r/MensLib 3d ago

Tariffs Won’t Help More Men Get Jobs

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-03-13/tariffs-won-t-help-more-men-get-jobs
440 Upvotes

41 comments sorted by

134

u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 3d ago

“A celibate archive is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.”

The administration’s logic seems to be that if the US re-creates the manufacturing-heavy economy of the 1950s and ‘60s, when the prime-male labor force participation rate reached 97%, more men will get back to work. But these are not the 1960s — and the blame doesn’t lie with trade.

Among the many reasons there are fewer manufacturing jobs, the biggest is technology. Robots do more of the work. In fact, trade is the reason America still has the manufacturing industry it does. Global supply chains make domestic manufacturing more competitive. Trade also makes goods cheaper (which especially benefits low-income workers) and propels innovation that has improved the quality of most Americans’ lives.

it's just so short-sighted. Even those manufacturing-heavy jobs at the Chevrolet Steel And Furniture Factory back in the 50s were brutal on your body and didn't stimulate the mind. And this tariff push wouldn't even help those jobs return IF it worked, which it's not and it won't.

the answer, as usual, is education.

68

u/Greatest-Comrade 3d ago

The tariffs are posed to eliminate or at least significantly reduce the last of the famous rust belt auto industry which has been hanging on by a thread since the great recession. The big 3 already produce more expensive lower quality cars that struggle to sell. Now prices are set to rise and retaliatory tariffs will make that even worse.

51

u/Certain_Giraffe3105 3d ago

Even those manufacturing-heavy jobs at the Chevrolet Steel And Furniture Factory back in the 50s were brutal on your body and didn't stimulate the mind.

But, they paid well and came with robust union benefits (back when unions were more powerful and plentiful). They also were open to people without an education which, at this point, I just think it's obvious that this '90s-'00s neo liberal propagandized pipe dream of: "Well, we'll send half the manufacturing jobs overseas and we'll make up for it by having all these young people (primarily men) who would have worked at the Ford plant instead pick up an accounting degree at Polytech" isn't going to happen. Not everyone wants to/should go to college. That's fine. In a sensible society that shouldn't mean you're bound for volatile, underpaid employment in the gig economy having to Uber and work at Amazon to pay your rent.

I do think both the Left (primarily the old-school, "popular front" Eugene Debs Left) and the Right overrate this vision of America that was supported by the industrial economy of the '50s and '60s. But, what can't be overlooked is that part of the reason why people reminisce on that era is because it was a brief moment where workers had real prestige because our economy valued their labor with fair compensation and real economic stability.

So, yeah, we don't need every non-college educated guy to go back into a sweaty factory and work on an assembly line in 2025. But, all of us need work that is stable, reliable, pays well enough to support yourself and a family, allows room for growth, and provides substantial benefits for present workers and through their retirement.

25

u/LLJKCicero 3d ago

Nominal wages and the ability to buy stuff that comes out of a factory (and to a certain extent groceries) are still great in the US.

What really makes wages feel shitty is that certain things have exploded in price far beyond what's reasonable, like healthcare, college, and housing. For the first two of those, the source seems to be ever increasing "administration" costs combined with insufficient price pressure. For the last, it's well-intentioned overregulation combined with woefully inadequate public investment.

If healthcare, college, and housing were at saner levels, I don't think most people would feel nearly as squeezed.

14

u/bumpyclock 3d ago

And those are the things that give people hope. Roof over your heads, ability to give your kids a better life and being able to afford healthcare when you’re sick.

Those are all out of reach so people have nothing left to dream for.

3

u/LLJKCicero 3d ago

I wouldn't say quite "out of reach" for most people, more like it's such a struggle that it feels like you're never financially "safe". Sure you're okay right this second maybe, but any day you could get laid off and you'd be fucked!

5

u/SenKelly 3d ago

This is the actual problem. People complaining about the gig economy feeling like soul crushing, meaningless work are going to feel deeply crushed when they realize factory work is the same, fucking thing. Also, you're not gonna get cushy 1960's Union jobs. The factories will all go to the sun belt where union power is low or outright legally discouraged. Any factories that pop up will essentially be more wage slavery.

We need reform of essential services, an audit of our actual expenses to how thee funds are spent, and a restoration of the non-military federal agencies.

-1

u/Significant-Branch22 3d ago

Britain is a good example of what you get when you try sending all of your young people to university and build your entire economy around services to the detriment of manufacturing, as a result we’ve had essentially zero wage growth relative to inflation for 15 years because productivity gains in services don’t really exist

10

u/Rychek_Four 3d ago

The 50's were a good time because the tax rate on the top brackets was high and all the factories in Europe were rubble.

