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"A working class hero is something to be / If you want to be a hero well just follow me"
Trump made an interesting proposal recently to end taxes on overtime wages. I think this proposal is a non-starter for practical reasons, but is still directionally correct. Ending taxes on overtime wages is intended to help the working class. And the working class in America are not being given a fair shake. Our society feels as if it is run for the benefit of retirees and people with fake email jobs. We need to take action to rectify this.
Despite what some people may say, blue collar work is awful. It pays little, it's hard on your body, it's often hourly (so no pay when you take off to go to the dentist), the benefits are typically bad, etc.. While some people can get rich by operating a business providing blue collar services, this is an extremely hard and frustrating path. Is it any wonder that young people only want white collar jobs?
The Democratic Party solution for this is of course more welfare for the working poor. I think this policy is deeply destructive as it disincentives labor, and creates a captive class who are dependent on the government to live. (This might be a feature, not a bug, to some Democrats who envision a permanent ruling majority).
But I think a more constructive way forward is to increase the value of blue collar work. Tariffs help with this, even if they reduce overall prosperity. This overtime proposal is interesting since it only rewards people who are already working more than 40 hours a week. And it will, of course, hit mostly blue collar workers.
And, with that, the party alignment feels complete. Trump is winning among blue collar workers by nearly 20 points, and losing among white collar workers by similar margins. Democrats are promising subsidies for white collar workers such as student loan forgiveness. Trump is promising to reward his own base. Personally, if we're buying votes, I think Trump's proposals are better.
Lowering taxes at all is bad on its face since the government needs more taxes and less spending. It's worrying that neither side really cares about ballooning debt, since it will almost certainly have a far bigger impact on the lives of regular Americans than something like climate change ever will in our lifetimes.
Poor people have been doing pretty well recently, actually. The Gini coefficient has been flat or declining for the past several decades (in FRED's most recent data for 2021 it was lower than any year since 1992). Also, if you want greater incentives for work, bolster the EITC.
I don't buy the notion that blue collar work is uniquely awful. It might be tough on the body, but it also has a relatively lower barrier to entry, and some people outright prefer it. How does capitalism balance the upsides and downsides? With a little tool called "market wages". If blue collar work is so bad, why don't blue collar workers just sign up to get those supposedly worthless, trivial desk jobs? Your argument feels like the right-wing equivalent of "women are only paid 77 cents for every dollar a man earns".
Because they lack connections to centers of powers. Sinecures are not awarded to just anyone.
More specifically, credentialism makes it more difficult for people without rich parents to get fake email jobs.
The truth is that half the population is sub 100 IQ and many are well below that, and they can struggle with the basic verbal and spatial skills required in the majority of white collar jobs, even ‘fake email jobs’. Take an iconic fake email job like a product marketing manager at a FAANG, the reality of it still requires an above average intelligence even if they’re only working a few hours a day.
FAANG is like the Ivy League of the real world. They are going to get top employees.
But there are lots of fake email jobs that are not FAANG. Take, for example, the 10% of the private sector that works at nonprofits (up from approximately 0% in 1960). Many of them are quite stupid indeed. As time goes on, the average IQ of the college graduate continues to fall, and today is not much above the population-wide average. And, of course, stupid people struggle at blue collar professions at well.
I think it takes more intelligence to be a good HVAC repairman than it does to shuffle papers back and forth at a non-profit.
This might be true(I have no idea how smart you have to be to do non-profit work), but you don't have to be a good HVAC repairman to make a living. You don't, in point of fact, have to be a good HVAC repairman to make near the top of compensation for HVAC techs- many 'techs' are more realistically sales guys who are paid ~$20/hr plus 10% commission on all equipment sold to the customer through leads they generate, and HVAC companies commonly charge 400%+ markup on new systems. Installers make $15-$20/hr and get hired right out of the probation office, so it's an extremely profitable racket all around.
The key to a residential AC guy making his boat payment is, counterintuitively, to not fix very many air conditioners.
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