Comment by sudoscript | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudoscript | Hacker News Reader

> The third major failure has been a general apathy about politics amongst my colleagues here in the Bay Area. When many of the best minds in machine learning have decided that the most existential threat to civilization is the rise of Skynet, we have had a major failure of group think.

I cannot agree more. I am also in the Bay Area, and I feel surrounded by people who are deeply out of touch with the rest of the country.

There is real desperation in this country. That's why Trump is President. People didn't vote for him because they are racist. They voted for him because they worry about putting food on their tables. They worry about being left behind in a world that has fewer and fewer ways for the average Joe to dream about a future. They're angry, rightfully so, and in Trump, they found someone willing to listen.

They sure as hell didn't find it in us. Sure, we've given them lip service. We've looked at them through our rose-tinted Google Glasses, and at best, we've felt a twinge of regret at the way the world is going. Not enough to do anything. For all the efforts to teach girls to code (a problem deeply related to our own talent shortage), how much have we done to figure out what a blue-collar worker in rural Indiana is supposed to do when the sole factory in his town shuts down?

Because let's face it -- we look down on them. We call them hicks and rednecks. We scoff at their lack of high-falutin education. We think they got left behind because they're not good enough. Because they didn't pass the tests we did, didn't have the ambition we do, didn't try as hard as we do. It's a nice thought if you want something to let you sleep at night, but it's not true. Those people aren't worse than us. They're not left behind because they're stupid. They're being left behind because people like us stopped giving a damn a long time ago.

The solutions we did offer were exactly the ones you'd expect from a far-removed elite aristocracy. Teach everyone to code, or throw them money. Neither of which they want. So the people you laughed at, the people you thought yourselves better than, the people you offered little more to than pie in the sky techno-utopian dreams -- is it any surprise they turn around and elect someone you don't even understand? You never understood them anyway.

Yes. This is exactly what happened and what so many liberals (myself included) don't want to hear but have to come to terms with. It's in our best interest to share the prosperity we enjoy with those less fortunate, or we create a breeding ground for anger and ignorance that will come back to truly make our lives hell.

Same thing applies in the middle east where we've bred terrorism from poverty.

This is our collective fault. We can't ignore them anymore. The only way forward is to empathize with our fellow human beings whose suffering is real and whose anger is dangerous.

This is the narrative currently being pushed, but let's not forget its weaknesses:

- A blue-collar senior in Appalachia is really unlikely to have enough contact with those "liberal college students" to be bothered with their constant references to Judith Butler etc.

- If the issue is with racism or homophobia, I don't see a compromise happening: minority rights aren't subject to popular approval. Democracy isn't two wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner.

- Trump voters are by and large not the poorest. The white guy with missing teeth living in a trailer is the wrong cliche, because he's unlikely to vote at all. These are conservatives, many retired.

- Every time some politician talks about "real America", he's trying to delegitimize liberals. I fail to see how that is less insulting.

- People who decide to punish the weakest of the weak, just because it's a convenient way to annoy me, are indeed worse people.

- The left should get back to talking about economics, yes. But I doubt that these voters would appreciate it, seeing as the last time the left made the case against neoliberalism, most of them probably complained about "the smelly hippies who should get a job instead of taking about some 99% or 1% BS"

- there are quite a few improvements for a factory worker who lost his job that the left has implemented, or would like to if not for a complete boycott of government by the right: universal healthcare, universal income, consumer financial protection (payday-loan and similar specifically targeting poor people). Strong anti-trust regulation. Redirecting money from the military to investments in infrastructure/education/health...

Politics is not just about being right. It's about convincing others you are. That's where the left has failed (if you agree with their positions).

Agreed, the left has real ideas for solutions to middle America. But these ideas are not what people want, so the burden is to prove that they work. Unfortunately for many of those ideas, such as universal income, it is still too early to say. Meanwhile other ideas, such as the current implementation of healthcare, is actively being rejected by voters after it was tried, i.e. it does not work (they're like a product customers do not buy, even if it's good for them).

You're also right that Trump's voters all not all poor and living in trailer parks (they also weren't all old people). I haven't seen data on socioeconomic background, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were essentially middle of the road. But for good reason, they are afraid for their economic futures. It's a justified fear, and it's good cause for feeling desperate.

Unfortunately for many of those ideas, such as universal income, it is still too early to say.

As others have noted in this subthread, that's not a desired solution for many of these people. They want to earn their money, not "get a handout".

Look at McGovern's 1972 campaign "Demogrant" proposal, $1,000 to every citizen, that's 5,750 in official 2016 BLS CPI dollars.

As I saw them at the time, the most effective political ads against him showed toy soldiers, ships and I assume planes, on a board (maybe of world?), and then a hand wiped off a large fraction of them, putting into visual language his (anti-)defense proposals, which I'll note weren't copied by Jimmy Carter, even before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

But the second most was on the Demogrant, although all I can remember about it is some iron worker, maybe eating his lunch, high up on the side of a building frame, and I think it was in black and white.

I don't think enough Americans have changed, especially the Rust Belt ones that carried him over the top, that universal income is going to fly with them. That you think it has a chance suggests one of us is not in touch with these people. Then again, I find the idea personally abhorrent for what I believe to be the same reasons, but on the third hand I'm pretty old, at least by HN standards.

Oh, I definitely agree. I am not a UBI supporter by any means. Still, I think if the left can prove that it works on a smaller scale, and change people's mind, I'd be willing to reconsider (which is my default position on almost anything -- prove it and I'll believe it). But it's a long shot.

>There is real desperation in this country. That's why Trump is President. People didn't vote for him because they are racist. They voted for him because they worry about putting food on their tables. They worry about being left behind in a world that has fewer and fewer ways for the average Joe to dream about a future. They're angry, rightfully so, and in Trump, they found someone willing to listen

How do you square the poverty story above with the fact that trump ran on a fiscally conservative platform, within a fiscally conservative party that promises to reduce the safety net?

I have to assume that many don't want a safety net; they want to be able to be able to support themselves.

Which is fine... but personally, I don't see that much difference between charging a tax that makes my imported goods more expensive (in an effort to subsidize American workers) and, say, just setting up some sort of reverse income tax, or strengthening the Earned Income Credit or what have you so that you directly tax me and directly give those dollars to people who don't have competitive job skills. If anything, I bet the latter would be more 'efficient' in that I'd have to pay fewer dollars to keep those folks fed and housed, just 'cause if you make imports more expensive, sure, more stuff will be manufactured here, but most of that manufacturing is going to be done by robots, so it seems to me you'd mostly be making me pay more for stuff I buy, then turning around and increasing the demand for labor from people with my sorts of skills.

Not everyone believes that the solution to poverty is welfare. I imagine many of his voters believe the solution looks more like protectionism. Which is basically what his plan is.

I'm not claiming they're right. I'm just claiming that you can be a fiscal conservative and still think you have the solution to poverty.

But isn't protectionism a lot like inflation, in that it can stimulate labor demand while making things more expensive? (And is often called a hidden redistributive tax)

My impression is that this party is as much against inflation as it is against handouts, while inflation occupies the same niche as trade protectionism in that it can stimulate job growth without seeming like a handout.

This is the first I've ever heard of protectionism as a form of inflation; I doubt that the average Trump voter would believe what you're saying here. I mean, I don't believe it, and I voted for McMullin.

Well, technically it's a tax, but it doesn't matter to the consumer if it's a tax, especially one this upstream, that makes a commodity more expensive.

It's not just poors who voted for trump. So I think calling a vote for trump a vote for survival is a stretch.

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