An interesting story in the New York Times presented this basic claim: American political views and attitudes about life generally are now defined mostly by level of education. Not completely, but dramatically.
Education level has always been a "separator issue," I suppose, particularly when higher education was confined mostly to elite white males. The economy and public life is dependent upon educated people, but now that women outnumber men in educational achievement while non-college, rural males find productive work harder to come by, the divide seems worse than ever.
And it is poisoning our political debates, killing our rural neighbors, and prompting all sorts of desperation, including deaths of desperation, from suicide to drug overdoses.
The article also noted that in the past decade or so political affiliation and higher death rates coincide, with red state death rates rising much higher for both men and women compared to blue states.
Red states are increasingly producing a smaller percentage of the nation's productivity and revenue and demanding more and more government support. Just imagine how the nation's senior citizens might react to the elimination of social safety net programs. We value our freedoms, all right, but certainly not freedom FROM government support. Just ask Floridians.
The article also included stats from surveys about how various demographics feel about the future. This was illuminating: non-urban white males are much less optimistic about the country's future than Blacks and Hispanics. It turns out that most non-college whites are actually doing OK financially but their fear and anger comes from enjoying less power, less influence, and less notice. They have a vague feeling that they are not as valuable as they once were.
Blacks, on the other hand, have suffered for so long and been forced to learn so many coping skills to survive that their confidence in the future is quite high. "Been down so long, it looks like up to me" applies here.
Black Americans still value education and believe in more education being a key to bettering their lives. Many poor whites are denigrating higher education and opting to cling to their grievances.
What can be done? Short of mandating a college education -- which seems unlikely for so many reasons -- the only solution I can see is to rebuild manufacturing and local industry. Many of those jobs, which used to provide not only financial security but a sense of pride in work, were outsourced to other countries with incredibly low labor costs.
That led to a large percentage of our goods being produced abroad, which makes for cheap t-shirts and computers, but didn't bring financial benefits to many areas of the country. How can we help our rural and non-college educated fellow citizens? Give them valuable work to do.
Easy to say, I suppose, and there would certainly be some increased costs involved. Even the poorest Americans live relatively good lives compared to a majority of the rest of the planet. And not every poor, aggrieved white person will find a great position. But it wouldn't take that many to start the shift and calm the outrage.
And paying a bit more for clothing, electronics, heavy equipment, and more... how large a burden would that be? Do I really need another cheap t-shirt or pair of pants? Do I really need a smart phone upgrade every two years?
Of course, the owner class is not going to simply build new factories in small town Iowa next year, unless there are incentives. There were "perverse incentives" (harmful to the nation) in outsourcing jobs and reducing costs/increasing profits. I can imagine government creating incentives that work in the other direction.
I am not expert enough to be able to formulate a plan or proposed legislation, but I suspect there are plenty of people with those skills and vision.
It just makes sense to me that people need valuable and sustaining work to feel good about life. Right now, too many Americans don't feel good about their present or their future.
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