Trump Presidency Round 2

Bishop2b5

Bishop2b5

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IrishLax said:
Most people will take a lower paying blue collar job in other industries right now rather than work in manufacturing. There are a lot of reasons why, but a lot of it is just the psychology of it all. Would you rather do a repetitive task all day, every day or be a carpenter? Or a mason? Or a delivery driver? A job at UPS is way more desirable right now than a job in manufacturing.

The biggest issue right now is unfilled manufacturing jobs — and how for decades we have been using immigrants as the stop gap to fill them and other domestic jobs that struggle to attract workers — and if you really wanted to do something about that the answer is probably tackling disability fraud and welfare programs but that’s a whole different discussion.
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To each his own, but I'd rather have the repetitive factory job at $25-30/hr than the only slightly less boring $15/hr job. To me, work isn't my life. It's how I fund my life. It's all repetitive and boring after awhile. If I have a family to support or a lifestyle to fund as a single person, I'm going for the higher pay. Being bored at work to have a much better life outside of work seems a no-brainer to me.
 
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Bluto

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GowerND11 said:
And unionization has been declining in our nation for the last, what, 5 decades. Many states where the new manufacturing is popping up are actively campaigning against unions even existing, trying to dismantle workers' rights that have been fought for, literally, 140-100 years ago.
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I’ve posted this before but working in food harvesting/processing and warehouse environments can be fucking brutal due to the repetitive nature of the work and the working conditions.

It does a serious number on your body in the immediate and long term. I’m speaking from first hand experience having worked in a cold storage plant in Alaska and having worked picking crops. In my particular case in Alaska I was working in conditions as cold as 40 below and more often than not it was either wet and or damp. Most shifts during peak season were 10-12 hours and the longest I worked was 18. I worked that schedule for four months straight with no days off.

The way I see it the only way those jobs would be even remotely desirable to do long term for most people would be a significant pay increase, guaranteed low cost healthcare, better unemployment benefits due to the erratic/seasonal nature of many of these jobs, pensions, disability and much longer vacations to allow for rest and recovery.

There was some of that for the locals that worked year round at the plant I worked at due to union representation but yeah damn near all of them had serious physical issues and most were self medicating with drugs and or alcohol.
 
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BuaConstrictor

BuaConstrictor

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Bluto said:
The way I see it the only way those jobs would be even remotely desirable to do long term for most people would be a significant pay increase, guaranteed low cost healthcare, better unemployment benefits due to the erratic/seasonal nature of many of these jobs, pensions, disability and much longer vacations to allow for rest and recovery.
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I'm sure the GOP will be fine with expanding union representation and workers rights in order to alleviate these issues for these jobs!
 
BuaConstrictor

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So...Trump just got rid of Veteran's Day...



Also, he does know that WWII didn't end on May 8th, right?
 
GowerND11

GowerND11

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BuaConstrictor said:
So...Trump just got rid of Veteran's Day...



Also, he does know that WWII didn't end on May 8th, right?
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Virtue signaling, base lubing, and identity politics at its finest again. We don't need to have these days "created" other than dudes in MAGA hats to get a hard on because Trump "is a true patriot" when all he is doing is continuing nonsense and getting nothing actually tangible completed.
 
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Bluto

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BuaConstrictor said:
I'm sure the GOP will be fine with expanding union representation and workers rights in order to alleviate these issues for these jobs!
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It sure is weird seeing all these former Ayn Rand and Chicago school of economic acolytes who brought us deindustrialization in the first place now saying “trust us” we’re for the “working man”.

I honestly do think they want Americans to work in these types of jobs but it would be a situation more akin to what was presented in The Jungle more so than the post WW2 era. I mean Trump keeps referencing the McKinley era as being some sort of golden age, when in fact it was an extremely shitty time to be a worker in America.
 
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RDU Irish

RDU Irish

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GowerND11 said:
My entire family has always been blue collar until me. My dad worked for Honeywell for 40 years. His dad, on the railroad. His brother in the factory with him. Another as a lineman for PPL. My mom's side... much of the same. I grew up in the Coal Region, I know work, I know blue collar....... Yeah, people don't want to work these jobs anymore. My friends that work for Hydro's Cressona, PA plant (their largest aluminum plant in the US and one of the largest in the world) are constantly looking to find workers. They can't get anyone in there to stay. Starting at $25/hr in a very LCOL area, and they can't get people to fill positions, let alone stay.

