Except all Americans didn’t have jobs back in the 1950’s - half the adult population was expected to stay solely within the home providing free domestic, child, and elder care. In many areas a wife could not have a job outside the home without her husband’s permission. It being legal to pay women less added additional pressure to keep half the adults out of the job market. It screwed over any woman who didn’t have a husband for whatever reason, and if she had kids it screwed them over, too.
I’m not going to dispute how you felt - how you felt is how you felt and there’s no arguing with that. However, when I was accepting government help (and yes, I too remember the cheese) I never felt that way. I did feel humiliated at a church-run food pantry once, but that’s why I never went back there. Other places were more interested in helping me than shaming me or converting me so I went there.
I agree that kids can be little monsters, and often their parents aren’t any better. I wish our society would stop demonizing the poor.
That is, of course, the complete opposite of what I said. I honestly don’t know where you got it.
I invite any actual historian to clarify, but it’s my understanding that what drove Japan to war was the fact that the west (or maybe just the US) had instituted political policies that had the potential to hamstring Japan’s economy. This was an existential threat to Japan, and they reacted accordingly.
You proposed that the US should impose policies with the deliberate intent of cutting off trade between the US and those other countries. This would of course destroy the american middle and lower classes due to cutting off their access to numerous goods. But sure, okay, who cares about them. The point here is that other countries would likely see this as a hostile action, because it would be one.
Now, admittedly, it’s a little unlikely that other countries would actually be existentially threatened by this - they’d probably just ramp down production a bit and focus on selling to other, non-american countries. The people existentially threatened would be middle and lower-class americans, and they don’t have an army.
Thanks for showing your ignorance of manufacturing. If someone forced iPhones and other such to be made in the US, they would be made in automated factories that would not employ that many people - and definitely not people who used to be coal miners. Manufacturing output has increased in the US, but not manufacturing jobs. And I’ve heard someone from a major electronics company say that they don’t automate their factories in SE Asia because the people are cheaper than the machines.
Coal is dying. Even Trump’s subsidies didn’t help. That’s a good thing. I remember when the news each evening gave pollution reports. No longer. Coal doesn’t just make your windows dirty, it makes your lungs dirty, and that can and will kill you. That worth it to you?
Let’s train the coal miners for good jobs in clean energy. Win win.
Sounds to me like you want to force companies to set prices and hire people for your political goals. I might be wrong, but that sounds like socialism to me. You a socialist? Not that there’s anything wrong with it.
I know our Soviet friends have for the past several decades enjoyed their guaranteed lifetime jobs in obsolescent industries producing low quality products for a market not subject to any kind of competition or change, all overseen by the cryogenically preserved corpse of Comrade Breznev.
Oh, I got the joke. LivingGhose371 doesn’t want a “handout”, but he does want an entitlement in the form of an economy that “the government” somehow guarantees will never change and in which everybody can make a middle class living whether what they do is of any economic value or market need, e.g. mining coal that nobody wants to burn, which is exactly what killed the Soviet Union, and pretty much every other planned economy that resisted technological and social change.
It’s ironic that the people so opposed to a “welfare” society are the ones most willing to embrace it when it fits with their particular view of how the world should work, e.g. all of the billionaires and investment banks who are perfectly happy to accept government handouts in the form of a “bailout” or “stimulus” from an economic downturn that they created through unsustainable speculation and endless credit.
If the US decided to go completely protectionist, closing the ports and bombing incoming shipments of clothing and appliances at the border, the result wouldn’t be that all of the retirement-aged people would be hired back to work at a comfortable six-figure wage. What would actually happen is society would collapse into anarchy long before enough factories got up and running factories would either hire a relatively small number of experts (not 60-year-old miners), or would hire people at starvation wages the way Walmart and Amazon like to do.
Honestly I’m not certain there is a way to employ everyone to middle class levels, if “everyone” includes people who have no useful skills and refuse to accept training because it’s ‘shameful’.
It was a joke because there is stuff wrong with some brands of socialism, like the old Russian brand. People on the right in the US who condemn socialism espoused by some in the left aren’t condemning that type - which practically no one supports - but the European variety. Which is less socialistic than the remedies our friend seems to be supporting.
They all connect the dots. It’s just that almost no Republican can win without deplorable votes.
You’re joking, right? Anyone going on the Sunday news shows would’ve been branded a traitor by Trump. Their names would’ve been added to the list of people to hang on 1/6.
Agreed; protectionist policies like tariffs and buffering obsolescent industries designed to prevent change or competition are the worst and ultimately most unworkable aspects of economic regulation and “socialist” policies. On the other hand, The “Nordic Model” of market socialism, comprehensive welfare assurance (health, education, unemployment, child care), and institutionalized support for collective labor bargaining that doesn’t just result in a cottage industry of “labor unions” that essentially exist to shake down employers and union members alike, has resulted in nations with economic health and prosperity indices—including innovation and enterprise, safety and security, and personal liberties—that are at the top of the heap in every category, notwithstanding the high general quality of life in such nations. They haven’t achieved this by mining coal and protecting polluting industries, of course; they’ve gotten their by enabling and stimulating innovation and assuring that their citizens aren’t exploited by shady short term creditors or constantly living in fear of being bankrupted by a normal medical treatment.
“Socialism”, is of course the bogeyman that conservative pundits and politicians like to wave around even as they ensure that money and tax benefits flow freely to their billionaire supporters (and the same is true for many “moderate” Democrats whose major donors are investment banks and the insurance industry, among others), as if the horror of horrors would be a favorable comparison to Sweden or Denmark.
I think you’re right. It makes me even more disgusted Mr T still wields political power. Somehow the Republicans have to discredit this guy. It’s scary to think he will run again and easily win the R primaries. There’s no R candidate that I currently see that could beat him.
Yeah, there’s something odd about the people who say it’s ridiculous to make coal miners “learn to code”, but seem to think, “Go make iPhones!” is a reasonable solution.
So things were great when only one parent had to work to support a family and the other could be at home raising their kids and doing actual parenting and spending time with them rather than dumping them off at some daycare. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be just fine with having my wife go to work in a factory or fab and me staying home to raise the kids.
I’m talking about my grandmother who was the sole breadwinner for her widowed sister, her niece, and her own two sons being paid less than half what men doing the exact same work were paid, and when she asked for a raise was told she should get another husband.
I’ll also mention it was entirely legal to pay Black people - of any gender - less than a White man for doing the exact same work.
The wage was sufficient for one parent to pay for an entire family ONLY if you were White man.
And the lower classes didn’t have daycare - the kids were either left with a relative while the parent(s) worked or were left to fend for themselves.
The 1950’s were not nearly as wonderful as some people think they were.
And of course, as previous cites have pointed out, even for white men that only held good until the next employment slump or layoff, of which there were a lot in the 1950s. Putting a whole family’s economic eggs in the one-breadwinner basket is a risky strategy.
I’m surprised 7 Republicans had the moral conviction to do the right thing. I’m sure they knew risking their political office wouldn’t change the outcome.
