Working-class American men are getting lonelier and sicker and their lives are shortening. It’s not just a sad state of affairs. It’s a full-blown crisis that demands policy solutions.
We live in a society that generally looks down on working class people. Not all working class people, equally, though, as not everyone who sells their labor is culturally or socially in the same class. A professional athlete making tens of millions of dollars a year can’t really be counted in the same social class as a factory worker making $50K a year. That being said, very, very few people get rich by earning a wage. Generally speaking, if you want to get rich you have to have access to capital.
And getting rich is the goal. One’s position in the social hierarchy is closely tied to their wealth and income. For this reason, there’s a strong incentive to NOT do work that doesn’t pay a lot. Unfortunately for all of us, much of that work is absolutely essential for the functioning of any modern society. So, there’s a disconnect. The incentives are skewed, away from some of the most essential work and toward some of the least essential work. I think the long term effects of this could be disastrous, as we see more and more shortages of workers in essential fields.
But fear not, the capitalists have anticipated this and they have a solution: immigrants. Just bring people in from other countries to do the essential yet low wage, low status work. I don’t really think that’s a solution at all, and is more or less just delaying the inevitable.
We live in a society that generally looks down on working class people. Not all working class people, equally, though, as not everyone who sells their labor is culturally or socially in the same class. A professional athlete making tens of millions of dollars a year can’t really be counted in the same social class as a factory worker making $50K a year. That being said, very, very few people get rich by earning a wage. Generally speaking, if you want to get rich you have to have access to capital.
And getting rich is the goal. One’s position in the social hierarchy is closely tied to their wealth and income. For this reason, there’s a strong incentive to NOT do work that doesn’t pay a lot. Unfortunately for all of us, much of that work is absolutely essential for the functioning of any modern society. So, there’s a disconnect. The incentives are skewed, away from some of the most essential work and toward some of the least essential work. I think the long term effects of this could be disastrous, as we see more and more shortages of workers in essential fields.
But fear not, the capitalists have anticipated this and they have a solution: immigrants. Just bring people in from other countries to do the essential yet low wage, low status work. I don’t really think that’s a solution at all, and is more or less just delaying the inevitable.