The Imagined Constituency Animating Populist Economics

America no longer has the working class of the 1970s

The 1970s were one of the worst decades in American history. We suffered humiliation in Vietnam, crime spiraled out of control, the economy tanked, and the fashion was horrific. Few ever pine for the ‘70s, particularly when it comes to economics. The days of stagflation, high unemployment, gas lines, and general market chaos are not what people see as a golden age.

But the 1970s has found a few fans on the “populist” Right. One of those figures is Batya Ungar-Sargon, a liberal who opportunistically glommed onto the Trump moment to become a conservative personality. During her appearance on Bill Maher’s show last month, she claimed the ‘70s weren’t so bad. “The reason the people want to go back to the 70s is because the largest share of the GDP was in the middle class,” the pundit argued. She went on to point out how more of the GDP is controlled by the wealthy few, how we lost our manufacturing to China, and how we need American factories to pay middle-class wages. Ungar-Sargon makes points few Trump supporters would disagree with.

But she’s guilty of a problem often encountered with certain populists. They argue that we need to completely change our economy to give manufacturing jobs to working class people dying to take them. The assumption is that there is a giant reservoir of working class folks ready to do this. All America needs to do is restore the 1970s economic model and offer these people a middle-class income. The issue is that this constituency doesn’t really exist anymore, nor would a return to an older economic model reanimate it. We no longer have the human capital to operate that kind of economy. The future calls for something else.

The people who lost their factory jobs 40 years ago are no longer around. Their children moved away from the factory towns and trained for other jobs.

There’s a “if you build it, they will come” mentality at work. We will suddenly have the solid white working class of the mid-20th century if you simply bring back manufacturing. But, as Springfield, Ohio, shows, the people who come for these jobs are often migrants. We don’t have the working class we once had.

American demographics are very different from the 70s. We were still over 80 percent white then. We are now 57 percent white. We are also an older population. The median age in America was 27.4. It’s now almost 39. There aren’t the young men to work these jobs like there once were. Increased education further depletes the possible manufacturing workforce. In 1980, roughly 80 percent of Americans 25 and older did not have a college degree. Today, it’s a little over 60 percent. Many of those are retirees who are not going back to the factory. The dream of yesterday was that the father worked hard at the factory so the children would go to college and not have to work there. Now the populist dream is for the college grads to go straight back to the factory to compete with robots and migrants.

The factories still here experience serious hiring problems. Many American manufacturers have minimal requirements to get hired. Ohio companies told a Wired survey that they would readily hire anyone “who could pass their drug test, show up on time, and weld in a straight line.” However, it’s difficult to find workers to meet these basic criteria. A notorious example of this problem was exhibited by Springfield. A local factory owner told the media he preferred Haitian workers over Americans because he struggles to find locals who can pass a drug test. Americans, understandably, took that as an insult.

There’s a common refrain that if we just paid good wages, the workers would turn up. But if the problem is guys failing to pass drug tests and show up for work, it’s a situation where higher wages might not fix.

There is a way to make manufacturing high-skilled and high-wage. Germany operates on this model, but it would require major changes within America. We would need to overhaul our education, labor relations, and consumer expectations to accomplish it. Vocational training would have to be greatly expanded and consumers would have to be fine with paying much more for goods. Considering Washington’s limited appetite for dramatic economic change, don’t get your expectations up. It would create serious pains in the economy for the short-term. Americans will not appreciate the price increases, even when told it helps other Americans. They may be necessary, but whichever party puts them in place will pay the price at the ballot box.

Bringing back manufacturing has its upsides. We don’t want to keep our manufacturing base in China. It’s better to bring it here. However, we must face the reality that we don’t have an eager, out-of-work population ready to take these jobs. We already face labor shortages in blue collar work. Adding more without actual workers will encourage more demands for immigration. Instead of restoring the middle class, these meme-driven ideas could lead to an even bigger increase in migrants. We don’t want more Springfields dotting the heartland.

The solution to this is to increase automation. This will lessen the demand for migrant labor and reduce production costs long-term. It will solve a lot of issues, but it won’t bring the 1970s economy back.

We have to understand who actually makes up our base. It’s middle-class people with something to lose. It is not the fantasy constituency populists imagine. We need to base our policy priorities on what our actual voters want. They want less immigration, an end to DEI, crime curbed, and a strong economy. They didn’t ask for ill-formed economic proposals that might upend this agenda.

Economic thinking on the Right is increasingly dominated by memes rather than sound analysis. We’re told “GDP is fake,” thus we should tank it to make it more affordable to buy a home and raise a family. (It’s unclear how one can do that if you lose your job due to the tanking GDP.) Some conservatives now champion nice-sounding proposals, such as a strict limit on credit card interests, that would upend the economy. Many so-called populists seem to not care because of the meme thinking and delusions about who our voters are. Much of these policies would hurt our actual voters and benefit no one–besides the mythical constituency they fixate on.

The 1970s aren’t going to make a return, and we’re probably better off for it. When it comes to economics, one of the main concerns should be weaning America off its addiction to migration labor. If populist proposals inadvertently reinforce that addiction, they should be discarded. What might sound good in a tweet or a column may prove disastrous in real-life. We all want more manufacturing done in the US and Americans put first. But we have to be realistic about our capabilities and the nation’s human capital.

We need a new economic model that’s different from the one of the mid-20th century and that of “neoliberalism.” It will put America first while embracing technological advancement, and it won’t require as many low-skilled laborers as the old economy. It will make America great again, even if it isn’t fantasized by populists.