6 ms·

This is an excellent article. It opens up the minds of people who many on the coasts have struggled to empathize with in light of Tuesday. In talking about eco

This is an excellent article. It opens up the minds of people who many on the coasts have struggled to empathize with in light of Tuesday. In talking about economic policies, and free trade deals that supposedly shipped jobs off to China, I wish the article (and more importantly politicans) would emphasize the importance of technology being the driver behind manufacturing job loss. It's only a matter of time before robots replace most manufacturing jobs. The only reason they haven't full-scale yet is that wages in China are still too low to make it cost effective (but that's changing). Otto just delivered the first self-driving truck shipment. In a few short years, the most common job in what was it, 30 or so states? It'll be all but gone. The article hit the nail on the head with having working class economic policy being front and center on the campaign, not bathrooms. But a tariff on Chinese exports ain't it. Nobody is bringing steel back to Youngstown, and though Clinton touched on this a little bit (the renewable energy jobs for example), creating new jobs that are actually here to stay for a while -- whatever they may be (while unfortunately not seeming elite and professional) -- is the only message the Democrats can deliver if they want to win office again.

throwaway475278 10y ago
I think it's somewhat helpful to take the author's angle to "raise awareness", but the root problem is still education. If I'm starving to death in a wheat field, teach me to make bread. Retraining programs and better k-12 are the solution, not assuaging a bunch of literally too-stupid-to-help-themselves white dudes. I get that they don't like being too stupid to help themselves, it sucks. But cheap access to a community college and some kind of "displaced worker" program that helps keep families fed while someone gets a degree would be so much more beneficial than trying to reboot a bunch of dying industries.
- zepto 10y ago
  Retraining for what?
  - chongli 10y ago
    I'm not who you're replying to but I'll interject anyway: Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades. This is the program championed by Mike Rowe [0]. It also happens to dovetail perfectly with Trump's so-called $1 Trillion infrastructure plan. If he actually puts his money where his mouth is, he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated). [0] http://profoundlydisconnected.com/ http://profoundlydisconnected.com/
    - knz 10y ago
      > he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated) Trump isn't hated because he is Republican. People are afraid of losing hard won rights like marriage equality or the right to healthcare if they are unfortunate enough to have a preexisting condition. The violent rhetoric he used during his campaign doesn't help at all - condoning crowds chanting "kill her/hang the bitch/lock her up", saying that he wishes he could "smash the shit out of protesters", and offering to pay the legal costs of people who assaulted protesters. That is not normal in a health democracy and sets a dangerous precedent. If Trump is a moderate on issues such as gay marriage and somehow manages to control healthcare costs without people losing their coverage he could be popular.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Small correction: Trump is now keeping the most popular provisions of the ACA, such as no exclusions on pre existing conditions, after his discussion with Obama at the White House. I see Trump as a necessary evil to shake up the establishment, and I believe he will be tempered as he adjusts to the gravity of the office (as he has already started to do). What gets you into office is it what you say once in office.
    - RandomOpinion 10y ago
      >Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades. Are you under 40? I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate. Yes, having had life experience helps somewhat but not all that much. It's easy to say "Just do X" but pretty much everything becomes harder to do after 40 or so.
- jordanb 10y ago
  You're starving to death because it's not your wheat. You go to the bakery and offer your shiny new breadmaking education and they say "sorry we got all we can use."
- rleigh 10y ago
  Education and retraining are useful, but only if there are jobs for people to do with that education and skillset afterward. Otherwise it's largely pointless, and serves primarily to make the unemployment stats look better than they really are. I don't believe that education is the root problem here. The root problem is the vast scale of job losses. Education can benefit some of the people affected, who can then move to other jobs and careers. But it can't help the majority if the opportunities simply don't exist. And I think that harsh reality isn't properly acknowledged. A vast number of people have been essentially abandoned without hope. The alternative jobs and careers simply don't require enough people to make up for the losses. (I'm writing this from the UK, but there are a lot of parallels in the massive industrial decline here as well, and I don't think any good long-term solution has been found here yet either.)
byuu 10y ago
Indeed. And when all those truckers lose their jobs, that's not just going to affect their lives. They're going to be retraining and competing for your jobs next. And they don't have to be nearly as skilled as you, if they're willing to do the work for half the cost. Which they will be, because they'll be desperate to feed their families. And thankfully for employers, us programmers have been doing our best to make programming easier and easier. The people looking to take our jobs will certainly appreciate that. We need to start talking about a post-work economy and how that will work. Because that's going to happen. If automation pushes us there without the appropriate policies in place, it is going to be absolutely devastating. And as this article touched on, the working-class generation is going to be deeply troubled by the idea of anyone getting anything without working hard for it. The concept of "if you don't work, you don't eat" is deeply ingrained into their psyches. So it is going to be a very uphill battle.
- douche 10y ago
  Very much indeed. What I'm not sure is understood in these jobs calculations is that there is always a domino effect. The paper mill closes down one of their machines. This lays off 100 people. All the truckers that supplied wood for that machine also lose their jobs. There's another 25 jobs. All the logging contractors that supplied that machine have to either find other contracts or lose their jobs. There's another 25 jobs. The businesses that supplied parts and repairs for the loggers, the truckers, and the mills, lose that business. There goes some more jobs. The sandwich shops, gas stations, restaurants and everything else in the community takes the hit because of the hundreds of other people that have now lost their jobs, and some of those people lose their jobs. People leave the area. School districts downsize, the road departments and the police forces and the hospitals downsize because the population has shrunk. It's a vicious circle.
- lamontcg 10y ago
  I tend to doubt that truckers will turn into programmers. If anything programming is going to continue to be more about burning out college grads, and it'll be difficult for 40 year old established programmers to find work, much less 40 year old retrained truckers--even at half the cost. At any rate, that would be the optimistic viewpoint, that they could actually get retrained and get jobs and compete for wages. What is likely to happen is that they'll have extreme difficulty finding any work, the income gaps will widen and there'll be even more disaffected workers.
rayiner 10y ago
> not bathrooms. Ironically, if the right weren't making a big deal about bathrooms we could just let people use the bathrooms they want and fight about how to protect workers.
tmnvix 10y ago
Unless something completely unexpected happens in the next decade or two, it seems clear to me that there are only a couple of possible outcomes here: 1. Stay the course and endure further entrenchment of inequality and rising under/unemployment due to capitalism's innate tendency to concentrate wealth by favouring capital over labour (unearned vs earned income) and technological changes leading to reduced opportunities for low skilled work. 2. Bite the bullet and accept that a political solution is needed to reduce inequality (most likely through some kind of redistribution mechanism). There are plenty of historical precedents for this (Bismark's social contract, rise of the labour movement, the New Deal). A few commonly discussed solutions are: 1. Universal Basic Income 2. Governments introducing money into the economy directly through spending on infrastructure (or UBI) rather than through assuming debt. 3. Shifting taxes away from income to assets. An example of this would be Land Value Taxes. Personally, I am in favour of (3), with the focus being on taxing unproductive investment first. Lower income taxes and and more incentive to invest in actual businesses (rather than say, flipping houses or other speculative activity) would do a lot of good. It would be great if we had an economy where money was a bit easier to make and a little bit harder to keep. A higher velocity of money is good for an economy.
- pascalxus 10y ago
  here in CA, All you have to do release the tens of thousand of square miles of undeveloped land (95% of CA is still undeveloped) and build houses and roads on it. That would generate a huge number of jobs. Since housing prices are through the roof, I bet the economy could support an enormous construction increase. And, even much more if building regulations were removed to allow for really low cost housing. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone: solve the housing problem and massively increase blue collar jobs.
  - grzm 10y ago
    A couple of questions come to mind: how much of the undeveloped land is conducive to development (e.g., too mountainous)? Having green space, undeveloped land also has value. What are the long-term trade offs of removing the green space?
- 10y ago

