In this election cycle, Trump voters weren’t primarily motivated by the economy, they were motivated by immigration and culture issues.
I think we need to see more data on this one. I’d put forth the idea that in fact the underlying issues were in fact economic, and that the cultural and immigration issues were mostly just utilized by Trump as things to blame for the underlying economic woes.
Here’s an article I found instructive on the perspective and here’s a relevant passage:
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
I thought this analysis was interesting.
I said that it shows that unemployed people aren’t likely to start a revolution or anything just because they’re unemployed.
Ah, I understand your point now. Sure, that’s true, but I’m imagining what happens if the lower-middle class gets squeezed out, as mentioned above. I need to go learn more about economic trends of the middle class in American history before I can make this case, though.
If you take a broad view then half of all things will increase x risk in the long run and half of them will decrease it.
Wait, I’m new to x-risk analysis and TDT… but is that true? Why would the distribution of the space of all possible actions split 50⁄50 towards increasing or decreasing x-risks? That doesn’t seem right. Am I missing something?
On aggregate, yes. I’m talking about the economic situation for a certain group, which is the lower-middle class. I don’t know that this is true for them. I’ll go try and dive in on this.
If I’ve parsed your meaning correctly, you are saying every action has a counterfactual non-action, and if you include not just the space of possible actions but the impact of non-action, then risks break 50/50? That makes more sense, but doesn’t really seem to be helpful in deciding between actions to take. The space of possible actions to take is what should concern us, yes?
Regardless, I take your larger point, which is that we should put efforts where you can maximize impact and you are skeptical on the effective value of this one as opposed to others. I would certainly need to be more quantitative in my analysis of this and back up my ideas/claims for sure.
Totally agreed. I have yet to hear an argument that 1) invalidates my chain of reasoning or 2) indicates there are other inflection points along the chain that are better. Whether or not this compares well with other options for x-risk reduction is an exercise I have yet to perform (as I mentioned above).
Thanks for this!