Margot Katz-Sanger left this point out of her scorecard on Obamacare. Since people are now able to get inursance through the exchanges, they are no longer dependent on getting it from their employer, which usually means working a full-time job. As a result, the number of people choosing to work part-time has risen by more than 2 million since the law went into effect. The people benefiting have disproportionately been young parents and older workers who are too young to qualify for Medicare.
Margot Katz-Sanger left this point out of her scorecard on Obamacare. Since people are now able to get inursance through the exchanges, they are no longer dependent on getting it from their employer, which usually means working a full-time job. As a result, the number of people choosing to work part-time has risen by more than 2 million since the law went into effect. The people benefiting have disproportionately been young parents and older workers who are too young to qualify for Medicare.
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It’s often said that the economy is too simple for economists to understand it. Neil Irwin gave us evidence to support this assertion in a NYT column today. The piece both raises the question of whether the economy is too dynamic, or not dynamic enough, and what we can do to protect workers if it is too dynamic.
On the first question, we really don’t have to debate much. We have good measure of the economy’s dynamism, it’s called “productivity growth.” Productivity growth measures the increase in the amount of output in an average hour of work. It has has been extremely slow in the last decade, just 1.0 percent annually. It was rapid from 1995 to 2005, at 3.0 percent a year, but this was just equal to the pace during the period from 1947 to 1973. So, we clearly have no reason to worry that the economy is too dynamic.
In terms of protecting workers, the piece makes the point that workers who lose their job due to innovation are an important externality. This is obviously true. It’s also not a new point. Other wealthy countries require that companies give severance pay to longer term workers. This both provides a bit of insurance to workers and effectively causes companies to internalize at least part of the costs associated with throwing a long-term employee out of work.
For example, if companies are required to pay two weeks of severance pay for each year of work, then a company planning to lay off a worker who has been employed for twenty years would have to pay forty weeks of severance pay. This would be a substantial disincentive to laying off workers. Companies would then have more incentive to modernize existing facilities and to retrain workers so they have the skills needed to be as productive as possible.
One of the great things about required severance pay is that it can be mandated at the state level. This means that there is no need to wait until Donald Trump and the Republican congress decide it is a good idea. States with progressive governments can adopt laws to this effect tomorrow. (At the moment, Montana is leading the way, with a law that prohibits dismissal without cause.)
Anyhow, this really is not a hard problem, nor is it new. We can provide a substantial degree of protection to workers from job loss due to technology or any other reason. We have chosen not to do so.
It’s often said that the economy is too simple for economists to understand it. Neil Irwin gave us evidence to support this assertion in a NYT column today. The piece both raises the question of whether the economy is too dynamic, or not dynamic enough, and what we can do to protect workers if it is too dynamic.
On the first question, we really don’t have to debate much. We have good measure of the economy’s dynamism, it’s called “productivity growth.” Productivity growth measures the increase in the amount of output in an average hour of work. It has has been extremely slow in the last decade, just 1.0 percent annually. It was rapid from 1995 to 2005, at 3.0 percent a year, but this was just equal to the pace during the period from 1947 to 1973. So, we clearly have no reason to worry that the economy is too dynamic.
In terms of protecting workers, the piece makes the point that workers who lose their job due to innovation are an important externality. This is obviously true. It’s also not a new point. Other wealthy countries require that companies give severance pay to longer term workers. This both provides a bit of insurance to workers and effectively causes companies to internalize at least part of the costs associated with throwing a long-term employee out of work.
For example, if companies are required to pay two weeks of severance pay for each year of work, then a company planning to lay off a worker who has been employed for twenty years would have to pay forty weeks of severance pay. This would be a substantial disincentive to laying off workers. Companies would then have more incentive to modernize existing facilities and to retrain workers so they have the skills needed to be as productive as possible.
One of the great things about required severance pay is that it can be mandated at the state level. This means that there is no need to wait until Donald Trump and the Republican congress decide it is a good idea. States with progressive governments can adopt laws to this effect tomorrow. (At the moment, Montana is leading the way, with a law that prohibits dismissal without cause.)
Anyhow, this really is not a hard problem, nor is it new. We can provide a substantial degree of protection to workers from job loss due to technology or any other reason. We have chosen not to do so.
