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Nevermind the disappearing working class.

Papa bull

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There's a lot of talk about the middle class disappearing, but let's talk about the class that actually DID disappear. The working class. No one talks about the working class any more.

At one time, there was the upper class - the independently wealthy and the middle class - the doctors, lawyers, merchants and other professionals - and the working class, the bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, construction workers, etc. etc. etc.

How did the "working class" disappear from our political discussions?
 
There's a lot of talk about the middle class disappearing, but let's talk about the class that actually DID disappear. The working class. No one talks about the working class any more.

At one time, there was the upper class - the independently wealthy and the middle class - the doctors, lawyers, merchants and other professionals - and the working class, the bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, construction workers, etc. etc. etc.

How did the "working class" disappear from our political discussions?

I am still here, yet not talked about? ;)

It still comes up on most immigration threads, as that is where the competition/wage depression with illegal labor is the strongest.
 
There's a lot of talk about the middle class disappearing, but let's talk about the class that actually DID disappear. The working class. No one talks about the working class any more.

At one time, there was the upper class - the independently wealthy and the middle class - the doctors, lawyers, merchants and other professionals - and the working class, the bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, construction workers, etc. etc. etc.

How did the "working class" disappear from our political discussions?

Republicans demonized them as lazy and stupid. Further, they didn't fit into conservative plans for capital flight to sweatshop nations. They specifically crafted to the treaties to globalize capital but not worker protection, and conservatives blocked any attempt to restrict outsourcing. Further, Republicans have made it harder and harder to unionize (and vilified unions), and unions were the means by which working people obtain some modicum of negotiating strength against business. Finally, the GOP cut taxes on the rich and blocked any attempt to raise taxes, which is the only way to make trade with sweatshop nations a good deal for working people here -- comparative advantage benefits trading nations in the aggregate, but not classes within each nation. Specifically the rich have gotten richer with trade, while workers income has dropped. The way to handle that is to increase taxes on the upper brackets and use that revenue to retrain and educate workers. But of course conservatives blocked that.

You act surprised.
 
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Maybe the were absorbed by the term poor. There does seem to be a presumption that if you don't have much money, you must be sponging of the government. Of cours, this is not at all the case. I see plenty of "working class" people in my neighborhood. They slog along paycheck to paycheck but they do work.

Just speculating...
 
There's a lot of talk about the middle class disappearing, but let's talk about the class that actually DID disappear. The working class. No one talks about the working class any more.

At one time, there was the upper class - the independently wealthy and the middle class - the doctors, lawyers, merchants and other professionals - and the working class, the bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, construction workers, etc. etc. etc.

How did the "working class" disappear from our political discussions?


We're still here, but we're now "the poor".... because most of our jobs are now held by illegal aliens, most of the factories we worked at have been relocated overseas, and the few jobs we've managed to hang onto pay 1990 wages even though in 2013 a dollar is only worth 40 cents, comparatively.
 
There's a lot of talk about the middle class disappearing, but let's talk about the class that actually DID disappear. The working class. No one talks about the working class any more.

At one time, there was the upper class - the independently wealthy and the middle class - the doctors, lawyers, merchants and other professionals - and the working class, the bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, construction workers, etc. etc. etc.

How did the "working class" disappear from our political discussions?
Through hard work of rational-thinking people who, unlike you, don't separate carpenters and farmers from professionals when they speak.

Truth is these classes you speak of never did exist, or if they exist in some form there's only the working class and the leach-off-the-system poor who need to start being productive or die off.
 
The Trades have been ignored for the most part with the promotion of additional education to the coming generation. Assistants and Journeymen have been replaced with MBAs and PHDs.

Many trades are virtually barren, and those that do take up the trades don't seem to have the same pride in the quality of their work, unless you get someone who has been doing it for 20 years.

And Goshin is correct, many of the trade jobs that are left have been taken up by illegal aliens.
 
The illegals flood the market and today ...even in some of the red-est states when you pass the construction crew on the government road works projects you rarely see anybody who isn't Mexican. I watched as they first start doing work in the ditches...then they start driving the heavy equipment ...and soon they are foremen at the sites.

Just about every politician local as well as congress...democrat and very much republicans have lined up with this practice.

Meanwhile....in Silicon valley the Asians have pretty much taken over that place.

Yet ...Americans don't get it.

There are still industries ..where you need a college degree (engineers, accountants etc.) where Americans in these disciplined still feel it can never happen to them!!!
Many rightwing tea-purty will be quick to run to the aid of the corporations ...and tell you ...it's the freeeee market.

