by Brett Stevens on May 13, 2017

Despite the media barrage about how Donald Trump was elected by angry impoverished white people “clinging to their guns and religion,” it seems that the suburbs elected him, meaning that the upper half of the American middle class, who are more aware of how economies work and what types of policies succeed, were instrumental in his victory:

As compared with most Americans, Trumpâ€™s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. Thatâ€™s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But itâ€™s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. Itâ€™s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

These people are more likely to run their own businesses or be in positions where decision-making is needed, and because they are accustomed to handling money and productivity, they know roughly what works and what does not. The world is only beginning to awaken to what a disaster the combined Obama and Clinton economic and social policies have been for America (and most of them, wanting us to be weaker, have a vested interest in not speaking up).

In particular, they see how immigration and the welfare state have destroyed real wages for the American worker:

Over the past year average hourly earnings have risen by 2.5%. Unfortunately, the consumer-price index, a standard measure of inflation, rose by 2.4%, meaning the average workerâ€™s purchasing power hardly grew at all. This is no aberration. Since 2010, hourly wages corrected for inflation have risen at barely 0.5% a year. The official statistics back up reports that Americans are working harder than ever just to stay even. Since the depths of the Great Recession, household incomes have increased steadilyâ€”not because wages are rising, but because Americans are working more hours. A longer view reveals the limits of these gains. Nearly eight years after the official end of the recession, median household incomes arenâ€™t much higher than they were when the recession began, and they remain a bit lower than in January 2000. For families in the middle, it has been a lost two decades.

It was a bad enough disaster that we doubled the workforce by sending women to work, but immigration is even more of a disaster, driving down wages.

On top of that, Leftist social policy requires a welfare state and wealth redistribution, and this means that the top half of the middle class pay almost all of the taxes, which are then gifted to underclasses in order to “prime the pump” through consumer spending.

For every dollar spent in business, a chunk is taken out through taxes, regulations, lawsuits, unions and other Leftist favorites. This slows business, but even more importantly, passes costs on to the consumer at the same time it restricts their wages.

Americans are not starving, but they are not living, either. They are spending all of their time at work, engaged in activity of dubious actual value, in order to keep from being sucked under into the downtrodden class of people with no prospects and little future.

Tags: donald j. trump, economics, leftist economics

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