Being a proud carrier of the MAGA party card requires one to take a nostalgic detour into an imaginary 1971 — one where working-class wages were apparently at their peak, manufacturing dominated the economy, and everything was sunshine and American Dream milkshakes. So it isn’t surprising that Batya Ungar-Sargon, one of MAGA’s loudest voices, has decided to take that fantasy trip back to the past.
Here is the tweet:
In 1971, the high water mark for working-class wages, manufacturing was 25% of the U.S. GDP. Today it’s 10%. Everything Trump is doing with tariffs and immigration controls is to give the American worker a shot at the American Dream again after half a century of race-to-the-bottom economics that enriched the elites. So naturally, the elites are apoplectic.
America has some problems. From the decline in fertility and marriage, to workers’ attachment to the workforce, to addiction, to our big and destructive government, to our unsustainable debt level, to the artificially high cost of living — there is a lot to fix. Trying to eliminate tariffs that others impose on us and we impose on them isn’t a bad idea. Stopping the OECD and other international organizations from harmonizing taxes and keeping American companies from striving is good too. But that requires accurate diagnostics of our problems and appropriate solutions.
Ungar-Sargon’s tweet offers neither a good diagnostic nor a good solution. Let’s take a step back from the sepia-tinted delusions and talk about some facts.
First, on what planet was 1971 the “high water mark” for wages? Looking at the data, we can see that workers today earn more than they did in 1971. Real wages for every quintile have risen since then, despite the decline in manufacturing jobs. If 1971 was the golden era of working-class prosperity, why is everyone making more money now?
Now, in her defense, some data can be easily misinterpreted to support her point, as Adam Ozimek explains here. But people making this mistake have been corrected so many times that by now it is easy to find out what the true path of wages has been over the past several decades. I get that nostalgia is fun, but at least it should be grounded in reality.
Second, there’s the MAGA nostalgia for the size of the manufacturing sector. This nostalgia is rooted in a failure to understand that manufacturing as a share of the economy has declined because the economy has evolved, not because of the machinations of elite globalists. The fact that manufacturing is now 10 percent of GDP instead of 25 percent doesn’t mean it was “stolen” from workers; it means the economy adapted to consumer choices. And as consumers get wealthier — as they have — they want more services relative to more tangible stuff. How are MAGA leaders going to force consumer choices to change? Or is the plan to mandate that consumers stop consuming services — such as Netflix, afterschool programs for the kids, streaming music, and those related to vacations, health care, and education — and force them to buy more goods? I am serious. What’s the plan here?
There’s also the fact that as countries develop, their economies naturally shift first from agriculture to manufacturing and then from manufacturing to services. This is exactly what has happened in every wealthy nation on earth. In addition, for a country to become richer — and be able to increase the wages of its population as we have since the 70s — industries across the board must become more productive. This is what happened in manufacturing across almost every nation on the globe. In fact, American industrial output is near its all-time high, which it hit in September 2018, just as Trump’s first round of tariffs was taking full effect. But this production is now done with more and better machines and fewer workers — which is why productivity has skyrocketed and real wages have risen.
Would Ungar-Sargon prefer that we return to the mid-20th-century factory conditions just to keep the percentage of manufacturing workers higher even though their wages would be lower? We have problems, but we have to be honest about the trade-offs we face.
And here’s the kicker: For all the MAGA world’s nostalgia about manufacturing jobs, most Americans aren’t on board with the idea of returning to work in factories. I know it’s trendy to pine for the good ol’ days of “real jobs,” but let’s be honest — many of the lost manufacturing jobs were dangerous and physically grueling. Ever heard of black lung? Chronic back problems? Missing fingers? Factories weren’t exactly wellness spas. Manufacturing workers in the mid-20th century had higher rates of workplace injuries and serious long-term health problems than today’s workers.
Even today, manufacturing jobs remain harder and more dangerous than most jobs. And I admire and thank those who take these jobs. But this reality explains why shipyards — closer to old-school manufacturing than anything else we’ve got — are desperate for workers. They pay well, but young people prefer working in air-conditioned offices, coffee shops, or tech start-ups. Politico Pro reported last year that shipyards have a fast-food problem — meaning they can’t compete with the local Burger King for workers. Much of the rest of manufacturing faces the same problem in light of the thousands of job openings that are unfilled.
And by the way, it is telling that most of those clamoring for more 1970s manufacturing jobs are doing it from the comfort of their computer jobs.
Finally, I hate to break it to her, but Trump’s trade policies aren’t going to magically bring back 1970s America. Tariffs don’t make an economy richer — they make things scarcer and more expensive. And the frenzied way the administration is going about implementing its tariff “policy” only further discourages investment, which, in turn, chills growth. It will backfire.
The president and his surrogates are telling us that the pain will be temporary and that it is all for the best. But the data, and the financial markets, point in the opposite direction. But I guess logic is secondary to the narrative.
This is not an argument for doing nothing. The administration has admirable intentions on many fronts. But Ungar-Sargon’s argument is a fantasy wrapped in historical inaccuracies inside a lousy policy proposal. Manufacturing isn’t dead, real wages aren’t lower, and young people don’t want to work in manufacturing just because someone on the New Right is feeling sentimental about the 1970s and a less globalized past.