181–190 of 265 posts
> Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing? Because when the shit comes to shove and the global economy takes a nosedive or your previous friendly third world manufactures give you the finger, having a "service industry" is worth nothing, but being able to produce the actual shit your businesses design and sell/export, matters. Of course for the US this might be less so, because they can always force, by di…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Which is easy for a coastal educated person to say, but to a line of family men who have not just eschewed education but actively resisted it, this is a tough pill to swallow. I don't think it's so much a cultural thing as the high intellectual capabilities required for high paying knowledge jobs. Coding, for example, is just too hard for a huge segment of the population, regardless of how much training they get. I…
TIL that the React ecosystem is a conspiracy against the poor.
This is a great article. The rage of the blue-collar masses is misplaced. It belongs with engineers, STEM people, operations research, Taylorist management. Globalism isn't the architect of their fate. We are. Want enough work to go around? Ban the last 100 years of agricultural development. That'll create all the jobs you could possibly want, real fast. Except then you'all find out that more work to go around is a w…
This is my favourite counter to millenials complaining about how booomers had jobs handed to them on a platter. "What, you want an unfulfilling factory job doing the same mundane thing day in, day out, probably on your feet, and probably without climate control? And if you're a woman, explicitly get paid less for it?" The boomers may have had a higher employment rate, but they weren't design consultants and business…
This is a great article. The rage of the blue-collar masses is misplaced. It belongs with engineers, STEM people, operations research, Taylorist management. Globalism isn't the architect of their fate. We are. Want enough work to go around? Ban the last 100 years of agricultural development. That'll create all the jobs you could possibly want, real fast. Except then you'all find out that more work to go around is a w…
This is my favourite counter to millenials complaining about how booomers had jobs handed to them on a platter. "What, you want an unfulfilling factory job doing the same mundane thing day in, day out, probably on your feet, and probably without climate control? And if you're a woman, explicitly get paid less for it?" The boomers may have had a higher employment rate, but they weren't design consultants and business…
And for a lot of people on the autistic spectrum, a factory production line type job might actually be somewhat enjoyable and well tailored for their strengths. Doesn't require any creativity, few communication skills are required, doing the same thing for long periods of time is rewarded...
Manufacturing jobs and service sector jobs are not mutually exclusive. Historical trends do not represent an evolving sophisticated economical stragety, but document economical needs met. The author suggests manufacturing jobs are irrelevant, but all jobs are relevant and necessary.
> Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing? Because when the shit comes to shove and the global economy takes a nosedive or your previous friendly third world manufactures give you the finger, having a "service industry" is worth nothing, but being able to produce the actual shit your businesses design and sell/export, matters. Of course for the US this might be less so, because they can always force, by di…
People are disconnected by a lack of jobs that they want to do, jobs that provide tangible value, and need to blame that on something. So generally go with immigration, because it's a problem they can (try) and do something about and it must be that the immigrants who took the jobs.
Truth is the country as a whole decided that they'd outsource those dirty manufacturing jobs to a lower class in another timezone. Without really considering what value they'd provide now that they don't actually make anything anymore.
The country goes into decline, no longer producing anything of value, trying to suck money out of the marketing, economic and other forms of lockin they put in place (many of which would be called "service industries). Slowly, the countries actually doing the manufacturing wake up to the fact that they don't actually need that stuff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then again, software is one of the few industries where you can do quite well without a formal degree or license. This makes it unusually open to the uncredentialed, if not the unskilled.
Define "unskilled". I would say that even if software developer does not have a degree he or she still needs to be quite smart. Now imagine typical blue collar worker having IQ below 100, who dropped from high school (as they often do) learning advanced technical concepts like network protocols, dozen of JS frameworks, not to mention higher order functions and macros. That's the issue with technical advancements: the…
The memory is that these old factory/manufacturing jobs were high paying (middle class), secure, and accessible to people of low intellect, minimal education, and limited social grace. The proposed replacements "caregivers, retail workers and customer-service representatives" are significantly lower wage and also require more "EQ" that the working man of the prior generation didn't need. The voters these politicians…
> actively resisted it Honest question. Is this a reality or a degrading stereotype?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my favourite counter to millenials complaining about how booomers had jobs handed to them on a platter. "What, you want an unfulfilling factory job doing the same mundane thing day in, day out, probably on your feet, and probably without climate control? And if you're a woman, explicitly get paid less for it?" The boomers may have had a higher employment rate, but they weren't design consultants and business…
I've done both blue-collar, shitty industrial jobs and white-collar cushy programming jobs. If they both paid the same, I'd be very tempted to take the blue-collar job. There's something very fulfilling about working with your hands and producing something tangible. As bad as turning wrenches or pumping a grease gun can be, days of endless meetings with obtuse stakeholders or perpetual yak-shaving aren't any better.
> Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing? Because when the shit comes to shove and the global economy takes a nosedive or your previous friendly third world manufactures give you the finger, having a "service industry" is worth nothing, but being able to produce the actual shit your businesses design and sell/export, matters. Of course for the US this might be less so, because they can always force, by di…
So those politicians speaking to old people in steel towns are misleading them and giving them false hope. Bringing manufacturing back isn't going to do much to reduce unemployment . That seems to be the point of the article.