I don't think this is a steel-manning of the populist approach or a remotely adequate defense of the Neo-liberal approach because it very studiously avoids the issue of immigration.
Sure, there's some talk about tariffs and trade, but <b>the go to option in the populist "economic policy for the working class" playbook is "reduce unskilled (and especially unskilled illegal) immigration.</b>
The defense of neoliberalism is terribly weak because it doesn't acknowledge that nearly unconstrained immigration is a key tenent of liberalism. In many cases it's been made explicit that the "working class" to be helped is the foreign working class, because relative to them, the domestic working class is actually really well off.
This might be true, but as a policy preference, it's a pretty obvious FU to a domestic working class, an no amount of futzing about with sops on tariffs and labor taxes is going to offset it. This is the neoliberal policy that needs to change, because otherwise the vast majority of of the "neoliberal project" (which is good for all) is likely to get thrown out like the baby with the bathwater.
In short, neoliberal policy for the working class must start with consciously uncoupling the neoliberal policy that's admittedly anti-working class.
(I consider myself a liberal and I have no problem with this. In my study of liberalism as a political philosophy I've found nothing that suggests the absolutely poor foreigner should be preferred or invited into the polity at the expense of the only relatively poor citizen.)
I think we can take Tyler as something of an embodiment of the neoliberal consensus. Didn't he write and entire book about Brazilification of America.
-----
What will the United States look like in twenty to forty years? Extrapolating from the present, Cowen argues that “we will move from a society based on the pretense that everyone is given an okay standard of living to a society in which people are expected to fend for themselves much more than they do now.” He imagines “a world where, say, 10 to 15 percent of the citizenry is extremely wealthy and has fantastically comfortable and stimulating lives…. Much of the rest of the country will have stagnant or maybe even falling wages in dollar terms, but a lot more opportunities for cheap fun and also cheap education. Many of these people will live quite well, and those will be the people who have the discipline to benefit from all the free or near-free services modern technology has made available. Others will fall by the wayside. … It will become increasingly common to invoke ‘meritocracy’ as a response to income inequality” and this “framing of income inequality in meritocratic terms will prove self-reinforcing. Worthy individuals will in fact rise from poverty on a regular basis, and that will make it easier to ignore those who are left behind.” (pp. 228-230)
The future Cowen paints is pretty bleak for the majority of Americans. For instance, “the less wealthy will be pushed out of the nicer living areas.” He contemplates the possibility of building some makeshift structures for the poor, including the elderly poor, “similar to the better dwellings you might find in a Rio de Janeiro favela. The quality of the water and electrical infrastructure might be low by American standards, though we could supplement the neighborhood with free municipal wireless….” (p. 244)
I think we need to question the assumption that jobs for people without college degrees have disappeared entirely. Many have, but many others have been created that continually go unfilled. The trades, welding, manufacturing, truck driving, etc. all are short on workers. Drivers have been short for over 20 years now, and I have seen industry estimates that the market could readily absorb 33% more (for what that is worth). I have spoken with manufacturing companies that are increasing automation largely because they can't find workers to hire to do the work.
We can argue about whether or not labor prices need to increase to make supply meet demand, but especially in trucking the wages are getting nuts with 30$ an hour plus overtime being the median in most regions for local drivers. I think we need to seriously ask what people without college degrees are doing instead. What are they doing such that a job with pay over the national median is not worth it?
I suspect that the issue isn't so much the lack of jobs providing money and dignity, but rather what people consider dignified and what their other, non-work options are.
Given the increase in those attending college and the very low wages most of them make after 4 years, it suggests to me that as a culture we have decided that anything not requiring a college degree is a bad job, whether or not it pays more.
What are the non-work options for the millions out of the job market? What looks better than making >60K$ a year at a job?
<i>Given the increase in those attending college and the very low wages most of them make after 4 years, it suggests to me that as a culture we have decided that anything not requiring a college degree is a bad job, whether or not it pays more.</i>
I think there is a lot to this. Recently, I've spoken to a plumber and an electrician and they both say that older people are retiring and new people aren't coming in. There's something about the way that all young people are required to attend kindergarten through academic grade 12, and then counseled that they would be selling themselves short if they don't go to college.
Around here, in order to get a high school degree, you need to attend ("seat time") 990 hours for four years in a cafeteria list of required academic subjects. Perhaps if apprenticeship could be substituted for half that time. Perhaps if students could be routinely tested for aptitude and interest (and their interest respected). But perhaps that's like expecting your local Ford dealer to tell customers that they don't really need that luxury pick-up.
I knew one young person with the ability that became a welder. He ended up quitting to become a nurse. It was pretty simple to him, being a welder was a miserable job that was hurting his body and didn't even pay as well as being a nurse, with far less stability and future options.
