Economic Update: Economics of Women Voting Trump

Summary

Economic Update: Economics of Women Voting Trump

Podcast: Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Episode Date: December 8, 2016
Host: Richard D. Wolff
Guest: Dr. Harriet Fraad (second half)

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Overview

This episode of Economic Update explores the economic and psychological factors behind the voting patterns of American women—specifically, why a majority of white married women voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. In the first half, Richard Wolff dissects Trump’s early economic moves and offers global economic developments and progressive responses. The second half features an in-depth discussion with Dr. Harriet Fraad, focusing on the complexities of women’s economic positions and psychological motivations in their electoral choices.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Planned Elimination of the Estate Tax

[04:00]

• The estate tax affects an extremely small portion of Americans—only those with estates over $10.9 million.

• Collects about $21 billion annually for the federal government.

• Eliminating this tax exclusively benefits the richest 0.1% and widens wealth inequality.

• Substituting it with a capital gains tax (at 20% vs the estate tax’s 40%) would further benefit the wealthy while reducing federal revenue.

  “When Mr. Trump campaigned to do something about inequality, maybe what he meant is to make it worse, because that’s what this will do.” — Richard Wolff [05:40]

2. Capitalism’s Everyday “Bizarre” Waste

[08:20]

• Examples include airlines (e.g., United) charging for overhead bin usage—reflecting the incremental extraction of profits at the cost of the public.
• Airlines have collaborated to reduce flights and maximize profits, making travel more miserable for most passengers.
• Broader point: Capitalist systems create routine inefficiencies and hardships for ordinary people.

3. Global Economic Instability

[11:30]

• European Central Bank’s ongoing “quantitative easing” (printing money) highlights persistent economic woes in Europe—problems that have reverberated globally since the 2008 crisis.
• U.S. dollar strength (due in part to capital flight from troubled regions) risks causing debt crises in poorer nations.

4. Trump’s Economic Advisory Board: The Same Old Elites

[14:15]

• Despite anti-establishment rhetoric, Trump’s appointees are drawn from Wall Street (Blackstone, JPMorgan, BlackRock, etc.) and major corporations (Walmart, Disney, GM).

• Many of these figures contributed to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, highlighting the bipartisan overlap at the top.

  “It reads like a joke, only it isn’t a joke, unless, of course, the joke’s on us.” — Richard Wolff [17:50]

5. Austria’s Election: A Different Path for Discontent

[19:10]

• In Austria, voters facing economic hardship chose a left-leaning Green Party leader over a right-wing, anti-immigration candidate.
• Wolff notes this as a contrast to U.S. and U.K. where discontent fueled the right.

6. Cities Ban Diesel for Public Health

[20:40]

• Inspired by Tokyo, major cities (Paris, Mexico City, Madrid, Athens; possibly London) prepare to ban diesel vehicles to fight air pollution—unlike any U.S. city.

  “Here is a decision… to put the health of their citizens ahead of the profits of the oil and automobile companies...” — Richard Wolff [21:30]

7. Pope Francis on Inequality and the Estate Tax

[22:10]

• At a Vatican global forum, Pope Francis calls for equal opportunity and fair resource distribution, challenging inheritance systems that perpetuate inequality.

• Wolff connects this stance directly to Trump’s proposed estate tax repeal.

  “To be a good Christian, as the Pope sees it, is to have equal opportunity. Cutting estate taxes... guarantees and perpetuates unequal opportunity.” — Richard Wolff [23:00]

8. Oil Companies’ Economic Desperation

[24:10]

• Persistent oil extraction is critical to corporate valuations, fueling industry opposition to fossil fuel reductions and aggressive PR campaigns.

9. Portland, Oregon’s Pay-Ratio Tax

[25:55]

• New law taxes companies whose CEOs earn over 100 times the median worker wage. It’s a modest but real step toward combating income inequality.

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Main Segment: Why Did White Married Women Vote for Trump?

Featuring Dr. Harriet Fraad
[31:59]

Setting the Record Straight on the Statistic

[32:01–33:10]

• The oft-cited 53% figure refers to white married women, not all women. White married women often vote with their husbands, reflecting household pressures and shared economic perception.

  “Married women tend to vote the way their husbands do… whereas single women voted for Obama.” — Dr. Harriet Fraad [33:10]

Psychological and Economic Roots of Voting Patterns

• Many married women rationalized Trump’s misogynistic actions as “locker room talk,” similar to Melania Trump’s defense.

• The collapse of the “family wage” since the 1970s (jobs exported, mechanized, and wages frozen) eroded women’s household security.

• Still overwhelmingly responsible for uncompensated domestic and emotional labor, women also face job insecurity and wage penalties for motherhood.

• Corporate feminism (Hillary Clinton’s brand) never addressed the insecurity faced by most American women, especially single mothers and low-wage workers.

  “Hillary was a corporate feminist… But the average woman… the lowest paid wage worker. Single women are the lowest paid workers. Women with children get a penalty…” — Dr. Harriet Fraad [37:10]

Alienation and Distrust of Elites

[39:00–41:03]

• Working-class women feel derided by elites, the educational system, and even some feminists. Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” comment reinforced this alienation.

• Many felt more recognized by Trump’s rage than Clinton’s policy proposals.

• Identification with Trump’s anger overrode concerns about his behavior.

