> It really does a great job of helping explain Trump supporters.
I think what we're seeing are the results of taking 6 trillion dollars that should have been spent building infrastructure for working class Americans and instead wasting it in Iraq.
I think what we're seeing are the results of taking 6 trillion dollars that should have been spent building infrastructure for working class Americans and instead wasting it in Iraq.
The budgetary cost of the Iraq war was, according to the Congressional Research Service, $815 billion[1]. Even if you would rather model long-term or indirect costs, there was never, ever $6 trillion in the Federal budget over the corresponding period that could have been redirected to "infrastructure for working class Americans".
I think Trump supporters are regular simple Americans who are looking around and seeing they haven't benefited from the economic prosperity at a rate equivalent to their output and are facing an all out assault on their labor via neo-liberal policies adopted by both major parties. Neither party is going to point back at themselves and Trump has seized their support by blaming common scapegoats and tapping in to populist racial, gender and religious discrimination. Democrats have and do do this too, ie "super predators", etc.