Atrios posted this clip today and I decided to listen to it instead of relying on the summary. It’s somewhat out of context – it sounds like Bloomberg is in the middle of giving a short history of work, starting with farming, moving to the industrial revolution, and ending with the information age. His point was that most of the work done today requires a lot more skill than farming 300 years ago.
This is just bog-standard business conference stuff. Does he sound a little condescending? Yeah. Is this going to sink his battleship? Probably not.
Just as pure political strategy, I think attacking stuff like this for being “out of touch” is a political mistake. If you get this riff into context, Bloomberg probably has some solution that may or may not work to address the legitimate issue of what to do about an economy where a lot of people are locked out due to lack of technical skills. My guess is that his solution was unworkable, but he’s identifying a problem that resonates in “the heartland” — high tech skills and high tech jobs are few and far between in rural areas.
Frankly, the answer to this problem that is sometimes given by “moderate” Democrats’ – turning miners or assembly line workers into coders or network engineers – is just as vacuous as most of the conversations at business conferences. I spent a lot of time in “the heartland” last year, and the only “coder” I saw was when I looked into the mirror, because there are essentially no coding jobs in rural areas. What I did see was two paramedics in their late 50’s or early 60’s, men who had other jobs prior to retraining, who were now working in the only technical field in most rural areas, medicine. There were also a lot of nurses and aides, and home health care workers. Those home health care workers worked for agencies charging what, for that rural area, is a lot of money (like $25-35/hr), but I doubt that the aides saw a fraction of that. I also saw closed down nursing homes, and families struggling to take care of their elderly parents and grandparents at home when they really should have been in an assisted living facility or a nursing home.
A solution that really could help these rural areas is a huge infusion of money into Medicaid (which pays for most nursing home care, in the end), more assistance to pay for home health aides, and adding a requirement that aides and paraprofessionals be paid a much better wage. Then, retraining programs could be for medical jobs that actually exist in rural America, not IT jobs that exist in New York. But if you stand in front of a bunch of unemployed farmers or factory workers and tell them that, they’ll think you’re trying to sell them crappy jobs, because, today, those jobs don’t pay shit, and they’ve seen a lot of those jobs leave town.
The information economy is real, but so is the healthcare economy. The biggest employer in a lot of small towns is the hospital and/or nursing home — if they’re lucky enough to still have one or both of those facilities. That’s the reality in the heartland. Maybe Democrats could start addressing that if they want to win over a few voters in those places.
There’s plenty of other stuff that Bloomberg is terrible on – just attack him on that.
germy
“It’s a banana. How much could it cost?”
germy
germy
MomSense
He knows nothing about farming. It’s not easy.
Betty Cracker
@germy: That ad is going to hit the sweet spot for people who spend more time dragging Sanders than Trump (and there are many). Gotta give Bloomberg credit: he understands the existing fissures in the party, and he is exploiting them ably.
Baud
“out of context” is the defining feature of modern political discourse.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@MomSense: I agree – today’s farming is as high-tech as, well, pretty much everything else.
germy
O. Felix Culpa
We watched American Factory on Netflix last night. While it isn’t a truly groundbreaking documentary, it did give greater insight into the harsh reality of rust belt struggles and the misery that is factory work without union protections.
Gin & Tonic
It’s funny, Bloomberg strikes me as the kind of guy who probably reads The Economist (or pretends he does.) I actually do read it, and there was a long piece last week or the week before about the IT revolution in farming. There is an awful lot going on in that field, and there’s a lot of money to be made, in the intersection of machine vision/AI/robotics with agriculture.
A side effect, of course, is fewer and fewer farmers needed per crop-acre, leading to more hollowing out of those “heartland” towns, but that’s not something Bloomberg cares about. But if he thinks of it as “dig a hole and place a seed” then he clearly hasn’t been keeping up. At the very least, he should take a ride in a $500,000 GPS-controlled computerized harvester.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Well I like neither of them. Did you see the cray cray on full display at the BS event in Nevada? There were topless women supposedly his supporters protesting dairy farmers.