Most people smart enough to go into the trades are instead going into Eds and Meds, because they are subsidize demand/restrict supply professions. You see a lot of male nurses these days who in the past might have been in the trades.
An RN makes 77k a year with great benefits and a good future. An LPN is around 50k, same as a trucker. Neither of these have onerous education requirements, less than a BA.
To be fair, most truck drivers make more in the $100K+ range, because of overtime and the norm of 12+ hour days. I don't know why that is the norm, but most of the drivers I have worked with are irritated if they got less than 10 hours a day. I suppose because it feels a bit less like work to be left alone to drive, but damned if I know.
I wouldn't be surprised if nursing isn't becoming a big competitor for the traditional trades, myself. I will say that the male RNs I have dealt with are... not so good. Why, I don't know, but it is a rare male RN that isn't irritating to me on some dimension.
Truck drivers that own their own rigs and manage their own routes make more, but that involves capital investment and risk. It also involves running your own business which means lots of skills and is hardly unskilled labor. My father also owned his own route which meant doing sales, marketing, accounting, financial planning, etc. It's no surprise that a job that includes many white collar skills pays a white collar wage.
The question is why not just become white collar if you have those skills. Working from home with your family is a lot better then sleeping in a cab. (An untold story of trucking is that its an easier industry in which to hide earnings from child support). In the case of my father he had an opportunity to join management but found management too effeminate and dishonest for his liking.
As to overtime regulation help to limit that to a certain extent. Every rig now has a little computer monitoring you every minute.
I am literally looking at the weekly pay sheets for 5 of our drivers that make over $2,000 a week, every week. The use company trucks and don't manage routes. Granted, they do cryogenics, which does include loading and unloading the tanker and so is somewhat technical, but no more so than driving the truck itself. I can unload a cryo-trailer, but I wouldn't trust myself to drive it around.
Things seem to have changed quite a bit since your dad was driving. It might vary by location too, but drivers on the coasts make pretty impressive money these days, even compared to college grads. Remember that if you crack $100K a year that puts you in the top 15% of all earners in the US.
Maybe so. I can only look at the average earnings on the BLS, and they aren't that impressive. The Northeast has always had a surplus, but a lots gets eaten up by COLA.
And I can't say how much someone might make if they are pulling huge amounts of overtime, but living 60+ hours a week on the road ought to pay a huge premium. I get paid more then that to sit at home and post.
I guess the question I would ask is:
1) If everyone did it, would the pay hold up?
2) Just what do you think people working long hours at difficult and hazardous jobs should make per hour? What kind of standard of living should that offer?
My dad didn't slept in his own bed with his family every night. The hours were a bit long and he woke up early. And it was physically difficult. But it wasn't the worst trucking job in the world. He was able to afford a modest house near NYC on a single income. We had safe neighborhoods and good schools. We could afford health insurance. The exact same people working the exact same job post union busting can't afford any of that stuff.
It was my understanding that RNs require a four-year college degree. But, yeah, I think a lot of people who would have gone into the trades are now going into the medical field. As the old saying put it, "Indoor work, and no heavy lifting."
Would you live in the cab of a truck on the road away from your family for $50k a year? Maybe without benefits. In a job that would require you to take the time and money to get licensed and which everyone tells you won't exist in ten years because we are going to have self driving trucks?
I wouldn't. You wouldn't. Anyone who can understand that implicit marginal tax rate at the $50k income level wouldn't. Hell my Dad's pitch on why I should go to college was so I didn't end up driving a truck.
Same story for any of the hard jobs that destroy your body. My half brother was a painter for most of his life. Paid more than being a store clerk. Except now his lungs and skin are all messed up.
My dad was a local truck driver. Back in the union days they made, on a real basis, twice what they earn now that the union got busted. They also had way better benefits. HIs story is pretty consistent with the data, real wages in trucking are way down since the 70s as is the unionization rate.
At the current salary, there is a "shortage" of truck drivers. I predict that the trend for the next few years in trucking will be for pay to get better and working conditions to improve.
I think your use of scare quotes is incorrect, Arnold. Pay is already up; you can get 44$ an hour plus over time in eastern PA. The problem is that people are not going into trucking, or the trades in general. That's why I brought up the question of where are all these unemployed/underemployed going instead. What prevents people from filling the jobs that are available, pay well, don't require college degrees, and despite what people say, are not miserable jobs on whole?
We both know that shortages are a real thing, typically when there is a price ceiling. With so many people out of the labor force and unemployed, it might be worth considering that shortages in workers might be caused by something else too, something that limits supply meeting demand.
You keep saying "Own your own rig" and "Get your own routes" and I keep correcting you that the wages I am talking about require neither. Honestly even the experience part is not very firm, such is the lack of drivers.
So really the question is "Get licensed" which is under a year last I checked. That compares favorably to just about every degree or licensing program out there.
