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Author Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0  (Read 1412045 times)

Frumple

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12270 on: November 13, 2016, 08:31:45 am »

Y'know, I was looking over that again to see if anything changed since the last time I did, and I just now noticed one of the things on there is minimum federal sentencing for people trying to reenter the country after being kicked out once. That... may actually be competitive for the most hilariously unfeasible thing on that list, particularly in the face of the stated intent to fuck the federal budget into a gas tank and set it on fire.

The particularly fun bit about it, is the wording suggests he's going to try to advocate for border crossing to be actually illegal, i.e. under the purview of the criminal justice system, i.e. under the procedural protections giving under due process et al, i.e. ballooning the resources and time needed to deal with the individuals in question by several orders of magnitude. That would be a clusterfuck of faintly awe inspiring proportion.
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Sergarr

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12271 on: November 13, 2016, 08:49:14 am »

So, apparently, the Trump supporters call themselves "centipedes".

What?!
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martinuzz

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12272 on: November 13, 2016, 08:54:20 am »

Seems fitting. Creepy, crawly and poisonous.
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Harry Baldman

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12273 on: November 13, 2016, 09:01:26 am »

So, apparently, the Trump supporters call themselves "centipedes".

What?!

Oddly fitting.

I mean, if they actually call themselves that, they kind of deserve what they get.
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Frumple

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12274 on: November 13, 2016, 09:09:22 am »

Parts of 'em have been for at least a few months, now.
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smirk

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12275 on: November 13, 2016, 09:22:32 am »

Frumple, I've been thinking on the points you made regarding my "forsaken manufacturing worker" theory as to the rise of right-wing nationalism, and I think you do have a point. It's not that those who ended up unemployed or underemployed immediately turned this direction; hell, many benefited from various Democrat policies. It's that social media such as Reddit and Twitter gave them opportunities to stumble upon the rather alluring alt-right, which gave them an explanation as to why they feel that they aren't as well-off as their parents. The nice thing about this addition to the theory is that it also justifies why this shift happened so suddenly. It also avoids discounting all of the effort put into helping those in need, particularly by Democrats.

Rather amusingly, it lets me blame Brexit on Thatcher.
Few pages late, but you might be interested in this here think-piece on a former manufacturing town and its voting habits, particularly the bits about church-reinforced social mores. They had a good run-up to this long before modern social media.

(Oh, to be alive now, in this, the Time of Think-pieces. Such surfeit of choice!)
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12276 on: November 13, 2016, 09:44:22 am »

Frumple, I've been thinking on the points you made regarding my "forsaken manufacturing worker" theory as to the rise of right-wing nationalism, and I think you do have a point. It's not that those who ended up unemployed or underemployed immediately turned this direction; hell, many benefited from various Democrat policies. It's that social media such as Reddit and Twitter gave them opportunities to stumble upon the rather alluring alt-right, which gave them an explanation as to why they feel that they aren't as well-off as their parents. The nice thing about this addition to the theory is that it also justifies why this shift happened so suddenly. It also avoids discounting all of the effort put into helping those in need, particularly by Democrats.

Rather amusingly, it lets me blame Brexit on Thatcher.
Few pages late, but you might be interested in this here think-piece on a former manufacturing town and its voting habits, particularly the bits about church-reinforced social mores. They had a good run-up to this long before modern social media.

(Oh, to be alive now, in this, the Time of Think-pieces. Such surfeit of choice!)

Not to be a horrible liberal, but it sounds like one of the better long term solutions is better education in rural towns? Won't solve anything short term like the 4k lost factory jobs mentioned in the article, and TBH, I have no idea how we'd solve that because those factory jobs aren't coming back.
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smirk

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12277 on: November 13, 2016, 10:02:38 am »

As much as there is one single "solution", yeah. Jobs or some form of economic structure that isn't rapidly disintegrating, education, and about three generations down the line. Not that those first two are at all likely to happen, at least on any large scale.
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Frumple

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12278 on: November 13, 2016, 10:03:23 am »

Few pages late, but you might be interested in this here think-piece on a former manufacturing town and its voting habits, particularly the bits about church-reinforced social mores. They had a good run-up to this long before modern social media.

