The country recently advanced to a pivotal time in its political history. A small group of profanely wealthy individuals that comprise the dominant economic class and their political sycophants forged ahead to protect their entrenched economic power. It is outlined in a document titled Project 2025. It is a supercharged blueprint for a neofascist government model with a nod to the religious fundamentalist Taliban.
Progressives might recognize that our dominant economic class has two elements. The corporatists represent economic interests that depend on trade, and domestic and foreign investment. The other group are oligarchs representing mainly private equity firms who support economic breakdowns and erasing regulations.
The Democrats represented the corporatist model and the Republicans represented the oligarchs. The oligarchs were led by Mr. Trump, a charismatic, convicted criminal cult leader whose paracosm of lies resonated with working people.
The campaign featured a relentless barrage by the corporate media peddling misinformation on a regular basis. The daily din of personal, often laughably tragic opinions on social media was the rule; recognizing fact from fiction was an exhausting task.
Real Economy
Both political parties claimed to represent working people.
However, we are in a time when our inherent economic components are rarely discussed. The Republicans never discussed it. They were too busy conning the public with distractions and the Democrats were busy dithering about the distractions.
That rarely discussed taboo is the structural ossification of our economic model that benefits the U.S. dominant economic class. Unfortunately, it leaves the masses of middle working class and working-class people in a near permanent condition of economic adversity or anxiety.
Economic Model Distractions
The dominant economic class funded an array of media, think tanks, and politicians to ensure the dissemination of misrepresentations, oversimplifications, and fabrications about the economy. It divided working people primarily with issues of racial identity and ethnicity.
Other issues were the successful ploy denying reasonable gun control, women’s right to choose medical care, climate change, LBGT issues, and a nutty array of irrational notions of non-existent government conspiracies from their dystopian medley of scapegoats.
That distraction reached a new level of malarkey thanks to the toxic presence of Mr. Trump—projectile lying became the new norm.
A considerable number of liberal pundits and politicians were ensconced in corporate media bubbles. They rarely identified the actual economic struggles that working people have been subjected since the Democratic Party abandoned them with the Clinton administration.
Working People’s Issues
Working people deserve economic opportunities; they do the work that creates the profits. From a spiritual perspective-think economic security for their families including retirement and the branches of healthcare and housing. Education, nutrition, transportation, and safety round out their basic concerns. “Democracy” fits in there somewhere, but a hungry child’s deprivation takes precedence over a largely irrelevant political model manipulated by an avaricious dominant class.
Mr. Trump’s Appeal
Yet political experts were still bewildered by the large demographic of working people who supported the toxicity of Mr. Trump against their economic interests. Decades of crumbs and empty promises from the corporate Democratic Party created a political backlash that Mr. Trump appeared to remedy.
The actual economic numbers partially explain why large numbers of working people were attracted to the bombastic style of Mr. Trump. The torrent of scabrous lies did not matter; It was Mr. Trump’s tone that resonated with many working people.
Unemployment
The Ludwig Institute for Shared Prosperity (LISEP) calculates a True Rate of Unemployment.
Using data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35 plus hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.
This presents a troubling reality of why many working people gravitated toward Mr. Trump. Economic issues transcended character, and personality defects.
The BLS reported in November that the unemployment rate in October 2024 was 4.1 percent.
LISEP reported in November that the True Rate of Unemployment for October 2024 was 24.0 percent.
Shadow Government Statistics (SGS) uses current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for the significant portion of "discouraged workers" defined away in 1994 during the Clinton Administration. The SGS estimate includes the longer-term discouraged or displaced workers for more than one year.
The BLS reported in October that the unemployment rate for September 2024 was 4.1 percent.
SGS reported in October that the unemployment rate for September 2024 was 26.7 percent.
Numerous liberal pundits asserted the Biden administration rescued the economy with those official low unemployment rates from the BLS; perhaps they might explain the numbers from LISEP and SGS. The election of Mr. Trump did that for them.
Underemployment
Underemployment is an element that keeps wages and salaries low to bloat the profits of the U.S. dominant class. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York defines underemployment as "working in a job that typically does not require a bachelor’s degree.” The demographic are college graduates age 22-27 who earned a bachelor’s degree or advanced degree.
Statista reported in August that in June 2024, 41 percent of recent college graduates were underemployed.