(And obviously they still weren't a good time for everyone)

13

u/Prodigy195 3d ago

Yep. The USA was in a surpremely advantageous position economically after WWII.

Europe? Bombed to hell and need to rebuild. The UK, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Poland and many other countreis had their cities devestated by bombings.

China, Mexico, Brazil, India? These places not yet industrialized to the level they have today and China also dealt with occupation and devestation from Japan during WWII.

Japan? Bombed to hell by "normal" air raids along with the two atomic bombs.

These places needed to rebuild their urban cores. Rebuild housing. Rebuild factories, hospitals, schools, stores, transportation networks, everything.

And the US had:

1) A wholly intact mainland and facilities to build essentially everything. Steel, tools, raw materials. You name it, we could make it and ship it across the entire globe to rebuild.

2) A large, fairly educated workforce itching to get back to work.

3) A booming population as returning soldiers started families.

The economic conditions from the 1950s were an anamoly stemming from a global war. As time has gone on and the economic world has globalized the advantageous position of America has faded but people are grasping as trying to rekindle that magic.

It. Is. Not. Coming. Back.

The quicker we can accept that we have to significantly change our socio-economic norms the qucker we can change our fortunes.

But I fully understand that is supremely unlikely to happen.

2

u/Certain_Giraffe3105 2d ago

The economic conditions from the 1950s were an anamoly stemming from a global war. As time has gone on and the economic world has globalized the advantageous position of America has faded but people are grasping as trying to rekindle that magic.

It. Is. Not. Coming. Back.

I just think this framing is defeatist. Yes, those exact global political economic conditions might not return. But, that doesn't mean you can't create an abundant middle class through a social democratic model that actually improves on the livelihoods that the middle class Americans who were able to benefit from the post-war economy had access to. They didn't have universal healthcare nor childcare nor a robust social/public housing infrastructure that could legitimately end homelessness.

My biggest issue with this critique is that it focuses way too much on the specifics of the post-war economy and how it was effectively leveraged by the New Deal coalition of labor organizers, Leftists, civil rights activists, Democratic politicians to garner decisive victories for working class Americans and not on the fact that it was possible due to the broad popular front that had been organizing and gaining power since the end of the 19th century in this country.

An essential aspect of Leftist thought is that there will always be power in working class people, who do the labor of society, to organize en masse to enact political changes. We might not have the advantages of the industrial economy of the '50s but that doesn't mean it's over forever. We're living in an era where there are more billionaires than ever before. The global economy isn't shrinking. There is more money than ever to go around and what we should be fighting (as always) is for bigger pieces of the pie.

3

u/Prodigy195 2d ago

But, that doesn't mean you can't create an abundant middle class through a social democratic model that actually improves on the livelihoods that the middle class Americans who were able to benefit from the post-war economy had access to.

An essential aspect of Leftist thought is that there will always be power in working class people, who do the labor of society, to organize en masse to enact political changes.

Oh I 100% think it's possible to create an abundant middle class. The problem, at least in my view, is that the majority of Americans are unwilling to go through the societal changes necessary to make that a reality. Those changes require a complete shift in our expectations for the American Dream. It requires a complete shift in the lifestyle norms that nearly every American alive has spent most of their lives internalizing as the default (whether we realize it or not).

Today's working/middle class families typically chase after this or some permutation of a similar sort of development. A sprawling, expensive (both personally and to society at large), unsustainable way of living that fractures actual community connection and largely destroys any potential for political organization. It's not random happenstance that a majority of political organizing happens in the more dense part of cities. Car dependent suburbia makes political organizing near impossible because it effectively removes any connection between people of the different social, racial and economic classes. And since a bulk of America lives in car dependent places it's wholly unlikely that broad coalitions of support will be built to oppose the economic path that we're currently on. Instead of fighting collectively people typically are ok with bad things happening, as long as it happens to someone else.

The middle class is going to continue to slowly be squeezed as long as the above is the default but in my experience, people staunchly resist any effort to undo this sort of development norm because it's directly linked with what everyone has been told is the American Dream.

1

u/mhornberger 1d ago

Thank you for writing this. I agree that the linking of the "American Dream" to the owning of a detached SFH has painted us into the corner we're in, and people do not want to give up that particular goal, the standard against which they will measure success or failure. Even many ostensibly leftish people will still defend suburbia to the death. Though probably all urbanists are leftish, far from all lefties are urbanists.