  “They didn’t vote for Trump because of his program... They voted to identify with his rage.” — Richard Wolff [41:38]

Why Clinton’s Feminism Didn’t Deliver

• Clinton’s “glass ceiling” feminism failed to address daily economic hardship or value care work.

• Sanders’s campaign, with universal child care, better family leave, and higher minimum wage, was more attuned to these concerns.

• Rage at the status quo drove women to Trump, not policy agreement.

  “Hillary stood for the top. She stood for the Democratic establishment that let them down… And so they didn’t identify with her. They saw her as part of a corporate elite…” — Dr. Harriet Fraad [45:38]

Questions of Sexual Morality and Voting

• For white married women, having “sexual protection” within marriage reduced concern for Trump’s sexism—unlike more vulnerable single women and minorities.

• Outrage and identification trumped (pun acknowledged by Wolff) aversion to Trump’s personal behavior.

  “Those other concerns, the built up rage, the economic crisis, the humiliation, that those factors trumped their disgust at the sexual behavior…” — Richard Wolff [46:56]

The Future: Possibility of a Shift

[47:43–49:27]

• If Trump fails to deliver substantive change, Dr. Fraad expects married women’s anger will persist and may turn on him, as it did on Obama and Clinton.

• The outcome depends on whether an alternative (like Sanders) successfully channels this anger toward systemic economic transformation rather than scapegoating immigrants or minorities.

  “And after a while, people will realize, wait a minute, that’s just a photo op. We are not being saved. Things are worse for us.” — Dr. Harriet Fraad [49:28]

The Uselessness of Symbolic Solutions

• Trump’s celebrated Carrier jobs deal is critiqued as largely symbolic, benefitting few while costing society. The lesson is that “photo ops” cannot address systemic economic dislocation.

  “A photo op, the saving of a few jobs, granted, but at an enormous social cost…” — Richard Wolff [50:52]

Political Alienation is Deeply Rooted

[54:16–55:40]

• Voting is an expression of decades of alienation, not short-term campaign promises.

• Trump’s brashness and willingness to attack “elites” was satisfying and cathartic for voters feeling powerless.

  “He behaves like an angry street person. A bully, a braggart. And he beats up on the people that they like to see beat up. Yes, very satisfying.” — Dr. Harriet Fraad [55:40]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On estate tax repeal:
  “Bottom line is the richest among us will become much richer than they were before.” — Richard Wolff [06:10]

• On political continuity:
  “The very same people that all the other presidents go to for their guidance, that’s where Mr. Trump is going.” — Richard Wolff [16:20]

• On equitable inheritance:
  “For each person to have the same opportunities to realize his or her potential, a potential that is ultimately based on the dignity of the children of God…” — Pope Francis, quoted by Wolff [22:40]

• On the gendered division of rage and security:
  “The mass of women… saw [Clinton] as part of a corporate elite who dumps them into the basket of deplorables.” — Dr. Harriet Fraad [45:38]

• On the election as anger management:
  “They voted to identify with his rage.” — Richard Wolff [41:38]

• On future outcomes:
  “If Trump turns out to be lots of theater, lots of tweets, lots of photo ops, but doesn’t fundamentally alter the condition of the mass of women, would you expect them to be as angry at him…?” — Richard Wolff [47:43]

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Important Timestamps

• [04:00] — Trump estate tax repeal explained
• [08:20] — Airline industry’s new charges as microcosm of capitalist waste
• [14:15] — Trump’s economic advisory appointments: the return of elites
• [19:10] — The Austrian left turn
• [20:40] — Major cities move to ban diesel cars
• [22:10] — Pope Francis on economic opportunity
• [24:10] — The fossil fuel industry’s existential crisis
• [25:55] — Portland taxes extreme CEO-worker pay gaps
• [31:59] — Dr. Harriet Fraad joins to analyze women’s votes for Trump
• [33:10] — Married vs. single women’s voting tendencies
• [37:10] — Economic hardships women face
• [41:38] — Voting as identification with rage
• [45:38] — The limits of "corporate feminism"
• [47:43] — Predicting future shifts in women’s political anger
• [50:52] — The real cost of Trump’s Carrier jobs deal
• [54:16] — Long-term roots of political alienation
• [55:40] — “A bully, a braggart. And he beats up on the people that they like to see beat up.”

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Conclusion

This episode delves beneath surface-level campaign analysis to reveal how decades of economic change, cultural alienation, and failures of mainstream feminism intersected to push white married women toward Trump in 2016—not for love of his program, but out of bitter identification with his rage against the elite. Dr. Fraad argues that symbolic achievements and rhetorical flourishes—and even exposure of personal scandals—are dwarfed in importance by lasting economic hardship and the psychological need to find an outlet for anger and dissatisfaction.

For future elections, unless real material conditions change for ordinary women and families, and unless a candidate taps their lived frustrations with substantive, recognizable solutions, anger at the status quo—and votes for those who can channel it—will persist.

