We expect American politicians to value American workers over Mexican workers. The morality you outlined here suggests that our elected officials should be able to brag every time a factory leaves the US - “I created 1600 jobs for Mexicans!” Not going to happen, nor should it. Some things are zero sum. Carrier needed one factory. If it’s located in Mexico, then Americans don’t have those jobs.
Politicians do create jobs. What happens in the job market in the country is not simply the result of massive forces out of anyone’s control; they are the result of policy decisions. Sometimes policy decisions have unforeseen results, sometimes policy decisions have to balance competing needs, sometimes your hands are tied and policy has to move in a particular direction. But the hollowing out of our industrial base was not due to inevitable economic hurricane winds against which nothing can stand. They were due to political decisions embraced by both parties in the US for generations.
Policy decisions are going to come down to cost/benefit analysis. If you believe that spending $250,000 a year to keep X jobs in the US isn’t worth it, fine. But the fundamental equation is still the right way - the only way - for this to work. If the government is going to help keep good paying, working class jobs in the US the method by which it is going to make that happen is to spend money. The power of the purse is the only tool in its box.
Some else of what you wrote at the end misunderstands why people react so poorly to an air conditioner plant shutting down. We’ve been hearing variations of the “don’t worry about the coal mine shutting down, the solar power battery factories will make up for it” for closing in on a hundred years. The implied promise goes unfulfilled every time. Those great jobs that are right around the corner never appear, and the old jobs that provided a solid wage for American workers vanish. It’s a matter of trust, which again comes down to policies, not a question of misunderstanding abstract economic theory. Praxis is what matters in the end.
The rest of your essay was very funny and interesting, particularly the criticism of the DeV essay for focusing on messaging rather than policy. Thanks for posting it. I would argue, though, that running working class candidates is the BEST idea that came out of the DeVabbott essay. You’re 100% correct that it would fly in the face of the entirety of democratic history until now, but it seems like an idea worth trying. At some point the government needs to reflect the needs of the working class, and maybe having them at the table is the best way for this to happen.
I mean, sure, but the economy generally and the job market specifically aren't among those things, and taking a myopic view of just a single Carrier factory completely ignores the dynamics of the larger system. Just look at the Buy America policies the author mentions, and other policies meant to protect our bizarre and outdated fetish for Pennsylvania steelworkers. It is more expensive to make the affected products in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world, full stop. Yet by artificially increasing the price of iron and steel, you raise those input costs for every other industry that uses iron and steel to build things (including, you guessed it, Carrier air conditioners!). So you've maybe "saved" some jobs in that industry (although only so many because automation is a far bigger driver of manufacturing's relative decline in the U.S.),* but at the expense of (also well-paid!) construction jobs throughout the country.
*"Relative" being a critical term here, since our manufacturing sector is actually growing despite all claims to the contrary. In absolute dollars, the U.S. manufacturing sector grew by about $500 billion between 2000 and 2020, but declined as a share of GDP and of the job market due to a combination of automation and faster growth in other sectors.
> We’ve been hearing variations of the “don’t worry about the coal mine shutting down, the solar power battery factories will make up for it” for closing in on a hundred years. The implied promise goes unfulfilled every time.
In what sense has that promise gone unfilled, since unemployment is lower than ever, and the median wage is higher than ever?
Sure, I agree that every change to the economy benefits some people and hurts others, but if the broad majority is being helped by the sum of the changes, that seems good.
The broad majority aren’t being helped. Working for GM on the line provided enough money to support a family with the occasional luxury - a vacation every year, maybe a second car. Working for Walmart does not. They both count as “employed” though, so the change in living standards isn’t reflected in the unemployment rate.
Well, if the median income is increasing, then by definition the broad majority are being helped. If you think that living standards are broadly lower today than they were in 1950, here's a good article: https://www.slowboring.com/p/nostalgia-economics-is-totally-wrong
I don’t know if that’s something anyone agrees with. Now. If we are to say “government creates jobs” does that mean the American south in about 1820 “created” more jobs than any other part of the world? I wouldn’t say that.
So I do have a question though are you saying all jobs are policy decision? And not market forces? How does that work in, say, creative spaces? Have governments enacted a “guitar in every toddlers hand” policy? No. Creative spaces are and mostly always have been the truest form of that evil misunderstood “invisible hand”.
Unless you count the first amendment as a”policy decision” which it’s not. Creative spaces stand in stark contrast to the idea of policy created jobs.
Jeff understands this because Jeff works in those spaces.
Also. Zoning reform is, as always, the boring solution to all of the is.
Having spent 5 decades now as a blue-collar working class schmoe doing my skilled trades thing both directly in and around the domestic auto industry in between layoffs and job losses, I've come to put precious little stock in jobs rhetoric from politicians. They start talkin' jobs and I hear blah blah blah. A smart and truly cogent and effective jobs policy would be a smart thing to do. Maybe one day they'll do it. Even if only by accident.