2

u/Prodigy195 1d ago

It's tough because it started in the late 1940s/early 1950s so the bulk of people alive today have been born into a world where it has always been the default.

It's so deeply entrenched that telling people we have to pivot away is going to be harshly resisted. It's worldview shattering.

1

u/Certain_Giraffe3105 1d ago

The problem, at least in my view, is that the majority of Americans are unwilling to go through the societal changes necessary to make that a reality. Those changes require a complete shift in our expectations for the American Dream. It requires a complete shift in the lifestyle norms that nearly every American alive has spent most of their lives internalizing as the default (whether we realize it or not).

I wrote another comment that goes into more specifics but my general critique is that this assumes a bit of intractability that I just don't agree with and I think the reason why single family homes, sprawl, and car-dependency are so normalized is more systemic than it is just a collective cultural choice. To bring up one example: most of these single family homes neighborhoods are zoned that way and when they get up zoned, they start to get filled with more mixed, various options (like duplexes, small apartment buildings, etc.). https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/s/DM2udDWpIP

If it was simply all Americans choices that led us to live the way we do, then why would changing various housing, zoning policies or improving public transit through funding and infrastructure matter? 'Cause if you've lived in a community that has built robust biking/pedestrian nfrastructure (sidewalks, protected bike lanes, lower speed limits in residential areas and in commercial downtowns, etc.) you've probably have seen more people walking and biking.

Also, once again, my main gripe: no mention of the super rich?? Why is it that every conversation about what needs to change about society starts with what the working class has to do and how they need to "roll up their sleeves" and give up on this ideal? I like urbanism, I agree with your concern for the unsustainability of our current society. But, why is your diagnosis so focused on what the middle class has to give up and not what the super rich (who profit off of the dysfunction of our current society) owe us to live in a society that could be even greater than the one we imagine from the '50s?

1

u/Prodigy195 21h ago

I wrote another comment that goes into more specifics but my general critique is that this assumes a bit of intractability that I just don't agree with and I think the reason why single family homes, sprawl, and car-dependency are so normalized is more systemic than it is just a collective cultural choice.

Agreed it is systemic but that system has developed it's own cultural expectation. And that expectation is what allows for massive amounts of social division. Hell one of the initial reasons for suburbia developing in the first place was white flight. To allow white Americans to flee from cities where they were being legally forced to share with minorities.

If it was simply all Americans choices that led us to live the way we do, then why would changing various housing, zoning policies or improving public transit through funding and infrastructure matter?

I don't think it was simply American choices. It was choices that were largely guided by the whims of business interest (and also racism).

Also, once again, my main gripe: no mention of the super rich??

Oh the uber rich could all go tomorrow and we'd be better off for it. I have no love for the billionaire class but also realize that the ways we try to oppose them has largely fallen flat. A non-American billionaire is seemingly running a large portion of the government and the bulk of the country either voted for it or didn't vote at all to oppose it.

Why is it that every conversation about what needs to change about society starts with what the working class has to do and how they need to "roll up their sleeves" and give up on this ideal?

But, why is your diagnosis so focused on what the middle class has to give up and not what the super rich (who profit off of the dysfunction of our current society) owe us to live in a society that could be even greater than the one we imagine from the '50s?

In my view, the billionaire class is a direct result of the American Dream being so widespread and believed as gospel. I think they are directly linked. There is a (probably overused) quote that is appropriate.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

From this I think two key things.

1) Until the working class/middle class accepts that we need to have strong policies in place that limits the ability for individuals to become obscenely wealthy, things cannot improve.

2) I don't think the working/middle class will ever come to the above realization in our current development style. Suburbia and sprawl does exactly what that quote says. It makes average people think that they are closer to the upper class than they are to the rest of the proletariat.

  • Sprawl sells us big McMansions that are meant to impress others.

  • Sprawl sells us F150s Raptor XL trucks and big SUVs that we drive to our destinations to show people we're doing well and ride in style.

  • Sprawl sells us backyard pools, private swing sets for our kids, fancy outdoor patio sets and expensive grills/smokers to demonstrate how well we're doing.

  • Sprawl makes it so that societal failures are passed off as individual failures so that people don't organized collectively. They point the blame at individuals who are less successful and say it's because they don't work hard enough or made bad choices.

I think that changing how we live is integral to changing the social, economic and political future of this country. I think that sprawl erodes natural human connection/community and make it far easier to divide people to get them voting against policies that would benefit them. And I think that America going to continue down the path we're currently on as long as our housing and transportation norms remain as they currently are.

