Saving obsolete jobs

The harsh answer to this question is that there is no reason to sugarcoat the truth and try to appeal to someone who is out-of-work because their job got automated out of existence (and let's be honest, that's a lot more likely to be what happened than outsourcing to some third world country). It doesn't help them to lie about 'bringing jobs back' or some such nonsense. Tell them their job is gone, it isn't coming back, and they should take advantage of training opportunities to move into a field where employment is available. Uncomfortable, yes, but anyone who promised (or is promising now) that life would be easy or fair is lying.

Isn't that very simplifying? This is not about a 10 % cheaper t-shirt. To state that the world in fact has gotten much better is not a "worldview". It is a fact (as long as you accept the idea of healthier, longer and safer lives as "better"). And it extends far beyond the "usual suspect" data from developing countries that indeed people in the rich countries affected by these changes don't care about too much. 50 years ago, people even in the Western countries were living under much worse conditions, they were exposed to much more health and safety risks, watched black & white tv (if they even had a tv), they ate worse, they smoked and drank like there was no tomorrow and so on. There is enough data on the improvements (whether the tv is an improvement is of course a philosophical debate, which I guess we shouldn't have here right now). But people forget. Like they forget that their ex-partner who cheated on them or beat them was an asshole. And that needs to be said and repeated over and over again. Just as a reminder for people who start to romanticize a past which, in 90 % of the aspects, was not better for most people. Even if it feels that way today.

Nevertheless, obviously there is a substantial, systemic problem. Which is what I describe in the beginning of the post.

What, in my opinion, drove the populism is not the acknowledgement of overall improvements until today, but the "let's carry on" mentality of the well-off. In my post I tried to make clear that this is not what I am in favor of. I acknowledge the problem, and I want a change. But not a change backwards.

I do not see a conflict in stating that things have been improving until very recently, as long as one acknowledges that the path that led us to prosperity until recently might not continue to do so.

Why are "blue collars" people today special snowflakes who demand to be paid $50k/yr to push a button?

And why are they, by and large, the same people that tell others to pull themselves up their bootstraps? I thought this was America, where we frown on "socialism". Yet it seems nobody has a more socialist mind-set than the average American worker lately. Funny, that.

I don't like to participate in weird economic oppression Olympics, but the recent Brexit-style populism is a First-World problem. Third World countries are trying to get into industrial economies too and that's why there is more competition now. They want good standards of living too.