Great Post!
[ Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know #### about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,” said Alfred Lubrano in Limbo. ]
Sounds like an experience I had a couple of years ago. They couldn’t possibly fathom the level of detail and super-human powers needed to unlock a 40+-year-old mess. One even admitted I was light-years ahead of them. Still, every thing you did, tried to do, informed, suggested, tried to implement etc. was immediately rejected and substituted with shoot-from-the-hip “fixes”. I’ve never seen anything like it.
The example of the entitled “poor” - the woman with no job but could drop off her kids in government-funded daycare - was brilliant.
Very good piece. Sean Hannity has often said “I never got a job working for a poor man”. Working class people don’t as much envy the wealthy as they aspire to follow in their footsteps.
Another thing occurs to me: It’s no secret that many of those who have joined the Trump Movement are people who once held those good paying jobs that were outsourced to China and Mexico. But what is also true is as those jobs went away, so did the power the unions had over many of those workers. And just as was the case in WI after Gov. Walkers reforms went into effect, given the choice of belonging to the union or not, many chose to quit.
The unions stranglehold on the the working class has been broken.
Oh, liberals like a woman to know her place too, I think. I mean, look at the celebs they turned to: Madonna, Beyonce, Katy Perry... women who trade on their sexuality for notoriety and cash, and think this is "empowerment." It's not empowerment: even in the most patriarchal societies, an attractive woman could parlay her sexuality for influence and diamonds. We called them courtesans back in the day... but that's not empowerment. That's the oldest profession.
I think that any politician who simply emphasizes respect for work would create a very broad coalition. America used to respect work. If you worked and earned your money, no one begrudged it to you. My stepfather started out a Democrat union member but became a Republican because he saw the Democrats buying votes by telling people they could live off of someone else’s dime. Work is a dirty word these days. Its so sad.
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
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Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
Mike Row Nails it (Not sure about FB policy for posting content? This is an excellent read- and nails why the country went for trump-
Jim Childers writes…
Hey Mike - I hear all the Presidential candidates talking about the “right” of “free” college and how college is necessary to function in our society. I have not heard a single candidate opine about the necessity of training for the “trades.” Why do you suppose our “anointed ones” have such a myopic view of the blue-collar class even as they court their votes?”
Hi Jim -
If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that most candidates don’t focus on the necessity of trade schools, because most voters would prefer their kids get a four-year degree from a University. If a majority of voters valued skilled labor as much as they value a sheepskin, I suspect Donald would be campaigning in a hardhat, Hillary would be stumping in steel-toed pumps, and Bernie would be handing out free welding torches.
Truth is, a lot of well-intended parents still believe that kids who attend trade schools do so because they’re not “college material.” That’s an absurd stereotype with no basis in reality, but for the millions of parents who want something “better” for their kids, it’s reason enough to discourage a career in the trades. Unfortunately, this reasoning is not only faulty, it’s destroying economies large and small.
Consider the number of college graduates today, who can’t find work in their chosen field. Hundreds of thousands of highly educated twenty-somethings are either unemployed or getting paid a pittance to do something totally unrelated to the education they borrowed a fortune to acquire. Collectively, they hold 1.3 trillion dollars of debt, and no real training for the jobs that actually exist. Now, consider the countries widening skills gap - hundreds of thousands of good jobs gone begging because no one wants to learn a useful trade. It’s madness. “College For All” might sound good on the campaign trail, but in real life, it’s a dangerous platitude that reinforces the ridiculous notion that college is for people who use their brains, and trade schools are for people who use their hands. As if the two can not be combined........”
https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1162043553805786:0
Trump beat a concerted, well-financed, world-wide effort to throw everything including the kitchen sink at him. I've never seen such a withering excrement-storm.
If Trump is successful and if the GOP, seeing that success builds on it instead of returning to its present bearings, the GOP could lead, I will never say rule, this country until my daughter has grandchildren. Trump has a job or work ahead of him. I pray he is up to it.
They remain obsessed with promoting anything immoral. (There, fixed it).
Great Post!
Another article telling the Democrat Party how to win elections.
Why should The Harvard Business Review care about teaching the Democrat Party how to win elections?
I could see the Harvard Political Science Review giving general political advice, but even they shouldn’t be so locked in with one political party.
They are so deluded that they see no wrong with what they do.
Its not a surprising venue.
A lot like this and similar in the HBR.
Its a useful and unpredictable publication.
The working class simply got tired of waiting for the wealth to trickle down.
A great example of someone who has learned much and understood nothing.
The real question to ask is whether or not subjecting the working class to repeated bouts of unemployment and then providing tremendously expensive "retraining" isn't just an enormous subsidy to importers who contribute nothing to the well-being of the United States.
And if so, why are we doing it?
No. Progressives have been stealing from natural increases in production, technology and wealth to build a massive political base dependent on them.
Bump
I read until the author asserted that Trump won because blue collar men want women to know their place again. Other that, kinda long winded dissertation about working class men, by someone who is not one.
Pass.
True words
Most of these elites will not nor never had a hard job They get paid ridiculous money to step on those who do. I don’t trust lawyers or academics. Doctors a bit more. Give me the common sense of a nurse or miner or farmer any day
Great article. Does she realize that if the Dims act on these uderstandings there will be no place for their Progressive agenda? Of course not because she doesn’t realize the ultimate prize is the subjegation of the lower classes to the elite ruling class. She is just another useful idiot who thinks the agenda is just a little misguided in “helping” people.
