Re: The decline of blue-collar and farming work

On Wed, 8 Jan 2025 04:25:04 -0000 (UTC), Retrograde
<fungus@amongus.com.invalid> wrote:

There were a lot of other things happening in the same timeframe though,
so I don't think it's as simple as that:

For farming and blue collar employment, mechanization, "assembly-line"
techniques got better, and also for blue collar folks, Reagan's,
et.al. large budget and trade deficits.

Mechanization (or mechanisation) is the process of changing from
working largely or exclusively by hand or with animals to doing that
work with machinery. Wiki

Horse powered implements were replaced with ICE tractors/combines,
which greatly replaced the labor needed.

Henry Ford's assembly-line, for instance, required many workers in
earlier days, but fewer as tech-improvements were made.

Paul Krugman - And the trade deficits of the 80s also arguably marked
the point at which the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing really got
going. To be honest, it's hard to find a break in the trend when
looking at jobs data, but there was a very distinct break in
perceptions: according to Google Ngrams, the Reagan era was when
people began referring to the industrial Midwest as the Rust Belt: