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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On November 13 2016 07:59 Blisse wrote:https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-classShow nested quote +What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
-snip-
Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC, and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century. That (combined with other factors) led to social programs targeting them. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from Macy’s. My sister-in-law was livid.
-snip-
Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
The best advice I’ve seen so far for Democrats is the recommendation that hipsters move to Iowa. Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling a wave of despair deaths in the form of the opioid epidemic.
Vast rural areas are withering away, leaving trails of pain. When did you hear any American politician talk about that? Never.
-snip-
Found an opinion piece that I really enjoyed.
so those people want high paying jobs that don't require any degree or knowledge or intelligence. Do they not realize those jobs will never exist again? No matter what they are promised, no one will ever pay $20 an hour for someone to stand at a line and work in a factory, when we can just have those jobs be automated and only have to pay for the machinery and energy.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 13 2016 08:05 Nyxisto wrote:
DNC shenanigans aside The Dems actually had some pretty good policy focused debates and Clinton won the primaries quite convincingly by popular vote. Sure some newspapers like the Wapo took a sledgehammer to Bernie but there was still a popular vote gap of 4 million or ~12%.
Unlike with the general election, in primaries the issue of exposure asymmetry plays a much larger role. No one has the problem of not knowing who Clinton or Trump are but plenty of people would have not voted for Sanders because they didn't know who he was or what he stands for. In that light he was sabotaged for long enough that his momentum could be blunted. If all the primaries came three months later, he would have had a very real chance of winning.
Similarly, plenty of good candidates get like 0% votes not because people chose someone else over them, but just because they didn't have enough exposure for people to care. The endorsement of other politicians and this "DNC shenanigans" stuff plays a large role in that.
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If people are going to 'blame' people for Trump's victory, it needs to be productive blame. Blame the DNC for generating disgust amongst progressives, and fix the DNC. Blame the state governments who, immediately after the Voting Right Act was struck down, set in motion plans to systematically disenfranchise groups that vote Democrat with "surgical precision"-these people need to be challenged, especially since most of the judicial actions to remedy them were staying measures. Blame the lack of ability of Democrats to communicate with white working class voters the extent to which Trump's plans are unlikely to bring back jobs in the way they want and figure out how to communicate policy in meaningful ways beyond platitudes in ads and negative quotes.
Heck, blame the Electoral College if you want-but do it for the right reasons (winner-take-all states making non-swing states full of conservatives and liberals alike completely irrelevant to the point where Texas or Wyoming Democrats and Vermont and California Republicans might as well not exist) not because of some odd notion it empowers rural people and make strides to keep the ways it empowers small states while removing this factor.
Don't blame "Berniebros." Don't blame "racists." Don't blame "sexists." Don't blame "the media." That's pointless and just builds anger.
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Sanya12364 Posts
Nice article! Since we do live in more interesting times, i'm doing bit of reading on the class warfare and also some of the more salient points of the trump platform.
One of these facets is the ACA(ObamaCare) repeal.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-will-trump-do-to-obamacare/
Looking at it, the individual mandates and the funding of Medicare/Medicaid are some of the most unpopular parts of the ObamaCare. People love "free stuff" until it comes time to pay for it.
The individual mandate seems like one such facet of the ACA. If Trump simply attacks the unpopular paying part of ACA, the service will crumble under its own weight as the low risk population (young) flee and the remaining high risk population will find the service too pricey to be affordable.
If there are any related analysis, please do shared.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
For the issue of "Trump won't bring working class jobs back" that really isn't enough. You have to do something to bring them back, not just essentially say "we don't know how to deal with you so we're not going to help you." One candidate at least genuinely appears to be catering to that "forgotten" group. Telling them that it won't work doesn't matter unless you have something that will.
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On November 13 2016 08:09 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 07:59 Blisse wrote:https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-classWhat So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
-snip-
Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC, and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century. That (combined with other factors) led to social programs targeting them. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from Macy’s. My sister-in-law was livid.
-snip-
Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
The best advice I’ve seen so far for Democrats is the recommendation that hipsters move to Iowa. Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling a wave of despair deaths in the form of the opioid epidemic.
Vast rural areas are withering away, leaving trails of pain. When did you hear any American politician talk about that? Never.
