Thank you for this, and more importantly for you life of work on behalf of part of my chosen family.
As is often the case, I wake up in the middle of the night and turn on my computer and find your comments.
The industrial policy followed by Regan was wrong then, and the industrial policy being followed today in the USA is wrong now. I am reading Matthew Desmond’s recent book "Poverty, by America"
He believes that entrenched poverty in the United States is the product not only of larger shifts, such as deindustrialization and family dissolution, but of choices and actions by more fortunate Americans. Poverty persists partly because many of us, with varying degrees of self-awareness, benefit from its penetration. “It’s a useful exercise, evaluating the merits of different explanations for poverty, like those having to do with immigration or the family,” Desmond writes. “But I’ve found that doing so always leads me back to the taproot, the central feature from which all other rootlets spring, which in our case is the simple truth that poverty is an injury, a taking. Tens of millions of Americans do not end up poor by a mistake of history or personal conduct. Poverty persists because some wish and will it to.”
H e reminds us that "Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that.” He suggests "Becoming a poverty abolitionist, entails conducting an audit of our lives, personalizing poverty by examining all the ways we are connected to the problem — and to the solution.”
I am conducting an audit of my life. I hope some of you will join me.
Pretty much spot on in your predictions even if you were being tongue in cheek. Guess the explosion in tech jobs did insure American prosperity for those workers but not the traditional hard hat blue collar middle class . And that undercut the importance of unions in the economy.
Stalin's Five-year Plans. Mao's Great Leap Forward. Reaganomics. It seems that ANY time a nation restructures its Industry and/or Economy, there WILL be winners and losers. "Out with the Old, in with the New" only works well when it is the Old that get EVERYTHING they need to become the New -- which NEVER happens. The Old get tossed out of their careers and are told to "Retrain!" in a mostly sink-or-swim manner. If you spent the last decade or more on an assembly line, you are NOT about to easily transition to writing Assembly language program code. It takes YEARS to learn high-tech trades. And at the rate that tech goes from latest-and-greatest to OBSOLETE is on the verge of, "Don't blink or you'll miss it."
The ONLY entity that benefits from these kinds of abrupt transitions is Big Business. And the closer you look at the process, the more the rank and file workers start to look like cogs in the machinery: totally replaceable parts.
Interesting stroll down memory lane. I am curious just how many people got the intended message. I am guessing not many. Reagan was a strange bird, part of him wanted desperately to live and keep our nation living in the past and another side of him wanted us to have the latest and greatest that we could use to smite anyone who got in our way. He would not have appreciated being referred to as the first to have a "new industrial policy" because he was sure once trickle down got going, the old one would work just fine. Reagan wanted a "Star Wars" program but not really. He wanted us to have a strong industrial base, but decided it was better if he sent everything offshore. I don't know if the Dems would have done much better because they were in charge of Congress and still couldn't stop the trickle-down BS from doing a job on our economy and the passing away of so much of our industry, thus our middle class. Every time a Republican administration is over, I take a few moments to wonder what might have happened if someone with a positive vision for our future had held the White House. We are seeing some of that right now with Biden's plans. Republicans are fighting every step of the way because I think they want to live in their dream past where whites ruled, had all the best houses, schools, churches, jobs, and everything else, hardly having to compete because white was just right everywhere. Reagan made a lot of mistakes while president. That goes with to play a president instead of knowing how to be one. We saw that again with W. Bush to some extent and more fully with Trump. I am glad some of our industry is returning, perhaps we will take the opportunity to become more innovative again and depend on our workers here, not that the workers over there aren't good, they are, but they need their own businesses that work with them, not exploit them as we have done so oftten.
Stuck in there between the lines is the fallout from Reagan's firing of the Air Traffic Controllers, who represented by their own Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association. That union busting message set the stage for middle class losses ever since.
I can remember as a child when we wanted to express a feeling of total confusion and disconnection we said things were "Discombobulated." The length of the word made us small people seem so much more important. The sound the word made as it left our lips had such a nice ring to it that we discombobulated almost everything. Times change and the words we use to express ourselves are altered as well. The relevance we held for life changes as we grow older. As children, we thought of ourselves as being basically indestructible in a world we couldn't possibly understand. Now fully grown, and then some, we have come to understand just how vulnerable we really are. Our society quivers with time. It struggles when times are tough and when things are good all is "hunky-dory," another adjective we used to throw around. What we're experiencing as a country, both politically and socially, is leaving our people feeling completely discombobulated. A word used by children all those years ago has found relevance in our world today as adults. I'm so proud of myself for composing an entire paragraph without mentioning his name, so why start now? Why can't we turn back time? Before he came on the scene there were differences but we managed to work through our problems in an effort to find solutions that worked for the general good of all the people. How can one overweight man of questionable integrity hog-tie an entire country? I think it's time to reflect and inhale a good dose of smelling salts. We're in for a fight, because if we don't "we won't have a country anymore." What goes around comes around Donnie.
