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Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

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Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#151

Post by kamaal »

MichaelGG wrote: post #72
posguy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For plumbers, electricians and a few other trades you can become a journeyman apprentice in the US, and after a few years you can earn high 5 digits to low 6 digits with healthcare usually. That being said, its a mature industry and not highly regarded in the US as it is a "blue collar" job. Stigmatizing & devaluing an honest days work is ridiculous to me, but that is what our society has done to these jobs.

So is it just the stigma that prevents people from getting 100K a year? I mean if it's as easy as it sounds in your comment, there should be loads of people signing up. And I'm guessing you don't end up with 80K+ in student loans?

>>So is it just the stigma that prevents people from getting 100K a year?

There are a plenty of things that play into decisions like these:

1. 100K/year doesn't necessarily mean you get some fixed income every month. Not everyone enjoys that kind of a lifestyle.

2. Feeling of doing a lesser intellectually involving work.

3. Perennial threat of facing impending dilution in wages, as you are working in a area where people have a lower barrier to entry.

4. Other social respect problems. You likely won't get as much attention in your circles as some one is who working at Google.

Many other things...

By and large you will still be better off with a job that pays you a fixed income every month.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#152

Post by scarface74 »

posguy wrote: post #16
cryptarch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe learning a craft could work for him? Woodworking, metalworking, glass-blowing, programming? An apprenticeship might just be right up his alley, but I'm not sure how available that is in the US.

For plumbers, electricians and a few other trades you can become a journeyman apprentice in the US, and after a few years you can earn high 5 digits to low 6 digits with healthcare usually. That being said, its a mature industry and not highly regarded in the US as it is a "blue collar" job. Stigmatizing & devaluing an honest days work is ridiculous to me, but that is what our society has done to these jobs.

Im from the outside looking in, but I never understood why a lot of parents with kids with only average or below average academic skills don't think of encouraging their kids into getting a trade like plumbing, electrician, car repair etc. they don't "waste" time learning subjects that they see as irrelevant and everything they learn is directly related to their future career. I don't see a time where there isn't a need for those trades.

The reason I say I'm on the outside looking in is because doing any job that requires the ability to use both hands was never an option for me.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#153

Post by zeteo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #137
zeteo wrote: post #104

> Johnson started using opioids in high school after breaking his collarbone, first in football and again while wrestling [... T]hings slipped out of control after he graduated and found that his skills — art and cooking, but not academics — meant little in the workforce. > At one point [... he] got a full-time job making wood pallets. [...] “It’s a stupid job. It doesn’t matter if you’re high to work it” It's hard n…

Skills in sports, arts and cooking are highly marketable and the evidence of this abundant, just switch on your TV. These are also highly competitive injuries in which a great deal of strategy is needed to succeed because the economics are brutal and the media is dedicated to presenting (almost) only the upsides in order to attract an ongoing supply of cheap labor that can be exploited for short-term profit. I resent…

Yes, and winning the lottery is highly marketable too, isn't it? I didn't say working in sports, arts or cooking was a stupid job. The stupid job is what you get if you can't make any money using the skills you've developed.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#154

Post by antisthenes »

breatheoften wrote: post #110
thesagan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within capitalism itself, some economists also argue that wealth concentration tends to suppress investment opportunities, because there aren't as many "moneyed eyes" on economic events worthy of capital and management; investment gets tunnel vision. I don't have any links on-hand but there's plenty of material out there (from reputable sources, and not-so-reputable ones) with a quick Google search. https://www.googl…

It seems like capitalism really needs something like a wealth tax -- ideally with the rate tied to the change in concentration of wealth over the whole society, so during periods of time when capital is concentrating, the wealth tax goes up vs epochs when it does not... Interestingly, I was reading about the idea of a wealth tax and came across this depressing nugget ...: > In 1999, Donald Trump proposed for the Unit…

Land value tax.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#155

Post by magic_beans »

dkhenry wrote: post #28

The tolerance for abject racism in the media these days is appalling. This article's contents have nothing to do with race, and more to do with economic status. This is the flip side of a media that has espoused the ideals of identity politics, they can't even see past someone's racial grouping to identify a problem facing all Americans ( and most likely other nations too in our globalized economy ). Bloomberg should…

Do you know what racism is? Because I'm not seeing any in this article. Just because an article makes mention of the hardships of some white people doesn't make the article racism. This article is specifically about how WHITE Americans, who traditionally could become extremely successful in life without college degrees, are now finding that is no longer the case.

