The upcoming Worker's Revolution

[pullin]

@Sam_Stone

In the meantime, by the time that person graduates with a humanities degree another person who goes into the trades will be debt-free, have 2-4 years of job experience, be making a very good salary and may be ready to buy a house and start a family. We forget that the other cost of going to college is the opportunity cost of spending four or more of your best years outside of the work force.

Thanks Sam for posting this. I’ve tried pointing this out repeatedly, and find myself set upon by the “this graph shows people with degrees make more” crowd. I steered one of my youngsters toward a trade, and he not only has full-time work, the shortage is such that he’s gotten 2 job offers from competitors since Feb (one offered $6500 sign-on bonus, the other offered $100 just to come to an interview). His salary has gone up about 35% for his second year, and I suspect will easily pass the 6-figure mark before he’s 30 (he’s 24 now). He and his sweetheart are trying to decide where to settle and start their family, while his old friends are still delivering pizza to pay their college loans. My rough WAG is about half his HS graduating class still lives with their parents (he’s been independent since turning 21, and is debt free).

@Sam_Stone

Coming out of college with $100,000 - $200,000 in debt makes it hard to find a spouse, it makes it nearly impossible to buy a house until the debt is mostly paid down, and makes it hard to start a family. It is a huge burden on a young person that can ruin their life. I had about $15,000 in debt, and it felt like an anvil around my neck when I was getting started and being paid entry level wages. A philosophy major with $150,000 in debt earning $30,000/yr will have their life’s decisions dominated by that debt for a decade or more - the very years when young people should be starting families, buying their first home, and getting a good head start on life.

This can’t be stressed enough either. Thru kids/acquaintances I have now met my third Psychology grad with over 100K in college debt, who’s earning less than 30K per year.

I have also watched one of my youngsters regretfully abandon a relationship, because their potential SO was too financially toxic to marry. My kid finally had to break it off because any life started with this individual would mean a decade or more of paying off debt before kids, house, or any sort of future could be contemplated.

For really interesting reading on this subject, try the Last Psychiatrist’s Hipsters on Food Stamps article. One of the most interesting things I’ve read in a while.

This paragraph, on the humanities graduate says it all:
It’s hard to accept that the University of Chicago grad described in the article isn’t employable, that the economy doesn’t need him, but it is absolutely true, but my point here is that not only is he not contributing, the economy doesn’t need him to contribute. Which is good, because there’s nothing he can do for it. 1. Anything requiring science is out. 2. “He can work manual labor!” I love how people assume economics doesn’t apply to construction. The demand for those jobs is very high AND hipsters suck at them. At any wage, Gerry the hipster will always be outworked by Vinnie the son of a longshoreman…

[Evil_Captor]

@John_Mace

Ugh. That doesn’t even prove your point for 1 capitalist, let alone “most”. That was a political and policy statement, not an economic one.

In case it wasn’t obvious, my request for a cite was rhetorical. There is no cite you are going to be able to produce to support that claim. Just pointing out that such statements have no place in reasoned debate.

Allow me to refresh your memory. Here is Romney’s exact quote:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. … My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Now, Romney knew what the unemployment rate was … 7 or 8 percent at that time IIRC … so 40 percent of the people he was talking about were employed. And his statement oozes contempt for the people he’s talking about. And it wasn’t a general policy statement, it was said in a private meeting of big-ticket Republican donors. The only reason we know about it is one of the menials hired to pass around the caviar was able to secretly video Romney’s words.

And it’s not just revealing about Romney. Why did he say those words? Because he knew his audience would LUUUUURVE hearing them – after all, he was begging them to give him money at the event. So Romney who probably understands the mentality of big-ticket Republican donors better than you or I, believed they shared the contempt that was evident in his words.

Finally, yes, you’re right, it would be difficult indeed to get reliable stats on these attitudes, because the wealthy know better than to reveal their contempt for workers in public. But everyone so often, they slip up, or are exposed, as Romney was, and to the discerning eye, all is revealed.

[Mr.Nylock]

@Amateur_Barbarian

Nice writing, but not a word of it addresses your original sentence. “Simple hardworking people” are not confined to factory laborers and farmers. I’ve worked with “simple, hardworking” programmers and chip designers.

