Class resentment: debate edition

A provocation offered by our favorite Archdruid:

“[T]he affluent classes from which the leadership of the liberal movement is drawn, and which set the tone for the movement as a whole, benefit directly from the collapse in wages that has partly been caused by mass illegal immigration, since that decrease in wages has yielded lower prices for the goods and services they buy and higher profits for the companies for which many of them work, and whose stocks many of them own.”

Sacred cows, things tough to talk about.  He has his arguments for the idea that an influx of more folks corresponds with depressed wages, an idea of whose mechanisms I’ll leave alone.

But the idea that one class might benefit from the immiseration of another – what a powerful idea. This is a true zero-sum outlook.  Is that what is going on?  Are some jobs created by offshoring other ones?  Perhaps the jobs held by a more upper-middle class group?  So that lower-wages are experienced by what we would call a lower class?

And let’s map this onto the current (2016) national election (even though I continuously and, obviously, ineffectually swear off thinking about or spending any amount of effort on).  Do the candidates bases – the core group/demographic that supports each of the two candidates – match up with the two participants in a zero-sum game mentioned above?  I think this makes things just that much spicier.

Two classes that are not simply at odds with each other when it comes to, say, values but whose very existences rely one on the other.  A negative relationship that isn’t broached publically.  Not talked about in the debate.  A clear source of resentment that goes on not being expressed.  What benefits the elite impoverishes the poor.  The elite being those with degrees who have jobs that require degrees and the poor being those with zero post-high school education not making much money if not any at all.

How embarrassing!  Embarrassing?  Is that the right word?  That sounds weird but, man, it is an awkward relationship.  That link and the link doesn’t get talked about.  Not just free agents pursuing life in different but still unencumbered ways.  No.  What is going on in this case is an elite, the upper-middle class being in a position of power, holding sway over an underclass.  The two groups come to the table as un-equals.   But, as though some fairytale curse had been cast, they find themselves incapable of putting words to this idea.

But beyond the resort to storytime curses there are real structures and concept to apply here.  Resentment was mentioned above and perhaps that is a good way to look at how poor sees rich – and, heck, even how rich sees poor.  The sense of injustice that the word resentment carries with it is easy to see from the perspective of the poor.  What a shitty relationship to be in, being the one who has been wronged!  And those that wronged you have more power.  But flip the script and think of the awkwardness the rich must feel – I’m being serious.  They are in the position of feeling like their well-off existences is the product of greed – and then they have to (maybe occasionally) rub shoulders with those that they’ve wronged.  They must be all like, “Umm, sorry?  Suckers? . . .  I stole it fair and square.  You don’t know what it’s like”. 

So, for the elections . . . bring on more spectacle!