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A few generations ago, the likes of Eric Garner would have been working in a factory, now such individuals are unemployed and his job is in Asia.
Before factory employees unionized factor workers were treated horrible. It no different than how they are currently treated in poor Asian countries now a days. While Eric Garner was unemployed he had a much greater quality of life (place to sleep, food on the table, and clothes to wear). He was making a profit from using common business strategy of taking advantage of arbitrages in the local cigarette market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nograviti
Who knows we may look back on this as the golden era when people were relatively equal..
What does it mean to be equal? Capitalism is based on the principal of inequality. If I work smarter and harder than you, I deserve to make more money than you. The questions isn't we should all be equal, it should be how much inequality is tolerable.
Before factory employees unionized factor workers were treated horrible. It no different than how they are currently treated in poor Asian countries now a days. While Eric Garner was unemployed he had a much greater quality of life (place to sleep, food on the table, and clothes to wear). He was making a profit from using common business strategy of taking advantage of arbitrages in the local cigarette market.
What does it mean to be equal? Capitalism is based on the principal of inequality. If I work smarter and harder than you, I deserve to make more money than you. The questions isn't we should all be equal, it should be how much inequality is tolerable.
I disagree, the decline of industry in the US started around the late 70s and continued throughout the 80s. At the same time income inequality climbed massively in the United States which by and large has continued unimpeded until now. Prior to that the income gap between (African-American) Blacks and Whites for example was closing, but then it widened again. Also in real terms, people who worked in the factories of yesteryear often had higher incomes than the largely now unemployed working class of today.
Capitalism is based on the principal of inequality. I think not as we have many varying forms of capitalism in the world today. It is byproduct of the system, but not its principal basis. Also perhaps in the US this is true, but in the social democracies of Scandinavia, such extremes of rich of poor are not politically acceptable nor the norm. In Germany, despite having many successful world beating companies, the outlandish anglo-saxon pay scale of US CEOs is largely unheard of.
Also I think you misunderstood my last point. Eventhough we regard today as unequal in terms of income equality especially when compared to the 70s. If we project the growing income gap between the 1% and rest as continuing, then in the scheme of things maybe inequality today might not seem so bad. The 1960s and 1970s might then be viewed as a weird blip in the greater scheme of things..
The above discussion imo is really the primary root cause of the changes being seen in major cities today...
I disagree, the decline of industry in the US started around the late 70s and continued throughout the 80s. At the same time income inequality climbed massively in the United States which by and large has continued unimpeded until now. Prior to that the income gap between (African-American) Blacks and Whites for example was closing, but then it widened again. Also in real terms, people who worked in the factories of yesteryear often had higher incomes than the largely now unemployed working class of today.
Capitalism is based on the principal of inequality. I think not as we have many varying forms of capitalism in the world today. It is byproduct of the system, but not its principal basis. Also perhaps in the US this is true, but in the social democracies of Scandinavia, where such extremes of rich of poor are not politically acceptable nor the norm. In Germany, despite having many successful world beating companies, the outlandish anglo-saxon pay scale of US CEOs is largely unheard of.
Also I think you misunderstood my last point. Eventhough we regard today as unequal in terms of income equality especially when compared to the 70s. If we project the growing income gap between the 1% and rest as continuing, then in the scheme of things maybe inequality today might not seem so bad. The 1960s and 1970s might then be viewed as a weird blip in the greater scheme of things..
The above discussion imo is really the primary root cause of the changes being seen in major cities today...
Fair point, thanks for sharing your view on the matter.
I am not sure I see it as a return to the medieval period, more as a return to the gilded age. Where the likes of the Carnegies and Vanderbilts lived it up in town, surrounded by poor districts only there to serve them.
When computerised automation kicks in, it will become even more unequal and that is when the real political debate will begin. A few generations ago, the likes of Eric Garner would have been working in a factory, now such individuals are unemployed and his job is in Asia. Soon it will be the turn of the middle class, as you will need less accountants, traders etc. This combined with continued offshoring of middle class jobs and the future for cities maybe very interesting indeed.