Your overall thesis in that post read quite differently than what you say just above.

The meat of the post is the first 3 paragraphs, the fourth is a little different and rather tangential, and about the subtle, hard to define cultural changes surrounding work. True, that part of what I wrote isn’t particularly consistent - there is quite a bit more I would have to add for it to make better sense; but I don’t think it would be polite for me to further clog this thread up with my ramblings on tangential issues than I already have. :o

[Evil_Captor]

@Amateur_Barbarian

There is nothing great about burgers, in fact, most top of the line chefs not-so-secretly despise people who eat burgers, especially at McDonald’s. It’s great to have food, though.

Just pointing up the essential banality and irrelevance of your statement. I suppose come the revolution, won’t be no money and we’ll all be swimming in burgers, or some such?

I was responding to the question “What’s so great about work?” Some people kinda fetishize it, but most who have worked at bottom of the ladder jobs either hate work or are indifferent to it. And for good reason. People work for money.

And yes, when we get our shit together someday, you won’t need work or money to live and you will have plenty to eat. That’s going to happen. Just a matter of “when.”

[Evil_Captor]

@Mr.Nylock

The point about mixed economies I was making earlier may seem like hair splitting, but getting back to the OP, the prevalence of mixed economies is the reason that I think that there will not be a worker’s revolution.

I believe that because of mixed economies the redistribution of wealth and resources would prevent one group of robot or machine owners from monopolizing an amount of resources in the world that would impoverish the general population. We already have flexible systems in place that redistribute resources much more broadly than a purely capitalist system would. I don’t know if this point was made earlier by anyone, I sort of only skimmed a couple of the really long posts.

Well if you believe that, how do you explain the massive redistribution of wealth toward the wealthy that has been occurring over the last several decades in the US? I’d say it had little or nothing to do with “mixed economics” and an awful lot to do with Supreme Court decisions that have allowed the wealthy to legally flood our political system with money, in essence, buying most of Congress. I’m not sure how “mixed economics” is going to change that.

I also do not believe there is an upper class that wants to destroy the lower class. It is my belief that there is an upper class that wants to stay socially superior, however I think it is their best interest to not allow the standard of living for the general population to fall to revolution sparking levels. The increase in the ability of technology creates an abundance of resources - revolutions come from a lack of resources.

I share your belief that the upper class does not WANT to destroy the lower class, or more accurately, the middle class. This does not mean that the upper class will not destroy the middle class and the lower class. I DO think the upper class is utterly indifferent to and contemptuous of the lower class and a lot of the middle class, too. Read Mitt Romney’s words in my response to John Mace … they are telling.

The upper class did not WANT to destroy our economic system in 2008 … but they did, and we are living with the results. The upper class, however intelligent and humane individual members of the group are, collectively are a bunch of locusts. They will do whatever it takes to aggrandize their personal wealth. And if that means a few fields get destroyed … well, it’s up and off to the next field. So long, USA.

A certain way of life will disappear I believe. The simple, quiet, hardworking man or woman that existed in my dad’s day and was a respected person in the community will not thrive in the new system. Outside of high tech, the new technology will create service economies that tend to favor soft skills and political savvy. Do you find this to be a reasonable conclusion?

No, it’s all going to go. Only about five or ten percent of the current workforce will be needed in the future.

[RickJay]

@Sam_Stone

When did she get her degree? Would you advocate that she study drama if tuition was $20,000 per year and she would have to borrow the money?

Ontario, and obviously tuition is not $20,000 a year.

Whether or not she should have graduated with debt is of course her decision; I am not arguing a pile of student debt is wrong or right, merely that the student should make an informed choice. If you want to take “communications,” whatever the hell that is, and risk $100,000 in debt, so be it - as long as the student and their parents are clear that it’s a $100,000 debt incurred basically to follow a dream. It’s not for me to tell someone what to spend their money on. Is when they finish their “communications” major and are surprised the workforce does not need them that there’s something wrong.

And there must be something SERIOUSLY wrong because, again, this is not new. Political science degrees did not get you a whole hell of a lot when today’s political science majors were born. This didn’t just happened in the last three years.

