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"Liberals and Never Trump Conservatives must learn Donald Trump was a warning from the Working-Class." --- Ah, here in lies the problem... "Liberals" and "Nev

"Liberals and Never Trump Conservatives must learn Donald Trump was a warning from the Working-Class." --- Ah, here in lies the problem... "Liberals" and "Never Trump Conservatives" are divided out as different as "Working-Class". If you sell your labor, you are working class. Until there can be more solidarity there, I see the division of America only worsening.

coolsunglasses 6y ago
Having "works for a living" in common means a lot less than your entire worldview, what you think the purpose of life and existence is, and what the properly ordered priorities of the State are. And all of those are drifting faster and further apart.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> If you sell your labor, you are working class This is a convenient trope. I mostly hear it from well-off friends. There is an American aristocracy. They live on inherited wealth, have never connected to the common person and are a scourge. But there are people whose compensation is tied to productivity growth. And there are people who are not. Getting those of us making six or seven figures, with health insurance and a retirement portfolio, looking to buying a house and having kids, to find common policy with someone constantly facing foreclosure, who may not have a bank account, whose kid is struggling with opioid addiction and can’t afford to fight an illegal parking ticket issued by their dying town will be hard. Put another way, we have Americans who feel they need to fight to survive. And we have Americans who feel they need to fight to thrive. Those result in different policy priorities.
- ErikAugust 6y ago
  "to find common policy" This is also a convenient trope. You can literally be both of the pictures you paint in America, sometimes in the span of the same year. Things like affordable job training and college education, and universal health care would benefit most Americans. I have a feeling especially on Hacker News that a lot of people do not like to compare themselves to poorer working people - and think they are wildly different somehow.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > affordable job training and college education, and universal health care would benefit most Americans In theory. In practice, job training has a poor track record [1]. College aid mostly helped middle- and high-income families [2]. Universal health care is an unknown. A high-income New Yorker and rural Obama-Trump Alabaman will prioritise different things in a healthcare bill. The latter don't trust the former. For good reason. We have ignored them. We then dressed up that ignorance by pretending our interests are identical. Those who checked found uncomfortable truths. A healthcare bill fighting for support in Texas can't fund abortions and transition surgery and drug rehabilitation. But without those things it is a non-starter in New York and California. [1] https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5n7j_-EhB3IC&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=nafta+job+training&ots=UjTEvdoa7I&sig=RG-M5UdYQSo2JLxOCxPj0O_twRY#v=onepage&q=nafta%20job%20training&f=false https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5n7j_-EhB3IC&oi=... [2] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7756/w7756.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7756/w7756...
tbihl 6y ago
Saying that doctors and waiters are both 'working class' may satisfy some ideological preference of yours, but it will reliably confound understanding and any improvement that could be downstream of that understanding. People have long been able to understand the notions of 'professional class' and 'service sector'; I recommend taking advantage of their intellectual legwork.

coolsunglasses 6y ago

Having "works for a living" in common means a lot less than your entire worldview, what you think the purpose of life and existence is, and what the properly ordered priorities of the State are. And all of those are drifting faster and further apart.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> If you sell your labor, you are working class This is a convenient trope. I mostly hear it from well-off friends. There is an American aristocracy. They live on inherited wealth, have never connected to the common person and are a scourge. But there are people whose compensation is tied to productivity growth. And there are people who are not. Getting those of us making six or seven figures, with health insurance and a retirement portfolio, looking to buying a house and having kids, to find common policy with someone constantly facing foreclosure, who may not have a bank account, whose kid is struggling with opioid addiction and can’t afford to fight an illegal parking ticket issued by their dying town will be hard. Put another way, we have Americans who feel they need to fight to survive. And we have Americans who feel they need to fight to thrive. Those result in different policy priorities.

ErikAugust 6y ago
"to find common policy" This is also a convenient trope. You can literally be both of the pictures you paint in America, sometimes in the span of the same year. Things like affordable job training and college education, and universal health care would benefit most Americans. I have a feeling especially on Hacker News that a lot of people do not like to compare themselves to poorer working people - and think they are wildly different somehow.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > affordable job training and college education, and universal health care would benefit most Americans In theory. In practice, job training has a poor track record [1]. College aid mostly helped middle- and high-income families [2]. Universal health care is an unknown. A high-income New Yorker and rural Obama-Trump Alabaman will prioritise different things in a healthcare bill. The latter don't trust the former. For good reason. We have ignored them. We then dressed up that ignorance by pretending our interests are identical. Those who checked found uncomfortable truths. A healthcare bill fighting for support in Texas can't fund abortions and transition surgery and drug rehabilitation. But without those things it is a non-starter in New York and California. [1] https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5n7j_-EhB3IC&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=nafta+job+training&ots=UjTEvdoa7I&sig=RG-M5UdYQSo2JLxOCxPj0O_twRY#v=onepage&q=nafta%20job%20training&f=false https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5n7j_-EhB3IC&oi=... [2] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7756/w7756.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w7756/w7756...

tbihl 6y ago

Saying that doctors and waiters are both 'working class' may satisfy some ideological preference of yours, but it will reliably confound understanding and any improvement that could be downstream of that understanding. People have long been able to understand the notions of 'professional class' and 'service sector'; I recommend taking advantage of their intellectual legwork.