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You’re not wrong on most of your points - and I’m not denying the value of hard work. And I’m also well aware of the drudgery of office work. That said, have y

You’re not wrong on most of your points - and I’m not denying the value of hard work. And I’m also well aware of the drudgery of office work. That said, have you worked in the kind of factory that will come back? I did a summer stint at my dad’s steel mill as a 19 year old. I’m proud of that summer but that work took a lot of me. When other friends were out doing things, I was too exhausted to hang out. The money wasn’t great either. And that’s a microcosm of most of those older worker’s lives. Many drank heavily. I’m not bemoaning them at all or their work. I’m just saying that the early 2000s wasn’t the 1850s either. I don’t deny there’s a better life than office work but let’s not gloss over the kind of hard - as in, really hard - labor that industrialization requires.

fragmede 1y ago
Let's not gloss over the other part of it too though. Not everyone is smart enough to be a doctor or a lawyer, or even a nurse or a paralegal, and those people need jobs too. It shouldn't be backbreaking soul crushing work, but they do need jobs.
deltarholamda 1y ago
Absolutely it's hard work, and dangerous too. In the case of steel, in the early 2000s they would be competing more or less heads-up with foreign steelmakers--mostly Chinese--and that puts a kind of pressure on working conditions. Most people wouldn't mind hard work if it's rewarded with home and family. It's the idea that we have to work in a sweatshop and live alone in a fifth floor walkup that makes people pause. To avoid that situation isn't easy, there are a ton of factors involved, but it is possible. In the end, a country that doesn't make things is a country beholden to others.