If populism is a protest vote, what exactly were they protesting?

I had lunch with a buddy over the summer. He was one of the first guys at Go2Net who took all his earnings and went to become a helicopter pilot. He's a smart guy - one of the smartest I know. And he pointed out that we were paying $17 each for roast beef sandwiches.

Which is fine if you're making twice as much money as you were 20 years ago. But we're not.

Employer-provided health plans crossed an average yearly cost of $20k this year. Employees typically pay two thirds of that but with a median income in the United States of $59k, families are paying an average of 10% a year as insurance against getting desperately sick. And the system isn't working, particularly among non-college-educated white people.

Meanwhile, the nature of jobs has changed - if you were in manufacturing or transportation, you're not anymore.

And if you want your kids to have a better life than you, the amount of money you're having to contribute has gone through the roof.

The tricky thing about globalism is it's not pithy. It's not something you can easily explain. "We need to spend money overseas to raise the standard of living globally in order to promote cross-border cooperation and interdependency so that conflict declines and international harmony rules the day" is also "you're now competing with Bangladesh with an American cost of living and September 11 and the Iraq War happened anyway."

If I had to buy my house now, instead of in 2000, I would spend about 4.5 times as much. If I had to graduate college now, instead of in 2000, I would spend about eight times as much. I mean - I did some time at community college and the quarterly tuition rate was higher than my university was. Meanwhile, the average starting salary out of my degree program has gone from $66k to $76k in twenty years.

I think it's a lot easier for an older person to reach for populism because if you're 25? I mean, you know you're fucked but you have no experience of not being fucked. But if you're 55 you can clearly remember back when things weren't fucked. You can remember GM before NAFTA, you can remember retail before Walmart, you can remember the Internet before Facebook and you can remember healthcare before it was double your car payment.

And when one party says "we will continue to make things better for all Americans" you know you're not "all Americans" because things aren't better for you. And when the other party says "It's the immigrants!" at least you know that someone is acknowledging the problem.