Meanwhile ...the corporate lobbyist have the politicians opening up the FLOOD GATES on HB-1 visas...as a sweetener to the immigration Bill!!

See .....we need this because with all the recent unemployed graduates with student loans to pay back.....we can't find educated workers!!!


I'll say it over and over again .....the tea-puuurty for decades are just people who have always been easy to get riled up to act against their very own interest!!
They have been groomed to come to a screeching halt when it comes to the banks and wall street ....talk to them ...and those people are on our aside ...always on the up and up ...everybody else is just jealous!!!
 
There's a lot of talk about the middle class disappearing, but let's talk about the class that actually DID disappear. The working class. No one talks about the working class any more.

At one time, there was the upper class - the independently wealthy and the middle class - the doctors, lawyers, merchants and other professionals - and the working class, the bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, construction workers, etc. etc. etc.

How did the "working class" disappear from our political discussions?

They have a new name now, Republicans refer to them as "leeches suckling from the government teet".
 
The Trades have been ignored for the most part with the promotion of additional education to the coming generation. Assistants and Journeymen have been replaced with MBAs and PHDs.

Many trades are virtually barren, and those that do take up the trades don't seem to have the same pride in the quality of their work, unless you get someone who has been doing it for 20 years.

And Goshin is correct, many of the trade jobs that are left have been taken up by illegal aliens.

This is what many refuse to believe, but I can assure you that it is so. Our congress critters now seem to be falling all over each other to be the first to endorse immigration reform to attempt to pander to these potential new voters and those that sympathize with them. I am not sure if making the "undocumented" into sanctioned permanent non-citizen workers (for 10 years?) will allow trade wages to start to recover any but do not see that it can hurt - unless they simply shift to other jobs and are replaced by the next wave of illegals (since border security and other paths for illegal immigration will likely not change).
 
Tis not shocking the "working class" is disappearing, we don't make anything here. Unions, taxes, legislation, litigation, etc made it unprofitable to manufacture here. Once an economy doesn't manufacture there aren't many jobs left. Now we're facing obamacare. A wiser man than me said, "if you thought health care was expensive before, just wait til it's free".
 
Through hard work of rational-thinking people who, unlike you, don't separate carpenters and farmers from professionals when they speak.

Truth is these classes you speak of never did exist, or if they exist in some form there's only the working class and the leach-off-the-system poor who need to start being productive or die off.

As a non-rational-thinking person, I'll remember your absurd lecture about our classless society next time I hear you mentioning "the middle class".
 
They have a new name now, Republicans refer to them as "leeches suckling from the government teet".

Do they, now? I think you're confusing people who sit on their ass and collect welfare with people who work for a living. I'm not surprised given your political leaning since so many progressives think collecting welfare is as good as work.
 
As a non-rational-thinking person, I'll remember your absurd lecture about our classless society next time I hear you mentioning "the middle class".
You just called yourself a on-rational-thinking person. Maybe you should learn something about sentence structure before coming back here?
 
There's a lot of talk about the middle class disappearing, but let's talk about the class that actually DID disappear. The working class. No one talks about the working class any more.

At one time, there was the upper class - the independently wealthy and the middle class - the doctors, lawyers, merchants and other professionals - and the working class, the bricklayers, carpenters, farmers, construction workers, etc. etc. etc.

How did the "working class" disappear from our political discussions?

I hate all of those terms.
 
You just called yourself a on-rational-thinking person. Maybe you should learn something about sentence structure before coming back here?

Sorry, I was just making fun of your asinine presumption. You seem to be fond of making asinine presumptions, seeing as you've made at least one in each of the last two posts I've seen from you. Figures that just about the time I think someone is pretty sharp it turns out they're pedantic ninnies who would rather quibble of semantics than discuss anything meaningful. It's a shame, really.
 
I wonder if unions made wage competition an issue?
 
Do they, now? I think you're confusing people who sit on their ass and collect welfare with people who work for a living. I'm not surprised given your political leaning since so many progressives think collecting welfare is as good as work.

Most people that work are supported by some form of welfare, you may be yourself and not even realize it.
 
We're still here, but we're now "the poor".... because most of our jobs are now held by illegal aliens, most of the factories we worked at have been relocated overseas, and the few jobs we've managed to hang onto pay 1990 wages even though in 2013 a dollar is only worth 40 cents, comparatively.