I live in the type of region that "yearns" for factories, yet all of these good paying jobs (including some of the good paying distribution centers) struggle to obtain full work forces, despite the claims we want production jobs. But hey, I'm just a midday white collar snob 🤷‍♂️
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Sounds like upward mobility facilitated by hard work to me. Dare I say the American Dream? Why are the people who built strong families while building this country not celebrated as a path to generational success? Maybe legally immigrating people to work those 500k jobs would be good for our culture as well as economy. Godless nihilism creating a SSDI aspiring class who would rather doordash and play Xbox than get married and raise respectable kids seems like part of the problem in filling those 500k GOOD PAYING JOBS.

You can be white collar without being a snob btw. If you take my comment as a snipe at you - that is on you. I'm surrounded by white collar snobs "that's what checkbooks are for" when they snark at someone who mows their own lawn. You are not an insufferable snob - neither is Lax. But I can tell you have white collar guilt over your blue collar roots. You aren't one of "them" and that is a good thing.

IrishLax said:
These people are so unserious, my family situation is almost exactly the same. Mom grew up in rural America detasseling corn and such. Worked hard, was smart, was in first class of women to go to ND. My dad’s family worked in a furniture factory or was in the military, my dad ended up going to ND as well which is where they met. My grandma scrubbed toilets. Neither side of my family is anything other than salt-of-earth // working class people. My parents were EXCEPTIONS who worked their asses off SPECIFICALLY TO GET GOOD JOBS and live a comfortable life.

No one is going to apologize for doing well in school or getting good jobs because the truth is that almost all Americans DO NOT WANT SHITTY FACTORY JOBS regardless of where you come from. Polling and actual job data are very clear on that. People absolutely prefer other blue collar jobs like construction, etc.

Anyone carrying water for pushing Americans into bad jobs when there are already 500k open manufacturing jobs *while not willing to work that job themselves or have their family work it* is a hypocritical asshole. Fuck off.
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Stigmatizing hard work and pretending college is the only path to success have gutted the collective work ethic of America, IMO. 25% of people viewed those 2% of workforce as upgrades - you focus on the 75% that look down their noses at SHITTY FACTORY JOBS. Maybe we have a geographical or structural unemployment issue undermining the open 500k manufacturing jobs? Maybe people don't value themselves enough to see that they can qualify for these jobs. It is odd to me that you take pride in this blue collar lineage but trash that path forward for upward mobility for others. Would you be embarrassed if your kids grow up to work SHITTY FACTORY JOBS?

College degrees apparently make people entitled to the point nobody should have to do shitty work, unless they are an illegal immigrant. We need that underclass to serve us so we can get paid six figures to pretend to work in our pajamas in Starbucks. God forbid we have to scrub our own toilets or mow our own grass.
 
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Bluto

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RDU Irish said:
Sounds like upward mobility facilitated by hard work to me. Dare I say the American Dream? Why are the people who built strong families while building this country not celebrated as a path to generational success? Maybe legally immigrating people to work those 500k jobs would be good for our culture as well as economy. Godless nihilism creating a SSDI aspiring class who would rather doordash and play Xbox than get married and raise respectable kids seems like part of the problem in filling those 500k GOOD PAYING JOBS.

You can be white collar without being a snob btw. If you take my comment as a snipe at you - that is on you. I'm surrounded by white collar snobs "that's what checkbooks are for" when they snark at someone who mows their own lawn. You are not an insufferable snob - neither is Lax. But I can tell you have white collar guilt over your blue collar roots. You aren't one of "them" and that is a good thing.



Stigmatizing hard work and pretending college is the only path to success have gutted the collective work ethic of America, IMO. 25% of people viewed those 2% of workforce as upgrades - you focus on the 75% that look down their noses at SHITTY FACTORY JOBS. Maybe we have a geographical or structural unemployment issue undermining the open 500k manufacturing jobs? Maybe people don't value themselves enough to see that they can qualify for these jobs. It is odd to me that you take pride in this blue collar lineage but trash that path forward for upward mobility for others. Would you be embarrassed if your kids grow up to work SHITTY FACTORY JOBS?

College degrees apparently make people entitled to the point nobody should have to do shitty work, unless they are an illegal immigrant. We need that underclass to serve us so we can get paid six figures to pretend to work in our pajamas in Starbucks. God forbid we have to scrub our own toilets or mow our own grass.
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I don’t think you’re ever gonna find a substantial number of citizens in this country who would want to engage in various levels of shitty work that is often disabling in the long term unless it included affordable healthcare, pensions, substantial vacation time and or more than poverty level unemployment benefits.

People didn’t want to work those jobs in the “golden age” of industrialization and that’s what gave rise to the labor movement in this country.

It’s a shame the GOP has made destroying organized labor one of its life’s missions. With that in mind, asking people to believe it’s the party of the “working man” makes zero sense.
 
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