All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

There is some strain and resentment in our relationship over our income differential, sure... especially when I want to complain that I'll never be able to afford a 1.4 million dollar house on the Peninsula because I only make 150k. It's just pointless to even bring that up to him because I know I will come off as an ass. However in some ways, he has it better than me. He and his wife bought a nice 4 bedroom rancher on a half-acre lot with an inground pool for 120k- which I will never ever be able to afford around here in my lifetime barring some unicorn ipo.

("Dirty Santa" is where everyone brings one gift -- we do $10 -- and then you play a game where you either open a random gift from the pile or steal someone's opened gift. It's pretty fun. To me it's more fun than "real" christmas gifting...)

Because my dad became a doctor he was able to put me and 5 of my cousins through college. He makes the original decision and my entire family is completely different today.

Granted, we wouldn't know the difference.

Not just key, those are life altering decisions. I still remember my friends who chose civil/mechanical engineering over CS'ish fields(Electronic, IT, Computer science) because they wanted a better college, than a better course. I remember friends and cousins who chose to go into fields like literature/arts. I remember kids in my school who dropped out because their father's business was good enough. Most of them aren't doing good. But back then they justified their decision on all sorts of grounds, yet they didn't have to make them at all.

At each step it felt like I was getting lonelier along the way. It was tough, but it was worth it.

People make stupid decision and they make them for no rational reasons at all.

Here is another hint, your sister and you are probably even now making small decisions over time which will make you 10x worth more than her, another 15-20 years from now.

Small decision add up to big things. Especially the kind of decisions which can change the direction of your life.

But I've been thinking about how much money I really need. I could have indulged in some expensive hobbies, but I can also get by with lesser equipment and practice the same hobbies, as long as I don't obsess over how "bad" that equipment is. And there are a lot of hobbies that either cost little to maintain, or that benefits other people. So there seems to be a lot of potential for reducing spending on oneself ones immediates and funneling some of it elsewhere (either through money, labour or time).

> it's why the unions left in the first place

If it was that simple, why are antilabor and unionization laws passed or pushed upon areas that allow freedom of assembly?

Many physical laborers recognize the importance of unions and are members.

If labor had a way to demand a portion of the productivity gains that went to the rich over the past ~40 years, not much would have changed in terms of lifestyle for the former middle class.

Many of us who advocate for less inequality are advocating for changing the political decision behind the distribution of our wealth increase. For example, had median income, base year 1979, paced productivity, it would have gone from ~50k to ~90k (real). It actually went from ~49k to ... ~54k.

The issue is if you've tasted riches for a while, its hard to wash away the feeling that you are some how special and entitled to money, regardless of the choices, decisions and the work you do in your life.

Upgrades to a higher lifestyle is easy, downgrades are tougher, painful and emotionally taxing to a lot of people.

Never upgrade if you can't sustain.

What did you think McCarthyism was all about? Or Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers?

I think of my grandparents and how they lived their lives. My mom's dad was a NYC Sanitation worker, among other things. They lived frugally and eventually had a small summer cottage in the country. He had an 8th grade education, because his family in Ireland couldn't afford more. Yet he taught himself calculus up to the calc 2 level. That whole cohort of grandparents, grand uncles and aunts had a healthy disrespect for wealth. They had pride in their work, family & their church.

My dad's dad was a very successful pub owner in Brookyn, who essentially lost it all when the city went to pot in the 70s and his clientele vaporized or went to Jersey. But he wasn't a bitter man, he was a guy who lit up a room and found joy in all sorts of things -- he was a bike messenger in his 60s, which to my young ears was probably the most important job on earth. Family, community and friends are values that I think about when I think of him -- a man who lived through a lot of tragedy beyond the scope of this little post.

Misery and despair isn't a racial issue or even a poverty issue. We created a society where passive entertainment degraded the social fabric, (read "Bowling Alone") and now we're in the process of smashing ("disrupting") society and robbing people of their purpose.

That pretty much fits to a T what has been done historically to many segments of black and Hispanic society. So why should we be surprised at the manifestation of misery and desperation from discarded white people?

You need to think much more basic than that: Success is having a savings account, a roof over your head in a safe stable location so the kids can stay in the same school, reliable transportation, and a job that provides enough income for all of the above.

Applies just as much to everyone as it does to whites or the working class, and statistically the black working class has it worse.

Not so sure about your view on marriage, though. Are you saying your son shouldn't marry because, if he finds a girlfriend and has children, marriage would disadvantage him should they ever divorce?

I'm not English, but from my (lefty, somewhat uninformed) point of view - wasn't it Maggie Thatcher who "wrecked worker solidarity in private industry"? Or at least wasn't the downfall of unions around her time?

Aside: I have a colleague from Liverpool, let's just say he wasn't distraught upon learning the news of her passing.

I'm actually a member of a fraternal organization (like the masons) where exactly this kind of social mingling happens. It is fantastic.

Anyone looking for more social support, consider joining one of these clubs (if you have time, which I know is a scarce commodity). They are desperate for new members, and often own assets/property.

