This is great point. I see this on social media commentary all the time and wonder if educated elites being merely oblivious or totally asshole about working class concerns.
This is great point. I see this on social media commentary all the time and wonder if educated elites being merely oblivious or totally asshole about working class concerns.
These people are not ignoring the plights of the poorer working class; they are altogether completely blind of it. They know that 3 million people just filed for unemployment, but they only know about it as an abstract statistic. The human cost is entirely lost on them.
[0] https://crooked.com/articles/we-are-doing-fine-coronavirus/
In a thread on HN someone commented that the 3m unemployment figure was only 1% of the population. I had to take a moment to let that sink in.
It makes me worried about a future dominated by technocrats.
There's nothing uniquely non-empathetic about technocrats.
This would be approximately 3M / 158M [0], or a 1.8% rise in the unemployment rate.
In the 2008 recession, we saw a total unemployment rate of almost 10%, so we'd have to lose an additional 7-8M jobs to get to that level.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/26/us-unemploy...
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/economy/articles/2020-03-23/fed-...
"So we need to make sure that our economic recovery does not come at the expense of those who can least afford it or who are just getting started in life: Hard-working young people in service industries and retail that are being decimated by layoffs; all those who are hustling to make a living in the gig economy, and those who were already struggling to get by before this crisis, who are drowning in credit card debt or student loans, and who now are in even greater need of a lifeline."
When I scroll further down the page I can see a fundraiser for readers to support "people and communities who are more vulnerable and need extra support during this time" including the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, and One Fair Wage. Apparently readers and podcast listeners have contributed about $650 000 which at least from an Australian perspective seems non-trivial.
Finally, one of their most recent articles (I'm going through the articles because I'm not going to listen to the podcasts) on the politics of a pandemic titled "How Democrats Should Navigate Pandemic Politics" talks about the importance of directly supporting workers including with "paid-leave provision that’s much bigger than the one the White House watered down in the initial House bill, along with a broad Emergency Unemployment Insurance provision".
I can't reconcile all this stuff with being blind to it. It looks like the founders of this site were in the white house while the medicaid expansion was passed which, at least from an outside perspective, seems to be the most important legislation of the past few decades for the poorer working class.
Even that article you linked to doesn't seem like a damning indictment. If you read it a bit more closely it's at least partially a joke article where the writer talks about the resilience of the human spirit while writing on the walls in lipstick, getting gum in her hair, and napping in the middle of sentences. If it was a manifesto of values I'd agree with you that a lack of focus on unemployed people undergoing hardship would be notable, but it's not. It's just a joke.
I lean to "oblivious" argument. People inherently see things through their own experience.
Back in the 80s I took some classes that tried to break through the bubble (especially funny that it was MIT where I like to joke "if you don't arrive arrogant they'll beat it into you").* This was just before the CMC machine tools arrived so we were working on WWII surplus Bridgeport mills and the like. And we were sent down (literally in the basement of building 35 IIRC) to work on them under the supervision of the folks in blue who were all polite but also unstinting in their criticism (in my case -- I deserved it!). After a few sessions of this, in lecture we were reminded that "you'll be up in the air conditioned design shop sending prints down for these guys to build. They may only have a high education but they are at lest as smart as you guys, often smarter. If you send something stupid to them you'll hear about it". It was a good lesson.
* This is actually an exaggeration: in my experience nice people continued to be nice. But MIT does have quite a few jerks, not all of them intentionally so.
BUT their upbringing, the media they consume, and the reinforcement of beliefs through their social echo chamber makes it insanely hard to change their "obliviousness", to the point where it's not so innocent anymore - more like willful ignorance.
His first job out of school was at an investment bank. The world of blue collar work was entirely foreign to him.
Part of the problem is the two-party system, which essentially ensures that control remains between the Dems and GOP. This is why so many presidential elections wind up being contests of the least-worst option.
But I do agree with you in that it's an issue.
That does not square with the US electing donald trump.
As an aside, and hoping you find this interesting: Ralph Nader, who was a serious presidential candidate as late as 2000, did embrace exactly that combination ... I believe he claimed that (relatively) open borders were ipso facto anti-union.
Even the corporate VP making half a million dollars thinks she's middle class.
it's more obvious then to see that the 20-80% middle class standard of living has unambigously become more stressed, debt-laden, fearful, and immobile over the last 50 years, while the 1% has become much freer in all dimensions.
we need to bring that back into balance (which is not perfectly equal distributions by the way).
Friedrich Merz, a politician of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, but purged by her years ago, is trying to become next party chief and chancellor.
He is a board member of Blackrock. A lobbyist, and a successful business lawyer. He owns private airplanes.
Yet, in a much laughed about interview, he claimed to belong to the "upper middle class".
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/business/france-blackrock...
In a capitalist society, class is determined by ownership of, and your relationship to, capital.
Conversely, except in SV, everyone I know that pulls over $300k thinks they're rich.
