6 ms·

The middle class (and lower class) has suffered tremendously from the lower cost of labor abroad and the ability to cheaply import goods and services. The upper

The middle class (and lower class) has suffered tremendously from the lower cost of labor abroad and the ability to cheaply import goods and services. The upper class has benefited tremendously from the same. Another thing that has decimated the middle class is the general collapse of family. Divorce is the greatest family wealth destroyer in America. People who care especially about jobs for the lower and middle classes support trade and immigration restriction politics. This is exactly why certain midwest states handed Trump the election in 2016, whatever imperfect good they got from that. I've been to these places. People in rust belt towns with closed factories did not think that the Democrats were going to bring the jobs back. If free trade improves the overall economy by making the very rich slightly wealthier, and destroying the jobs of everyone else, it is obviously not an unalloyed good, and perhaps not in the interests of most people. Similarly with mass immigration.

dgacmu 7y ago
This comment about family is simply not true. Divorce rates are at near record lows: https://www.statista.com/statistics/195955/divorce-rate-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/195955/divorce-rate-in-t... part of that is due to marriage rates being down, but divorces as a percentage of marriages are also at the lowest point they've been since 1975: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/03/divorce-rates-are-down-but-theres-a-catch/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/03/divorce-rates...
- romaaeterna 7y ago
  That is all true enough, but doesn't actually contradict my point. A number of cohort studies have reliably made the point that I did about divorce, and the increase of singleness and late singleness in the last few decades has seriously impacted middle class wealth formation.
logicchains 7y ago
>The middle class (and lower class) has suffered tremendously from the lower cost of labor abroad and the ability to cheaply import goods and services. The middle class in China and India (which barely existed a few decades ago) has profited tremendously from this. It's a natural equalisation: why does a worker in America deserve a better standard of living than a worker in Indian or China when the latter is willing to work so much harder to pull his family out of abject, mud-hut poverty?
- romaaeterna 7y ago
  There are other groups that I would bankrupt first to help the third world than the American middle class, if that's what it takes.
- sand_castles 7y ago
  Excuse me. This idea that Chinese and Indians would be living in mud hut level poverty without blessing from the American capitalist class is an feel good manufactured narrative. India has very little integration to global supply chains, they famously followed a consumption lead growth model - "We feed our people before others". China duped the American capitalist class using the carrot of profits. They could have easily bought the technology and know how from Europeans, but couldn't believe their luck when they found out how easy it was to make Washington sell it's industrial base. You are free to reindustrialize at paying 45 dollars / hour to assembly line workers.
belltaco 7y ago
>The middle class (and lower class) has suffered tremendously from the lower cost of labor abroad and the ability to cheaply import goods and services. The upper class has benefited tremendously from the same. This sounds right but is not very true. Look at the quality of living of lower income people, things like refrigerators, TVs, air conditioning, heaters, smartphones, cars, computers etc, and pretty much everything you can buy at walmart have dropped in price precisely because of the ability to cheaply import goods and services. Things which cannot be or are not outsourced like college, doctors and hospitals are super expensive and unaffordable, and results not only in things like a saline bag costing hundreds of dollars instead of a couple. And this funnels money to the upper class e.g. doctors and college administrators from the lower classes, and results in inequality. Not to mention raising the income levels of other countries allows a lot of people in the US working for companies with a large overseas revenue component.
- romaaeterna 7y ago
  Do we actually disagree? The non-outsourcable stuff has inflated in price at the same time that the outsourcable stuff has deflated, and it has destroyed one group of Americans while enriching another, far smaller group.

dgacmu 7y ago

This comment about family is simply not true. Divorce rates are at near record lows: https://www.statista.com/statistics/195955/divorce-rate-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/195955/divorce-rate-in-t... part of that is due to marriage rates being down, but divorces as a percentage of marriages are also at the lowest point they've been since 1975: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/03/divorce-rates-are-down-but-theres-a-catch/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/03/divorce-rates...

romaaeterna 7y ago
That is all true enough, but doesn't actually contradict my point. A number of cohort studies have reliably made the point that I did about divorce, and the increase of singleness and late singleness in the last few decades has seriously impacted middle class wealth formation.

logicchains 7y ago

>The middle class (and lower class) has suffered tremendously from the lower cost of labor abroad and the ability to cheaply import goods and services. The middle class in China and India (which barely existed a few decades ago) has profited tremendously from this. It's a natural equalisation: why does a worker in America deserve a better standard of living than a worker in Indian or China when the latter is willing to work so much harder to pull his family out of abject, mud-hut poverty?

romaaeterna 7y ago
There are other groups that I would bankrupt first to help the third world than the American middle class, if that's what it takes.
sand_castles 7y ago
Excuse me. This idea that Chinese and Indians would be living in mud hut level poverty without blessing from the American capitalist class is an feel good manufactured narrative. India has very little integration to global supply chains, they famously followed a consumption lead growth model - "We feed our people before others". China duped the American capitalist class using the carrot of profits. They could have easily bought the technology and know how from Europeans, but couldn't believe their luck when they found out how easy it was to make Washington sell it's industrial base. You are free to reindustrialize at paying 45 dollars / hour to assembly line workers.

belltaco 7y ago

>The middle class (and lower class) has suffered tremendously from the lower cost of labor abroad and the ability to cheaply import goods and services. The upper class has benefited tremendously from the same. This sounds right but is not very true. Look at the quality of living of lower income people, things like refrigerators, TVs, air conditioning, heaters, smartphones, cars, computers etc, and pretty much everything you can buy at walmart have dropped in price precisely because of the ability to cheaply import goods and services. Things which cannot be or are not outsourced like college, doctors and hospitals are super expensive and unaffordable, and results not only in things like a saline bag costing hundreds of dollars instead of a couple. And this funnels money to the upper class e.g. doctors and college administrators from the lower classes, and results in inequality. Not to mention raising the income levels of other countries allows a lot of people in the US working for companies with a large overseas revenue component.

romaaeterna 7y ago
Do we actually disagree? The non-outsourcable stuff has inflated in price at the same time that the outsourcable stuff has deflated, and it has destroyed one group of Americans while enriching another, far smaller group.