Comment by tmpz22
7 days ago
> every economic headwind imaginable.
Freaking what? Are they food insecure? Facing a military onslaught. Come on.
7 days ago
> every economic headwind imaginable.
Freaking what? Are they food insecure? Facing a military onslaught. Come on.
The local food bank I donate to sends out a quarterly newsletter and the number of families it serves has more than quadrupled since 2020.
I think this is the primary reason the Democrats have been losing, clearly voters are feeling economic hardship in a big way, and ignoring it or belittling the point is what lost voters.
We can't focus on social issues when the hierarchy of needs isn't being met.
Historically a lot of Republicans have derided poverty statistics and poverty programs because the people on the programs “all have big screen TVs”[0]. I’m not sure the politics are as clear cut as you indicate.
[0] https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/air-c...
I mean, I watched and participated in the US Election last year, it was extremely clear to me that Republicans focused on economy, and Democrats focused on social issues.
The Republicans won, which is an indictment on the Democrats messaging in my opinion.
I'm not even talking about the merits of which party has better ideas, or if people are voting against their own best interests. But I think the party that said they'd do "something" to make the economy better is the one that won.
Why Democrats don't hammer on retraining and education so that more people can participate in the services and information economy confuses me greatly. Manufacturing isn't coming back, at least not immediately.
4 replies →
This is quite an anti-worker comment.
"They still have cereal and fast food and they're not getting shot so they're fine." LOL.
You're both painting polarized views. I'm from the rust belt where many of these disenfranchised can be found. Manufacturing isn't coming back. Tariffs are only going to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
I think the point was that these tariffs are hurting stocks because it is hurting workers, which hurts consumer spending. These tariffs are against workers primarily. The next time you see someone digging up a water main check their boots, the supervisor might be wearing Carhartt and Redwing, if they are a hipster, but the people who are muddy are typically wearing much cheaper imported equipment.
It's more that we shouldn't pretend that things could not be worse, which is what the person they were replying to was trying to say.
Because things can definitely get worse.
> Because things can definitely get worse.
Absolutely.
If people don't want things to get worse, then the abuse and disenfranchisement of the American worker must end.
That's kind of where we are at this point.
Its a perspective thing. I saw an interview a couple weeks ago of a man in his 30s saying he finished high school and couldn't find a warehouse job like his father did and had been working odd jobs ever since.
To my parents that was an unacceptable thing, had I finished high school and not done college (or some vocational school) I'm sure they would have kicked me out of their place. So not continuing my education was never an option, I had to, because from their perspective that was the only way.
This other dude never had this, his dad worked an warehouse job at some big box store more likely, went up the chain there and made a decent living for his family. The expectation for the family was that if their kids had done the same, it would have been fine, he said his father never even finished high school, but that isn't reality anymore for most people and I don't think this has been a culturally set reality in the US.
People were very much still expecting this would continue to be a thing but its very hard for you to do that in a place where there is very little manufacture and with so much tech taking over brick and mortar stores.
The thing with tech taking over the world, is it's taking over the world everywhere and the last few places where labor is still cheap are employing humans.
In so much stuff involving process automation if you go about building a new factory you're going to minimize your labor costs as much as possible. The only dumb jobs that remain pay very low and/or are back breaking, and everything else is a high tech job. On top of that process efficiency means that a single factory somewhere could easily produce all the product needed to meet world demand, the most difficult part would be meeting regulations in other countries. We are past the days where you need 20+ factories building the same thing in the US for most products. You build it in one place and put it on a truck with fast and cheap shipping.
People will keep crying for a past that no longer exists while the world changes ever faster.
> there is very little manufacture
The US has a ton of manufacturing, but few manufacturing jobs, because they automated a lot of the aspects of production. This was one the biggest concerns by Andrew Yang when running for president, lack of good jobs because of automation takeover.
I don't think the parent is seriously describing these people as actually facing every economic headwind, but is instead pointing out the lack of imagination on the part of the people supporting this policy.
Not OP, but a) "to them", and b) I would add that they are being nudged - ever so slightly - to believe in an exaggeration of the facts.
Are they food insecure?
You'll have been quoted on thirty different subreddits by the end of the week. This is hilariously tone deaf to the hardships many are facing.
Absolutely tone-deaf, but there's a real point.
"Things are terrible, so we have to do something!" No, you have to do something that will help. Just "doing something" isn't good enough. And if you think "things can't get any worse", yeah, they can. A lot worse.
Don't make random changes just because things are bad. You need changes that will help, which is a lot harder.