Why Do Trump's Republicans Hate Immigrants?

 Popular Economics Weekly

“The stakes are enormous if Republicans succeed in removing most of the estimated 11 million undocumented worker (only half of which are from Mexico and the Latin countries), and cut legal immigration in half, as they have promised to do. Economic growth will plummet, since it is mainly based on growth of the working age population, as well as labor productivity, which has also fallen since 2000.” Harlan Green Huffington Post

Huffington Post

I wrote in 2017 that for most of the past half-century, adults in the U.S. Baby Boom generation – those born after World War II and before 1965 – have been the main driver of the nation’s expanding workforce. But as this large generation headed into retirement, the increase in the potential labor force would slow markedly, and immigrants will play the primary role in the future growth of the working-age population (though they will remain a minority of it).

Republicans know this. Then why have Republicans and the Trump administration opposed immigration reform when there has never been enough American-born citizens to fill the labor rolls?  America has always had a labor shortage, which is why we have always been a land of immigrants.

A hint to the answer may be in the Gestapo-like tactics of the ICE raids to deport undocumented immigrants that is supposedly because they are supplanting lower-paid jobs that could be held by American citizens. (But that has never been the case, according to various studies that show American citizens won’t take such lower-paying jobs.)

The Republican Party has come to believe that it can only maintain power by preventing minorities from voting. They have suppressed voters in red states by limiting access to polls in minority districts and getting the Supreme Court to nullify parts of the Voting Rights Act that allowed federal government oversight of voting districts to ensure they weren’t over-gerrymandered to not accurately represent the population mix.

And now it is taking a darker turn with Trump’s callup of National Guard Troops to occupy Democratic cities, and threats to call any protests signs of an insurrection. Why have Republicans become so desperate that they now want to rule by decree?

One reason is the total growth of adults in the prime working ages of 25 to 64 over the next decade will be lower than the total in any single decade since the Baby Boomers began pouring into the workforce in the 1960s. The growth rate of working-age adults will also be markedly reduced, according to a PEW Research study.

The latest immigration trends studied by Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI), a labor think tank, echoes the PEW analysis. Future economic growth will suffer if there aren’t enough new immigrants to supplant retiring workers in our adult labor workforce.

“The fast growth of the labor force between 1948 and 2007 and the slowdown since then can be explained by three big demographic changes: the Baby Boom that saw high fertility rates from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s and then a sharply lower fertility rate since, the steady influx of women into the labor force from 1948 until roughly 2000, and population aging that has seen the share of the over-65 population rise rapidly since 2007,” said Bivens.

We know that President Trump has always been racist; calling any immigrants that aren’t from white, Caucasian countries, such as Norway, criminals and the lowest of the low, hence his appeal to White Christian Nationalists.

Withholding funds from states and institutions in the name of suppressing DEI hiring is the Trump administration’s attempt to impoverish Americans in the blue states, as they have done in the red states. Their answer to the smaller workforce is the hope that AI and robots will fill the labor market void.

It is the reason for the huge rally in AI companies that is driving today’s stock market highs, driven by the hope that AI can replace our declining population.

The EPI’s Bivens says the labor force of the U.S.-born population will likely fall each year for the next decade. So what can we do to alleviate the hardships to come because Republicans have no answer for the half of our working population that will be replaced by AI, and already live month-to-month with no excess savings?

The EPI says it can be done with a social safety net that serves all Americans, not just the wealthy. “In addition to policies that prioritize tight labor markets, policies should target the following for adults:

• reductions in opioid use
• reductions in incarceration rates
• improvements in policies that support parents and caregivers
•  substantial improvements in the pay and working conditions of jobs of the future (like caregiving jobs) to attract and retain workers

“Investments in today’s children are crucial for boosting the labor force participation of future generations, such as safety net policies that promote long-term health and educational investments. 

This isn’t a pie-in-the-sky wish list but what can be done today, as it has been done in the past when such autocracies fail, as they always do.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The Age of Narcissism Is Ending

 Answering the Kennedys’ Call

PEWResearch

The election of President Biden is bringing an end to the age of narcissism, or as Tom Wolfe titled it in 1976, “The ‘Me’ Decade”? Only 30 percent of adult Americans say they still approve of our former Narcissist-in-Chief in the latest polls since Donald Trump’s defeat in November.

Donald Trump epitomized what psychologists have described as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPR). Psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell described in their 2009 book, “The Narcissism Epidemic”, the destructive effects of narcissistic behavior: the breakdown of institutions that bind families and communities, thus encouraging divisive and antisocial, short-term behaviors over long-term, collective decision-making.

There is much more to the definition, of course, but psychologists are in general agreement a person with NPR, such as former President Trump, has sociopathic behavior with an almost complete lack of empathy, or regard for others.

Dennis Shen, in a London School of Economics article maintains narcissistic behavior became prevalent in baby boomers and millennials, the Gen X and Y’ers born approximately between 1946 to 1980, as they focused on their own needs rather than the needs of others.

It was a sharp divergence from the post-Depression and World War II generations, when a rare consensus within America emerged, the result of existential crises in the form of the World War and looming Cold War.

