Guest Column by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.

As much as people want government “off their backs” or “put on a diet,” they like what government does for them.

People want government to work for them, and maybe for people like them, but sometimes they’re not as concerned about it working for others. While it may or may not be from a conscious racial, ethnic or religious bias, etc., it probably stems from an evolutionary ingroup/outgroup bias. We are more likely to like and trust people who look and sound like us. It’s a tough bias to overcome.

It has been one of the main troubles in the U.S. all along. The first voters were white men, preferably with property, just like the founders. Gradually enfranchisement expanded to blacks, women, Native Americans and 18-year-olds, usually through struggle and often as the result of war.

Enfranchisement is just part of the puzzle. In a multiracial country like the U.S. where business and government leaders are still disproportionately white and male (President Obama being an exception on race), affirmative action programs give people a chance who wouldn’t usually pass the ingroup “like” test of those in power.

Affirmative action isn’t popular among some people, especially those who don’t benefit directly from it. There are a couple main reasons for this. If the odds have been tilted in a person’s favor and the playing field is then leveled, to them it feels like something has been taken away. Something was taken away, or at least reduced — the unfair advantage. But if a person feels entitled to that unfair advantage, they will likely be resentful.

A second problem is that not enough progress is being made on all fronts. While the income gap between white people and black people remains stubbornly wide, in the past 40 years blacks have had greater income gains relative to white men, whose real wages have been nearly stagnant. Black incomes aren’t anywhere close to catching up to white incomes yet, but the narrowing gap is enough to cause dysphoria among a substantial segment of white people. Women have also made gains relative to men.

A related problem is that the working class has taken the hardest hit from economic restructuring. Manufacturing jobs have declined, many union jobs have been replaced by non-union jobs with lower wages and fewer benefits, and sometimes even a second income (or third) can’t make up the difference. That’s a tough place to be, and many people feel left behind.

So if government doesn’t seem to be working in one’s favor (as much as it used to, or as much as it does for others), it makes it easier to see government as illegitimate. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have done enough to address the stagnation of real wages.

Democrats have renewed drives for higher minimum wages, and they’ve pushed consistently for Social Security and unemployment benefits, etc., but they haven’t fought inequality enough to convince white working class people that they represent their interests anymore. Frank Rich argues that Democrats have shifted their focus too much to the concerns of the professional class.

Republicans are predictably still in “cut taxes to create jobs” mode, which sounds enticing, even though the strategy hasn’t created jobs in practice. It has, though, very successfully increased inequality.

Another reason people have stopped believing in the power of government is that billions of libertarian dollars relentlessly promote the idea — through think tanks and talking heads — that government is a hindrance. In 1978, Charles Koch stated, “Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm.”

What is that statist paradigm? It’s the idea that government is an agent for public good, and it was widely accepted after World War II. How things have changed.

As Jane Mayer documents in “Dark Money: the Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” Koch and his cronies like Richard Mellon Scaife, Harry and Lynde Bradley, John Olin, the Coors family and the DeVos family poured money into these causes because of adherence to libertarian principles. The fact that it was in their economic interests to weaken the social safety net and limit government reach is sheerly, one could believe, coincidental.

A small band of billionaires is powerful, but a huge band of regular brothers (and sisters) can overwhelm them every time. The many must not let the few groom them to focus on their smaller differences and lose sight of their larger shared interests. At the end of the day, most regular people would like employment that pays the bills, a safe and healthy place to raise their families, opportunities for their kids and a dignified retirement for themselves.

Government can and should work actively for these ends, for everybody. Promises to build walls and ban certain groups are red (orange?) herrings.