I've been living in England for 16 years (after several long trips over the previous 15); I've seen plenty of people getting smashed in pubs as well as in clubs, never "out of sight" from anyone.

Beer consumption has gone down because of shifting consumer taste (alcopops didn't even exist in your '70s workers' paradise). The smoking ban absolutely did hit traditional pubs, basically turning them into waiter-less restaurants, but to be fair they were already being hit hard by chain consolidation and shifting consumer habits.

Supermarket sales of alcohol have gone up not because of opening times, but because of 1) price and 2) supermarkets getting bigger and less 'local', which means the woman at the till doesn't know you and will likely not stare at you like you're a child molester when you buy three six-packs (as it used to happen with local coops even in the early '90s).

Regarding the impact of immigration on "social housing" -- that's nothing compared to the impact of "right to buy" schemes. Traditional communities were disrupted because families bought out their council houses and flipped them on the market to cash in and move out. They didn't like living in working-class council-build areas, so they moved out and left those areas to the next wave of indigents. In fact, "social housing" is disappearing as a concept, and soon it won't matter who is or is not in a council house, because there won't be any council house left.

The hard truth is that the working class is made of individuals, who make individualistic choices. People like cheap Tescos, nice houses, and not getting lung cancer because they work in a pub. There is no need to romanticize the past.

But as it turns out, almost all of those peasants were capable of learning to read, doing algebra, engaging in abstract reasoning, labor coordination, and operating some fairly complex machinery. Many of them were even capable of becoming software engineers. We know this, because pretty much all of us came from them, and if we can do it, they could've done it, given the proper environment. Someone advancing your argument 1000, 100, or even 50 years ago would've wrong, what makes your argument different?

Of course we shouldn't expect equal outcomes from all people, but to suggest that we've now reached such a level of access and fairness in society that everyone still at the bottom can't possibly be elevated any further seems... unintelligent.

And since college education is mostly a positional good (it helps you compete against people with worse education for limited jobs), there's a pretty fantastic charitable opportunity for an enterprising lawyer to start suing employers over requiring or looking at college degrees.

There is true value in education, but unfortunately the only market demand is for people who are intelligent, conscientious and educated in certain fields. Hit all three and you are in demand otherwise a life of dead end jobs awaits you.

Maybe I misunderstood your point. Stories like that of Jaime Escalante suggest that there's a huge number of undiscovered talent and/or that better teaching makes more talent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante

Tell that to over 30% of my gifted class who weren't able to attend college (at least not until much later in life).

Education is generally a proxy for wealth, a certain type of culture, and supportive parents, in my experience.

[1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/11/the_magic_of_ed....

I was forced to work extra hours for no extra pay because I was salaried. I was under a lot of stress and assigned other people's projects until I was overwhelmed with them. I worked in St. Louis MO and my wife didn't want me to relocate and be in a different state so my job search was limited and nobody was hiring.

From the stress I developed a mental illness in 2001 and became disabled on short term disability. When I returned from short term disability I was fired for having a panic attack at work. They lost my doctor's notes that excused me and used them against me.

I tried another job in 2002 they used me to get their project to the next level, migrating from Excel to SQL Server for their database and optimizing the code. After the project was done, I was fired.

I ended up on disability in 2003, I went back to college to earn a bachelors but I was never medically cleared to go back to work.

I am 47 now, and I feel like my career is over. I had offers to work in the west coast but I could not relocate because of my wife not wanting me to leave out of state. I'm sure the working environment is different in SV and west coast companies.

But if other white men of a middle age had the stress that I had when working, I can see them developing a mental illness or turning to drug use. I never turned to drug use, but I had problems sleeping and waking up due to the stress.

I had friends who didn't go to college but learned programming by experience, they were expert programmers but lost their jobs because they didn't have college degrees and ended up working in retail jobs to make ends meet like Sam's Club.

I've known people with college degrees that didn't know what they were doing and I mentored them at work to get them started in programming. It is possible to earn a degree and still have problems doing the job they are hired for. For example programming classes teach how to write short programs that are very small, but writing larger more complex programs and how to debug them is not taught. That takes experience in the real world.

For the white middle class, life in 1950 was pretty good (unless you were sent to Korea). Life in 1960 was fabulous. At that time, a man could work as a clerk in a hardware store or an assistant in a butcher shop and support a stay-at-home wife and four children in his own middle class home with one car, one television, one phone, etc.

It was the American dream, based partially on generous union contracts for some, and general prosperity for others. Writers were in great demand; musicians could play 365 nights a year. Housing was cheap, jobs were plentiful, and salaries and wages rose every year.

Life in 1970 was different; the Japanese had beaten the Americans at steel, the Vietnam wartime economy was winding down even as Americans perceived we had lost the war, 50,000+ young Americans killed and hundreds of thousands of others traumatized and damaged. The Sixties had taken a massive toll on church, marriage, and society's general cohesiveness and morale, and suddenly things seemed awfully uncertain.

Around that time, Europe and Japan had rebuilt and were starting to compete vigorously, taking away the easy monopoly that American companies enjoyed for the previous 30 years.

