadays on hate crimes committed against Jews, so here are the FBI figures for reports of such incidents for 2005, and annually between 2010 and 2016:

976

1,040

935

836

737

684

731

862

These results provide some support for claims that Mr. Trump’s emergence on the political scene inspired some of the nation’s worst anti-semites to crawl out from under their rocks. But they also show that the Jewish-focused alt-right/neo-Nazis etc were significantly less activated in 2015 and 2016 than they were in 2005 or 2010. And of course, the overall U.S. population grew during that period.

Further, it’s easy to reach similar conclusions from this list of years, starting in the twentieth century, that have seen acts of actual violence on American Jews themselves (as opposed to, e.g., synagogue vandalism or verbal harassment):

1915

1958

1960

1977

1984

1985

1986

1991

1994

1999

2000

2009

2014

2018

The source is The Atlantic Monthly; I’ve added the 2000 Pittsburgh murder that I described in yesterday’s post which the magazine for some reason omitted. Although numbers like this per se can’t convey casualty counts and other qualitative measures of lives lost or individuals wounded or fear induced, there’s no support here for the idea that American Jews should feel less safe now than ever before. In fact, the worst decades look like the 1980s and 1990s. (Keep in mind that actual casualty levels don’t necessarily reveal the virulence of an attack.)

It’s certainly possible that the FBI’s upcoming 2017 data could show a big jump in various types of reported hate crimes, and that a Trump effect will be lot clearer (depending, again, on the makeup of the increase). Until then, however, the charges that Trump-ian dog whistles are the big reason for record (at least in modern times) threats to American minorities of all or even many kinds will be sounding an awful lot like dog whistles themselves.

Im-Politic: Some Major Surprises in Trump Poll Numbers

Tags

African Americans, Hispanics, Im-Politic, polls, SurveyMonkey, The Atlantic, Trump, whites

Even if you’re skeptical that pollsters are great at divining public opinion, you’ll probably agree that the results of a recent survey about President Trump’s popularity are absolutely stunning. In particular, the findings, reported last week in The Atlantic, show Mr. Trump has made notable strides in winning over African-American men and women, and Hispanic men – groups that overwhelmingly voted against him in the 2016 presidential election.

At the same time, the news wasn’t all rosy for Mr. Trump. The same poll showed that he’s lost ground with key constituencies that supported his run for the White House – namely among white voters.

The results reported by The Atlantic come from an on-line poll, so there are some reasons for skepticism. But the sample size was unusually large – more than 605,000 Americans were interviewed in this manner.

According to the exit polls, the President won only eight percent of the black vote in 2016. But the new findings, from SurveyMonkey, shows that his popularity with African-Americans has grown over the last year. The firm says that 23 percent of black men and 11 percent of black women currently currently approve of his performance.

The exit polls surprised most observers by pegging Mr. Trump’s share of the Hispanic vote at 29 percent. The Atlantic piece doesn’t give an Hispanic total for the newest findings, but the author of the article, Ronald Brownstein, writes that, “Trump’s 2017 approval rating slightly exceeded his 2016 vote share among Hispanic men, and was slightly below it among Hispanic women. ” Indeed, among Hispanic men, Mr. Trump’s support hit 40 percent.

More good – though not great – news for the President: SurveyMonkey reports his overall approval rating at 42 percent. That’s low historically, but it’s a bit higher than reported by the smaller, though more frequent, soundings from the major polling companies.

But that’s where the good news for the President stops. Principally, Mr. Trump carried 66 percent of the overall white vote in 2016. The SurveyMonkey report shows that his approval rating among whites is now just 56 percent. Among college-educated whites, his favorability numbers are down from 48 percent to 40 percent, and among whites without a four-year degree, his support has slipped since Election Day from 66 percent to 56 percent. And his position weakened considerably among white women however this population is sliced and diced.

