Believe it or not, 50% of people are below average; at least, below the median. They might be below average in physical beauty; intelligence; discipline; personal history; income; ability to play basketball; or many such things. Probably, everyone is below average in some way. I bet even Warren Buffett is a below-average dancer.
If we take “average” not to mean only the median, but the fat part of the bell curve on either side of the average, we get about 30% of people that are, by whatever measure you might want to focus on, well below average. The Bottom 30%. They are so far below the average that they can’t fake it.
Since the United States has about 330 million people, about 100 million people are in the Bottom 30%, the Well Below Average. That is a huge number of people. Why would you want to hire someone Well Below Average? Why would you want to marry them, or have them on your basketball team? Basically, the answer is: because they are the best of your available options.
A lot of Americans are, alas, from a socioeconomic standpoint, Well Below Average. They have a criminal record; a history of drug use; are ugly as sin; are terribly educated; rather stupid; have bad work habits; and all the other bad things you can list. Actually, there are about 100 million of these Americans that are Well Below Average. There are also a lot of other people in the world, who are, in comparison, even less attractive than these Below Average Americans. But, we don’t care as much about them. We care more about the Well Below Average Americans because they vote; they live in the same cities as us; they attend the public schools; and they affect the broader culture in every way.
In other words, it is much more important, for all Americans including the Well Below Average, the Average, and the Well Above Average, that these Well Below Average people can enjoy reasonably comfortable and productive lives, the core of which is: a good job.
It is much more important that we somehow gain better living conditions for the Well Below Average American than the Average Chinese.
Thus, Economic Nationalism. It is very important for us to make members of our Nation (or, citizens of the State) better off, instead of foreigners. We don’t care if an auto factory moves from Michigan to Georgia, because if there are any setbacks suffered by people in Michigan, there are offsetting advantages enjoyed by people in Georgia; and, the process of competition between the two has overall benefits as well. But, if a factory moves from Michigan to Malaysia, and people in Michigan suffer (because their Capital has been withdrawn) and people in Malaysia benefit (because they enjoy more Capital), now we care. Thus, the basic pattern of U.S. economic policy throughout history, which has been Free Trade and Free Movement (interstate immigration) within the United States, and tariffs/restrictions on trade and immigration with other countries.
One reason that Socialism doesn’t work is that there really aren’t enough people who are so wealthy and well-off, that we can take something from them to give to the Well Below Average, and make a major difference in their wellbeing. You need $270,000 of household income to be in the Top 5% of household income in the U.S. But, that often comes from two working parents. Typically, this household with a high income also lives somewhere with high expenses, like a major coastal city. It is very easy for a family to spend all of this, and more, while having a very “middle class” sort of lifestyle. They don’t have so much money left over that they can go handing out a lot of it to the Bottom 30%.
The other problem is, high taxes make the economy work much more poorly; which basically leads to lower incomes across the board, and outright unemployment especially for the Bottom 30%.
The common response from the Right is: Get Out of the Bottom 30%. Good idea. But, although people are often able to climb out of the Bottom 30%, and maybe go on to great accomplishments, nevertheless there is always a Bottom 30%.
The Bottom 30% has its own Bottom 30%, or the Bottom 10% of the whole population. These are the hard cases. But there are still over 30 million of them.
The best solution to the problems of the Bottom 30% are to make the Capital:Labor ratio so much in favor of Labor that companies are willing to hire even someone in the Bottom 30%, or even the Bottom 10%. Whenever workers have to compete for a job, someone must lose, even if they could, in fact, do the job reasonably well. But when jobs compete for workers, then companies have to take anyone who meets the minimum requirements for the job. Maybe, the company will even train them. At one point, the Ford Motor Company used to hold classes in English for its immigrant employees.
One result of this is that wages rise, even for the simplest but necessary jobs. The fact of the matter is, someone needs to clean the toilets. If a company making widgets is willing to hire the toilet cleaner and pay them $30 an hour to make widgets, because they can be made highly productive through the use of large amounts of capital (for example working at a sophisticated factory), and Labor is in sufficient shortage that you have to hire the toilet cleaner to work in your factory, then someone else will have to pay the toilet cleaner $30 an hour so that they don’t get hired by the factory owner. Thus, in times when there is a lot of Capital and not so much Labor, we see wages rise even for low-skilled jobs. Agricultural workers, or people in the meatpacking industry get high wages and benefits. Toilet cleaners get union jobs with good job security and benefits.