Meantime, having watched the steady and inexorable job-policy-resistant downsizing of this particular segment of the manufacturing base of the country for decades, if as a politician you want to get my attention as a working-class voter (frankly, at this point I'm a one-issue voter, and that issue is, for lack of a better description, *democracy*, but I digress), talk about doing something that will have an immediate and direct beneficial impact on myself and all other working-class people who *are* in fact working. There's more than a few of us doing that these days, it seems.
Do something about the fucking tax code. And maybe if you simply cannot manage to spend a bit less of the tax revenues flowing into the government coffers, spend them at least a bit more, oh, I don't know... prudently? Those $600 toilet seats of nostalgic by-gone days must be at least a couple of grand or more by now, what with inflation and supply chain issues and all. So maybe you could just go with unisex or uni-gender or omnigender or whatever bathrooms in all government facilities, saving a shit load of bucks and having the added advantage of putting to rest the question of who gets to pee where.
As for the tax code, I'm tempted to say "soak the rich" and give me a break, but that rhetoric is about as useful as jobs-blah-jobs-blah-jobs. However, it might be useful if the pols actually acknowledged in some real and meaningful way that the widening wealth inequity in this country and its deleterious effects is not a sole product of genius-like business acumen by the businessmen in the upper reaches of the capitalist / corporate heap. It's the genius-like acumen of their tax guys that contributes mightily to their bottom lines, both corporate and personal, as well. I'm seriously more than just a little tired of my feet being soaked by the trickle-down economics of these folks and their ilk casually pissing on my boots while the pols hold their dicks, all of them telling me all the while that it's a passing rain shower.
Speaking of dicks, I recall Jack Welch (anybody out there remember him?) bragging, in a year when GE made something on the order of $43 Billion with a B in profits, that the company paid the amazing, eye-popping total of Zero with a Z in federal taxes. Proud as a peacock of that, he was. But probably no more so than of his own personal return on the 1040 EZ he probably picked up from his local H&R Block on his way home after work.
But I'm proud to have done my patriotic duty by contributing to GE's bottom line that year in my own small way as a working-class *taxpayer*, even though I'd have preferred to do it the old-fashioned way by buying one of their products.
Maybe if I didn't have to pay a third of every damned penny I earn in taxes, I could more easily afford to park a new jet engine in my garage.
“The ‘buy American’ provisions that both support are estimated to cost $250,000 for each job ‘saved’”
Bollocks analysis. It doesn’t even account for the lawyers and paraprofessionals who help companies perform juuust enough American manufacturing to comply.
Don't give up on a guaranteed jobs program! All you have to do is add up all the money we spend on unemployment, welfare, and assistance programs and you may find that it would be cheaper, and more productive, to give a person a job.
No. It wouldn’t. There are other costs as well that aren’t just “money”. Besides the point a jobs guarantee is silly. You may as well make a cake guarantee.
And what job? Can I be guaranteed a job as a layabout white guy with an acoustic guitar? That’s a job people have. Looks pretty chill to me?
No we are usually talking about mind numbing soup shattering assembly like or data entry. Shudder.
A better solution would be a negative income tax or even, ugh, UBI.
You can’t guarantee something someone else does. That’s the problem with a jobs guarantee. It leads to situations where all you’re doing is forcing people to keep roommates they hate.
Go to any city or town in America and you will find no end to the jobs that could be done. Even if it's just picking up trash or cleaning a playground, it's better than paying people to stay home and not work, which, BTW, is what UBI is. If you're going to ask other taxpayers to give you part of their paycheck you should give something back.
Think about all the work not getting done by state and municipal governments that are not getting done because they "don't have the money." Every roadway has trash thrown about, potholes not getting filled. Nursing homes can't treat elderly because they don't have enough workers. Coastal communities could be building or repairing dunes, or planting dune grass to protect coast lines, but they "don't have the money." Meanwhile they're paying people to stay home and not work.
A couple of things I find curious about this survey. First is that all four points reveal preferences of working class voters that were not exactly a secret before now. “We found that working-class voters prefer candidates who say they will serve the interests of the working class and who place blame for the problems facing working Americans on the shoulders of economic elites” in particular is a no-shit DUH of a non-discovery. Second is that three of the points are of the form ‘talk about x’ rather than ‘actually do x’.
As a cynic, these points make me think that the Dem establishment a) is pretty well aware of the preferences of working class voters, and b) has no intention of paying anything more than lip service to them during campaign season before returning to business as usual once in office.
We expect American politicians to value American workers over Mexican workers. The morality you outlined here suggests that our elected officials should be able to brag every time a factory leaves the US - “I created 1600 jobs for Mexicans!” Not going to happen, nor should it. Some things are zero sum. Carrier needed one factory. If it’s located in Mexico, then Americans don’t have those jobs.
