Scarlett’s plight was sealed by globalization in the early 80s. Before then manufacturing jobs enabled a healthy middle class. Thanks to libtards’ embrace of an “Open Society,” with no borders and elites no longer identifying with their own countrymen but rather with other elites around the world, American workers have been sacrificed to a New World Order. Bless Trump for recognizing we must make AMERICA FIRST—for our security, health and fellow citizens.
And who sealed that plight for American’s in the 1980’s? That’s right! Ronald F-cking Regan. Congrats for running directly into the point and still missing it.
Reagan accelerated it. Also, NAFTA was a holdover from the Bush Sr. administration. Clinton went with it as a way to convince skeptical chud voters that he wasn't a Marxist, in the same way he allowed Poland into NATO to avoid getting bullied by right wing Polish activists in Swing states.
I used to blame Reagan, too. For years, I was mad at him for basically ruining Youngstown. I've since realized that there were many factors that led to manufacturing's demise in the US. Mostly, I blame it on the owners who saw an opportunity to pay less and make more.
When you pay less and make more, consumer prices fall. In any case, it wasn't really their choice: they were forced to by the competition mechanism. The result was a massive net gain in utility. Laid-off Midwestern workers could get welfare; the Third Worlders who replaced them had no welfare before they got those jobs, and one bad harvest meant actual starvation.
And my heart is certainly with them, but I saw what the destruction of manufacturing did to my community. It doesn't make it okay because they could go on welfare.
Love that you don’t want others to get nasty, but also see no problem leveling a nasty word like libtard. 🙄 Please everyone, less blame and more solutions!
I get that it’s important to understand where things started going wrong (and more importantly why and to whose benefit-in many cases our issues have less to do with political party than they do with our class system and money/power dynamics, which have corrupted BOTH parties) but what most of us can agree on is that we don’t like the system that has been built, and we need to vote EVERY party seat for change. Stop focusing on the blame game/us versus them/culture wars that money and power players in both parties use to distract us from the real story and start mobilizing together towards a future that actually benefits our daily lives!
You are correct. I will attempt to not rely on that word in future posts. It will be difficult, though. I think it’s because I live in Colorado which recently made the top ten list for worst crime-infested states. Colorado used to be a clean, rational, safe state. But then we turned Blue and , in turn, became a Sancturary State and then a crime-ridden, highly taxed rat hole.
It’s like every other alternate universe you guys live in, really:
Ronald Reagan is credited with initiating the concept that would evolve into NAFTA, promoting the idea of a North American free trade zone as early as 1979. However, Reagan did not negotiate or sign NAFTA itself; this was accomplished under his successor, George H. W. Bush, with the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed in 1988, and NAFTA signed in 1994 under the Clinton administration.
It was Reagan that set out to break the air traffic controllers union. It was Reagan that deregulated banking and investing, starting the shift away from manufacturing and toward banking. Save your drivel for the folks that don’t remember what actually happened.
Reagan realized that black markets are inevitable whenever a less costly alternative is available. His free trade initiatives were intended to inject REALISTIC FAIR Trade policies.
Bunk. Reagan was a doddering old fool beholden to the evangelical right for getting him elected, owned and operate by bush and Cheney, whose main focus was trying to outspend soviet Russia. Back before the gomers had the gall to pretend the octogenarians in office was bad. Single handedly jacked interest rates into the stratosphere and doubled the national debt. He incentivized manufacturing to move abroad, reducing which began the slide into manufacturing job loss in the US, while they leveraged cheap labor abroad to produce even cheaper goods and evade taxes. The worst of all possible outcomes with ANY trade. On a side note, that wasn’t even a good backpedal into that free trade pivot. You are not a serious person.
The GOP's libertarian and chamber of commerce arms (incl Reagan) are partly to blame. However, unless you lived through the 80's, it's hard to underscore just how deep the liberal-uniparty consensus was. There was lots of political theatre (Iran-Contra esp) but it was pretty much all theatre; whining about minutia while each side helped logroll the big changes from the other.
The Right's liberalism took the form of "earn and spend your money however and wherever you want." The Left's was formulated as "wear and do and sleep with whatever or whoever you want". The unifying theme was, "unchosen constraints are inherently unjust."
Both parties had a huge hand in getting us to where we are. It can't only be laid on Nixon or Carter or Reagan (who at least had an evil empire to be worried about) or Clinton or Bush Jr or Obama. (I leave out Bush Sr since he was a nothing.) They all partook in creating the mess that gave us Donald Trump.
Reagan made concessions to industry and manufacturing in the US by directing gov't policy and regulation away from favoring unions and labor. However, the jobs moved from unionized, high-tax, regulated states to other states in the US, not to Asia. China had yet to reform after the collapse of the USSR, although even Nixon had opened up trade as far back as 1973 that had a some effect on US steel and commodities. The destruction of US industry and manufacturing really got underway after the Cold War ended, 1989-1991, with NAFTA and GATT under Clinton and Bush's admittance of China as a favored trading nation. Reagan was not a free-trade libertarian, as shown by his tariffs.
I don’t disagree with any of that, but I also think it’s something more. The article talks about Walt Disney himself, and how his vision was to create an experience that would be unifying. Rich or poor, anyone and everyone could have the same experience at Disney World. Mass appeal was the point, as was creating a cultural experience that all could share. To bring us all together.
In Walt’s time, a lot of the business elite thought like that. Nowadays not so much. Now they go where the money is and these days, due to rising inequality, that’s with the rich. They genuinely don’t care about anyone else, and they’ll screw you over hard unless you can pay for a better experience. It’s social Darwinism at its most ruthless. They’ll take your business as their due, they won’t try to earn it.
The experience this leads to for everyone not lucky enough to be making a lot more than the median income is, I think, where a lot of the anger in America comes from. It’s also why the elites just don’t understand - they always get the premium experience, which is still nice. They haven’t experienced the noticeable degradation of quality of life that everyone else has.
"In Walt’s time, a lot of the business elite thought like that. Nowadays not so much."