Transcript

[A]

Sam. Saint gonna change. Welcome, friends to welcome to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, our incomes, our debts, those of our children and those looming down the road. And boy, do they loom these days. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life and I currently teach at the New School University in New York City. Before jumping into the program today, let me make a couple of brief announcements. The first one is to remind those of you either in the New York metropolitan area or who might be visiting at this Christmas season time that once every month, the second Wednesday of every month, I give a public lecture. I'm very proud and pleased to be able to tell you about it as I have in the past. This lecture occurs at the Judson Memorial Church, one of the oldest churches in New York City and the only church facing the Washington Square, the historic square in downtown Manhattan. The next one of these public lectures will take place on Wednesday, December 14th at 7:30pm Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square. It will be devoted to an analysis of what Mr. Trump has said his economic plans for all of us are and where they're taking us. If you're interested, please join us. It's a chance for me to meet you and vice versa, and in a setting that allows a greater exploration than the time constraints of the radio program usually allow. So once again, monthly meeting for December on the 14th, 7:30pm Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square. And the other announcement is also perennial here, which is to remind you that if you find what we do on these programs interesting, all of them are archived. Every program we've ever done on our website, democracyatwork.info that's all one word, democracyatwork.info and the second website that we maintain, RD Wolff, with two Fs. And in addition to an archive of all these programs, there's a great deal of material added all the time to these websites that I think you will find interesting. You can also use the websites to communicate to us. Both of them have mechanisms for emails to be sent to us on anything you would like us to deal with on these programs. What you do and do not like about the work we do with, we read them all. They are very important in shaping what we do. The websites also allow you to follow us by a click of the mouse on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, which is where we concentrate our linkages to all of you, etc. Let me ask you to make use of these websites There are ways for you to partner with us and vice versa. And it extends the reach of what we do to let other possibly interested folks that you know become aware of and hopefully partners with us. And the same applies to contacting us about radio stations that you think we might pursue to carry this program and likewise to engage with us about having me visit where you are to meet you there. Okay, let's jump in. And we have so many today that I'm going to go kind of quickly through this first half of the program. Well, I'll start with one of the things the President Elect Trump has said he's going to do, and that is going to get rid of the estate tax in the United States. Now, the estate tax is something we've talked about before, and I want quickly to tell you what Mr. Trump is planning. The estate tax now is, at the federal level, a tax that affects a tiny number of Americans way less than 1%. So we're talking about an infinitesimal minority. Why is that? Because the federal estate tax exempts the first $10.9 million that you leave to your chosen descendants, your chosen friends. So if you don't have more than $10.9 million, you don't care much about the federal estate tax because it doesn't apply to you. That's why it's only a tiny, tiny percentage. However, that tiny percentage of the American people that have more than 10.9 million to leave to their descendants and their family and friends, they are extraordinarily rich. So that, for example, in the last full year for which we have records, the amount of money collected by the federal government on the estate tax of those who leave, more than 10.9 million was $21 billion. That's a significant amount of money. So if you get rid of the estate tax altogether, as many in the Trump camp want, you are not only making the rich much richer than they used to be by removing a tax on them, but you are also depriving the Federal treasury of $21 billion so that either the federal government will have to raise taxes on the rest of us to make up for what they're not collecting from the super rich, or they can cut social programs for all of us because they don't raise that money and they've lost it from the super rich, or maybe they can borrow the money and worsen the deficit. You, you see the issue. But now a couple of specifics. If you're rich Enough, if you're one of the.001% of the people who have more than 10.9 million to leave when you die. Here's what you pay if you have more. 40%, current law, 40% on every dollar over 10.9 million for a married couple. One of the proposals in the Trump camp is to substitute the capital gains tax. Now, if you hear that, well, we're cutting the estate tax, but we're going to apply the capital gains tax. Don't think that it's a wash. Don't be fooled by this kind of talk because the capital gains tax is much lower on these people than the estate tax. The capital gains tax currently would be 20%. So for every dollar over 10.9 million, if this arrangement of the Trump game goes through, it's still cutting in half their tax bill from 40% to 20%. When Mr. Trump campaigned to do something about inequality, maybe what he meant is to make it worse, because that's what this will do, whether it's altogether cut or whether we substitute a 20% capital gains tax for a 40% estate tax. Bottom line is the richest among us will become much richer than they were before. Number two, I want to talk to you about some of the typical wastes of a capitalist economic system that often are not recognized for what they are, bizarre activities, but they happen every day. So while they're bizarre in ways I'm going to tell you about, they are also normal routine every day. And I'm going to just give you a few samples that became clear this last week. To drive the point home, United Airlines announced a first. They are going to charge for what you put in the overhead bin above your seat. You heard me right. Not only do you get to pay for putting luggage on the luggage service in a way we never used to before. When you check your bag, not only are we now required to pay for any food beyond water or soda or 11 peanuts in a plastic container, but. But now we're going to be asked to pay on United, with other airlines slated to probably follow. We're going to pay for the overhead bin. I really don't know what to say, but it's not a sign of an effective economy that