BBG Editorial from Feb 1: Dashed Expectations Power White Rage

[Lucky Luciano]

Premise is that white people felt they were on a good path to retirement or some other financial goal until the global financial crisis struck. Then the expectations of a good future were severely disrupted. Perhaps those white people voting for twitler do not have materially different incomes from those who voted for Hillary - but they had greater expectations that are now dashed.

I still think that racism and misogyny play a role here because after all they didn't care when it was __those__ people who had less to expect. Instead of joining forces with __those__ people they chose to make them the enemy and they chose twitler to fight them.

Interesting piece nonetheless:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-01/dashed-expectations-power-white-anger

ECONOMICS
Dashed Expectations Power White Anger

Feb 1, 2017 8:00 AM EST

By
Noah Smith
A while ago, I wrote about a new theory that’s gaining some ground in economics and finance. This is the theory of extrapolative expectations, which says that people tend to mistakenly think that recent trends are going to keep going. That theory could help explain financial bubbles. But I also believe it can help explain a lot of the anger we’re now seeing in the political world -- especially the rage that led to the rise of Donald Trump.

During the 2016 election, people often debated whether Trump’s supporters were motivated by economic anxiety. Plenty of evidence showed that Trump voters weren’t doing worse, economically speaking, than those who voted for Hillary Clinton. But that might not be the whole story.

To see why, take a look at the Financial Trust Index. A University of Chicago Booth School of Business team, headed by Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales, tracks how much people trust various economic entities -- banks, the stock market, mutual funds and large corporations. As you might expect, poor people tend to have less trust in the economy than do the wealthy. But in most of the years since 2008, non-Hispanic white Americans -- who formed Trump’s main support base -- reported less trust than nonwhites. That’s surprising, given that whites tend to earn more and have higher levels of wealth.

My hunch is that it’s a result of extrapolative expectations. Look at the wealth patterns for white and black households during the last few decades:

<Snip>

[Squinch]

1. All these sources are bending over backwards not to see what is in front of their noses.

It isn't about the financial crisis, and it isn't anything as clean as the financial crisis "dashing their expectations." It's sexism and racism writ large.

It is about the fact that white men now compete a bit more fairly with women and people of color for resources. They are no longer born on third base, now they are born on first or second while the rest of us need a hit to get on base. So they still have advantages, but no longer have the huge advantages they used to have. The rest of us are no longer absolutely forbidden from playing the game.

Because their advantages have been reduced, many of them simply cannot compete. They have to live lives that are almost as hard as the lives the rest of us have ALWAYS lived. It pisses them off. They think they are better than the rest of us, their identities are tied up with being the bosses of the rest of us, but the world is showing them that they are not.

And my response? Too damn bad. Cry me a river.

[Lucky Luciano]

2. They should have joined forces with POC and all the other so called bogeymen.

The white working class struggles have more in common with the struggles of POC than the struggles of billionaires - that is for damn sure. I guess they need someone to look down on to feel good about themselves.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Truth ....nt