Yes, and the point I'm making is that this change in thinking didn't happen because of "libtards" or "leftists." It was the very people like Trump, Reagan, et al who convinced everyone that the way to afford this Disney dream was to let them not pay taxes, gut the social safety net, and extract as much wealth as possible from the middle and lower class with impunity. And too much of the country fell for it, and continues to fall for it.
I wouldn’t really object to where you’re training your fire, but I think it’s a little too one-sided. The decline of the last ~fifty years is very much a bipartisan endeavor. Blaming only one side is too simplistic and reductive. If it were that simple no one would have voted for Trump, but it isn’t.
I remember that when I was younger at the University in Brasil, studying economics, one professor argued with the class that a reason why the consumer internet surged in the United States, and not in countries like French, is that the usual business plan for american business owner was to sell as much as possible with the best possible prices for the biggest possible market.
For an American business the goal was to have the biggest share of the market and make money in volume, upselling, cross-selling. So, every single American family had a telephone, a car, their own home.
In contrast, in a place like France, the culture was to make the most expensive goods you could to sell them at a premium for the elites. Telephones were things for rich people, cars, idem.
And then, well, maybe french clothes were a bit nicer, german cars too. But in America, once something was invented soon lots of people would have them. Cars, radios, televisions, computers. The idea was scale up the production and increase the market size, even if meant making a little bit less on each product and having to pay a bit more on salaries.
Manufacturing as a total count of employment has returned to 1980s levels and by many ways to analyze the data never actually left the US, instead just leaving the Rust Belt for the South. There is also currently a huge job swath of open manufacturing jobs. This story does not hold up to scrutiny, though it is politically compelling.
Peaked in 1979 around 20 Million down to about 12 Million now. However, each bit of added manufacturing production adds so many less jobs now due to automation.
The actual problem isn't so much that wages are too low (though it is a small bit of the problem), it's that housing costs are too high. Zoning laws, taxing production instead of land, and NIMBYism have mad housing costs sky rocket.
The market could adjust fine to the wages, like it did in the 50s and 60s when unions where even stronger.
It's just that instead the US was filled with manufactured world substitutes for 1/2 to 1/10 the cost, often at the same or worse prices (the margin enabling all this new equality and billionaires which didn't exist back then) or at a cheaper cost but worse quality (fash fashion, enshittification).
This is just wrong on several levels. The most important being the percent of American workers in manufacturing. It was over 20% (already in decline) in 1980 and is around 10% today. Even in total employees it's lower.
> Manufacturing as a total count of employment has returned to 1980s levels
It hasn't, but it doesn't matter, as the good parts are all manufactured in the developing world or China. What's left now (even if at the same count as good manufacturing jobs before) in the US is crap jobs.
I was partly responsible for the great "migration" when I worked for Motorola in the 80s. This is what really happened:
It was Nixon with the China trip, then both sides working to get China into the WTO and recognize it as a third world country. There were riders on NAFTA that incentivized transferring manufacturing plants to third world countries by giving tax credits and grants to those companies.
I admired Clinton for having a balanced budget, but despised him for pushing NAFTA (and other things). By the time Reagan got in office, the decline was unstoppable. Democrats pushed for helping the third world countries and Republican donors pushed for that because they saw the wonders of cheap labor.
You may have a different "opinion", but I lived the transition and was knowledgeable about the financials.
Clinton’s balanced budget was due to Newt Gingrich’s “contract with America.” The incentives to move manufacturing to Third-World countries is so despicable—but proof of elites identifying either other elites and not with their countrymen. Your post is really interesting!
You have the order of presidents wrong - Reagan came before Clinton (your paragraph structure implies otherwise, although to be fair you probably didn't intend it that way). And while he didn't start it, necessarily, Reagan's neo-liberal policies made deindustrialization and foreign outsourcing worse (he also gave amnesty to the very illegals everyone on the Right today complains about). Also, people forget NAFTA was dreamed up in the Bush Sr. administration; Clinton pushed for it as a way to win over skeptical voters who thought he was (lol) a Marxist because he dared to push for healthcare reform.
As for the bigger issue with this piece:
Disney is a private company. Liberal "elite" NYT contributors in Brooklyn with "pronouns" don't set the prices for said private company. Disney charges 100 bucks to take a crap in their restrooms because suckers like the people in the article buy into "the magic" and are willing to pay for the experience. This is literally free market capitalism at work; "leftists" didn't do this. Trump (who hired illegal immigrant labor to build his hotels and maintain his Florida crashpad, and who lobbied politicians of both parties for years to cut worker protections) and Vance (a cynical opportunist who - if you actually read "Hillbilly Elegy" closely, insults the poor working class - literally called Trump "America's Hitler" only a couple of years ago) are laughing at your ignorance.
Oops - yes, I goofed up with the order :P The information is still accurate regarding granting special dispensation to third world development, of which China is still classified as.
Au contraire! Reagan preached Free—but FAIR trade. And, then , of course, the libtard Clinton signed the NAFTA agreement which enabled Chinese to send their products through Mexico and thereby receive ridiculous trade favors. Trump’s efforts to bring manufacturing back to the US and to call out the unfair hidden taxes (such as Value-Added Taxes used by European countries) is an attempt to demand FAIR trade along with national security and health.
"Fair trade" by allowing industries to outsource to foreign countries while levying a small temporary tariff on Kawasaki motorcycles. AND giving amnesty to illegals. Lol, okay champ.
Your post is Bullshit revisionist Fox news history, unsupported by objective fact. See my comment above; NAFTA was a holdover from the Bush Sr. administration. Plus, REPUBLICAN DONOR private companies pushed for it to lower labor costs. Also, Tariffs are a tax on customers (like you). Just wait 'till Thanksgiving when the inventory stock ups get depleted. Read an economics 101 textbook sometime.
Well, Peachy (who "liked" the comment) and J. Fast (who wrote the comment) - thanks so much for elevating the discussion with the word "libtard." Everything after that word should be disregarded because the author isn't interested in a reasonable discussion.
Your anger seems to obscure comprehension of the point that America’s former middle class has been impoverished—and therefore a former “special, once in a lifetime vacation to Disney” is now completely out of reach. I wasn’t blaming Disney (though I do believe the entire Disney philosophy has abandoned its former traditional American values).
