Thomas B. Edsall writes at
The New York Times:
Mark Muro, the director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, analyzed the differences between those communities that supported Hillary Clinton and those that backed Donald Trump. The findings of Muro and Sifan Liu, a Brookings research assistant, suggest that Democrats who are calling for a return to progressive populism will encounter more hurdles than they expect.
In their Nov. 29 essay, “Another Clinton-Trump divide: High-output America vs low-output America,” Muro and Liu determined that:
The less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015.
In other words, the Clinton counties are the ones in which the economy is booming; they are hardly fertile territory for a worker insurrection.Muro enlarged on his findings in an email:
America’s most important, competitive, and often export-intensive industries — what we call its “advanced” industries — cluster tightly in such metro counties. Some 70 percent of these crown-jewel industries are concentrated in the 100-largest metros — the core of what Hillary won.
In a separate February 2015 study, “America’s Advanced Industries,” Muro and four colleagues report that the 50 industries in this heavily high-tech sector are crucial to America’s future growth:
These industries encompass the nation’s “tech” sector at its broadest and most consequential. Their dynamism is going to be a central component of any future revitalized U.S. economy. As such, these industries encompass the country’s best shot at supporting innovative, inclusive, and sustainable growth.
