economy – Unspoken Politics

It’s 1860 Again (Without A Lincoln)

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So, it’s an election year. The country is falling apart- both in the long-term crumbling of infrastructure, education, and health care, and the short-term of the COVID-19 epidemic killing thousands of Americans a year. The President, obsessed with “re-opening the economy” to prevent an (inevitable) massive recession just before the November election, is trying to rally people to engage in mass protest to attack sensible Democratic governors who are ignoring him and choosing to side with public health- and acting in regional cooperation (in the Midwest, West Coast, and Northeast regions to name a few) as states rather than taking advice from the federal government. Trump is seeing his authority slip through his fingers, and is thus stoking popular fury in an attempt to win it back. Whether this is just mass protest, which will spread coronavirus faster, or armed attacks, remains to be seen. What is clear is that the country has conclusively and thoroughly gone to Hell.

This isn’t the first election year that’s taken place in Hell. There was 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression. 1940 and 1944, while World War II was raging. 1968, as the Vietnam War was peaking and left-wing mass protest threatened to overwhelm a divided Democratic Party, which ultimately lost due to Nixon’s subterfuge and the racist Southern Strategy.

But this is 1860. As the prospect of an anti-slavery (or anti-expansion of slavery, which to slave owners were one and the same) candidate becoming President, states began to engage in furious rhetoric, voter suppression, and unilateral actions. A Civil War was the fallout of the election, which killed probably about 750,000 people by recent estimates. The country was falling apart, after decades of strife, compromise, and a rising and militant abolitionist movement- ultimately leading to the raid on Harper’s Ferry by John Brown, which drove the slaveholding states into an absolute fury and created a revolutionary situation.

The issue here is that the 1860 election also brought us Abraham Lincoln, one of the best Presidents we’ve ever had- a savvy politician, a strong leader, perhaps the most gifted public speaker in American political history. His strength made both the campaign season and the aftermath of the election a more optimistic time for abolitionists and antislavery states. Though from humble origins, he had by then been proven to be a masterful orator and campaigner who would transform America in his four years in office.

In 2020, we’ve got Joe Biden. Biden is not a great orator- he routinely forgets his train of thought and can barely read from a teleprompter. His leadership is lacking, as he largely disappeared from national view during the initial period of panic about coronavirus, ceding all media time to Donald Trump. And his entire career has been filled with terrible decisions (the Iraq War), racist politics (busing, the crime bill, the War on Drugs), and naked corruption (the bankruptcy bill, Hunter Biden’s $600,000 salary for a Ukrainian energy company during his vice presidency). He is not Lincoln. He’s not even George W. Bush. He has no leadership capability, and thus he might just blow this whole thing.

Screen Shot 2020-04-18 at 9.46.18 AM — Electoral College Predictions as of April 3rd

Biden holds about a five point lead, without having had to debate Trump or make any public appearances. He’s the most sheltered political nominee in history, with the exception perhaps of Reagan during his decline in 1984. Five points nationally is not much, as Hillary won by three and still lost all the key states. Swing state polls have things generally within the margin of error, especially Wisconsin. Biden looks like he will be fighting a defensive war to hold traditional Democratic states Clinton lost (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin). Talk of taking back Ohio or Iowa seem like a pipe dream. And Florida, which would make the Midwest results irrelevant, is filled with voter suppression, attempts to overturn a voter initiative to re-enfranchise ex-felons (which likely will confuse these people and many will not vote due to that confusion), and a crooked Republican governor who will do anything to keep his state red, despite sliding approval ratings in a time where most governors have had residents rally around them. The map is small, the margins are thin, the suppression is total (remember all the 2016 suppression happened in spite of a Democratic president). Biden isn’t Lincoln. And that’s a problem when the country is tearing itself apart.

Trump and the Luxury of Failure

As expected, even a small sliver of Donald Trump’s tax returns proved to be interesting and infuriating. The rise and fall and rise (and fall, and rise) of Trump serves as a primer on success and failure in America.

The business fortunes of Trump have oscillated from runaway success to total disaster multiple times. However, the situation gravitates towards money- his fortunes are rooted in the money and connections he inherited. Thus, even when his net worth was well below zero, he could act in a way that most broke Americans could never. Failure as a celebrity real estate mogul seems to resemble deferred success. And as his tax returns show, massive loss can be turned into gain. Never mind that most American carry around debt for years, if not their whole lives.

But the ability to fail is in itself a privilege. Many Americans fail once financially, and never return to a place where it could happen again. Hardship is not a short, confined phase in a larger journey, but rather becomes built into the structure of life.

Yet seeing the continuous wave of protests against police violence in cities, it becomes clear that whole population can never fail, for the system has not and will not let them succeed. There is no money for food, childcare, the same benefits that well-off children and their families have. The school system is dysfunctional and higher education is both remote and expensive. Deindustrialization, trade pacts, and outsourcing have stripped communities of decent work with benefits. Reading Matthew Desmond’s Evicted a few weeks back, his case studies lacked the money to both pay rent and do anything else. Kids attended a dozen different schools, grew up more often in the streets than in the home. Hardship was passed down generation to generation.

In America, only the wealthy can succeed and fail like Donald Trump has.

Affording college should not be a carnival game

I’m somewhat disgusted from watching the college football conference championship games. Not the quality of the games- they were pretty engaging, and go Spartans- but the halftime contest between two people competing for college tuition money. The Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway had two contestants throwing footballs into a hole in a giant soda can to win $100,000 in scholarships.

I don’t have a problem with a corporation handing out some money for college- it’s certainly not the most destructive way to gain publicity, but it does feel strange that people in the United States have to compete for the right to graduate debt-free. One of the long-term threads to American prosperity, especially if that prosperity is to cross class lines, are people of all ages pursuing some form of post-secondary education. High tuition rates discourage poor and lower middle class students from applying at all. And America is rapidly losing its edge in overall attainment:

And struggle in STEM majors:

STEM Graduation Rates1 600x486 The U.S. STEM Graduation Rate Is Very Low Compared To Other Countries

I’ve previously written a detailed speech on the idea of free tertiary education in America, which you can read here. It seems that intelligent and perceptive people should focus on learning, and not fret over balance sheets unless they take an accounting class.

Dreams turned into debt

I’ve wondered how you would encapsulate the economic era that most Americans live in. The fundamental costs of living have skyrocketed. Many Americans are lucky to have zero retirement savings, because others are mired in long-term debt.

I decided to draw this graph to encapsulate what the post-industrial era had brought. With the death of high-wage unskilled labor and declining investment in training and education, wealth has turned into a sea of debt.