The complaints about illegal aliens is quite trumped up. Jobs that American workers did after the 1930s are not held by illegals. They pick fruit for a buck a day. Americans haven't done that since the New Deal. But the other two arguments are spot on. A lot of our labor has been shipped overseas, and our government has become increasingly subservient to business interests, so the labor exporting aspect of free trade has been protected. And wages have barely increased since the 1970s. But apparently we can't tax corporations on their overseas income, or increase the minimum wage. We're kind of stuck until the American middle class stops confusing the profit driven goals of corporations with their own goals, and stops catering to them.
 
The complaints about illegal aliens is quite trumped up. Jobs that American workers did after the 1930s are not held by illegals. They pick fruit for a buck a day. Americans haven't done that since the New Deal. But the other two arguments are spot on. A lot of our labor has been shipped overseas, and our government has become increasingly subservient to business interests, so the labor exporting aspect of free trade has been protected. And wages have barely increased since the 1970s. But apparently we can't tax corporations on their overseas income, or increase the minimum wage. We're kind of stuck until the American middle class stops confusing the profit driven goals of corporations with their own goals, and stops catering to them.


Nevermind the complete ignorance the average American hosts regarding the violent precarity of immigration work, the invisibility of working people in all facets of society has never been so obvious
 
We are even today the second largest manufacturing country with only China, with 4 times the population, ahead of us. What we lack is low level manufacturing which is very dated as an economic source. Its called progress. When you buy a $200 Ipod, 80% of that money is right here in America where we design, market and distribute.



Tis not shocking the "working class" is disappearing, we don't make anything here. Unions, taxes, legislation, litigation, etc made it unprofitable to manufacture here. Once an economy doesn't manufacture there aren't many jobs left. Now we're facing obamacare. A wiser man than me said, "if you thought health care was expensive before, just wait til it's free".
 
Republicans demonized them as lazy and stupid. Further, they didn't fit into conservative plans for capital flight to sweatshop nations. They specifically crafted to the treaties to globalize capital but not worker protection, and conservatives blocked any attempt to restrict outsourcing. Further, Republicans have made it harder and harder to unionize (and vilified unions), and unions were the means by which working people obtain some modicum of negotiating strength against business. Finally, the GOP cut taxes on the rich and blocked any attempt to raise taxes, which is the only way to make trade with sweatshop nations a good deal for working people here -- comparative advantage benefits trading nations in the aggregate, but not classes within each nation. Specifically the rich have gotten richer with trade, while workers income has dropped. The way to handle that is to increase taxes on the upper brackets and use that revenue to retrain and educate workers. But of course conservatives blocked that.

You act surprised.

Well, the conservatives are not the ones who are trying to negotiate a TPP and a US-Europe trade agreement, Obama is, but let's blame George Bush for those too......
 
We are even today the second largest manufacturing country with only China, with 4 times the population, ahead of us. What we lack is low level manufacturing which is very dated as an economic source. Its called progress. When you buy a $200 Ipod, 80% of that money is right here in America where we design, market and distribute.

Americans want 2 things.

1. Plentiful and cheap goods.
2. Plentiful and high paying unskilled manufacturing jobs.

The problem is that if you pay people a lot of money for producing goods, you don't have plentiful cheap goods. And if you outsource the production of cheap goods to another country, you don't have lots of unskilled manufacturing jobs, let alone high paying ones.

If we want to pay twice as much for everything, then unskilled labor can be more plentiful and pay more. But no one wants both sides of that equation. Go figure?
 
The complaints about illegal aliens is quite trumped up. Jobs that American workers did after the 1930s are not held by illegals. They pick fruit for a buck a day. Americans haven't done that since the New Deal. But the other two arguments are spot on. A lot of our labor has been shipped overseas, and our government has become increasingly subservient to business interests, so the labor exporting aspect of free trade has been protected. And wages have barely increased since the 1970s. But apparently we can't tax corporations on their overseas income, or increase the minimum wage. We're kind of stuck until the American middle class stops confusing the profit driven goals of corporations with their own goals, and stops catering to them.

Then how come virtually every construction, restaurant, flooring, house painting and landscaping crew contains non-English speaking, non-North Americans? We're not just speaking of people who came up from the south, but from the north and the Islands too.

If you have one penny invested in a mutual fund or IRA, you're supporting the corporations profit driven, lobbyist inserted government supported demise of the 'working class' also.
 
Well, the conservatives are not the ones who are trying to negotiate a TPP and a US-Europe trade agreement, Obama is, but let's blame George Bush for those too......

Well,I actually support those agreements. Still,it is funny. Dems who cry about "losing our jobs"never try to slown down on all of the regulations,taxes and other issues which in some cases causes companies to leave. Or that BJ Clinton signed NAFTA,GATT and PNTR with China.
 
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