Cost of Living
Cost of living measures the requirements to maintain an overall lifestyle. The Economic Policy Institute’s incisive model in 2024 is based on specific costs of living for families defined as two parents and two children in different regional areas. The costs are minimal excluding purchases that many take for granted for a basic lifestyle.
For example, in Suffolk County, Massachusetts the income required is $148,155. The median income was $93,360 in 2023.
A review of “Red States” that supported Mr. Trump showed how effective the indoctrination hoodwinked working people. The following examples represented the economic reality that blanketed much of the country in 2024:
Gordon County Georgia, required $79,681; the median income was $57,555.
McMillen County Texas, required $91,075; the median income was $60,313.
Duchesne County, required Utah $94,382; the median income was $70, 821.
Montgomery County, North Carolina required $86,804; the median income was $55, 523.
Across the US the difficulty for working people to provide the basics for their families is the rule, not the exception.
Inflation
Inflation rates reported by the BLS measures the general increase in price for goods and services by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) with two indexes:
The CPI-U measures prices for goods and services for urban consumers and is released as a headline monthly to the public. It is used by business, labor, consumers, and to determine federal tax brackets.
The CPI-W is a subset of the CPI-U and measures minimum wage rates, government programs particularly Social Security for urban wage earners and clerical workers.
The BLS report in January 2024 stated that the Consumer Price Index for 2023 was 3.4 percent.
SGS reported the Consumer Price Index in 2023 was 11.9 percent.
According to SGS, the real CPI no longer measures the cost of maintaining “a constant standard of living” or “out of pocket” expenditures for Americans. In the 1990’s conservative academics and politicians devised the idea that the CPI should account for a “substitution” and “quality new goods bias.”
To accomplish this, the Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI-U) was introduced in 2002.
In reality, it was a hoax to lower benefits primarily from older recipients with reduced Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). It is updated monthly.
Resistance
Progressives require strategies and tactics to impede the tsunami of dehumanization by Project 2025.
Masses of working people voted for Mr. Trump, a morally and ethically impaired candidate. The primary reason again, was not complicated. Mr. Trump appealed to significant numbers of working class and working middle-class Americans because our economic model has not benefitted them for decades.
A structural remedy tends to freeze mainstream pundits and politicians. Our elections are habitual distractions from the underlying forces of our economic model. The two corporate parties largely representing the economic interests of the dominant class failed to generate much energy or motivation for an increasing number of Americans.
Labor unions must lead the way
Organized labor has the organizing experience and structures to run campaigns for progressive candidates. However, it is not clear whether private or public sector unions can run robust, effective campaigns in alliances with other unions without territorial issues becoming fractious.
Regrettably and understandably, some unions tend to settle into silos focusing exclusively on their members’ interests rather than the community of unions representing other working people. This obstacle must be obviated as Project 2025 seeks the utter destruction of the labor union movement.
Moreover, unions must form alliances with progressive spiritual and secular organizations to reach all demographics of working people. Only a diverse alliance can create potential political power to debunk the relentless churning of lies by the architects of Project 2025.
Another tactic that progressives might consider is acceptance of cultural issues without necessarily agreeing with them. The prevailing issue that we can agree is the results of our economic model. Emphasizing cultural issues with “woke” identity politics over economic class politics has contributed to the recent defeat and the grotesque policies of Mr. Trump and his Republican Party.
Progressive Paths Forward
There are generally two paths progressives can take.
They can wrest control of the Democratic Party from the corporatist class by electing progressive candidates at the municipal, state and federal level, particularly the U.S. Congress.
The experience of Senator Bernie Sanders being squashed twice by the corporate Democratic Party leaders is instructive. Sanders drew from the same working peoples’ demographic as Mr. Trump. Polls showed he would have defeated Mr. Trump.
The other path is to form an authentic labor party.
Consider that polls show most Americans favor progressive policies. Those sentiments must be connected to a political party that working people trust. However, the chance of this being successful, if at all within a reasonable period of time is problematic.
These appear to be the choices or hideout and let Project 2025 waft over the country until our democratic impulses are grounded into pulp.
The inescapable result is that working people will continue to suffer as Mr. Trump’s policies largely benefit the one percent of Americans in the dominant economic class as the cancerous Project 2025 spreads.
The form a resistance in 2025 takes to oppose the Trump neofascist model is unclear. What is clear is that if the MAGA Republicans are not defeated, the American experiment will be no more.
