Thread by @LarryGlickman

There is a lot to argue with in this David Brooks column, first among them is his claim that Trump is fighting a "culture war" and not a class war as well. /1
nyti.ms/2R4oBFP

Among many other things, Trump has cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, tried to throw millions of Americans off of their health insurance, cut food stamps, given corporations carte blanche to pollute. /2

There are many other examples of Trump and the GOP's top-down class warfare. The success of this version of class warfare is that Brooks and many others reserves this term for those who seek to mitigate and reverse it. /3

Because we haven't seen it enough, Brooks reprises the NYT diner thing again: "swing voters in the Midwest care more about their values — guns, patriotism, ending abortion, masculinity, whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness." /4

Whose views, exactly, is Brooks representing when attributing these views to "swing voters in the Midwest." And what exactly does "masculinity" mean to them? And don't majorities in the U.S. support gun control (by a wide margin) and abortion rights (by a narrower one)?/5

And although he juxtaposes "values" (which he incorrectly takes to be inherently conservative) with "proletarian class consciousness," policies like progressive taxation, making the minimum wage a living wage, and certain expansions of the welfare state are quite popular. /6

Next, Brooks' claim that "wages are still generally determined by skills and productivity," is very problematic. First, because "skills" are cultural constructed and, second, because how does one measure "productivity" in the growing service/care sector of the economy?/7

Also, we know that the national minimum wage of $7.25/hr hasn't been raised in more than a decade and that robust trade unionism and collective bargaining are both a key to raising wages. The current status quo includes a paltry minimum wage and low levels of unionization. /8

How do we "reward productivity with pay" in low-carbon and increasingly socially necessary care work? And why do we think about so many of these jobs as not "skilled" positions? /9

And isn't there another way of looking at "superstar companies" that are "capturing larger and larger market shares"? Conspicuously, Brooks doesn't name names. But isn't this a backdoor way of highlighting the growing problem of monopoly power? /10

It's hard not to read this sentence without thinking about Dennis Muilenberg, the just-ousted CEO of Boeing: "Today’s successful bosses are doing what they should be doing: increasing productivity, growing their businesses and offering great service."/11
businessinsider.com/boeing-muilenb…

Here's an example of a unionization drive in the service sector to improve working conditions and pay. This piece doesn't provide numbers, but I suspect that there are more employees in the video game industry than in, say, coal mining. /12
hollywoodreporter.com/news/video-gam…