However the inability of the left to champion the cause of the working class is really disappointing. How did the right become the champion of the rural working classes. Something went badly wrong there.
It's pretty simple really... since the 90's the Democrats were lobbied and co-opted by transnational corporations to outsource all the blue collar jobs overseas, then promote the domestic white collar work life as the only the lifestyle left in America for anyone, anywhere. It was all highbrow and condescending. They figured that this is what all Americans want and need -- it's obvious they want to model American work life after Japan. Disregarding the fact that 80% of Americans are not cut out for a desk job just to sit behind a computer all day. They really just want to work with their hands and actually get something accomplished every day. They want their work life to have meaning, purpose, and lasting legacy.
Just go to college, earn your degree, and you'll be just fine they said. Get a white collar career and earn a great salary they said. Get married, buy a nice house, put your kids through college they said. Retire wealthy, they said.
Yeah, well that's all fine and good while the American economy is going strong and consumerism is rampant (70% of GDP!).... until a financial crisis comes, and then they start outsourcing all the
white collar jobs that are left in America as well. That is actually happening right now... in China, white collar jobs are booming for the exact same work that the former American desk jockeys used to do before they got downsized (translation: were too expensive to just go to meetings, do Powerpoints and push Excel spreadsheets around all day) and at a fraction of the cost.
First they gutted the lower middle class (blue collar jobs). Then they gutting the middle- middle class. Now they are gutting the upper middle class (white collar desk jobs). Soon in America there will be nothing left but a few wealthy elites at the top of all the multinational corporations (i.e., Amazon, Google, Apple, etc.), and everyone else working for them but getting paid peanuts (relative to local cost of living, insurance, long term debts, etc.) and barely scraping by.
The Democrats solution to this monster of a problem they created is apparently more govt debt, more corp debt, more handouts, more free services, and perhaps even Universal Basic Income. Socialized by more taxes on the middle class and the poor to pay for it all. It's preposterously stupid and naive to think that this will solve things in the short or long term. It's an attempt to bandaid over the problems instead of solving them. It's a snake eating its own tail.
This is a pretty serious problem and I am concerned about it.
I am have some small involvement with a project that will put about 300 downtown white collar workers out of work by turning their day jobs into a series of automated workflows. The components that can’t be done by computer will be done by workers in a low cost center in a regional city. It won’t be offshored because the quality of the work product would be too low.
From there it’s a race between developing world workers and the computers as to who will get their standards of quality high enough to subsequently replace the local workers. But the computers are going to win. You can see this with Foxconn dumping Chinese laborers for robots.
Automation is going to kill third world workers jobs even harder than it kills domestic jobs because, generally speaking, education standards are still lower on average in the developing world than in the West. (Their best are as good as our best but that’s an aside).
The Democrats are right in that anyone without a decent education and the ability to be highly agile in their role is fucked. I don’t know what the Republican solution is - locking up Hispanic children is a distraction. Trade wars are a distraction, the 300 jobs that area going have nothing to do with China. And that’s just one smallish company. The low cost Chinese workers can’t speak English so they are useless for white collar outsourcing.
So everyone can whinge about the cost of education, but if your population isn’t educated, it’s not going to be competitive and it’s going to drag down your economy.
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