The last round of globalization should have been a win-win-win. Producers reduced their labor costs and increased their profits; consumers enjoyed lower prices; and displaced workers were supposed to be compensated by the producer and consumer groups, using the government as a channel, through direct repayments and effective training programs. The first two parts of the equation functioned as planned, but the third did not, and we are paying for it in the form of right-wing populism today. What went wrong?
A number of things. First of all, business owners who frequently believed they were job-creating supermen saw no reason to pay higher taxes to fund the programs necessary to compensate globalization victims, and they had the political clout to get what they wanted. To some extent, this was accomplished by feeding workers a steady diet of nostalgia and culture wars. For their part, the workers, whose social status depended largely on their previous employment, didn’t want government handouts; they permitted themselves to be convinced by opportunistic right-wing voices that the government had stolen their jobs, and that a vote for Republicans would bring them back. Finally, the displaced workers found it difficult to find jobs that fit their skills. It just isn’t that easy to turn a coal miner into a coder, and government funds for infrastructure and education in unremarkable rural areas don’t guarantee an economic rebirth.