This explains so much pain and suffering and disenfranchisement . The cruelty was the point. Is that what was billed as creative destruction? They pulled it down so the economy could be gerry rigged for the dementedly selfish few. Most people, including me, didn’t know how things were shifting for the worse so fast. It seemed to me that unless you already had a leg up you were stuck where you started or destined for failure. The class division from Reaganomics happened within families sorting people depending on when they came of age in the new way of picking winners, not by merit so much as starting position. The income tax for young adults just starting out used to be graduated to ramp up over a few years to allow for expenses of starting a new household and some savings. My older siblings benefited from that before Reagan did away with it. I found it very difficult to scrape together a few dollars for an emergency fund. It put me at a disadvantage economically. Why? Why step on people who are just starting out? The cruelty is the point.
Ah, memories. Those of us who survived eight years of Reagan as Governor of California knew that he had many, many supporters in California's massive defense sector. When he became president he rewarded them well. After all, they had made him first governor and then president. They (and the oil people and anti-New Deal Birchers) ran the government in the back room while he did his avuncular PR schtick out front, just like they had done for eight years in California. This may be a memory, but it was Reagan and his backers who put us on the road to Donald Trump, so it is incredibly relevant.
I think that Reagan’s concern was less — far less - with the nature of the “old” industries versus that of the new than with shaking off what he and his confederates saw — and current descendants still see — as the “tyranny” of a heavily unionized (and Democratic-voting) labor force in favor of new businesses that would resist efforts of workers to unionize. To that extent he was very, and sadly, successful, even as Republicans continued to perpetuate the myth of the nobility of heavy, inefficient industry and how it made America the arsenal of democracy.
To heal this country, step one - hold Prez Trump accountable in a court of law. Pass fair economic policy so that Wall Street pays it's fair share of taxes and wealth. I have had no choice but to make a few career changes due to changing economies just like this article. We must have tax payer funded education all the way through. Allow me to digress, it's not good to pre-sort kids in their early teen years to private academies for corporations to train for their job usages.
I can't buy a good pair of shoes and I'm not happy with how clothes fit from Chinese factories. I haven't been for a long time. Every country should have the factories for self sustaining goods.
If you haven't tried a mid life career change - give it a try. Let me tell ya, the age discrimination is so blatant and the laws for enforcement so gutted - it's hard to get a job. I have proof of a significantly younger person getting the job I applied for time and again - thanks LinkedIn ;) After 30 to 70 is our prime. We have the education and experience. Yet, we are pushed aside. Which is part of the reason that Trump got elected.
I was surprised how many republicans actually whispered to me - if they would put Bernie Sanders on the ballot, I'd vote for him. He makes good sense. So what did the Dems do? ....
Spot On. I was a well paid mule for a mid-sized auto-part manufacturer. When benefits tanked we suggested that wage concessions weren't unreasonable. By 2000, the only negotiations left for low-tech workers' were how much less would you accept the next pay check to be. By 2020 Our sole-earner worked for a provider for a large government division. Come Covid, she retired, and within 10 years we wont be able to afford the only wealth we have (our home). If this is the American Dream why do i wake with cold sweats?
The 'human resources' are just cogs in the wheel, or changeable parts. there is little to no concern for them. Hence, we see the anger of the MAGA 'party' . It hurts to be expendable. to be blamed for being victims of thoughtless capitalists ; The "I got mine" crowd.
Ah, but where would we be without the advantage of high capacity killing machines readily available to one and all? An industry that was already strong absolutely blossomed under Reagan, and the proof is made visible every day in the perpetually rising body count right here at home. Better every year!
So interesting thank you for all you do and the historic perspective on how we got here. The interesting twist is that many of our nations home grown engineer struggle to find jobs which drives that intellectual talent in other directions.
Professor
Thank you for this, and more importantly for you life of work on behalf of part of my chosen family.
