America's Loss of Jobs, Working Against Self-Interest and Economic Decline of the Working Class

With much respect for the always wise and insightful views of Robert Reich, Pericles21 adds two cents to Professor Reich's article, 'How to Prevent Future Trumps', in his July 3, 2018, blog site.

In that article, Prof. Reich gives his analysis that the cause of the economic woes of the American worker class is the three or more decades of wage declines superimposed on the standard worker class (at least white workers) guilt of racism.

While racism and wage decline are undeniable in their presence, they are not universal to every white worker personal profile or loss of lifestyle. Rather, Pericles21 maintains that racism and wage decline are really resultant fallouts from a primary economic dynamic that has promoted them into the spotlight.

And that primary economic dynamic has been the decades-ongoing disappearance of 'meaningful' (lifestyle sustaining) jobs either from 'jobs flight', being outcompeted in the technical worker marketplace and other factors not at all stemming from the personal blemishes of the American worker. This is something that few analysts, writers and pundit observers of American socio-economics have commented on, much less apparently even looked at directly.
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Pericles21's perspective is the economic wage and prospect "stagnation" Reich refers to are really descriptors of the effects of job disappearance which has happened largely as the result of a fundamental American 'Lack' at the national policy level.

America has simply not developed a national look-to-the-future industrial-jobs development policy for the future. And that 'future' is now at least 35 years from first appearing in the late 1970s.
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And let's not forget that lifestyle sustaining jobs mean stability of a national culture! Which translates to a population capable of a secure, critical thinking base able to see through the demagogue's camouflage!

In his article, Dr. Reich focuses on the ever-present American social mystery of why the white worker and needy classes have so readily and consistently embraced policies and especially persons that operate against their self-interests without even these actors bothering to hide their true natures.

In 2009, at the early history of this blog, and at the start of the first Obama term, Pericles wrote about the phenomenon of the white disaffected, poor and just anxious bloc appearing to knowingly decide against self-interest in voting. Pericles21 noted how in 2009, the southern white bloc, characterized and pre-historied by the South Carolina white antagonists of Reconstruction, voted for political candidates who were, to most of 'us' who claim to possess a rational thinking ability, in 1870, in 2009 and again today in 2018 transparently hollow and false prophets who invariably fail to help their wishful and gullible supporters and usually leave them worse off than before to suffer from economic collapse, industry closings and overall job disappearance.

Once again, under Trump, the gullible but hopeful supporters of the demagogue (the white evangelicals, struggling, jobless and poor) are seeing they have wasted blood and flesh sacrifices to a false idol. 'We', the rational minded, think in wonderment that 'they' must have sensed somewhere in their hearts the Trump glitter was a veneer that would sooner or later rub off revealing base metal. But, the base drabness and disappointing ugliness were probably not expected to be so...ugly.

So once more we are seeing how shallow the demagogue's (Trump's) promises are. Job flight is recurring, and disappointed American workers (white) are again experiencing being the marketplace outliers going hungry as the con-man hero-that-wasn't-but-what-every-sign-predicted and his fellow thieves take their turn at raping America.

Dr. Reich succinctly summarizes his well-stated analysis of the racism and wage-decline factors:

Why did so many working class voters choose a selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful, megalomaniac for president?

It’s important to know, because we need to stop more Trumps in the future.

Reich further analyses:

The answer lies in the interplay between deep-seated racism and stagnant and declining wages. Both must be addressed.

Some white working class men and women were – and still are – receptive to Trump’s bigotry. But what made them receptive? Racism and xenophobia aren’t exactly new to American life. Fears of blacks and immigrants have been with us since the founding of the Republic.

What changed was the economy. Since the 1980s, the wages and economic prospects of the typical American worker have stagnated. Nearly 80 percent now live paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks have grown less secure.

And after this is where Pericles21 tosses his pennies into the pot. (It's so easy to 'Monday-Morning', respectfully even a 'Reich', without whose insightful and convenient analyses this blog would not have been written.

America has sat idlely in the face of global technical-industry and lifestyle changes while watching wide-eyed and with jealousy (sometimes) as other nations stepped smartly ahead to cope with these changes. America lost the steel industry because we myopically refused to 'violate' quarterly profit traditions to retool that industry. Likewise we lost leadership in consumer electronics because we couldn't/wouldn't violate comic-book bootstrap fantasies of the poor garage-base American-kid intrepeneur (keep American ingenuity classically poor and less dependent on R&D funding), i.e., we forgot the reason for R&D in the face of a relatively few nickels and dimes saved to short-term P&L statements. From this policy shortsightedness, America has suffered long term loss of competiveness, failure to dream up new industries and above all failed to create new, lifestyle sustaining jobs in a substantial way.

And, to repeat, let's not forget that jobs that sustain a meaningful, comfortable lifestyle equates to a stable national culture respected internationally!