Arkady
President
It's odd how divergent Trump's policies and his voter base are. His voters were disproportionately older people living in less economically developed parts of the country, yet you could argue that's just who his policies are most likely to hurt.
Consider, for example, Trumpcare. It effectively functions as a reduction of the subsidy that, under Obamacare, flowed from young and healthy people (and very rich people) to old and sick people. Say you're a 55-year-old former manufacturing worker currently cobbling together $26,500 of income from odd jobs. The CBO says that by the time you're 64 your health premiums will be up 750% versus where they would have been with Affordable Care. Instead of paying $1700 per year for insurance, you'll be paying $14,600. After deducting for insurance, your income would be below the poverty line. Yet that kind of older person is exactly the kind of voter who went for Trump.
Or consider Trump's policies of reducing international trade and immigration. Each of those policies will have winners and losers. But the one group that's most likely to lose are older people. If you're a retiree living on a fixed income, you're not out there competing with new immigrants, most of whom do manual labor jobs. It's not like you're going to miss out on the dream landscaping or box-stacking job because a Mexican immigrant will do it for cheaper. So, if the flow of immigrants is reduced, that's not going to be a benefit for you like it might be for a young person with no work experience who could find himself in head-to-head competition with those immigrants. But, if the flow of immigrants is reduced, you, as an older person, are more likely to find that the kind of help older people can benefit from is soon priced too high for you to afford. Right now it's cheap for an older person to hire someone to plow his driveway or mow his lawn, or to provide some of the lower-skill home healthcare work that can make it possible for a physically impaired person to continue living independently. But as that immigrant-heavy labor pool is drained, those prices will rise.
Similarly, if we impose high tariffs and other protectionist trade strategies, the negative fallout is likely to fall disproportionately on older people. In theory, such protectionism could benefit some young people just entering the workforce. The kind of labor-intensive steel mills we had in the past aren't coming back, thanks to automation, but if people are forced to buy expensive American steel instead of cheap foreign alternatives, there will be a handful of extra jobs available for people to run the robots in those factories. Older workers are going to be hard-pressed to convince employers to train them up for those kinds of jobs, but tech-savvy (and cheap) younger workers will look like an investment worth making. Meanwhile, the higher consumer prices, due to the reduction of cheap imports, will hit everyone, but will be particularly hard on those on a fixed income and those who can't train up as easily to fill the new roles available in the labor market.
So, it seems likely that Trump's policies will be roughest on the very people who were most supportive of him. They're likely to see much more expensive health care, increasing costs to hire domestic help, and rapid inflation for consumer goods (without income growth to offset that). Inflation has been effectively dead for so long that people have forgotten how rough it can be, when incomes don't rise commensurately. Older people are particularly likely to find themselves in that situation in coming years.
Consider, for example, Trumpcare. It effectively functions as a reduction of the subsidy that, under Obamacare, flowed from young and healthy people (and very rich people) to old and sick people. Say you're a 55-year-old former manufacturing worker currently cobbling together $26,500 of income from odd jobs. The CBO says that by the time you're 64 your health premiums will be up 750% versus where they would have been with Affordable Care. Instead of paying $1700 per year for insurance, you'll be paying $14,600. After deducting for insurance, your income would be below the poverty line. Yet that kind of older person is exactly the kind of voter who went for Trump.
Or consider Trump's policies of reducing international trade and immigration. Each of those policies will have winners and losers. But the one group that's most likely to lose are older people. If you're a retiree living on a fixed income, you're not out there competing with new immigrants, most of whom do manual labor jobs. It's not like you're going to miss out on the dream landscaping or box-stacking job because a Mexican immigrant will do it for cheaper. So, if the flow of immigrants is reduced, that's not going to be a benefit for you like it might be for a young person with no work experience who could find himself in head-to-head competition with those immigrants. But, if the flow of immigrants is reduced, you, as an older person, are more likely to find that the kind of help older people can benefit from is soon priced too high for you to afford. Right now it's cheap for an older person to hire someone to plow his driveway or mow his lawn, or to provide some of the lower-skill home healthcare work that can make it possible for a physically impaired person to continue living independently. But as that immigrant-heavy labor pool is drained, those prices will rise.
Similarly, if we impose high tariffs and other protectionist trade strategies, the negative fallout is likely to fall disproportionately on older people. In theory, such protectionism could benefit some young people just entering the workforce. The kind of labor-intensive steel mills we had in the past aren't coming back, thanks to automation, but if people are forced to buy expensive American steel instead of cheap foreign alternatives, there will be a handful of extra jobs available for people to run the robots in those factories. Older workers are going to be hard-pressed to convince employers to train them up for those kinds of jobs, but tech-savvy (and cheap) younger workers will look like an investment worth making. Meanwhile, the higher consumer prices, due to the reduction of cheap imports, will hit everyone, but will be particularly hard on those on a fixed income and those who can't train up as easily to fill the new roles available in the labor market.
So, it seems likely that Trump's policies will be roughest on the very people who were most supportive of him. They're likely to see much more expensive health care, increasing costs to hire domestic help, and rapid inflation for consumer goods (without income growth to offset that). Inflation has been effectively dead for so long that people have forgotten how rough it can be, when incomes don't rise commensurately. Older people are particularly likely to find themselves in that situation in coming years.
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