keeps squeezing people. The airlines got together to reduce the number of flights to fill up the airplanes. The airlines got together to make the seats so narrow and small that the concept sardine can occurs to everyone who takes an economy flight these days. But they're not stopping. They've made real good profits by squeezing us into these airplanes, by making the experience ever more painful, miserable, etc. And they're not stopping so we will get to pay for the overhead bin where we stuff our bags and our coats. Second example, the European Union Central bank of Europe has decided to extend quantitative easing to pump even more money into the economy, because everything else they've done hasn't worked. The economy in Europe is in very bad shape. Americans like to notice that, imagining that if it's bad over there at this moment and not here, we will somehow escape contagion. Let me remind everyone, the crisis of 2008 started in the United States. The Europeans thought they wouldn't have to suffer. Two years later it hit there. Four years later, it bounced back and hit here. Right now, we're doing well here. They're a disaster in Europe. But the notion of an interconnected economy having one section of it, this part of the country, escape the extremes. And we have a lot of problems here, too. That's silly. And if there's terrible crimes in Europe, guess what. This is a system that keeps communicating the disease of its instability from one part to another. And here's a final example of a system spinning out of control in order to avoid even worse economic downturns since 2008 than what we suffered in 2008. As you all know, the American Federal Reserve System pushed interest rates down to next to zero. And what this did is it made a lot of companies and countries around the world borrow dollars. Here in the United States because the interest rates were so low. Well, now, because the rest of the world's capitalist economies are in such trouble, rich people are moving their assets to the United States because they think it's a safer place for rich people. Especially now with President Elect Trump, the value of the dollar is going up, which means they have to pay back the loans they took out at a low interest rate by having to buy more dollars with their cheapened currencies because the dollar is going up and other currencies are going down, that's making it impossible for them to repay the loans they took, causing a whole new set of crises to bedevil particularly Asian, African and Latin American economies. This is an economy system that doesn't work. Next, Mr. Trump announced in the last week a number of appointments, and one of those that I want to talk to you about at some length is the appointments he made of a group of Wall street tycoons. I thought you would be pleased. Who he chose for this. What? It's an advisory board. It's called the Strategic and Policy Forum. They advise the president on what he should do in terms of economic activities and policies. Leading it up will be Steve Schwarzman, the chief executive officer of the Blackstone Group, one of the biggest players on Wall street. Members of this forum that Trump has also named Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan and Chase. Lawrence Fink, head of BlackRock. I mean, I could go on. There are many more number of these folks were major contributors to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Oh, I see. The big attack on Wall street, on Goldman Sachs, on all these big financial players, that was just campaign rhetoric. He has now put the very same people on the boards that the Clinton administration, the Obama administration also did. Big change. Well, I don't know. You know, President elect Trump says one thing, but as we know. Well, let me mention some of the other people that Mr. Trump thinks highly of. General Motors Company. You know, the car company that when collapsed in 2008 required a $50 billion bailout from the United States taxpayer. The head of that corporation that had a bailout because it collapsed, Mary Barra, she's on the board too. Clearly, this is a company whose stellar management qualifies to be an advisor. Wow. Bob Iger, head of Walt Disney. Now there's a kind of business you want the chief executive of. Ooh, Doug McMillan, the chief executive of Walmart. He's on it. Wow, this is charming. The very same people that all the other presidents go to for their guidance, that's where Mr. Trump is going. And when he was pressed on it, here's what he. Well, I want my administration to include quoth some of the greatest business people in the world. That's how he brushed off commentary that these are millionaires and billionaires. The very people who he criticized when it was asked, why did you name Bob Ross? I believe it's Bob Ross. I don't want to give you a false name, Mr. Ross. In any case, head of the Department of Commerce, he commented, quote, this is now Trump. One of the networks asked me, well, this is because this guy knows how to make money, folks. I see you're qualified to give advice because you know how to make money. In case some of you are wondering, I can round out the other people on the panel. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, Goldman Sachs, lead independent director, Ginny Rometti, the CEO of IBM. I mean, it reads like a joke, only it isn't a joke, unless, of course, the joke's on us. Next item. In Austria, there was an election last week, and a very interesting one, because Austrian working people have been suffering under the economic troubles that all of Europe is suffering under. They are angry at their Establishments for the economic suffering they're undergoing, like in every other country of Europe, like in the United States too. And so this was a vote in which they had a chance, the people, to express their anger at the stodgy old financial and political establishment of Austria. What's different from what the British workers did and what the American working people did when they had their chance? They had a real choice between someone going left and someone going right. The rightist candidate, who played on anti immigration fears, who played on anti Muslim fears and so on, tried his best to get the anger of people about their economic situation to express itself in a vote for him. He was going to help them by kicking out the immigrants, by being anti terrorist in a way that made most Austrians scratch their heads, since they haven't had a major problem in this area. But what was unusual about Austria is there was another candidate who also spoke to the suffering of the mass of people economically and said the solution wasn't in being anti immigrant, anti Muslim or any of those kinds of directions. It was in recognizing that basic economic changes needed to be made. And the person who carried this banner was the leader, a former leader of the Green Party in Austria. So