-snip-
Found an opinion piece that I really enjoyed. so those people want high paying jobs that don't require any degree or knowledge or intelligence. Do they not realize those jobs will never exist again? No matter what they are promised, no one will ever pay $20 an hour for someone to stand at a line and work in a factory, when we can just have those jobs be automated and only have to pay for the machinery and energy.
Pretty much this. The vast majority of jobs that were lost are not coming back. They are either jobs that Americans refuse to do, are obsolete, or are jobs replaced by the microchip not Mexico. This is why the platform of bringing jobs back is one that Trump is almost bound to fail on which will piss off a large majority of the people that voted for him. This will be especially true for people thinking that coal is coming back or those car factories in places like Detroit.
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Very true, who knows how long it will take, but hopefully soon solar will be able to compete with coal without subsidies. When that day comes coal will be dead forever
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On November 13 2016 08:12 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:05 Nyxisto wrote:
DNC shenanigans aside The Dems actually had some pretty good policy focused debates and Clinton won the primaries quite convincingly by popular vote. Sure some newspapers like the Wapo took a sledgehammer to Bernie but there was still a popular vote gap of 4 million or ~12%. Unlike with the general election, in primaries the issue of exposure asymmetry plays a much larger role. No one has the problem of not knowing who Clinton or Trump are but plenty of people would have not voted for Sanders because they didn't know who he was or what he stands for. In that light he was sabotaged for long enough that his momentum could be blunted. If all the primaries came three months later, he would have had a very real chance of winning. Similarly, plenty of good candidates get like 0% votes not because people chose someone else over them, but just because they didn't have enough exposure for people to care. The endorsement of other politicians and this "DNC shenanigans" stuff plays a large role in that.
Sure, but Bernie also was essentially a newcomer in the Democratic party. The US system is very permeable because of the direct vote but if you're not running against 16 other people like Trump did I have a really hard time believing that the "she stole the primaries" narrative is justified.
If there's two candidates, one is centrist one is more radical, one is a party member for decades the other isn't I don't think it's surprising that the cards are stacked against you. I also don't think there's necessarily something wrong with it, it's just how it is. If the Bernie movement would have started three or four years ago I think they would have had bigger chances of winning. Trump already had a tea party base to build on. The Republicans were unstable for a much longer time.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 13 2016 08:25 On_Slaught wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:09 hunts wrote:On November 13 2016 07:59 Blisse wrote:https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-classWhat So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
-snip-
Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC, and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century. That (combined with other factors) led to social programs targeting them. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from Macy’s. My sister-in-law was livid.
-snip-
Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
The best advice I’ve seen so far for Democrats is the recommendation that hipsters move to Iowa. Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling a wave of despair deaths in the form of the opioid epidemic.
Vast rural areas are withering away, leaving trails of pain. When did you hear any American politician talk about that? Never.
-snip-
Found an opinion piece that I really enjoyed. so those people want high paying jobs that don't require any degree or knowledge or intelligence. Do they not realize those jobs will never exist again? No matter what they are promised, no one will ever pay $20 an hour for someone to stand at a line and work in a factory, when we can just have those jobs be automated and only have to pay for the machinery and energy. Pretty much this. The vast majority of jobs that were lost are not coming back. They are either jobs that Americans refuse to do, are obsolete, or are jobs replaced by the microchip not Mexico. This is why the platform of bringing jobs back is one that Trump is almost bound to fail on which will piss off a large majority of the people that voted for him. This will be especially true for people thinking that coal is coming back or those car factories in places like Detroit.
You say "the jobs are not coming back" and that may be true - but what happens next? The answers do exist, but there's not a single one that doesn't involve some obscenely expensive infrastructure expansions across the entire nation, and some very painful and not very pleasant coercive measures that force companies inward towards those forgotten "inner cities" to build new businesses. Earlier I gave an example of Soviet/Russian development and how it took painful sanctions to get businesses and legislators to start to consider how they would take internal expansion seriously and what needs to be done to clear the way for that. This is far from the only historical precedent for sanctions forcing a nation to develop its own industry - the US had the same issue 200 years ago with the French-British conflicts and its decision to sanction both of them.
Solutions exist but they basically go against the tide of every economic force that would exist in a vacuum. Politically this can be a truly unpalatable exercise that turns into a no-win scenario.
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On November 13 2016 08:05 Nyxisto wrote:
DNC shenanigans aside The Dems actually had some pretty good policy focused debates and Clinton won the primaries quite convincingly by popular vote. Sure some newspapers like the Wapo took a sledgehammer to Bernie but there was still a popular vote gap of 4 million or ~12%.
