Re 1: Mid-western/"fly-over" state folks have been hit by large amounts of change in the last few decades. The "white working class" (especially male) was overthrown by globalization, immigration, by a renewed push for women's rights, LGBTQ rights and so-on. Wages went down, social rank went down and opportunities dwindled. No training programs, no social programs, no healthcare, nothing.
This has led to a reactionary position of "returning to the good old days" of manufacturing, of mining, and conservative ideologies. To when they could pursue the American dream. I think it can come across the way you describe but it's driven more by fear and lack of opportunity than by some intrinsic arrogance characteristic.
These are the folks who were left behind by the Democrats in 2016. The status quo genuinely wasn't working for them. Not that the alternative was better, but it was an alternative to a system that wasn't working and from their perspective they had nothing to lose. That's why we find ourselves where we do.
Re 2: "There is no shortage if you pay enough" has more to do with the zero marginal cost business models that yield staggering quantities of revenue and profit per worker. Apple makes ~$40B per year in net profit off of 123,000 employees. That means could give each of them (including FTE geniuses and sales people) a $350,000 per year raise and still break even. There's tons of head-room here.
It's not just HN, I keep reading many opinions and thinkpieces that reference "the situation in the midwest" when trying to talk about jobs, job markets and localized economies that are often frustratingly and annoyingly WELL off the mark.
I share your frustration.
Signed,
Northern Indiana
I've never lived there though, so I'm curious to hear how far off the mark you consider me to be.
Don't.
More seriously, no you're not really that far off. Most of the wealth concentrated in NWI specifically exists to and from Chicago. In this case, not speaking for anyone else by me and my own experiences: I have many friends who live in towns like Hammond, but with the exception of groceries and utilities spend a lot of their time (and money) over in IL (these are the well to do types, I should clarify). My job is in Chicago. Personally I'd be curious to see if anyone's ever done the numbers on how towns like Merrilville and Hammond are doing fiscally against how many residents hold full-time jobs in the second city.
Brain drain is a real thing too, if kiddo isn't going to ND, IU Northwest or State (or even traveling down to Bloomington or Lafayette), they're probably heading up 55 to Chicago and going to one of the many schools up there. And not returning because...well, there's not much here, big wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
All that said: Housing is affordable. Indianapolis is slowly transforming into something really interesting. Have fun getting there with these roads but..
I'm an IU grad myself and 100% agree it's still one of my favorite breakfast spots; I'll be down there for the holidays and it's definitely on the list.
When I first moved to L.A. I had two different people (on separate occasions at Pan Pacific Park) ask me if I was from the MidWest. I said yes, but asked how they knew. Both responded, "because you're friendly." Doesn't have broader significance, but those encounters always stood out to me.
That's honestly not evidence of a thriving technology scene, its evidence that you and your friends make a lot of money. Would you say you and your friends are representative of the typical worker in the Midwest?
I could see how it is low compared to farmers, but most farm income goes into operating costs. Farmer Joe could be making 500k a year but that doesn't mean he's taking home much in profit, in a lot of cases he's taking far less.
It seems unfair to look at a farmer's peak income and say that they are doing well. Of my 5 uncles that owned farms, all but one had to give up their farms because they couldn't make a living -- now they work on corporate owned farms (which includes their former land) for mid-range pay for the area (which is much lower than tech-industry pay). A few lean years can put a farmer so under water that they can't recover.
The one uncle that still runs his farm (well, he's mostly retired now, his daughter and her husband do most of the work) managed to survive because he had two strokes of luck - he sold some land to a developer for a good profit and he has some natural gas wells on his property, as part of the "rent" for the well, he gets free gas so his energy cost is nearly zero for as long as those wells keep producing.
Your description doesn't come close to describing the average small city in the Midwest.
Or the east.
Or the south.
Or the west.
Or even most suburbs.
I'd love to know your zip code so I can look at the amazing census data for your area and figure out how to replicate that miracle
In other words, white male hegemony in the Post WW2 period especially in the US had ended, and rightly so. The rest of the world was in shambles and the US was the de facto hyperpower. With rise of China and others, that ship has sailed and this is the new reality and people have to deal with it.
Left behind? Wasn’t it their official party platform to offer social programs to help retrain these “left behind” workers for new opportunities? Instead they decided to vote for the party that promised them they would bring back 19th century industry, like coal mining.
