August 16, 2018
I was involved in an exchange on the extent to which economic factors, as opposed to racism, sexism, and xenophobia, played a role in Trump’s election. While this is probably not a good way to spend one’s time I kept trying to make a point that as best I can tell everyone is ignoring.
Due to worsening conditions for the working class (defined here as people without a college degree), the rate of educational upgrading has slowed dramatically over the last four decades. If we continued to see the same rate of increase in college graduation rates in the years since 1979, as we did in the years from 1959 to 1979, we would have far more college educated people and far fewer people without college degrees.
This means that even if there were zero change in the attitudes and voting behavior of white working class people, there would have been many more votes for Clinton and fewer for Trump since there would be fewer white people without college degrees and more with college degrees.
Yes, this is incredibly simplistic, but if there is something wrong with the logic, no one has bothered to tell me what it is. (Here is the earlier post I did with Sarah Rawlins for folks who want to check the numbers.)
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