I think we agree! My point was that America was first, but you only saw that if you were doing business at a corporate level, particularly in things like tech or finance. If you lived in a small town, you saw your manufacturing shut down. If you lived in a big city you knew people who were doing business all over the world with great success.
And also I agree that the whole country benefited economically. But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly.
>But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly.
May be proponents of globalism should have financed those voters travel to other countries to see what real "doing badly" looks like.
In US, as far as i see, whenever/wherever somebody is struggling, doing badly, it can mostly be attributed to 2 problems - 30 or something years stagnant minimum wage, which today is several times less than minimally reasonable, and tremendous limitations on housing construction, both problems are inflicted by politicians on the regular people.
Only 1.1% of workers earn the federal minimum wage. There are billboards in my state for grocery store stockers advertising $19/hour, and this is not a state with a higher minimum wage than federal. I think min wage concerns are generally wrong; the main problem is wage growth not tracking housing costs. Doubling or even tripling the minimum wage would overall do approximately nothing to the sentiment of economic despair.
The minimum living wage should be driven by local housing costs. Many sources of financial advice recommend spending no more than one-third of your income on housing costs. By that rule, the minimum living wage should be three times the cost of a mid-tier one-bedroom apartment.
For those who would claim that's too much to pay for a "minimum wage job," I have another question: Should a job that does not pay enough for someone to live be allowed to exist? We have those kinds of jobs today, and the companies with these jobs have whole departments teaching their employees how to gain social support such as rent assistance and Medicaid.
> the minimum living wage should be three times the cost of a mid-tier one-bedroom apartment.
I would argue very-low-tier even if I were taking your position, or even low tier with roommates
> Should a job that does not pay enough for someone to live be allowed to exist?
I don't know, probably. For local service jobs like janitors, demand is inflexible, and they'd probably end up just getting higher pay. I worry about what happens to any job that could be done for cheap, remotely, in a foreign country. Manufacturing already happened this way, and with a high enough minimum it would happen to landscape architects, middle managers, accountants, etc. In the absurd case it could be cheaper to ship overseas your HVAC or even your car for repairs, instead of paying a mechanic. It could be cheaper to telephone a foreign doctor, food costs could be dwarfed by labor costs to the point that fast food is luxury, it could be cheaper to ship your dog across the border to go to a vet. It seems like we'd be putting a whole lot of people out of jobs and business, with their customers going remotely to a sweat shop.
Now if we pair the minimum wage increase with suitable tariffs so that people aren't shipping their cars for repairs, sure, but that is never brought up.
Gives me an idea. If I was rich and wanted to fix the healthcare system, I might look into charters plane flights/accomodations and find the most lucrative medical procedures and offer people a better way overseas. We count on people being the adversarial counterweight in the US but they don't really have the means to truly be that anymore. I bet it wouldn't take a whole lot of enabling people power to destabilize the current medical system.
What industries could people take power back in this way?
Look up medical tourism. It's a thing already. The value-add would be vetting the medical practitioners. You go to your doctor because you trust them to do the right job. You go to a doctor in a foreign country, and it feels much more dodgy. Medical tourism groups may already do this; I haven't investigated it.
I toyed with the idea when I needed a couple of crowns. A friend of mine in Estonia and I worked out that two crowns is the break-even point for traveling to Estonia and seeing his dentist.
Private companies invented 'the company store' and paying their labor in script so that labor never had a means to leave (your pay is useless outside of the company town).
Politicians got rid of company pay choices and made them pick from a list of options after it was established companies couldn't be trusted to make the wage choice on their own.
So yes, and for good reasons. Unless your argument is that companies should be allowed to pay in useless company scrip?
Government oversite is so necessary and has become so pervasive and successful that Conservatives are like fish that don't believe water exists. They assume our successful heavily regulated Capitalism is the default state of Capitalism.
There is a lot more to life, and to the sentiment of "America First", than economics. I interpret the MAGA movement as mostly not about economics, but about trying to revert to previous social and cultural norms and values. Sometimes, even acknowledging and accepting the negative economic consequences of that.
For example most Republicans I know, when confronted with the idea that illegal immigrants benefit the economy, still want them deported. The economy is not their primary concern with most issues. Framing Trump's actions always economically misses the point a lot of times.
Moreover, America First is a sentiment of spending our attention and money on our internal problems, like redirecting foreign aid to domestic aid. It's a feeling of, why is Africa getting billions of my tax dollars when I can't buy a house? This is completely unrelated to our foreign business practices except to the extent that we were doing charity for a nebulous status. At least that's what I think people voted for. In practice it has been America burning its goodwill for no reason.
And also I agree that the whole country benefited economically. But its hard to see that when your region is doing badly.