Okay, time to refine my argument, hone my question, focus, focus, focus. Yeah, I’m concerned about the wide and widening wealth disparity in the USA but more so because I am a member of the working class and since the mid to late 70’s, according to most economists, wages have barely budged. Despite the fact that more of us now graduate from high school, more of us attend and graduate from college, more of are actually working more hours than our fellow working class citizens worked in the 1970’s, our productivity is the envy of the nations of the developed world and that the GDP has continued to rise, year after year since the 1970’s …..wages have remained virtually flat.
In that same period, the wages of CEO’s has skyrocketed and the amount of wealth garnered by the .01% has reached astronomical heights, all from the labor of our better educated, better skilled, harder working and more productive working class.
So, Ms. or Mr. political candidate running for office, given what I have just laid out, what are your ideas and strategies that you think will end this near fifty year slump and jump start wage growth for the American working class. And by working class I refer to all Americans who start out with close to nothing and though the sweat of their own brow, not the dividends of an inherited fortune, depend on their labor to live a sustainable, independent, and proud life. I am referring to the second shift warehouse workers who pick and ship the medical supplies that arrive at medical office the next morning, the clerks at the office that inventory the packages, the nurse who uses the supplies and the doctor who checks the patient…..and the people who work at the coffee shop where all the aforementioned pick up a cup of coffee and a donut on their way to work. I am asking for all of them. All of them. What are your ideas and strategies that you think will end this near fifty year slump and jump start wage growth for the all the members of the American working class?
Cut immigration
“In California, for example, tougher border enforcement has raised farm wages to $16 / hour, up perhaps $5/ hour over earlier times.” http://bit.ly/2DyJz5L
Interesting suggestion and it leads into the fallacy that immigrants do the jobs that the the American working class refuses to do. The whole truth is that immigrants do the jobs that the American working class refuses to do for the piss poor wages that the ownership class is willing to offer. .
I have always said that there is NO job that an temporary alien worker does that I, as a US citizen will not do. I will just demand a wage based on the “free market principles of supply and demand”….something that the ownership class is not fond of when it it not in their favor.
This comment is incoherent. You say you demand a wage based on the “free market principles of supply and demand,” but you also suggest that the wages for undesirable jobs are “too low.”
Wages are low because the employers are hiring laborers who do not have the legal right to sell their labor in this country and for more reasons than one, have no leverage with their employers, so they take what they can get. The people who enter this nation outside the legal channels are providing “black market” labor. If we were to give these same people rights (something I fully support), their wages would increase and their working conditions would improve.
Or the jobs would be outsourced or automated.
Much rather raise and enforce the minimum wage, and give immunity to those who may be undocumented who rat out employers for not paying what is legally required.
More xenophobia. More breitbart rubbish (hidden behind a bit.ly url).
More hate.
But see recent LA Times article “Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don’t want the job” (http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/)
Invest in education so that workers have the skills needed to do jobs that are in demand. It is a fool’s errand to complain that employers aren’t willing to pay more than they are for low-skilled jobs given that we are in a global marketplace. It is likely that in the future, and maybe even today, there are workers whose labor doesn’t command a living wage. The minimum wage can help solve this problem for jobs that cannot be outsourced. But a better answer is probably some variant of guaranteed minimum income financed by progressive taxation.
I guess you did not read my original post….
Read it. Disagreed.
Tell me John, does your wife work?
Wages may be flat since the mid-70’s but the size of the workforce, since that time, has more than doubled. (and, indeed, the population of the US — 216M in 1975 — grew by nearly 50% over the ’75 number to 320M in 2015) That’s more than twice as many people getting paid, 2015, than did in the mid-70’s. More people getting (roughly) the same amount means it’s a much much bigger pie.
But here’s the thing: in 1974 most workers were male and most work-eligible men, worked. The converse is true for women: Most women did not work. So the vast majority of the new additions to the workforce between 1975 and 2015 were likely women.
And women are very much paid less then men on average.
So if all workers (women and men) average to a ‘flat wage’ over time, but a large subset of those workers (women) were (are) consistently paid depressed wages then the other major subset (males) must have received an increase in wages. That’s the way the math works.