If you’re a glass half-full Trump backer, you could be heartened upon realizing that most of the negative trends could easily be reversed with just a little more discipline and reasonably good judgment from the Oval Office. If you’re a glass half-empty type, you’ll emphasize that both qualities remain in distinctly short supply.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Crucial Details on the U.S. (and Heavily Female) White Die-Off

Tags

2016 election, Angus Deaton, Anne Case, cities, coal, death rates, Donald Trump, health, Jobs, manufacturing, mortality, mortality crisis, Populism, rural areas, small towns, Trade, wages, whites, women, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Everyone should be grateful to the Washington Post for following up – in heart-breaking detail – on one of the most tragic and important stories of our time: the mounting mortality crisis among working- and middle-class middle-aged white Americans. At the same time, the Post‘s findings raise as many questions as they answer, significantly complicating the story – and the challenge of reversing these dismaying trends.

This white mortality crisis, you’ll recall, first broke into the news last fall, when Princeton University economists Angus Deaton (the latest Nobel prize winner) and Anne Case published a report solidly documenting the trend and linking it to growing economic insecurity combined with ever more paltry pension plans. Deaton and Case noted pointedly that, although other high-income countries, especially in Europe, had also experienced financial crises, productivity slowdowns, and widening inequality, the worsening white death rates in the United States, which provides fewer social and retirement protections, were unique. The authors also suggested that declining economic expectations hit white Americans’ psyches especially hard, and that non-whites, whose expectations were never as high to start with, found harder times easier to cope with.

As observers – like yours truly – noted, the implications for American politics seemed profound. In particular, I wrote, the Deaton-Case results indicated that outsider Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was more on-target than even he suspected when he kept complaining that America was getting “killed” by job- and wage-killing trade policies. And in fact, a strong relationship between rising white mortality and resurgent U.S. populism was made clear by the Post last month, when it found a high correlation between concentrations of the mortality problem and support for Trump.

Today’s report, however, adds crucial details indicating that other factors may be at work as well. One such finding: that “the most extreme changes in mortality have occurred among white women….” Women, after all, haven’t suffered nearly as much manufacturing job loss as men – whether it stems from trade policy mistakes or other causes (like factory automation). At the same time, since so many women have entered the U.S. workforce in recent decades – as manufacturing employment has faced more trade and technology pressure – they could well be affected indirectly by industrial job loss, as laid off manufacturing workers had to start competing for jobs in service sectors where women were more numerous.

Also muddying the picture is the big (and overlapping) rural-urban white health divide found by the Post (with “rural” including “small-town America”). In important ways, this geography of the white mortality crisis is consistent with the trade and manufacturing-centered interpretation. As is known by anyone who has traveled extensively around the “rust belt” or the American South, lots of factories have been and still are located in small towns and semi-rural areas, in part because land is cheap.

And reinforcement for this view is found on this map accompanying the Post article.

So many of the orange-brown and dark grey areas in the map on left — which signify counties and regions with the fastest rising white female mortality rates — are places like southern Michigan (think “auto industry”), northern Ohio (autos, steel, and industrial machinery), northwestern Indiana (steel), north central and western New York State (industrial machinery, heating and cooling equipment, railroad equipment, steel), and the Carolinas (where the plunge in textile and furniture jobs hasn’t nearly been offset by newer – often foreign – investments in sectors like aerospace, automotive, appliances, and electronics assembly). (The map on the right shows counties and region where white female mortality is falling.)

Nonetheless, so many of the biggest orange-brown stretches are regions dominated by other parts of the economy. Clearly, the coal industry’s woes bear lots of blame for the mortality crisis in Kentucky, southern Ohio, and West Virginia. And Nebraska, the eastern half of Utah, and the western half of Kansas have never been manufacturing strongholds (though Wichita has long been a major aerospace center).

The variety of local and regional economies involved shouldn’t be surprising. Anything as big as a mortality crisis in such a large segment of the population is bound to have multiple causes – and to resist talking-point-deep explanations and slapdash remedies. But that doesn’t mean the mainstreams of the two major parties shouldn’t be addressing the rapidly deteriorating health of so many Americans much more comprehensively and energetically.