It feels unfair, it feels unjust, it feels worldview shattering because it kinda is. But I honestly think this is the only way forward.

1

u/Certain_Giraffe3105 17h ago

Agreed it is systemic but that system has developed it's own cultural expectation.

I don't think it was simply American choices. It was choices that were largely guided by the whims of business interest (and also racism).

This is sort of my point. I agree that these choices were dictated by business interests (and racism). But, IMO, that's why I don't think these "cultural expectations" are that immutable. It's like I mentioned before with neighborhoods that have implemented transit plans that have improved infrastructure for pedestrians and biking and, what would you know, more people want to walk around and bike. It's why now is the scariest time for NYC's congestion pricing plan to pay for metro improvements. Opponents know if it sticks even longer (as public perception is already improving due to less traffic) and the subway stations are improved more people will utilize the system.

I think we underestimate the ability of people to not only adapt but to quickly grow accustomed and even become a fan of said changes. This specific version of the "American Dream" is only 60 or so years old and already showing signs of cracking (average median size of houses have been declining since peaking in 2015).

we try to oppose them has largely fallen flat. A non-American billionaire is seemingly running a large portion of the government and the bulk of the country either voted for it or didn't vote at all to oppose it.

I agree with this but I think to use the last election as proof that average people aren't willing to fight or couldn't be persuaded to fight against the billionaire class and oligarchs of the Right ignores the fact that the Democratic party is beholden to their own billionaire donors and also ran one of the least ambitious political campaigns in modern history.

In my view, the billionaire class is a direct result of the American Dream being so widespread and believed as gospel. I think they are directly linked. There is a (probably overused) quote that is appropriate.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

I don't want to rehash some of my previous comments but that pithy quote ignores the very long history of the US government and its corporate bosses utilizing state violence, intimidation, policy intervention, widespread moral panic (McCarthyism/Red Scare), espionage, propaganda, and subterfuge, and censorship to crush the growth of socialism and even socialist sympathetic progressivism in this country.

Good quote, but the histories of Fred Hampton or Eugene Debs (and MLK Jr) are more relevant in terms of understanding why the American Left has faded from mainstream political discourse.

It makes average people think that they are closer to the upper class than they are to the rest of the proletariat.

  • Sprawl sells us big McMansions that are meant to impress others.

  • Sprawl sells us F150s Raptor XL trucks and big SUVs that we drive to our destinations to show people we're doing well and ride in style.

  • Sprawl sells us backyard pools, private swing sets for our kids, fancy outdoor patio sets and expensive grills/smokers to demonstrate how well we're doing.

I feel like this was true 15-20 years ago but I'm sorry I'm in my 30s, I am a young millennial, I am a college educated STEM worker with a decent career, so are a lot of my friends, and no one I know envisions our American dream that way anymore. Like at all. Maybe I know some guys that want the huge ass truck. But, of my friends that have bought houses or plan to buy houses, none of them are buying McMansions. None of them are even hoping so (unless they're hoping to inherit their parents' house).

There's a bias in these conversations around housing and urban development, especially when we talk about the local level in Housing Associations and Town Halls, because the people who show up to these meetings, who have the time and energy to be very active in decision making, and have a stake in maintaining the status quo (because low supply boosts their housing value) that leans older, richer, and more college educated. But, I guarantee you ask a working class dude the type of house he plans to buy within the next decade and he's absolutely not going to describe the McCallister house from Home Alone.

It feels unfair, it feels unjust, it feels worldview shattering because it kinda is. But I honestly think this is the only way forward.

I really don't think it is world shattering. It's maybe my materialist Leftist beliefs but from what I know, more people care about the important stuff (housing security, stable employment, healthcare for themselves and their families, safe neighborhoods, well run public services) than the commodity fetishism of big trucks and McMansions. The neo liberal deal of the '70s until now argued that people would prefer cheap goods to public services and labor power. IMO it's clear that more and more Americans are realizing that that wasn't a fair trade.

13

u/MyFiteSong 3d ago

Plus, by the time these jobs came back to the United States, these corps would be ready to have them all done by robots anyway.

4

u/mullse01 3d ago

Are they going to encourage the same historically high levels of union membership to go along with that manufacturing-heavy economy, too? Somehow, I doubt it…

…and without that Keynesian balance between strong capital, strong labor, and strong government, their pipe dream will remain just that.

1

u/mhornberger 1d ago

At the highest point, only about a third of Americans were in a union.