that was the choice, left or right, to express your anger about the establishment. And the Austrians decided by a sizable plurality of nearly 7% that they were going left. And they elected the former head of the Green Party to be the new leader of Austria. And I thought you might want to know that. Next economic update. A remarkable story, really, that I didn't know about, and so I'm assuming many of you did not. Some while ago, the city of Tokyo banned in the city area any diesel cars and trucks because diesel produces too much air pollution and is damaging to the health of the citizens. If you didn't know that, I didn't either. And I probably wouldn't have heard about it had I not come across a story this last week. The announcement that the mayors of four other European and global cities are about to follow suit. And I thought you ought to know Paris, France, Mexico City, Madrid, Spain and Athens, Greece, are all about to outlaw the harmful sulfur fuel, the diesel fuel that fuels diesel engines. And made that announcement at a biennial summit of city leaders in Mexico. Indeed, the new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced that he is likely to go in that direction now too. So for those of you that are listening, here is a decision of mayors of some of the biggest and most important cities on this planet that they're going to put the health of their citizens ahead of the profits of the oil and automobile companies that make use of diesel fuel. And if you've noticed that there's no single American city being mentioned. Good. That's what I hoped you would notice. How long will Americans permit that? Next? Every now and then I read statements by the new Pope. He's not so new anymore. Pope Francis and I caught this one and wanted to share it with you because it's an economic update, too. And it's one that speaks to the canceling out of the estate tax with which we opened today's program. Turns out on December 3, there was a conference organized by Fortune and Time magazines, American productions. They have something called the Global Forum, which is held in Vatican City. And they got an audience with the Pope, and the Pope gave them a comment on their Global Forum. I'm going to now quote from Pope Francis, whose words were entitled, we must listen to the voices of the poor. Now, here's what he said in his speech to this forum. What we are speaking about is the common good of humanity, of the right of each person to share in the resources of this world. And now hear me, please, as I quote these words continuing in the Pope's message, for each person to have the same opportunities to realize his or her potential, a potential that is ultimately based on the dignity of the children of God created in his image, image and likeness. The Pope wants everyone to have the same opportunities to realize his or her potential. If you allow some people to inherit millions or billions of dollars, they don't have the same opportunities to realize their potential as does a child or born into a family that doesn't have that kind of money. Any idiot understands that. The Pope's message here is crystal clear. To be a good Christian, as the Pope sees it, is to have equal opportunity. Cutting estate taxes not only doesn't give us equal opportunity, it guarantees and perpetuates unequal opportunity. And we can imagine what the Pope has to say about that. Next item. If you consider the four cities that I just listed that are going to be doing away with diesel engines because they're harmful to health, you will know that oil and its damage to people has been in the news continuously for months now. First of all, we all know that air pollution is produced in our society, above all by burning gasoline in cars and trucks, and that air pollution is a major cause of emphysema, lung cancer, asthma, and a whole host of other epidemics around the world. Oil, and the pursuit of oil is profitable for the thousands of companies involved in extracting and delivering it. And refining it and for the industries that make use of it, above all cars and trucks. So it's a struggle once again between profit making industry and the health and welfare of masses of people. We've even more recently seen a kind of dense historical example when the desire to make money off transporting gas and oil ripped out of the ground with fracking has led companies to violate the sacred lands of indigenous American native people, to threaten their water supply, to engage in a need to run the pipelines in an area that literally affronts the very sacred range religious family values that are propounded in our society but ignored when it comes to policy. Well, here's a new explanation, economically speaking, for why the oil companies are so desperate and can't bother respecting anything. Here's the problem. As people turn away from fossil fuels, they threaten the existence of these oil and gas companies. Why? Because many of the biggest ones, Exxon, Chevron, the big names, the value of the companies is dependent on the amount of oil and gas they have in the ground that they own. But that value is dependent on the assumption that it will ever be brought up to fuel our energy needs. And if some or all of it isn't brought up, then the value of those companies collapses today. Uh oh, now you understand why they have to work as hard as they do to muddy the world with information that isn't correct to stop any effort to end the use of fossil fuels, even just to reduce it. Because it's a direct attack on these companies whose value in the stock market, whose value in the marketplace depends on the assumption that all of that oil and gas in the ground will be brough up at a high price for them. But if it isn't because we turn to renewable sources, their economic situation is threatened in the little time I have left. A shout out. Portland Oregon just passed a new law. It taxes businesses. If the CEO, the highest paid official of the business, earns more than 100 times the median wage of the employees of the enterprise. In other words, Portland Oregon has gone on record to do something about economic inequality. It's a small step, it's a modest step. But if you're serious about doing something about inequality, you don't cut the estate tax. You do what Portland did, the city council and the mayor in passing a law that says to companies, if you worsen inequality in this society, you're going to have to pay a tax you didn't pay before. Folks, we've come to the end of the first half of economic update. I want to thank you of course for listening. I want to ask you again to make use of the websites that we list here each week to partner with us, to communicate with us. We will be back in a very short time, very brief interval, and then I think you will be excited to learn about the interview that will occupy the second half. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

