Trump and the poor

  

After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits

Voters in the struggling Pennsylvania city of New Castle backed Trump hoping he’d curb inflation. But the incoming president will be under pressure to cut spending.

This is a link to a current article in the Washington Post.  It has, of course, a paywall.  You can find it discussed, however, on Twitter.

One of the things that has baffled me about Trump's support to some degree is that people have supported him who are very likely to get a massive dope slap over the next four years.   It's clearly baffled the Democrats as well as they fairly clearly assumed that the economic underclass and those on benefits would support them, given traditional Republican hostility to their interests.

But it does make sense.

The same class discussed here is the one that was badly hurt by the exportation of jobs overseas and, frankly, high immigration rates.  They have something to lose, to be sure, but more than anyone else, they hope for a return of a sort of imagined past.  They can look back when they, or maybe their parents or grandparents, had good high paying jobs that didn't require any real education.

Both parties conspired against their interest.  Allowing high immigration rates and basically encouraging manufacturing to move overseas could have been avoided.  This class, together with the Rust Belt middle class, started signaling that it was enraged well over a decade ago and they threw their support behind, first, Bernie Sanders and then Donald Trump.

But will a government of the super wealthy really care about the plight of these people?

I don't really think that Trump thinks much beyond Trump.  He cannot in any fashion be figured to be what Brands called Franklin Roosevelt, "a traitor to his class".   Trump has frankly viewed some members of this demographic,  namely those who serve in the military, as low class dupes.  

So we now have a real test.  Franklin Roosevelt, love him or hate him, like his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, proved to be massively loyal to the American middle and poor.  Other 20th Century figures who mobilized populists proved to not be at all.  What about Trump?

I'm not optimistic.  Trump can't "lower" prices, save by accident if he causes a Depression.  Populists in Congress are both hostile to spending and hostile to taxes, even though Americans are far from overtaxed by first world standards (and don't have the standard of living of other first world nations either).  "Tea Party" types served up the Kool aide for populists that cutting spending and taxation would serve the interest of the average when it most likely stands just to make hit obscenely wealthy, like Elon Must, wealthier.

On the other hand, a thick massive dose of reality won't hurt certain classes.  There are large demographics that basically have come to live on benefits while simultaneously complaining about the government.  And an argument that some benefits were better coming from the private sector, which has an expectation of conduct, vs the government, which doesn't, can certainly be made.  The "reduced and free lunch" programs locally are an example which I've cited before, which went from helping the poor with, essentially, property tax revenues, to some sort of right.

Well, it's going to be interesting.