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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMaybe There's a Way to Create Good Jobs Again
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-27/maybe-there-is-a-way-to-create-good-jobs-againThe average American worker is confronting a number of problems right now -- stagnant income, an overhang of debt from the housing bubble, the high cost of college and the replacement of pension plans with high-fee, low-return 401(k) plans. But few would deny that one huge challenge is economic insecurity. Political scientist Jacob Hackers 2006 book, "The Great Risk Shift," discusses how many risks that were once borne by companies are now shouldered by individuals. That is probably an inevitable result of the transition from corporatism to neoliberal shareholder capitalism that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Basically, the era of "good jobs is a memory for most workers. Private-sector unionization is disappearing, average job tenure has plunged and benefits have been cut.
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But turning the gig economy into a good deal for workers doesnt just require government policies, it demands a cultural shift. Thats the kind of thing that economists have trouble wrapping their heads around. Technology is taking away one big benefit of the old corporatist economy -- security -- but in its place its giving us something we had almost forgotten how to value. Its giving us independence.
In the pre-industrial U.S. economy of the 1700s and early 1800s, much of the work (other than farming) was done by skilled artisans who sold their own products -- basically, they were independent contractors. In "Battle Cry of Freedom," historian James McPherson describes how, in the very early days of the U.S.s Industrial Revolution, wage labor was widely seen as a threat to freedom -- a form of slavery lite.
Response to Recursion (Original post)
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Warpy
(111,276 posts)We've lost too many key industries in this country to survive the next big war, let alone think about being on the winning side. Even a trade war could bring this country to its knees.
The way to restart it is to enact confiscatory taxation on the 0.1%. The only way they could avoid paying those taxes would be to rebuild US industrial infrastructure, a win-win for them since what they no longer had in paper assets, they'd have in income.
It won't happen until/unless they are forced. It has to happen.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)America's industrial output has never been higher. We just don't use as many workers as we used to to do that.
There's an NYT article I posted a while ago profiling a yarn factory (that's not a particularly key industry, but you get my point) that moved to Mexico in the 1990s and relocated back to South Carolina recently. Before they moved to Mexico they employed about 1500 people in South Carolina. Now they employ 200, but make twice as much yarn as they did before.
former9thward
(32,025 posts)In the 1950s the U.S. produced 60% of the world's industrial output (I am getting that figure from a Wall Street Journal article I read). Every other county was shell shocked from WW II. Now it it completely different where dozens of countries, including massive countries like China an India, can do what we do.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Both in absolute terms and per capita.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=1bHY
Warpy
(111,276 posts)Note that there are still niche manufacturing of all of these but not nearly enough for the country as a whole.
That's ONE yarn factory. We need dozens, plus what I listed.
While it's good news that some plants have been reopened and retooled as China has continued to raise wages (they've doubled in the last decade), most manufacturing of key items is still being done offshore.
Anyone who doesn't think this is a national security issue simply hasn't thought it through.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)We're just not using many workers to do it. And that's only going to increase in the future as automation gets better.
most manufacturing of key items is still being done offshore
Textiles I'll grant you, but the US still manufactures more electronics than China, for instance.
Warpy
(111,276 posts)The "manufacturing" done here just puts them together.
FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)The lines are scewed due to the New difinitions
Juicy_Bellows
(2,427 posts)You aren't counting assembled as produced I assume. Thank you. I googled briefly but didn't get anything relevant.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)are 'good'?
I still hate the nonsense of "average this" and "average that". That seems more like the language of media stereotypes than any sort of economic or sociological analysis.
My own knowledge of the present is probably rather limited. I have five nieces and four of their husbands who are in the workforce. They all seem to be doing fairly well. Even the niece who is a hairdresser was posting pictures of herself at Neuschwanstein this summer. Doing well enough to take a European vacation at age 29.
Another niece got married this summer. Unlike her parents and aunt who honeymooned in exotic Wisconsin Dells, she went to Cancun.
Maybe she has a lot of student loan debt. I am not sure how much my brother is paying. As I understand it, her first two years cost about $30,000. I note that because she had the option of two years of free college and living at home for two years. Pretty sure I would have jumped at that even though I had a full daddy scholarship. She chose NOT to take the free (admittedly lower quality) college.
Then there's my siblings. All of them are doing well, except me, and they sorta envy me, because I am the only one talking about retirement (although my little sister just mentioned it too, she could retire even before me as I wait to turn 57.
I also have experience with the "glorious past", and that experience, as well as statistics, tell me that it is again, a bunch of hype, to pretend that EVERY worker had a good job in the glorious past.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)And that's going to have to be a cultural change as much as anything else