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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33986 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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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.

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