FiveThirtyEight: Manufacturing Jobs Are NEVER Coming Back.

[HughBeaumont]

110. "We'd better re-think what it means to 'work'; get GMI, retrain, embrace change, blah blah blah"

. . . . and then you wake up and realize we live in America, which is run by corporate-purchased politicians, where none of that is GOING to happen (no matter how desperately it NEEDS to happen).

The apparent solution on one side is a Guaranteed Minimum Income, which isn't going to happen in any of our lifetimes. Don't get me wrong, it's YEARS past time that it needs to happen. But the reality is, Paul Ryan controls the purse strings and Americans are, plain and simple, stupid bastards that like yelling with Fox News. So hoping that these voters will put the politicians in that will consider instituting GMI is like hoping the majority of our citizens will someday learn there's no value in demonizing concepts and people that aren't revolved around worshipping wealth.

(and before anyone says "well, Hugh, calling them 'stupid bastards' isn't going a long way of getting them on our side" YOU KNOW, WHATEVS. These people are grown adults; I don't have time to recalibrate the fuckered parts of their head, I have my own problems to deal with. If they want to believe bullshit fairy tales like trickle-up socialism will lead to the benefactors and handlers being more benevolent or an invisible sky daddy will make their lives better while blowin' up the Mooslims and Commies, that's on them, not me. If they want to believe they're better than someone because they're white, fuck them. They need to wake up, grow up and OWN up. Stop believing in religions; that includes their precious "free marketz". There's a start.)

The apparent "solution" on the other side is "well, you need to be less dependent on 'Uncle Sugar', make your OWN opportunities and start taking RISKS!" Um. OK. I'm so grateful for that sage piece of wisdom, Andrew Carnegie. That's about as helpful to me as saying "win the lottery" or "here's a pile of bricks, pipes and wood, build a house." In all actuality, attempting to win the lottery is less of a risk since I can recover $20 as opposed to $2000 or $20,000.

What will I sell? Who'll be the audience for that product? How will I manufacture it? How will I survive other people selling similar things? How do I compete with corporations that have me at a cost advantage from jump? Can I live with more periods of making no money vs. periods of making money (IF such periods come)? Will my net be as much as I'm making now (I can pretty much tell you the answer to that question . . . NO)? Sorry, I can't afford to move backwards in life; I'm not 22 years old any more, I have only NOW and these bills in front of me that aren't going away.

So . . . can anyone tell me why I should have any sort of hope for my kid's future success or my retirement prospects? Does anyone have any kind of solution that's going to WORK? Multiply economic regression by millions upon millions of citizens and, sorry to break this to you, you're going to have a heaping biblical problem on your hands that's likely going to turn bloody and ugly. If you're proposing every generation from now on will have to work until they're gurneyed out while throwing our kids to an economic environment that offers such minimal opportunity to succeed (with an enormous entrance fee, of course) . . . that's not much to look forward to. That's going to lead to cataclysm and murders. How can we avoid this?

"Wow, so much 'hair on fire'." Well, hey, what say you? You know I'm right about this. Every move we make has to be the right one. Keep making more stupid moves, America, and watch our kid's futures go over Niagara Falls.