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It’s not clear that this is what he intended to do in a column that rightly criticized Donald Trump for quickly abandoning his pledge to force drug companies to lower prices, but it is what he did. Pearlstein asserts:
“Because ours is the only country that does not negotiate prices with drug companies, using a national formulary, Americans pay roughly twice what patients in other countries do for the most widely used drugs still under patent. What that means, in effect, is that Americans pay for the 20 percent of drug industry revenue that is invested in researching new drugs, giving the rest of the world a free ride. In exchange for this largesse, a disproportionate share of the high-paying research jobs are located in the United States.”
Pearlstein is asserting that the United States is making its citizens pay more than people elsewhere for their drugs, in effect as a bribe, to get drug companies to locate research jobs in the United States. This is a clear violation of WTO rules and would be quite a news story if Pearlstein has any evidence to back up this assertion.
As a practical matter, we would expect drug companies to locate their research facilities where the cost of the research is lowest. The cost of research is not affected one iota by what a country’s citizens pay for drugs. Most likely the reason most research is located in the United States is the enormous subsidies that the government provides through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is not a coincidence that a huge number of biotech companies are located in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, right next to the NIH campus.
It is also absurd to claim, as Pearlstein does, that we give the rest of the world “a free ride.” The rest of the world pays plenty of money to finance the research being done by the pharmaceutical industry. The industry only claims to do $50 billion a year in research spending. They collect well over $500 billion a year in revenue outside of the United States. In effect, Pearlstein is claiming that if the U.S. government decides to hand the pharmaceutical industry another $50 billion a year in profits because of the power of their lobbyists, that other countres are free-riding because they are not equally corrupt.
Of course, serious newspapers would be discussing more efficient alternatives to patent-monopoly supported drug research (see Rigged, chapter 5), but the Washington Post gets considerable advertising revenue from the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s not clear that this is what he intended to do in a column that rightly criticized Donald Trump for quickly abandoning his pledge to force drug companies to lower prices, but it is what he did. Pearlstein asserts:
“Because ours is the only country that does not negotiate prices with drug companies, using a national formulary, Americans pay roughly twice what patients in other countries do for the most widely used drugs still under patent. What that means, in effect, is that Americans pay for the 20 percent of drug industry revenue that is invested in researching new drugs, giving the rest of the world a free ride. In exchange for this largesse, a disproportionate share of the high-paying research jobs are located in the United States.”
Pearlstein is asserting that the United States is making its citizens pay more than people elsewhere for their drugs, in effect as a bribe, to get drug companies to locate research jobs in the United States. This is a clear violation of WTO rules and would be quite a news story if Pearlstein has any evidence to back up this assertion.
As a practical matter, we would expect drug companies to locate their research facilities where the cost of the research is lowest. The cost of research is not affected one iota by what a country’s citizens pay for drugs. Most likely the reason most research is located in the United States is the enormous subsidies that the government provides through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is not a coincidence that a huge number of biotech companies are located in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, right next to the NIH campus.
It is also absurd to claim, as Pearlstein does, that we give the rest of the world “a free ride.” The rest of the world pays plenty of money to finance the research being done by the pharmaceutical industry. The industry only claims to do $50 billion a year in research spending. They collect well over $500 billion a year in revenue outside of the United States. In effect, Pearlstein is claiming that if the U.S. government decides to hand the pharmaceutical industry another $50 billion a year in profits because of the power of their lobbyists, that other countres are free-riding because they are not equally corrupt.
Of course, serious newspapers would be discussing more efficient alternatives to patent-monopoly supported drug research (see Rigged, chapter 5), but the Washington Post gets considerable advertising revenue from the pharmaceutical industry.
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Yahoo ran a piece pointing out that it didn’t really make sense for Donald Trump to take credit for the jobs report released on Friday since the survey on which the report is based was taken in the middle of January, before he was in the White House. The piece concludes by telling readers:
“So while Trump can’t be blamed for disappointing data or take credit for a good report, next month is all his!”
While the first point is entirely correct, it doesn’t really make sense to give a president credit or blame for what happens in the early months of their administration. The economy has a great deal of momentum, which means it will continue whatever path it is on for some time.
In the case of President Obama, the economy was tanking when he came into office, losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. While he did quickly push a modest stimulus package through Congress, it wasn’t signed until the end of February and didn’t really start to have an impact until April. Even at that point, Obama’s program had to counteract an enormous amount of negative momentum in the economy.