That's not racism. That's journalism.

Racism would be if the article made fun of white people, or derided them.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#156

Post by posguy »

dorgo wrote: post #103
MichaelGG wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is it just the stigma that prevents people from getting 100K a year? I mean if it's as easy as it sounds in your comment, there should be loads of people signing up. And I'm guessing you don't end up with 80K+ in student loans?

As a programmer in Germany I don't even get half of that. Where can I sign?

Move to the US or get a job working on a project remotely for a US based company. Programmers in major US cities can earn $100k a year easily with no experience and just a degree.

That being said, people I know in Turkey were wholly unwilling to go to the US to work, they'd rather wait 2 or 3 years for their company to send them to work in Europe due to the political climate and laws in the US. That was under Obama tho, I'd be surprised if it hadn't degraded since then.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#157

Post by anigbrowl »

kalmari wrote: post #58
analyst74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting thing I noticed after moving to America, is that race is such a big deal here that many issues have to be labeled by race, even if they apply universally. Canadian medias on the other hand, seem to be much less interested in playing the race card.

its very strange to. i never saw it as a child nor expeirienced it but when i got older in america every one seems to be about race and other things that can differentiate in one way or another.

Possibly because many people have looked at the social narratives that they grew up with and concluded that they did not accurately reflect their experience of the world.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#158

Post by magic_beans »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #84
dkhenry wrote: post #28

The tolerance for abject racism in the media these days is appalling. This article's contents have nothing to do with race, and more to do with economic status. This is the flip side of a media that has espoused the ideals of identity politics, they can't even see past someone's racial grouping to identify a problem facing all Americans ( and most likely other nations too in our globalized economy ). Bloomberg should…

I think that life has always been like this for many blacks. Whites - even working-class whites - used to be more immune to this kind of despair. What's different is that the lack of economic opportunity is starting to destroy whites as well. (Yes, it always was there to some degree, but the intensity is new.) Now, we as a society should have cared when it was happening to blacks. But it is a significant change that…

I'm black, and a small part of me is enraged when I read these kinds of articles. This kind of sh*t has been happening in the Black community for GENERATIONS. No one cares until it's white people though.

That said, maybe once people see that this sort of despair is beginning to affect white people, they will gain more empathy for all the black people suffering the same way.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#159

Post by gramstrong »

okreallywtf wrote: post #122
gramstrong wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educate them with all of the free time created from automation, then put them back in to the work force.

Educate them with what money? That requires redistribution of wealth because these people will not leave the workforce with the means to retrain and reeducate themselves. How many scientist and engineers can any future workforce support? There will be a limit to how many "production" jobs there can be. By this I mean manufacturing, farming, infrastructure etc. This still leaves many creative endevours that can be pro…

I guarantee you that the majority of Americans are immediately on board with free education once they realize the alternative is a lifetime of welfare.

As far as how many scientists and engineers we need? Virtually infinite if you're creative enough. There are plenty of problems left to solve that we haven't even started. The best motivator for finding and solving those problems? Money.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#160

Post by okreallywtf »

marcosdumay wrote: post #95
heavyheavy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my perspective, it IS racist that American cares so much about rehabilitation and empathy for the white drug problem while the black drug issue was dealt with with violence and tearing apart famalies. Is it wrong to want white drug users to go to jail just like black ones were?

You tell me. It is wrong to make things worse for everybody just because when it was less worse for a powerful group it was ignored?

The issue is this problem never went away. Minorities are still being punished disproportionately for drug use [1]. I don't think that we should let spite dictate our reaction to the opioid crisis but it indicates maybe its time to stop pretending that the drug war was a necessary evil, especially given we might be about to double-down on it (and most likely continuing to disproportionately convict minorities) [2].

[1] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/141027_iachr... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-sessions-vows-to-ramp-up...

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