Trump Voters Want Respect. Here’s How to Give It to Them

Elites tend to give themselves too much moral credit for their positions.

.. I guess this makes me a front row doofus but I actually place value on economic growth in developing countries who have benefitted significantly from, for example, the outsourcing of iPod production. I’m sorry if the back row kids, perhaps enlightened by their “traditional views of race,” don’t care about the welfare of people in developing countries who are much poorer than they are. But I happen to.

.. This is, I would say, roughly the core attitude of those front row kids. What splendid, enlightened people we are, so different from those racist reactionaries who don’t even care about people abroad! How fortunate that we happen to be smarter, wiser, and more moral than those mouth-breathing losers!
.. Recall that the Rust Belt’s long decline started with factories moving to the American South, not China.
.. Technology has also enhanced that decline, and automation now looks to be doing to retail what it did to large numbers of manufacturing jobs.
.. bad trade and immigration policy feel like something we can fix, and “the internet is bad for traditional retailers” doesn’t.
.. How much do you care about those folks in the developing world? Have you given away all of your stuff and income to the developing world, until you are living at the same level as African subsistence farmers? No? Of course not
.. it turns out that your caring is pretty limited to stuff that also happens to benefit you, or at best, cost you very little. And everyone is happy to help others when doing so is personally cheap.
.. Elites, then, tend to give themselves too much moral credit for their position
.. people care more about their role as workers than they do as consumers.
If you go from having a relatively high status and secure job to lower status, lower-paid, and less secure work, the psychological stress of worrying about your future and feeling that you have lost ground may not exceed the psychological benefits of cheaper stuff.
.. So why do people want respect, and what does it look like? It looks like charity towards others. Not necessarily agreement, but the simple dignity of being taken seriously, not caricatured or dismissed.