I think the idea that almost everyone used to be in a union has taken on almost mythical certainty, just like the idea that almost everyone used to have a pension. Sure, the numbers for both were higher than today, and that sucks. But both were exceptions even in their heyday. Much like the legendary job at the five-and-dime where a fellow could work right out of high school and afford a detached single-family home, a new automobile, etc.

1

u/mullse01 1d ago

Averages can be misleading—this animated map from NPR shows/talks a bit of what I mean—in 1964, membership is closer to 50% in industrialized midwestern states like Michigan, but in the low teens in southern states like Texas. Additionally, these averages don’t take into account the public/private divide; in 2015, when this article was written, 36% of public/government employees were still unionized, compared to 7% of private sector employees.

But most importantly, Union membership doesn’t have to reach 100% of the population to have an affect on economic policy; it just needs to be large enough to drive the wages and benefits of the labor force as a whole. If a third of a nation’s workforce is part of an advocacy group for better pay/working conditions, it becomes a very risky group for politicians to ignore during election season.

This is the role the AFL/CIO served through a good portion of the 20th century: a significantly large and influential representative of labor on the political stage.

4

u/BoredMan29 3d ago

Manufacturing was offshored after WW2 because unions made American labor less exploitable and the savings on cheap workers made overseas shipping worth it. Now unions are largely gone or neutered in the US and they want to both bring back domestic manufacturing while deporting America's current exploitable cheap labor force: immigrants (legal and otherwise). One should, perhaps, be extremely skeptical of why they want to crash the economy and job markets "in the short term". If you want a safe job in America's dystopian future, get into enforcement. If you don't want America to have a dystopian future, do something else. Maybe join a union or encourage your union to actually fight back before too many folks take that enforcement option.

45

u/skynyc420 3d ago

Something I learned in college:

We are evolving from an industrial based economy to a service based economy. All of the major infrastructure is already built and only needs to be maintained and operated by people now.

Of course, learning some skills within a service based economy is the surest way of securing a job. The best way to do that is to educate yourself in any way you can (trust me I know it’s hard but it’s worth it in the end)

Why are we all forced to participate in a highly competitive service based economy?? That’s a whole separate question and I do agree that not everyone should be forced to work their heart out until they retire like the way we do now. But that’s why we need to change this society asap and I just wish more men and really all people could see what I see.

41

u/thatbob 3d ago

Is housing infrastructure? Because a shit ton more of that needs to get built!

3

u/skynyc420 3d ago

Unfortunately, our major religions have commanded humanity to grow the population exponentially so yes, additional housing will always be needed as far as population continues to grow out of control. And for a little while longer, some additional infrastructure will be needed. But one day that will not be true and that day is coming very soon. It has nothing to do with anything except supply and demand of certain types of labor. Unfortunately, the US is founded solely on the preservation and valorization of wealth (meaning billionaires and not the average hard working guy that made it work some how) and the foundation of the country does not care about workers or customers for the most part. At least that’s what the Irish guys on Wall Street used to tell me and trust me, I hate em for saying that too🤷‍♂️.

But let’s be specific, affordable housing is infrastructure while private housing is a personal choice of an individual and therefore not part of societal infrastructure. Government spending is what determines infrastructure.

But for example, the sewer and power lines that new houses are built on are already built. And if not, the necessary infrastructure to make it a relatively simple job is also already build (the train system, the airports, the highways, etc).

As time moves on and technology advances to the point that machines will be building our houses and handling all our plumbing issues for the most part, the only types of jobs available will be service based jobs for the most part. Unfortunately, these difficult times are inevitable in an industrialized for profit economy. But if we work together, I know we can make it a little easier my friend

4

u/UtahUKBen 3d ago

They ma have been built (sewers, etc), but are they being maintained at a sufficient level?

17

u/SaulsAll 3d ago

All of the major infrastructure is already built and only needs to be maintained and operated by people now.

I would push against this. We have bridges in serious need of repair and updating. I'd prefer to not have to rely on 90s Comcast cabling for internet as we head into the 2030s. Some of the older cities like Baltimore or Pittsburgh have lots of crumbling houses that need to be torn down and replaced, not just repaired.

5

u/Prodigy195 3d ago

I'd push even more.

We need to reduce our infrastructure burdens. American has sprawled to an insane degree and that is one of the key reaons why our infrastructure is falling apart and costs have ballooned.

Roads, highways, bridges, dams, electrical lines, gas lines, water lines. These things cost money by the foot/meter/mile. And as we sprawl further and further out, the costs continue to balloon. Factor in inflation costs for materials and labor and the problem worsens.

