KEVIN WILLIAMSON, of The National Review, in an article now widely considered to be the ultimate in elitist sneering and Nazi comparisons, dismisses the concerns of Americans who say immigration has negatively affected their economic prospects. He says these concerns are “wholly bunk.” The problem with working class communities is moral decline, not economics.

In reality, the problem is both. Williamson so grossly misrepresents the economic picture, one has to wonder whether he is living in another country:

On the trade front, American manufacturing continues to expand and thrive — an absolute economic fact that is, perversely, unknown to the great majority of Americans, who believe precisely the opposite to be the case. Americans have false beliefs about manufacturing for a few reasons: One is that while our factories produce much more than in the past, they employ fewer people; another is that we tend to produce capital goods and import consumer goods — you won’t see much labeled “Made in the USA” at Walmart, but you’ll see it on everything from the aircraft flown by foreign airlines to the robotics in automobile factories overseas. Another factor, particularly relevant to the question of manufacturing and trade, is that a large (but declining) share of those imported consumer goods comes from China, a country with which we have a large trade deficit. That isn’t because the Chinese are clever, but because they are poor: With an average annual income of less than $9,000, the typical Chinese household is not well positioned to buy American-made goods, which are generally expensive. (China is a large consumer of U.S. agricultural products, especially soybeans.) Add to that poorly informed and sentimental ideas about what those old Rust Belt factory jobs actually paid — you can have a 1957 standard of living, if you really want it, quite cheap — and you get a holistic critique of U.S. economic policy that is wholly bunk.

Williamson maintains that the economy has improved overall. But for the lower middle class this is not true. Terrence P. Jeffries, of CNS News, wrote last year:

The number of jobs in manufacturing has declined by 7,231,000–or 37 percent–since employment in manufacturing peaked in the United States in 1979, according to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The real median household income of Americans who have completed high school–but have not attained a higher degree–also peaked in the 1970s and has declined since then.

In fact, according to the Census Bureau (Tables H-13 and H-14), the real median household income of an American householder who has completed four years of high school peaked in 1973 at $56,395 in constant 2013 dollars. By 2013, it was down to $40,701. That is a drop of $15,694–or 27.8 percent. (The Census Bureau’s Table H-14 publishes the annual median household income from 1960 through 1990 of householders who have “completed” four years of high school. Table H-13 publishes the annual median household income of householders who have ‘graduated” from high school or its equivalency from 1991 through 2013.)

 Williamson is a classic apologist for cut-throat capitalism:

 Economics is about satisfying human wants, not defining them. The problem isn’t that Americans cannot sustain families, but that they do not wish to.

Again the problem is two-fold. Economic and moral decline have fed upon each other. Our economy does define wants. It values the wants of the monopolist and usurer over those of the laborer.

Williamson ends with the ultimate sneer:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

Once again, while I am not a Trump enthusiast, I have to say his critics make him look good.

— Comments —

Hurricane Betsy writes:

What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

Okay.  Where precisely are they supposed to go?  To the cities, several of which can already be rightly described as megalopolises?  What will they do there?  Live like sardines in a tin?  Just my choice, but I’ll take life in a trailer in a small town with my own kind.

This civilization is on its way out and there are no human-made cures that I can think of.  It’s only the direct intervention of God Himself that can save this rotten, smelly mess.

Laura writes:

He’s incredibly arrogant.

He believes people work for the economy rather than the economy works for the people.

John writes:

Williamson feels free to say the most insulting and demeaning things about down-scale whites. But would he even suggest the same things about blacks in the same category? No, because this rhetorical bully obviously prefers to hit at people who aren’t organized to hit back.

Laura writes:

Here are some comments from the NRO site in response to the Williamson piece. The last comment is especially worth reading:

P*****d • 3 hours ago

Some years ago I started looking hard at what Conservatism Inc. was, who it employed, how they talked and thought, who was their most faithful audience. It’s not a pretty picture, but this day was predicted by the behavior of the conservative establishment and the foolishness of those who believed them.