Who knows we may look back on this as the golden era when people were relatively equal..
No, a few generations ago the ancestors of people like Eric Garner worked as farmers, lumbers, domestic staff, shoe shiners, etc.
Leftists try to claim the old industrial age was this grand era of equality, but it was not. There was substantial discrimination against Blacks in those days even in the industrial sector.
Even if offshoring was reverse, automation has reduced the need for industrial workers. And today blue collar jobs require a certain level of education (certifications or licenses), union membership, and they drug test you. Blue collar jobs do not hire drunks or drug addicts off the street these days.
NYC has no shortage of construction jobs. Notice Garner wasn't doing them. He was too fat and with too many health problems to deal with much in the way of job related stress.
I disagree, the decline of industry in the US started around the late 70s and continued throughout the 80s. At the same time income inequality climbed massively in the United States which by and large has continued unimpeded until now. Prior to that the income gap between (African-American) Blacks and Whites for example was closing, but then it widened again. Also in real terms, people who worked in the factories of yesteryear often had higher incomes than the largely now unemployed working class of today.
.
Not on the working class being mostly unemployed. They work in retail, construction, civil service, and the service sector.
I had an uncle who worked for years for a glue factory. He has hearing loss due to exposure to noise and and cancer due to exposure to chemicals.
I even think there are elements of sexism and chauvinism in this idealization of factory (male) work. It was before the women's movement and before women joined the workforce in greater numbers.
The idea that doing dangerous work that will kill you is somehow a godsend to African Americans is 100% bull**** and racist. There's absolutely no reason why people of all races can't go out for better jobs.
But you don't want that, for whatever reason communists are obsessed with the idea of people working in horribly polluting factories of yesteryear.
Some other things to think about. After WW2, Europe was destroyed, Japan was nuked, China was a wreck, and most of the so called third world never had much industrial capacity. So in the 1950s, industrial goods were pretty much ONLY made in the US. By the 1980s Europe and Japan were reindustrialized (meaning there was excess factory capacity in the US). After China, India, and Brazil industrialized, and plus automation manufacturing became a smaller part of overall employment. Back to the 1950s, when women and Blacks were limited to the margins of the workforce, is when you had the height of factory employment for White American men.
No, a few generations ago the ancestors of people like Eric Garner worked as farmers, lumbers, domestic staff, shoe shiners, etc.
Leftists try to claim the old industrial age was this grand era of equality, but it was not. There was substantial discrimination against Blacks in those days even in the industrial sector.
Even if offshoring was reverse, automation has reduced the need for industrial workers. And today blue collar jobs require a certain level of education (certifications or licenses), union membership, and they drug test you. Blue collar jobs do not hire drunks or drug addicts off the street these days.
NYC has no shortage of construction jobs. Notice Garner wasn't doing them. He was too fat and with too many health problems to deal with much in the way of job related stress.
Sorry but that is nonsense, the great migration of the original population of African American blacks was driven by opportunities afforded by jobs in manufacturing in cities like Chicago and New York. Discrimination or not those folks would not have come in such huge numbers, had the work not been there. Blacks certainly seemed to believe that opportunities were better in the north otherwise they would not have moved.
Additionally the decline of places like the South Side of Chicago and the black communities in the mid-west coincides with the decline of industrial activity in the late 1970s onwards. Utopic or not, the numbers stand, the income gap between whites and blacks was closing through the 1960s and 70s and began to climb again thereafter. Interestingly with the decline of those opportunities some blacks have actually started returning to the South, suggesting those jobs were the driver.
Unless you are an Aspie like me, you realise that I was using Garner as an example, in that more people of his background were in gainful employment a mere generation ago and the change to knowledge based service economy has rendered them less employable. The same pattern can be seen with working class whites in the north of england after Thatcherism, as this isn't a racial phenomenon..
Also when it comes to construction as with things like the fire service connections matter more than you think. If no one in your immediate circle has access to job contacts for a new tower going up you wont be able to get a job.
As for automation, thanks for regurgitating my earlier point
Not on the working class being mostly unemployed. They work in retail, construction, civil service, and the service sector.
