What the Democratic Party did to alienate poor white Americans

[Wanderfound]

@Shuck

It simply raises the question, in whose interests was it to portray unions as corrupt (far, far in excess of any reality)?

Also: in those cases in which unions had been corrupted (much less frequent than portrayed), who was it doing the corrupting? Who paid the bribes, and in return for what? Whose interests are served by a union that can be bought?

@Shuck

It simply raises the question, in whose interests was it to portray unions as corrupt (far, far in excess of any reality)? To deny the role of corporate interests in the decline of unions is to totally ignore their long history of overt - and often illegal - efforts to break unions by any means.

US attitudes towards unions are somewhat strange from the outside. All around the world bosses have tried to convince their workers that unions are evil, but the US seems unusual in the extent to which the workers accepted that message.

[Shuck]

@Wanderfound

All around the world bosses have tried to convince their workers that unions are evil, but the US seems unusual in the extent to which the workers accepted that message.

Yeah, it’s totally bizarre because it’s also pretty obvious how the middle class has been damaged in the absence of unions, unions have been blamed for the collapse of industries even when that’s obviously not the case (e.g. the auto industry, where we can compare the US to, say, Germany, where they make twice as many cars and pay their workers twice as much). Instead people just get angry at the non-stagnant wages of public employees and their unions. Weirdest to me are those who talk about how unions (and regulations) are making the US unable to compete with countries like… China. (Yes, if only we, too, could pay slave wages, allow wanton dumping of pollutants such that the air is unbreathable, the water undrinkable and there are regular unnatural disasters caused by flagrant abuses of companies, we’d be in much better shape.) It indicates to me that people have totally, uncritically bought the corporate line.

[AnthonyC]

It can be fun for debtors.

Well, I guess it depends how hyper

[AnthonyC]

@wysinwyg

Incidentally, the US has a very weak manufacturing base right now. Tariffs on manufactured goods would increase prices of manufactured goods, but also create jobs – it would essentially redistribute wealth from the middle class to the lower class.

U.S. real GDP from manufacturing ($ billion/year) has been trending up not down for decades, but with manufacturing not growing as fast (partly due to outsourcing) and so shrinking on a % of GDP basis. The U.S. is the world’s second largest manufacturer in terms of $ value as of 2015.

Eventually lots of manufacturing will come back here, too - but jobs won’t. Falling costs of automation + rising labor costs in the rest of the world will drive this. There will never be more need for unskilled or semiskilled manufacturing labor in the U.S. Skilled technicians/tradespeople/craftsmen/engineers? Sure. But workers-per-unit-manufacturing-output will only go down from here on out.