re: #35 Decatur Deb

Long read from Crooks and Liars, but it offers some explanation of the weird landscape we see around us:

Normalizing The Destruction of America’s Middle Class

crooksandliars.com

That’s an excellent analysis, and something I’ve been pondering more and more recently, having seen it among family, friends and acquaintances. And even when some industries start to recover, such as construction, the wages tend to be even lower and those skills even less valued, and relative to that, those public jobs which are required to educate the next generation and maintain infrastructure have seen the budget knives.

There is very little “industrialization” left in the US and the vaunted “information age” jobs are actually fewer in number than anticipated, and have become cheapened as technology has evolved. Mfg jobs which lead to the forming of the vast middle class have been exported and what jobs are left have devolved into service jobs. Those types of jobs are much less valued than those that produce something useful for more than a few minutes, such as food service, lower level health and child care jobs, and retail of goods mfg’d outside the US. Exceptions are those jobs that are making money work to make more money, such as in the financial industry and producing nothing but vast wealth for the few. Basing an economy on consumption, rather than production is bad policy and drives down quality of life, and you have a mangerial class that is paid fairly well to herd the masses of workers. But while Pres Obama’s policies would require at least a more equal distribution of jobs between the two, the only way to sustain a middle class culture, Republicans want to continue driving down wages for the average worker with an anything goes, to the victor goes the spoils wafare ideology.

I heard a report this am that Ford is bring back production of the Fusion to the US from Mexico and those jobs will help, but it’s a drop in the bucket when you look at a state like NC, which lost 2 major industries—textiles and furniture—which have been replaced by nothing but those aforementioned service jobs. Thousands of mfg jobs replaced by a few hundred in one state is a recipe for disaster, which is what is happening in NC. And those folks who have been forced into the low-paying service sector will have a really tough time getting the kind of education they need for themselves to make anything close to a living wage, and affecting any children they might have. It’s stressful for families, it’s stressful for society, and it’s causing human misery.