You are describing an over the road driver. I was talking local, home every night work. Plus, most drivers (intentionally) work more than 40 hours a week, typically closer to 60-65, and so bring in around $2200 a week before tax. I am looking at a handful of pay records at that rate right now, in fact. None of our guys are union.
Complaining about the time and money to get a CDL is sort of laughable... what job that pays well today doesn't require a license or a degree? The time and money to get a CDL is trivial compared to even an associate's degree, let alone a BA.
Is there a neoliberal party pursuing the proposals you outline here? Is there a bill in congress that eliminates the payroll tax? I thought the big neoliberal tax proposal being debated now was how big a SALT deduction the neoliberals were going to give themselves?
Invade the world.
Invite the world.
Indebted to the world.
That's what neoliberalism means to me. Maybe it's my own definition, but if neoliberalism means something like "the current ruling consensus in the west" then its pretty accurate.
Such a consensus doesn't really have a tax or economic policy beyond "entrenched interests in capital and the bureaucracy should do better whatever a toll that takes on anyone else". Print money you don't have and give it to buddies, OK. Subsidize demand and restrict supply, OK. You might say that neoliberalism is about who is on the inside of those grifts and who is on the outside. We restrict the supply of doctors, but not fruit pickers. Etc.
I think the problem here is that the relevant labels mean next to nothing anymore, as most have been applied to "whomever my group doesn't like" and swapped around all over the place. In this case, Dr. Kling has never to my knowledge been in favor of SALT deductions, printing money, paying off supporters, or restricting the supply of doctors. Certainly he has been against subsidizing demand and restricting supply.
I think it is past time that we Americans stopped paying attention to the labels and party brand names, and started looking at the actual policy positions themselves to see if they make sense. Both major parties are a total mess of incoherent policies that work at cross purposes, but we end up supporting one or the other because some fraction are desirable and the rest we hope won't be too bad. Applying lots of ever shifting labels makes that less cognitively distressing, but doesn't help us understand the situation, much less improve it.
Political parties work towards the welfare of their interest groups. The policies they advocate need not have coherence or moral principles, only that they increase the welfare of the supporting coalition members. When people say neoliberal they generally mean "most capital, professionals, bureaucrats, government employees, singles/childless, some foreign nationals, and certain dependent classes or demographic interest groups."
National Conservatism seeks to represent the middle class, families, and national citizens (the people on the outside of that neoliberal gravy train), especially those operating in something like the real economy rather than the credential economy.
Getting rid of the payroll tax might indeed be something that would help the middle class and be something supported by national conservatives. If you want to push that I think you would have better luck getting a National Conservative party to adopt it then a "neoliberal" party.
Even when neoliberals want to trickle down some money to the plebs, they prefer to do it via in-kind services provided by members of the neoliberal caste. So instead of just giving people with kids money and letting them figure out their own childcare arrangements, neoliberals will provide a subsidized liscenced childcare arrangement staffed by neoliberals and run according to neoliberal ideology. To give one example in the BBB right now.
I mean who do you think would be more likely to implement the changes Arnold outlines here if they were president. Joe Biden or Christopher Rufo?
See, that's why the labels are worse than useless. The group you describe as "neoliberal" are what 20 years ago were called "liberals" meaning "Democrats" and then called progressives after liberal gained a negative connotation. Saying neoliberals in that sense and "classical liberals" are roughly the same thing is like saying night and day are roughly the same thing. E.g. government employees are about as interested in deregulation and free trade as cats are interested in getting baths.
You can draw new lines and say "Ok, this label applies to these people here now" but unless someone goes through an makes an official weekly update of who is under what label, it only adds to confusion as the labels move around. I don't think that is an accident; the American left has gone through a lot of labels in my life time, and I suspect it is for the same reason that small children go through a lot of diapers.
At any rate, you and Arnold are not using "neoliberal" in quite the same way, I expect. Kling seems to conflate "neoliberal" and "classical liberal", what you seem to be using "neoliberal" to describe those people who 20 years ago were just called "liberals" in America (which is 180 degrees different from what liberal means in the rest of the Anglo-sphere.)
Freddie deBoer implies here that neoliberalism could help create universal health coverage. This is not a material point in the jobs debate, but I do want to call it out as misleading. Universal health coverage can only be created with some type of coercion.
Whether the coercion is an insurance mandate, or higher taxes for expanding Medicare and Medicaid, or the regulation of prices for emergency rooms, drugs, and devices -- it still requires new laws and regulations.
Populism should be a goal and neoliberalism a means. Populism doesn't have much interesting to say on policy design, other than to remind us that policy should benefit the most people. Neoliberalism doesn't have much to say about policy goals - free markets is not goal but a means to achieve the goal of human prosperity.
Unfortunately proponents of populism and neoliberalism think they are both means and goals, often with bad effect. We can optimistically hope that a balance of power between the two can avoid this mistake of each.
