Populism and the Economics of Globalization [pdf]
It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity.<p>When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that&#x27;s disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said to get $10k more per year. Today I would say, getting an extra year at $30k is enough to justify the burnings.<p>We should think a bit more about Maslow&#x27;s hierarchy. If you can&#x27;t give people a decent living first, they will revolt if you try to &quot;make them matter&quot; or try to reach these lofty goals. You might think that wage improvements don&#x27;t matter if we don&#x27;t fix the climate, but the exact opposite is true.<p>I&#x27;m not making the point that the climate isn&#x27;t worth saving, racism doesn&#x27;t need solving if we can&#x27;t fix poverty and &quot;underemployment&quot;. I&#x27;m saying that we won&#x27;t succeed unless we fix that ... first.<p>Globalism produces beautiful iPads. But global average wage is $2k ... not per month. Per year. If you&#x27;re average, working in a non-booming industry, and of course most people are exactly that, that is a terrifying prospect. The sad part is ... yes killing globalization will make us all worse off, in terms of the country&#x27;s GDP. But it will lessen the gap between the 1% and the 99% (note that 2% is $97k per year, and as such anyone working in the Bay Area in IT is likely at least in the top 2%). Of course, mostly by making the 0.1% - 50% a LOT worse off (that&#x27;s anyone making less than about 2.6 million per year and more than $56k. Even in the Bay Area, that&#x27;s probably C-level wages).