In theory, a sensible Republican / conservative Democrat wouldn't try to resurrect the steel mill in the districts that put him in office, but instead promote the retraining of steel workers to work in IT. But that just sounds like what happened to that Gary guy, so maybe that's already been tried by neoliberal politicians (the first Clinton?), and what Trump has been selling is just the dying gasp of a phantasm of past prosperity (i.e., MAGA / fascism?).

Despite the fact that that Trump lost the popular vote by 2%, they have 32% less of GDP -- and it's shrunk substantially since 2000. That's a pretty large discrepancy.

(Not in response to Eversor)

tl;dr: economic contractions are painful and politically disruptive

I agree it's definitely a problem. Capitalism definitely needs to find something to do with these people, or else {

Assuming it's possible to middle aged steel workers to become software engineers, you'd also have to bring IT companies to those places (unless they're going to work remotely, but does that really work at scale?).

Retraining the workforce to work in IT is one of the preferred slogans of technocratic neoliberals, but it seems pretty farfetched. More recently, a preferred slogan of theirs is that we need to retrain people to become end of life caregivers, because that job is about to be highly in demand as the boomers continue to age, and it's difficult to automate. That seems less farfetched, but I can see how not everyone might be suited to the work. Bathing elderly people and cleaning their bedpans requires an altruistic spirit and a level of patience that not everyone may have an abundant supply of.

What bugs me (and I think many people around here) is that Congress hasn't at all taken a role in bargaining with the White House to ensure its own values and policies are maintained. For example, they could put Trump to the test on foreign policy, threatening to impeach if doesn't at least give the appearance of standing up to Russia.

Right, but that's what they told "Gary"

heh, who's this Gary guy?

They’ve done exactly nothing to address the fact that the spoils of capitalism have been unequally distributed individually. Rich people want to live near rich people, and they bring their educated professional thralls with them. Isn’t that the real problem here? Can you explain in 140 characters what the Democratic Party can do about this short of tanks-seizing-factories literal socialism?

Source: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/trump-is-not-a-fluke-why-trumpism-is-a-global-phen.html

I remember in the actual lecture posted way back in this thread, Blyth points out how neoliberals suggested retraining Gary to work in IT, but:

What makes you think this isn’t what congress wants?

If they do want it, they'll have a chance to really show it after the midterm elections, because right now (edit: as a collective body) too many of them seem sufficiently scared stiff to do anything but grovel before the Tea Party.

I think the argument I'd make is something like this: globalization (and the unhindered transfer of goods, people and capital across national borders that it entails) has made it possible for some people in the United States to become extraordinarily wealthy, while also exposing others in the country to increased competition. It's also produced an economy that makes it a lot easier to thrive if your a big fish that can compete on a global scale, which means that there's been a consolidation of capital out of more remote areas of the country and into big cities, where for all sorts of reasons its easier to run a big company. I think the reasons why you need geographic distribution is not different from the reason why you need any redistribution of wealth: we're all Americans, so we all have obligations to each other; therefore, the winners of globalization have an obligation to share their wealth with people who are not winners.

OTOH, might have something to do with certain political interest groups favoring partisan gridlock as a means to subvert democracy (wait, I already mentioned the Tea Party).

The way you talk, it almost sounds like you think that we have actual socialism in this country!

Force Amazon to open HQ2 in Oklahoma.

Aren't the red states already practically bribing corporations to set up shop in their states?

Something like that. :p

Matt Yglesias has suggested moving entire departments of the federal government out of DC and the midwest and western parts of the country. That also seems like a good idea too, although the real prize would be to move industry out of SF/LA/NY/DC.

That's just going to increase CO2 emissions, as industry will be even MORE geographically dispersed.

Here's an idea: give people in sparsely populated areas vouchers to move closer to where the jobs are.

That's probably where we're headed anyway. I don't like it, though!

But wait, now the rural areas will be even more sparsely populated!

Solution: abolish the electoral college?

But alas, that would mark the end of the Confederacy

If everyone currently in the rural areas dies or moves, then people like me will be able to move to rural areas to start cults without conservative influence

Funny to think that the only accepted form of "socialism" / government help in this country is to help people find jobs. Of course, we can't possibly just redistribute wealth, because that runs the risk that the money will end up in the hands of black people.