Sorry, Arnold. I laugh at all those critical of neoliberalism (including one of my daughters in a book published by MIT press --of course, it's not dedicated to her dear daddy). I laugh because they never attempted to understand the economic history of the several countries whose governments were accused of implementing neoliberalism. The "neoliberal" response to economies in shambles shouldn't be a surprise because the crises which precipitated the response were just symptoms of "structural" problems caused by the heavy government intervention. Either in Chile post-1975 (not post-1973) or in China post-Mao and especially post-1992, there was only one way out of those problems: to get rid of most of that intervention. But neither Chile nor China became "neoliberal" economies because of politics.
Arnold, I think you should laugh with me about those that insist writing about neoliberalism but have no idea of why "neoliberal" revolutions were inevitable to get out of crises and why their success has been so limited. I'm ready to discuss the experience of most countries that in the past 50 years have gone through at least one "neoliberal" revolution. BTW, I lived and worked in Chile during 1973-84, I returned in 1999, and now I live in Santiago. Also, I lived and worked in Beijing and Hong Kong 1994-97, and I have continued analyzing their experiences. Indeed, the China shock to the world economy is the outcome of the greatest "neoliberal" revolution of the past 50 years, and unfortunately, it may not end well.
Finally, populism has been discussed for decades (centuries?) and it has accompanied the "neoliberal" revolutions in some LA countries. I consider it a political response to economies in shambles. I was born and raised in Argentina where populism was discussed and promoted by the two major political coalitions in 1951 and today is still discussed by the two major political coalitions.
"Roundabout production that includes workers from other countries" is generally a good idea when those other countries are broadly values-aligned and can be trusted to stay that way. However, the picture gets more complicated when another country might defect, and the defection is of large enough scale to really matter. That problem has diplomatic, not just economic, elements to it.
Your fix for fixing the 'average' that's 'supposed to be over' job market is correct directionally. Even if some sort of industrial policy were to be developed and adopted, you would need to do that anyway. Our tax and entitlement systems can't be defended intellectually, but they are also politically invincible.
I also identify as neoliberal, but Kiing's version does not actually go far enough in the "perusing" of progressive ends with market-friendly means. He's on strong grounds in suggesting that we should eliminate the caped wage tax as a way of financing Social Security and subsidized health insurance in favor of (which he does not say) a VAT, which would be more progressive and les subject to the vagaries of demographic change and the business cycle.
And neoliberals were never supposed to be opposed to "regulation," only regulation that does not pass cost benefit analysis and to replace regulation of externalities with taxation in many places, first of all in reducing net emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere.
But not taxing income originating from capital is bonkers. We could eliminate some of the silly ways of taxing income from capital (taxing business income AND dividends by eliminating business income taxation and imputing income to owners and by indexing capital gains).
We could also do more to make our sort of progressive income tax into a sort of progressive consumption tax by increasing deductions (here is one place that a deduction rather than a partial tx credit actually makes sense) for "retirement" savings. But all these changes need to go hand in hand with making the tax system more progressive and eliminating the structural deficit.
"And neoliberals were never supposed to be opposed to "regulation..."
Where did you get you definition of 'neoliberal?' The term was popularized by leftists as a pejorative for anti-regulation, pro-privatization politicians like Reagan and Thatcher and intellectuals like Friedman and Hayek. You can identify as one I suppose, just as I could identify as a Christian despite neither believing in God nor caring about whatever Jesus said. And it's a trivial statement to say one supports regulations that pass cost-benefit analysis. The reason why neoliberals oppose regulation is precisely because they believe that regulation almost never passes cost-benefit analysis.
I don't think CPI graphs reflect what neoliberals wanted. Laissez faire types have pretty much always wanted (and still want) deregulated health care and education as well. I doubt the failure to accomplish that in those fields because lots of them work in those fields (people who work in healthcare and education are among the least neoliberal people you'll find). In fact it was probably working class support for socialized medicine that prevented Thatcher from being able to touch it.
I never accepted "leftist" attempt to tarnish common sense policy of pursuing progressive goals with market friendly means. What you describe as "neoliberal" is just old fashioned anti (progressive) tax " Republicanism.
I think an accurate synthesis is that they wanted less regulation when it protected deplorable jobs and industries, but the same or greater regulation in their own industries. All those graphs of CPI by type showing goods getting cheaper end Eds and Meds getting more expensive are the statistical representation of that.
I don't think this is a steel-manning of the populist approach or a remotely adequate defense of the Neo-liberal approach because it very studiously avoids the issue of immigration.
Sure, there's some talk about tariffs and trade, but <b>the go to option in the populist "economic policy for the working class" playbook is "reduce unskilled (and especially unskilled illegal) immigration.</b>
The defense of neoliberalism is terribly weak because it doesn't acknowledge that nearly unconstrained immigration is a key tenent of liberalism. In many cases it's been made explicit that the "working class" to be helped is the foreign working class, because relative to them, the domestic working class is actually really well off.