Politicians do create jobs. What happens in the job market in the country is not simply the result of massive forces out of anyone’s control; they are the result of policy decisions. Sometimes policy decisions have unforeseen results, sometimes policy decisions have to balance competing needs, sometimes your hands are tied and policy has to move in a particular direction. But the hollowing out of our industrial base was not due to inevitable economic hurricane winds against which nothing can stand. They were due to political decisions embraced by both parties in the US for generations.
Policy decisions are going to come down to cost/benefit analysis. If you believe that spending $250,000 a year to keep X jobs in the US isn’t worth it, fine. But the fundamental equation is still the right way - the only way - for this to work. If the government is going to help keep good paying, working class jobs in the US the method by which it is going to make that happen is to spend money. The power of the purse is the only tool in its box.
Some else of what you wrote at the end misunderstands why people react so poorly to an air conditioner plant shutting down. We’ve been hearing variations of the “don’t worry about the coal mine shutting down, the solar power battery factories will make up for it” for closing in on a hundred years. The implied promise goes unfulfilled every time. Those great jobs that are right around the corner never appear, and the old jobs that provided a solid wage for American workers vanish. It’s a matter of trust, which again comes down to policies, not a question of misunderstanding abstract economic theory. Praxis is what matters in the end.
The rest of your essay was very funny and interesting, particularly the criticism of the DeV essay for focusing on messaging rather than policy. Thanks for posting it. I would argue, though, that running working class candidates is the BEST idea that came out of the DeVabbott essay. You’re 100% correct that it would fly in the face of the entirety of democratic history until now, but it seems like an idea worth trying. At some point the government needs to reflect the needs of the working class, and maybe having them at the table is the best way for this to happen.
"Some things are zero sum."
I mean, sure, but the economy generally and the job market specifically aren't among those things, and taking a myopic view of just a single Carrier factory completely ignores the dynamics of the larger system. Just look at the Buy America policies the author mentions, and other policies meant to protect our bizarre and outdated fetish for Pennsylvania steelworkers. It is more expensive to make the affected products in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world, full stop. Yet by artificially increasing the price of iron and steel, you raise those input costs for every other industry that uses iron and steel to build things (including, you guessed it, Carrier air conditioners!). So you've maybe "saved" some jobs in that industry (although only so many because automation is a far bigger driver of manufacturing's relative decline in the U.S.),* but at the expense of (also well-paid!) construction jobs throughout the country.
*"Relative" being a critical term here, since our manufacturing sector is actually growing despite all claims to the contrary. In absolute dollars, the U.S. manufacturing sector grew by about $500 billion between 2000 and 2020, but declined as a share of GDP and of the job market due to a combination of automation and faster growth in other sectors.
> We’ve been hearing variations of the “don’t worry about the coal mine shutting down, the solar power battery factories will make up for it” for closing in on a hundred years. The implied promise goes unfulfilled every time.
In what sense has that promise gone unfilled, since unemployment is lower than ever, and the median wage is higher than ever?
Learn to code, coal miners!!
Sure, I agree that every change to the economy benefits some people and hurts others, but if the broad majority is being helped by the sum of the changes, that seems good.
The broad majority aren’t being helped. Working for GM on the line provided enough money to support a family with the occasional luxury - a vacation every year, maybe a second car. Working for Walmart does not. They both count as “employed” though, so the change in living standards isn’t reflected in the unemployment rate.
Well, if the median income is increasing, then by definition the broad majority are being helped. If you think that living standards are broadly lower today than they were in 1950, here's a good article: https://www.slowboring.com/p/nostalgia-economics-is-totally-wrong
I don’t know if that’s something anyone agrees with. Now. If we are to say “government creates jobs” does that mean the American south in about 1820 “created” more jobs than any other part of the world? I wouldn’t say that.
So I do have a question though are you saying all jobs are policy decision? And not market forces? How does that work in, say, creative spaces? Have governments enacted a “guitar in every toddlers hand” policy? No. Creative spaces are and mostly always have been the truest form of that evil misunderstood “invisible hand”.
Unless you count the first amendment as a”policy decision” which it’s not. Creative spaces stand in stark contrast to the idea of policy created jobs.
Jeff understands this because Jeff works in those spaces.
Also. Zoning reform is, as always, the boring solution to all of the is.
Having spent 5 decades now as a blue-collar working class schmoe doing my skilled trades thing both directly in and around the domestic auto industry in between layoffs and job losses, I've come to put precious little stock in jobs rhetoric from politicians. They start talkin' jobs and I hear blah blah blah. A smart and truly cogent and effective jobs policy would be a smart thing to do. Maybe one day they'll do it. Even if only by accident.
