At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, British
weavers tried to smash the machines in newly built textile factories. These so-called Luddites felt that mechanization of production threatened their livelihood and their
traditional way of life. When a machine threatens to replace the man, the man
breaks the machine.
These days, we see something similar. The threat comes
not from machines, but from new modern technologies and globalization: ICT and the
sharing economy, coupled with free trade and ever greater migration flows. Those
who feel threatened today are predominantly white, old and male. The threat
that they face is that their jobs get shipped off to China or Eastern Europe or
that they get replaced by an immigrant or a smartphone app.
The angry white old men don’t break things. Instead,
they attend rallies against immigrants and vote for politicians who promise to
make their countries great again.
They are mainly men. Low-skilled
men work in sectors that are particularly threatened by free trade, immigration
and automation: manufacturing, construction and agriculture. Low-skilled women, in
contrast, tend to prefer service and public-sector jobs, in which
employment prospects are safer. In fact, they may even benefit: an immigrant
who comes to Europe to work on a construction site will need to buy bread and
milk in the local shop and get haircut from a local hairdresser.
They are mainly white: previously they were the
dominant and privileged group and now they increasingly see themselves becoming
the underclass, outflanked by the more successful minorities.
And they are old, as older workers are more likely to
possess skills that are of little use in today’s modern economy. The young have
invested in education, which gives them a competitive edge over the less-skilled
immigrants and overseas workers, and they are sufficiently tech savvy to
participate in and benefit from the spread of new technologies.
Take taxi drivers as an example. The typical London
cabbie is a white male in his 50s, drives an ancient looking black cab, does
not possess much formal education but has acquired the Knowledge (familiarity
with London’s streets and alleys), and is usually grumpy. If you use your
smartphone to hail an Uber, you’ll probably get a cheerful young guy from
Romania or the Middle East who will rely on GPS to get you to your destination.
In a Toyota Prius.
In the past, such men would work all their life,
retire on a defined-benefit pension in their early to mid 60s, and then die
shortly thereafter due to ailments brought about by a lifetime of hard work and
overindulging in smoking, drinking and fatty food. Not anymore. With their jobs
off-shored or taken up by immigrants, they face long old age on benefits, then on
modest defined-contribution pension. And one can’t even smoke in pubs anymore.
At the same time, the young are too busy doing well to
have kids. And this is why the angry white old men are becoming more
influential. In the past, their gripes would be outweighed by the more numerous young. Not anymore. We are moving closer to the point where the median
voter will be an angry white old man. When that happens, expect more nasty
electoral surprises to happen. Pegida, Brexit and Trump represent just the dawn
of the new political paradigm.