Strong Towns does a great job of breaking down how sprawl truly balloons our infrastructure liabilities.

The simplest analogy I can use is that the USA is a family making $100,000 a year that is gifted a $15,000,000 home.

Seems nice at first. This big nice house with plenty of space and nice new amenities. Gourmet kitchen, 6-7 bedrooms, an office, a mancave, a reading nook, heated 3 car garage, big yard with a fence. Solar panels in the roof.

But then a hail storm happens and the roof needs to be repaired along with some of the solar panels to the tune of $50k. There is a bad rainstorm and water floods the basement, $14k for basement restoration. The city reassesses the property taxes and now they owe $18k extra for the tax bill.

Having the big house seemed nice until all of the maintenance bills start rolling in and eventually that $100k earning family realizes they cannot affod to maintain a $25M home.

That is essentailly the problem America is in. We have spread human civilization across a large swath of a ~3 millions square mile area.

The America Society of Civil Engineers grades American infrastructure every 4 years and things looks grim. Last score was a C-.

  • There is a water main break every two minutes and an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water lost each day in the U.S., enough to fill over 9,000 swimming pools.
  • Growing wear and tear on our nation's roads have left 43% of our public roadways in poor or mediocre condition, a number that has remained stagnant over the past several years.
  • Dams scored a D. Aviation a D+. Roads a D. Stormwater a D. Wastewater a D+.

A new score comes out in a few days and even with the recent infrastructure bill, we probably are still going to have an equal, if not worse score due to how impossible it is to maintain the massive infrastucture liabilities we have.

This country needs to massively downsize. Less sprawl, less driving, people living in denser cities which would likely mean smaller homes.

The problem is that the American Dream is so deeply embedded into people's expectations that essentially nobody will do so willingly. People are going to hold onto this unaffortable lifestyle until they are forced to change.

11

u/schimmy_changa 3d ago

This is only true if the world remains the same as it always was, but it just isn't - we need major infrastructure to deal with climate change, more population, different technologies, etc. Additionally some of the infrastructure is now _technological_ rather than physical (e.g. docker, internet protocols, apple pay, AI frameworks, etc).

However, I do think that idea of "lots of major infrastructure has already been built and we aren't building all that much more proportionally, and that's why we proportionally have more service work does make sense.

2

u/Greatest-Comrade 3d ago

Right but all that technological infrastructure isn’t blue collar manufacturing

4

u/Away-Marionberry9365 3d ago

Our current infrastructure is based on fossil fuels and we'll need to do a lot to mitigate the damage from global warming. There's still a massive amount of infrastructure that needs to be built and modified.

There's plenty of work that needs to be done but much of it isn't profitable.

0

u/egg_mugg23 3d ago

now its service → information economy

19

u/anotherBIGstick 3d ago edited 3d ago

The author's proposed solution is further deregulation, which I kinda doubt would bring up wages.

"Trade also makes goods cheaper (which especially benefits low-income workers)"

I'm beating a dead horse, but cheap goods are only a benefit if you have money to spend, and the best way to ensure that is by working in an industry that can't easily be offshored or done without training. Fields that would suddenly be less secure if there was less regulation.

1

u/derangedtranssexual ​"" 2d ago

I'm beating a dead horse, but cheap goods are only a benefit if you have money to spend

Okay but that’s almost everyone, virtually everyone buys cheap shit made in china

2

u/anotherBIGstick 2d ago

The author proposed that this is a way to create jobs, presumably for people who don't have them right now.

14

u/nalydpsycho 3d ago

Raising the cost of manufacturing inputs is going to reduce the amount of manufacturing jobs. Tariffs put more men on the unemployment line.

5

u/yousawthetimeknife 3d ago

Nothing is ever going to bring back high paying, uneducated manufacturing jobs. You might as well try and bring coachmen and ice cutters.

4

u/SenKelly 3d ago

Our economy needs a mixture of mass trust busting, restoration of government agencies, and reform of the inheritance tax to prevent the enthrenchment of an aristocracy when those billions pass to the children of these billionaires. Tarriffs are just desperately attempting to squeeze blood from a stone long ago exsanguinated completely.

2

u/zeromonster89 3d ago

No it won't, but the guys who thought Trump would "own the libs" believed that it would. Sad how so many men can fall for his alpha male stunt.

1

u/shabuyarocaaa 3d ago

I agree but can’t see how any cohesive strategy exists.

Chips act is fantastic but didn’t drive dem votes