I'm angry because ignoramuses like you don't understand exactly how that impoverishment of the middle class happened, and then against all logic and reason turn to charlatans like Trump (the very type of person who did this to the middle class) to fix it.
Further, the only value Disney ever had was making money, lol. The whole "a world of wonder for the whole family" was an advertising gimmick.
Globalisation is not the problem. The problem is the unwillingness of the top 10%/1% to share the bounty. Whilst the USAs GDP has skyrocketed that increased wealth has not been shared with the working class and the underclass. Wages have stagnated, welfare has decreased as taxes have decreased from the 10%. If history is any example the USA is one or two steps away from revolution. The only thing holding it back is the power of the 10% propaganda.
It wasn’t just the liberals,their open society was tearing down social mores and the conservatives bought into the open society via free trade. Neither of these has worked out well for the middle and lower class. Fatherlessness and jobs shipped to China everyone on the welfare dime. The stark contrast between the haves and have nots is at an all time high in America. Reversing this is going to take a miracle.
This Bannonite nonsense has zero basis in reality. Very curious how you square this lofty ideal of security and health for fellow citizens with the administration empowering the corporatocracy, slashing cancer research, giving billionaires tax cuts, and slapping tariffs on american consumers. Robust middle class here we come lol
Oh brother…Reagan was trying to be realistic…Black Markets rise whenever goods can be obtained somewhere cheaper. America just wasn’t diligent at enforcing FAIR. Consider the Chinese virtual slave labor producing Apple products and practically everything else. Do Americans really want to be part of that? NO.
I detest Disney and thought I was in HELL when I visited. Every State and National park is better and healthier. Disney died decades ago. Despicable organization.
I am sorry to read that, Madjack. My young daughter and I thoroughly enjoyed a visit to Disneyland when she was six years old in the early 90s. As a single mother, I could afford it as a well paid professional. It was a great experience for us as Walt Disney had intended.
Over 30 years ago, as I was pulling our mini van out of the Disney parking lot I told my wife “If Mickey knew I had five dollars left in my wallet, he would throw himself under the wheels of this vehicle to get it. “ The Disney corporation is a godless, money sucking vampire.
"Let Them Eat Cake" say the NYC elite, in whichever tony corner of the city they may reside. I have come to HATE NYC for these snobs, mostly trust children who never had to work a day in their lives for their privileged lifestyle. On one level, I hope that Mamdani becomes their mayor and then strips every ounce of wealth they have from them so they can suffer like the rest of us in America.
NYC has poor people as well. In fact, the majority are working class. In no way can the problems of this nation be summed up by NYC elites vs. the rest of us in America.
I agree with you: “ I hope that Mamdani becomes their mayor and then strips every ounce of wealth they have from them so they can suffer like the rest of us in America.”
People are ripped off, mocked and then derrided as morally inferior, yeahthat's going to make people bitter. Whatever evils befall the members of the West's PMC far overdue and well deserved.
It's greed. The Leftist elite have completely missed the irony that they're all Gordon Gekko now.
Times change, and if we don't change with them, you, me, and Scarlett, it's our own fault. Disney is not what it was. Neither are professional sports or [your past avocation here]. Drop them if they're burning your dreams and go on to something else. Because there's a lot more options to choose from now and they don't cost eight grand.
It seems that the new business model these days is to take something that used to be good, make it shittier, and then charge an additional fee to experience it in its pre-shittification mode.
Streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix are doing this - now you have to sit through commercial breaks, just like we used to have to on the broadcast stations that we tried to avoid by purchasing streaming subscriptions. Youtube seems to have doubled the number of ads lately, and the only way to avoid them is to upgrade to Premium. You have to sit through an ad to play the Wordle game now, and the only way to make it go away is to purchase a subscription (which I refuse to do because I do not want any of my money going to the New York Times).
That’s one of many reasons I always have and always will love reading physical books. Once you’ve bought it they can never insert ads, upsell or change the content. I’m sure someone somewhere is thinking of banning them for those very reasons
Back in the day these business’s were losing money to grow market share. At some point they mature and need to make money. They can’t spend VC money forever just so you don’t have to watch ads.
A better example is Southwest Airlines. They've had over 50 years of profitability outside of 2020 and it still wasn't enough for Wall Street. So now we're paying extra for bags and window seats on the same planes.
Thank you for this wonderful article. Yes, we all have a tendency to discount poor people, especially those who are extremely overweight or look scraggly. Thanks for helping open a lot of people’s eyes.
Peachy, I worked in management for a company in So Cal that was also a corporate partner of Disney. My family had the privilege of multiple visits to Disneyland not unlike what you describe when you were a WDC employee. They know they were extremely fortunate to have such access - and treasure their memories from their experiences. Things have certainly changed enormously as you’ve described since those days 20+ years ago. It breaks my heart to read about folks like Scarlett and her family who must scrimp and sacrifice greatly to afford the most basic access to the parks and their attractions for Disney to maximize their corporate profits. I’m all for free enterprise but honestly wish access to the basic experiences at Disney’s theme parks didn’t require a second mortgage or the money to afford a private guide to move up the line.
I also worked for Disney after being a lifelong admirer of Walt and the"Disney Way". What a revelation to see the underbelly of greed and discrimination in the "Kingdom". The real "magic" (or misdirection) is how they try to conceal it. Thanks for helping expose them. You forgot the "Candlelight" Christmas abomination where the wealthy and high profile guests are seated close to the nativity story presented in song and celebrity narration. There is "no room at the inn" for the riff raff. Jesus, Mary and Joseph would have to wait forever in the far back and strain to see their own celebration!
Coincidentally, Disney struggles to make money. The shares have shed about half since 2021. Between the efforts to skin park customers and the movies they've greenlighted, the mouse house is struggling. Businesses that lose track of their concern for the customer experience are punished. So there is justice, just not handed out to those whose expectations find disappointment.
My guess also. And the same consulting firms that help the airlines implement charging for each seat, bag, and per potato chip are no doubt "advising" Disney as well.
The parks make money. The streaming service bleeds money and the studio strategy of buying every expensive IP on the planet obviously wasn't sustainable.