Kevin Williamson, David French, and others filling the thinning (and increasingly angry) ranks of Con Inc have adopted a version of prosperity theology: believe in the free market, work hard, and donate to us, and your faith will be rewarded with infinite 5% growth and stock market gains. What they are learning now is that a con artist’s dupes will turn on them with ferocity once they figure out the con.

Now the tricks aren’t working–the culture warring, propaganda slogans, and ideological catechism are being rejected all at once. Con Inc doesn’t understand what is going on (they never were very interested in human behavior), it thinks by doubling down on the prosperity gospel it can staunch the bleeding.

But of course for that to work you need to deliver something, and Con Inc delivers nothing, and putting faith in them leaves one worse off than before. Con Inc is merely a servant to its donors, its true audience. But this con only works if Con Inc keeps delivering a voting base to meet the needs of the donor class. Once that stops happening, what do they expect to be paid for?

TheRadicalModerate • 3 hours ago

The U-Haul strategy sounds great–until you realize that all of the same people who need to move are divorced and have joint custody of children. There are people who are marginally more ambitious, but they’ve still ripped through a marriage or two with nothing to show for it but incidental fecundity. They’re trapped as long as they love their children, because their ex-spouses (and their ex-spouse’s spouses) have no incentive to move at the same time.

Sam-I-Am ✓ᴺᵃᵗᶦᵒᶰᵃˡᶦˢᵗ  • 2 hours ago

David French, you elitist mooks don’t even understand your own lack of self-awareness in the grand scheme of our nations history. You have zero comprehension of the vital role the wealthy, affluent members of our society have taken as leaders, investors and teachers of the middle-class and poor of this country from day one. I am not talking about sitting in some ivory tower on Lexington Avenue and lecturing Americans about compassion or drug addiction.

I’m talking about bedrock, concrete climbing down into the trenches and getting your hands dirty. From John Hancock using his personal wealth to fund the rebellion to Henry Ford providing good wages to his workers on the line. Even robber barons like Rockefeller and Carnegie became philanthropists. Hollywood made films and shows about justice, moral sacrifice, and strong families. Yet, over time and especially the last 60 years the elites have started retreating into their social clubs, enclaves and fortress communities.

They no longer influence local communities like they should. On the contrary the decadence, the drugs, the apathy, the immoral behavior and the lack of work ethic you blame on working class Americans can be turned right back around and pointed at the wealthy as well. In a way, Mr. Trump has offered to bridge that gap that’s been missing. That’s what he means when he says, “I want to rally the country.” The appeal is obvious and goes beyond some vague speech about ‘win, win, win’. The people feel that with someone successful like him in their corner, they have a chance.

Donald Trump has the potential to be a good president, but the bottom line is you guys like things just the way they are. And the statement that “it’s a lie that the working class has been victimized by outside forces” is so stupidly inept and blind in the face of the facts that it jumps off the cliff of reason into insanity. You people are truly stupid and I would even feel sorry for you if you weren’t so smug about your moral superiority.

HarryTruman2016 • 2 hours ago

When the problem of unemployment and underemployment undermined and damaged urban black communities in the late 60’s and 70’s, many working class whites assured themselves that it would never happen to them. Their religious affiliation, pride in their immigrant roots and natural work ethic would protect their communities no matter the economic circumstances. Now we have see that is not true. Communities where honest but unremarkable work does not yield a decent living and sense of self respect (particularly for men) are headed for trouble. Conservatives first pointed to the white working class and admonished those who were not succeeding in America to act as they do. Now conservatives are telling these people they are failures and to get off their asses and move to some place and do something. It must be great to be a conservative. All you have to do is just change the direction of of your critical fire, never examine if what you said in the first place is valid.

