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I am saying the problems afflicting the rural working class and poor (as distinct from the suburban conservatives who make up much/most of Trump's base and who are generally doing more than fine) are not the product of the urban professional class, immigration, or free trade as Greer hints. These people have, by and large, chosen to side with political leaders who favor economic and labor policy disfavorable to them for social/values reasons. Insofar as this represents their priorities, fair play, but to turn and blame low standards of living in the rural midwest or deep south on the urban professional class is nonsensical.
I don't know if you are accurately representing the body of Greer's argumentation, but if the way you characterize it is accurate, it's sort of giving away the game. US manufacturing dominance in the mid 20th century was a bubble of anomalous circumstances that was never going to be sustained. Europe was always going to rebuild, East Asia was always going to industrialize, economic growth was always going to make American manufacturing less competitive internationally, automation was always going to make manufacturing less labor intensive, etc... Even a maximally protectionist policy regime wouldn't fix this (ignoring the harm inflicted on the rest of the economy in the name of manufacturing fetishism), because it wouldn't fix the fundamental issue of a world that had grown beyond US manufacturing. Japanese and later Chinese industry frequently ended up beating US industry on both price and quality.
I'm not going to say that nothing can be done about the US' relative position in global manufacturing, but it isn't what Trump is promising and it isn't what a bunch of 60 year old ex-factory workers from Ohio want. It probably means more immigration, not less, more international partnerships and less protectionism, more capital/automation-intensive facilities, and more federally directed industrially policy. It also requires acknowledging that no, the US is not going to go back to manufacturing most of the world's steel or cars.
A major distinction is that Trump haters don't say this, whereas many Trump supporters cite the arrogance, condescension, and judgment of 'coastal elites' as a reason for supporting him. They frame it more sympathetically than I do, but it's coming from their own mouths.
He was literally four in 1966. If he has any expertise on the socio-economic conditions of the 60s, it is purely incidental to his personal life. (TBF, it wouldn't be appreciably more credible if he was ~20 instead, though he could at least cite a singular adult perspective).
As I said, I don't think he's lying. I think he's bullshitting.
Apologies for the delay in replying - life can get busy sometimes.
I disagree but neither of us have provided evidence here. I agree with Greer's position that choices about the costs of these changes were not equally distributed across society, and they were the inevitable consequences of the choices that were made.
Greer actually agrees with this and it is a large theme in his work - though he also throws in the energy factor, which I think is a significant element as well. The point actually being made is that the reaction to those changes and shifts involved making decisions that profited some sections of society at the expense of others. Neither me nor Greer are claiming that the managerial class/salary class just decided to fuck over the rural poors for no reason - but that the decisions made in response to crisis hurt those groups to advantage others. All of the factors you identified are real reasons as to why the US would not be able to maintain the success they did and neither me nor Greer would disagree (I think, at least).
I think that those policies and ideas, the same ones that have been put in place for the past several decades, will continue to have the same impact they have had for the past several decades. If you want to have that argument I would love to, but I don't think this moldy old conversational thread is the place.
I actually think "arrogance, condescension and judgement" coming from someone is a valid reason to hate them and work against them - I know that if I act arrogantly and condescendingly to people while negatively judging their lifestyle it doesn't tend to lead to us becoming best of friends. But that's actually very different to the original claim, which was "Trump supporters have an inferiority complex and feel humiliated when college-educated liberals look down on them."
And he also lived in Appalachia and other parts of the country hit by the economic conditions we spoke about later - he's been following these stories for quite some time. The reason I brought it up is that he ha actually lived through all the changes that he's describing.
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