Collapse of the progressive economy: the future belongs to blue-collar workers | Hacker News Reader

Collapse of the progressive economy: the future belongs to blue-collar workers

unherd.com

37 pointssourpuss31 comments

> the future may be brighter for people who can install plumbing systems than those who perform tasks easily done by machine. “It’s the end of the white-collar knowledge work,”

As someone who has been struggling to find a person to update our bathroom who isn't charging obscene prices, this kinda resonated with me. It dawned on me that these guy's hourly rate might be higher than mine right now. Rather than leetcode or side projects I actually started watching YouTube videos about home improvement. I successfully installed a new vanity / sink. Very satisfying to accomplish. I suppose we are all engineers, and can transition to what is in demand. A shower install could be a higher lift, though. :)

Your experience is actually quite solid argument for blue-collar workers not taking over.

White-collar professionals aren't dumb and incapable of screwing in their own light bulbs. They can do the math on ROI of DIY projects and complete them if need be. If you can do some light plumbing with a couple of youtube videos, then that right there already eats a bunch into their margins.

And if we're talking about more difficult projects (e.g. replacing underground pipes, excavating, etc.) then the margins aren't nearly as high.

The difference is that a skilled blue collar worker can do it much much faster and with better results

For small jobs better results is dubious.

I mean, yes, I know some people who would screw up installing a faucet, but most people are competent enough to follow instructions and not flood their house.

Does the difference in quality justify paying someone $150 to install a $50 faucet? Personally, I don't think so, but YMMV.

"Progressive" makes it sound like the Republicans don't support it. There has been in-practice bipartisan support for the growth of the centrally planned economy.

It wouldn't surprise me if the US government has fairly direct control over more than half the financial flows in the US economy after including 2nd order effects; even though officially it is only around 40%. The political consensus has been "This is good, but we'd like to go higher" from the Democrats and "This is ok, but we'd like to scootch a little lower" from the Republicans.

It is hard to imagine a high performing economy that is controlled mostly by the US government. They are barely competent at running the key government institutions.

> They are barely competent at running the key government institutions.

That's by design. In the last forty years, Reaganism has firmly taken hold of both parties, i.e. "starve the beast".

This is at display again currently with the efforts of getting the IRS's budget cut - nevermind that improved collection would improve the budget. It's not about the budget - it's about who's paying the bill. Or not paying - in this case.

The tax code is like the speed limit. If they enforced it 100% (or substantially closer to 100%) it would wind up getting changed to reflect reality and that would be counterproductive to the goals of everyone who complains it's not enforced enough.

The billionaires and other people with nebulous and complicated finances would actually be the people least effected by greater enforcement because their arrangements typically are at least legal on face value whereas the average types of noncompliance are obviously in violation of the tax code so you'd be seeing 1099 people, people with side gigs and people with business income getting hit most frequently and hardest.

> If they enforced it 100% (or substantially closer to 100%) it would wind up getting changed to reflect reality

That would be a good outcome.

> that would be counterproductive to the goals of everyone who complains it's not enforced enough.

I don't agree at all. I want transparency, not deal-cutting for special-interests behind closed doors. That's a recipe for corruption.

> people with side gigs and people with business income getting hit most frequently and hardest.

It's not only about enforcement, even auditing the relevant people is not happening. At it is, the IRS doesn't even have the money to audit rich people[0]. Besides; the IRS could still decide to not target anyone making less than 250K.

[0] https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich

"Starve the beast" was quite successful during the 1990s, the U.S. had constant budget surpluses and was paying down debt. And it happened under a Democratic administration.

That was also an exceptional time where the USA was benefiting from a huge one-time windfall, i.e. the end of the Cold War and commensurate reduction of the biggest line item in the US budget (the military).

The Cold War never resumed, so it wasn't a "one-time" windfall. It was Bush Jr.'s foolhardiness to cut taxes AND wage two wars simultaneously that eliminated the surplus and sent the deficit soaring.

Along with both parties in congress. The tax cuts were later extended. There were very few sane minds at the time in the US.

Yes, they came up with one of the great all-time thoughtstoppers in that time: "You're either with us, or with the terrorists".

