Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
Can you give us some facts to establish that the middle class is in fact shrinking? It seems to me that more than anything globalization is freeing up domestic labor to do more productive things i.e. for a greater wage. It's possible though that it provided such a shock to the system in countries like the U.S. that it may take a while to fill that void of jobs again, but once that happens we'll be stronger for it.

And most importantly you can't ignore what a great effect this is happening on the world as a whole. The countries that get outsourced to are being rapidly pulled out of poverty.
For this reason and others, I don't even consider the drop in manufacturing an issue. American high tech adores foreign growth because that's exports, and these are very high paying jobs. The sorts of manufacturing the US has lost is textiles and stuff we never really did much of in the first place (like cell phone assemblage). The big bits of manufacturing are not ones that can be outsourced (automobiles), and the drop in that has a lot to do the dip in growth since the 90s (which I think is mainly just a monetary policy and regulatory issue)

Being a good plumber isn't hard and they make bank. But who says they want to be a plumber? Granted that's service and trade, but it's on the same bandwidth as manufacturing

Also, manufacturing tends to require relocation. People don't wanna move, so they have to work in service. We have achieved enough of the American Dream that new generations take it for granted that they can find work so easily


It may be interesting to look at the manufacturing thing as a regional thing. If it wasn't for the Midwest, we wouldn't be talking about any of this shit. We consider this a country-wide thing, but it isn't. Maybe it's something about Michigan and Ohio that people just don't like. Wait, I've got it! The Sun Belt Migration! They invented air conditioning, and that opened up slews of migration from the Midwest and Northeast down to the sun belt. This demographic shift spell turmoil for the manufacturing belt. Instead of constant in-migration of hopeful laborers, it got out-migration of people who wanted to get away from the continental coldness. I don't know if that's all true, as I just came up with it, but I'd certainly look into it