The Building Tidal Wave

It’s at times like this that I crank up the music of Snap (excuse me, I meant Snap!)

You no doubt remember that band’s dance classic The Power, which contained the immortal line “I got the power!”

Yeah, go ahead and blare it.

And while you're grooving, realize that the aforementioned power in that song could very well refer to the surging cultural influence of Latinos, who “will increasingly become a critical foundation of support for the new American Economy.” And on the political front — say, picking the next president — you should know that “Latinos might end up being the key to the contest.”

How can this be? After all, Hispanics are very much an ethnic minority in this country, have just a sliver of the accumulated wealth that white Americans have, and are not exactly the most popular group among Washington politicians.

Well, it’s all about momentum. You see, population growth among Latinos is around 2%, which doesn't sound like much until you realize that for the rest of the American population, it’s below 0.5%. In fact, “U.S., population growth hit an 80-year low in 2018.”

Also, labor-force participation among Latinos is 68%, which is “about 6 percentage points higher than non-U.S. Latinos.” Crunching the numbers a little more shows us that Hispanics “accounted for 82% of the growth in U.S. labor-force participation between 2010 and 2017, despite accounting for less than 20% of the country’s overall population.”

So if you didn't know it already, here’s statistical proof that Hispanics are more likely to be working their asses off.

Increased consumer spending is also a reason why Latinos have the third-highest growth rate among all global economies and have the eight-largest economy in the world. To put it into perspective, if American Latinos were their own country, they would “exceed the size of France’s gross domestic product within the next 10 years.”

So take that, Frenchies!

Sorry, got a little jingoistic there for a minute.

The point is that “the contribution of the U.S. Latino community will become increasingly important moving forward to the economy.”

And this influence is sweeping into every sector of the economy. Hey, there are even more Hispanic truckers than ever before — yes, Latinos in trucker caps behind the wheels of big rigs. Think about the possibilities of a Smokey and the Bandit reboot with Diego Luna as a truck-driving Latino good ole boy.

On second thought, skip that. It’s a dumb idea.

In any case, when Hispanics are not propping up the U.S. economy, they are exerting long-overdo influence on the world of politics.

Witness that “for the first time, Latino elected officials and voters… are getting a real full-court press from Democratic contenders during the early stages of the primary process.”

Political experts believe that Hispanics “could play a much more prominent role in picking the nominee,” which is why the 839 Democrats running for president are currently glad-handing, backslapping, and speech-ifying their way through the Latino community. You see, “candidates who want to win simply can't afford to wait to build a following among Latino voters.”

For some strange reason, Republicans are not doing much to reach out to Hispanic voters. Maybe that's because Latino “support for the GOP is eroding,” and over half of Latinos who voted for Republicans in the past say that “it is hard to support Republican candidates right now.”

That’s a real shame, isn’t it?

Because as we know, Latinos are only getting stronger.