This might be true, but as a policy preference, it's a pretty obvious FU to a domestic working class, an no amount of futzing about with sops on tariffs and labor taxes is going to offset it. This is the neoliberal policy that needs to change, because otherwise the vast majority of of the "neoliberal project" (which is good for all) is likely to get thrown out like the baby with the bathwater.
In short, neoliberal policy for the working class must start with consciously uncoupling the neoliberal policy that's admittedly anti-working class.
(I consider myself a liberal and I have no problem with this. In my study of liberalism as a political philosophy I've found nothing that suggests the absolutely poor foreigner should be preferred or invited into the polity at the expense of the only relatively poor citizen.)
https://www.amazon.com/Average-Over-Powering-America-Stagnation/dp/0142181110
I think we can take Tyler as something of an embodiment of the neoliberal consensus. Didn't he write and entire book about Brazilification of America.
-----
What will the United States look like in twenty to forty years? Extrapolating from the present, Cowen argues that “we will move from a society based on the pretense that everyone is given an okay standard of living to a society in which people are expected to fend for themselves much more than they do now.” He imagines “a world where, say, 10 to 15 percent of the citizenry is extremely wealthy and has fantastically comfortable and stimulating lives…. Much of the rest of the country will have stagnant or maybe even falling wages in dollar terms, but a lot more opportunities for cheap fun and also cheap education. Many of these people will live quite well, and those will be the people who have the discipline to benefit from all the free or near-free services modern technology has made available. Others will fall by the wayside. … It will become increasingly common to invoke ‘meritocracy’ as a response to income inequality” and this “framing of income inequality in meritocratic terms will prove self-reinforcing. Worthy individuals will in fact rise from poverty on a regular basis, and that will make it easier to ignore those who are left behind.” (pp. 228-230)
The future Cowen paints is pretty bleak for the majority of Americans. For instance, “the less wealthy will be pushed out of the nicer living areas.” He contemplates the possibility of building some makeshift structures for the poor, including the elderly poor, “similar to the better dwellings you might find in a Rio de Janeiro favela. The quality of the water and electrical infrastructure might be low by American standards, though we could supplement the neighborhood with free municipal wireless….” (p. 244)
-----
Of course our host wrote about this:
https://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-toady-class-on-average-is-over/
Of course that was 2013...any updates?
I would particularly like to know if Kling understands why that toady conference disgusts someone like Foseti, who is no populist.
https://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/in-which-someone-actually-manages-to-disgust-me/
I think we need to question the assumption that jobs for people without college degrees have disappeared entirely. Many have, but many others have been created that continually go unfilled. The trades, welding, manufacturing, truck driving, etc. all are short on workers. Drivers have been short for over 20 years now, and I have seen industry estimates that the market could readily absorb 33% more (for what that is worth). I have spoken with manufacturing companies that are increasing automation largely because they can't find workers to hire to do the work.
We can argue about whether or not labor prices need to increase to make supply meet demand, but especially in trucking the wages are getting nuts with 30$ an hour plus overtime being the median in most regions for local drivers. I think we need to seriously ask what people without college degrees are doing instead. What are they doing such that a job with pay over the national median is not worth it?
I suspect that the issue isn't so much the lack of jobs providing money and dignity, but rather what people consider dignified and what their other, non-work options are.
Given the increase in those attending college and the very low wages most of them make after 4 years, it suggests to me that as a culture we have decided that anything not requiring a college degree is a bad job, whether or not it pays more.
What are the non-work options for the millions out of the job market? What looks better than making >60K$ a year at a job?
<i>Given the increase in those attending college and the very low wages most of them make after 4 years, it suggests to me that as a culture we have decided that anything not requiring a college degree is a bad job, whether or not it pays more.</i>
I think there is a lot to this. Recently, I've spoken to a plumber and an electrician and they both say that older people are retiring and new people aren't coming in. There's something about the way that all young people are required to attend kindergarten through academic grade 12, and then counseled that they would be selling themselves short if they don't go to college.
Around here, in order to get a high school degree, you need to attend ("seat time") 990 hours for four years in a cafeteria list of required academic subjects. Perhaps if apprenticeship could be substituted for half that time. Perhaps if students could be routinely tested for aptitude and interest (and their interest respected). But perhaps that's like expecting your local Ford dealer to tell customers that they don't really need that luxury pick-up.
I knew one young person with the ability that became a welder. He ended up quitting to become a nurse. It was pretty simple to him, being a welder was a miserable job that was hurting his body and didn't even pay as well as being a nurse, with far less stability and future options.