So, the first thing to do, to see a rise in wages is to make sure women and men get paid the same for the same work. Wages will not, then, average out to ‘flat’. Look at that. You were fighting for womens equal pay all the time and you didn’t even know it… Bet that came as a shock.
This will not address the issue of the .01% getting more than ‘their fair share,’ but that’s not the question you asked.
Yes.
OK. Time for a callback…
So… John… You downrated my comment and replied with one word. That’s ‘refining your argument to a fare-the-well, don’t you think?
Good luck with that.
My wife works. Yes, in general, women take less dangerous jobs, take more time off to spend with family, are less likely to take jobs where the income is not guaranteed, and in exchange, make a little less money and live longer lives. Personally, I would much rather live longer in exchange for making more money, but that’s me.
I have no idea what any of the aforementioned has to do with the fact that for several decades, wages for all working class citizens, regardless of age, gender, religion, location, etc has remained flat even though their labor has added dramatically to the wealth of the .01%, a small group pf individuals and families with no particular advantage in education or job skills, which is the point of this discussion.
That was very much true in 1975. It is simply not at all true in 2018. Things have changed and that is exactly my point: which change has had a profound effect upon the circumstances. Here and now, we have female cops, female combat pilots, female welders. female construction workers, female firefighters…
The notion that women do different work from men, in the here and now, is. Simply. Not. True. (In fact, it is against the law to hire as if this were true…)
I’m trying to tell you what that has to do with these facts. I’m answering your question. You’re refusing to accept my answer.
If the workforce doubled, but the economy did not grow, workers would have seen lower wages.
If the workforce had not doubled and the economy grew the wages would have increased.
But the workforce did double, and the economy did grow. If overall wages over that time stagnated where one portion of that doubling is actually and actively paid depressed wages the other portion of that doubling actually saw an increase in wages. In very broad strokes, that’s the math. That’s what it means to draw an average.
No. That’s the point of your anger. But you asked –specifically asked a clear question — about wage growth. I’m telling you about wage growth. If women had been paid the same as men we would not be talking about ‘wage stagnation.’ We’d be talking about a modest, but measurable, wage increase over that time.
Nor is this intended to let the ‘.01%’ off the hook or to say equitable wages solves all problems. It does not. But it does start to refine your argument, which is where you started…
I’m not interested at this point in a discussion about wage/work discrepancy between segments of the working class. I’m not interested in pitting one segment against the other.
I’m only interested in why all the wealth gains created by the working class have, for the most part, gone to a small class of people who do not have more education or superior job skills.
That means you are only interested in arguing an incorrect conclusion you have arrived at upon false premises. You are unlikely to reap anything from that whirlwind beyond more frustration and confusion
Nope. It means I’m not interested your tangents and misleading statements.
The discussion is limited to why wages for working class individuals have remained stagnant despite the economic gains produced by their labor. We know there was money made and it’s not in the wallets of the working class. We find it in the wallets of the .01%. Why is this so?
In 2000, the average white male earned 94 cents for every dollar an Asian man earned. In 2014, the average white male earned only 83 cents for every $1 earned by Asian men when comparing men of equal education and job experience.
While interesting, this too has nothing to do with the subject I wish to discuss.
This is where you are wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That you persist in this is why you are confused and frustrated. You simply will not be able to continue this line of argument and get the conclusions you fervently wish to … it is a thing impossible to do.
The size of the working population has doubled while wages stagnated means there are more people eating similar sized slices of a much larger pie.
THIS MEANS: the total amount of money going to workers wages has increased and this increase in money going to wages found its way to the wallet of the people who have formed the increase in the size of the working population.
Furthermore, if the increase in money had been distributed equitably (fair pay) wages would not have been stagnant, but rising…
During the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, average real income per family declined dramatically by 17.4%
Per family, not per person.
In 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3% but the gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery.
Again, per family.
Between 1993 and 2012, the top 1 percent saw their incomes grow 86.1 percent, while the bottom 99 percent of families saw just 6.6 percent growth.
