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Comment by YeGoblynQueenne | Hacker News Reader

This is an honest question, I'm not American, I don't live in the US and I genuinely don't know: how has Donald Trump served the interests of "working people without a college education" during the four years of his presidency? I'm also curious to know if the Democrats have done any different.

In the interest of full disclosure I am totally guessing that neither did anything to materially improve the lives and fortunes of working-class Americans and neither Donald Trump will, nor would Kamala Harris. Working people in the US, as in the rest of the world seem to me to be shafted for good, by all sorts of economic forces that they have no control over. I'm speaking in this as a current academic but one-time unskilled, immigrant worker.

It used to be that you could feed yourself and your family with "the sweat of your brow". Not any more. Who is working to change that?

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> how has Donald Trump served the interests of "working people without a college education" during the four years of his presidency?

Uneducated working class folks compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and cheap housing. During his presidency illegal immigration was lower and wages rose for the working class and housing costs were relatively stable. He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate, and crime tends to impact the working class much more than the middle/upper classes.

Mostly folks who voted for him voted on the premise that their experience of the economy was better when he was president rather than on the basis of individual policies.

> During his presidency illegal immigration was lower

Is that true? Legal immigration was lower especially during the lockdown (for obvious reasons). But the number of deportations of illegal immigrants barely changed, e.g. https://www.cato.org/blog/president-trump-reduced-legal-immi...

> wages rose for the working class

That happened. And it happened even faster under Biden.

> He’s also positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate

And yet the murder rate rose to the highest level since 1997.

> their experience of the economy was better when he was president

I feel like it might be more accurate to say "perception" than "experience".

>https://www.statista.com/statistics/329256/alien-apprehensio...

Trump’s first term and Obama’s second term were fairly steady, then you see a massive bump under Biden.

Border patrol apprehensions is very different from illegal immigration! You can't control how mnay people try to get across.

You actually can, by working the incentives. For the first three years of Biden’s administration one could show up, be apprehended, and be relatively certain that they would be released into the country, where you might be housed and fed.

Under later Trump and Biden’s current policy, you are released into Mexico.

https://x.com/SenJohnThune/status/1793001514211967288

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