The Democrats did lean for a bit towards offering something stronger, but proposals like universal health insurance were voted down by the centrist/neoliberal faction in internal party politics, and didn't make it into the 2016 platform. It definitely wasn't a focus of the campaign either, which somewhat infamously chose to write off blue-collar voters and try to win by flipping moderate Republicans in affluent suburbs instead (Chuck Schumer articulated the strategy as, "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia").
Care to point me to campaign promises in 2016 to this effect? Or perhaps actions by the current administration in this direction? All I've seen or heard is pining for "clean coal" in various forms.
>The Democrats did lean for a bit towards offering something stronger, but proposals like universal health insurance were voted down by the centrist/neoliberal faction in internal party politics, and didn't make it into the 2016 platform
So these voters were so distressed by this that they decided to vote for the party whose stated goal was to remove health insurance from the poor and sick? This argument doesn't seem to hold water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_Training_Partnership_Act_o...
The 2016 Democrat failures also stem from the arrogance of the coastal populations. A lot of my progressive friends didn't vote because they were sick of being looked down on because they didn't live in California or New York.
They don't have social programs and healthcare because they consistently vote against anyone who proposes these things. So they're really to blame for their own problems. Sure, globalization et al have been big factors, but they shot themselves in the foot by voting against policies that would benefit them, and instead voting directly against their own economic interests.
2. The idea that "There is no shortage if you pay enough" is BS is just whining because employers just really want to underpay and overwork people and are defensive anytime they aren't able to accomplish exactly that.
Hence, I find the argument that "there There is no shortage if you pay enough" so entitled and arrogant. The high-tech industry is already paying salaries, that most any other professions would kill for. So what is that "magic number" when your blue-collar guy will hang up his hard-hat and switch to coding?
I am not aware of any untapped geniuses now toiling as coal miners, truck drivers or construction workers waiting for the salaries to hit a magic number for them to unleash their talents.
That's not who would be most affected by a long term trend of high salaries. It's the kids who would go to biz school or wall street or law school (or med school, but that's less of a positive, hah) instead because that's where the money has been in the past.
I think we all know the answer to that.
You do realize there's other high paying industries besides software engineering, right? It's not like your choices are learning to code or working at Arby's.
It's really not entitlement, it's simply people who believe that the labor pool has market-like characteristics. During recessions and downturns this certainly is used as a reason to do hiring freezes, cut pay, and lay people off. So if the labor pool acts like a market during a surplus, how could it be arrogant to assume it loosely follows those rules during a shortage; where wages should be pushed upward?
My own view is that there is no true technology labor shortage, just that technology companies are still in the process of figuring out how to maximize the productivity of their technology teams outside of "Make them work longer hours" Better decision making, better working environments for technology contributors, and more focus on nurturing technology manager talent could significantly increase productivity IMO.
Not trying to be snarky, as I'm generally ignorant about most career paths, but wharvelse is there paying well. Off the top of my head I cam think of finance, doctors, and, in some cases law, butnis there anything outside of that. I know that in many industries you can end up doing pretty well, but only once you've reached the very top. Whereas the aforementioned professions can pay well from that start .
There is no healthcare profession with the same or higher median salary that doesn't have at least as Master's degree as the entry-level education, and all healthcare occupations except Physician Assistants and Nurse Anesthetists/Midwives/Practitioners with the same or higher median salary actually have a doctoral or professional degree as the entry-level education.
There are no occupations in Business & Finance with equivalent or higher median pay. (Personal Financial Advisors, at $88,890, are the highest in that area.)
There are some engineering occupation with higher median pay, but only Aerospace, Computer Hardware, and Petroleum Engineers (Chemical gets close, at $104,910.)
So, no, there aren't lots of occupations in those three areas paid, on average, better than SWEs (or Software Developers).
There are a bunch of management occupations with higher pay, though, ironically enough, “Top Executives” is just a bit below Software Developers.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/mobile/home.htm
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mobile/...
Pay what you need to or go out of business. Either way, stop your whining.
-there is no housing shortage in SF/NYC/any big city, just a shortage at what you are willing to pay
-there's no shortage of insulin or medications or health-care just a shortage at the price you are willing to pay.
-no affordable education crisis.... (on and on...)
You see if you don't pay the market rate for the resource, Sh_t out of luck.
sauce for the goose == sauce for the gander
Maybe not for you, but as a small business owner it's my livelihood.
Some of those industrial workers have built up amazing work habits that could really ramp up their programming skills if applied that way, as well.