To be clear, WaPo propagated an outright lie about Bernie Sanders and his civil rights record. Amidst others questioning his civil rights record, basically spreading propaganda among black voters.
But that’s not Bernie Sanders in the photo. It is Bruce Rappaport.
www.washingtonpost.com
People use the word "steal" to mean a variety of things. It's not surprising that non-US residents wouldn't see this, but the super delegates all glomming onto Clinton before the race started, going against what the people of their states said, the media ignoring and dismissing Bernie as long as they could, etc, etc... all adds up to not an active conspiracy, but all of their interests aligning in such a way they they inadvertently coordinated everything they could to shut him out.
One big one about the primary was who could participate, the DNC and their supporters here went on at length about how keeping the primary pure was somehow better than inviting people in. They fought against the idea at every turn and Hillary's weakness outside of loyal dem insiders came back to bite them.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 13 2016 08:26 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:12 LegalLord wrote:On November 13 2016 08:05 Nyxisto wrote:
DNC shenanigans aside The Dems actually had some pretty good policy focused debates and Clinton won the primaries quite convincingly by popular vote. Sure some newspapers like the Wapo took a sledgehammer to Bernie but there was still a popular vote gap of 4 million or ~12%. Unlike with the general election, in primaries the issue of exposure asymmetry plays a much larger role. No one has the problem of not knowing who Clinton or Trump are but plenty of people would have not voted for Sanders because they didn't know who he was or what he stands for. In that light he was sabotaged for long enough that his momentum could be blunted. If all the primaries came three months later, he would have had a very real chance of winning. Similarly, plenty of good candidates get like 0% votes not because people chose someone else over them, but just because they didn't have enough exposure for people to care. The endorsement of other politicians and this "DNC shenanigans" stuff plays a large role in that. Sure, but Bernie also was essentially a newcomer in the Democratic party. The US system is very permeable because of the direct vote but if you're not running against 16 other people like Trump did I have a really hard time believing that the "she stole the primaries" narrative is justified. If there's two candidates, one is centrist one is more radical, one is a party member for decades the other isn't I don't think it's surprising that the cards are stacked against you. I also don't think there's necessarily something wrong with it, it's just how it is. If the Bernie movement would have started three or four years ago I think they would have had bigger chances of winning. Trump already had a tea party base to build on. The Republicans were unstable for a much longer time.
You could say that of course the DNC conspired to help the candidate who was in their system for longer - but for Sanders voters, that's not a valid reason. The party rules quite clearly prohibit the leadership from playing favorites, it is ridiculous at this point to assert that the party leadership did not play favorites, and the Bernie Sanders voters are rightly displeased about being conspired against.
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The real thing that should keep you up at night is the advent of self driving cars and how it kills trucking in america. That won't just drive the largest employee group into extinction but all the industries that support truck drivers across america. Gas stations havn't made much money on the gas in a long while and what money they do make comes from people coming in and buying things in the stores. Diners will die out by the thousands as they lose traffic. these jobs never paid enough to retire on reasonably and you'll have people who have no other marketable skills and will be too old to transision into anything else.
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On November 13 2016 08:38 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:25 On_Slaught wrote:On November 13 2016 08:09 hunts wrote:On November 13 2016 07:59 Blisse wrote:https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-classWhat So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
-snip-
Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC, and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century. That (combined with other factors) led to social programs targeting them. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from Macy’s. My sister-in-law was livid.
-snip-
Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
The best advice I’ve seen so far for Democrats is the recommendation that hipsters move to Iowa. Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling a wave of despair deaths in the form of the opioid epidemic.
Vast rural areas are withering away, leaving trails of pain. When did you hear any American politician talk about that? Never.