In 1928, the top 1% of families received 23.9% of all pretax income, while the bottom 90% received 50.7%.
By 1944 the top 1%’s share was down to 11.3%, while the bottom 90% were receiving 67.5%, levels that would remain more or less constant for the next three decades.
But starting in the mid- to late 1970s, the uppermost tier’s income share began rising dramatically, while that of the bottom 90% started to fall.
In America, the wealthiest 160,000 families own as much wealth as the poorest 145 million families, and that wealth is about 10 times as unequal as income.
I’m done here.
The very definition of ‘recession’ Duh.
Yes. Yes, you are.
Not all of the wealth gains were the result of working class people slaving away creating more items in a more efficient way. When I started working one function took 7 people to create a pallet of finished product from start to finish. By the time I left 2 people could create the same amount, due to auto weighing and auto packaging equipment. The investment in the equipment was significant but it was worth it. Shareholders, upper management, engineering made the call and it worked. Working class people had no say and risked nothing, more wealth was created without them.
If by “working class” we mean hourly workers on a manufacturing line, then little if any of the wealth gains are the result of those workers working either harder or more efficiently.
Any efficiency gains were from robotics, improved tooling, improved QA equipment, and so on. I suggest that the average person who punches a time-card today works approximately as hard as his or her counterpart in did 1970.
As scott12mass correctly observes, the wealth gains of the past five decades have no relationship to how hard anybody works — then or now.
By working class I mean anyone, anyone, whose life is primarily supported by their labor, no matter what that labor is. They do not depend on rents. The rent seekers are the wealthy class and they own both parties; all of the Republican Party and a controlling percentage of the Democratic Party..
Who owns the auto packing equipment?
Shareholders. Some workers utilized their 401ks, which invested in the company and so in one sense you could say they were also the reason some lost their own job. (All were transferred to other positions actually)
In the context of what I have been saying, I can only read your statement here as an attempt to mean ” 7 less 5 equals 14. ”
You don’t actually say what happened, implying only that automating cost the workers something, though again you don’t say what that is… Did management let go the 5 employees you implied were made superfluous? Or did they keep all seven and start to make 3 1/2 pallets in the time they used to make one?
Or, perhaps they hired an additional 7 employees (doubling their workforce to 14) and started cranking out 7 pallets in the same time they used to make only one… that is to say, what would a businessman say if I promised that by increasing the workforce by a factor 2… and after adding a one-time (albeit substantial) deploy of automation… said businessman would be getting a 7 times increase in productivity?
Sorry didn’t mean to reply to you at all. Replying to John’s
“I’m only interested in why all the wealth gains created by the working class have, for the most part, gone to a small class of people who do not have more education or superior job skills.”
As I said
(All were transferred to other positions actually)
The job was automated, 5 people transferred, no increase in total capacity needed. Shareholders benefited. Now the machines are idle since the product is made in Mexico, shareholders are benefiting more. But that is a very different thread or post.
Sorry for the confusion.
Um, I’m pretty sure the wealthier do have on the whole better educations. Certainly there is plenty of evidence that the better educated you are the more income you are likely to make over the course of a lifetime.
It’s nice to talk about these things in isolation, but wish lists don’t substitute for work. We can talk “proposals” ’till the cows home home, but it won’t do squat to address income inequality without outreach and enforcement mechanisms.
Hence below are (partial)) political operating preconditions, not policies:
Recreate liberal institutions as social structures. One thing about the Democratic Party as a political institution is its absence as a part of everyday civic life.
For example, the “Never heard of” numbers for 2018 Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial candidates, as of March 25, per the WBUR/MassInc poll are:
Setti Warren – 70%
Bob Massie – 62%
Jay Gonzalez: – 75%
One of the more regrettable aspects of contemporary Democratic politics (especially at the campaign level) is the almost total disconnect from the grassroots. The same applies to organized progressives.
As a corollary, there is an over dependence upon the politics of spectacle, at the expense of the more boring – but more permanent – work of organizing.