Most people smart enough to go into the trades are instead going into Eds and Meds, because they are subsidize demand/restrict supply professions. You see a lot of male nurses these days who in the past might have been in the trades.
An RN makes 77k a year with great benefits and a good future. An LPN is around 50k, same as a trucker. Neither of these have onerous education requirements, less than a BA.
To be fair, most truck drivers make more in the $100K+ range, because of overtime and the norm of 12+ hour days. I don't know why that is the norm, but most of the drivers I have worked with are irritated if they got less than 10 hours a day. I suppose because it feels a bit less like work to be left alone to drive, but damned if I know.
I wouldn't be surprised if nursing isn't becoming a big competitor for the traditional trades, myself. I will say that the male RNs I have dealt with are... not so good. Why, I don't know, but it is a rare male RN that isn't irritating to me on some dimension.
Truck drivers that own their own rigs and manage their own routes make more, but that involves capital investment and risk. It also involves running your own business which means lots of skills and is hardly unskilled labor. My father also owned his own route which meant doing sales, marketing, accounting, financial planning, etc. It's no surprise that a job that includes many white collar skills pays a white collar wage.
The question is why not just become white collar if you have those skills. Working from home with your family is a lot better then sleeping in a cab. (An untold story of trucking is that its an easier industry in which to hide earnings from child support). In the case of my father he had an opportunity to join management but found management too effeminate and dishonest for his liking.
As to overtime regulation help to limit that to a certain extent. Every rig now has a little computer monitoring you every minute.
I am literally looking at the weekly pay sheets for 5 of our drivers that make over $2,000 a week, every week. The use company trucks and don't manage routes. Granted, they do cryogenics, which does include loading and unloading the tanker and so is somewhat technical, but no more so than driving the truck itself. I can unload a cryo-trailer, but I wouldn't trust myself to drive it around.
Things seem to have changed quite a bit since your dad was driving. It might vary by location too, but drivers on the coasts make pretty impressive money these days, even compared to college grads. Remember that if you crack $100K a year that puts you in the top 15% of all earners in the US.
Maybe so. I can only look at the average earnings on the BLS, and they aren't that impressive. The Northeast has always had a surplus, but a lots gets eaten up by COLA.
And I can't say how much someone might make if they are pulling huge amounts of overtime, but living 60+ hours a week on the road ought to pay a huge premium. I get paid more then that to sit at home and post.
I guess the question I would ask is:
1) If everyone did it, would the pay hold up?
2) Just what do you think people working long hours at difficult and hazardous jobs should make per hour? What kind of standard of living should that offer?
My dad didn't slept in his own bed with his family every night. The hours were a bit long and he woke up early. And it was physically difficult. But it wasn't the worst trucking job in the world. He was able to afford a modest house near NYC on a single income. We had safe neighborhoods and good schools. We could afford health insurance. The exact same people working the exact same job post union busting can't afford any of that stuff.
It was my understanding that RNs require a four-year college degree. But, yeah, I think a lot of people who would have gone into the trades are now going into the medical field. As the old saying put it, "Indoor work, and no heavy lifting."
https://www.zippia.com/truck-driver-jobs/salary/
Would you live in the cab of a truck on the road away from your family for $50k a year? Maybe without benefits. In a job that would require you to take the time and money to get licensed and which everyone tells you won't exist in ten years because we are going to have self driving trucks?
I wouldn't. You wouldn't. Anyone who can understand that implicit marginal tax rate at the $50k income level wouldn't. Hell my Dad's pitch on why I should go to college was so I didn't end up driving a truck.
Same story for any of the hard jobs that destroy your body. My half brother was a painter for most of his life. Paid more than being a store clerk. Except now his lungs and skin are all messed up.
My dad was a local truck driver. Back in the union days they made, on a real basis, twice what they earn now that the union got busted. They also had way better benefits. HIs story is pretty consistent with the data, real wages in trucking are way down since the 70s as is the unionization rate.
At the current salary, there is a "shortage" of truck drivers. I predict that the trend for the next few years in trucking will be for pay to get better and working conditions to improve.
I think your use of scare quotes is incorrect, Arnold. Pay is already up; you can get 44$ an hour plus over time in eastern PA. The problem is that people are not going into trucking, or the trades in general. That's why I brought up the question of where are all these unemployed/underemployed going instead. What prevents people from filling the jobs that are available, pay well, don't require college degrees, and despite what people say, are not miserable jobs on whole?
We both know that shortages are a real thing, typically when there is a price ceiling. With so many people out of the labor force and unemployed, it might be worth considering that shortages in workers might be caused by something else too, something that limits supply meeting demand.
How long and how much investment would it be to:
1) Get Liscenced
2) Get Experience
3) Own your own rig
4) Get your own routes
That's a big investment for a career where you live on the road and everyone tells you a computer will take your job within a decade.
