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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33985 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Lowering taxes at all is bad on its face since the government needs more taxes and less spending. It's worrying that neither side really cares about ballooning debt, since it will almost certainly have a far bigger impact on the lives of regular Americans than something like climate change ever will in our lifetimes.

Poor people have been doing pretty well recently, actually. The Gini coefficient has been flat or declining for the past several decades (in FRED's most recent data for 2021 it was lower than any year since 1992). Also, if you want greater incentives for work, bolster the EITC.

I don't buy the notion that blue collar work is uniquely awful. It might be tough on the body, but it also has a relatively lower barrier to entry, and some people outright prefer it. How does capitalism balance the upsides and downsides? With a little tool called "market wages". If blue collar work is so bad, why don't blue collar workers just sign up to get those supposedly worthless, trivial desk jobs? Your argument feels like the right-wing equivalent of "women are only paid 77 cents for every dollar a man earns".

I agree that most/all of these proposals seem unwise. We need to tax the poor more and cut spending harshly, particularly the insidious "refundable tax credits" that have really caught on lately.

That said, people mostly complain about "fake email jobs" that are in government, or are government facing. These jobs require credentials that are typically not actually market based but mandated or "mandated". So saying they exist in a market is kinda false.

I don't really think raising taxes on the poor exclusively is a great idea. While the poor have been doing alright recently, I'd say that's generally a good thing given the US's gini coefficient is generally higher than other OECD countries. Letting most parts of the Trump Tax Cuts expire would be a good start. Also, slashing all refundable tax credits seems unwise, given that the EITC qualifies as one according to my Google searches, and it's one of the best redistribution programs that exist. Economists across the ideological spectrum generally rate it pretty highly.

The credentials issue of jobs generally is certainly an issue, but for reasons of zero sum signaling competition rather than... the fact that people work at a desk.

It is a spending problem; not a taxing problem.

Spending more than you tax just hides the tax in inflation! Trump's tax cut just arbitrarily redistributes from the kind of workers who don't take overtime to the kind who do. This is silly. But it, like 'no taxes on tips', is a gimmick that appeals to voters in a way that 'i will lower your taxes by 2.73%' doesn't.

Progressives would say the opposite. Any realistic scenario getting the US back to fiscal prudence will involve both.

There's no realistic scenario for that. Americans would have to give up attempts at world hegemony and lower welfare while increasing taxation.

Either is politically impossible.

The US did it in the 90's so I see no reason why it'd be impossible.

Because US thought they had no competition. If you proposed lowering defense budgets now you'd be called a traitor selling out global freedom to the Chinese.

Progressives who don't admit that spending needs to be brought to at least stratospheric rather than deep-space levels are simply economically illiterate. Realistically it's more or less impossible to solve the entitlements issue without raising taxes(in the first place, eliminating the social security tax on contributions), and so we need to do both. But hard right budgets usually can balance out without tax increases, they're just pure fantasia politically.

I don't buy the notion that blue collar work is uniquely awful. It might be tough on the body, but it also has a relatively lower barrier to entry, and some people outright prefer it.

This is specifically a handout to skilled labor- lower skilled labor isn't allowed to work overtime, it's too expensive relative to the value they produce. And skilled labor is not uniquely awful but does not have a lower barrier to entry, although it mostly has a cheaper one(3 years of crap work on the construction side vs a four year degree). It might be socially disprefered but it's not the terrible deal some like to paint it as, just a different set of trade offs.

Remind me to post about the new "training" requirements dem states are imposing on blue collar workers that used to run on apprenticeship+ license testing. You can probably already imagine what they are and the motivations for them.

Very soon going into skilled labor will be as locked down as going to college.

It’s not just blue states…

I'd be very interested in that. I have an interest in the shipbuilding industry, which as far as I'm aware is currently having the devil's own time with staffing for the Trades, and is in three main locations: New England (Dem), Gulf Coast (Rep), and Norfolk (I don't know if Virginia qualifies as Dem or not).

They avoided it when possible, but managers at the McDonald’s where I worked in high school would still schedule me above forty hours when their options were limited. Bummer would find many other teenage workers away on vacation with their families, and not everyone was trained to work every position.

Also that 1.5X multiplier was amazing for me at the time, and I’d jump at any opportunity for it.