In Trump’s case, the economy is on a path of modest growth and relatively strong job creation. This is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, unless he does something to slow or speedup growth, or there is some extraordinary shock to the economy.
Anyhow, we are inevitably going to try to score the performance of a president and it is customary to treat the day they take office as the starting point for the scorecard. However, as a practical matter, this approach does not make a great deal of sense.
Thanks to Robert Salzberg for calling this piece to my attention.
Yahoo ran a piece pointing out that it didn’t really make sense for Donald Trump to take credit for the jobs report released on Friday since the survey on which the report is based was taken in the middle of January, before he was in the White House. The piece concludes by telling readers:
“So while Trump can’t be blamed for disappointing data or take credit for a good report, next month is all his!”
While the first point is entirely correct, it doesn’t really make sense to give a president credit or blame for what happens in the early months of their administration. The economy has a great deal of momentum, which means it will continue whatever path it is on for some time.
In the case of President Obama, the economy was tanking when he came into office, losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. While he did quickly push a modest stimulus package through Congress, it wasn’t signed until the end of February and didn’t really start to have an impact until April. Even at that point, Obama’s program had to counteract an enormous amount of negative momentum in the economy.
In Trump’s case, the economy is on a path of modest growth and relatively strong job creation. This is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, unless he does something to slow or speedup growth, or there is some extraordinary shock to the economy.
Anyhow, we are inevitably going to try to score the performance of a president and it is customary to treat the day they take office as the starting point for the scorecard. However, as a practical matter, this approach does not make a great deal of sense.
Thanks to Robert Salzberg for calling this piece to my attention.
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One of the central themes in the Republican drive to repeal Dodd-Frank is the claim that it has made it difficult for businesses to get credit. This assertion is often given the he said/she said treatment, as in this Washington Post piece today. (Actually, it’s often just given the he said treatment, where the assertion is accepted as fact, with the question being whether a reduction in business credit is worth making the banking industry safer.)
There is actually evidence that we can look to in order to assess the ability of businesses to get credit in the Dodd-Frank era. On the one hand we can look at the interest rate on high-yield bonds as being the cost of capital to many mid-size firms that are big enough to get access to the bond market, but still far too risky to qualify as investment grade.
Rates in this market, as well as spreads against Treasury bonds, have been extraordinarily low in recent years. In fact, there were so low that Fed chair Janet Yellen warned against a bubble in this market in the summer of 2014. The other major piece of evidence is the self-assessment of businesses of the problems they face in getting credit.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has been surveying its members on the problems they face in their business. They explicitly ask about credit conditions. In recent years, this has been a very minor problem and in fact last year hit record lows for the survey.
While all surveys have methodological issues, there is no reason to believe that the NFIB would tilt its findings to make credit look like less of a problem than it actually is. Nor is plausible that credit could be a major problem for a substantial portion of U.S. businesses but not for the businesses included in the NFIB survey.
In short, we do have evidence on the question of Dodd-Frank undermining access to business credit and it is unambiguous, it has not posed a major problem. The claim that Dodd-Frank has prevented businesses from expanding and undermined the recovery is one of those alternative facts that is so popular in political debates these days. It should not be taken seriously.
One of the central themes in the Republican drive to repeal Dodd-Frank is the claim that it has made it difficult for businesses to get credit. This assertion is often given the he said/she said treatment, as in this Washington Post piece today. (Actually, it’s often just given the he said treatment, where the assertion is accepted as fact, with the question being whether a reduction in business credit is worth making the banking industry safer.)
There is actually evidence that we can look to in order to assess the ability of businesses to get credit in the Dodd-Frank era. On the one hand we can look at the interest rate on high-yield bonds as being the cost of capital to many mid-size firms that are big enough to get access to the bond market, but still far too risky to qualify as investment grade.
Rates in this market, as well as spreads against Treasury bonds, have been extraordinarily low in recent years. In fact, there were so low that Fed chair Janet Yellen warned against a bubble in this market in the summer of 2014. The other major piece of evidence is the self-assessment of businesses of the problems they face in getting credit.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) has been surveying its members on the problems they face in their business. They explicitly ask about credit conditions. In recent years, this has been a very minor problem and in fact last year hit record lows for the survey.