You keep saying "Own your own rig" and "Get your own routes" and I keep correcting you that the wages I am talking about require neither. Honestly even the experience part is not very firm, such is the lack of drivers.
So really the question is "Get licensed" which is under a year last I checked. That compares favorably to just about every degree or licensing program out there.
You are describing an over the road driver. I was talking local, home every night work. Plus, most drivers (intentionally) work more than 40 hours a week, typically closer to 60-65, and so bring in around $2200 a week before tax. I am looking at a handful of pay records at that rate right now, in fact. None of our guys are union.
Complaining about the time and money to get a CDL is sort of laughable... what job that pays well today doesn't require a license or a degree? The time and money to get a CDL is trivial compared to even an associate's degree, let alone a BA.
Is there a neoliberal party pursuing the proposals you outline here? Is there a bill in congress that eliminates the payroll tax? I thought the big neoliberal tax proposal being debated now was how big a SALT deduction the neoliberals were going to give themselves?
Invade the world.
Invite the world.
Indebted to the world.
That's what neoliberalism means to me. Maybe it's my own definition, but if neoliberalism means something like "the current ruling consensus in the west" then its pretty accurate.
Such a consensus doesn't really have a tax or economic policy beyond "entrenched interests in capital and the bureaucracy should do better whatever a toll that takes on anyone else". Print money you don't have and give it to buddies, OK. Subsidize demand and restrict supply, OK. You might say that neoliberalism is about who is on the inside of those grifts and who is on the outside. We restrict the supply of doctors, but not fruit pickers. Etc.
I think the problem here is that the relevant labels mean next to nothing anymore, as most have been applied to "whomever my group doesn't like" and swapped around all over the place. In this case, Dr. Kling has never to my knowledge been in favor of SALT deductions, printing money, paying off supporters, or restricting the supply of doctors. Certainly he has been against subsidizing demand and restricting supply.
I think it is past time that we Americans stopped paying attention to the labels and party brand names, and started looking at the actual policy positions themselves to see if they make sense. Both major parties are a total mess of incoherent policies that work at cross purposes, but we end up supporting one or the other because some fraction are desirable and the rest we hope won't be too bad. Applying lots of ever shifting labels makes that less cognitively distressing, but doesn't help us understand the situation, much less improve it.
Political parties work towards the welfare of their interest groups. The policies they advocate need not have coherence or moral principles, only that they increase the welfare of the supporting coalition members. When people say neoliberal they generally mean "most capital, professionals, bureaucrats, government employees, singles/childless, some foreign nationals, and certain dependent classes or demographic interest groups."
National Conservatism seeks to represent the middle class, families, and national citizens (the people on the outside of that neoliberal gravy train), especially those operating in something like the real economy rather than the credential economy.
Getting rid of the payroll tax might indeed be something that would help the middle class and be something supported by national conservatives. If you want to push that I think you would have better luck getting a National Conservative party to adopt it then a "neoliberal" party.
Even when neoliberals want to trickle down some money to the plebs, they prefer to do it via in-kind services provided by members of the neoliberal caste. So instead of just giving people with kids money and letting them figure out their own childcare arrangements, neoliberals will provide a subsidized liscenced childcare arrangement staffed by neoliberals and run according to neoliberal ideology. To give one example in the BBB right now.
I mean who do you think would be more likely to implement the changes Arnold outlines here if they were president. Joe Biden or Christopher Rufo?
See, that's why the labels are worse than useless. The group you describe as "neoliberal" are what 20 years ago were called "liberals" meaning "Democrats" and then called progressives after liberal gained a negative connotation. Saying neoliberals in that sense and "classical liberals" are roughly the same thing is like saying night and day are roughly the same thing. E.g. government employees are about as interested in deregulation and free trade as cats are interested in getting baths.
You can draw new lines and say "Ok, this label applies to these people here now" but unless someone goes through an makes an official weekly update of who is under what label, it only adds to confusion as the labels move around. I don't think that is an accident; the American left has gone through a lot of labels in my life time, and I suspect it is for the same reason that small children go through a lot of diapers.
At any rate, you and Arnold are not using "neoliberal" in quite the same way, I expect. Kling seems to conflate "neoliberal" and "classical liberal", what you seem to be using "neoliberal" to describe those people who 20 years ago were just called "liberals" in America (which is 180 degrees different from what liberal means in the rest of the Anglo-sphere.)
Freddie deBoer implies here that neoliberalism could help create universal health coverage. This is not a material point in the jobs debate, but I do want to call it out as misleading. Universal health coverage can only be created with some type of coercion.
Whether the coercion is an insurance mandate, or higher taxes for expanding Medicare and Medicaid, or the regulation of prices for emergency rooms, drugs, and devices -- it still requires new laws and regulations.