   > And it happened under a Democratic administration.

It was a Republican Congress though who tied Clintons hands and forced him to sign on to a balanced budget after the absolute drubbing the Democrats took in 1994 midterms, losing 50 seats in the House and control of both chambers of Congress. In the end, they found a way to work together and we benefited greatly from that era until 9/11 snapped the government back into constant growth mode.

That's not how this game works. The administration in charge at the time gets the credit/blame for everything that happens on their watch - whether they had anything to do with it or not.

Blue-collar workers earning more and consuming more seems pretty strictly beneficial to the work I do in software.

Bizarre article that thinks the rise of worker power through unions might be bad for the Left?

The politics of your average blue collar worker, union or not, is very far from what comes out of the mouth of your average white collar left leaning type on pretty much every issue except possibly union stuff (and abortion stuff which varies wildly depending on where you propose on drawing the policy line and is a pretty low priority to your average blue collar worker in general) if the particular blue collar worker swings that way on that issue.

So yeah, the left having to cater to blue collar people is bad for the people who care about the stuff the left is currently prioritizing.

I don't think that point was being made even at all. The article is trying to illustrate that the politics espoused by the wealthy and influential left is actually profoundly different and often times at odds with the personal positions held by working-class individuals.

In the U.S., there's a not-entirely-mistaken perception that the Democratic Party abandoned organized labor in the Clinton era, starting with AR Labor Reform Bill of 1978 and climaxing in NAFTA.

This Democrat "triangulation" - social left + blacks + structured finance - has been the DNC model for a while. According to some. Post-2008, it's obviously got problems with some of its bits.

Often missed in this analysis: the intensifying ethnonatalist streak of American labor, and the problematic (if historic?) union involvement of organized crime and its natsec enablers. Theoretically Luciano was on payroll to help stop communism, but patsies have a disturbing tendency to turn into leaders of the organization they are supposed to be infiltrating. Both Hitler and Stalin being good examples of this.

It's not bad for the Left, but potentially catastrophic to a Democratic Party whose party consensus is based off neoliberal economics and plenty of "don't talk about class, talk about race".

Of course, this is also balanced out by the fact that the Republican Party has no clue where to go post-Trump (or, hell, post-Romney). They can't even get internal consensus on electing a House speaker.

I'm pretty sure this article's author has an axe to grind against both left-wing politics and the DNC, though. The article's premise relies on the idea that a good chunk of the Democratic Party virtue-signals progressive causes to avoid criticism of their labor practices. That's true, but not the whole story - the Republican party is similarly paralyzed by the donor class. The underlying problem is that SCOTUS kicked the legs off of election finance rules in the name of the 1st Amendment. First they said money can be speech (reasonable) and then said there's no justification for contribution limits (wtf no).

So now corporations regularly outspeak everyone else. Both parties are ideological zombies made up of call center employees who regularly moonlight as Senators and Representatives. This gives rise to "anti-partisan" issues; where both parties agree to kill "common-sense" or "everyone agrees on this" kinds of bills that would harm the donor class interests. Think about how much of a problem it has been just to get decent right-to-repair legislation going, just as an example.

What the hell is a progressive economy?

It’s an awful title, probably chosen by the editors. The author Kotkin knows and does better.

The author uses the term constantly throughout the article, and really seems to think the Left should be pretty afraid of blue-collar workers gaining power and unionizing. I very much doubt the author knows what they are talking about.

That was my impression as well.

Seems to be some conservative culture warrior type.

Anything the author doesn't like. This is rather a lot of words spilt on weird "anti-woke" obsession.

I'm not sure? My guess is that it's a term the author (or the blog) coined to push some right-wing political hobby-horses. If I had to take it seriously, I'd argue that what he's talking about is the DNC donor class - i.e. the big tech companies that signal for progressive causes as long as it isn't too closely related to their labor costs.

There's a dash of "AI will kill and eat everyone" here too, except the author seems to think that white collar workers will be unscathed while artists and programmers will be completely obsoleted. I don't buy that.

Probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism#Economic_progres...

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