It would be fun to see a like time sequence graph of the fall of agricultural jobs. We grow more food with less people. I never hear anyone complain about that.
Few people outside science seem to understand the extent to which these sociological factors matter for the reach, recognition and impact of new research. In my PhD research field, some of the most widely cited work was bunk, but the authors had a good narrative – and their story stuck. Hardly anyone bothered to check their supplementary material – in high impact journals too, so much for peer review – where they hid the shockingly bad stats for their protein structure results (this was way before the world of AlphaFold). It's actually kinda partly why I became a journalist instead of a researcher…
2001-2008 was a dysfunctional economy long before the Global Financial Crisis…any paper that shows “jobs created” during the jobless recovery of 2001-2004 can be outright dismissed. The underlying problem with the 2001-2008 economy was an energy crisis that elevated CPI hitting 5.6% in July 2008. Every Republican that dismissed that elevated CPI needs to explain why the inflation of the last several years was so negative while the inflation under Bush was innocuous. So not only was CPI elevated but good manufacturing jobs were being outsourced to such a degree that core PCE was only slightly elevated from 2005-2008.
Perot was the classic “boy that cried wolf” when a very real dragon was lurking in the Pacific Ocean. People that blame NAFTA for manufacturing job losses might be the dumbest people on the planet when by every metric the canary in the coal mine (Detroit) was much better off in 2000 than in 1993.
To your point, the process is a much longer and broader one than the slice of it examined by “The China Shock” but this arguably only makes the damage done to the contemporary political scene even worse because the “American carnage” which fuels Trump’s demagoguery is much deeper and more widespread than that narrow focus implies. To get a sense of the bigger picture I recommend Judith Stein’s “Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies”
Despite the title, the book identifies how the US State Department (as early as the late 1950s) consciously subordinated the interests of domestic labor as part of its “containment of communism” strategy.
Correct. Especially when a big chunk of “American carnage” is coal mining jobs lost in West Virginia to….Wyoming. Oh, and Nucor and union health care benefits probably reduced manufacturing jobs more than globalization prior to China in the WTO. The big caveat is always textiles in the Carolinas which are in the news today because Navarro says the BMW factory in Greenville, SC is somehow bad for America?? WTF???
It would be fun to see a like time sequence graph of the fall of agricultural jobs. We grow more food with less people. I never hear anyone complain about that.
Great work as always Kyle!
Thanks Rory!
Few people outside science seem to understand the extent to which these sociological factors matter for the reach, recognition and impact of new research. In my PhD research field, some of the most widely cited work was bunk, but the authors had a good narrative – and their story stuck. Hardly anyone bothered to check their supplementary material – in high impact journals too, so much for peer review – where they hid the shockingly bad stats for their protein structure results (this was way before the world of AlphaFold). It's actually kinda partly why I became a journalist instead of a researcher…
Wow, thanks for the clarity your post brings to this issue!
2001-2008 was a dysfunctional economy long before the Global Financial Crisis…any paper that shows “jobs created” during the jobless recovery of 2001-2004 can be outright dismissed. The underlying problem with the 2001-2008 economy was an energy crisis that elevated CPI hitting 5.6% in July 2008. Every Republican that dismissed that elevated CPI needs to explain why the inflation of the last several years was so negative while the inflation under Bush was innocuous. So not only was CPI elevated but good manufacturing jobs were being outsourced to such a degree that core PCE was only slightly elevated from 2005-2008.
Perot was the classic “boy that cried wolf” when a very real dragon was lurking in the Pacific Ocean. People that blame NAFTA for manufacturing job losses might be the dumbest people on the planet when by every metric the canary in the coal mine (Detroit) was much better off in 2000 than in 1993.
To your point, the process is a much longer and broader one than the slice of it examined by “The China Shock” but this arguably only makes the damage done to the contemporary political scene even worse because the “American carnage” which fuels Trump’s demagoguery is much deeper and more widespread than that narrow focus implies. To get a sense of the bigger picture I recommend Judith Stein’s “Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7907138-pivotal-decade
Despite the title, the book identifies how the US State Department (as early as the late 1950s) consciously subordinated the interests of domestic labor as part of its “containment of communism” strategy.
Correct. Especially when a big chunk of “American carnage” is coal mining jobs lost in West Virginia to….Wyoming. Oh, and Nucor and union health care benefits probably reduced manufacturing jobs more than globalization prior to China in the WTO. The big caveat is always textiles in the Carolinas which are in the news today because Navarro says the BMW factory in Greenville, SC is somehow bad for America?? WTF???