While all surveys have methodological issues, there is no reason to believe that the NFIB would tilt its findings to make credit look like less of a problem than it actually is. Nor is plausible that credit could be a major problem for a substantial portion of U.S. businesses but not for the businesses included in the NFIB survey.
In short, we do have evidence on the question of Dodd-Frank undermining access to business credit and it is unambiguous, it has not posed a major problem. The claim that Dodd-Frank has prevented businesses from expanding and undermined the recovery is one of those alternative facts that is so popular in political debates these days. It should not be taken seriously.
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While intellectual types are writing all sorts of grand treatises on how automation is going to take all the jobs and leave most people unemployed, the folks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who actually collect the data haven’t gotten the message. They released data today on productivity growth (this is the measure of the rate at which automation is reducing the need for labor) for the 4th quarter of 2016.
The data showed that productivity grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the 4th quarter and is now 1.0 percent higher than it was a year ago. This is roughly the same pace that productivity has grown for the last decade. It is an extremely slow rate of productivity growth. Productivity had grown at close to a 3.0 percent rate from 1995 to 2005 and also in the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973.
In other words, instead of automation moving along at an incredibly rapid rate leading to mass displacement of workers, it is actually advancing very slowly. We can put the threat of automation in the alternative facts category, albeit in the category of alternative facts that appeals to intellectual-types.
While intellectual types are writing all sorts of grand treatises on how automation is going to take all the jobs and leave most people unemployed, the folks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who actually collect the data haven’t gotten the message. They released data today on productivity growth (this is the measure of the rate at which automation is reducing the need for labor) for the 4th quarter of 2016.
The data showed that productivity grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the 4th quarter and is now 1.0 percent higher than it was a year ago. This is roughly the same pace that productivity has grown for the last decade. It is an extremely slow rate of productivity growth. Productivity had grown at close to a 3.0 percent rate from 1995 to 2005 and also in the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973.
In other words, instead of automation moving along at an incredibly rapid rate leading to mass displacement of workers, it is actually advancing very slowly. We can put the threat of automation in the alternative facts category, albeit in the category of alternative facts that appeals to intellectual-types.
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During his presidential campaign Donald Trump frequently talked about how he used campaign contributions as payoffs to advance his business interests. He boasted that if you give politicians money they have to do what you want. In an apparent effort to further advance his business interests, Donald Trump is pushing a plan that would allow him to get taxpayer subsidies for these payoffs.
He proposed a plan that would overturn current law, so that tax-exempt churches could get directly involved in political campaigns. (The NYT article is inaccurately headlined, saying that Trump would end “law banning political endorsements by churches.” There is no law that blocks churches from making political endorsements. The law only blocks endorsements by organizations with tax-exempt status.)
If Congress follows the path proposed by Trump, he would be able to make tax-deductible donations to a church-like organization, which would then pass them on as payoffs to politicians of Mr. Trump’s choosing. This would mean, for example, that he could donate $100 million to the First Church of Trump. Since this donation would be tax deductible, he would get 40 percent, or $40 million, written off of his taxes. The Church of Trump would then make contributions to the candidates of Trump’s choosing. He would then call upon these politicians for favors he needs to boost his businesses profits.
It will be interesting to see if the same Congress will be able to vote for both cuts to people’s health care and subsidies to Donald Trump’s political payoffs.
During his presidential campaign Donald Trump frequently talked about how he used campaign contributions as payoffs to advance his business interests. He boasted that if you give politicians money they have to do what you want. In an apparent effort to further advance his business interests, Donald Trump is pushing a plan that would allow him to get taxpayer subsidies for these payoffs.
He proposed a plan that would overturn current law, so that tax-exempt churches could get directly involved in political campaigns. (The NYT article is inaccurately headlined, saying that Trump would end “law banning political endorsements by churches.” There is no law that blocks churches from making political endorsements. The law only blocks endorsements by organizations with tax-exempt status.)
If Congress follows the path proposed by Trump, he would be able to make tax-deductible donations to a church-like organization, which would then pass them on as payoffs to politicians of Mr. Trump’s choosing. This would mean, for example, that he could donate $100 million to the First Church of Trump. Since this donation would be tax deductible, he would get 40 percent, or $40 million, written off of his taxes. The Church of Trump would then make contributions to the candidates of Trump’s choosing. He would then call upon these politicians for favors he needs to boost his businesses profits.