I feel like I missed my opportunity to have a Disney experience. We are pretty well-off, but still conscious of where our money goes. I refuse to spend that much money on a theme park ticket. I’m tired of being nickeled and dimed for everything. Last year, we went to Vegas and stayed on the Strip. Vegas isn’t what it was 20 years ago either. We’ve gotten to the point where we rarely look or think about going to concerts because they are too expensive for what they are offering. Paying hundreds of dollars for nose-bleed seats, plus the parking, food and ‘the experience’ isn’t appealing at all.
Great article, Peachy. I lament constantly how horrifically class-snotty we are in this coastal elite place I live. With concerts I feel we are getting what we deserve. No one buys music anymore so the bands have to charge obscene prices and tour into their dotage. I still see a lot of live music, but always when the band is on their ascent or on their decline. For example, Zach Bryan before he hit huge, and Toto and Men at Work last week long after their zenith.
For the life of me I don't understand why ANYONE (no matter what your political views) goes to DisneyWorld or DisneyLand given their pricing and lack of value relative to that pricing. For the double life of me I don't understand why ANY CONSERVATIVE would spend money with Disney given Disney's extreme woke values.
I have friends that are conservative Christians and they go to Disney for every single vacation, sometimes more than once a year. I mean, literally, EVERY SINGLE TIME. They wouldn’t dream of even once trying a different destination. When I have (tactfully) probed them on the seeming dissonance between their faith and the actions and values of Disney I get a kind of embarrassed, rambling rationalization that I know they don’t really believe but need so they can continue to go to an overpriced theme park and give their money to people that loathe them. Disney is like a cult
As much as I love our chud conservatives, it's a well known trend that they are very low in openness. Once they find a vacation spot or restaurant they like, that's all they go to, even if there are much better options out there.
I live in Tennessee and younger friends with kids still at home have found better theme parks with none of the weirdness and just fun. Most of them go to Dollywood and the kids are always smiling and the parents are too because it didn't set them back an arm and a leg.
The twin policies of free trade and mass immigration have turned a middle class republic into an elitist oligarchy. Disneyland a microcosm. While I am personally a beneficiary of that transformation, I and I suspect many others would prefer to live in the Old America.
Ojalá there will be no more Terry Walker Cressels, dying in the muck of a distant swamp on behalf of people who despise him and betray his descendants.
The most straightforward method is simply by driving up demand for a good with inelastic supply: without the 1965 and 1990 immigration acts the population of the US would be about 80 million lower than it is today - but there would still be two Disneylands.
The more complex method is that increasing labor supply at the bottom half of the productivity distribution, as is true of immigration to the US, shifts the distribution of wages towards higher earners by competing down wages at the bottom. As a result, the top 10% of US households now account for about 50% of all consumption and they can outbid the middle classes for goods and services, as we see in this Disneyland example.
Although not Disney, the mountain resorts in Colorado are extremely cost prohibitive. Aspen is so expensive that folks that work somewhere in the town can’t even afford to live there. If you know anything about high mountain towns, space is few and far and costs a lot. I’ve come to the conclusion that as a Colorado native that still lives here, but who does not participate in winter, that those mountains are no longer meant for us.
Vail Resorts ruined skiing and all the funky cool mountain towns, which are now filled to the brim with the uber wealthy staying in hotels that cost over $500/night. The rest of us sit in traffic for hours on I-70, and the workers live in their cars. And don’t get me started on Denver.
The state is a disease now. Everything is ruined and you can't find any escape from it. A parking lot filled with money hunger and eyes for more development.
This is my 32nd year in Colorado. There are so many things that are just priced out of regular people’s budget.
I just paid $70 to park for a Football game. We were nicely gifted free tickets -
It’s still going to be a $250-400 day. Gas, parking, food and maybe one tshirt for the kiddo. It’s her first live game. I should be looking forward to this. Instead I’m just dreading it.
Last time we went in 2009 we made the mistake of going in June so we had to avoid pride celebrations at each park. We were still subjected to affectionate displays at the hotel pool so we left- easier than explaining to my young kids what was going on. By the time my youngest came along Disney was already unwatchable so we haven’t bothered going back. Such a tragedy!
Scarlett’s plight was sealed by globalization in the early 80s. Before then manufacturing jobs enabled a healthy middle class. Thanks to libtards’ embrace of an “Open Society,” with no borders and elites no longer identifying with their own countrymen but rather with other elites around the world, American workers have been sacrificed to a New World Order. Bless Trump for recognizing we must make AMERICA FIRST—for our security, health and fellow citizens.
And who sealed that plight for American’s in the 1980’s? That’s right! Ronald F-cking Regan. Congrats for running directly into the point and still missing it.
It was NAFTA, in the 1990s that closed much local manufacturing. Yes, the trend had begun earlier, probably under Nixon and Kissinger.
Reagan accelerated it. Also, NAFTA was a holdover from the Bush Sr. administration. Clinton went with it as a way to convince skeptical chud voters that he wasn't a Marxist, in the same way he allowed Poland into NATO to avoid getting bullied by right wing Polish activists in Swing states.
I used to blame Reagan, too. For years, I was mad at him for basically ruining Youngstown. I've since realized that there were many factors that led to manufacturing's demise in the US. Mostly, I blame it on the owners who saw an opportunity to pay less and make more.
Many factors, but Reagan was the big one.
When you pay less and make more, consumer prices fall. In any case, it wasn't really their choice: they were forced to by the competition mechanism. The result was a massive net gain in utility. Laid-off Midwestern workers could get welfare; the Third Worlders who replaced them had no welfare before they got those jobs, and one bad harvest meant actual starvation.
And my heart is certainly with them, but I saw what the destruction of manufacturing did to my community. It doesn't make it okay because they could go on welfare.
It began in the 70s with auto workers being laid off and continued with Clinton signing NAFTA. Clinton did the majority of the damage
Really. There’s no need to get so nasty! Reagan preached Free—but FAIR trade. Libtard Clinton diminished FAIR with the NAFTA agreement which enabled.