-snip-
Found an opinion piece that I really enjoyed. so those people want high paying jobs that don't require any degree or knowledge or intelligence. Do they not realize those jobs will never exist again? No matter what they are promised, no one will ever pay $20 an hour for someone to stand at a line and work in a factory, when we can just have those jobs be automated and only have to pay for the machinery and energy. Pretty much this. The vast majority of jobs that were lost are not coming back. They are either jobs that Americans refuse to do, are obsolete, or are jobs replaced by the microchip not Mexico. This is why the platform of bringing jobs back is one that Trump is almost bound to fail on which will piss off a large majority of the people that voted for him. This will be especially true for people thinking that coal is coming back or those car factories in places like Detroit. You say "the jobs are not coming back" and that may be true - but what happens next? The answers do exist, but there's not a single one that doesn't involve some obscenely expensive infrastructure expansions across the entire nation, and some very painful and not very pleasant coercive measures that force companies inward towards those forgotten "inner cities" to build new businesses. Earlier I gave an example of Soviet/Russian development and how it took painful sanctions to get businesses and legislators to start to consider how they would take internal expansion seriously and what needs to be done to clear the way for that. This is far from the only historical precedent for sanctions forcing a nation to develop its own industry - the US had the same issue 200 years ago with the French-British conflicts and its decision to sanction both of them. Solutions exist but they basically go against the tide of every economic force that would exist in a vacuum. Politically this can be a truly unpalatable exercise that turns into a no-win scenario.
What happens next? Perhaps those people can stop being entitled and learn that they are no better than the urban people that are also skilless and uneducated, and go work fast food or retail. The people living in urban areas that don't have useful skills or degrees don't magically get to be middle class, they have to work fast food and retail and other bad jobs where they barely get by. Why should those rural people who are skilless and uneducated be considered special and be helped in ways that the urban people aren't?
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On November 13 2016 08:42 Sermokala wrote:
The real thing that should keep you up at night is the advent of self driving cars and how it kills trucking in america. That won't just drive the largest employee group into extinction but all the industries that support truck drivers across america. Gas stations havn't made much money on the gas in a long while and what money they do make comes from people coming in and buying things in the stores. Diners will die out by the thousands as they lose traffic. these jobs never paid enough to retire on reasonably and you'll have people who have no other marketable skills and will be too old to transision into anything else.
So what do you suggest? Go full luddite vs. self driving cars?
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On November 13 2016 08:15 TanGeng wrote:Nice article! Since we do live in more interesting times, i'm doing bit of reading on the class warfare and also some of the more salient points of the trump platform. One of these facets is the ACA(ObamaCare) repeal. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-will-trump-do-to-obamacare/Looking at it, the individual mandates and the funding of Medicare/Medicaid are some of the most unpopular parts of the ObamaCare. People love "free stuff" until it comes time to pay for it. The individual mandate seems like one such facet of the ACA. If Trump simply attacks the unpopular paying part of ACA, the service will crumble under its own weight as the low risk population (young) flee and the remaining high risk population will find the service too pricey to be affordable. If there are any related analysis, please do shared.
I would just throw out there that "median household income" in the piece is actually median family income, median household income is lower. And both are worthless. Median individual income is about 30,000 (and it's lower now that it was in 2008)
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On November 13 2016 08:47 mahrgell wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:42 Sermokala wrote:
The real thing that should keep you up at night is the advent of self driving cars and how it kills trucking in america. That won't just drive the largest employee group into extinction but all the industries that support truck drivers across america. Gas stations havn't made much money on the gas in a long while and what money they do make comes from people coming in and buying things in the stores. Diners will die out by the thousands as they lose traffic. these jobs never paid enough to retire on reasonably and you'll have people who have no other marketable skills and will be too old to transision into anything else. So what do you suggest? Go full luddite vs. self driving cars?
Well the ultimate solution is most likely basic income. The trouble is we don't hit automation everywhere at the same time and it's still way too early for basic income, so we're gonna have some really wonky solutions in the meantime.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 13 2016 08:44 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:38 LegalLord wrote:On November 13 2016 08:25 On_Slaught wrote:On November 13 2016 08:09 hunts wrote:On November 13 2016 07:59 Blisse wrote:https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-classWhat So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
-snip-
Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC, and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century. That (combined with other factors) led to social programs targeting them. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from Macy’s. My sister-in-law was livid.
-snip-
Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
The best advice I’ve seen so far for Democrats is the recommendation that hipsters move to Iowa. Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling a wave of despair deaths in the form of the opioid epidemic.
Vast rural areas are withering away, leaving trails of pain. When did you hear any American politician talk about that? Never.
