General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Josh Brolin CONFIRMS what I've told you ALL ALONG about TRUMP and the "Pimp Lessons" episode of "The Shield." [View all]haele
(14,945 posts)Whereas before the 1970's, there was generally someplace for them to land - if they worked hard enough - where their lives were considered comfortable for their time, where they could potentially buy a bit of land, or a car, or a home. The last time a working class family could even think about taking an annual two week road trip vacation to a National park or other tourist destination was probably before Reagan neutered the Unions and S&L crisis finally broke the back of working class home ownership and small local business employers.
Not to mention the practice of flattening service wages so that what used to be a living wage, like clerk (which includes cashier, secretary, or reception desk), janitor/maintenance, warehouse, drivers, is now considered an "entry level job" or scut work jobs for brain dead slackers who couldn't go to an Ivy league or has the proper class social network to get a "good job ". Technical or Skilled Trades jobs are "as needed". Part time, hurry up and wait jobs that anyone with a minimum of training and common sense can do.
Average jobs are disposable jobs. 50% of them can theoretically be replaced by automation and AI over the next ten years.
As I point this out, I am reminded that for Minorities in the US, this has been the default attitude of the Ownership class towards their employability status, whether or not they are doing important work, or had the genius, or got the education and experience to be able to make innovations and increase productivity (i.e., profit).
Now the "Real 'Murican" whose parents and grandparents lived respectable, comfortable lives where they could work for a "reasonable" business owner and still save up generational wealth for their time periods is facing the same roadblocks Minorities have faced in an increasingly compressed Living Wage labor market.
So these previously privileged adults are looking for someone to validate their upset over not being able to live the lives their childhood showed them could be possible, when they didn't see the financial stress or fear of job loss.
When a family could buy a comfortable home on a 10 - 15 year mortgage on a teacher's, janitor, mechanic's or senior clerk's job. When lower level managers and sales folk on commission - like a grocery or department store section manager - could make enough to buy a car and maintain a mortgage, and still save up to put a kid through college.
Those average jobs are fewer, and they pay the living wage equivalent of half what they did in the 1980's. It's like Childhood Nostalgia has been betrayed. So MAGA, along with Q-anon and modern Middle Class Conservatism in general, is looking for someone to blame as the floor that the Minorities used to hold up below them starts losing large pieces.
They're just either too lazy or too afraid to look "up" to see who's actually removing the floor under them.