Maggie's Farm

News Junkie, I think this is one of the most important conversations we can have and the hardest.. I know that I have a lot of ambivalence and there are no simple sound bite answers.
I'm going to take awhile to digest this article, I am so irked. It drips with disdain and condescension for all those little people, you know those mindless, easily lead people that attend Little League games, participate as volunteers to collect litter from the highway, those people who want to be assured that there will be jobs in the future for their children; jobs that will provide an opportunity to contribute and be productive. This writer demonstrates such a failure in imagination and empathy. You have to conclude that they have never interacted with anyone outside of the privilege bubble. Surely, an intellectual should be able to offer more than monolithic stereotypes.

Dems just sell out to the Globalists and Financialists for the Money, but the "Grown Up Republicans" of the article, I think are TRUE believers. They are convinced that the regular every day folks have to be racists or stupid for not buying into Globalism(incl open borders) and Automation as a win, win for everyone, everywhere all the time, though they might acknowledge growing pains. They think you are just being obdurate for not going along. They believe that the “rising tide lift all boats” is a law and not a cliché. I’m not saying there isn’t a kernel of truth in this, and certainly historically it usually has paid off.
They don't understand why you don't trust them that you are better off with a dead end temp job or service job, because you have a undreamed of level of material goods. I am not saying there aren't good jobs being created but they aren't sufficient to make up for all the lost middle management or manufacturing jobs. Lots of the jobs that are being required don't necessarily require a high school education, let alone a college education.

There is a huge asymmetry in knowledge and power between the regular folks and the Mandarin class, which translates into income. I don’t think this is driven solely by government but is in part the consequence of REAL ECONOMIC GAME CHANGERS. The information revolution (meta data), instant global communication, the explosion of digital automation, and logistics are all very disruptive. We are all still trying to come to grips with the impact on those mid level jobs that used to be the mainstay of the middle class, and not just the American middle class. The Dems will coalesce around their cargo cult but honestly I haven’t heard a Republican even attempt to discuss it let alone acknowledge this until Trump

Here is a debate from 1994. Who do you think got it right?
Sorry for the length.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwmOkaKh3-s

The Middle in America seems to be caught in a perfect Storm between globalism, automation, and instant global communication. To be clear, I hope we all realize that a static economy is a kind of death so we want to live in a dynamic economy, which means change. This change is part of the human condition and we have been adapting from the time of the first basket wavers and flint knappers. This is part of an ongoing journey. People had to adapt when the railroad tied America together into one enormous domestic market place, and when the interstate highway system lured corporations to the Sunbelt. There were winners and losers of course. Today, the same thing is happening writ large, but it doesn’t seem like most of us benefit. There are few well paid occupations that can’t be off shored, despite all the assurances.
So American consumers buy imported household and personal products. The countries exporting to the United States, in turn, have a trade surplus so that they can turn around and buy products from the Multinational Megacorps in the USA. OK, so far so good. Supposedly foreign buyers are buying agricultural products, energy, autos & aeronautics, entertainment, capital equipment. I understand this but what I don't see is how this benefits the regular everyday working people, except in an indirect, trickle down kind of way. These industries don’t create huge demands for labor for regular people, gifted creative people maybe , but not regular people. I can’t find the chart comparing the revenues for Google relative to the number of employees compared to General Motors. It is telling. Also check out Boeing. Boeing may suck up a lot of foreign trade dollars but if you look at Boeing’s supply chain, you will see why it doesn’t trickle down to the American working middle. Not faulting Boeing, just saying.
I apparently lack vision because I just don’t get how flea markets, beaders, and aroma therapy candle shops will make up for the jobs that generate “real grow then pie wealth”. Maybe we’re all going to stand around all day working for the government, giving each other flu shots. I just don’t see how dead end service jobs, stoop labor, or government jobs are going to make up for the significant revenues and support for infrastructure that would have been generated by the manufacturing sector.

"Boeing may suck up a lot of foreign trade dollars but if you look at Boeing’s supply chain, you will see why it doesn’t trickle down to the American working middle."

Messed this up, accidently deleted some of my point. Boeing employs a lot of Americans, of course, possibly over a million if you include the entire supply chain. It is not a great example of the decline in # of employees to revenues ratio. I was trying to point out that Boeing's supply chain is worldwide and the $30B in foreign sales doesn't just go to creating American jobs.