As is often the case, I wake up in the middle of the night and turn on my computer and find your comments.
The industrial policy followed by Regan was wrong then, and the industrial policy being followed today in the USA is wrong now. I am reading Matthew Desmond’s recent book "Poverty, by America"
He believes that entrenched poverty in the United States is the product not only of larger shifts, such as deindustrialization and family dissolution, but of choices and actions by more fortunate Americans. Poverty persists partly because many of us, with varying degrees of self-awareness, benefit from its penetration. “It’s a useful exercise, evaluating the merits of different explanations for poverty, like those having to do with immigration or the family,” Desmond writes. “But I’ve found that doing so always leads me back to the taproot, the central feature from which all other rootlets spring, which in our case is the simple truth that poverty is an injury, a taking. Tens of millions of Americans do not end up poor by a mistake of history or personal conduct. Poverty persists because some wish and will it to.”
H e reminds us that "Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that.” He suggests "Becoming a poverty abolitionist, entails conducting an audit of our lives, personalizing poverty by examining all the ways we are connected to the problem — and to the solution.”
I am conducting an audit of my life. I hope some of you will join me.
Pretty much spot on in your predictions even if you were being tongue in cheek. Guess the explosion in tech jobs did insure American prosperity for those workers but not the traditional hard hat blue collar middle class . And that undercut the importance of unions in the economy.
Stalin's Five-year Plans. Mao's Great Leap Forward. Reaganomics. It seems that ANY time a nation restructures its Industry and/or Economy, there WILL be winners and losers. "Out with the Old, in with the New" only works well when it is the Old that get EVERYTHING they need to become the New -- which NEVER happens. The Old get tossed out of their careers and are told to "Retrain!" in a mostly sink-or-swim manner. If you spent the last decade or more on an assembly line, you are NOT about to easily transition to writing Assembly language program code. It takes YEARS to learn high-tech trades. And at the rate that tech goes from latest-and-greatest to OBSOLETE is on the verge of, "Don't blink or you'll miss it."
The ONLY entity that benefits from these kinds of abrupt transitions is Big Business. And the closer you look at the process, the more the rank and file workers start to look like cogs in the machinery: totally replaceable parts.
Your crystal ball was in fine form when you wrote that. Bravo!
Interesting stroll down memory lane. I am curious just how many people got the intended message. I am guessing not many. Reagan was a strange bird, part of him wanted desperately to live and keep our nation living in the past and another side of him wanted us to have the latest and greatest that we could use to smite anyone who got in our way. He would not have appreciated being referred to as the first to have a "new industrial policy" because he was sure once trickle down got going, the old one would work just fine. Reagan wanted a "Star Wars" program but not really. He wanted us to have a strong industrial base, but decided it was better if he sent everything offshore. I don't know if the Dems would have done much better because they were in charge of Congress and still couldn't stop the trickle-down BS from doing a job on our economy and the passing away of so much of our industry, thus our middle class. Every time a Republican administration is over, I take a few moments to wonder what might have happened if someone with a positive vision for our future had held the White House. We are seeing some of that right now with Biden's plans. Republicans are fighting every step of the way because I think they want to live in their dream past where whites ruled, had all the best houses, schools, churches, jobs, and everything else, hardly having to compete because white was just right everywhere. Reagan made a lot of mistakes while president. That goes with to play a president instead of knowing how to be one. We saw that again with W. Bush to some extent and more fully with Trump. I am glad some of our industry is returning, perhaps we will take the opportunity to become more innovative again and depend on our workers here, not that the workers over there aren't good, they are, but they need their own businesses that work with them, not exploit them as we have done so oftten.
Stuck in there between the lines is the fallout from Reagan's firing of the Air Traffic Controllers, who represented by their own Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association. That union busting message set the stage for middle class losses ever since.
I can remember as a child when we wanted to express a feeling of total confusion and disconnection we said things were "Discombobulated." The length of the word made us small people seem so much more important. The sound the word made as it left our lips had such a nice ring to it that we discombobulated almost everything. Times change and the words we use to express ourselves are altered as well. The relevance we held for life changes as we grow older. As children, we thought of ourselves as being basically indestructible in a world we couldn't possibly understand. Now fully grown, and then some, we have come to understand just how vulnerable we really are. Our society quivers with time. It struggles when times are tough and when things are good all is "hunky-dory," another adjective we used to throw around. What we're experiencing as a country, both politically and socially, is leaving our people feeling completely discombobulated. A word used by children all those years ago has found relevance in our world today as adults. I'm so proud of myself for composing an entire paragraph without mentioning his name, so why start now? Why can't we turn back time? Before he came on the scene there were differences but we managed to work through our problems in an effort to find solutions that worked for the general good of all the people. How can one overweight man of questionable integrity hog-tie an entire country? I think it's time to reflect and inhale a good dose of smelling salts. We're in for a fight, because if we don't "we won't have a country anymore." What goes around comes around Donnie.
