Environmentalism, Trumpism, and the Working Class. By William Murray.
There is strong evidence that the country’s environmental policies and practices over the past half-century — and their contribution to lower economic growth and rising income inequality — have brought class tensions to a breaking point.
Since the Income Tax Amendment was ratified in 1913, political fights in the US have become largely about the redistribution of wealth and with it, social power. And nothing redistributes wealth more from the real, physical world and into cyber space — away from labor unions and skilled labor and into algorithmic code (where there is no regulation) — than environmental regulation.
As wide as the partisan gaps are concerning illegal immigration and free trade, none can compare to those on environmental protection and global warming. In 2019, Gallup found that 86 percent of Democrats say the government is doing too little in terms of environmental protection, while only 25 percent of Republicans believed the same. A poll by Resources for the Future found it “particularly intriguing” that 76 percent of Democrats believe that unchecked global warming will hurt them personally, but only 26 percent of Republicans believe the same. …
Globalization and environmental regulation severely damaged manufacturing — and thus the lower and middle classes — in the West.
One of the most important developments of the past decade has been an acknowledgement of the decline of relative incomes for the middle classes of North America and Europe over the past 30 years when globalization reigned supreme.
Brexit, the yellow jackets of France, the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, BLM, and MAGA all happened in societies that have seen decades of stagnant and even negative household income among those groups between 20–80 percent of most-developed countries’ income distributions. While academics argue over the scale of this redistribution … there is little argument that it represents the “greatest reshuffling of individual incomes since the Industrial Revolution.”
Countries that have seen the most dramatic growth in political populism — France, the United States — are places where the manufacturing base has fallen the most. Economies like Germany and South Korea, where fewer manufacturing jobs have been lost, have not seen this uptick in populist unrest. …
The elevation of the underclass to the middle class is one of the key attributes of the American experiment since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. From the stockyards of Chicago to the coal mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania, millions of immigrants found their way into greater American society. …
Because manufacturing, agricultural, and energy production jobs can be done as well (if not better) without the educational credentials typically desired in many New Economy industries, upward mobility in America starts with these types of jobs. …
While [environmental regulations] were justified on human health grounds during its first decades, they have achieved a law of diminishing returns. Since the 1990s, these policies have led inexorably to the generational trend of offshoring jobs that undermines the social stability and upward mobility of the working and underclass …
Trump turned things around:
Ignorance of this economic truth is why it’s so disappointing that President Barack Obama believed one had to “wave a magic wand” to bring back manufacturing jobs. If there is one thing we’ve learned from the American economy’s experience under Trump, it’s that technological change and globalization are embedded in political choices, not historical determinism. Manufacturing and industrial jobs can return if economic incentives are aligned through public policy. …
Working class wage gains surpassed upper income wage gains between 2017–2019 for the first time since the late-1990s …
It is clear that the environmental movement’s constraints on innovation and job creation have played a big part in the destruction of the labor market’s role in political integration for the American underclass. Yet the sacred narratives held by the political Left mean this will never be acknowledged, something clearly seen in the early days of the current administration.
Yet another politically incorrect truth.