If blue collar work is so bad, why don't blue collar workers just sign up to get those supposedly worthless, trivial desk jobs?

Because they lack connections to centers of powers. Sinecures are not awarded to just anyone.

More specifically, credentialism makes it more difficult for people without rich parents to get fake email jobs.

This is in fact the systemic racism / white privilege argument, and I would have to agree - many whites, irrespective of actual ability or intellect, are awarded sinecures by their rich parents, or by others simply based on the color of their skin and (unjustifiably) presumed superiority to visible minorities.

If you are white and still pulling pints and polishing off bartops then you have squandered your privilege by acquiring credentials of no value whatsoever (if any at all) or are so utterly bereft of merit that not even your systemic advantages and headstart on life can save you.

That white people are being promoted based on the color of their skin and presumed superiority to minorities has been generally false for multiple decades now. Just the opposite is true. Obviously, some white people (and some, but fewer, minorities) do indeed receive sinecures from their rich parents. The vast majority do not.

While it's true that black people in American are much less privileged than whites on average, we have the technology to look past skin color. Sasha Obama is a million times more privileged than Eminem.

Your argument is gross and racist.

gross and racist

Not constructive, whether it’s genuine or parody.

The truth is that half the population is sub 100 IQ and many are well below that, and they can struggle with the basic verbal and spatial skills required in the majority of white collar jobs, even ‘fake email jobs’. Take an iconic fake email job like a product marketing manager at a FAANG, the reality of it still requires an above average intelligence even if they’re only working a few hours a day.

FAANG is like the Ivy League of the real world. They are going to get top employees.

But there are lots of fake email jobs that are not FAANG. Take, for example, the 10% of the private sector that works at nonprofits (up from approximately 0% in 1960). Many of them are quite stupid indeed. As time goes on, the average IQ of the college graduate continues to fall, and today is not much above the population-wide average. And, of course, stupid people struggle at blue collar professions at well.

I think it takes more intelligence to be a good HVAC repairman than it does to shuffle papers back and forth at a non-profit.

Take, for example, the 10% of the private sector that works at nonprofits (up from approximately 0% in 1960). Many of them are quite stupid indeed.

Most employees of non-profits are employed by large service-providing non-profits with the largest single group being universities and university hospital systems. I don't think that academics and healthcare workers are "quite stupid indeed". The annoying wowzer subset of nonprofits is a lot less than 10% of employees.

I think it takes more intelligence to be a good HVAC repairman than it does to shuffle papers back and forth at a non-profit.

This might be true(I have no idea how smart you have to be to do non-profit work), but you don't have to be a good HVAC repairman to make a living. You don't, in point of fact, have to be a good HVAC repairman to make near the top of compensation for HVAC techs- many 'techs' are more realistically sales guys who are paid ~$20/hr plus 10% commission on all equipment sold to the customer through leads they generate, and HVAC companies commonly charge 400%+ markup on new systems. Installers make $15-$20/hr and get hired right out of the probation office, so it's an extremely profitable racket all around.

The key to a residential AC guy making his boat payment is, counterintuitively, to not fix very many air conditioners.

Because they lack connections to centers of powers.

This strains credulity when juxtaposed with reality. I got a desk job with no connections, as did most of my friends + acquaintances in my graduating class.

credentialism makes it more difficult for people without rich parents to get fake email jobs.

I'm slightly more sympathetic to this argument, but still find it unconvincing. State schools aren't that expensive especially to genuinely poor individuals who can apply for all kinds of scholarships. There's also online options that are very cheap, e.g. I'm finishing up a masters in CS that only cost about $6K total, of which I paid around $1k

This strains credulity when juxtaposed with reality.

A better way of saying this would be simply "I disagree".

I've dug ditches and worked in finance. This isn't the issue. Credentialism isn't what is stopping diggers from working fake email jobs.

Credentialism isn't what is stopping diggers from working fake email jobs.

IMO "fake email jobs" is a bit of a Russell's conjugation: "I have an important role keeping [industry] moving, you work remote as a middle-manager, and that guy over there has a fake email job." Not to say that all such jobs are useful, but I'd bet there'd be a fair bit of disagreement about whether any specific role qualified. People often don't have good visibility into what other departments are doing, and I'd bet nobody considers their job this way, but absolutely does sneer at, say, the accounting department ("it's all just a spreadsheet anyway") or purchasing.

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