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Comment by throwaway475278 | Hacker News Reader

I think it's somewhat helpful to take the author's angle to "raise awareness", but the root problem is still education. If I'm starving to death in a wheat field, teach me to make bread. Retraining programs and better k-12 are the solution, not assuaging a bunch of literally too-stupid-to-help-themselves white dudes.

I get that they don't like being too stupid to help themselves, it sucks. But cheap access to a community college and some kind of "displaced worker" program that helps keep families fed while someone gets a degree would be so much more beneficial than trying to reboot a bunch of dying industries.

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Education and retraining are useful, but only if there are jobs for people to do with that education and skillset afterward. Otherwise it's largely pointless, and serves primarily to make the unemployment stats look better than they really are.

I don't believe that education is the root problem here. The root problem is the vast scale of job losses. Education can benefit some of the people affected, who can then move to other jobs and careers. But it can't help the majority if the opportunities simply don't exist. And I think that harsh reality isn't properly acknowledged. A vast number of people have been essentially abandoned without hope. The alternative jobs and careers simply don't require enough people to make up for the losses.

(I'm writing this from the UK, but there are a lot of parallels in the massive industrial decline here as well, and I don't think any good long-term solution has been found here yet either.)

You're starving to death because it's not your wheat.

You go to the bakery and offer your shiny new breadmaking education and they say "sorry we got all we can use."

Retraining for what?

I'm not who you're replying to but I'll interject anyway:

Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades. This is the program championed by Mike Rowe [0]. It also happens to dovetail perfectly with Trump's so-called $1 Trillion infrastructure plan. If he actually puts his money where his mouth is, he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated).

[0] http://profoundlydisconnected.com/

> he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated)

Trump isn't hated because he is Republican. People are afraid of losing hard won rights like marriage equality or the right to healthcare if they are unfortunate enough to have a preexisting condition. The violent rhetoric he used during his campaign doesn't help at all - condoning crowds chanting "kill her/hang the bitch/lock her up", saying that he wishes he could "smash the shit out of protesters", and offering to pay the legal costs of people who assaulted protesters. That is not normal in a health democracy and sets a dangerous precedent.

If Trump is a moderate on issues such as gay marriage and somehow manages to control healthcare costs without people losing their coverage he could be popular.

Small correction: Trump is now keeping the most popular provisions of the ACA, such as no exclusions on pre existing conditions, after his discussion with Obama at the White House.

I see Trump as a necessary evil to shake up the establishment, and I believe he will be tempered as he adjusts to the gravity of the office (as he has already started to do).

What gets you into office is it what you say once in office.

>Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades.

Are you under 40? I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate. Yes, having had life experience helps somewhat but not all that much.

It's easy to say "Just do X" but pretty much everything becomes harder to do after 40 or so.

Are you under 40?

Yes.

I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate.

You don't have to retrain everyone. Retrain younger people as machinists and toolmakers. The older people can have their old jobs back, working in the same supply chain as the newly-retrained tradespeople.

I'm sorry I am from a working class background and know plenty of skilled tradesmen. In good times they get enough work, in bad times they spend a lot of time on furlough. It simply isn't true that we need millions of more people in the trades, the supply is meeting demand just fine.

Actually many highly skilled trades were absolutely decimated by the collapse of American industry: machinists, tool and die makers, boiler makers, to say nothing of all those plant supervisors and other blue collar management positions.

And it can and probably will eventually happen to us digital tradesmen too.

The whole argument behind Donald Trump's infrastructure pledge is to create the demand for millions more of these jobs. To build or rebuild untold numbers of road, rail, plumbing, sewage, water treatment, electrical, and on and on and on. Trillions of dollars worth of this stuff, creating millions of jobs and modernizing the country's infrastructure!

Yeah Trump's infrastructure project will great for tradesmen while it lasts. Obama had a similar program if you recall, the stimulus. It was also great while it lasted.

10 years (Trumps projected duration) should be sufficient runway to match infrastructure work required with labor. Remember, millions of Boomers, especially in the trades, are headed to retirement over the next decade.

Are you referring to the 'cash for clunkers' boondoggle, or something else?

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