For "manufacturing jobs", read "jobs you don't need a lot of education for." I found a magazine from the 70s talking about the good jobs to be found in factories that only required native common sense and dexterity and maybe a high school diploma. If you could competently run a machine and had a union behind you, you could have a good life. I don't think those jobs exist any more.
edit: There is a sector of society that despises the idea of an office job. Some of it is a feeling that office jobs aren't "manly", but a lot of people need to be doing more than moving paper and computer keys around. I deal with a lot of those kinds of people in my work, people who do construction or travel around the country doing insurance work in catastrophes. They're the ones who resent having to work with the fiddly computers and would rather be swinging a hammer or slogging through mud.
And yet the union busting corporations who took those jobs elsewhere are always let off the hook
Sorry, I'm a bit gruff today
Jobs you don't need a lot of education for that pay a living wage. That's what we're missing now -- there are plenty of jobs you don't need a lot of education for! They are all part-time and pay minimum wage.
There are also too many people, in general.
And there ARE only so many office jobs that pay a living wage.
One support for many in difficult times use to be the extended family. But in the US from the '80s on, a lot of corporations moved offices and factories (IBM from NY to NC, etc.) and workers had to either move with them or lose their jobs. Others lost their jobs and moved afterwards. And it wasn't usually a case of three generations, siblings and their spouses and kids, the whole kit and kaboodle moving. It was the nuclear family, if that. If it's you and your kids with no family for 500 miles, problems are much more disruptive. You can't drop the kids off with your sister if you need to go into the hospital for surgery. If you lose your job again and get foreclosed on, staying with family until you get your feet back under you means taking the kids out of school and away from all their friends and losing your local professional connections. But how do you afford to stay? Yes, families have been problematic for people when there's abuse, and sometimes distance is good. But on the whole, it's another layer of protection (howsoever grumbly or irritating) between people and the sharp edge of life that's been stripped away. This can be scary. And scared people can cast blame in stupid ways.
Calli, you're right. The loss of the extended family support has been devastating in ways I think we don't really realize because the isolated nuclear family has become the norm.
Because everything is terrible, I've been trying to focus on work, which I totally acknowledge is a privilege.
Unfortunately, I'm trying not to lose my shit at someone who doesn't seem to understand that: a) I am not a manager, b) I'm technically not even a team lead, and c) I am working two full time roles right now, so what
exactly
would he like me to neglect in order to do the thing he's asking?
People, man. I'm going to stop being mad and assume he has good intentions after I take a walk and angrily eat some TJ's dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
I got nothing done today because I spent most of the day at the change of command and then they let us go early. Now I just had an ice cream cone, and I think I will go see Finding Dory because the world sucks.
