The Crisis of America’s White Working Class Is More Spiritual than Material

National Review ^ | April 11, 2016 | David French

[expat_panama]

There is a story the media likes to tell about American economic and cultural history. It goes something like this: Once upon a time, decades ago, working-class Americans enjoyed a glide path to prosperity. Fathers and sons worked side-by-side at the mill or the plant or the quarry. They could expect high wages and lifetime employment. They could build and support families. Then, the mill closed. Jobs fled to China or automation rendered them superfluous. Families were cast upon a safety net shredded by heartless politicians, and with few prospects and no financial security, despair settled in...

...The Post’s piece included a number of revealing charts. The first looked at the American poverty rate:

You’ll notice that the “good old days” – the years surrounding Jones’s birth ...ms as a percentage of GDP...

...The safety net hasn’t been “shredded.” The old days weren’t days of greater prosperity. American life was never easy, but it was much harder in the recent past...

...She wasn’t a casualty of the system but of an almost pathological self-destructiveness. In fact, earlier in life, Jones was on her way up. She started working at a Kmart snack bar, became a manager, and by her mid-20s was training to become a regional manager. Here’s how the Post describes what happened next:...

...Life has always been hard for the poor, but it has not always been quite so lonely. Part of this is the legacy of the welfare state...

...The complex nature of the crisis should not be a license to avoid facing its ultimate truth head on: America’s working class is in the grips of a malady far more spiritual than material. We can spend trillions more, but safety nets won’t save the human soul.

[expat_panama]

The only reason this is only a "white" here seems to be that it's not PC to say non-whites can possibly have a problems w/ spiritual values. imho this spiritual crisis (like the hard data shown in the article) refer to all races.

[expat_panama]

Good morning!  Here we thought yesterday that stocks were about to crash and then they end up w/ a tidy little advance in rising volume.  It's not that we don't know anything, in fact we just learned that the markets are becoming flaky.   Meanwhile metals are strong w/ silver now at highs ($16.10) not seen since June last year.

Yuge pile of econ stats coming out today:

7:00 AM MBA Mortgage Index
8:30 AM Core PPI
8:30 AM PPI
8:30 AM Retail Sales
8:30 AM Retail Sales ex-auto
8:30 AM Core PPI
8:30 AM Retail Sales
8:30 AM Retail Sales ex-auto
10:00 AM Business Inventories
10:30 AM Crude Inventories
2:00 PM Fed's Beige Book

--and our pundits have been busy too...

Divorce Can Push Retirees Into the Red - Rodney Brooks, Washington Post
The Dignity of Free Trade - Donald Boudreaux, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
This Billionaire Just Bulldozed Jersey Tax Base - Chris Matthews, Fortune
As Tax Day Approaches, We Can Do Better - Alex Brill, RealClearMarkets
Panama Exposes Shell Companies Right In U.S. - Shima Baughman, TNR
Panama Papers' Russian Mob Connection - Michael Weiss, The Daily Beast
This Problem Could Push Much of U.S. Into Bankruptcy - Editorial, IBD
The Dire State of Global Economy In Six Charts - Szu Ping Chan, Telegraph

[PapaBear3625]

In the original definition, you were “working class” if you worked for somebody else for a paycheck.

You were middle-class if you were something like a doctor, lawyer, small business owner — somebody who didn’t have a boss, only customers and clients. The middle class sat between the working class and the upper class — the landed gentry, the aristocracy.

When NR talks with contempt about the working class, they are really talking about most of us.

[sphinx]

No, the reason the story is about the “white” working class is that Kevin Williamson wrote a very pointed article in NR a couple of weeks ago about the white underclass, which is just as dysfunctional, though somewhat less violent, than the black underclass. A number of people took offense. Many of the offended, of course, had not read or carefully considered the piece; they were just offended that Williamson had dared to hold dysfunctional people responsible for their own pathologies. There have been several follow-on pieces in NR addressing the controversy.

[Pietro]

More BS from NR telling working class whites to sit down and shut up as if we’re completely unaware of what’s going on in this country.