-snip-
Found an opinion piece that I really enjoyed. so those people want high paying jobs that don't require any degree or knowledge or intelligence. Do they not realize those jobs will never exist again? No matter what they are promised, no one will ever pay $20 an hour for someone to stand at a line and work in a factory, when we can just have those jobs be automated and only have to pay for the machinery and energy. Pretty much this. The vast majority of jobs that were lost are not coming back. They are either jobs that Americans refuse to do, are obsolete, or are jobs replaced by the microchip not Mexico. This is why the platform of bringing jobs back is one that Trump is almost bound to fail on which will piss off a large majority of the people that voted for him. This will be especially true for people thinking that coal is coming back or those car factories in places like Detroit. You say "the jobs are not coming back" and that may be true - but what happens next? The answers do exist, but there's not a single one that doesn't involve some obscenely expensive infrastructure expansions across the entire nation, and some very painful and not very pleasant coercive measures that force companies inward towards those forgotten "inner cities" to build new businesses. Earlier I gave an example of Soviet/Russian development and how it took painful sanctions to get businesses and legislators to start to consider how they would take internal expansion seriously and what needs to be done to clear the way for that. This is far from the only historical precedent for sanctions forcing a nation to develop its own industry - the US had the same issue 200 years ago with the French-British conflicts and its decision to sanction both of them. Solutions exist but they basically go against the tide of every economic force that would exist in a vacuum. Politically this can be a truly unpalatable exercise that turns into a no-win scenario. What happens next? Perhaps those people can stop being entitled and learn that they are no better than the urban people that are also skilless and uneducated, and go work fast food or retail. The people living in urban areas that don't have useful skills or degrees don't magically get to be middle class, they have to work fast food and retail and other bad jobs where they barely get by. Why should those rural people who are skilless and uneducated be considered special and be helped in ways that the urban people aren't?
Well, you're not "not getting it" any worse than Hillary Clinton and her economic team, I'll give you that. People are not particularly inclined to just accept that minimum wage is all they can hope for within their home area. And it doesn't have to be true either, depending on how policies are implemented.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 13 2016 08:50 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:47 mahrgell wrote:On November 13 2016 08:42 Sermokala wrote:
The real thing that should keep you up at night is the advent of self driving cars and how it kills trucking in america. That won't just drive the largest employee group into extinction but all the industries that support truck drivers across america. Gas stations havn't made much money on the gas in a long while and what money they do make comes from people coming in and buying things in the stores. Diners will die out by the thousands as they lose traffic. these jobs never paid enough to retire on reasonably and you'll have people who have no other marketable skills and will be too old to transision into anything else. So what do you suggest? Go full luddite vs. self driving cars? Well the ultimate solution is most likely basic income. The trouble is we don't hit automation everywhere at the same time and it's still way too early for basic income, so we're gonna have some really wonky solutions in the meantime.
Well, we almost always get back to this "basic income" discussion. The real problem is when people are worried about more than just subsistence, but about having a real living wage. That's two very different groups and basic income can't possibly cater to the latter; it would probably make things worse for them in fact.
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On November 13 2016 08:51 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:44 hunts wrote:On November 13 2016 08:38 LegalLord wrote:On November 13 2016 08:25 On_Slaught wrote:On November 13 2016 08:09 hunts wrote:On November 13 2016 07:59 Blisse wrote:https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-classWhat So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
-snip-
Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC, and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century. That (combined with other factors) led to social programs targeting them. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from Macy’s. My sister-in-law was livid.
-snip-
Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
The best advice I’ve seen so far for Democrats is the recommendation that hipsters move to Iowa. Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling a wave of despair deaths in the form of the opioid epidemic.
Vast rural areas are withering away, leaving trails of pain. When did you hear any American politician talk about that? Never.
