Very good article on Steve Bannon. Agree with this wholeheartedly: "The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.” Rings true: “In sum, the working man was betrayed by the establishment [both R and D], or what he dismisses as the "donor class."” But here’s where my cognitive dissonance kicks in. Trump is most assuredly a globalist and a member of the donor class. And Steve Bannon is an angry misanthrope.
A number of years ago, a portfolio manager, an Oxford
educated, upper class Brit hired to run international investments for my
employer, told us at a quarterly conference that America was pretty much over,
that Americans were imbued with a sense of entitlement, were thick and rather
clueless, that the smart money, while still based in the US, would increasingly
invest in US multinationals or internationally, because the US’s rotting infrastructure, self-centered
view of the world, expensive labor (inclusive of the professions) and lousy
schools had already doomed us. It was
just a matter of time.
This was couched in eloquent verbiage, of course, delivered
with an upper class British accent. His
view was shared by the Wall Street breed of New Yorkers in the room. It was a pessimistic and hopeless
message. Your factories were never
coming back, necessary remediation of environmental contamination left behind
by departed foundries and manufacturing plants would choke profits and progress,
America’s day in the sun was over or about to be.
A friend at the time, more hopeful, explained the situation
to me thus: “America will be the Kenilworth
of the world (Kenilworth being an extremely wealthy suburb of Chicago), the
headquarters country, the administrative center.” And I countered with, “And the rest of the world
will be Gary, Indiana?” But – even he
was wrong, because money is fluid, and, see below, there is no loyalty by big
business to the United States, per se.
In looking back, I was the only person in the room of about
60 people that hailed from small town Midwest, a manufacturing center, no less. Many of us thought the Brit was an
insufferable snob, but few, if any, had witnessed, as I had (from a distance)
the decline and near death of a once thriving town. To say that I took his insults somewhat
personally, well … (So I organized a bowling
outing for the whole group, including the Brit, in nearby Lake Geneva, Wisconsin,
which fact did not endear me to company management, until, surprise, the
exotic, expensive Brit had a jolly, good
time.)
Here is where learned that betting against America was actually
pretty good business. And by “America” I
mean – sorry – the 99.9%. There was
enough steam in the system to propel us forward for a generation without excessive
reminders that the end was fast approaching, so politicians could engage in the
usual partisan cant, and the country could retain its steadfast fealty to big
business, because jobs, prosperity, retirement security, spreading the wealth. But big business had no loyalty to the United
States or its people (except as consumers, and well-behaved citizens guaranteeing
orderly societal interactions and transfer of political power). Cheap labor,
and importantly, massive new markets, offered something we cannot. But in order to perpetuate the fiction that
we must give big business everything it asks for, there had to be a few bad
guys to blame for continued erosion of big business support for the US: Taxes, unruly minorities, bad schools, government
intrusion … That’s my conclusion,
anyway.
How Steve Bannon and Trump plan on redressing the wounded and
substantial middle is still a mystery.
Infrastructure projects likely would be privatized and cherry-picked
(much needed water infrastructure and road/bridge repairs are not profitable) and
offer temporary, though lucrative, jobs in the construction industry. Many manufacturing jobs have been replaced by
a microchip or robot or simply greater efficiency. They’re just gone. Trade constraints will hurt agricultural
exports, very big in the flyover region, and given the newly established and
emergent middle classes elsewhere, perhaps foreign manufacturers will find
other markets for their products.
Pipelines, etc. offer, as well, temporary employment for some, but there
is the downside of more environmental degradation. For those of us who believe
the scientific consensus that climate change is real and accelerated by CO2
emissions, it’s a rock and hard place solution.
On this point, I would like to be wrong, truly, because the consequences
of the consensus being right are so drastic.
For about 25 years I have been pondering what will become of
all the excess labor in the US. Not everyone
is endowed with a massive IQ and education to support it, not everyone is an
Ivy League wonder kid with all the right social connections, eighty percent or
more of startup business fail, and life happens, even to the most fortunate. We can’t depend on casinos and golf course
developments to underpin an economy, real estate development cannot supplant
manufacturing as a main source of economic strength and boomer retirement wealth,
the fuel for many real estate bonanzas, will run out. (Hint:
in the short to medium term, health care providers and assisted living facilities
will get the lion’s share.) Then what?