[B]

Letting go.

[A]

And I. Just like a dream.

[B]

I still believe.

[A]

Come back to me Just like a dream. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's edition of Economic Update. I'm your host, Richard Wolff, and today I am very, very pleased and proud to have as my guest Dr. Harriet Fraad. Many of you who listen to this program know that she is a frequent visitor. And in recent months, the amount of interest and response we get every week that she's here has led us to make a decision, which I did announce a couple of weeks ago that from now on, the first program of every month will have Harriet join me in talking about the kinds of things that have made you tell us you'd like to hear more of what she has to say. We would have done that in December, but a scheduling problem made that impossible. Therefore, she's here on the second program of the month of December, but starting in January, it will be the first program each month, barring schedule changes. Dr. Harriet Fraad is a mental health counselor and hypnotherapist. She is in private practice in New York City and has been for many years. She also writes articles and books on the intersection between economic events and people's personal lives, psychological issues and so on. I'm very proud that the Democracy at Work blog, which you can find at our website democracyatwork.info that the latest piece of writing that Dr. Frad has done is posted there, and you are welcome to go to the website at any time and read it. Like everything else on our websites, both democracyatwork.info and rdwolf.com, you can visit it 24 7, no charge. It's there for your use. So, Harriet, welcome to the program.

[B]

Thank you. Glad to be here.

[A]

The program today is devoted to kind of answering broadly a basic question. 53%, the statistic goes, that is swirling around the Internet and around media. 53% of white women in the United.

[B]

States, white married women.

[A]

All right, correct me in a minute. Let me just finish. 53% of white women in the United States voted for Donald Trump in the last election. Given the importance in that campaign of Mr. Trump' sLet's call them politely sexual activities, etc. It was rather stunning that you got this kind of statistic and so many of you asked, and I have now asked Harriet to talk to us about how to understand that statistic, how to get it correct. Please correct me if I need to be corrected so that we can understand what is meant, what is behind that number. So start off and tell me how to correct the number, by all means.

[B]

Well, it is not 53% of all women, single or married. It's married women, because married women tend to vote the way their husbands do. Married women voted for Romney in the last election, whereas single women voted for Obama. And one of the issues here is for a lot of married women, just to give you there's many, many issues, but I'll give you a psychological one first, like Melania Trump did try to dismiss their husband's hatred of and humiliation of female sexuality by saying it's braggadocio, it's bragging, it's locker room talk. They don't actually rape women, although the evidence is indeed that they do, but that they don't want to see their husbands that way. They want to see them as their sweetie, who wouldn't do something like that, so they dismiss it out of hand. But those are personal reasons. The other reasons are that ever since the 70s, when men's wages were frozen and when the family wage stopped because jobs were exported and mechanized and computerized, women lost a position in which they could stay home, they could be with their children. They had a place that was limited and they needed to change it often, but they had some security, which is gone. Also, they had a respected place maintaining life, not sufficiently respected, but a respected place which the right wing shows, for which the right wing really shows respect, even though they don't do anything to make it at all possible. Then what happens?

[A]

Just to make sure that I understand the position in the home as homemaker, childcare, elderly life, maintaining life, relationships and.

[B]

Beauty and connection, which is honorable work and it should be compensated. It wasn't. But in any case, now women are still overwhelmingly in charge of that labor, that emotional labor, that physical labor and maintaining life. But now they also have to work outside of the home as well. The average employed woman with an unemployed man does more domestic labor than her unemployed husband because partly women compensate by doing extra to relieve their husbands the humiliation of being devalued, that they no.

[A]

Longer are providers either because they're unemployed or because their wages haven't kept up with the cost of their employment, they're.

[B]

Unemployed or their wages have lowered and so that they are within traditional manly definitions, ones I reject, but nonetheless exist. They can't be providers and they are unmanned. In fact, women who earn more than their husbands do more domestic work, even when they're both earners to compensate their husbands for the humiliation of a secondary role. So that you have women who want security and who want some kind of respect and who don't get it. And that's been a problem in feminism from the very beginning. Of course, feminism is not a monolith. There's different kinds of feminists. Hillary was a corporate feminist who concentrated like Sheryl Sandberg and lean in how corporate women could break the glass ceiling and be president of the company. However, Sheryl Sandberg got more than a six figure salary and has personal wealth and nine servants, which made her life a lot easier at home. And just looking at where women are in the labor force, you see that Hillary Clinton earned $15 million last year. So the average woman makes less is the lowest paid wage worker. Single women are the lowest paid workers. Women with children get a penalty in the labor force 7% lower for each child they have. Because I think the employers see that they'll be the ones having to stay home if the children need anything. And there's systematic discrimination against mothers in the labor force and against women in the labor force. And Hillary Clinton was a corporate feminist.

[A]

So is your point that she didn't speak to these concerns?

[B]

She did not speak to the mass of women? Look at it this way. It takes, according to the sources that define these things, $150,000 to have a basic comfortable middle class life for people, women and children and a man in the house, or at least women and children in the household, a comfortable middle class life. 3% of American women earn that, even though the majority of women in the United States are single. And so that Hillary was not talking to those women, they were in her big basket of deplorables who didn't have to be considered. Her child care program was better than Trump's, but it really didn't give the kind of consideration that let's say Bernie's did. Bernie wanted universal Head Start. Hillary wanted some more help and more than Trump did, but not the same as compensating single women of having after school programs and universal Head Start and so on. And another reason is that like their husbands who voted for Trump, they often hate elites where they interact with with the school system. Often their children are put on drugs. One out of 10 children take some form of drug.

[A]

You mean as A behavior control mechanism.

[B]

As a behavioral control. Now that is true across the board, but much more on the lower end. Instead of saying, wow, maybe we should give the kids a chance to jump around a little bit. Their children, they drug them to make them compliant. And the school system has very little sympathy for them. So do the doctors in a clinic at Yale, which I used to attend and work, you know, they had such contempt for the struggles of people to try to maintain a house and take care of children. Very, very difficult because they didn't identify with them. And that's the corporate feminist that Hillary was. And so that these people have contempt for elites. They may like to have money, they all want to have money like their husbands, but they don't want to be disrespected, they don't want to be in the basket of deplorables.

[A]

And that turned them against Clinton, that.

