In 2016, a steel worker union official asked President Barack Obama at a June 1 town hall in Elkhart, Indiana, about job losses at a plant run by Carrier, an air conditioning manufacturer that recently announced plans to move jobs from Indiana to Mexico. He replied that some jobs “are just not going to come back,” while others are in flux or rebounding.
In 2021, President Joe Biden said ‘Does anybody think in the 21st century, with changes taking place in technology and across the board, than 12 years of education is enough to be able to live enough middle class life? I don’t think so,’.
As both presidents throw up their hands as if asked to defy the laws of gravity, neither is willing to admit that the reasons that plants move from Indiana to Mexico and 12 years of education will no longer support a middle class life is because we decided to make it so. We decide on trade policy. We decide on labor laws. It is our government, our laws, that facilitated the exodus of factories, resulted in the loss of bargaining power by labor, and allowed the .01% to accumulate fortunes that ancient kings and pharaohs would envy.
Income for the typical high school graduate dropped by almost 10 percent between the mid-1960s and the mid-2010s, according to Pew Research. Democrats would like us to believe this drop was caused by natural forces, a storm front, a polar vortex, perhaps the consequences of the Northern Lights.
“If you see a turtle sitting on a fencepost, he had help getting there” is one of President Bill Clinton’s favorite phrases. Yes, and we see plants move from Indiana to Mexico, when we see high school graduate incomes drop over 50 years, someone helped that all happen.
One thing I’ve learned in life is that to discover who is in control of any economy, from a small business to a nation, follow the money. In the USA, it’s painfully clear that the working class, even in the Democratic Party, has virtually no control of the economy. Even our Democratic presidents admit it when they call for defeat before even trying to help the working class and in a cowardly act, blame the workers for their plight – refusing to point a finger at the system, and those in control of the system, perhaps because many are big donors?
You sometimes seem to be fighting progress just as intensely as those who are pushing back against greater inclusion.
I think today if you see a turtle on a fence post it’s probably Mitch McConnell straddling said fence. 🙂
I was skeptical of Johntmay’s last post, but I think he’s making his case here. Does anyone actually have any evidence that two years of post secondary education is the key to a successful middle class life? Is it really so impossible to learn those skills before you leave high school? Education itself is changing so rapidly that the old formulas apply less and less.
I’m fine with having more years of education available, but I don’t believe that lack of education has much to do with the economic distress of working people. There is something dishonest in the way the Biden administration (and they are not the first) implies that there is. It gives the administration cover for its many broken promises, and for running a country where “nothing fundamentally is going to change.”
I don’t hear any Democrats asserting that “two years of post secondary education is the key to a successful middle class life”. The assertion is instead that the LACK of post secondary education is a major obstacle. Those are two very different statements.
The ante is needed to join a poker game. Paying the ante allows a person to participate — it does not assure or even promise that the person will win (most players lose).
Education is the ante needed to participate in the economy. The GOP has striven, for generations, to deny that ante to both blacks and to women.
I enthusiastically join many of the criticisms of our party. In particular, our party is too eager to protect the very wealthy and has been for generations. Our stance towards education accessibility is one of the things our party is doing right — fellow Democrats should not oppose it.
This criticism of sound Democratic Party policy is misguided and ultimate hurts blacks and women.
The Democratic party does not have to say so, they just have to act like it’s so, by quietly dropping the fight for minimum wage, single payer health etc.
The inadequacy of 12 years of schooling is conventional wisdom. Should it be? What constitutes education these days is pretty fluid these days.
You asked the following question:
The more relevant question is:
The answer to the second question is a resounding “yes”. It is conventional wisdom because it has been demonstrated time and again. The situation is especially bad for minorities and women who have no secondary education.
Should we fight harder for an increased minimum wage? Resoundingly, yes. Should we fight harder for single-payer government-sponsored health care? Even more resoundingly, yes. None of that means that we should stop fighting to improve access to post-secondary education.
The point is that being blocked from access to secondary education does serious harm. The Democratic Party strives to remove those barriers, and has for decades.
The Democratic Party should continue its fight to improve access to post-secondary education.