Comment by tbirdny

3 months ago

America doesn't underestimate it, its president does.

For better or worse the man is exposing the mindboggling scale of deindustrialization that was hidden underneath America's transition to a "knowledge economy". Decades of failed economic policy has led America to this point.

  • Unfortunately, that ship sailed a long time ago. Why is no one in the administration paying any attention to the outsourcing of high skill knowledge work to India and elsewhere? Obviously I have a bias working in technology, but it seems to me to be a much more CURRENT issue and one that can actually be addressed in the present.

  • That job retraining is going to happen ANY DAY NOW I tell you, and then those textile workers are going to be so glad that they can be call center workers.

I saw a chart passing around from this Cato Institute survey (Cato is a right wing think tank) [0]. It made me laugh.

> America would be better off if more Americans works in manufacturing than they do today. Agree 80%/Disagree 20%

> I would be better off if I worked in a factory instead of my current field of work. Agree 25%/Disagree 73%

[0] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2024-08/Globalizat...

  • Those two are not in conflict. The claim is 20-25% of the population would be better off if they moved to a manufacturing job. The other 75-80% are better off where they are, but making the bottom better makes everyone better.

  • They're going to end up with some sort of corvee forced labour scheme enforced by ICE, the logical conclusion of "other people should go work in the factories".

    • We already have that, it's called prison labor. The current regime will certainly ramp that up and throw even more people into forced labor camps.[1]

      BTW we don't talk enough about the gigantic loophole in the thirteenth amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [emphasis added]

      1 https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/flyover-country

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