Realize that politics isn’t religion; there is no messiah. One need only look at the 2016 Vermont governor’s race, where Republican Phil Scot won over Democrat Sue Minter by a nine point margin. This was despite the fact that Minter was the anointed candidate of Bill McKibben and Vermont’s organized environmental movement, in the greenest state in the Union (and Bernie Sanders’ home state).
Recognize that all politics are local. There is no way that a Massachusetts progressive could (or should) get grassroots support in Alabama or Western Pennsylvania. What Doug Jones and Conor Lamb had in common was their neighbor-to-neighbor-door-to-door field structure.
Rediscover case studies and and the lost art of political intelligence. One of the (many) failures of Clinton in 2016 was her campaign’s over dependence on computer-generated circular arguments, at the expense of accurate data. The frustrating aspect of this was that (in the rust belt at least) everybody knew what was going on except the Clinton operatives.
Work to revive and support organized labor from the grassroots up. Most progressive “labor” organizers tend to be middle class outsiders, who operate in the context of internal organized elitism, which really alienates working class voters (irrespective of ethnicity).
Respect people where the rubber meets the road. Fact check policy proposals with those people directly affected by same. Ask for their advice.
How do we make the party part of everyday life without reviving the worst stereotypes of ward machines? I would be much more interested in canvassing if I thought people would welcome and expect being approached rather than seeing it as a nuisance. I’m not at all surprised with the unfamiliarity with the candidates. I’m not sure I would be familiar either if I weren’t an activist. There might as well not be an election this year for all the media report.
Actually I’d prefer a return to the old ward and precinct organizations, because (whatever their faults) those organizations were more responsive to electorates – in particular working class voters.
When I was growing up, the old-style Washington County (PA) Democratic Party picnics provided cross-racial, cross ethnic, and cross-class social venues. Offtimes the mere existence of those venues worked as an informal means of reconciling interests.
Ditto the old Democratic Ward Committee picnics I went to when I first arrived in Boston.
Operationally the old organizations had more knowledge about voters (down to the household) than the computerized lists that candidates use today. Down in the weeds, a local with a check list, and a pocket full of dimes, and a volunteer car pool was an effective part of GOTV.
In many ways there was more of a win-win environment for candidates and voters alike. Voters knew that they had communication mechanisms to affect policy in real time (because the precinct captain was judged by his/her ability to pass constituent service requests up the food chain) Conversely electeds were judged by their real-time responsiveness to those requests.
In elections, because everybody knew who did and did not vote (and more often than not, who the voter supported) this both increased turnout and diminished personalizing politics, because there was a default position of agreeing to disagree about political choices in a shared civic environment.
Arguably as important was that canvassers in elections were neighbors. As such, their presence was welcome. Too often modern campaign organizations are geographically, culturally, and civically separate from the communities in which they operate (or phone bank), hence those organizations alienate many voters.
The level of activity varies greatly, but some local committees do have community events. Most campaigns I know do utilize locals for voter contact when they can, but I wouldn’t discount campaign invasions entirely. Plus quite frankly it strikes me as awfully parochial of voters to feel alienated by people who don’t live nearby, especially since there are so many shared concerns.
This is one of the reasons that I suggested attention to case studies. In 2004, the Dean Campaign (most famously in Iowa) was done in by his own out-of-state volunteers; hence “orange hatting” as a term of art.
To Dean’s credit, he learned from that error, and his Fifty State strategy contributed to Congressional victories in 2006, and was a major factor in the 2008 Obama win.
Alas, Obama dismantled his embedded ground game in 2009, with predictable results in 2010. The 2012 Presidential race had more to do with Republicans overplaying their hand on racial issues (particularly regarding overt voter suppression) than Obama’s field operations. That said, Obama had some embedded working class field in 2012, Clinton had no field, insofar as potential supporters in those communities were concerned.
The same thing happened in the 2014 Massachusetts governor’s race; and for what it’s worth is the reason why (in the face of little name recognition for Democratic candidates, as cited above), Charlie Baker’s positives are so high. Simply put, Despite policy differences between a majority of the electorate and Charlie Baker, Democratic credibility is so low that Baker wins by default.
