As I read this post at RealClearMarkets by Jeffrey Snider on Trump’s victory:
Donald Trump’s victory was as much a repudiation of technocracy as the changing operations of the PBOC and the sacking of that country’s finance minister. It cannot be understated that the electoral votes which gave Trump his margin of victory were those of the rust belt. Rural Pennsylvania and Michigan voters who delivered to Mr. Trump those states have in the very few days since the election been slandered repeatedly as xenophobic, sexist, and racist despite twice voting for Barack Obama.
it occurred to me that people who have lived primarily on the coasts and in large cities may not understand what the Midwest countryside is like. Or at least was like.
Until relatively recently not only was the Midwest countryside heavily farmland with many large farms, it was filled with small factories. In Michigan most towns had, in addition to the stores and services supporting farming, factories that supplied the auto industry.
The two changes that have taken place over the last 30 years in these areas are that the small stores have given way to Wal-Mart and the factories have closed their doors, both resulting in significantly less small town employment than used to be the case.
Thinking of rural areas as populated by a bunch of uneducated farmers is cartoonish and simple-minded. Iowa has no really large cities. It’s mostly rural. Nonetheless 25% of its people have college educations and the percentage of Iowans who have graduated from high school is higher than in Massachusetts (the state with the highest percentage of college grads).
One more point from Mr. Snider’s post that bears some thought. The Chinese have technocracy and meritocracy. We don’t. We have elitism and cronyism masquerading as technocracy and meritocracy.
I think the Midwest countryside still has a lot of small factories; driving off the interstate and on blue highways, I frequently find large tool or plastics factories in the middle of nowhere. In 2012, Illinois employed 542,004 in manufacturing at 13,868 companies; that works out to 39 jobs per company. For every Caterpillar or John Deere, there are countless small companies never heard of, but when the big companies announce layoffs, its in the thousands.
That’s where I make my living, people. There are an incredible number of $50-$250MM in revenue widget makers in all those red counties. We currently own some in MI, TX, PA, OH, and panhandle FL. Those places sound familiar wrt the election??
As Dave points out, it’s cartoonish to think of the people as dumb or worse. They are plenty sophisticated and give me any one of them over an entertainer who writes books or reads the news from a TelePrompTer and think they are all that.
There are still a lot of factories, just fewer factory jobs. It also varies by region. Some areas really are decimated and most of the people who are able to find jobs elsewhere have left. Most of their kids are leaving. However, you are correct about Walmart dominating. I live and work with a lot of those people. They are my family. They don’t seem much different than most other people. Well, except for the shape changers. They are weird, but then they are really the wife’s family (Iowa).
Steve