[B]

Turned them against Hillary, and it turned them towards Trump, who expressed their outrage at the elites who mistreat them.

[A]

And so you mean both administrative elites in institutions, but also the people at the top of the corporate pyramid and all that?

[B]

Exactly. The people at the top of the corporate pyramid and the people at the top of the government. The same sectors of the population that supported Obama, the same geographic spread of the women who supported Obama supported Trump because Obama promised hope and change and didn't deliver. So that they don't believe what politicians say anymore. They don't believe the promises, but they do believe the outrage. Just like the British said no to Brexit.

[A]

This is a very interesting point. Yes. I think our audience can and will chew on this. That's a very subtle point. They didn't vote for Trump because of his program, which they didn't even like and they didn't even believe it. And they didn't know it and they didn't believe it. They voted to identify with his rage. Is that your point?

[B]

Right. With his rage against the elites, you know, the lawyers they can't afford, the people who have contempt for them wherever they go, as in the school hierarchy or at the doctor or at the insurance company, the people at the top.

[A]

So all the accumulated indignities produced an identification with the rageful Trump. Right. And so how do you square that with the exposure of his sexual inappropriately behavior and his sort of, you know, his presentation, particularly by Hillary as a misogynist, as anti women and so on?

[B]

Well, part of it is they assumed it was locker room talk. And also their anger is more important than anything. Just like Brexit, Just like the People that you mentioned in Austria or look at Portugal, who are ruled by the Green Party now with the Communist Party, people are saying no to the way they've been treated, that the neoliberals who are keeping the corporate structure and intensifying it while allowing some minorities and women more opportunities within that corporate structure at the top don't. Their promises don't mean anything. And so their transgressions don't mean as much as they might otherwise.

[A]

You mean the transgressions of those who express the rage?

[B]

Exactly. Also, since it's married women and white women who voted for Trump, who voted for Trump, they have some protection in their sexuality. The way the majority of women in the United States who are single, because we have majority single women, don't have that sexual protection from predation. Look, the people on the Lolita Express, which Clinton and Trump flew, where you can rape underage girlsand anyone can look it up on Google, were enticed because they're poor kids who saw an opportunity to get a job as hostesses on these flights and didn't realize they'd be raped. Those aren't the children of the elites who look for those jobs. And so that the majority of married people, married white women could go for Trump. Minorities who earn much less than white women and didn't want, you know, were more affected. Single women and minorities were more affected because they're more sexually vulnerable in our culture.

[A]

Is it an implication of your argument here that had Hillary just hypothetically espoused a different kind of feminism, a feminism that wasn't about making it into the glass ceiling, but a feminism that stressed all the ways she, as president, might have provided supports for childcare, supports for women to get out of the house, supports for making family life easier across the board, that there might have been a different electoral outcome, Very different, because.

[B]

Someone like Bernie had many more supports for women? One of the reasons that Bernie would have won those same areas if he weren't blocked by the Democratic Party and Hillary, he appealed to them. Universal child care, after school care, home health care, family leave for an injured or sick family member. All of these which are addressing women's traditional labor and giving it some honor and position and some real support and real economic support as well as social recognition, they weren't there with Hillary. Hillary stood for the top. She stood for the Democratic establishment that let them down. The hope and change that was not delivered. She is. Hillary supported the $12 instead of Bernie's $15 minimum wage. And the majority of minimum wage workers are Females working in the food industry, working as home health care aides, you know, so that those were economic blows for the mass of women. And so they didn't identify with her. They saw her as part of a corporate elite who dumps them into the basket of deplorables. So that even though his sexualtrump's sexual behavior was questionable, there were many other factors that influenced married women. And you're saying married white women, excuse.

[A]

Me, and you're saying, if I can be pardoned, the pun, that those other concerns, the built up rage, the economic crisis, the humiliation, that those factors trumped their disgust at the sexual behavior and disrespect for women that they saw but didn't weigh enough to offset the other reasons they had to go the other way. I mean, that's right.

[B]

They didn't offset that and they didn't believe the programs anyway because they've been lied to so frequently. So the hope and change agenda that they supported didn't happen for them. And they're very angry and betrayed.

[A]

Let me then ask you to look into the future for our listeners and viewers. If Trump turns out to be, we don't know yet. But if Trump turns out to be lots of theater, lots of tweets, lots of photo ops, but doesn't fundamentally alter the condition of the mass of women, would you expect them to be as angry at him in the next election as they were at Obama Clinton this time?

[B]

Yes, and I don't know where that anger will go. One of the reasons Bernie really was a viable candidate in just those areas that Hillary lost was because he captured the anger. And he pointed out that it is at a neoliberal system in which corporate heads are valued and everyone else, the body of the public, is thrown on the slag heap. That the widening gap of inequality has to be changed, that it's the bankers, that it's the corporate heads that are getting away with this and the money can be had and he will bring it back here. Whoa. It's so typical with a carrier business that Trump got all sorts of credit for saving the jobs. Well, he saved half of them, but half of that half turns out to be jobs that weren't supposed to be moved anyway. According to the union leaders who were involved. They weren't even slated to move. And he's doing it one by one. And carrier got a $7 million incentive instead of just saying, hey, you've got millions and millions in federal contracts. They're cancelled unless you keep all the people.

[A]

No.

