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 The 60-year-old, who for decades has swung between voting
Republican and Democrat, sometimes moonlights as a tax preparer for
$8 an hour, but says that work is also vanishing as more firms
outsource to places like India.
“I don’t think things will ever be like they were,” Wright said.
In that respect, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio
agrees with him.
More than any other Republican candidate, the Florida senator has
made the convulsions of the modern economy the centerpiece of his
presidential campaign. At a youthful 44, he sees it as his personal
mission to prepare the country for a future marked by rapid
technological change, the rise of the “sharing economy”, and the
erosion of traditional working-class jobs due to foreign competition
and automation.
The stance marks him out from the rest of the crowded Republican
primary field, but also comes with major risks in the many states
where blue-collar workers and, increasingly, clerical employees feel
threatened by the pace of change.
For Rubio, who is among the frontrunners in most opinion polls,
there is no going back.
“Prosperity in our time is likely,” he said at a speech at a tech
incubator in Chicago this month, “if we act now to embrace the
future.”
Rubio trumpets firms such as ride-sharing service Uber that have
shaken up traditional industries. He has thrown his support behind
free-trade deals such as the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
that the Obama administration is negotiating, and vows to slash
corporate tax rates to help U.S. businesses compete globally.
That is fairly standard fare for Republican candidates. But Rubio
has gone further. Rather than raising the minimum wage, which he
said will lead to more outsourcing and automation, Rubio proposes
that the government provide temporary wage subsidies to prop up
low-wage workers.
He seeks to reform the U.S. immigration system to allow entry based
on job skills, not family ties. And he wants to transform the
nation’s university system, which he has branded a “cartel,” to
allow for more online learning that emphasizes tech-based skills at
the expense of liberal-arts education.
He proposes allowing investors and firms to “partner” with college
students, paying their tuition in exchange for a percentage of their
future earnings.
Rubio's allies say he is seeking to appeal broadly to the middle
class and lower-wage workers.
But while his message could connect with urban “millenials” – those
born between 1980 and 2000 - the Republican primary electorate is
dominated by older, rural voters who may be less willing to join
Rubio’s dash to the future.
Ben LaBolt, a Democratic strategist, said older voters in "rust
belt" states could see Rubio's pledges as "a threat to the
manufacturing jobs that provided the basis for the middle class in
their towns.”
LaBolt was part of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign in
2012 that used Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s success at private
equity firm Bain Capital against him, painting him as a job
destroyer who favored “creative destruction” over protecting
workers.
AVATAR OF NEW ECONOMY
Of the rest of the Republican field, Jeb Bush, the former Florida
governor, and Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, have come closest to
Rubio in their support for the sharing economy.
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But no one has positioned himself as its avatar of the new economy
in the way Rubio has.
Rubio’s polar opposite in the Republican field might be Mike
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who won the Iowa caucuses in
2008, and who has been sounding populist themes in a bid to court
workers displaced by the trends that Rubio has embraced.
One consistent criticism of Rubio is that his outlook is too rosy,
that globalization and automation will continue to hollow out the
U.S. middle class, and that he hasn’t been critical enough of
nations like China, which has been accused of manipulating its
currency to secure an unfair advantage.
“As Republicans, we tend to have a knee jerk reaction to the words
‘free trade’- that this is a good thing,” said Stephani Scruggs, a
conservative activist who opposes the 12-nation TPP.
“It’s not good when you have to pick up a job at McDonald's at $10
an hour and at gas stations at $12 an hour to make up for the $22 an
hour job you lost.”
Robert Scott, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy
Institute called Rubio’s vision of the future “a pipe dream” at a
time when the U.S. trade deficit is growing.
“Foreign suppliers are eating the heart out of the manufacturing
economy,” Scott said. “It’s not clear he understands what the trade
deficit means for the economy.”
The institute last year released a report that, based on the trade
deficit, estimated U.S. job losses to China on a per capita
state-by-state basis. Topping the list was New Hampshire - a state
Rubio needs to do well in next year to stay competitive.
Rubio insists that the United States can innovate its way out of its
job-loss crisis — and until it does, his wage proposals and
education reforms would help ease the pain.
“We are the biggest threat to ourselves because we refuse to embrace
opportunities,” Rubio said in Chicago. Of the new economic reality,
he said: “We either adjust to it or embrace it— or we will be left
behind by the future.”
But there’s no getting around that in Rubio’s world, there will be
plenty of losers. David Herring, who runs Acme Taxi in Columbus,
Ohio, says his business has been cut in half by Uber.
Unlike Rubio, Herring is not a fan of the sharing economy. “I hope
it’s a fad that runs out soon,” he said.
(Editing By Stuart Grudgings)
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