Populism should be a goal and neoliberalism a means. Populism doesn't have much interesting to say on policy design, other than to remind us that policy should benefit the most people. Neoliberalism doesn't have much to say about policy goals - free markets is not goal but a means to achieve the goal of human prosperity.
Unfortunately proponents of populism and neoliberalism think they are both means and goals, often with bad effect. We can optimistically hope that a balance of power between the two can avoid this mistake of each.
Sorry, Arnold. I laugh at all those critical of neoliberalism (including one of my daughters in a book published by MIT press --of course, it's not dedicated to her dear daddy). I laugh because they never attempted to understand the economic history of the several countries whose governments were accused of implementing neoliberalism. The "neoliberal" response to economies in shambles shouldn't be a surprise because the crises which precipitated the response were just symptoms of "structural" problems caused by the heavy government intervention. Either in Chile post-1975 (not post-1973) or in China post-Mao and especially post-1992, there was only one way out of those problems: to get rid of most of that intervention. But neither Chile nor China became "neoliberal" economies because of politics.
Arnold, I think you should laugh with me about those that insist writing about neoliberalism but have no idea of why "neoliberal" revolutions were inevitable to get out of crises and why their success has been so limited. I'm ready to discuss the experience of most countries that in the past 50 years have gone through at least one "neoliberal" revolution. BTW, I lived and worked in Chile during 1973-84, I returned in 1999, and now I live in Santiago. Also, I lived and worked in Beijing and Hong Kong 1994-97, and I have continued analyzing their experiences. Indeed, the China shock to the world economy is the outcome of the greatest "neoliberal" revolution of the past 50 years, and unfortunately, it may not end well.
Finally, populism has been discussed for decades (centuries?) and it has accompanied the "neoliberal" revolutions in some LA countries. I consider it a political response to economies in shambles. I was born and raised in Argentina where populism was discussed and promoted by the two major political coalitions in 1951 and today is still discussed by the two major political coalitions.
"Roundabout production that includes workers from other countries" is generally a good idea when those other countries are broadly values-aligned and can be trusted to stay that way. However, the picture gets more complicated when another country might defect, and the defection is of large enough scale to really matter. That problem has diplomatic, not just economic, elements to it.
Your fix for fixing the 'average' that's 'supposed to be over' job market is correct directionally. Even if some sort of industrial policy were to be developed and adopted, you would need to do that anyway. Our tax and entitlement systems can't be defended intellectually, but they are also politically invincible.
I also identify as neoliberal, but Kiing's version does not actually go far enough in the "perusing" of progressive ends with market-friendly means. He's on strong grounds in suggesting that we should eliminate the caped wage tax as a way of financing Social Security and subsidized health insurance in favor of (which he does not say) a VAT, which would be more progressive and les subject to the vagaries of demographic change and the business cycle.
And neoliberals were never supposed to be opposed to "regulation," only regulation that does not pass cost benefit analysis and to replace regulation of externalities with taxation in many places, first of all in reducing net emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere.
But not taxing income originating from capital is bonkers. We could eliminate some of the silly ways of taxing income from capital (taxing business income AND dividends by eliminating business income taxation and imputing income to owners and by indexing capital gains).
We could also do more to make our sort of progressive income tax into a sort of progressive consumption tax by increasing deductions (here is one place that a deduction rather than a partial tx credit actually makes sense) for "retirement" savings. But all these changes need to go hand in hand with making the tax system more progressive and eliminating the structural deficit.
"And neoliberals were never supposed to be opposed to "regulation..."
Where did you get you definition of 'neoliberal?' The term was popularized by leftists as a pejorative for anti-regulation, pro-privatization politicians like Reagan and Thatcher and intellectuals like Friedman and Hayek. You can identify as one I suppose, just as I could identify as a Christian despite neither believing in God nor caring about whatever Jesus said. And it's a trivial statement to say one supports regulations that pass cost-benefit analysis. The reason why neoliberals oppose regulation is precisely because they believe that regulation almost never passes cost-benefit analysis.
I don't think CPI graphs reflect what neoliberals wanted. Laissez faire types have pretty much always wanted (and still want) deregulated health care and education as well. I doubt the failure to accomplish that in those fields because lots of them work in those fields (people who work in healthcare and education are among the least neoliberal people you'll find). In fact it was probably working class support for socialized medicine that prevented Thatcher from being able to touch it.
I never thought of Thatcher/Reagan as NEO liberals, just old fashioned anti-government types.
I never accepted "leftist" attempt to tarnish common sense policy of pursuing progressive goals with market friendly means. What you describe as "neoliberal" is just old fashioned anti (progressive) tax " Republicanism.
I think an accurate synthesis is that they wanted less regulation when it protected deplorable jobs and industries, but the same or greater regulation in their own industries. All those graphs of CPI by type showing goods getting cheaper end Eds and Meds getting more expensive are the statistical representation of that.