That said, it’s not necessarily that we need fewer people in university to get more people into trades. People could go to university and then learn a trade. Tradesmen are not useful if they are ignorant and stupid, and I cannot emphasize this enough;** the tradesman of tomorrow is the business owner of the future.** For all that our resident Marxists burble about capitalists and proletariats and that rot, virtually all single-site businesses I visit with 10 to 150 employees were started by the proletariat. I can’t off the top of my head think of a single example to the contrary, and that’s a sample of 75 businesses at least. All of them were someone who was a tradesman, saw a market opportunity, scraped up some money, bought a few machines, and have since grown and now employ 50 people or something like that. (Or it was a few tradesmen in a partnership.)

If you don’t have people in the trades now, you won’t have people doing that 10, 20 years from now. Your pool of skilled workers is your pool of entrepreneurs. And believe me, the ones with some sort of education benefit from it.

Having said all this, I think it’s very important for me to clarify my position; I am NOT doing a “kids are lazy” rant. Young people today are absolutely not lazy. They work as hard as anyone. They have, however, in many cases been terribly ill-advised by every authority figure they can trust, and one can hardly blame them for taking the advice of everyone.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@Evil_Captor

I was responding to the question “What’s so great about work?” Some people kinda fetishize it, but most who have worked at bottom of the ladder jobs either hate work or are indifferent to it. And for good reason. People work for money.

If you work for a paycheck, you’ll never take home anything more than a paycheck. Since a huge part of this thread is about college degrees as job tickets, I guess I can’t fault you individually for that mindset.

And yes, when we get our shit together someday, you won’t need work or money to live and you will have plenty to eat. That’s going to happen. Just a matter of “when.”

“If you pray hard enough, water will run uphill. How hard do you need to pray? Why, hard enough to make water run up hill, of course.” - L. Long

[msmith537]

@Amateur_Barbarian

If you work for a paycheck, you’ll never take home anything more than a paycheck. Since a huge part of this thread is about college degrees as job tickets, I guess I can’t fault you individually for that mindset.

So what should people work for? Sure, you should try to do a job you enjoy (or at least don’t hate), but the paycheck is the only think I can take away from the job that I can actually use to pay my mortgage and buy food.

No matter how much someone loves doing something, people tend to not love anything when they are told they have to do 70-80 hours a week, can never take a vacation from doing and are looked at with suspicion for doing any other activity that takes focus away from that activity (like family or personal lives). That’s what cults do and some companies actually try to instill that cult-like mentality into their employees.

The “do what you love and love what you do” message is basically a way to convince workers to take lower pay, work longer hours and tolerate crappier conditions through the application of peer pressure and a sort of Stockholm Syndrome battered housewife mentality that they are lucky just to be part of such an important organization. As opposed to looking at your employer/employee relationship from the logical and rational standpoint of delivering a service in exchange for a form of compensation.

At least feudal lords didn’t give a shit if the peasants “loved” working for their liege, so long as they did their job.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

I’ll just sum up my response as “Truly sorry you see it that way.”

[Mr.Nylock]

@Evil_Captor

Well if you believe that, how do you explain the massive redistribution of wealth toward the wealthy that has been occurring over the last several decades in the US? I’d say it had little or nothing to do with “mixed economics” and an awful lot to do with Supreme Court decisions that have allowed the wealthy to legally flood our political system with money, in essence, buying most of Congress. I’m not sure how “mixed economics” is going to change that.

Well, I’m thinking about some of the effects of government spending and how it can bolster certain sectors. Examples include everything from the extra tax refunds mailed to people a few years ago when the job market took a hit, to increases in unemployment benefits, tax abatement, the large amount of jobs created by the federal government in the last 20 years, food stamps, the money set aside for small businesses and minorities in government contracts, interest free school loans guaranteed by the government, public school. There are currently many public policy options that kick in when the private sector takes a nose dive - in a purely capitalist society nothing would cushion those blows. The thought is more along the lines of without government intervention in the economy there currently would be much greater wealth disparity. I could be completely wrong about that, but that is my current view of the situation.