It isn't just "reopen the plant" - it is "reopen the plant and match economic conditions in the time period from the 1950s-1990s".
Just reopening won't bring back the comparably high wages from that time period.
Just reopening won't bring back the comparably high wages from that time period.
It's a start though. If the plant stays closed, those "comparably high wages" certainly aren't coming back. If the plant opens, there's a chance.
There's a lot of "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" protecting a shitty status quo: "don't do that because it doesn't fix X," implicitly requires that one solution fix everything perfectly all at once.
Like it wasn't perfect but it sure was preferable to what's about to come.
We could have kept that and implemented policies that were far less painful and far more likely to increase wages.
Yeah, but we didn't, so this is what we get.
That's why, ultimately, I blame Democrats for Trump. They had many opportunities to improve things, but they chose to ignore the trouble and prioritize other stuff more amiable to their increasingly upper-class base. The root cause was their neglect of the building pressure, Trump is just the explosion. They keep claiming they're the competent and responsible ones, but they are just irresponsible in a different, more subtle way.
I'm saying that this outcome will never exist because more has changed than just the plant closing. If we coupled "reopen the plant" with "the plant makes entirely new things" and "the plant trains local workers to take these jobs" and "the plant pays above local service/construction wages" and "the plant will be successful in geopolitical competition" and "the plant can do 10x the amount of business due to advances in automation to get to the same level of employment" and on and on.
We could solve _each_ of these problems, absolutely - but they are all interlocking parts of a wicked problem. Blowing up the economy and threatening a global recession won't actually solve any of these.
But neither will the status quo.
Like, much much worse?
> Like, much much worse?
It will at least afflict the comfortable, otherwise they wouldn't be so opposed.
And that's fine. We've been running on a twisted "win-win" logic in this country for a long time: no policy can be pursued where the working class "wins" unless the well-off also "win" (because if they don't, there will be much whining), but if the working class loses it's "Who cares! They've got to suck it up and adapt. Be more grateful and go fill the holes in your life with cheap shit from Walmart."
Enough of that, and a lot of people rightly stop caring if things can get worse. Trump is the chickens coming home to roost. If people didn't want this outcome, they should've gotten together to fix the problems with neoliberalism.
> Enough of that, and a lot of people rightly stop caring if things can get worse
I get the feeling, but it's still dumb: "My neighbor is playing loud music, so I'm going to burn down the block. Ok, so I don't have an apartment anymore, but at least hes not plying loud music anymore!! Win!!"
* well, not the rich. They will be fine, at least in the short to medium term