ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Eric the Green]

(03-25-2017, 04:31 PM)FLBones Wrote: Who cares if the job is "mindless" and "dull" if it offers full time positions with decent pay, benefits and pension? I'd take a factory job in a heartbeat if they were available. The elitist attitudes towards factory/manufacturing jobs is partly what led to the demise of it here in the US. It's better than the way things are now with most jobs being in the service sector. It's predominately low paying part time jobs. And a lot of these service sector jobs have irregular working hours like working nights, weekends, holidays, etc.

They were better than the service jobs. But there was much grounds for complaint about these jobs, since they made people do robotic things which made them feel more like machines. They aren't very fulfilling, creative or stimulating jobs, so many people rebelled at having to do them. The only reward for these jobs was money, and workers had no connection to what they were making. So was life just about making money, so you could "live" by having some (also-mindless) "fun" on the weekends and on rare vacations for living? Kinda like how their man Trump views his current job? Yes, there was lots to complain about this lifestyle. But the "standard of living" was good, IF "living" meant little more than "making" a living.

But did the complaints kill the jobs? I doubt it. It's cheaper for the bosses to hire robots in the long run than hiring real live human robots, and also cheaper to move factories to China, Mexico or Bangladesh and hire the cheap labor available over there. The complaints were justified, but the service jobs are no more fulfilling, and pay worse, for those who can't master the high tech world, be their own boss, or fulfill their dream to be some kind of artist or inventor/scientist. 

The "elite" to complain about is not those who complained about the mindlessness of the factory jobs. The "elite" to complain about is the bosses who fired the workers for their own economic benefit, and replaced them with machines and cheaper labor abroad, and who won't cut hours and raise the pay of the workers instead of firing them. The "elite" to complain about is the Republican politicians who get votes by appealing to the prejudices of those who lost their jobs, who think that it's the fault of "elitist attitudes" or "illegal immigrants" or "affirmative action" that they lost their jobs, when it isn't. The elite to complain about is the Republican politicians and the bosses who bankroll them, who appeal to the "self reliance" ethos while throwing people out of work, and opposing as "creating dependency" the very welfare programs and income credits that are necessary because of the very unemployment which THEY cause by hogging all the rewards of the new technology that lessens the need for labor.