5 ms·

This seems like a great demonstration of basing arguments on a dependent variable. Every slide I've seen so far would be better explained by white collar vs blu

• jp0d 2y ago
  I don't think white collar vs blue collar comparison is necessarily better. There are heaps of ways to slice and dice data and this one of them. I'd argue that it's a rather interesting perspective.
  • turbojet1321 2y ago
    My point is that it isn't really a different slice, though. The vast majority of the "sitting" occupations are white collar; the vast majority of the "standing" ones blue collar.
    • Nevermark 2y ago
      So think of it as a concise objective way to settle what is blue color from white color, for purposes of a study. No definition will be perfect, but this one does pretty well as you point out. It also naturally provides an objective gradation, which many definitions that stand in for blue collar” or sit in for “white collar” won’t provide.
• esperent 2y ago
  It seemed to me that it was using the dependant variable intentionally so that it could build up to the twist: actually it's all about race. To be fair, the twist did get me. I thought it was leading up to discussing injury rates, or health in old age. Since I'm not from the US, the pivot to discussing race wasn't very interesting/relevant to me.
  • erikerikson 2y ago
    I have the thought that racial divisions are even more stark elsewhere, although in cases across different lines. I would, for example expect a lot more Chinese in to positions in that country alongside far lower diversity. Is it not this way? How about where you are from, since you're "not from the US"?
    • Filligree 2y ago
      Divisions here are between the Irish, British, French, Italians and so on -- each with their own prejudices, to say nothing of people coming from eastern Europe. Each and every one of these groupings have faced discrimination in one context or another, and all of them would be described as 'white' in American terms. Actual Asian people are too far out of context to really be considered on more than an individual basis; there aren't a lot of them here.
    • kstenerud 2y ago
      Japanese vs Brazilians Germans vs Turks Han Chinese vs non-Han Chinese Canada vs first nations Many countries have their racial underclasses.
    • esperent 2y ago
      > I have the thought that racial divisions are even more stark elsewhere While race is of course an issue in all countries, few countries hold on to their racial divide as strongly as the US. Nonetheless, I didn't mean that discussion about race wasn't relevant or interesting to me. I simply meant that discussion about the racial divides in the US aren't relevant to me. Since I hear and read about US specific race issues a lot I usually avoid the topic and was a bit annoyed that this post baited me into investing so much time before it revealed what it was about.
    • lmm 2y ago
      Most countries have ethnic divisions, but they're not the US race categories and not based on skin colour. I am of my ethnicity and this affected how I was treated, whereas the US flattens that to "white" and treats me as such. (More baffling is how the US is in complete denial of its class system - so much so that anyone who tries to talk about class is immediately told they're talking about race)
  • turbojet1321 2y ago
    I agree, it was bit of a bait and switch and (also as a non-American) the racial twist took me by surprise. The actual data would still have made as much (or more) sense if it was white vs blue collar, but I suppose no one would be surprised by that, and wouldn't have clicked through long enough for the "switch" to hit.
  • kdazzle 2y ago
    Ha, I’ve heard a few Dutch say that American style racism didnt really apply to them, but then later they say that some person isn’t Dutch because they aren’t white. All in the workplace. I think it’s just not as top of mind in other places, but its there.
    • plufz 2y ago
      I think it is a little of both. I’m not American, but as a bystander it seems quite obvious that race is important in the US because of how important slavery has been in your culture (founding fathers, civil war, the history of your political parties, income distribution today, etc). But I also have the impression that you have more knowledge of racism than some other countries. I mean the Dutch obviously have a horrific racist history.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    > Since I'm not from the US, the pivot to discussing race wasn't very interesting/relevant to me. Does your home country have any minorities that are economically lower class? And, importantly, are they visibly identifiable, like different skin colour? I assume yes -- most countries have them if you look close enough. Would it be more interesting if the data were viewed through the lense of these different ethnic groups in your country?
