Mark Thoma — Why the Working Class Is Choosing Trump and Sanders

Donald Trump recently defended Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:

“Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal reflects the negative reaction to Trump’s remarks from many Republicans:

“Mr. Trump is a political harbinger here of a new strand of populist Republicanism, largely empowered by Obamacare, in which the ‘conservative’ position is to defend the existing entitlement programs from a perceived threat posed by a new-style Obama coalition of handout seekers that includes the chronically unemployed, students, immigrants, minorities and women … who typically vote Democrat.”…

The dialectic between advocates of the market state and those of the welfare state is coming to a head politically. Is the tide beginning to turn? It seems so. Will this be a wave election that turns it? Maybe not. But momentum is now gathering.

The Fiscal Times
Why the Working Class Is Choosing Trump and Sanders
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon