[smashingfiasco]

The Midwest sees educated people as an inconvenience or a threat?

Goddamn. Where did you get that idea from? Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about.

The problem is that it’s stagnanted over here. NAFTA destroyed the way of life for a lot of mid-westneners. Made people poor. Made want. Destroyed the mechanisms, the entry level, manual jobs, that people used to pull themselves up by.

Municipalities got into a vicious cycle of loss of tax base feeding into loss of services feeding into even more loss of tax base.

For starters, to get an idea of what’s going on over here, I’d recommend you watch both Detropia and Flint Town. Get a little taste of reality and see the people you’re trying to crap on. Everyone here, everyone sees that value and importance of education. Every parent, even in the most down-trodden neighborhoods with the worst schools, wants this for their children. Again, loss of tax base, loss of jobs, increased violence.

Assuming you live on one of the coasts, you’ll get yours. Just wait until the underfunded pension systems finally blow.

Can’t believe I just read such a level idiocy on HN.

[dragonwriter]

> The problem is that it’s stagnanted over here. NAFTA destroyed the way of life for a lot of mid-westneners.

Neoliberal international trade without adequate internal redistribution of gains (which was going on long before NAFTA, though NAFTA was a particular example) broadly was doing that for quite a long time, but the problem is.more on the lack of redistribution end than the open trade end (you do want to avoid a race to the bottom on labor, environmental, etc., standards, but in aggregate terms trade is a net gain and losing that gain without doing anything about internal distribution isn't going to do many people any good — as Trump's tarriffs may soon demonstrate tangibly.)

> Everyone here, everyone sees that value and importance of education.

That might be true of your neighborhood; it's clearly not generally true as demonstrated by the outcomes of elections in the Midwest at every level.

> Again, loss of tax base, loss of jobs, increased violence.

Sure, economic dislocation and it's side effects may be why culture war topics leveraging cultural resentment directed both at “coastal elites” and both higher education and the people that have it is a winning way for local elites to line up political support between policies they feather their own nests.

[lsc]

If it really is about economic pain for the poor, why did they vote in someone who promised to cut taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor?

That sounds like the action of a people who think they are doing fine; people who don't think they need help.

[smashingfiasco]

I can’t answer for everyone in the Midwest, but from what I saw, no one trusted HRC. And if you were paying attention, it was revealed that politics “is like making suasage,” and that “you have to have a public position and a private position.”

And yes, I still hear a lot of resentment about NAFTA, which is strongly associated with the first Clinton administration. No one trusts that family. The people in this region called BS, not because they’re racist and uneducated, but because they feel that they were betrayed before. When the coasts shouted “racists” at them, it made everyone double-down in their position.

Meanwhile, DJT basically steals the Obama-era democratic platform, makes a stop in their little main-street town and promises the impossible.

Someone else might have a different experience, but this is what I saw and heard.

——

To be clear, midwesterners weren’t voting based on tax policy as you suggest, this was about trust, betrayal and vengeance.

[lsc]

>To be clear, midwesterners weren’t voting based on tax policy as you suggest, this was about trust, betrayal and vengeance.

That's consistent... but I don't really see how it's actionable. There's a lot of talk on the left about what we can do to help the midwest financially, but as you say, it's not about money.

If you had the ear of someone who mattered in the 'blue state' establishment, what would you tell them if they asked "What can the blue states do to help?"

[lsc]

>Assuming you live on one of the coasts, you’ll get yours. Just wait until the underfunded pension systems finally blow.

Do you think people on the coast will be more hurt than people inland by social security getting defunded?