This explains so much pain and suffering and disenfranchisement . The cruelty was the point. Is that what was billed as creative destruction? They pulled it down so the economy could be gerry rigged for the dementedly selfish few. Most people, including me, didn’t know how things were shifting for the worse so fast. It seemed to me that unless you already had a leg up you were stuck where you started or destined for failure. The class division from Reaganomics happened within families sorting people depending on when they came of age in the new way of picking winners, not by merit so much as starting position. The income tax for young adults just starting out used to be graduated to ramp up over a few years to allow for expenses of starting a new household and some savings. My older siblings benefited from that before Reagan did away with it. I found it very difficult to scrape together a few dollars for an emergency fund. It put me at a disadvantage economically. Why? Why step on people who are just starting out? The cruelty is the point.
Ah, memories. Those of us who survived eight years of Reagan as Governor of California knew that he had many, many supporters in California's massive defense sector. When he became president he rewarded them well. After all, they had made him first governor and then president. They (and the oil people and anti-New Deal Birchers) ran the government in the back room while he did his avuncular PR schtick out front, just like they had done for eight years in California. This may be a memory, but it was Reagan and his backers who put us on the road to Donald Trump, so it is incredibly relevant.
I think that Reagan’s concern was less — far less - with the nature of the “old” industries versus that of the new than with shaking off what he and his confederates saw — and current descendants still see — as the “tyranny” of a heavily unionized (and Democratic-voting) labor force in favor of new businesses that would resist efforts of workers to unionize. To that extent he was very, and sadly, successful, even as Republicans continued to perpetuate the myth of the nobility of heavy, inefficient industry and how it made America the arsenal of democracy.
To heal this country, step one - hold Prez Trump accountable in a court of law. Pass fair economic policy so that Wall Street pays it's fair share of taxes and wealth. I have had no choice but to make a few career changes due to changing economies just like this article. We must have tax payer funded education all the way through. Allow me to digress, it's not good to pre-sort kids in their early teen years to private academies for corporations to train for their job usages.
I can't buy a good pair of shoes and I'm not happy with how clothes fit from Chinese factories. I haven't been for a long time. Every country should have the factories for self sustaining goods.
If you haven't tried a mid life career change - give it a try. Let me tell ya, the age discrimination is so blatant and the laws for enforcement so gutted - it's hard to get a job. I have proof of a significantly younger person getting the job I applied for time and again - thanks LinkedIn ;) After 30 to 70 is our prime. We have the education and experience. Yet, we are pushed aside. Which is part of the reason that Trump got elected.
I was surprised how many republicans actually whispered to me - if they would put Bernie Sanders on the ballot, I'd vote for him. He makes good sense. So what did the Dems do? ....
Spot On. I was a well paid mule for a mid-sized auto-part manufacturer. When benefits tanked we suggested that wage concessions weren't unreasonable. By 2000, the only negotiations left for low-tech workers' were how much less would you accept the next pay check to be. By 2020 Our sole-earner worked for a provider for a large government division. Come Covid, she retired, and within 10 years we wont be able to afford the only wealth we have (our home). If this is the American Dream why do i wake with cold sweats?
The 'human resources' are just cogs in the wheel, or changeable parts. there is little to no concern for them. Hence, we see the anger of the MAGA 'party' . It hurts to be expendable. to be blamed for being victims of thoughtless capitalists ; The "I got mine" crowd.
Ah, but where would we be without the advantage of high capacity killing machines readily available to one and all? An industry that was already strong absolutely blossomed under Reagan, and the proof is made visible every day in the perpetually rising body count right here at home. Better every year!
So interesting thank you for all you do and the historic perspective on how we got here. The interesting twist is that many of our nations home grown engineer struggle to find jobs which drives that intellectual talent in other directions.
Both predatory (Reaganite) and parasitic (Thatcherite) capitalism have failed.
A compendium of your observations, then and now, would be appreciated.