[B]

And after a while, people will realize, wait a minute, that's just a photo op. We're en masse. We are not being saved. Things are worse for us. And they will, depending on what alternative is out for them, they will go, they will be angry, and hopefully they'll have somebody like Bernie who mobilizes the anger, but without, as they say, sucking up and kicking down. So that the people on whom the anger should be vented would be the people at the top who control the strings, not the immigrants, women and minorities who are even poorer than you.

[A]

Just a footnote. I can't resist a footnote on Trump and the Carrier Corporation. Two days after the photo op and all the hoopla, the Carrier Corporation announced a 5% increase in the prices of the air conditioners, obviously figuring that, having looked good in their dealing with Mr. Trump, they could get away with something that might not have been politically and public relations wise, doable. But it drives home your point that in order to save half the jobs that were at stake, no, less than.

[B]

Half, less than half of those weren't even slated to be moved.

[A]

So to save a quarter of those, a smaller number than was claimed, not only did the state of Indiana have to come up with $7 million, and let me remind everyone that $7 million, that either is going to have to be made up by taxing the people of Indiana, or if they're not going to make it up, cutting social programs, $7 million worth, because you've given that money to a company besides all that. If you raise the prices 5%, it's like a tax on everybody who buys an air conditioner. It means every company that buys a new air conditioner will raise the prices of its restaurant, its offices, in order to recoup what they pay the cost to the society. That's what Trump's deal with Carrier achieved. A photo op, the saving of a few jobs, granted, but at an enormous social cost that will have ramifying effects in our economy that will negate 9/10 of what this was. This is not a solution to a problem. It's just moving the chairs around and faking it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's remarkable.

[B]

And when people realize that, we'll see how they go. It depends in a way, on where is the voice for their anger. Bernie was a very positive voice for people's anger, but he was blocked. And Trump was not blocked in the same way.

[A]

No, he was celebrated in the media.

[B]

And he was covered everywhere. Nobody said a word for Bernie in the established papers for months.

[A]

Let me go back to the conditions of America's households, families, and particularly the women, since that's what we're trying to understand. How do you think women now the election is over, they made their choices. How would you guess? Or how do you believe, based on the clients that you speak with every day and so on. How are women reacting to the Trump that's becoming known as he puts people into cabinet positions and so on? Is there some sense you have of how women, having gone through the campaign, made their vote? How are they processing the next stage?

[B]

Well, I think that most women who voted for Trump, like their husbands, want to give him free rein to do things and see what happens. They're not looking too closely and they're not people who follow his stated policies or think Jeff Sessions, the Klan, should he be district attorney? Uh oh, you know, they're not thinking that way. They never were engaged with the nitty gritty of the political positions and they think, we voted for Trump. He's our man, let's see what he does. So he still has their support. It's only when the ramifications of his decisions come down and people struggle harder and are poorer and they lose their jobs and their jobs are still going overseas. Like he has his stuff made overseas in China and Mexico and the few photo ops haven't affected their lives that he'll stop getting that benefit of the doubt. By that time, who knows what will happen? Because Kushner wants to suppress protests.

[A]

That's his son in law who.

[B]

Right. Who he's given a lot of authority to.

[A]

So you're saying in a sense that what a vote that happens in one year in a sense is shaped by the 50 years before it? Absolutely, by the 30 years before it. So that all the last minute hoopla of advertising is really secondary to the accumulated sense of, of who to vote for. Since you don't believe it makes much difference and you don't believe that the politician tells you the truth, you're making a small step that you have not much hope in, but at least you can express your anger.

[B]

That's right. Just like Brexit in England, you can express your rage at the status quo that's cheated you and that's been cheating you for the last 50 years, even if they're much younger than that, the culmination of those policies and outsourcing that isn't limited with laws and labor practices the way it is in more protective nations, you know, and most people don't know what's happening in other countries, but they're angry and he captured their Rage because he is very angry and insulting and he acted like he wasn't going to be like the other politicians because he doesn't behave like a polite politician. He behaves like an angry street person.

[A]

A bully, as many people.

[B]

A bully, a braggart. And he beats up on the people that they like to see beat up. Yes, very satisfying.

[A]

Yeah, I noticed in the aftermath of the carrier event when the union leader got up and corrected the numbers, actually gave Trump his due. He saved at least x hundred, but it's not the number he said, it's this number. Trump got outraged, spent many tweets in the days that followed attacking the union, attacking that union leader. The very idea that you could diminish his self created portrait was intolerable to the former.

[B]

Absolutely. That's why they want to have protesters arrested. He doesn't tolerate criticism. What is it, Alex? But Baldwin calls him Rumpel thin skin, you know, because he takes offense and fights back.

[A]

Dr. Fraad, thank you very much for your comments. I hope everyone is paying attention. Let me know please what you think as you have when Dr. Fraad has been part of our program in the past. You will encounter her. We will be talking about another topic the first session of January. Thank you all for listening. I want to ask you again to be a partner to make use of our websites, democracyatwork.info and rdwolf with two Fs.com I want to thank one of our longest partners, truthout.org, that remarkable independent source of news and analysis. But we are looking for more partners for sponsors. Any relationship you might think of having with our program, please let us know. We will get back to you and I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Change, change, change, change, change, change. Thing gonna change. Yes, it is, it's. It.