Surprised Now the Election is Over – Why?

Donald Trump won the electoral vote but lost the popular. He spoke (among other things) to the poor who were worried about loss of manufacturing jobs and no prospects for the future. Surprisingly the vote of this demographic was split, though he did win the majority of the poor white vote. However, the most surprising thing was the percent of college educated whites including women he won over. If one thinks about it, this should not be surprising. Today there are many forces at play, among them globalization and technology. Throughout history, jobs moved from England to the Continent, from there to North America and from North America to Asia (contrary to election rhetoric South America pretty much remains agrarian). Technology also has a history of not only evolutional but also revolutionary change. Machinery changed craft shops to factories and factories were changed by mass production. These changes, by their very nature, are disruptive with technology causing the greatest upheavals. Today, there is much talk and fear of robotics replacing manual labor in manufacturing. but little is said of technology’s effect on others in the work force. Those at the lower end of the wage scale only temporary displacement to be concerned about. Capitalism, to function properly, needs to have the poor live at some relative level of comfort (or else pitch forks in the streets). Capitalism facilitates constant innovation, creating upheavals where new jobs are created and old lost. For centuries, since the Industrial Revolution, the lesser skilled labor force has seen their jobs shift geographically and due to changes in technologies. During this churn many fall by the wayside. There is a historical precedence for these upheavals and for governments often, to preserve the capitalist system, having to adjust. Though there is a lag between the time old jobs are lost and new jobs or new systems (changes in education or new sources of income created) it has always happened. After all there was the “New Deal” with Medicare, Medicaid and various welfare programs to deal with the turmoil in the early part of the twentieth century. Even now there are moves underway to increase the minimum wage and serious discussion about other methods like tax credits or outright cash distribution (a city in Canada has experimented with this) to attend to the loss of or stagnation of income at the low end while we wait for the new technology to come around. For the group that surprised the pundits, the college educated upper middle class, there is no system, , there is none being discussed, nor has there ever been one never mind one under development, to keep them from sliding down to the ranks of the poor. What technology is doing with gusto is, if not completely eliminating, greatly reducing the value of many middle management, technical and administrative jobs. People working in these positions comprise the largest portion of the middle and upper middle class. The working poor aspire to have their children fill these jobs, but deep down inside they realize that these will not be there in the future. Historically, effects of disruptive changes needed developments in multiple technologies and time to resolve. The mating of Information technology with mechanics is needed for robotics to significantly change the factory floor. Unfortunately only the information technology, which already exists, is needed to eliminate middle management along with many technical and administrative jobs. This is already happening. The punditry and most politicians have not seen this but people holding these position have, and they are afraid. Realizing that the current system has no initiatives in place to attend to them, they voted against a status quo. The working poor may slide from an income of say $40,000 (I’m guessing at these numbers) to one of $35,000, not a life style changing amount, while the possibility of returning to $40,000 if not a bit higher is within sight. The current system has demonstrated its ability to do this. On the other hand, the upper middle class may be looking to falling from an income of $90,000 to $35,000 with the accompanying lifestyle change and they are scared. Back about 15 years ago, during the “dot com” collapse, I was talking to a friend about the possible repercussions of an economic collapse including civil unrest. He pointed out that historically, for a regime change, a certain relatively high percentage of middle management needs to be negatively impacted. Whereas the working poor, for the most part, do not have skills to organize and lead a rebellion, middle managers do. So Mr. President Elect, your first priority when you get to the white house should not be to stall, if not reverse, the browning of America nor should it be to protect us from the proliferation of Islam with its imagined terror; or to figure out how to improve the lot of the working poor, though you need to do that, but to develop and implement policies to alleviate the fears of the middle and upper middle class. If you cannot do this, there may indeed be pitchforks in the streets.

GOP Want to Create “Safe Zones” for Syrian Refugees

Granted, life in a war zone is horrific, but life in a refugee camp isn’t so great either. We spent most of seven years in Germany after the war (WWII) as refugees living in various camps where in the better ones, we share a room the size of a large classroom with three other families. The room was divided into four areas by army blankets strung on wires. Our section had just enough room for two cots, one for Mom and Dad and one for my sister and I and a wall locker. In the next section lived a couple with a son and a nephew who was around 10 years old. Toward the end of the war the Nazis executed his mother and father right in front of him. He was very traumatized and would have nightmares almost nightly which we could clearly hear through our blanket wall. The entire floor shared one bathroom and there was a separate bathing area for the entire building much as one would find in a gym. For kids this was not too hard. But one time more recently, I was at an airport and our flight was delayed. I was sitting around and started thinking about what the life of my parents as adult refugees must have been like. It occurred to me that it had to be like waiting for a flight at an airport for several years. How awful! There is no work. There is very little entertainment. There is no comfort, only waiting endlessly. Not to mention the anxiety of not knowing if you can ever be granted asylum or return to your home. So those of you who think that herding people into camps is such a great deed, go spend a weekend at an airport waiting for a flight and imagine doing that not for two but for one thousand days.