re: #373 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

I read back in the late 70’s that it would have been cheaper and made more economic sense to shut down Detroit and re-train all the auto workers than to subsidize a group of dying companies

But that was not socially or politically feasible. America was based on the idea that you did not need a fancy education: you just went to work, learned a specific job, did it well, gained seniority and you could live well, own a house and car, and maybe even a boat or a vacation home, and even put your kids through college.

DT won the Midwest and Middle America on the empty promise of bringing those sorts of jobs back.

And as automation - and one day, AI - ramps up, more jobs are going to disappear. What’s the answer going to be? Some kind of neo-Luddite solution? The prohibition of technological innovation? Subsidizing obsolete industries?