It will be interesting to see if the same Congress will be able to vote for both cuts to people’s health care and subsidies to Donald Trump’s political payoffs.
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The discussion of the Trump administration’s view of the value of the dollar by Neil Irwin is somewhat confused. Irwin wrongly asserts that Treasury secretarys have always argued for a strong dollar:
“If you asked the Treasury secretary his view of the dollar, the answer would be equally rote: ‘A strong dollar is in the interest of the United States.'”
This is not true. There have been many occasions in the past when Treasury secretaries have quite openly worked to bring down the value of the dollar. In the mid-1980s, Reagan’s Treasury secretary James Baker met with his counterparts in major trading partners to negotiate a decline in the value of the dollar in the Plaza Accord. The point was quite explicitly to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.
There was a similar story in the early years of the Clinton administration. A main goal of his deficit reduction package was to lower the value of the dollar, thereby reducing the U.S. trade deficit. Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton’s first Treasury secretary indicated he was content to see the dollar fall in response to the decline in interest rates in the United States.
The strong-dollar policy began with Robert Rubin becoming Treasury secretary. This led to an explosion in the U.S. trade deficit and the massive imbalances that led to the housing bubble and the Great Recession that followed its collapse. So, a strong dollar hardly has a solid pedigree either in economic theory or reality.
The piece also perversely warns that is a border adjustment tax isn’t fully offset by a rise in the value of the dollar:
“…the tax would hit American consumers and retailers hard.”
If the Trump administration wants the dollar to fall then it must have the intention of increasing import prices. This generally doesn’t “hit American consumers and retailers hard” because the net effect on the price of most items they buy is limited. (Recall the huge rise in prices associated with the 30 percent drop in the dollar from 2002 to 2008? Yeah, no one else does either.)
In other words, higher import prices is a feature, not a bug. It is a necessary aspect of a policy intended to reduce the trade deficit and create more jobs in manufacturing.
The discussion of the Trump administration’s view of the value of the dollar by Neil Irwin is somewhat confused. Irwin wrongly asserts that Treasury secretarys have always argued for a strong dollar:
“If you asked the Treasury secretary his view of the dollar, the answer would be equally rote: ‘A strong dollar is in the interest of the United States.'”
This is not true. There have been many occasions in the past when Treasury secretaries have quite openly worked to bring down the value of the dollar. In the mid-1980s, Reagan’s Treasury secretary James Baker met with his counterparts in major trading partners to negotiate a decline in the value of the dollar in the Plaza Accord. The point was quite explicitly to reduce the U.S. trade deficit.
There was a similar story in the early years of the Clinton administration. A main goal of his deficit reduction package was to lower the value of the dollar, thereby reducing the U.S. trade deficit. Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton’s first Treasury secretary indicated he was content to see the dollar fall in response to the decline in interest rates in the United States.
The strong-dollar policy began with Robert Rubin becoming Treasury secretary. This led to an explosion in the U.S. trade deficit and the massive imbalances that led to the housing bubble and the Great Recession that followed its collapse. So, a strong dollar hardly has a solid pedigree either in economic theory or reality.
The piece also perversely warns that is a border adjustment tax isn’t fully offset by a rise in the value of the dollar:
“…the tax would hit American consumers and retailers hard.”
If the Trump administration wants the dollar to fall then it must have the intention of increasing import prices. This generally doesn’t “hit American consumers and retailers hard” because the net effect on the price of most items they buy is limited. (Recall the huge rise in prices associated with the 30 percent drop in the dollar from 2002 to 2008? Yeah, no one else does either.)
In other words, higher import prices is a feature, not a bug. It is a necessary aspect of a policy intended to reduce the trade deficit and create more jobs in manufacturing.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress are looking to get rid of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and to repeal the fiduciary rule which requires financial advisers to give advice that is in the best interest of their clients. Without this rule, many financial advisers would give advice to clients suggesting they invest in products which may not be good for them, but pay the advisers a high commission.
