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Comment by inerte | Hacker News Reader

And since when the US has a “job availability” problem? Unemployment is low. We have a jobs quality problem. Good pay, good hours, benefits. It doesn’t matter if it’s manufacturing or services.

Somehow some people think their parents had it easier working for a factory, but a lot of blood and sweat went to get that. We can shed blood and sweat to get better barista jobs too. It’s not about where jobs are performed.

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Agreed. I'd go so far as to say that the compensation/job quality balance has been out-of-wack for years. It has never been about skill, either, but leverage. And even "unskilled" workers can conjure leverage by creating chokepoints that they can toll, if they're able to organize and hold out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604145

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjJgfspg/ shows it all too well.

Except that people liked those jobs because they were doable for people who aren't bright enough to write code. If you're not the brightest tool in the toolbox, and not the most professional, and have a criminal record, you still need a job, and the trades are open for business. Amazon warehouses skill level, without the dystopia.

I'm sure I'll do fine, it's my friends who have been underemployed for decades that aren't as bright who don't have a career to speak of that feel helpless and disempowered. Some of them voted for him. I can't say I don't see where they're coming from.

Again, America had low unemployment. And low level blue color job can be aw much dystopia as warehouse - your not bright person with criminal record an no skills will be taken advantage as much.

What the unemployment numbers, even digging into U4 vs U6, don't account for, is how hard people have to scramble to find those jobs. it's not that they aren't out there, people do still need to pay bills after all, it's that gone are the days when you'd just show up to the union hall and know you'd just be assigned some work. That feeling of solidarity, that you can just rely on the fact that you're needed and necessary and can get a dollar to feed yourself today, whenever you need a dollar. That doesn't show up on unemployment numbers.

Arguably driving for Uber/whatever does that today, but you can't seriously believe that you can build an entire economy off of everyone delivering people and food to the rich.

I do not think there is space for solidarity where these changes are going. The people voting for president and supporting him see solidarity as a weakness and something for suckers - or worst as taking something away from them. Again and again, republicans are against any measure or action where someone might get something.

Even if factories are rebuild, there will be no solidarity. Nor work that gives you much meaning - factory work is repetitive no fun no spiritual anything work. With a lot of steps that seem pointless to the person doing them.

the things that made a factory job good are long gone too. pensions. stable employment. companies that cared about their employees.

Even if we assume manufacturing does bring back high quality jobs: The people still have to leave their low quality jobs they are currently doing to fill those jobs. Which means the American people are going to have to give up something. Which probably means things like their Big Macs, with a return to home cooking like in the heyday of manufacturing.

A win from a health perspective, perhaps, but going back to the age where people didn't do anything other than spend all their free time maintaining their home life probably isn't what people are dreaming of.

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