Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

Post by watwut » Thu, May 08, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

wormlord wrote: post #14

msandford wrote: post #8

I find this kind of article hilarious. "Numbers go up! You're not allowed to feel poor or think that there's a problem! Our number is bigger so you must be rich!" I saw this 10-20 years ago when economists were telling people that inflation is low despite their feelings about inflation. "Our math is correct and you ignorant folks should be grateful for how this economy is managed." Just because you can produce equati…

Yeah this completely ignores the fact that many people would rather work on making things with their hands that they can physically see, rather than pushing numbers around on a spreadsheet. This article ignores alienation, cost of living, social atomization, enshittification, the police state, and many other factors that contribute to everyone feeling like shit. The liberal intelligentsia need to learn that voters do…

Post by watwut » Thu, May 08, 2025, 2:02 PM UTC

wormlord wrote: post #18

wat10000 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That goes both ways, though. Just because you feel a certain way doesn't mean that's how it is. A lot of people's perceptions of economic performance are more connected to their opinion of the President than to any actual facts. How people feel matters, of course, but that doesn't mean that the numbers are wrong if they don't match. People's feelings about inflation are not ground truth about inflation, just ground t…

[flagged]

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, May 08, 2025, 2:04 PM UTC

msandford wrote: post #8

I find this kind of article hilarious. "Numbers go up! You're not allowed to feel poor or think that there's a problem! Our number is bigger so you must be rich!" I saw this 10-20 years ago when economists were telling people that inflation is low despite their feelings about inflation. "Our math is correct and you ignorant folks should be grateful for how this economy is managed." Just because you can produce equati…

Post by wormlord » Thu, May 08, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #21

wormlord wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this completely ignores the fact that many people would rather work on making things with their hands that they can physically see, rather than pushing numbers around on a spreadsheet. This article ignores alienation, cost of living, social atomization, enshittification, the police state, and many other factors that contribute to everyone feeling like shit. The liberal intelligentsia need to learn that voters do…

The people you talk about are consistently voting for more police state, for more social atomization and for higher cost of living. They see empathy, help to others and cooperation as negatives. Those are just facts. As for working with hands rather then pushing numbers in spreadsheet, most people do not want to work as workers in factories - that is based on surveys. That includes tradesmen.

Post by micromacrofoot » Thu, May 08, 2025, 2:09 PM UTC

hparadiz wrote: post #19

micromacrofoot wrote: post #7

and re-industrialization won't save it we can't possibly compete with (much) cheaper overseas labor, tariffs will do nothing but exclude the US from this cheap labor while other countries continue to benefit from it eventually more of it will be automated anyway, and areas that saw booms from cheap labor will face similar class crises there's also this idea that maybe our standard of living needs to regress some ("2…

I recently was looking at a 4 speaker switch on monoprice. It was $20 two months ago. Now it's $40. It occurred to me that the parts in this speaker switch amounted to be $2 of raw parts. The simplest of plastic pieces with basic copper wires and metal screws. Yet they were shipping it here and forcing American consumers to pay $20 in taxes instead of possibly claiming an almost $36 profit margin by paying $2 of taxe…