 

Im-Politic: New Survey Shows Surprising Areas of National Consensus

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abortion, American Values Survey, blacks, China, Democrats, Donald Trump, equal opportunity, family leave, Hispanics, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, independents, inequality, Islam, minimum wage, multinational corporations, Muslims, offshoring, parental leave, police killings, polls, Public religious Research Institute, race relations, regulations, Republicans, same-sex marriage, Trade, whites

Just when you think you’re getting a handle on the American public’s mood in these raucous political and social times, along comes some polling data that rock your world. And I’m pleased to report that, in the case of the new American Values Survey published by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRII), the net results strike me as encouraging as they are surprising. Specifically, they indicate that the U.S. public is much less divided on many hot button social and cultural issues than politicians and the national media coverage have been indicating. In fact, the findings of this November survey suggest the gathering of a common sense consensus on these supposedly bitterly divisive matters.

The unexpected areas of agreement start with a subject close to the leading headline-maker of the day – Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s call for a temporary ban on travel by all non-citizen Muslims into the United States. It’s too early for a poll on this specific proposal. But I found it instructive that, according to the PRII, Americans agree by a 56 percent to 41 percent margin that “the values of Islam are at odds with American values and way of life.” In 2011, only 47 percent agreed and 48 percent disagreed.

Moreover, although breaking the results down by political leanings produces differences, even 43 percent of Democrats share these suspicions of Islam. For Republican and independents, the figures are 76 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

The survey shows an even split on the question of whether immigrants “strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents” (47 percent agreed) or “constitute a burden on the U.S. because they take jobs, housing, and health care” (46 percent). But only last year, the “strengthen” option won out by 57 percent to 35 percent. The partisan gap is indeed wide, with 63 percent of Republicans holding such negative views of immigrants and 66 percent disagreeing. But 32 percent of Democrats were focused on immigrant-created economic burdens as well.

Even more suggestive of consensus on this issue, though, are the results for a slightly different question. Fully 45 percent of Democrats agreed that “illegal immigrants are at least somewhat responsible for America’s current economic woes” (as well as 70 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of independents). And check out the racial split: Majorities of white and black Americans (58 percent and 52 percent, respectively) told held illegal immigrants “at least somewhat responsible” for the nation’s economic troubles – along with 40 percent of Hispanic Americans. For good measure, so do 44 percent of the white and college-educated, who often benefit from low-wage illegal immigrant labor.

The PRII survey will scarcely comfort President Obama, Congress’ Republican leadership, or the multinational corporations who all support America’s current trade policies. Breakdowns were not provided, but 86 percent of Americans hold “corporations moving American jobs overseas…somewhat or very responsible for the present economic troubles facing the U.S.” That’s up from 74 percent in 2012. “China’s unfair trade practices” were cited by 73 percent. Not surprisingly, 72 percent of Americans believe the country is still in a recession, a figure that’s remained pretty steady 2012. Keep in mind that the current recovery began, at least technically, in mid-2009.

Large majorities also believed that “the current economic system is heavily tilted in favor of the wealthy” (79 percent); that lack of equal opportunity in America is a “big problem” (65 percent); and that “hard work is no guarantee of success” (64 percent – including 52 percent of Republicans).

And these majorities extended to numerous economic policies. Just over three-quarters of all Americans favor increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour (including 60 percent of Republicans). Eighty five percent support paid sick leave and 82 percent back paid parental leave. And although no questions were asked about desired regulatory policy changes, 69 percent of respondents blamed “burdensome government regulations” for at least some of the nation’s economic predicament.

Signs of common ground were also evident on domestic social issues that are thought to be highly polarizing. For example, relatively few Democrats (36 percent) or Republicans (43 percent) considered abortion important to them “personally.” And the partisan split on same-sex marriage was smaller, and at lower levels of salience – 28 percent for Democrats and 29 percent for Republicans.

Big divides remained on numerous issues, to be sure – like confidence in the federal government, and a $15 minimum wage (lots of Republicans climb off that boat), and police treatment of minorities. Interestingly, in this vein, minority Americans are significantly more optimistic than whites that “America’s best days are ahead of us.”

But it’s hard to finish this latest American Values Survey feeling deeply pessimistic that the nation can’t overcome its differences and create that better future. In fact, one of my biggest reasons for hopefulness is the following finding: “Nearly two-thirds (66%) of the public agrees that, ‘everyday Americans understand what the government should do better than the so-called ‘experts.’ There is broad agreement across racial, generational, and partisan lines.”