“This post-war era of togetherness saw unprecedented economic stability and trust in the state as the steward of the people,” said Shen., “The nation backed global reciprocity, exemplified during the founding of the United Nations, Bretton Woods institutions and Marshall Plan.”

We now have a president who is explicitly restarting global reciprocity by rejoining alliances such as the Paris Accord on climate change, and restoring economic stability with a ‘new’ New Deal of Rooseveltian proportions—more than $6 trillion in government spending to ‘build back’ American institutions and programs designed to heal communities and families.

We also have a younger generation facing serious existential crises—diminished economic and educational opportunities, a deteriorating physical environment and polarized political environment that has endangered our constitutional-based democratic system.

And they don’t like what America has become.  Gen Zer’s (born after 1996) are more progressive and pro-government, most see the country’s growing racial and ethnic diversity as a good thing, and they’re less likely than older generations to see the United States as superior to other nations, said a recent PEW survey.

A look at how Gen Z voters view the Trump presidency provides further insight into their political beliefs. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in January of last year (2020) found that about a quarter of registered voters ages 18 to 23 (22%) approved of how Donald Trump is handling his job as president, while about three-quarters disapproved (77%).

"Millennial voters were only slightly more likely to approve of Trump (32%) while 42% of Gen X voters, 48% of Baby Boomers and 57% of those in the Silent Generation approved of the job he is doing as president."

So Americans are coming together again with the election of President Biden, who has asked “that we all do our part”—the younger generations in particular, who are reacting as did those of the Great Depression and World II when faced with existential threats.

Harlan Green © 2021

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

What Happened To Our Leaders?

 Answering the Kennedys’ Call

Wikipedia

President-Elect Biden is 78 years old, and will be the oldest President in our history when he is sworn in. He continues to uphold the recent age levels of POTUS set by Donald Trump (74), Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan and GHW Bush that were all over 70 by the time they left office.

The NY Times Ian Philbrick reports that we have the oldest leaders in the western developed countries at a time when the age of elected leaders in other developed countries is falling.

“Since 1950, the average age of heads of government in the three dozen member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has steadily declined, from above 60 years old to around 54 today. The average O.E.C.D. national leader is now two decades younger than Mr. Trump — and almost a quarter century younger than Mr. Biden.”

Why does that matter? I believe it is a major reason for the slow slide into populism and the dysfunctional democracy we currently endure without the increased social and economic benefits enjoyed by citizens of other western developed countries with younger and more forward-looking leaders.

The slide into a federal government led by President Donald Trump that is barely able to function has resulted in our inability to manage the new coronavirus pandemic that is infecting and killing a record number of Americans.

We seem to crave the appearance of strong leadership even if he or she eschews the main requirement of leadership, namely the necessity to keep our 50 different states plus territories, each with its own system of governance, safe and united in common purpose,.

“On a national level, many of us have been seduced by “shiny new objects” – what I call “leadership bling, says Nancy Koehn, a historian at Harvard Business School and the author of the 2017 book, “Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times.”Too often, we’re dazzled by personal ambition, reasoning that a person who was born hard-charging and who followed his or her self-interest all the way to enormous wealth, celebrity, or authority has to have accumulated great wisdom.”

The Trump administration’s one legislative accomplishment was the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act that resulted in the first $1 trillion annual budget deficit in our history, while Republicans failed in more than 80 attempts to repeal Obamacare.

Our federal government has become out of touch with younger generations in particular that are almost unanimous in wanting better schools, universal health care, a higher minimum wage, and other benefits now enjoyed by all other developed countries.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in January of this year found that about a quarter of registered voters ages 18 to 23 (22 percent) approved of how Donald Trump is handling his job as president, while about three-quarters disapproved (77 percent). Millennial voters were only slightly more likely to approve of Trump (32 percent) while 42 percent of Gen X voters, 48 percent of Baby Boomers and 57 percent of those in the Silent Generation approved of the job he is doing as president.

The Times also points out that the average age of Congress has also trended upward for decades. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, is 80; Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is 78. The Supreme Court’s nine justices average above 67. Mr. Trump’s cabinet averages over 60, among the oldest in the O.E.C.D.

Even younger Republicans follow Democrats in wanting more benefits in the PEW survey. Gen Z Republicans, for instance, are much more likely than older generations of Republicans to desire an increased government role in solving problems, says PEW.

“About half (52%) of Republican Gen Zers say government should do more, compared with 38% of Millennials, 29% of Gen Xers and even smaller shares among older generations. And the youngest Republicans are less likely than their older counterparts to attribute the earth’s warming temperatures to natural patterns, as opposed to human activity (18% of Gen Z Republicans say this, compared with three-in-ten or more among older generations of Republicans).”

Looked at in economic terms, our slide into extreme conservatism instituted by Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party with their credo of lower taxes and an unregulated, free market capitalist ideology, is the reason we have a federal government out of touch with most Americans.

Whereas our European cousins enjoy universal health care, higher minimum wages, and shorter work weeks for the same pay; all brought about by keeping their governments young and able to adapt to even a COVID-19 pandemic.

So where are the leaders to come that will bring in programs and policies that will govern for future generations, rather than cater to the populace of the past?

Harlan Green © 2020

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen