In today’s New York Times’ Opinion section is fact-based, real-world reporting by, of all people, Mr. “Flat Earth” Thomas Friedman, the much-disparaged “there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere” columnist. The often unrealistically optimistic Mr Friedman, who is usually gallivanting around the Middle East or Africa, coming up with analyses that most progressives read with a liberal amount of eye-rolling, has spent some time traveling through the red-states and the Rust Belt.
What he discovered is that the much-reported white working class “abandonment” by the condescending coastal elites, which fueled the “anger” that made them vote Trump, is by no means universal. Turns out the biggest factors in the economic decline of communities is not the God-damn Libtard idiot gummit, but how smart and activated local communities are to take the initiative to invest and create an economic future for themselves.
In the alleged sea of “malaise” and decline in the fly-over states, are oases of prosperity and hope, people with good jobs building stable lives for their families, getting on board the trends that will provide a solid local future economic growth. Rather than sitting on their behinds waiting for coal mining and 1950’s manufacturing jobs to come back, refusing to engage in life-long learning or “activist” government programs, communities that embrace change and make smart choices are thriving.
Reading this article, it became crystal clear that here is an appealing Democratic economic platform to refute trickle-down economics and GOP budget accounting fraud. Using facts, those pesky things with a well-known liberal bias, the “good jobs” the future can spring up anywhere folks are willing to meet the requirements half-way, rather than succumb as the “forgotten” into despair, “disability dependency,” opioid addiction and suicide.
In fact, in many of these places reported on, there’s a SHORTAGE of workers to fill available positions. The problem is that many of the locals refuse to take advantage of available private/public retraining programs to learn new skills, preferring to do nothing until an obsolete factory job is hand-delivered to their front door. Also lacking are people with the “soft skills,” things like showing up for work on-time and sober, and being willing to work a full day without whining.
Here lies the outlines of a “Marshall Plan for the Homeland,” clear indications of proposals Democrats could carry into the next couple of election cycles, that directly address the problems besetting the failing working and lower-middle classes in the red states. Partner an economic revitalization program, planting the seeds for future prosperity between the coasts, with a platform of universal health care, student loan debt forgiveness, strong support for labor organization, and infrastructure investment and a 21st century New Deal takes shape.
Huge progressive waves could sweep cynical and incompetent Republicans from the seats of power, state and federal, for a generation, not unlike how FDR created the foundation for a huge, prosperous middle class, and a decades-long solid Democratic block of voters. Moreover, lending a hand to communities to bootstrap themselves back up the economic ladder, contains common sense platform planks of self-reliance and personal responsibility that even (any but the most craven right-wing tax-cutting toady) Republicans could support. And certainly the somewhat more persuadable vast “Independent middle” would be more likely to support an actual plan of action than yet another round of broken Republican promises and fake populism.
So, even if all this makes sense, how would you ever pay for it? Krugman-style lower zero bound nearly-free borrowing and investment? Repatriating the trillions of corporate profits parked off-shore if that money is invested in American communities? A Wall Street transaction tax of a fraction of a penny on millions of daily stock trades that has been projected to generate billions in new funding? An North Dakota- style infrastructure bank in any state willing to have one? Finally fixing future Social Security and Medicare financing and take that club away from Republicans?
Please read Mr Friedman’s piece (there’s something I never thought I would say on this site!) and see if you might feel some optimism that the solutions are out there, proven and ready to be applied, if only we screw up the political will to propose them, fight for them, and face down the inevitable opposition to the federal government actually functioning in the best interests of the 99%.
www.nytimes.com/...