It’s not parochial;; it’s rational that an institutional culture of equal-opportunity bigotry and operational political malpractice would alienate voters.
In the current political climate abstract policy briefs are trumped (pun intended) by credibility. The messenger is far more important than the message. And Democrats seldom recruit and sustain credible messengers.
The “shared concerns” felt by voters don’t always overlap with the premises of activists; and said activists seldom fact-check their premises. Nor do activists consider how their own institutional flaws contribute to Republican victories.
Not a case study, exactly, but this illustrates my point. From today’s Washington Post (empathis added):
The average outsider canvassers simply don’t have the connections, local knowledge, organic empathy, or people skills to establish rapport with voters. Thus they often do more harm than good.
That gets exponentially worse with out-of-district phone bankers.
Please expand on equal opportunity bigotry (which sounds like an oxymoron) and operational political malpractice. Also, by shared concerns is it wrong to assume that just about everyone wants a good secure job, safe streets, quality education for their kids (and I’m sure a few others)? At least in NH Clinton had plenty of field, many from within the communities being served. Also, with regard to your example in your follow-up is it seriously realistic for someone to have an in-depth conversation with everyone, especially those in the middle of making dinner and chasing kids? Frankly I’m having a hard time thinking of a less efficient use of someone’s time.
I don’t mean to sound oppositional, and I think I hear the aspects of the “old ward and precinct organizations” that you want us to revive. I don’t doubt that the benefits and advantages you describe were real and valuable.
I fear you understate the many disadvantages that came along with that system.
Here in Somerville, many of my neighbors are old-timers who remember the period you speak of. Several of my local officials know me. I’m becoming more active in town affairs and local campaigns.
I hear unanimous and passionate contempt for the “old ward and precinct organizations” you describe. Elected officials past and present who lived through those times describe them as nightmares of corruption, venality, and actual physical threats and harm. I’ve not heard ANYONE here echo your desire to return to those dark times.
Your commentary is completely silent about the dark side of that intimate knowledge that you paint so approvingly. The old organizations did, indeed, know who did and did not vote and who did and did not support the favored candidates of the day. That knowledge was frequently used to bully, harass, and shame people, families, jobs, and businesses.
Stories of explicit bribery and corruption in pre-Red Line Somerville are rampant and frequently retold. I have no reason to doubt their accuracy.
I share your enthusiasm for re-inventing our approach to campaigning. I do not share your enthusiasm for returning to what I see as the dark and corrupt days of old-fashioned ward and precinct organizations.
Ward and precinct organizing and permanent grassroots political engagement. does not always equate to machine corruption,
I am acutely aware of the dark side of machine politics. That said, I’m equally aware that consistent and comprehensive grassroots activism from the ground up can address the issue.
A case in point (specific to Somerville) is the activism of Gene Brune and his allies. Back in the late Seventies my then-girlfriend lived in Somerville, and I’m not totally unacquainted with politics there back in the bad old days.
Other examples are the grassroots campaigns that elected reform Democrats like Father Robert Drinan back in the Seventies. In these instances such grassroots engagements overthrew machines.
Comprehensive organized grassroots politics are not ipso facto corrupt; and unaccountable policies controlled by elites have their own problems, and are equally subject to corruption.
Insofar as my personal experiences are concerned, old-style politics back home were much rougher that anything that might have occurred in Massachusetts. It took house-to-house organizing across the county to clean up the mess;; and such organizing is what I proposed.
I don’t think anyone is objecting to grassroots campaigns. In fact that is the only type of campaign I’ve been part of in recent years.
Gene Brune (whom I’ve met on several occasions and am very impressed by) was, as the history is being told to me, the first of the “modern” reformers in Somerville. Perhaps I’m thinking of older “machine” politics than you intend — it was those who came before him that I have in mind.
I certainly don’t mean to suggest that grassroots politics are corrupt. It was your explicit reference to “old ward and precinct organizations” that I reacted to (perhaps overly so).
BTW, I went to school in Pittsburgh (1970-1974) and lived there again in 1982 (in Glenshaw). I share your perception of the rough-and-tumble politics of the region, at least while I was there.