Love that you don’t want others to get nasty, but also see no problem leveling a nasty word like libtard. 🙄 Please everyone, less blame and more solutions!
I get that it’s important to understand where things started going wrong (and more importantly why and to whose benefit-in many cases our issues have less to do with political party than they do with our class system and money/power dynamics, which have corrupted BOTH parties) but what most of us can agree on is that we don’t like the system that has been built, and we need to vote EVERY party seat for change. Stop focusing on the blame game/us versus them/culture wars that money and power players in both parties use to distract us from the real story and start mobilizing together towards a future that actually benefits our daily lives!
You are correct. I will attempt to not rely on that word in future posts. It will be difficult, though. I think it’s because I live in Colorado which recently made the top ten list for worst crime-infested states. Colorado used to be a clean, rational, safe state. But then we turned Blue and , in turn, became a Sancturary State and then a crime-ridden, highly taxed rat hole.
It’s like every other alternate universe you guys live in, really:
Ronald Reagan is credited with initiating the concept that would evolve into NAFTA, promoting the idea of a North American free trade zone as early as 1979. However, Reagan did not negotiate or sign NAFTA itself; this was accomplished under his successor, George H. W. Bush, with the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed in 1988, and NAFTA signed in 1994 under the Clinton administration.
It was Reagan that set out to break the air traffic controllers union. It was Reagan that deregulated banking and investing, starting the shift away from manufacturing and toward banking. Save your drivel for the folks that don’t remember what actually happened.
Reagan realized that black markets are inevitable whenever a less costly alternative is available. His free trade initiatives were intended to inject REALISTIC FAIR Trade policies.
Bunk. Reagan was a doddering old fool beholden to the evangelical right for getting him elected, owned and operate by bush and Cheney, whose main focus was trying to outspend soviet Russia. Back before the gomers had the gall to pretend the octogenarians in office was bad. Single handedly jacked interest rates into the stratosphere and doubled the national debt. He incentivized manufacturing to move abroad, reducing which began the slide into manufacturing job loss in the US, while they leveraged cheap labor abroad to produce even cheaper goods and evade taxes. The worst of all possible outcomes with ANY trade. On a side note, that wasn’t even a good backpedal into that free trade pivot. You are not a serious person.
The GOP's libertarian and chamber of commerce arms (incl Reagan) are partly to blame. However, unless you lived through the 80's, it's hard to underscore just how deep the liberal-uniparty consensus was. There was lots of political theatre (Iran-Contra esp) but it was pretty much all theatre; whining about minutia while each side helped logroll the big changes from the other.
The Right's liberalism took the form of "earn and spend your money however and wherever you want." The Left's was formulated as "wear and do and sleep with whatever or whoever you want". The unifying theme was, "unchosen constraints are inherently unjust."
Both parties had a huge hand in getting us to where we are. It can't only be laid on Nixon or Carter or Reagan (who at least had an evil empire to be worried about) or Clinton or Bush Jr or Obama. (I leave out Bush Sr since he was a nothing.) They all partook in creating the mess that gave us Donald Trump.
Reagan made concessions to industry and manufacturing in the US by directing gov't policy and regulation away from favoring unions and labor. However, the jobs moved from unionized, high-tax, regulated states to other states in the US, not to Asia. China had yet to reform after the collapse of the USSR, although even Nixon had opened up trade as far back as 1973 that had a some effect on US steel and commodities. The destruction of US industry and manufacturing really got underway after the Cold War ended, 1989-1991, with NAFTA and GATT under Clinton and Bush's admittance of China as a favored trading nation. Reagan was not a free-trade libertarian, as shown by his tariffs.
I don’t disagree with any of that, but I also think it’s something more. The article talks about Walt Disney himself, and how his vision was to create an experience that would be unifying. Rich or poor, anyone and everyone could have the same experience at Disney World. Mass appeal was the point, as was creating a cultural experience that all could share. To bring us all together.
In Walt’s time, a lot of the business elite thought like that. Nowadays not so much. Now they go where the money is and these days, due to rising inequality, that’s with the rich. They genuinely don’t care about anyone else, and they’ll screw you over hard unless you can pay for a better experience. It’s social Darwinism at its most ruthless. They’ll take your business as their due, they won’t try to earn it.
The experience this leads to for everyone not lucky enough to be making a lot more than the median income is, I think, where a lot of the anger in America comes from. It’s also why the elites just don’t understand - they always get the premium experience, which is still nice. They haven’t experienced the noticeable degradation of quality of life that everyone else has.
"In Walt’s time, a lot of the business elite thought like that. Nowadays not so much."
Yes, and the point I'm making is that this change in thinking didn't happen because of "libtards" or "leftists." It was the very people like Trump, Reagan, et al who convinced everyone that the way to afford this Disney dream was to let them not pay taxes, gut the social safety net, and extract as much wealth as possible from the middle and lower class with impunity. And too much of the country fell for it, and continues to fall for it.
I wouldn’t really object to where you’re training your fire, but I think it’s a little too one-sided. The decline of the last ~fifty years is very much a bipartisan endeavor. Blaming only one side is too simplistic and reductive. If it were that simple no one would have voted for Trump, but it isn’t.
True, but most of my rhetorical ammo is reserved for the right, because they did the most to bring us here.
No, you just hate the right. Politicians of both sides are equally odious.
False equivalency. Thanks for playing!
Indeed—my point that elites identify with other global elites—no longer with their “countrymen!” Thanks for amplifying so well!
I remember that when I was younger at the University in Brasil, studying economics, one professor argued with the class that a reason why the consumer internet surged in the United States, and not in countries like French, is that the usual business plan for american business owner was to sell as much as possible with the best possible prices for the biggest possible market.
For an American business the goal was to have the biggest share of the market and make money in volume, upselling, cross-selling. So, every single American family had a telephone, a car, their own home.
In contrast, in a place like France, the culture was to make the most expensive goods you could to sell them at a premium for the elites. Telephones were things for rich people, cars, idem.
And then, well, maybe french clothes were a bit nicer, german cars too. But in America, once something was invented soon lots of people would have them. Cars, radios, televisions, computers. The idea was scale up the production and increase the market size, even if meant making a little bit less on each product and having to pay a bit more on salaries.
