Opinion | The new economy and the remnant

a little over a year, Amazon invited the cities and the States that had submitted bids to establish their second headquarters. This led to an absurd fight about who would get the dubious privilege of paying large grants in exchange of a worsening of the traffic congestion and house prices higher. (Answer: New York and the metropolitan area of Washington, DC).

But not everyone had a chance to win. Amazon specified that it only will establish the new headquarters in an electoral district democrat. Agree, it is not literally what he said Amazon. Only limited the competition to “metropolitan areas with more than a million inhabitants” and “locations urban or suburban with ability to attract and retain a significant technical talent”. But in the next Congress, the vast majority of places that meet those criteria will be represented by democrats. Over the last generation, the regions of the U.S. have experienced a profound economic divergence. Metropolitan areas rich have become richer still and attract increasingly to the fastest growing sectors of the country. On the other hand, the small towns and rural areas have been left behind and form a kind of remnant economic abandoned by the knowledge economy.

The criteria to establish the headquarters of Amazon illustrate perfectly the causes of this divergence. In the new economy, companies want to have access to large groups of workers with a training high, that can only be found in metropolitan areas large and rich. And the decisions of large companies such as Amazon on its location to attract even more highly skilled workers to those areas. In other words, it is a cumulative process that is consolidated and that, in fact, is dividing the US in two economies. And this economic divide is reflected in the political division.

The division is economic and political. But in the last election many voters rejected the ‘trumpismo’

In 2016, of course, the parts of US that are lagging behind voted in large measure to Donald Trump. The media responded with many profiles of supporters of Trump rural sitting in coffee shops. But it has proved that this tactic no longer works. The trumpismo dyed red republican the us regions lagging behind, but the reactions against the trumpismo have been dyed completely blue democratic regions in growth.

why the lagging Güvenilir Bahis Siteleri regions have moved towards the right, and the wealthiest regions to the left? It seems that it has been for the economic interest. It is true that Trump promised to restore the traditional jobs in the manufacturing sectors and the mining of coal, but that promise was never credible. And the political program of the republican orthodox of lower taxes and cutting social programs, which is basically still the Trump in practice, in reality detrimental to lagging regions, which depend on a lot of things like food stamps and aid to the disabled, so much more that is detrimental to the prosperous areas.

Is more, in the election data there is little or no support for the idea that the “concern” economic made the people to vote to Trump. As stated in Identity Crisis [identity Crisis], an important new book that analyzes the elections of 2016, what distinguished the voters of Trump were not the economic difficulties, but the “attitudes related to race and ethnicity”. However, these attitudes are not separate from the economic change. Although I personally do well, many of the voters of the regions lagging behind will feel aggrieved, and have the feeling that the glittering elites of the cities of the superstar they are missing the respect, and that sense of grievance becomes very easily racial. On the contrary, the transformation of the Republican Party in a nationalist party white separates to the voters – including white voters – in these metropolitan areas and large prosperous. So that the regional division becomes a political gulf.

can You save this abyss? Honestly, I doubt it. We can, and must, do many things to improve the lives of americans in the backward regions.

we Can ensure access to health care and we can increase the income with salary support and other policies (in fact, the tax breaks of income, which help workers with low wages, already benefit disproportionately to States with low income). But to recover the dynamism in these regions is much more difficult, because it means swimming against a powerful current economic.

And the feeling that you are leaving behind can be infuriating to the people even though their material needs are covered. This is what we see, for example, in the former East Germany: despite the enormous economic aid from the western part and the generous social programs, the "ossis" (a nickname by which is known to the citizens of East Germany) feel aggrieved because they consider that they are second-class citizens, and many of their votes have gone to parties of the extreme right.

therefore, the bitter division that we observe in the US —the ugliness that pervades our politics— can have profound economic causes, and it is possible that there is no way to remove it in practice. But the ugliness does not have to dominate. The majority of white voters in rural continue to support the trumpismo, but are not in the majority, and in the mid-term elections a significant number of those voters rejected the nationalist program white.

Thus, the US is a country divided, and is likely to remain so for a period of time. But the good part of our nature can still be imposed.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel prize winner of Economics © The New York Times, 2018. Translation of News Clips