(Oh, to be alive now, in this, the Time of Think-pieces. Such surfeit of choice!)
Hell, their run up so far as that went started the second the GOP started actually managing to get their small government shit through on the local level (which was quite a ways back). Article pointed pretty well about lack of jobs, lagging retraining or new education, and so on. What might have actually done something about that, and damn well tried, was government initiatives in education, job outreach (such as subsidizing green power investment, as a more recent example), and things of that nature. Stuff that GOP-aligned budgeting, lobbying, and political maneuvering steadily undercut and disrupted.

There's not going to be succor for an area that's lost an industry if someone can't get something else in or help get the people out, and the major thing is (as plenty of folks have been pointing out for years in relation to what manufacturing jobs even potentially could come back) business damn sure ain't going to do that. What incentive or excuse there may have been to build away from urban or heavily developed areas in the past just isn't there anymore, and with the decay that's been occurring there's a hell of a lot of reasons for a startup or expander to avoid the hell out of them. And anyone that doesn't do that avoiding is almost certainly going to be outperformed by folks that do and don't reap the disadvantages of trying to build up in an area that's riddled with the problems these post-manufacturing/rural communities are, at best pushing the problem down the road a few years as they struggle and then collapse or get bought out and moved.

And so you need a non-business actor to do anything about it. Something that doesn't have profit or competition necessarily informing a lot of their decisions. Charity (ha) or government, state or federal, something along those lines. And, y'know. The former has never really managed much on that front -- others, definitely, but not redevelopment or retraining of substantial note, though definitely more the latter than the former. Problem with rest was, of course, that one of our major political groups were undermining the government possibility, making sure that any efforts that did exist just weren't enough, making sure the reality was failure and the situation worsening, even if it was trying to get slowed down or reversed.

Not to be a horrible liberal, but it sounds like one of the better long term solutions is better education in rural towns? Won't solve anything short term like the 4k lost factory jobs mentioned in the article, and TBH, I have no idea how we'd solve that because those factory jobs aren't coming back.
The problem with that? Is you need cooperation from the political forces in power to get better education in those towns. Charities can't manage enough and anything profit motivated is going to be dubiously effective at best. Cooperation where the major or at least sufficiently minor forces are republicans, that have an ideological and/or functional opposition to a functioning government. You can't get better education without funding, either more or at least the same and better allocated. You can't get that funding when huge chunks of the people deciding how that funding is made and used are intentionally refusing to give it. Folks've been trying to bring better education to rural and ex-manufacturing towns for at least the last couple of decades and working bloody close to miracles with the resources they have a lot of times, but even with disproportionately effective effort (which isn't everywhere anyway) there's only so much you can do with the resources available. A thousand time multiplier only helps so much when you've got a ten thousand point problem and three points of resource to allocate. And the support to really do it, get the funding and the expertise and the legal/procedural/etc. resources needed, just ain't there. And it's pretty doubtful it's going to suddenly show up anytime over the next few years, ha.

Basically, it's a good idea. It's a good idea people thought of before either of us were born and have been trying to implement the whole time. It's a good idea that's impossible to implement because the logistical necessities behind it cannot be reached, due in no small part to the flat fact it's being actively opposed. It's not going to work as a long term solution until those problems are solved. And the chances of that happening while the GOP is still a significant political force (never mind the majority one) is slim to none, unless they make some pretty drastic shifts in policy and implementation.
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Vilanat

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12279 on: November 13, 2016, 10:12:43 am »

That there is an incredibly high paywall to get higher education sure didn't help those poor townies. that it's the same people who were probably an hindrance for the U.S to finally get back to affordable, if not free, higher education is ironically sad.

They are too late, by two generations at least. As we said before, unless America decides to revolt against the machine, these people are going to remain unemployed even if trump somehow manages to bring back every manufacturing plant to the U.S (Which is why the gap in production costs between the West and the East is gradually declining and it actually starts being an incentive for the elites to bring back production with lower logistic costs). and if America revolts against the Machine, it becomes irrelevant.

Just wait a few years to a decade when all the drivers gets out of job. they might even become smart enough to vote for someone who propose universal basic income even if he is a dirty communist.
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12280 on: November 13, 2016, 10:17:10 am »

The thing is that even if they bring every single factory back, so much is automated now that it still won't bring all of the jobs back.