Meantime, having watched the steady and inexorable job-policy-resistant downsizing of this particular segment of the manufacturing base of the country for decades, if as a politician you want to get my attention as a working-class voter (frankly, at this point I'm a one-issue voter, and that issue is, for lack of a better description, *democracy*, but I digress), talk about doing something that will have an immediate and direct beneficial impact on myself and all other working-class people who *are* in fact working. There's more than a few of us doing that these days, it seems.
Do something about the fucking tax code. And maybe if you simply cannot manage to spend a bit less of the tax revenues flowing into the government coffers, spend them at least a bit more, oh, I don't know... prudently? Those $600 toilet seats of nostalgic by-gone days must be at least a couple of grand or more by now, what with inflation and supply chain issues and all. So maybe you could just go with unisex or uni-gender or omnigender or whatever bathrooms in all government facilities, saving a shit load of bucks and having the added advantage of putting to rest the question of who gets to pee where.
As for the tax code, I'm tempted to say "soak the rich" and give me a break, but that rhetoric is about as useful as jobs-blah-jobs-blah-jobs. However, it might be useful if the pols actually acknowledged in some real and meaningful way that the widening wealth inequity in this country and its deleterious effects is not a sole product of genius-like business acumen by the businessmen in the upper reaches of the capitalist / corporate heap. It's the genius-like acumen of their tax guys that contributes mightily to their bottom lines, both corporate and personal, as well. I'm seriously more than just a little tired of my feet being soaked by the trickle-down economics of these folks and their ilk casually pissing on my boots while the pols hold their dicks, all of them telling me all the while that it's a passing rain shower.
Speaking of dicks, I recall Jack Welch (anybody out there remember him?) bragging, in a year when GE made something on the order of $43 Billion with a B in profits, that the company paid the amazing, eye-popping total of Zero with a Z in federal taxes. Proud as a peacock of that, he was. But probably no more so than of his own personal return on the 1040 EZ he probably picked up from his local H&R Block on his way home after work.
But I'm proud to have done my patriotic duty by contributing to GE's bottom line that year in my own small way as a working-class *taxpayer*, even though I'd have preferred to do it the old-fashioned way by buying one of their products.
Maybe if I didn't have to pay a third of every damned penny I earn in taxes, I could more easily afford to park a new jet engine in my garage.
“The ‘buy American’ provisions that both support are estimated to cost $250,000 for each job ‘saved’”
Bollocks analysis. It doesn’t even account for the lawyers and paraprofessionals who help companies perform juuust enough American manufacturing to comply.
-Signed, a government contracts attorney
Don't give up on a guaranteed jobs program! All you have to do is add up all the money we spend on unemployment, welfare, and assistance programs and you may find that it would be cheaper, and more productive, to give a person a job.
No. It wouldn’t. There are other costs as well that aren’t just “money”. Besides the point a jobs guarantee is silly. You may as well make a cake guarantee.
And what job? Can I be guaranteed a job as a layabout white guy with an acoustic guitar? That’s a job people have. Looks pretty chill to me?
No we are usually talking about mind numbing soup shattering assembly like or data entry. Shudder.
A better solution would be a negative income tax or even, ugh, UBI.
You can’t guarantee something someone else does. That’s the problem with a jobs guarantee. It leads to situations where all you’re doing is forcing people to keep roommates they hate.
Go to any city or town in America and you will find no end to the jobs that could be done. Even if it's just picking up trash or cleaning a playground, it's better than paying people to stay home and not work, which, BTW, is what UBI is. If you're going to ask other taxpayers to give you part of their paycheck you should give something back.
Think about all the work not getting done by state and municipal governments that are not getting done because they "don't have the money." Every roadway has trash thrown about, potholes not getting filled. Nursing homes can't treat elderly because they don't have enough workers. Coastal communities could be building or repairing dunes, or planting dune grass to protect coast lines, but they "don't have the money." Meanwhile they're paying people to stay home and not work.
> Can I be guaranteed a job as a layabout white guy with an acoustic guitar?
Now THERE’S a job I would be happy to see relocated to Mexico en masse.
A couple of things I find curious about this survey. First is that all four points reveal preferences of working class voters that were not exactly a secret before now. “We found that working-class voters prefer candidates who say they will serve the interests of the working class and who place blame for the problems facing working Americans on the shoulders of economic elites” in particular is a no-shit DUH of a non-discovery. Second is that three of the points are of the form ‘talk about x’ rather than ‘actually do x’.
As a cynic, these points make me think that the Dem establishment a) is pretty well aware of the preferences of working class voters, and b) has no intention of paying anything more than lip service to them during campaign season before returning to business as usual once in office.
AI is going destroy a ton of white collar jobs, especially in law.
Will be interesting to see if politicians in DC will circle the wagons to protect their industry.
Please don’t squat cobbler shame.