-snip-
Found an opinion piece that I really enjoyed. so those people want high paying jobs that don't require any degree or knowledge or intelligence. Do they not realize those jobs will never exist again? No matter what they are promised, no one will ever pay $20 an hour for someone to stand at a line and work in a factory, when we can just have those jobs be automated and only have to pay for the machinery and energy. Pretty much this. The vast majority of jobs that were lost are not coming back. They are either jobs that Americans refuse to do, are obsolete, or are jobs replaced by the microchip not Mexico. This is why the platform of bringing jobs back is one that Trump is almost bound to fail on which will piss off a large majority of the people that voted for him. This will be especially true for people thinking that coal is coming back or those car factories in places like Detroit. You say "the jobs are not coming back" and that may be true - but what happens next? The answers do exist, but there's not a single one that doesn't involve some obscenely expensive infrastructure expansions across the entire nation, and some very painful and not very pleasant coercive measures that force companies inward towards those forgotten "inner cities" to build new businesses. Earlier I gave an example of Soviet/Russian development and how it took painful sanctions to get businesses and legislators to start to consider how they would take internal expansion seriously and what needs to be done to clear the way for that. This is far from the only historical precedent for sanctions forcing a nation to develop its own industry - the US had the same issue 200 years ago with the French-British conflicts and its decision to sanction both of them. Solutions exist but they basically go against the tide of every economic force that would exist in a vacuum. Politically this can be a truly unpalatable exercise that turns into a no-win scenario. What happens next? Perhaps those people can stop being entitled and learn that they are no better than the urban people that are also skilless and uneducated, and go work fast food or retail. The people living in urban areas that don't have useful skills or degrees don't magically get to be middle class, they have to work fast food and retail and other bad jobs where they barely get by. Why should those rural people who are skilless and uneducated be considered special and be helped in ways that the urban people aren't? Well, you're not "not getting it" any worse than Hillary Clinton and her economic team, I'll give you that. People are not particularly inclined to just accept that minimum wage is all they can hope for within their home area. And it doesn't have to be true either, depending on how policies are implemented.
For what it's worth minimum wage increases outperformed the crap out of Hillary here, I imagine in other states too.
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On November 13 2016 08:44 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2016 08:38 LegalLord wrote:On November 13 2016 08:25 On_Slaught wrote:On November 13 2016 08:09 hunts wrote:On November 13 2016 07:59 Blisse wrote:https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-classWhat So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
-snip-
Understand That Working Class Means Middle Class, Not Poor
The terminology here can be confusing. When progressives talk about the working class, typically they mean the poor. But the poor, in the bottom 30% of American families, are very different from Americans who are literally in the middle: the middle 50% of families whose median income was $64,000 in 2008. That is the true “middle class,” and they call themselves either “middle class” or “working class.”
“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.
Understand Working-Class Resentment of the Poor
Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC, and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century. That (combined with other factors) led to social programs targeting them. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from Macy’s. My sister-in-law was livid.
-snip-
Understand How Class Divisions Have Translated into Geography
The best advice I’ve seen so far for Democrats is the recommendation that hipsters move to Iowa. Class conflict now closely tracks the urban-rural divide. In the huge red plains between the thin blue coasts, shockingly high numbers of working-class men are unemployed or on disability, fueling a wave of despair deaths in the form of the opioid epidemic.
Vast rural areas are withering away, leaving trails of pain. When did you hear any American politician talk about that? Never.
-snip-
Found an opinion piece that I really enjoyed. so those people want high paying jobs that don't require any degree or knowledge or intelligence. Do they not realize those jobs will never exist again? No matter what they are promised, no one will ever pay $20 an hour for someone to stand at a line and work in a factory, when we can just have those jobs be automated and only have to pay for the machinery and energy. Pretty much this. The vast majority of jobs that were lost are not coming back. They are either jobs that Americans refuse to do, are obsolete, or are jobs replaced by the microchip not Mexico. This is why the platform of bringing jobs back is one that Trump is almost bound to fail on which will piss off a large majority of the people that voted for him. This will be especially true for people thinking that coal is coming back or those car factories in places like Detroit. You say "the jobs are not coming back" and that may be true - but what happens next? The answers do exist, but there's not a single one that doesn't involve some obscenely expensive infrastructure expansions across the entire nation, and some very painful and not very pleasant coercive measures that force companies inward towards those forgotten "inner cities" to build new businesses. Earlier I gave an example of Soviet/Russian development and how it took painful sanctions to get businesses and legislators to start to consider how they would take internal expansion seriously and what needs to be done to clear the way for that. This is far from the only historical precedent for sanctions forcing a nation to develop its own industry - the US had the same issue 200 years ago with the French-British conflicts and its decision to sanction both of them. Solutions exist but they basically go against the tide of every economic force that would exist in a vacuum. Politically this can be a truly unpalatable exercise that turns into a no-win scenario. What happens next? Perhaps those people can stop being entitled and learn that they are no better than the urban people that are also skilless and uneducated, and go work fast food or retail. The people living in urban areas that don't have useful skills or degrees don't magically get to be middle class, they have to work fast food and retail and other bad jobs where they barely get by. Why should those rural people who are skilless and uneducated be considered special and be helped in ways that the urban people aren't?
Its not about them wanting to be middle class for nothing. Unemployment is much higher in rural area's and for many people there are simply no jobs.
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