Im-Politic: Globalization and the Vanishing White Democratic Voter

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Clinton, Democrats, free trade agreements, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, immigration reform, Jobs, minorities, Obama, offshoring, Populism, Republicans, Trade, trade Deals, voters, wages, whites

Thomas Edsall of The New York Times is one of journalism’s most incisive writers about economics and political economy. (And no, that’s not a subtle put-down.) That’s why it’s so strange to review what he left out of his column today on “The Demise of the White Democratic Voter” and on Republican attempts to change this group’s long-time loyalties.

According to Edsall, one of the keys to understanding why Democratic office-seekers have done so poorly among white voters in recent elections is the Affordable Care Act. He does indeed do a good job of explaining how Obamacare “shifts health care benefits and tax burdens from upper-income Americans to lower-income Americans, and from largely white constituencies to beneficiaries disproportionately made up of racial and ethnic minorities.” The author also rightly noted the ever greater resentment of white voters about underwriting big government more generally with tax bills that seemingly never stop rising.

But what Edsall left out is important, too: First is the Democrats’ 20-year ambivalence on offshoring-friendly trade deals, and their dramatic shift to wholesale support for immigration reform proposals featuring sweeping amnesty proposals. Second is the Republicans’ nearly equally wholesale refusal to capitalize on voter anxiety stemming from the job- and wage-killing effects of recent U.S. trade policies.

Since the 1980s, it’s been clear that Democratic party ranks include a great many voters from union families in particular who closely identify with the so-called traditional social values typically pushed by Republicans (who candidate Barack Obama in 2008 condescendingly claimed were clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”). At the same time, this group still (rightly) associates the GOP with a business establishment that’s been happy to abandon Main Street for cheaper foreign workers (whether brought into the United States or working abroad) and fast-buck financial engineering-heavy business models.

Ronald Reagan successfully appealed to many of these voters by combining vigorous defense of traditional values (often only in rhetoric rather than with action) and a series of trade policy decisions that provided major protections to key industries like autos, steel, and machine tools with big blue-collar unionized workforces. But his GOP successors in the Oval Office, the Georges Bush, strongly rejected this political and policy formula.

Of course, so have Democratic Presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – even as many of the House and Senate members elected by Democrats have staunchly opposed the last two decades’ worth of trade agreements and related policy decisions like coddling China’s currency manipulation. Small wonder that white men in particular – many of whom still relied on a shrinking manufacturing sector for their earnings and pensions – moved rightward.

Most middle class whites in particular have not been directly threatened at the work place by ever greater flows of legal and illegal immigrants (with exceptions in high tech fields flooded with H-1B visa holders). But unquestionably they have been turned off by the challenge to the rule of law and national security posed by the tacit encouragement of illegal immigration, by the use of their tax dollars to fund public services for illegals (which feeds into the broader hostility to high taxes), by the related sense of entitlement projected by the mass illegals’ demonstrations of the mid-2000s (which also included many legal immigrants and other supporitve citizens and residents), and by the multi-culturalist arguments so often used by champions of Open Borders.

Thus white voters face a choice nowadays that, if not entirely Hobson-ian, is decidedly uninspiring. On the one hand they can support a Democratic party that’s always taken the lead in creating the key economic protections crucial to creating a large, enduring middle class, but whose president is apparently determined to enact a mass amnesty by executive order, and only somewhat less determined to support more offshoring-friendly trade deals. On the other hand, they can continue defecting to a Republican party that, whatever its other perceived advantages, is only superficially united against looser immigration controls, and that’s even more enthusiastic than Mr. Obama about trade offshoring.

Some day, some national-level politician will figure out the advantages of fusing a populist economic platform with positions on social and cultural issues that can not only be called traditional, but that clearly emphasize the best of that tradition. Until then, however, it looks like winning the White House will depend heavily on whether the Democrats attract and retain enough non-white voters to offset continued loss of white supporters, and the converse for the Republicans – hardly a formula for a more harmonious and more unified nation.