    • graemep 2y ago
      In the UK different ethnic minorities do very differently economically (some better than the majority[1]) but this does not follow visible differences. Indians do a lot better economically than Bangladeshis, black Africans better than black Caribbeans, etc. People from some Eastern European countries do a lot worse than visible minorities. Of the white minorities the Irish were traditionally close to the bottom of the heap historically, but for the last few decades have done well, especially educationally, probably boosted by the quality of Catholic schools (religious schools can receive state funding here and many are therefore free to attend). Its clearly mostly to do with lack of intergenerational social mobility. Its worth noting that the group doing worst educationally in the UK are white working class boys. In Sri Lanka which is also my "home" country for a different definition of home the minorities are not "economically lower class" but have faced significant racism and religious discrimination (both sometimes violent) - but have also done the same themselves. [1] All numbers I know of that compare ethnic groups lump the three biggest native groups into one, "white British".
      • nox101 2y ago
        It's similar in the USA. Black Americans do poorly. Black Nigerian immigrants to great. They're both black so it's evidence race has little to do with whatever the problems of class are but a certain segment of vocal people ignore this evidence.
        • dahart 2y ago
          If true, it’s not necessarily evidence of race being independent of class, it would only be evidence of color being independent of class. If true, it might to some degree be the opposite of what you claim, it might be evidence of race mattering since Americans and Nigerians though they might share some physical traits, are now from different countries for many generations. Is it true? I’d love to see this evidence, can you link to some? There is a literal mountain of evidence that both color and race in the US correlate negatively with outcomes, perhaps in differing amounts, but if you ignore that, you’re also ignoring some evidence. There a lot of possible confounding reasons why one black group might fare better than another on average in the US, and that means that if you care about being accurate about whether race and class are linked, then it’s extremely difficult to separate them, and nearly impossible to declare they’re not linked. The biggest problem with your claim is that race and class absolutely were linked in the past without question, when blacks were slaves, and we have never had a period in US history where the socioeconomic outcomes of blacks matched whites on average. The situation has improved, but we have plenty of evidence we’re not there yet, and so it’s impossible and almost certainly wrong to claim that either race or color has little to do with class.
  • graemep 2y ago
    Its apparent very early on that it is about the US, and everything in the US is all about race. Race is far more important in the US: it seems to be fundamental to people's identity and how they are regarded in a way that is difficult to grasp from outside. It is strange to me that people who accept self-identity of gender regard race as an immutable inherited characteristic. The nearest parallel is caste in India. It is inherited, immutable and hierarchical.
    • defrost 2y ago
      The US is not homogeneous and the people within the US most likely to regard race as an all important immutable inherited characteristic are also largely those least likely to accept self-identity of gender. That at least is my coarse observation as an outsider and I stressed qualifiers as there are no absolutes here, just fuzzy clouds of human attributes with some overlaps and no hard borders. The types of US media that routinely dog whistles race issues and stereotype low IQ gun happy criminal types are pretty much the same media streams that mock trans identity, wokeness, and alphabet classification.
      • lmm 2y ago
        > The types of US media that routinely dog whistles race issues and stereotype low IQ gun happy criminal types That's the other side from the one that most strongly regards "race as an all important immutable inherited characteristic" as far as I can see.
      • graemep 2y ago
        > the people within the US most likely to regard race as an all important immutable inherited characteristic are also largely those least likely to accept self-identity of gender. I am not convinced. Even Americans who accept gender self-identity AND claim to be anti-racist usually have a problem with regarding race as a superficial characteristic, and rarely seem to accept people self-identifying as a different race to their "real" one. > The types of US media that routinely dog whistles race issues and stereotype low IQ gun happy criminal types are pretty much the same media streams that mock trans identity, wokeness, and alphabet classification. My point is that BOTH sides in the US regard race as an immutable fundamental characteristic.
• tarvaina 2y ago
  Isn't white vs blue collar a latent variable? You have to operationalize it somehow. If you just ask "how blue collar are you?", people's answers will be influenced by all kinds of subjective biases. I'd argue sitter vs stander distinction also makes this presentation more visceral, memorable and understandable. Collar color would feel unnecessarily abstract and boring.