Then. Nixon happened.
Manufacturing as a total count of employment has returned to 1980s levels and by many ways to analyze the data never actually left the US, instead just leaving the Rust Belt for the South. There is also currently a huge job swath of open manufacturing jobs. This story does not hold up to scrutiny, though it is politically compelling.
You are totally full of shit. Absolute numbers of ndustrial and manufacturing jobs are millions less than at the beginning of the 1990s.
Peaked in 1979 around 20 Million down to about 12 Million now. However, each bit of added manufacturing production adds so many less jobs now due to automation.
The actual problem isn't so much that wages are too low (though it is a small bit of the problem), it's that housing costs are too high. Zoning laws, taxing production instead of land, and NIMBYism have mad housing costs sky rocket.
Child of the working class here. Manufacturing was annihilated in the 70s and 80s and that destroyed many a community.
It was unions that did that, demanding more pay than the market had determined was optimal.
The market could adjust fine to the wages, like it did in the 50s and 60s when unions where even stronger.
It's just that instead the US was filled with manufactured world substitutes for 1/2 to 1/10 the cost, often at the same or worse prices (the margin enabling all this new equality and billionaires which didn't exist back then) or at a cheaper cost but worse quality (fash fashion, enshittification).
This is just wrong on several levels. The most important being the percent of American workers in manufacturing. It was over 20% (already in decline) in 1980 and is around 10% today. Even in total employees it's lower.
> Manufacturing as a total count of employment has returned to 1980s levels
It hasn't, but it doesn't matter, as the good parts are all manufactured in the developing world or China. What's left now (even if at the same count as good manufacturing jobs before) in the US is crap jobs.
Libtards?! lol, it was Reagan who fucked you. Read a history book, you MAGA chud.
I was partly responsible for the great "migration" when I worked for Motorola in the 80s. This is what really happened:
It was Nixon with the China trip, then both sides working to get China into the WTO and recognize it as a third world country. There were riders on NAFTA that incentivized transferring manufacturing plants to third world countries by giving tax credits and grants to those companies.
I admired Clinton for having a balanced budget, but despised him for pushing NAFTA (and other things). By the time Reagan got in office, the decline was unstoppable. Democrats pushed for helping the third world countries and Republican donors pushed for that because they saw the wonders of cheap labor.
You may have a different "opinion", but I lived the transition and was knowledgeable about the financials.
Clinton’s balanced budget was due to Newt Gingrich’s “contract with America.” The incentives to move manufacturing to Third-World countries is so despicable—but proof of elites identifying either other elites and not with their countrymen. Your post is really interesting!
Well-said. I hope people will listen and learn.
"wonders of cheap labor"
This but unironically.
You have the order of presidents wrong - Reagan came before Clinton (your paragraph structure implies otherwise, although to be fair you probably didn't intend it that way). And while he didn't start it, necessarily, Reagan's neo-liberal policies made deindustrialization and foreign outsourcing worse (he also gave amnesty to the very illegals everyone on the Right today complains about). Also, people forget NAFTA was dreamed up in the Bush Sr. administration; Clinton pushed for it as a way to win over skeptical voters who thought he was (lol) a Marxist because he dared to push for healthcare reform.
As for the bigger issue with this piece:
Disney is a private company. Liberal "elite" NYT contributors in Brooklyn with "pronouns" don't set the prices for said private company. Disney charges 100 bucks to take a crap in their restrooms because suckers like the people in the article buy into "the magic" and are willing to pay for the experience. This is literally free market capitalism at work; "leftists" didn't do this. Trump (who hired illegal immigrant labor to build his hotels and maintain his Florida crashpad, and who lobbied politicians of both parties for years to cut worker protections) and Vance (a cynical opportunist who - if you actually read "Hillbilly Elegy" closely, insults the poor working class - literally called Trump "America's Hitler" only a couple of years ago) are laughing at your ignorance.
Oops - yes, I goofed up with the order :P The information is still accurate regarding granting special dispensation to third world development, of which China is still classified as.
Au contraire! Reagan preached Free—but FAIR trade. And, then , of course, the libtard Clinton signed the NAFTA agreement which enabled Chinese to send their products through Mexico and thereby receive ridiculous trade favors. Trump’s efforts to bring manufacturing back to the US and to call out the unfair hidden taxes (such as Value-Added Taxes used by European countries) is an attempt to demand FAIR trade along with national security and health.
"Fair trade" by allowing industries to outsource to foreign countries while levying a small temporary tariff on Kawasaki motorcycles. AND giving amnesty to illegals. Lol, okay champ.
Your post is Bullshit revisionist Fox news history, unsupported by objective fact. See my comment above; NAFTA was a holdover from the Bush Sr. administration. Plus, REPUBLICAN DONOR private companies pushed for it to lower labor costs. Also, Tariffs are a tax on customers (like you). Just wait 'till Thanksgiving when the inventory stock ups get depleted. Read an economics 101 textbook sometime.
Well, Peachy (who "liked" the comment) and J. Fast (who wrote the comment) - thanks so much for elevating the discussion with the word "libtard." Everything after that word should be disregarded because the author isn't interested in a reasonable discussion.
You have made a very good point. Libtard is not conducive to conversation. I’ll have to pump my brakes as I peck out thoughts on my phone!
Trump isn't going to fix the enshittification of American life. He could care less about Scarlett and her kids.
This is good actually. American chuds don't deserve special privileges just for being American.
Also, these same people blaming "libtards" for the high prices at Disney apparently don't understand how free market capitalism works.
Your anger seems to obscure comprehension of the point that America’s former middle class has been impoverished—and therefore a former “special, once in a lifetime vacation to Disney” is now completely out of reach. I wasn’t blaming Disney (though I do believe the entire Disney philosophy has abandoned its former traditional American values).
I'm angry because ignoramuses like you don't understand exactly how that impoverishment of the middle class happened, and then against all logic and reason turn to charlatans like Trump (the very type of person who did this to the middle class) to fix it.
Further, the only value Disney ever had was making money, lol. The whole "a world of wonder for the whole family" was an advertising gimmick.