While the fiduciary rule and the consumer protections in Dodd-Frank are often portrayed as being important for consumers, which they are, they also serve an important economic purpose. If we make it more difficult to make profits by designing deceptive profits, then banks and other financial institutions will have to do things like offering better service and lower fees to attract customers. While ripping off customers is simply a form of redistribution (from customers to bankers and shareholders) providing better service and products is economic growth. In other words, people who care about growth rather than redistributing income upward should be in favor of these regulations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress are looking to get rid of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and to repeal the fiduciary rule which requires financial advisers to give advice that is in the best interest of their clients. Without this rule, many financial advisers would give advice to clients suggesting they invest in products which may not be good for them, but pay the advisers a high commission.
While the fiduciary rule and the consumer protections in Dodd-Frank are often portrayed as being important for consumers, which they are, they also serve an important economic purpose. If we make it more difficult to make profits by designing deceptive profits, then banks and other financial institutions will have to do things like offering better service and lower fees to attract customers. While ripping off customers is simply a form of redistribution (from customers to bankers and shareholders) providing better service and products is economic growth. In other words, people who care about growth rather than redistributing income upward should be in favor of these regulations.
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Thomas Edsall has an interesting piece on the turn to right-wing populists in the United States and elsewhere in recent years. While he connects the turn to the right to economic hardship for the working class, he leaves out an important part of the story. The economic hardship for the working class was actually to a large extent the result of policies supported by the Democratic Party in the United States and social democratic parties across Europe.
In the United States, the Democratic Party supported trade, financial, and intellectual property policies that had the effect of redistributing income upward. In the case of trade, deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), were quite explicitly designed to put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. The predicted and actual outcome of these policies is a loss of manufacturing jobs and downward pressure on the wages of non-college educated workers more generally. This policy was aggravated by the decision of the Clinton administration to push a high dollar policy that caused the trade deficit to explode.
At the same time, the self proclaimed “free traders” in the Democratic Party favored policies that protected doctors, dentists, and lawyers from the same sort of international competition. It’s not surprising that working class voters would not be pleased with a party that was working to take away their jobs and push down their pay, and derided them as stupid “protectionists” for opposing the policies, even while they personally were benefiting from protectionists policies.
In this vein, longer and stronger patent and copyright protections also have the effect of redistributing upward. Similarly, the regulatory policies directed towards the financial industry, including free too big to fail insurance, also have the effect of redistributing upward.
In Europe, the push for needless austerity, which has generally been embraced by social democratic parties, both directly and indirectly hurt the working class. The direct effect shows up in cuts in areas like health care, education, and pensions. The indirect effect is high unemployment and lower wages.
For these reasons, it is not surprising working class voters would not be happy with the establishment parties they have traditionally supported even if the right-wing populists may not offer a coherent economic alternative. (Yes, this is largely the point of my (free) book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.
Thomas Edsall has an interesting piece on the turn to right-wing populists in the United States and elsewhere in recent years. While he connects the turn to the right to economic hardship for the working class, he leaves out an important part of the story. The economic hardship for the working class was actually to a large extent the result of policies supported by the Democratic Party in the United States and social democratic parties across Europe.
In the United States, the Democratic Party supported trade, financial, and intellectual property policies that had the effect of redistributing income upward. In the case of trade, deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), were quite explicitly designed to put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. The predicted and actual outcome of these policies is a loss of manufacturing jobs and downward pressure on the wages of non-college educated workers more generally. This policy was aggravated by the decision of the Clinton administration to push a high dollar policy that caused the trade deficit to explode.
At the same time, the self proclaimed “free traders” in the Democratic Party favored policies that protected doctors, dentists, and lawyers from the same sort of international competition. It’s not surprising that working class voters would not be pleased with a party that was working to take away their jobs and push down their pay, and derided them as stupid “protectionists” for opposing the policies, even while they personally were benefiting from protectionists policies.
In this vein, longer and stronger patent and copyright protections also have the effect of redistributing upward. Similarly, the regulatory policies directed towards the financial industry, including free too big to fail insurance, also have the effect of redistributing upward.
In Europe, the push for needless austerity, which has generally been embraced by social democratic parties, both directly and indirectly hurt the working class. The direct effect shows up in cuts in areas like health care, education, and pensions. The indirect effect is high unemployment and lower wages.
For these reasons, it is not surprising working class voters would not be happy with the establishment parties they have traditionally supported even if the right-wing populists may not offer a coherent economic alternative. (Yes, this is largely the point of my (free) book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.
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