  • gav 2y ago
    When I had a blue collar job, my coworker used to divide jobs into "shower before work" and "shower after work". It's perhaps less relevant now that a lot of people can roll out of bed and start their remote job in sweatpants, but it's stuck with me.
    • turbojet1321 2y ago
      Ha - my dad, a plumber, couldn't fathom that people would shower in the morning and not of a night. Which, when you spend your day covered in dirt and excrement, makes a ton of sense. (Despite being solidly white collar, I still shower of a night)
      • nox101 2y ago
        Some cultures, it's normal to shower at night, others in the morning. The majority of Americans I know shower in the morning. Japanese bath/shower at night as a general rule. A western person I know married to a Japanese person said their partner thought they were gross to climb into bed all dirty (not bathing at night). My friend thought "waking up sticky from sleep and staying sticky all day is gross". My friend's solution was to bath both in the morning and at night. Their partner still only baths at night.
        • vundercind 2y ago
          I do both. If I don’t shower in the morning, my pits and other parts smell in ways that will make my clothes smellier faster even with deodorant. And going to bed with a whole day of sweat and body oils on you makes your bedding gross faster (it’s there, even if you weren’t active). I can’t really imagine skipping either aside from occasionally, all my stuff would smell and I’d have to run like 50% more loads of laundry.
• fenomas 2y ago
  You have this backwards - sitting/standing (and autonomy etc.) are the data, and blue-collar/white-collar are names for clusters in that data, and the latter depend on the former. After all, workers choose a shirt according to their job role, not the other way around! Also more importantly, I think the main point of the article is that it's not just two clusters; there are several interesting axes to look at. E.g. electricians are "standers" but have autonomy; bookkeepers are "white collar" but do little problem-solving, etc.
  • turbojet1321 2y ago
    Perhaps you're right. I suppose my annoyance is that by choosing sitting/standing as their variable, they gave the impression that they were telling a new and/or interesting narrative, when really they were presenting something well established and entirely common-sense (physical laborers get paid less and have poorer working conditions than office workers).
    • fenomas 2y ago
      I follow you, but I read TFA as saying the complete opposite of that. To me TFA is illustrating that "white-vs-blue-collar" is something of a thought-terminating cliche, and that looking at the actual data shows that various jobs cluster in ways you wouldn't expect if you assumed there were two big white/blue categories. (Also I interpreted "standing/sitting" as basically being a catchy title - I think the author's premise is that all the axes he examined are relevant, not just the standing/sitting one.)
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    > bookkeepers are "white collar" but do little problem-solving It is interesting that you think bookkeepers (accountants?) do little problem solving. I am sure they spend most of their day trying to track down missing expenses, or duplicates, or hard to categorise, or some weird tax law. That sounds like more than "little" to me.
    • fenomas 2y ago
• btilly 2y ago
  The classic from which all this comes is the UK bus system. You had the driver and the conductor. Equivalent jobs, from an equivalent background, with equivalent lifestyles away from work. But drivers sat and the conductors stood. Very, very different outcomes. This is literally the example from which we learned that standing and walking around helps prevent heart attacks.
  • Noumenon72 2y ago
    Those jobs seem about as equivalent as driver and passenger. You have to focus and avoid risks all day long as a driver. I'm suprised conductor pays more. I imagine they attract different types of people as well -- customer service people vs video game people. Must have been tough epidemiology to tease a signal out of that.
    • HPsquared 2y ago
      They probably just ignore all the confounding variables and focus on what can be measured.
    • btilly 2y ago
      What makes you think that conductor paid more? Certainly nothing that I said! Likewise what makes you think that the epidemiology was hard? The statistics were absolutely brutally obvious. The main problem was getting people to look at the data, not interpreting it. See https://bcmj.org/articles/exercise-and-heart-review-early-studies-memory-dr-rs-paffenbarger https://bcmj.org/articles/exercise-and-heart-review-early-st... for some of the early history that is involved here.
  • graemep 2y ago
    On the other hand IIRC postmen who walk rather than stand are healthy?