So…are you a Bernie Sanders supporter?
Originally, no, but increasingly, yeah, hah.
Please define “chuds.” Thank you.
Please define “chuds.” Thank you.
Globalisation is not the problem. The problem is the unwillingness of the top 10%/1% to share the bounty. Whilst the USAs GDP has skyrocketed that increased wealth has not been shared with the working class and the underclass. Wages have stagnated, welfare has decreased as taxes have decreased from the 10%. If history is any example the USA is one or two steps away from revolution. The only thing holding it back is the power of the 10% propaganda.
It wasn’t just the liberals,their open society was tearing down social mores and the conservatives bought into the open society via free trade. Neither of these has worked out well for the middle and lower class. Fatherlessness and jobs shipped to China everyone on the welfare dime. The stark contrast between the haves and have nots is at an all time high in America. Reversing this is going to take a miracle.
This Bannonite nonsense has zero basis in reality. Very curious how you square this lofty ideal of security and health for fellow citizens with the administration empowering the corporatocracy, slashing cancer research, giving billionaires tax cuts, and slapping tariffs on american consumers. Robust middle class here we come lol
It wasn’t the libtards who moved the good jobs overseas, it was trump’s friends the mega rich oligarchs.
Oh brother…Reagan was trying to be realistic…Black Markets rise whenever goods can be obtained somewhere cheaper. America just wasn’t diligent at enforcing FAIR. Consider the Chinese virtual slave labor producing Apple products and practically everything else. Do Americans really want to be part of that? NO.
I detest Disney and thought I was in HELL when I visited. Every State and National park is better and healthier. Disney died decades ago. Despicable organization.
Also never understood the appeal
National parks now operate on the exact same system of prices tiers for better experiences.
What? What are you buying at a national park other than the entrance fee?
My neighbor 2 summers ago said “hands down Dollywood was a million times better.” They’ll never go to Disney again.
I am sorry to read that, Madjack. My young daughter and I thoroughly enjoyed a visit to Disneyland when she was six years old in the early 90s. As a single mother, I could afford it as a well paid professional. It was a great experience for us as Walt Disney had intended.
Over 30 years ago, as I was pulling our mini van out of the Disney parking lot I told my wife “If Mickey knew I had five dollars left in my wallet, he would throw himself under the wheels of this vehicle to get it. “ The Disney corporation is a godless, money sucking vampire.
🤣 Now a trans vampire with tits.
Whatever makes you happy and hard, boi.
You speak for yourself. Obviously.
I sure don’t expect someone named “none” to speak on my behalf.
I am making fun of you, kitty, kitty.
"Let Them Eat Cake" say the NYC elite, in whichever tony corner of the city they may reside. I have come to HATE NYC for these snobs, mostly trust children who never had to work a day in their lives for their privileged lifestyle. On one level, I hope that Mamdani becomes their mayor and then strips every ounce of wealth they have from them so they can suffer like the rest of us in America.
NYC has poor people as well. In fact, the majority are working class. In no way can the problems of this nation be summed up by NYC elites vs. the rest of us in America.
Agreed. People here, including myself, are all rich and hate the real Americans. A day in NYC costs the same as a day at Disney.
I agree with you: “ I hope that Mamdani becomes their mayor and then strips every ounce of wealth they have from them so they can suffer like the rest of us in America.”
People are ripped off, mocked and then derrided as morally inferior, yeahthat's going to make people bitter. Whatever evils befall the members of the West's PMC far overdue and well deserved.
How do you know NYC elites are saying this? Can you show me where that is happening?
It sounds like you are inventing a guy to get mad at.
Meanwhile we don’t think about you at all.
It's greed. The Leftist elite have completely missed the irony that they're all Gordon Gekko now.
Times change, and if we don't change with them, you, me, and Scarlett, it's our own fault. Disney is not what it was. Neither are professional sports or [your past avocation here]. Drop them if they're burning your dreams and go on to something else. Because there's a lot more options to choose from now and they don't cost eight grand.
Can take two adults and three kids to Spain for a week for $5,000 or maybe less if you budget it. See something worth seeing
It seems that the new business model these days is to take something that used to be good, make it shittier, and then charge an additional fee to experience it in its pre-shittification mode.
Streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix are doing this - now you have to sit through commercial breaks, just like we used to have to on the broadcast stations that we tried to avoid by purchasing streaming subscriptions. Youtube seems to have doubled the number of ads lately, and the only way to avoid them is to upgrade to Premium. You have to sit through an ad to play the Wordle game now, and the only way to make it go away is to purchase a subscription (which I refuse to do because I do not want any of my money going to the New York Times).
That’s one of many reasons I always have and always will love reading physical books. Once you’ve bought it they can never insert ads, upsell or change the content. I’m sure someone somewhere is thinking of banning them for those very reasons
Ha! A monopolist version of ‘Fahrenheit 451’.
Pssst.... Use Ad Blockers for YouTube on laptop. Then cast to TV.
*taking notes*
Back in the day these business’s were losing money to grow market share. At some point they mature and need to make money. They can’t spend VC money forever just so you don’t have to watch ads.
A better example is Southwest Airlines. They've had over 50 years of profitability outside of 2020 and it still wasn't enough for Wall Street. So now we're paying extra for bags and window seats on the same planes.
Thank you for this wonderful article. Yes, we all have a tendency to discount poor people, especially those who are extremely overweight or look scraggly. Thanks for helping open a lot of people’s eyes.
Peachy, I worked in management for a company in So Cal that was also a corporate partner of Disney. My family had the privilege of multiple visits to Disneyland not unlike what you describe when you were a WDC employee. They know they were extremely fortunate to have such access - and treasure their memories from their experiences. Things have certainly changed enormously as you’ve described since those days 20+ years ago. It breaks my heart to read about folks like Scarlett and her family who must scrimp and sacrifice greatly to afford the most basic access to the parks and their attractions for Disney to maximize their corporate profits. I’m all for free enterprise but honestly wish access to the basic experiences at Disney’s theme parks didn’t require a second mortgage or the money to afford a private guide to move up the line.