I had an uncle who worked for years for a glue factory. He has hearing loss due to exposure to noise and and cancer due to exposure to chemicals.
I even think there are elements of sexism and chauvinism in this idealization of factory (male) work. It was before the women's movement and before women joined the workforce in greater numbers.
The idea that doing dangerous work that will kill you is somehow a godsend to African Americans is 100% bull**** and racist. There's absolutely no reason why people of all races can't go out for better jobs.
But you don't want that, for whatever reason communists are obsessed with the idea of people working in horribly polluting factories of yesteryear.
Some other things to think about. After WW2, Europe was destroyed, Japan was nuked, China was a wreck, and most of the so called third world never had much industrial capacity. So in the 1950s, industrial goods were pretty much ONLY made in the US. By the 1980s Europe and Japan were reindustrialized (meaning there was excess factory capacity in the US). After China, India, and Brazil industrialized, and plus automation manufacturing became a smaller part of overall employment. Back to the 1950s, when women and Blacks were limited to the margins of the workforce, is when you had the height of factory employment for White American men.
I am not sure what your point is
I think the opinions I espoused earlier are largely in line with what you have just said. I never said conditions for African Americans were great, but looking at the data, the gaps between them and the rest of white mainstream America were smaller back then.
Never did I say that factory work was glorious, but the levels of pay back then in such roles horrible as some of them were, were higher in real terms than sitting on welfare.
Actually I recently read a BBC article and they were pointing out the socio-economic data for African Americans was getting worse rather than better. With Geographical segregation increasing rather than decreasing for example.
As for the communist jibe, hardly... I am well aware of the rise of the nations you mentioned and the effects of industrial employment in America. But as you happily trot out the neo-con mantra of such jobs being unviable in America, how do you explain the Mittelstand or the survival manufacturing in towns like Kobe and Kyoto in Japan??
Germany and Japan are high wage economies but a lot of manufacturing takes place within their borders and their working class are in much better shape than in the UK or America..
Ideology shapes the economy of a nation as much as the supposed comparative advantage.. There is a reason why the sub-prime crisis started in the US and UK..!
Likewise there is also a reason why such real house price increases have only been seen in the major cities of Anglo-saxon economies. In Sweden, there are multitude of rules in place to prevent such rates of house price growth, including strict rules on foreign property development and ownership. The same for Germany, where Berlin recently passed rules on vacancy to prevent speculative buying by foreign owners...
Germany and Japan are high wage economies but a lot of manufacturing takes place within their borders and their working class are in much better shape than in the UK or America..
Ideology shapes the economy of a nation as much as the supposed comparative advantage.. There is a reason why the sub-prime crisis started in the US and UK..!
Likewise there is also a reason why such real house price increases have only been seen in the major cities of Anglo-saxon economies. In Sweden, there are multitude of rules in place to prevent such rates of house price growth, including strict rules on foreign property development and ownership. The same for Germany, where Berlin recently passed rules on vacancy to prevent speculative buying by foreign owners...
Yes, ideology does shape the the economy of a nation. But there are consequences to going down that path. America has its steep ups and downs. Germany and Japan have been bouncing around at the bottom for far too long - just look at their GDP growth rates, debt-to-GDP ratios and their inability to expand the private sector fast enough to absorb many young people looking for work. Between the 2 poisons I would much rather choose the US.
Yes as one of those mechanically inclined workers you do need an education and licensure, my field is not glamorous but it does require training and development, really the blue-collar vs white-collar argument that some like to have is in someways nonsense.
An Accountant and an Electrician both go to school, both have to acquire credentials, both graduate from a program of study to enter their field, only real difference one gets dirty and the other stays clean, we all should work together instead of looking down upon others cause their collar may be a different color then yours.
I to find this topic interesting so if you're graduating or have graduated from a college or tech school and you desire to try your hand at making the big bucks in Manhattan, where is left where a young professional goes and lives? Has Manhattan reached that point where if you want to work there don't expect to afford to live there? I would think that would drive young talent away but apparently they still seem to come.
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