Or we could raise taxes on the rich and do the infrastructure rebuild that’s been needed for decades.
There’s a decade’s worth of blue collar pick and shovel work needed.
Not to mention working on saving the oceans, cleaning up all the PFAS, reducing the impact of global warming, all this stuff. There is an absolute shitload of work that needs to be done that needs a massive amount of effort and manpower. This idea “well how are we going to create jobs when AI can do everything and we have enough web marketers I guess” is looking at the working world through the entirely wrong lens.
Wait. A new deal you say? To get us out of our
great depressionstagflation?If only we knew how that turned out historically. 🤔
According to folks on the Right, the New Deal’s spending actually prolonged the Depression. It was only much vaster government spending for WW2 that ended the Depression.
Interesting article and you and another commenter already touched on the “Boo Hoo Poor Men” theme so I’ll skip that.
The part that struck me was that he only mentioned blue collar work as job that men can be proud of and not as another avenue for helping to fix the problem. I myself have a degree but moved to blue collar work a few years after college. It wasn’t a move I was thrilled to make but I found something that interests me and pursued it. I now make as much or more than many of my contemporaries with plenty of room for advancement because of my degree.
A few times I’ve mentioned this, I’ve had people comment on the fact that you ruin your body and health in some of those jobs. That’s only if you have a boss that doesn’t care about OSHA and the other regulatory bodies. I work around lead paint all day, every day and my blood lead levels have decreased over the last eight years. Proper training and a boss who wants to do things the right way and it’s less dangerous than getting behind the wheel of a car. If you work in the trades and feel unsafe or like you are being exposed to hazards regularly, then find a new company or start your own. Once you have to tools and the knowledge, it doesn’t take much to start doing work on your own.
Edited to add: my industry and many other blue collar industries are desperate for people.
They may be desperate for people, but how does your industry treat women? I was wanting to get into trade, but they all seem filled with sexist assholes, and good money and fun work or not, there’s only so much sexist bullshit I’m willing to put up with.
It’s depends on the company and location. You’re correct there’s a lot of sexist morons out there, they exist in every industry and trade work definitely has more of that than say, IT. But, larger companies, especially in metropolitan areas seem to be better working environment for women in trade work.
I work in a very niche trade, historic buildings specifically, and I’ve found this area of expertise to be very open to women. The first company I worked for was in WV and half the company was women, including my foreperson. I went to a trade school to learn how to do this and over half of my classmates were women. I live in Colorado currently and there was a story on NPR yesterday of an expo focused on getting women into trade work.
Obviously, this is anecdotal but from my experience and perspective, there’s never been a better time for women to get into trade work. I don’t think anyone should have to deal with the sexist assholes and as I mentioned in my original post, once someone has the knowledge and the tools, they can start their own thing. Either go into business for themselves or start a company and keep the misogynists out.
While the topic sounds serious, the author should really pay a bit of attention in being a bit less sexist… the while article is a “poor men” kind of deal, with little in depth discussion… he even writes that it’s natural (even for him) to assume care work being done by women…
Yeah. I kind of hesitated to post it for exactly that reason. It is not really exactly the take that I would have taken to any of what it is talking about. I do think some of the underlying facts are important and so I posted it anyway, but I do pretty much agree.
Specifically I think a lot more of what is happening is that “powerful” jobs are going away, and “underclass” jobs are becoming more common, and he’s interpreting that as “male” and “female” jobs respectively.
Yeah, a very superficial take. Even if we want to look at it from the perspective of male and female employment, there are so many topics that haven’t been breached. Then the whole discussion of the economic value that is being lost. It is a problem to replace a 100k job by a 50k job, but if the two salaries were equivalent would it still be a problem? Or is the problem that tech work also generate profits but care works doesn’t? So many ways to look at the matter without sexism making it “oh so sad, poor men”
Isn’t he specifically calling out the built-in prejudice of society there? I mean he is acknowledging his own uncoscious bias as well, and calls for a reset of gender norms. What’s the problem with that?
He is not calling it out. He is establishing it
This won’t end well if nothing is done.