White Working-Class Decay Is a Real Phenomenon

I appreciate Dominic’s must-read response to my piece this morning in which I touched on the phenomenon of working-class whites in Middle America who find themselves and their communities in “states of dissatisfaction, decay, and discombobulation.” He rightfully notes that “there are plenty of people living in urban areas on the coasts who are dissatisfied, decaying, or discombobulated as well.” To an extent, I take Dominic’s point, but I maintain that there is a unique (in both kind and degree) sort of decay in white, working-class communities in Middle America — and I think that conclusion is largely supported by the data.

Take drug overdoses, which Dominic references. Dominic lists the ten states with the lowest overdose rates, but not the ten with the highest. I’ll do so here:

1. West Virginia
2. Tennessee
3. Louisiana
4. Kentucky
5. Delaware
6. New Mexico
7. Ohio
8. Maine
9. Pennsylvania
10. Indiana

And now the ten states with the highest suicide rates:

1. Wyoming
2. Montana
3. Alaska
4. New Mexico
5. South Dakota
6. Colorado
7. Oklahoma
8. Nevada
9. North Dakota
10.  Arkansas

And here are the ten states with the lowest estimated levels of happiness according to a 2022 study attempting to aggregate 30 relevant factors:

1. West Virginia
2. Louisiana 
3. Arkansas 
4. Kentucky  
5. Alabama  
6. Mississippi  
7. Oklahoma 
8. Tennessee 
9. New Mexico 
10. Missouri

So yes, “there are are plenty of people living in urban areas on the coasts who are dissatisfied, decaying, or discombobulated as well.” But to the same extent? With the same life-ending consequences? 

Now, on matters of economics, I’m not even going to attempt to argue with Dominic — he would pummel me so thoroughly that I fear it would rival the worst defeats of my beloved Cleveland Browns. But I will note that Dominic’s assertion that “nobody actually has the capability to direct trillions of dollars in economic output across hundreds of millions of people over millions of square miles in such a way as to screw specific geographic areas on purpose” does not mean that elites did not do so accidentally. And even highly destructive accidents of elite behavior, of course, should be of particular concern to those (not referring to Dominic) criticizing “Rich Men North of Richmond” singer Oliver Anthony for failing to emphasize human agency and personal responsibility. “It wasn’t on purpose” isn’t all that satisfying a response to someone whose family member died of a drug overdose as a result of elites failing to patrol the southern border.

And finally, I believe that Trump voters (which I focused on in my original piece) do believe in a very real sense that they are victims of the elites — I’m struggling to see Trump’s primary victory in 2016 any other way. As a matter of fact, it was already apparent in 2016 that the local mortality rate for whites was significantly correlated with support for Donald Trump in the primaries (for those interested in the relationship between social capital and Trump primary support, Tim Carney’s Alienated America is a must-read). And as the Washington Post noted in March of 2016, “most demographic groups saw a decline in their mortality rate over the past 15 years. Whites with little education saw an increase” (that is true for whites in general as well). 

In sum, I agree with Dominic that

[M]any individuals and communities in middle America do find themselves in states of dissatisfaction, decay, and discombobulation, but many do not. Many individuals and communities in urban America also find themselves in states of dissatisfaction, decay, and discombobulation. The causes for each are varied and often context-specific.

But that every white, working-class Middle American (or even a majority) is not in a state of despair does not mean that white, working-class despair in general is not relatively elevated, responsible for more loss of life, and disproportionately liable for creating our current political reality on the right. And I seriously worry that elites who discount this impart a “trust me or your lying eyes” message (I am not referring to Dominic, of course) which makes it impossible to wrestle these communities away from supporting Trump and thus furthering the tragic impact he continues to have on our politics.