The other is highly educated people feeling economically unprivileged and concluding that this now means they are the working class and what's in their interests is what's in the interests of the working class.
Both are misguided. The former leads to patronizing policy, the latter selfish. The best example I can think of for the latter is student loan forgiveness - lots of educational elites have student loans, comparatively little of the working class does.
Well said. I cringe a little whenever I hear a complaint like "we're the first generation who won't be as well off as our parents", usually from educated young adults who've never known what it's like to have your utilities shut off, or not know where your next week of meals is coming from.
I don't mean to trivialize issues like health care costs, student debt, or general economic anxiety; those problems are real, and go far beyond finger-wagging admonitions to "stop wasting money on lattes and experiences". But there's absolutely a conflation by many young college graduates that because they face uphill economic challenges (relative to their middle-class norms), that they must be in the same category as the hand-to-mouth working class. To the extent that creates political solidarity, great; but quite often, it belies selfishness and entitlement, with no awareness of, or gratitude for, much better they have it than the majority of the planet.
(Full disclosure: I have a bit of a grudge against twenty-somethings at the moment, for talking a big game, and then failing to show up to the primaries this year.)
However, depending on the union, rank and file members have lost power and representation.
1.) For the welfare of the worker, social programs, universal healthcare, "standard of living"
2.) Open borders immigration, free trade, outsourcing, and other ultra capitalist policies.
[1]https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-double-...
The point is workers elsewhere is equally entitled to support and liberty.
I'm not commenting on whether that's right or wrong, but it certainly suggests that the left favors open borders.
[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/11/immigration-ice-ab...
So far as I can tell the wish for the abolition of ICE is primarily tied a desire to eliminate an unrestrained, rogue, abusive policing org that's showed serious cruelty and abuses of civil liberties. I'm ok with eliminating ICE since they play such a harmful role such as they exist today, their leadership and members should all be fired with many jailed.
If people were calling to abolish the Border Patrol that could be construed as supporting open borders. Calling to abolish ICE is calling out corruption, abuse, and injustice in our immigration enforcement far from the border.
The borders are policed and enforced by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), specifically Border Patrol.
This is technically true and often-cited, but it's really misleading. Its 'creation' was more of a restructuring.
When ICE was created in 2003, it absorbed many parts of the United States Customs Service (founded 1789), the Immigration and Naturalization Service (founded 1933), and the Federal Protective Service (founded 1971).
Before ICE, the INS was responsible for arresting and deporting those who violated immigration laws.
All this aside, I'm sure we can agree:
(1) there's a correlation between (A) willingness to illegally immigrate and (B) the risk of deportation after crossing the border.
(2) that an increase in illegal immigration without governmental response would more closely resemble the concept of open borders.
The socialist left is against free trade and outsourcing. Period. We are internationalist and support trade with countries that will raise their labor conditions to parity. We also support anti-capitalist struggles abroad.
Except like so much with socialism, the reality and the hypothetical are in stark contrast. You are arguing that in theory, open borders allow for laborers to take their value to wherever it will benefit them the most. But in reality, it not particularly easy for an individual to pick up and move their entire lives, especially when we are talking about distances on the scale of international travel. So the workers who are willing to move end up being those with the least to lose, meaning those who do end up moving are those willing to settle for less.
Say Mexico and the US opened their borders tomorrow. Do you see American laborers taking their skills to Mexico en masse? Or do you see Mexican laborers taking their skills en masse to America? How do you think the value of an American laborer is affected when the labor market gets flooded with supply, many of whom will likely be willing to work for less than their American counterparts?
Given the structural inequalities between USA and Mexico allowing free movement of capital between USA and Mexico enriches USA and impoverishes Mexico.
However, since you asked, yes Mexicans, who have been abused would flood into the richer north. Socialism is ultimately about creating an equal society, not about preserving disparities between the rich and the poor. However, we would need policies to help preserve American's livelihoods, such as a Federal Jobs Guarantee otherwise open borders would be unpopular and damage living standards.
It's worth asking yourself why people born on one side of an invisible line deserve comfort and power and a baby born on the other side does not deserve to walk one foot north and find a better life.
What? I seriously don't understand this. Find what deals? How does it make it harder?
> Nations are fake.
In what sense? Surely, given the opportunity, most people would prefer to live in Sweden as opposed to Liberia. Most would pick US citizenship over, say, Vietnamese.
The most instructive places to look at in that direction are border areas in general, and the Middle East in particular.
Often times when you look at border areas you will see absurd divisions of people who would normally work together. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is a strong example.
For the clear negative impact of borders though, the absurd creation of most Middle Eastern countries by British diplomats is one of the clearest examples. The arbitrary lines that were drawn through tribal lands and small fiefdoms, the people left without countries of their own (e.g. the kurds) or brought to power over vast swaths of other people (the Saudis)- it is all as absurd as can be, and has proven as poisonous as expected.