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For many people in dying rust belt towns, no amount of "real retraining" is going to make a difference. Universal access to all the skills in the world is of li
by Kalium 10y ago
For many people in dying rust belt towns, no amount of "real retraining" is going to make a difference. Universal access to all the skills in the world is of little use when realizing that value means having to leave your family home, the only community you've ever known, and move to a scary metroplex. Everything costs more there! The people are different - they look different, talk different, think different, work different.
The obvious response to this, of course, is that if people in dying rust belt towns have skills then jobs will come to them. This makes sense! Why put your factory or office in an expensive city when it can go in a cheap small town? Clearly a ridiculous notion, right?
The problem is that whole towns don't re-skill at once. Ten or twenty or fifty thousand people don't become educated, experienced professionals all at once. It happens in drips and drabs, a little bit at a time. If you're in a major metro area, this means the professionals come to you. If you're in a small town, you've probably either shut down or paid out the nose to import a handful of experienced and educated professionals to run the automation.
And all of this is making some pretty big assumptions, too. Not everyone wants to start over at the age of 40- or 50-something. Not everyone has the mental or physical acuity to do so or wants to go head-to-head with more energetic 20-somethings. It's humiliating, to a great many people, to have to accept that the trajectory of their lives has been a dead-end. It's a terrifying risk to leave behind everything you know and look for a new life and a new career. Even if all the education and training in the world was 100% free in every way, those would still be true.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago>For many people in dying rust belt towns, no amount of "real retraining" is going to make a difference. Universal access to all the skills in the world is of little use when realizing that value means having to leave your family home, the only community you've ever known, and move to a scary metroplex. Everything costs more there! The people are different - they look different, talk different, think different, work different. Then we have to talk about the fact that under capitalism, these people are condemned to starve. Only something like a basic income can really help them.
- Kalium 10y agoOK. Let's talk about it! Let's also talk about the fact that under a basic income, these people will be absolutely miserable. They don't want money. They want work. Their identities revolve in no small part around dignity rooted in a fair day's work for a fair day's wage. Accepting charity is humiliating for them because it implies they cannot earn money. How do you think these people would feel about the prospect of being paid a basic income for life when they cannot work? It's humiliating beyond words. It's patronizing as all hell. It strips them of all respect, all dignity. It leaves them unable to look at themselves in the mirror, because they are now worthless in their own eyes. What do you think that does to a person? I'll tell you. Meth, heroin, obesity, heart disease... and burning hatred. In one sense, you're absolutely right. Only something like a basic income can really save them. In another, also very important sense, a basic income will destroy them. Not by death, but by unmaking who they are.
- Gargoyle 10y agoSo make it not charity. Make it part ownership in the entities that generate all this wealth. It's not basic income, it's dividends from the society you're a part of. Capitalism got us this far, but it's rapidly approaching the limits of its usefulness. Time to move beyond it, and not to some centralized government planning, either. Why do we need massive government power structures when all other jobs are being eliminated?
- Kalium 10y agoWonderful idea! It's not charity. Now it's a basic citizen's dividend. Because you're part of a society that generates this wealth! Except... it's still being paid without working for it. You wind up with all the same problems no matter what you call it.
- Gargoyle 10y agoYou end up with the problems due to the framing. If you frame it as a gift from your betters (which is how it is currently framed), yes, you have problems. If you frame it as something you're owed as a human right, there are many fewer problems. The framing does in fact matter. All the problems you mention are not inherent in the situation. They can be addressed.
- zip1234 10y agoTrucking is different than mining in the sense that truckers are scattered throughout the entire US. Mining was especially impactful to certain towns because the main industry in those towns was mining. That said, I have no idea how it will play out. It would just seem like spreading the burden geographically solves one of the issues, which is the necessity to move to find a job.