hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
An electrician? Yes- even low level electricians need to understand algebra to work unsupervised, making an effective IQ floor. A plumber? Depends on what you do within it. There's plenty of plumbers making a good living in, not really a sinecure because they actually work, but doing things your average handyman or construction worker would be able to do for much cheaper if it wasn't due to regulatory capture.
Moreover, I'm pretty sure that semi-skilled blue collar workers make more in America than anywhere in the EU; it's possible that genuinely low skilled workers make less, but I wouldn't count on it. The part of the American working class that's really struggling is mostly the residents of small towns in the former industrial heartland, and 'small towns in the former industrial heartland suck' isn't unique to the US.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
If your goal is specifically to increase blue collar compensation as a percent of corporate revenue, there's not really another way to do it.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
I'm pretty sure the American working class gets a better deal than the German one. American plumbers and factory workers probably both earn more and have a higher employment rate compared to their German equivalent.
Instead this is about a few left behind areas. This isn't an issue with blank slate liberalism; Western Pennsylvania didn't have blacks to compete for jobs anyways. It declined anyways. The rust belt is one of the whitest parts of the country.
I want to stop and ask- are German small towns doing that much better? It seems like everyone on earth has an issue with small towns pouring into the metropole due to lower wages. Literally. Gen. Franco couldn't stop it. Chairman Mao couldn't stop it. Donald Trump won't be able to stop it.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
Wasn't there a Paul Ryan proposal along those lines? He's always been a bit of a nerd so I wouldn't be surprised if it was based on actual economic theory.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
Quebec has a language police which goes around and makes sure that the French letters on storefronts and signs are bigger than the English.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
You would have to rejigger the entire education system.
Bring back handwriting lessons in lower grades, to start with.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Where did I say ‘we should take Freddie deBoer as gospel’?
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
IIRC Russian conscripts are brutally hazed but go up the social ladder and receive a pay raise if they choose a voluntary enlistment.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
It seems worth noting that avoiding the specific problem of 'the economy produces more college graduates than it knows what to do with' is not something anyone has figured out.
In America the existence of a certificate in following basic directions, using the English language, being able to not make problems when working in groups, etc is the function of a bachelor's in psychology, but what else do you suggest fill that role? I will grant that a bachelor's in psychology or communications or English is a very expensive way to grant this certificate. But America isn't cost conscious about anything else in general- or indeed, any other portion of the education system in particular- and there does have to be some way to tell employers 'look I have no experience but I'm literate, understand white collar norms enough not to violate them too bad, can follow directions, communicate, and won't make problems when working in a group'. My first AAQC was about this. And at least for now the economy needs workers who can follow directions, communicate, read and write, use the English language effectively, and can keep drama to a minimum. Maybe chatgpt will change that, but the majority of people whose employment depends on having a 'literate and not a retard' certificate are women so the government will protect their jobs even if it's pointless and stupid- the end goal of western governance is to maximize female LFPR at all costs, after all. The existence of a complicated, expensive, and baroque process to prove you aren't a retard and can read is an inevitability and other countries are even worse. In East Asia there basically aren't any non-fuckups who don't go to college.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Trump doesn’t believe in global warming.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Because actual criminals are not a threat to them. Activists are.
Did you think politicians were dispassionately interested in the welfare of the common person?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Not really, no. It gets rid of people they hate. That's why they did it.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
The Biden admin showed every sign of wanting to keep it indefinitely; it was struck down by the supreme court in late August 2021.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I continue to believe that tariffs are, while a bad thing, a highly survivable thing for firms that deserve to survive. High taxes are not a death knell for business(even as they aren't a good thing).
Putting tariffs on garments, strawberries, etc is dumb. But it's just a tax. It might cause a recession- I suspect more by bursting bubbles already in the economy than by the actual deadweight loss. It won't cause the great depression 2.0.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Well yes, child labor in impoverished countries is the reason oranges are cheap. But an autarkic America wouldn’t need to give up oranges or pineapples or sugar or rubber. Possibly tequila or rooibos or saffron, but those haven’t been successfully grown in other low-labor cost environmentally identical locales.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
And the USSR did exactly that- it turned perfectly good raw materials into products no one wanted and paid for it with the money from exporting oil.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Iirc greenhouse grown products are generally more efficient than conventional agriculture; third world labor costs are the main reason for importing so many tropical fruits.
Coffee and cocoa are specifically difficult to grow so they might be an exception.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
You know that average apartment rent is higher than something approximating half of apartment rents?
In any case, many construction workers do not live in apartments. They might rent a room in a house($600/mo in my metro) if not living with a partner(and if they are, two incomes makes rent much more affordable). They might live in a trailer park(generally cheaper than apartments). They might already own a house.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
While illegals make less than native workers doing the same jobs would, their wages aren’t illegally low and most don’t complain about the treatment from their bosses.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
The masses were, however, docile. People didn’t vote for extremists. Only a radical fringe opposed ongoing foreign policy commitments. There was more domestic terrorism than today, but normies didn’t have anything to do with that.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I don't think they realise how badly informed some voters are.
I’m reminded of the NYT study of low information voters during the 2024 campaign. Specifically, there was one woman they interviewed who liked Biden but was angry that he’d banned abortion and so planned to vote Trump. This woman lived in a blue state and so could have gotten all the abortions she wanted.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Hanania has a narrative he’s selling and every headlines-dominating story has to fit into that narrative.
That doesn’t make the narrative wrong. But it means that example #9000 from Hanania isn’t something we should just trust.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Kinda. Yglesias has a pitch that centrist democrats have a reasonable economic policy(which is not true, but if you throw out the moonshot lunacy they’ll never get done is close enough) but aren’t able to rein in the weirdos and nutjobs in their coalition.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Yeah, Biden wanted/tried to do lots of things that would have been as bad as if not worse than this. He just couldn’t.
Yes, Motteizean rationalist technocrats can devise a better system, but there doesn't seem to be a better system anywhere in the world. A high school diploma doesn't serve as the entrypoint to white collar work in any society that I know of(although there might be countries where some alternative to a college degree is widely accepted- can you list any? I think the US and Germany accepting a master license in the trades as equivalent to a bachelor's degree is the closest thing that exists- and that's more of a government convention than a real thing).
This isn't like low-carbon electrical grids where someone has gone and done it. It's the closest thing to an iron law of industrialized societies(that is, those needing a lot of scribes- people who can read, write, follow directions in not-retarded ways, act in all the ways white collar workers are expected to, etc but who don't have specific skills) that education of minors gets inflated in pointless rigor that gets coupled with grade inflation because society thinks it's just that important. Basically all non-fuckups in East Asian countries are shoved into a college admissions rat race, the percentage of German high school students in Gymnasia as opposed to Hauptschulen keeps rising, etc. This isn't just a democracy thing; China isn't one, and countries with vastly different political cultures keep doing it. And the scribal class is mostly women so prevailing ideology insists it needs to be feted and expanded, but that isn't the sole factor- Iran is not a very feminist place but it does the same thing with pushing more education than really needed.
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