How to Exist

This is not a new problem and does not lay at the feet of job seekers. Manufacturing trades are a few decades ahead of software development in this respect. Before off-shoring, being a tool and die maker was one of the most consistent paths to getting a really well-paying job. It took a long time to get into it: often a decade or more of on-the-job experience and only the best machinists qualified. But they’re crucial to most manufacturing, so most companies, even small ones, had a path to progressively bring new, inexperienced people into the trade, build their skills, and turn them into the people that companies needed. Then, off-shoring meant that they didn’t need as many tool and die guys as they used to have, so they mostly stopped taking apprentices. As time progressed, they had a seeming never-ending stream of experienced people to fill those dwindling roles, but now, there’s a problem: almost all of the people from the original system are retiring, and almost nobody’s been training apprentices, so the entire industry is at risk of losing that crucial manufacturing skill. Meanwhile, China has tens of thousands because 80s executives sent all of our knowledge over there in the 80s and 90s and they just kept progressing. As an aside, anybody who says “there will be new jobs,” as a response to the possibility of AI-driven job loss should visit the rust belt. There were new jobs— we as a society just didn’t care enough about the people we discarded to help them see the benefits of that.

Companies in the US right now, tech notwithstanding, largely see no commitment to helping maintain a labor pool, or help individual workers progress into more useful workers. They think it’s immoral to spend a dime on anything that isn’t going to contribute directly to this quarter’s bottom line.

> there are jobs like that

Yes I understand this. I’m a tradesman and I encounter all levels of blue collar workers far more frequently than just about anyone around here.

> they aren't considered worth taking when you can hold out longer for better ones

People don’t hold out on those jobs. I see people doing them all the time. They’re no different from uber or DoorDash. You just don’t see people doing those jobs as a career because they can’t provide you, let alone your family, with basic necessities.

Firstly, those jobs aren’t stable enough to bet your housing on, let alone with kids or whatever. Secondly, they never offer health insurance, which is an absolute must in the United States where your kid breaking their arm could put a low-wage family in the red for literally years. Let alone getting cancer or something.

> living standards have increased so much

Standards of living have not universally increased- the cost of convenience goods, electronics, entertainment, clothing, and other things have decreased. The cost of many necessities, such as housing, health care, and education, have all increased much more quickly. Go look for some visualizations that juxtapose the basic cost of living with wage growth since the 1970s— life, in general, was SO much cheaper then. It was SO MUCH EASIER for young people to get their adult lives started. Then look for a visualization that shows, for each year, what the inflation-adjusted purchasing power of the federal minimum wage was since the 70s. Blue Collar wage growth peaked in 1981.

> There are WAY more opportunities to benefit from that now than there were in the 70's.

To whom, how many jobs are there vs the population size, and how long does one basically need to be floated to get into it surely enough to make it a career? One of the biggest correlating factors among people who successfully founded businesses was having enough family support (money, connections) to float them through multiple failures and get a foothold. Even if there are more people for whom that’s true, that does not mean it’s a generally viable path. It requires starting on second base.

The amount of wealth concentrating in the higher echelons and the widening chasm between them and everyone else show how little those opportunities avail themselves to most people.

Life has gotten much better for the wealthy. Everyone else is hurting and cheap flat screen TVs don’t change that.

I thought it was an interesting discussion.

It’s not to say that listing to it will help you or someone else to change anything about it. But it’s a known observed phenomenon that some people don’t get what meditation is and don’t get why would you do it.