[Psalm 73]

"Many of the offended, of course, had not read or carefully considered the piece..."

I'm not a schill for NR, but you are exactly right - we see a lot of knee-jerk reactions to the mention of NR, where they don't dispute specifics, but merely rail on about "the GOPe".

Sadly, many seem to have taken up DU habits of blanket trashings divorced from actual discourse on the merits.

[stellaluna]

Being told that if you vote for Trump then you are white trash and need to die is pretty offensive.

[kearnyirish2]

There is no way to hide what is happening to our country and way of life, and young people in particular see it. Never mind giving up on ever having a family or owning a home; more and more young people can’t imagine having the discretionary dollars to buy/insure/maintain a CAR.

[Daveinyork]

What’s going on?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kA3UtBj4M

[Psalm 73]

"Being told...."

Really?
Did you read that somewhere or are you just repeating what someone told you?
Please show me the article that that phrase comes from in context.

[cassiusking]

Williamson is an apologist for the global freebie we have made of our industries and technologies

[Daveinyork]

I’m still trying to figure out when this golden age of the white working class was. If it happened, it didn’t affect my family. In the 1950’s, my blue collar dad had to borrow from his father in law (my grandfather) to pay the bills.

So he started a part-time business, while keeping his blue collar job. After a few years of working a full-time job, and a part-time business, we were able to afford a second car.

Was it the 1930’s? get real, the 40’s? uh huh.

Maybe it was the 1960’s. My mom went to work so that we could afford to go to college under the myth that it would help us to escape from the working class.

The 1970’s? stagflation? energy crises.

Ah, those were the days.

[mikeus_maximus]

Exactly. The economic and political destruction of America are irreversible, because they are merely symptoms of a profound and accelerating spiritual decline. Anyone who points out what God has expressly said to be “abominations” — divorce, infanticide, homosexuality which this country eagerly embraces— is viewed as a misguided religious nut, at best. God said he will always bring consequences to cultures that reach our stage of “progress”: even more sin and disillusionment, poverty, violence within, wars without, disease, hunger... the US is not immune, and no politician is going to turn it around.

[LNV]

Google is your friend. There are pages of hits on the two National Review articles which said that working class communities deserved to die.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/12/national-review-white-working-class-communities-morally-indefensible-they-deserve-to-die/

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/03/15/national-review-doubles-down-important-to-say-white-working-class-communities-deserve-to-die/

[Psalm 73]

"...working class communities deserved to die."

I've read the article - it doesn't say "Trump voters deserve to die" it says that there are some communities that should be allowed to die off. Communities have been dying in this country for two hundred years, and there are reasons for that.
Adapt or die - when the jobs leave, you pack up and go where you can find work. Or, apparently, you could go on SS disability, welfare, food stamps, etc.
It's not just minorities that do that, there's a lot of able whites that milk the system - I see it, and if you look carefully you can see it too.
I don't care what color you are - just stop sucking off the dependence teat.

[MSF BU]

Superb, especially the pension article. This is the ticking time bomb nobody feels like dealing with.

[Psalm 73]

"The economic and political destruction of America are....merely symptoms of a profound and accelerating spiritual decline."

Nicely put.
And it IS the "white working class" (in general) that gives a nod and a wink to the destructive social behaviors you mentioned.

[Pietro]

He built a fire on Main St and shot it full of holes.

[LNV]

Your compassion is noted.

Not everybody is cut out to be a software engineer or a doctor. Jobs that used to sustain the middle class have been systematically transferred overseas with the help of our globalist overlords, Cruz included. The wages of the working class jobs that are left have been dropping steadily due to the influx of illegal labor.

If you want people to work instead of being on welfare, they need to have jobs with wages high enough to survive.

[EBH]

What bother’s me is they describe this “golden age” of the working class as working in the mills, foundries, factories, etc. and then the jobs move to China.

What they fail to fill-in is the ‘why’ those jobs moved to China.

Union wages and demands, EPA, Taxes, and toss in there OSHA, Worker’s Compensation...all those things that describe this wonderful ‘age’ in America was ruined by socialist type policies.