'Why the Working Class Is Choosing Trump and Sanders'

New column:

Why the Working Class Is Choosing Trump and Sanders, by Mark Thoma:  Donald Trump recently defended Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:

“Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal reflects the negative reaction to Trump’s remarks from many Republicans:

“Mr. Trump is a political harbinger here of a new strand of populist Republicanism, largely empowered by Obamacare, in which the ‘conservative’ position is to defend the existing entitlement programs from a perceived threat posed by a new-style Obama coalition of handout seekers that includes the chronically unemployed, students, immigrants, minorities and women … who typically vote Democrat.”

But is it true that our economic system redistributes substantial sums away from the middle class to “handout seekers”? ...