throwaway475278 10y ago

I think it's somewhat helpful to take the author's angle to "raise awareness", but the root problem is still education. If I'm starving to death in a wheat field, teach me to make bread. Retraining programs and better k-12 are the solution, not assuaging a bunch of literally too-stupid-to-help-themselves white dudes. I get that they don't like being too stupid to help themselves, it sucks. But cheap access to a community college and some kind of "displaced worker" program that helps keep families fed while someone gets a degree would be so much more beneficial than trying to reboot a bunch of dying industries.

zepto 10y ago
Retraining for what?
- chongli 10y ago
  I'm not who you're replying to but I'll interject anyway: Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades. This is the program championed by Mike Rowe [0]. It also happens to dovetail perfectly with Trump's so-called $1 Trillion infrastructure plan. If he actually puts his money where his mouth is, he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated). [0] http://profoundlydisconnected.com/ http://profoundlydisconnected.com/
  - knz 10y ago
    > he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated) Trump isn't hated because he is Republican. People are afraid of losing hard won rights like marriage equality or the right to healthcare if they are unfortunate enough to have a preexisting condition. The violent rhetoric he used during his campaign doesn't help at all - condoning crowds chanting "kill her/hang the bitch/lock her up", saying that he wishes he could "smash the shit out of protesters", and offering to pay the legal costs of people who assaulted protesters. That is not normal in a health democracy and sets a dangerous precedent. If Trump is a moderate on issues such as gay marriage and somehow manages to control healthcare costs without people losing their coverage he could be popular.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Small correction: Trump is now keeping the most popular provisions of the ACA, such as no exclusions on pre existing conditions, after his discussion with Obama at the White House. I see Trump as a necessary evil to shake up the establishment, and I believe he will be tempered as he adjusts to the gravity of the office (as he has already started to do). What gets you into office is it what you say once in office.
  - RandomOpinion 10y ago
    >Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades. Are you under 40? I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate. Yes, having had life experience helps somewhat but not all that much. It's easy to say "Just do X" but pretty much everything becomes harder to do after 40 or so.
jordanb 10y ago
You're starving to death because it's not your wheat. You go to the bakery and offer your shiny new breadmaking education and they say "sorry we got all we can use."
rleigh 10y ago
Education and retraining are useful, but only if there are jobs for people to do with that education and skillset afterward. Otherwise it's largely pointless, and serves primarily to make the unemployment stats look better than they really are. I don't believe that education is the root problem here. The root problem is the vast scale of job losses. Education can benefit some of the people affected, who can then move to other jobs and careers. But it can't help the majority if the opportunities simply don't exist. And I think that harsh reality isn't properly acknowledged. A vast number of people have been essentially abandoned without hope. The alternative jobs and careers simply don't require enough people to make up for the losses. (I'm writing this from the UK, but there are a lot of parallels in the massive industrial decline here as well, and I don't think any good long-term solution has been found here yet either.)

