By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
“You put a couple of guys together with a truck and guess what you’ve got? A small business. That’s just culturally and economically how Hispanics operate in the United States.”
Those are the words of political analyst and Chicago-area native Steve Cortes, who was our recent guest on Wirepoints’ podcast The Dialogue. Cortes told us that the Hispanic community in America is still, by and large, working class – and its small businesses reflect that.
Latinos are statistically the most entrepreneurial demographic in America and their businesses have grown by 12.5 percent over the past five years, nearly 2.5 times faster than white-owned businesses, according to a recent report by McKinsey.
Unfortunately, many of those businesses are among the least able to handle the damage done by the high inflation that’s overtaken America. Overall price increases have hit 40-year highs, according to the latest numbers from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Of course, there are many middle-income and large Latino businesses that can weather, and even benefit, from inflation. But there are many more working-class Latino businesses that suffer the impact of the nation’s skyrocketing inflation.
“We just hit an all-time high in consumer price inflation.” Cortes told us. “Wages are not keeping up statistically, so Americans are getting poorer by the month. That is particularly problematic and pernicious for small businesses and critical for Hispanics because the Hispanic community is, by far, statistically the most entrepreneurial demographic in America.”
The skyrocketing costs aren’t going unnoticed by the Latino community. “It was only in 2019 that Americans overall saw a nearly 6.8 percent overall wage growth for the year, which was the best that America had seen in decades…that was also with extremely tame inflation. So real wage growth was absolutely soaring.”
It was even better than that for minorities, Cortes added: “Both blacks and Hispanic workers in America enjoyed above 7% wage growth for the full year of 2019. Blue collar Americans, whatever their ethnicity or race, enjoyed 9% wage growth for the year 2019. So I think what a lot of Latinos witnessed in their own lives was that they were getting more and more prosperous.”
Today, inflation is changing all that as Hispanics and working class communities suffer under the current policies of unlimited spending and federal bailouts.
Of course, higher inflation is only one issue. But add to that growing crime, fewer jobs, the obvious failures of the American public education system, laid bare by COVID, and all that helps explain the Latino community’s recent political shift towards the right.
The big question is, how far will they shift?
For the full discussion, you can listen to Wirepoints’ conversation with Steve Cortes below:
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Americans in 39 states aren’t subjected to a mask mandate. Why are Illinoisans?
- Wall Street Journal Column by Wirepoints’ Dabrowski and Klingner: Why the Chicago Teachers Union Always Gets What It Wants
- Still Calling For Employer Vaccine Mandates, American Medical Association Ignores Its Own Code Of Ethics
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Latinos, Asians. Go to Bridgeview and you’ll see a thriving Muslim community stretching miles down Harlem. All these groups want competent government, decent schools, a police force that doesn’t harass them, and reasonable taxes. Pretty standard stuff. They aren’t interested in the white guilt folks treating them like children. They’re sure as hell not the SJW types. They fled the type of government for which many of our “activists” advocate. They are often religious. And while many lean socially conservative, they are not Conservatives. These groups are ripe for the taking. Democrats view Latinos as nothing more than a commodity… Read more »
Not saying it right, but from personal experience, the dirty little secret is that Mexicans ( not sure about other Hispanics) have zero trust of blacks and especially low income blacks and don’t believe all the progressive bs focus heaped on blm, crt, etc. Republicans (im an independent) could be exploiting this distrust big time but instead, like this interview, think somehow they can be vehemently anti immigration and pro latino? Im for MASSIVE opening up the flood gates for legal imagration…i think its the only way to stop us from becoming a japan w a stagnant economy of old… Read more »
The Democrats cater to highly educated elites who are so far removed form people who actually work and struggle to pay bills. That is why they are losing support from hard working Latinos. They’ve close their schools, mandated them out of business, and don’t respect their Catholic faith either. This has historically been the characteristics of the Republican Party. It still is. Both parties are in the pockets of corporations and the oligarchs. It’s just the rhetoric that’s different. As long as politics is profitable it will continue to attract grifters and thrives instead of statesmen who want to serve… Read more »
How to Alienate Latinos for Dummies.