Did “pro-worker” conservative nationalism-populism help workers while President Trump was in office?
No.
Will it help workers in the future, as currently formulated by leading nat-pops such as senators Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio?
No.
From my feature in the current edition of the magazine:
Few of the major policy goals of Trump’s successors can be expected to help the working class any more than his jawboning of corporations did. Breaking up large technology companies, going after pharmaceutical companies, and imposing taxes on financial transactions aren’t about helping workers. They’re about expressing grievance against a social class on behalf of workers — what you might call “grievance-onomics.”
And the ideas of nat-pops that are less nakedly about expressing grievance — tariffs and other industrial policies — won’t help workers, either.
Moreover, the nat-pop wing of the Right peddles grievance-onomics, which will hurt workers — and consumers, and the economy as a whole — in insidious ways.
For one thing, this way of thinking belittles the importance of economic growth. [American Compass founder Oren] Cass goes so far as to dismiss both economic growth and income redistribution as ways of fighting material poverty and of increasing opportunity. He mocks this approach to economic policy — growing the economy and using the fruits of growth to help workers — as “economic piety.” (It is confusing, and perhaps telling, that one of his signature policy goals is a massive wage subsidy, a textbook example of the “economic piety” he criticizes.) He is not alone in downplaying the importance of growth.
And:
Grievance-onomics indulges a narrative that workers are victims who don’t have agency and are players in a “game” that is “rigged” against them. This is analytically false — e.g., the link between worker productivity and compensation is empirically strong. More than that, it is a terrible message to send to workers. If workers come to think of themselves as victims who can’t get ahead, then why will they try to get ahead? Apostles of grievance-onomics risk creating among workers the very problems of economic stagnation and immobility that they falsely claim beset us.
Yes, the economic pessimism of conservative nat-pops is misplaced. Income inequality has been stagnant or falling for over a decade. Inflation-adjusted wages for typical workers have grown by around one-third over the past three decades. Most adults today have a higher household income than their parents enjoyed at similar ages. The middle of the labor market has not been permanently hollowed out. The American dream is not dead.