And that's how it should be! There's no excuse to be geographically isolated unless it's to do something weird.

love that movie

We have a multi-party system here in The Netherlands. [Edit: I slightly misread your post.] Here, some people may vote that way yes, having a preference for a further-off-centre party, but voting more centre so "their" party might be able to form a government. That's what we call strategic voting in a multi-party system, but it works a little counter-productive, and people are starting to see that more and more. Because when people are giving their vote to smaller, further-off-centre parties, the bigger centre parties need to align with these further-off-centre parties in order to get a majority and form a government. If the big centre left party is losing votes to smaller more left wing parties, it becomes more attractive to work with them than with the big centre-right party, and vice versa for the right, of course. So you're generally better off voting for what really suits you best.

We have a proportional representation system where the government needs at least a minimal majority in the House. What you get is compromise politics. Neither left nor right get completely what they want, so it's basically going pretty centre. Sometimes more social, sometimes more liberal (economically speaking), but there's at least continuity. There's not a lot of governments trying to completely undo what the government before it did. Of course there's drawbacks too. Sometimes the results are very evenly spread and forming a coalition can become problematic when there are polarizing issues on the agenda. As far as I know there's never been a single party government, it's always been coalitions from 2 to 5 parties, I think. Sometimes a brittle coalition with a minimal majority is formed, and just one person breaking with the party/coalition line will result in the loss of a seat, and thus the majority needed to govern. We've frequently had government crises, which happens when parties (we call them "fractions") within the government cannot reach a compromise on some pivotal issue. But that just means slightly more frequent elections, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It's not perfect, but it seems healthier than the two party deadlock phenomenon in the US.

You really have to wonder what it will take to break out of that 'binary' system.

Cause/effect. When Republicans have complete control over a state, and systemically wreck any funding to schools, and backwards industries dump tons of money into corrupting the state legislature, and you have tax breaks so ridiculous the state can't fund itself, how much of a state becoming backwards can be blamed on globalization?

Honestly, I find this inability of red states to internalize any of their own problems troubling. Globalization has its effects, but you can't blame it all on that.

Eh, there isn't such a strong correlation between states being insolvent and having Republican governments. Look at this list: https://www.mercatus.org/statefiscalrankings

The top 8 states on this list are all states with entirely Republican governments (both houses + governor). I don't know if Republican control over state governments goes a very long way in explaining income inequality or social divisions in the country.

https://ballotpedia.org/Gubernatorial_and_legislative_party_control_of_state_government

It's easy to be solvent when you don't have any social programs, in exchange for, you know, really high poverty rates. I suppose "welfare" would be a better measure.

It's only from Wikipedia, but damn, North Dakota's economy is fuego:



Since ND relies so much on agriculture, and since the US is such a big food exporter, I bet globalization actually helps ND a lot.

Also, blue states with higher poverty is almost always because those states experience high levels of immigration, where if you look at poverty along racial lines, white people are usually sitting among the most wealthy/best off Americans.

Well yeah, nobody lives in ND to live in ND. I have a friend who lives in Fargo, and it's a ****hole, except you can get paid decently for ****ty jobs because nobody wants to live there.

Is that how it is, though? It seems like, in many cases, the reason why these states are solvent is because they're actually enjoying impressive growth and low unemployment.

George Mason is well-known for being a right-leaning university, and a ranking like "States by Fiscal Condition" sounds like it has a strong subjective bent to it. Sounds like it wouldn't be hard to pick a few measures that stack up to show red states are more responsible, though I'd have to read through the paper to verify.

Mmm, I wasn't aware of that. I'll look for more studies and see if there's much of a discrepancy between them and this one.

Still, looking at poverty rates too: lowest poverty rate in the country? NH. What kind of government does it have? A Republican one. Obviously that doesn't tell the whole story, but still seems that high poverty rates don't correlate to having Republican governments.

Actually I just read the abstract, and there are some suggestive lines:

"The study ranks each US state’s financial health based on short- and long-term debt and other key fiscal obligations, such as unfunded pensions and healthcare benefits."

I mean, yeah, if your state doesn't fund pensions or healthcare, then sure, it's fiscally responsible? This is pretty clearly a partisan take on what "fiscally responsible" means.

I bet people who live in ND are pretty content with living there if they've got roots there. Those that are better off now than they were a decade ago are probably happy about it. It does seem, however, that significant numbers of people are moving there.

Anyway, it seems like you get paid well if you work in ND because ND has been able to exploit its natural resources well and to produce wealth.