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Nov 22, 2022Liked by Cathy Reisenwitz

With the collapse of unions and the increase in trade and the off shoring of jobs due to NAFTA and then with China, the number of blue collar jobs that provided good wages and purpose to non-college educated men has collapsed. It is true that both of these have probably increased standards of living broadly, especially among the professional and managerial class, which is really the only group whose standards of living have improved the last 50 years.

The promise of Free Trade only works if the winners can compensate the losers. This should be easy because the winners "win" a lot more than the losers "lose." But we don't have a way to do this. Maybe there is no way short of charity, which is humiliating for the receiver. Trump showed a way to perhaps reverse the changes in Free Trade, with tariffs and other trade barriers with China. This is part of the reason that Trump is generally loved by working class Whites. He actually acknowledges and attempted to do something about their problems. Biden has greatly expanded the tariffs with an embargo to advanced chip technology with China. I don't like this way because it lowers standards of living and increases tensions between the two countries. But I can't think of another solution.

The resurgence of unions in places like Starbucks is pretty exciting to me, but it's really hard to see this expanding broadly and I can't image how it would bring blue collar jobs back. It's not crazy to imagine a world where labor captures a larger piece of the pie in some companies and better wages are paid, but it would be a reverse of at least 40 years of economic and would require a major cultural change. And even if it happened we are talking millions of jobs, not the 10s of millions needed and the jobs created would always be at risk of being automated away.

UBI perhaps?

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