It's no surprise that this same socioeconomic group is going through tough times today. The technology economy has no room for people with a high school diploma and good manual labor skills. Some car mechanics in the old days were barely literate, but fixing cars today requires knowledge of digital circuitry and software.

There are some silver linings, though. Shale energy has created a boom for drivers, roughnecks, welders, waitresses, etc. in places like North Dakota. Now that oil is legal to export, and assuming oil goes north of $40/BBL again, the U.S. will probably emerge in another decade or two as the world's largest energy exporter. Cheap domestic natural gas from shale formations has been a boon to the chemical and plastics industries. New technologies such as 3-D printing, as well as rising wages in the 3rd world, notably in China, are bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.

We probably won't see a golden age such as we experienced from 1945-1970, and unions have lost much of their clout since that time, but perhaps there will be more opportunities in coming years for blue collar and middle class workers than since the 1980s. Someone in this thread points out that technology workers may some day find themselves on the other side of the prosperity wall, as well. Nothing lasts forever.

Other countries have robust retraining programs, so the bolt turner could become something else when bolt turning isn't useful anymore. This works in tandem with trade schools, which are also better-supported by governments outside the US.

(And I also am a huge fan of the concept of universal basic income!)

I'd like to see a 2 or 3 year trade school for programming and other useful trades - with low costs. Something suitable for people who aren't interested in higher ed, but do want a decent trade in life.

Not really; there's a fair amount of support for a basic income from conservatives and libertarians, for good reason. We've decided that we aren't going to let people starve in the streets if they can't find a job. Given that, it makes much more sense to just give people money than to have a huge bureaucracy with dozens of programs trying to alleviate individual aspects of the problem of not having money.

And when you're spending time with people, in a house with a family, with clean water, sufficient food, electricity and internet access, with regular social gatherings, can you really be said to be in "lonely poverty"?

That said, all this is physically, economically possible today, but it is probably not politically or socially possible. It will take further decline before people finally realise it is what they've wanted all along.

This is such millenialist bullshit. Overall people are better off now than ever before. Yes, there are problems now, but there have always been problems. 25 years ago, the internet was unknown to the general public. Housing is more expensive, but food and clothing are cheaper, something these statements usually ignore. Civil rights for women and minorities are better - advances there far outweigh erosion in places like intellectual property. The further back you go, the better life is today. Remember when women were legally paid less than men for identical jobs? Remember being conscripted against your will? Remember when being visibly pregnant in public was a source of shame? Remember when you had to ensure you had all your food shopping done by a certain time, because shops were only half open on Saturdays and not open at all on Sunday? Remember how expensive appliances were, and that you actually had to take the time to go into the store to talk about the issue rather than ring a number or look online? Remember how time-locked (and expensive!) entertainment was, and none of it was 'on-demand'? Remember the fear of living under the nuclear umbrella and Mutually Assured Destruction? This last one has been replaced somewhat by nebulous 'terrorism', but the fear of our western democracies being literally overrun by a terrorist military doesn't really compare.

Remember when 'good job' meant 'regular pay packet', and not 'comfortable work in an office that you like'? The 'good jobs' of yesteryear were more gruelling and less fulfilling than the 'good jobs' of today. Want cheaper childcare? Then stop outsourcing to professionals and shame working women back into the home, because that's why childcare was cheap in the old days.

It's become more and more prevalent in the past couple of years to look at student debt and housing costs and simply declare that life now is worse than previously, without actually looking at what it was like to live in past days in an overall sense. Cherrypick a data point and declare that life is worse now. Yes, there are problems today, significant problems, but that doesn't mean life in previous generations was a breeze.

I have for a long time worked online to sell products (and also have a day job). My wife talks about liking the idea of selling something online, but can never find a calling.

Aside from type of crime, there's also intense "blame the victim" in the poor white areas, because "sure he was wrong to hit you, but you've grown up with him for decades how can you pretend not to know he's the village's violent drunk, best avoided?" or "sure the guy who crashed into you was drunk and thats wrong, but you've lived here for decades how can you not know after dark the roads are only for drunks?" Whereas "most" non-white area crime is anonymous, someone just walked down the wrong street or parked in the wrong spot or walked into a gunfight they had nothing to do with.

Generally speaking affirmative action means the non-whites have a chance for the future even if they don't deserve it leading to optimism, and also means that at least some of the whites who do deserve it won't get a future, leading to pessimism which also does wonders for race relations (sarcasm).

The plight of the working class is about free trade and reprioritizing economic policy. Union busting sent business to the South, NAFTA sent it packing.

Now even high end service jobs are at risk. A local hospital voted to unionize, and immediately afterwards the ER fired everyone and ships in visiting nurses from 400 miles away. It keeps the local labor hungry and costs down in the long term.

I made $12/hour as a "forklift operator" in 1993, just as a point of reference. And I doubt a modern college student could even get hired for a forklift operator-type job.

So, we say "unlucky" because it hints at the fact that many of the gifts that we humans have were not individually earned (intelligence, will-power, mental sanity, life, general health, your parents, etc). Nobody is in full control of their life, so we cannot judge them with impunity for the way their life worked out.