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Notes -
thesis of a possible effort-post. does this have legs?
Globalization didn’t have to break the working class, but blank slate liberalism did
A few decades ago you could show up with a 3rd grade education and still get a decent factory job that fed your family and gave your life... maybe not meaning, but some dignity. Today, those jobs are gone. Globalization took them, and now America has a surplus class of unemployable and underemployable mopes; people born too late for easy jobs but too early for gay-space communism to take care of them. They're stuck, adrift.
Was there any way to help them? Was the populist backlash unavoidable except for the choice of the form of our destroyer, Bernie Sanders’ classist rage or Trump's MAGA nationalist rage?
Is this a false choice? Yes, but the solution hinges on IQ realism. It hinges on slaying blank slate liberalism.
Countries like Germany faced the same global pressures but came out intact. They kept their working class employed, respected, and connected to dignity. How? By accepting a truth America refused: not everyone is wired for lambda calculus. Germany didn’t chase a fantasy of universal upskilling, or telling freshly unemployed coal miners to learn to code. Instead, they built protected, respected, cottage industries and stable vocational tracks with early sorting, precisely for the millions who weren't destined to debug beta reductions.
America, by contrast, swallowed a comforting lie: that we could escape globalization’s consequences without sacrifice. We embraced blank slate thinking, believing with enough TED talks and vocational bootcamps everyone could become high-skilled, high-status knowledge workers. We decided dignity wasn’t found in factories or plumbing, but in laptops and cubicles. Work that liberals secretly preferred.
But the bell curve didn’t care. IQ didn't budge. And so today, millions of Americans remain underemployed, abandoned, and pissed off.
Globalization didn't have to do this. Our denial of human cognitive differences, our stubborn insistence on the blank slate, did.
Germany got it right. America told itself comforting lies.
I'm pretty sure the American working class gets a better deal than the German one. American plumbers and factory workers probably both earn more and have a higher employment rate compared to their German equivalent.
Instead this is about a few left behind areas. This isn't an issue with blank slate liberalism; Western Pennsylvania didn't have blacks to compete for jobs anyways. It declined anyways. The rust belt is one of the whitest parts of the country.
I want to stop and ask- are German small towns doing that much better? It seems like everyone on earth has an issue with small towns pouring into the metropole due to lower wages. Literally. Gen. Franco couldn't stop it. Chairman Mao couldn't stop it. Donald Trump won't be able to stop it.
Don't you need to be at least a little smart to be an electrician or a plumber? Moreso if you are self-employed doing these things and making a nice amount of money?
I've done my own electrical work and plumbing at home and it requires a non-trivial amount of attention to detail and being able to do some basic computation. I probably couldn't do it stoned. Surely 100 IQ minimum needed to be employable.
Electricians have to pass trigonometry. Plumbers must be able to contort themseves into rather small, awkward spaces, which is more weight and age than IQ limited. Poster Plumber on DSL said there’s a standardized test to become an apprentice plumber in CA.
In CA, probably. In Texas if you’re a citizen you just find someone willing to hire you for a few years and then take the journeyman’s exam.
Electricians additionally need to have a record of a passing grade in algebra 2 from high school, or college algebra from community college, to be accepted for an apprenticeship. They also have to take a math for electricians class as part of it, but I don’t know what exactly is entailed(quite possibly trig).
In both cases the apprenticeship length is four years except classes and overtime can cut down on it somehow. The formulae are complicated but generally an associate’s degree cuts a year off. There’s a journeyman’s test afterwards. After a few more years you can get a master’s license to own your own company but most don’t bother.
For HVAC you get your EPA license(you can self study and just pay for a written test through HVAC suppliers) then register with the state and find someone to hire you. There’s a test to become a contractor after four years but most techs don’t bother. HVAC tends to have a much stronger commercial/residential distinction than the other two trades because it’s so easy to get into; most HVAC guys start out with residential(and usually residential installs, which is shittier work) and after some experience the smarter ones tend to switch to commercial.
Welders aren’t regulated by the state. Basically all welders go to school and get some kind of certificate, but you don’t technically need one.
In all three cases union apprenticeships have their own process which is different from the standard one but has an identical end result in the eyes of the government- the union apprenticeship is generally seen as higher quality, and union trained tradesmen tend to be paid more even if they aren’t part of the union. Trades unions themselves are basically guilds; tradesmen work for, and are paid by, the union itself and technically leased out to union shops in a temp agency like arrangement. In practice in DFW union members only switch companies when they want to.
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