These aspiring top earners also believe the bankers did not mean to cause the economic crisis in 2008, and only cheated a little, but they say nothing about working class people who lied to to get a mortgage and so were then sent to prison.
In his latest book, "Listen, Liberal : Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People ?", just released in France '"Pourquoi les riches votent à gauche" (éd. Agone), Thomas Frank explains how Hillary Clinton and the Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election. "Decades ago, the Democratic Party decided that thy did not want to be the party of the working class any longer. Thomas Frank call them the "professionals", they are white, rich, they have all studied in the best universities. They are very liberal on social issues, but very conservative and not as ease with the issues of inequality, incomes, etc.
"The Democrats, in the course of my lifetime, have become a party that is uncomfortable with discontent, with class-based anger. They don't like to talk about it. It makes them uncomfortable. Whenever they hear it, they try to get around it, they try to throw roadblocks in front, cognitive roadblocks, they don't want to think about it", acccording to Thomas Frank in this interview for the French newsmagazine "L'Obs". These Democrats want to be the party of a different class : the "creative" or "the winners". The democratic party and Clinton thought that the working class had "nowhere else to go", according to Frank. But they actually did vote for Trump....
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Perverse how everyone celebrates wage growth of Doctors and Attorneys and Engineers above the rate of inflation but panic breaks out at the Fed when blue collar jobs have increases in wages. Rapid interest rate increases, models showing all sorts of potential catastrophe emerge, talk of unnecessary tax cuts at the "wrong" time. Particularly vile partisans call it a "tax-scam" when fiscal policy is used to help non-white collar workers.
The only polite argument now, among academics is whether 1/4 percent hikes are more appropriate than 1/2 percent hikes each quarter to put an end to the threat. When investments rise, Dems call in Piketty. When Blue collar workers do well, we get calls for over throwing the President, fascist, nazis and base, disgusting appeals to darkest emotions. When university grads do well, make outrageous returns on their investment and labor in school, blue skies abound, birds chirp, butterflies flitter, it's flipping utopia, all is right with the world.
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