I’m fully on-board with grassroots and bottom-up organizing. I think that modern tools help, rather than replace, that.
Universal Basic Income https://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6003359/basic-income-negative-income-tax-questions-explain
I’ve written positively about universal basic income here on several occasions, it is a uniquely innovative policy tool we should definitely pilot and learn from. That said, the politics of it are going to be incredibly difficult, and will likely backfire and produce a backlash. The Greenberg study of Obama voters who defected to Trump in Michigan were already angry they had to take food stamps under Obama and could not find meaningful work to sustain their families.
I’ve come around to a federal jobs guarantee in lieu of basic income. Basically it amounts to the same thing, government redistributing wealth to people lacking in economic opportunities due to trade and automation, but it makes the recipients feel productive that they are contributing to the broader society. Particularly if we put them to work rebuilding America-something Trump successfully campaigned on that is one of his biggest broken promises.
I prefer an Alaska-style “dividend” to government-sponsored make-work (I’m using hyperbole for each for the sake of clarity).
In my view, the premise that a person needs to feel “productive” to feel good about life is itself one of the more pernicious devils of our current culture. There are a host of ways that men, women, boys, and girls contribute to broader society that have nothing whatsoever to do with “working” or with being “productive”.
It is no accident that an enormous portion of those who subscribe to this worldview also believe that most valuable aspect of a woman is her vagina — the objects that it can accept and the babies that it emits. The patriarchal view of women as sex objects fits hand-and-glove with the world view that each of us must spend our day doing “work” in order to feel “productive”.
Is a young woman who has a striking and unique way of rearranging found objects into temporary public installations “productive”? A great many of our great literary and artistic figures spent large portions of their lives destitute in no small part because they were unable to hold down a steady job. Were they “productive”?
Would we have the amazing corpus of Wolfgang Mozart if he had spent his life doing guaranteed government jobs?
There are a great many things needing to be done in America. Some of them require plain old-fashioned time-card-punching hourly work. Many of them require something very different from that.
I envision an America where the basic needs of day-to-day life are, for the great majority of Americans, simply there and available. We do not yet have to pay for the air we breathe. The indigenous population that we replaced thought the very premise of owning land was hysterically absurd (to their great detriment). What if time itself — our most precious resource — were made available to each and every American?
What if we lived in a society where people spent their days doing what they wanted to do, rather than what they had to do in order to meet the necessities of life?
We have enough wealth to leave behind the wage-slave mentality that does so much damage to our culture, our families, and ourselves. I think it’s time to embrace and celebrate a future where EVERY American shares in the enormous wealth we create.
I want my grandchildren to spend their lives doing what they want, rather than whatever the society around them deems “productive” at the time.
The Libertarian party is ahead of the curve on the idea of Universal Basic Income, more receptive than Dems or Republicans. Gary might have brought up the idea if he was allowed to be in the debates. Libertarians advocated for gay marriage before Dems.
I’m very open to the idea but would limit it to citizens only.
Citizens only or give money to anyone who can sneak in?
We are not talking a “gift”. We are instead talking about wealth that is created by everyone who lives here. All of us participate in creating the wealth, and all of us are entitled to share that wealth.
I resent the xenophobia of language like “anyone who can sneak in”. It sounds like you’ve spent too much time listening to Fox and Breitbart.
Not talking about a “gift” either. Like a social security check everyone qualifies for at say 21 years of age.
Simple question, only for citizens or anyone here.
Scott inadvertedly shows the fraught politics of a basic income to begin with. A lot of folks who we assume would vote for us and benefit from it actually resent the implication they need it since they think they work while the “illegals” or “blacks” take a check for “doing nothing”, even if they are on SSI or SSD themselves the benefits they “earned” by paying into them. Even if SSD is essentially a basic income in many depressed parts of the country where 50-60% of able bodied workers are on it.
Then it quickly gets into debates about deserving and undeserving working class, etc. a universal jobs program is an easier sell since everyone buys into the idea that people should earn their check. It amounts to the same end-an income floor for all Americans, but the means are more politically palatable and could also bring down the costs of all the projects we have to do around the country.