Marty S> • 2 hours ago

Your description of the white male shows the results and not the cause of their deterioration. Starting in the ’60s, power groups such as women, blacks, gays, immigrants etc. began blaming white men for their problems in an effort to elevate themselves. Year after year and for decades, the white male group was told they are useless, did not contribute to society and who needed them. For decades before the ’60s, the white male was the spine of the basic building block of our culture – the family – by accepting responsibility, along with his female mate, for keeping American society strong. That responsibility was strong during good and bad times because of their moral upbringing and obligation to society which in turn gave them a purpose for producing to society. During the great depression of the ’30s, they did not abandon their families because they still felt they had an obligation and purpose to society that they were needed. During WW11 and due to the segregation policies of the military at that time, it was the white male, in general, who died, giving their lives to allow the United States to continue to exist under a constitutional form of government. But with new generations since the ’60s to the present, whose education has blamed the white male for the problems of minorities and practically all the problems in this country while neglecting to tell the history of their accomplishments and contributions before the ’60s, society has convinced the white male he has no purpose, cannot contribute to society or family and is not needed for the survival of this country. So when he can’t find a meaningful job, when women abandon their children and husbands to become the family providers, when men are restricted to housework and feminized, when working hard has no purpose, when obligation disappears from his life, when just existing is their purpose in life, what does society expect. It has created this defeated human; it alone cannot expect anything else for without food and water the human will die. Without a purpose for life, the human will die. And without the white male as part of society, the United States, as we knew it, will die.

pogbmud • 2 hours ago

‘….Kevin is right. If getting a job means renting a U-Haul, rent the U-Haul. You have nothing to lose but your government check….’

No, Kevin and David are 100% wrong; make that 1,000% wrong if they support any of the other candidates, all of whom favor some kind of blanket amnesty (right to remain) with different ‘conditions’ attached.

‘…If making a job available means deporting every illegal in this country or making it near impossible for them to make a living by begging on the street, much less working at an actual job, AND if any able bodied American refuses to rent a U-Haul and move to a job for which they are qualified to do, they should lose their right to a government subsidy of any kind….’

·  johnallen919 • 3 hours ago

And the NRO deathspiral continues unabated…

Skeptic7 • 3 hours ago

When thousands are replaced under the H1-B programs, those families are supposed to up and move? The working spouse is supposed to change jobs? Move away from all the relatives, so that the kids can only see grandparents and cousins every few years? There is a cost to that too.

There are no solutions – only tradeoffs.

JP Skeptic7 • 2 hours ago

You see, the Working Class are supposed to be nomads, gypsies; they’re supposed to pull up stakes and move 2000 miles every couple years.

Skeptic7 JP • 2 hours ago

And moving to “where the jobs are” means the housing costs are more, and transplants would end up paying more for housing in less desirable neighborhoods with less desirable schools. \

It’s complicated.

Jim Harrison • 3 hours ago

Whether it NR Conservatives or knowledge-industry liberals, lots of people love to dump on the white trash. I think there’s an element of Calvinism in it, though often in a secular form. The great unwashed get what they deserve even if, as half way intelligent folks understand, they are largely born to their situation just as the well off are born to theirs. The sun is not responsible for the stench of a corpse, and God or Capitalism is not at fault just because he/it/they doesn’t elect everyone or even very many. Williamson makes a halfhearted effort to blame the behavior of poor whites on the welfare system, but that’s mostly just a way of eschewing responsibility. Like blacks and native Americans and many other despised groups, poor whites respond to abuse, poverty, and ignorance in unsurprising ways. Obviously many of these behaviors are self defeating, but conservatives (and plenty of non-conservatives) should be happy about that. A virtuous underclass would be intolerable in a country that imagines it believes in human dignity but insists on maintaining extreme levels of inequality.

Williamson should be congratulated. He has written a couple of paragraphs that will be reprinted in many places and for a long time. Deservedly so. He has harvested the self-satisfaction and small mindedness of his kind at the peak of its ripeness.

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