But yes, I agree that having affordable, if not free, higher education would help immensely.
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Frumple

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12281 on: November 13, 2016, 10:23:19 am »

Vil, there is actually a pretty significant amount of relief available vis a vis higher education and poorer communities, has been for a while even if, again, conservative efforts to reduce it haven't been ineffective. Pell grants, all the sorts of other bits of funding state and otherwise, all the charities and scholarships floating around... one of the things one of my relatives has done a fair amount of is helping folks in these areas interested in college and further education find that junk, and there's a good amount of outreach from other areas of the community (local libraries, job centers, etc.) encouraging similar things. 2-4 year stuff, technical training and whatnot... there was a lot of financial aid out there trying to make it as available as possible, and more stuff besides specifically aimed at retraining. Not nearly enough, but it wasn't really the paywall that was the problem, exactly, it was the lack of (and decrease in, either in an absolute sense or relative to what gains could have occurred) stuff available to surmount it.

Still, yeah, it didn't help and something that was just applied rather than having to be dug for would have helped a fair bit. Still questionable if it would be enough, but at the least things wouldn't have gotten as bad.
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martinuzz

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12282 on: November 13, 2016, 10:26:52 am »

It's all about education and encouraging innovation, and not outsourcing assembly to low wage countries. My home town was rebuild after WW2 as a manufacturing city by Philips, for manufacturing lightbulbs. It's industrial city planning also allowed DAF trucks to flourish. Philips started out producing lightbulbs, but over the years, developed into many higher tech branches. The company invested heavily in the improvement of the city's technical university, even funding an underground particle accelerator and physics campus, and also contributed to it's employees' children's education.

By the time Philips left our town about two decades ago, moving it's HQ to the western provinces, and much of it's manufacturing to lower wage countries, it had left the city with an infrastructure that was highly attractive to high tech industry and startups.
The workers that used to assemble lightbulbs and kitchen appliances are now working at ASML and other chip designers, for those still require enough low tech assembly and service jobs. Right now we are the Netherlands' equivalent of Silicon valley (Or rather, most of Silicon Valley's industries rely on the chip assembly machines that are developed and produced at ASML. We design the machines that allow the chip designers to design and create new chip architecture.)
This would not have been possible without extensive funding from both Philips and the government put into education, both for employees and their children.
DAF trucks never left town, and hasn't outsourced too much of it's manufacturing to lower wage countries, although automatisation has pushed back their employment numbers.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2016, 10:29:27 am by martinuzz »
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12283 on: November 13, 2016, 10:33:32 am »

Except that all those steel towns, textile towns, other etc. manufacturing towns, never did despecialize. Maybe some did, but the great majority didn't. Obviously it's too late now to do what your town did, now that the companies have left their company towns, but that in no way means we should give up.

And yeah, outsourcing is pretty bad here and feels like a large amount of blame should go that way.
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Frumple

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: Post-Apocalypse
« Reply #12284 on: November 13, 2016, 10:51:29 am »

Thing is, it kinda' shouldn't. Feels like it should, sure, but the blame is probably misplaced. It should be recognized as an issue and definitely acknowledged as what accelerated what's happened, but even if it had been prevented entirely we would still be seeing a shrinking manufacturing workforce and little to no end to that in sight. What killed the american manufacturing workforce (not the industry itself; that's still 2nd in the world and going pretty strong) was productivity gains more than anything -- if maybe not necessarily in a immediate sense, but definitely over anything resembling the long term. When a factory that used to employ two or three thousand can be run on half or a third of that nowadays (and will be) and still be meeting higher demand caused by simple population growth, there's just... nothing you can do to save that, short of intentionally sabotaging your companies (which, again, outperformed and inevitably dead because of it). The work that did it for a few thousand before, went overseas and did it for even more (due to worse infrastructure, productivity, relative cost effectiveness of automation and effort multipliers, and all that stuff), will not be as much work if you bring it back or had kept it here. 50k manufacturing jobs in mexico or china is not 50k manufacturing jobs in the US, and that has only so much to do with the wages involved.

It just... it boils down pretty simply. The manufacturing sector, the markets where outsourcing is hitting folks the hardest, they were never the solution. Reality of economics and technological/methodological advancement meant that just wasn't possible as a solution. We've always been working under the yoke of the fact that the only choices are diversification and reinvestment (human resource wise) into other markets, other sectors, because the ones that used to support these areas by their very nature are either no longer capable of it, or won't be within a generation or two.
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