byuu 10y ago

Indeed. And when all those truckers lose their jobs, that's not just going to affect their lives. They're going to be retraining and competing for your jobs next. And they don't have to be nearly as skilled as you, if they're willing to do the work for half the cost. Which they will be, because they'll be desperate to feed their families. And thankfully for employers, us programmers have been doing our best to make programming easier and easier. The people looking to take our jobs will certainly appreciate that. We need to start talking about a post-work economy and how that will work. Because that's going to happen. If automation pushes us there without the appropriate policies in place, it is going to be absolutely devastating. And as this article touched on, the working-class generation is going to be deeply troubled by the idea of anyone getting anything without working hard for it. The concept of "if you don't work, you don't eat" is deeply ingrained into their psyches. So it is going to be a very uphill battle.

douche 10y ago
Very much indeed. What I'm not sure is understood in these jobs calculations is that there is always a domino effect. The paper mill closes down one of their machines. This lays off 100 people. All the truckers that supplied wood for that machine also lose their jobs. There's another 25 jobs. All the logging contractors that supplied that machine have to either find other contracts or lose their jobs. There's another 25 jobs. The businesses that supplied parts and repairs for the loggers, the truckers, and the mills, lose that business. There goes some more jobs. The sandwich shops, gas stations, restaurants and everything else in the community takes the hit because of the hundreds of other people that have now lost their jobs, and some of those people lose their jobs. People leave the area. School districts downsize, the road departments and the police forces and the hospitals downsize because the population has shrunk. It's a vicious circle.
lamontcg 10y ago
I tend to doubt that truckers will turn into programmers. If anything programming is going to continue to be more about burning out college grads, and it'll be difficult for 40 year old established programmers to find work, much less 40 year old retrained truckers--even at half the cost. At any rate, that would be the optimistic viewpoint, that they could actually get retrained and get jobs and compete for wages. What is likely to happen is that they'll have extreme difficulty finding any work, the income gaps will widen and there'll be even more disaffected workers.

rayiner 10y ago

> not bathrooms. Ironically, if the right weren't making a big deal about bathrooms we could just let people use the bathrooms they want and fight about how to protect workers.

tmnvix 10y ago

Unless something completely unexpected happens in the next decade or two, it seems clear to me that there are only a couple of possible outcomes here: 1. Stay the course and endure further entrenchment of inequality and rising under/unemployment due to capitalism's innate tendency to concentrate wealth by favouring capital over labour (unearned vs earned income) and technological changes leading to reduced opportunities for low skilled work. 2. Bite the bullet and accept that a political solution is needed to reduce inequality (most likely through some kind of redistribution mechanism). There are plenty of historical precedents for this (Bismark's social contract, rise of the labour movement, the New Deal). A few commonly discussed solutions are: 1. Universal Basic Income 2. Governments introducing money into the economy directly through spending on infrastructure (or UBI) rather than through assuming debt. 3. Shifting taxes away from income to assets. An example of this would be Land Value Taxes. Personally, I am in favour of (3), with the focus being on taxing unproductive investment first. Lower income taxes and and more incentive to invest in actual businesses (rather than say, flipping houses or other speculative activity) would do a lot of good. It would be great if we had an economy where money was a bit easier to make and a little bit harder to keep. A higher velocity of money is good for an economy.

pascalxus 10y ago
here in CA, All you have to do release the tens of thousand of square miles of undeveloped land (95% of CA is still undeveloped) and build houses and roads on it. That would generate a huge number of jobs. Since housing prices are through the roof, I bet the economy could support an enormous construction increase. And, even much more if building regulations were removed to allow for really low cost housing. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone: solve the housing problem and massively increase blue collar jobs.
- grzm 10y ago
  A couple of questions come to mind: how much of the undeveloped land is conducive to development (e.g., too mountainous)? Having green space, undeveloped land also has value. What are the long-term trade offs of removing the green space?
10y ago