Jakob Scheffer commenting on the article: Message From America's Working Class
at the Council of European Canadians
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The percentage of foreign-born residents is higher in Sweden than in the US, 17% versus 14%. Still, Sweden is much more egalitarian than the US. We shouldn't become monocausal. Immigration is a contributing factor to the growing inequality in the US, but it certainly isn't the only one.
Trump may have won the nomination because of the support from the white working class, but he won the election by grace of the Electoral College. The Republicans did worse in the presidential election of 2016 than in the one of 2012. Uninspiring, uncharismatic Mitt Romney received 47% of the votes, but Trump received only 46%. In any other country with a presidential system, Hillary would have become president. In both elections, the turnout was about 55%. There was no massive electoral shift to Trump.
The German communist Karl Liebknecht once wrote, "Der Hauptfeind jedes Volkes steht in seinem eigenen Land" = The main enemy of every people is in its own country. Fortunately, that isn't always the case, but it is the case in the US today. The main enemy of 90% of Americans is the Republican Party, which is a plutocratic entity with no higher purpose than to make the rich richer. It sails under 2 false flags, the flag of white nationalism and the flag of social conservativism. It has to this because a frankly plutocratic party would not get many votes in a democracy since most people aren't rich.
The Democrats, for all their politically correct faults, have at least some commitment to social-democracy left. Unfortunately, like all leftists nowadays, they are too blinded by ideology to realize that mass immigration will inevitably undermine the welfare state because immigrants punch below their weight economically, which means that on average they pay less tax and receive more social benefits than the rest of the population.
Trump is not really a Republican, but he has to govern with Republican support, and the Reps are a party that is committed to turning the US into a plutocratic paradise, where the population is large, labor is cheap, taxes are very low, regulations are very few, protection of the environment is minimal, and economic security exists only for the wealthy. Disadvantageous though immigration is for the masses, if it will eventually put the Republicans out of business, then it may on balance still be beneficial to the American masses. It will fill me with Schadenfreude if those mendacious servants of the rich minority will be permanently relegated to the opposition.