Everyone.
This is why we have to be careful with UBI. When Piketty talks about it, it’s a means of transferring wealth from the elite to the middle class. When folks like Charles Murray or Milton Friedman talk about it, it’s a way of reducing government assistance to mere check cutting, and placing ceilings on assistance. For a social Democrat, it’s a $30,000 income floor. For a libertarian, it’s a $10,000 safety net ceiling. So we have to be very careful when we call it a bipartisan idea or claim both conservatives and liberals like it. They mean very different things by the concept.
I certainly want these things too. I have nothing against UBI personally, I just push back against the Silicon Valley narrative that it’s the panacea to solve populism. A lot of the populist angst is also rooted in breadwinners being displaced and towns losing their young professionals to cities while the kids who stay home do drugs.
I highly recommend Glass House by progressive journalist Brian Alexander. It shows how big finance (not trade or automation) wiped out his hometowns main employer and took with it the upper middle class managers and middle class workers who formed a harmonious civic culture that has been totally eroded.
Making a more generous and universal dole will not restore that civic culture and these people are not lacking in free time, they are lacking in opportunity. Both economic and cultural. Lacking in connection to the globalized world we all inhabit. The number one thing these voters said they voted for is jobs. It isn’t more welfare that they want, its work.
Granted I see the point that UBI can help people build businesses, form more stable families, and pursue activities they might otherwise be too risk averse to perform. It would make becoming a teacher a lot easier, a job that is harder to automate and more fulfilling than punching a clock at a factory or a downtown skyscraper. It would make community service easier. So I see the upsides. I think a both/and approach might also be a smart idea. Targeted income support and make work programs to help these left behind communities catch up with the rest of us. Once a sufficient amount of social and cultural capital is restored, then maybe the faucet to UBI could be turned on.
Don’t we already have what is essentially a pilot program for this in place? Namely, lottery winners? It would be interesting to study people who won enough to essentially replace their income, to see what happened to them, what they did in place of work, etc.
I don’t think UBI is a good thing – not because I’m opposed to redistribution, but because I think that people need a purpose in life, and that purpose is very often fulfilled via a job. I think a better approach would be to start by reducing the number of on-the-job hours from 40 to 35, to provide a lot more government jobs doing things that both crucially need to be done (like repairing infrastructure) and things that only marginally need to be done (maybe hiring people to create, coach, and manage youth sports teams).
This just in: Teachers Make Less on Average Today Than They Did in 1989
Is the Democratic Leadership telling teachers that they need more education and better job skills to remedy this problem? It’s what the rest of us are told.
Knock it off, will you!?
Knock what off? Working class wages have been flat for decades – disgruntled voters are leaving the Democrats and looking for a solution……and were so desperate in 2016 that they helped elect Trump. And you want me to knock it off?
I’m just getting started.
Your constant misleading suggestions that Dems think that education and training are panaceas to the exclusion of helping people where they are now. You sound like a broken record and a bit of a concern troll.
It’s not misleading. It’s historical fact. It’s the ideology of the neoliberal wing of the party that is still in control.
Here’s an interesting and informative article that does not mention education but does illustrate how both parties have embraced “Free Markets” and not government as the solution to the woes of the working class.
Democrats’ vision that our broken economy simply needs to correct for market failures has its limits.
by James Kwak
This morning on WGBH, Jim Braude and Margery Eagan (two favorites of mine) interviewed DNC chair Tom Perez. Tom said that Democrats need to campaign on “Better Jobs” to win elections.
Some Trump clone called Geoff Diehl is looking to run as a Republican against Senator Elizabeth Warren (another favorite of mine if not THE favorite) has on his website that he will get government off the backs of small business so they can create more jobs.
Massachusetts unemployment is at 3.5%, which means that 96.5% of us already HAVE a job!
What are these new jobs? And if we all take them, who is going to do the jobs that we were doing?
Are both parties tone deaf to wage growth?
It would seem so,
Well, Perez did say better jobs, which presumably means getting jobs to pay more at least as part of the equation.