02.16.12
Working Man Blues
AP Ticker takes on Charles Murray who’s latest bit of genius tries to make the case that shiftless downwardly mobile white people are that way because they don’t share the core values and ways of the more upscale tribe.
Krugman destroyed Murray and the thesis that the upper class has morals and that’s why it’s successful last week.
The Scrapple News bit features footage of old black and white film from when Philadelphia was a factory town a long time ago. Then the jobs all went to Mexico. And, finally, China. It’s congruent with the old 8mm of Fender yesterday, which went, first, to Mexico, and then to China.
The Murray argument also fits with the idiot claims that Americans simply lack the skills to fill manufacturing jobs in this country, as if making guitars or much worse, cleaning glass touch screens with organic solvent in the Chinese manufacturing district, requires some kind of right stuff the lazy non-upper class white tribe no longer possesses.
Trivia: The Nation’s submissions editor liked the “Mitt Romney Blues.” “Love it,” were the words. Not quite enough, or easy to fit for the magazine though.
So how do you catch a break around here? Anyone know?
Chuck said,
February 17, 2012 at 2:46 pm
The problem is that the ordinary citizen simply isn’t competitive with domestic slave labor:
http://www.manufacturing.net/news/2012/02/garment-workers-could-lose-jobs-to-prisoners
DD said,
February 17, 2012 at 3:00 pm
According to Wiki:
“UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) has 109 factories in federal prisons …”
This just in from the wire. Apparently the original story did some good:
The federal government is ending any plans to give a contract for Air Force jackets to federal prisoners, a move that would have closed a Kentucky company and left 100 people out of work.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., received an e-mail Friday from the Federal Bureau of Prisons saying it was not going to seek the jacket work.
I’m assuming it helped UNICOR is actually a government, rather than private sectory, business.
Chuck said,
February 17, 2012 at 7:08 pm
Well, it IS an election year, so the retreat figures.
Any other year, probably not so much…