I also worked for Disney after being a lifelong admirer of Walt and the"Disney Way". What a revelation to see the underbelly of greed and discrimination in the "Kingdom". The real "magic" (or misdirection) is how they try to conceal it. Thanks for helping expose them. You forgot the "Candlelight" Christmas abomination where the wealthy and high profile guests are seated close to the nativity story presented in song and celebrity narration. There is "no room at the inn" for the riff raff. Jesus, Mary and Joseph would have to wait forever in the far back and strain to see their own celebration!
Coincidentally, Disney struggles to make money. The shares have shed about half since 2021. Between the efforts to skin park customers and the movies they've greenlighted, the mouse house is struggling. Businesses that lose track of their concern for the customer experience are punished. So there is justice, just not handed out to those whose expectations find disappointment.
DEI commissars aren't cheap!!
My guess also. And the same consulting firms that help the airlines implement charging for each seat, bag, and per potato chip are no doubt "advising" Disney as well.
The parks make money. The streaming service bleeds money and the studio strategy of buying every expensive IP on the planet obviously wasn't sustainable.
Disney gross profit for the twelve months ending June 30, 2025 was $35.557B, a 11.7% increase year-over-year.
I feel like I missed my opportunity to have a Disney experience. We are pretty well-off, but still conscious of where our money goes. I refuse to spend that much money on a theme park ticket. I’m tired of being nickeled and dimed for everything. Last year, we went to Vegas and stayed on the Strip. Vegas isn’t what it was 20 years ago either. We’ve gotten to the point where we rarely look or think about going to concerts because they are too expensive for what they are offering. Paying hundreds of dollars for nose-bleed seats, plus the parking, food and ‘the experience’ isn’t appealing at all.
Yep.
And concerts. I used to go to concerts constantly.
I was just a working kid with a wife that made almost no money, but we did three concerts one week in ‘96 and two the following week.
Now I just won’t go for the prices they charge to sit in the nosebleeds or the lawn.
I couldn’t believe the bottom ticket price to see U2 during their residency at the Sphere was $1500. The shows were all sold out too.
Great article, Peachy. I lament constantly how horrifically class-snotty we are in this coastal elite place I live. With concerts I feel we are getting what we deserve. No one buys music anymore so the bands have to charge obscene prices and tour into their dotage. I still see a lot of live music, but always when the band is on their ascent or on their decline. For example, Zach Bryan before he hit huge, and Toto and Men at Work last week long after their zenith.
Credit card companies probably made almost as much as U2 did, since most of the idiots buying tickets put it on the card
For each ticket? *gulp*
That is correct. The prices were listed ticket prices on Ticketmaster, not reseller prices elsewhere.
For the life of me I don't understand why ANYONE (no matter what your political views) goes to DisneyWorld or DisneyLand given their pricing and lack of value relative to that pricing. For the double life of me I don't understand why ANY CONSERVATIVE would spend money with Disney given Disney's extreme woke values.
I have friends that are conservative Christians and they go to Disney for every single vacation, sometimes more than once a year. I mean, literally, EVERY SINGLE TIME. They wouldn’t dream of even once trying a different destination. When I have (tactfully) probed them on the seeming dissonance between their faith and the actions and values of Disney I get a kind of embarrassed, rambling rationalization that I know they don’t really believe but need so they can continue to go to an overpriced theme park and give their money to people that loathe them. Disney is like a cult
As much as I love our chud conservatives, it's a well known trend that they are very low in openness. Once they find a vacation spot or restaurant they like, that's all they go to, even if there are much better options out there.
I live in Tennessee and younger friends with kids still at home have found better theme parks with none of the weirdness and just fun. Most of them go to Dollywood and the kids are always smiling and the parents are too because it didn't set them back an arm and a leg.
I have other Christian friends that love Dollywood for those reasons
The twin policies of free trade and mass immigration have turned a middle class republic into an elitist oligarchy. Disneyland a microcosm. While I am personally a beneficiary of that transformation, I and I suspect many others would prefer to live in the Old America.
Ojalá there will be no more Terry Walker Cressels, dying in the muck of a distant swamp on behalf of people who despise him and betray his descendants.
I can see how free trade would be to blame but how is immigration responsible for the rising cost of things like Disney?
The most straightforward method is simply by driving up demand for a good with inelastic supply: without the 1965 and 1990 immigration acts the population of the US would be about 80 million lower than it is today - but there would still be two Disneylands.
The more complex method is that increasing labor supply at the bottom half of the productivity distribution, as is true of immigration to the US, shifts the distribution of wages towards higher earners by competing down wages at the bottom. As a result, the top 10% of US households now account for about 50% of all consumption and they can outbid the middle classes for goods and services, as we see in this Disneyland example.
Although not Disney, the mountain resorts in Colorado are extremely cost prohibitive. Aspen is so expensive that folks that work somewhere in the town can’t even afford to live there. If you know anything about high mountain towns, space is few and far and costs a lot. I’ve come to the conclusion that as a Colorado native that still lives here, but who does not participate in winter, that those mountains are no longer meant for us.
Vail Resorts ruined skiing and all the funky cool mountain towns, which are now filled to the brim with the uber wealthy staying in hotels that cost over $500/night. The rest of us sit in traffic for hours on I-70, and the workers live in their cars. And don’t get me started on Denver.
What has happened to Colorado breaks my heart.
The state is a disease now. Everything is ruined and you can't find any escape from it. A parking lot filled with money hunger and eyes for more development.
This is my 32nd year in Colorado. There are so many things that are just priced out of regular people’s budget.
I just paid $70 to park for a Football game. We were nicely gifted free tickets -
It’s still going to be a $250-400 day. Gas, parking, food and maybe one tshirt for the kiddo. It’s her first live game. I should be looking forward to this. Instead I’m just dreading it.
This is such a sad story. I hate Disney even more now and know I will NEVER step foot in one of their parks again.
Last time we went in 2009 we made the mistake of going in June so we had to avoid pride celebrations at each park. We were still subjected to affectionate displays at the hotel pool so we left- easier than explaining to my young kids what was going on. By the time my youngest came along Disney was already unwatchable so we haven’t bothered going back. Such a tragedy!