Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Stop Pretending the Working Class Is Helpless

Enough with the victimhood and grievances. The government should be more concerned about the poor.

December 19, 2018 at 1:00 PM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Looking for answers in Ohio.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Since Donald Trump became president, many elected officials and public intellectuals have joined the populist left and right in arguing that the American working class has been ignored and neglected. A consensus has emerged in Washington that the working class is in crisis — and that a major driver of this crisis is lack of attention from Washington.

To assess this, let’s put the political calculations aside and start with a basic question: Who is the working class?