Posted on 12/07/2016 1:09:47 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
To some extent, blue-collar workers gave back to Silicon Valley a bit of the disruption it has long given them
Nearly the entire tech industry, with the exception of PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, publicly lined up against Donald Trump and for Hillary Clinton in the recent presidential election. But words are one thing and actions another. And actions taken by the tech industry in the last decades helped seal Trump’s surprise victory.
Trump won, in large part, thanks to support by blue-collar voters without college degrees in the Rust Belt, particularly in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. The region has been hollowed out by a changing economy in which well-paying manufacturing jobs have been disappearing, replaced either by low-paying service jobs or by nothing at all.
Once upon a time, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, you could get a secure, high-paying job in the automotive and other manufacturing industries and live a solid middle-class life, with a safe retirement. No longer. People in the middle of the country watched while the economy turned on its head, their jobs vanished — and the tech industry flourished. The jobs disappeared, in large part, thanks to technology. The Australian Financial Review notes that U.S. manufacturing output has been growing, not shrinking, and hit record highs in 2016, even as 5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000 — 30% of the manufacturing workforce....
(Excerpt) Read more at cio.com ...
“The jobs disappeared, in large part, thanks to technology. “
Small part of it. Technology came in, the company asked for cuts, the unions refused and the company left for greener pastures. Meanwhile right to work states had the same technical issues and they managed.
Why is that?
Some of us tech workers WITH college degrees who don’t appreciate the use of H1Bs as a personal perk to keep expenses down also supported Trump.
More than "some", I bet.
Tech companies actively tried to SUPPRESS Trump and conservatives in general. He won despite their efforts.
Trump supporter BLOCKED by Facebook for complaining about site’s censorship of right-wing activists
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3603345/Conservative-activist-Lauren-Southern-banned-Facebook-mentioning-censorship.html
Apple, Twitter, Google, Instagram collude to defeat Trump
http://observer.com/2016/08/tech-companies-apple-twitter-google-and-instagram-collude-to-defeat-trump/
WikiLeaks Makes DNC Look Bad - Banned on Facebook and Shadowbanned on Twitter
http://investmentwatchblog.com/twitter-is-shadow-banning-dncleak-to-make-it-go-down-in-trends-and-wikileaks-links-are-banned-on-facebook-now/
I've worked in some auto plants in Mexico. So, nice try.
Granted, they are automated too. But the machinery still requires skilled operators, skilled maintenance people, skilled installers, skilled programmers. And those skills are developed and learned and passed on where you build the plants.
If they aren't here, then all that technology transfer is happening somewhere else.
With increased automation, the difference in wages means less than it would, which means that pretext for leaving is less and less. Differences in regulation and red tape and taxes become more important. Whatever it takes, though, to even the playing field, we have to do it. When the jobs leave, the money leaves, the technical savvy leaves too. Cultural optimism leaves too, you are left with people whose great hope in life is a raise in the legal minimum wage, since thats all there is to hope for.
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