On Supah Tuesday I will not be voting for either the Republican NY mayor or the Leap Year Democrat.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
In my dream world, they both take each other out in the next debate.
I’ll settle for the next best thing, which is the legalization of psychotropic drugs.
gene108
Democrats didn’t force Republican controlled heartland governments to reject ACA Medicaid expansion.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@gene108:
Absolutely, but I’m here to tell you that nobody connected the dots between the rejection of Medicaid expansion and closing of nursing homes in the small town where my parents live. Democrats need to push that message home, but since that state is deemed unwinnable (and it probably is), no Presidential campaign is going to bother.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud:
तुम्हारे मुंहमें घी शक्कर
Baud
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
That’s what state parties are for. We’ve collectively done a poor job maintaining them.
Anya
@germy: I still can’t get over the fact that Bloomberg (the supposed environmentalist) has spent $11.7 million to help re-elect Pat Toomey. If he is true to his conviction and his support of gun control and environmental policies why did he spend that much money to defeat Katie McGinty, an environmental policy expert? Michael Bloomberg is a fraud. He has no convictions. He just knows that environment and gun control are popular with a lot more people.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: I saw something about a topless protest incident but it sounded irretrievably dumb, so I didn’t click through. I assumed the protesters were against Sanders since they interrupted his event. They were protesting dairy farmers? Like radical vegans or something?
schrodingers_cat
The Orange Concealer is going to India. There are some slums on his route from the airport, so the Indian nautanki PM is building a wall around them so that they won’t be seen by the Orange King.
Cheryl Rofer
What bothers me about that quote is the lack of connection to the real world. We live in a physical world, in which physical measures must be taken to produce physical effects. Too much of the policy world doesn’t recognize that.
It’s clear that Bloomberg has never grown a plant, or watched one growing, except perhaps as an aesthetic exercise. Look at the lovely roses. No idea what it takes to grow them and how many things can go wrong on the way.
Nor has he ever, say, sawed a piece of wood to a measurement. He probably doesn’t even know it’s a lathe he’s mimicking and what operating one requires in physical and mental coordination.
This makes a difference in policy. To go to my specialty, on one side, there seems to be a belief that if we just summon our good will, we can make nuclear weapons go away. On the other, a belief that if we throw enough money at Los Alamos and Savannah River, they will turn out eighty plutonium pits a year, no sweat.
Nuclear weapons, like corn and lathes, are physical things. They contain dangerous materials that must be handled in particular ways. Building them is difficult. So is taking them apart. And then you have to deal with disposal of wastes or weapons parts.
Everything else in government is similar. Education requires competent teachers. Roads need asphalt and workers. Clean air needs equipment and research. Policymakers too often act as if words and money are enough. A president needs to know that there’s a lot more.
gene108
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Would anything Democrats say about Republican malfeasance puncture the right-wing media bubble Republicans/conservatives live in?
I think Democrats try to point things out, but get overwhelmed by right-wing media, and the MSM mirroring right-wing media.
I don’t know the the solution on how to get people better informed.
Starfish
@Gin & Tonic: Yes! This was my problem with what Bloomberg was saying. It showed that he was completely out of touch with modern farming.
The “teach everyone to code” is garbage because private companies are pretending to teach everyone to code, and no one is hiring junior programmers.
However, as Silicon Valley becomes too expensive for everyone, and remote work becomes more common, there will be coding jobs in those rural places. There may be some already.
Some of the really smart people who chat with me about coding are in places like Indiana and St. Louis.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Apparently they were his supporters but don’t like his stance on dairy farming or something. The ring leader who was fully clothed sounded like she had an Indian name.
ETA: Now I am wondering if her family is supportive of the murderous cow vigilantes of BJP.
OzarkHillbilly
Technology has invaded every sector of our economy. There is no way any one can be successful in today’s economy without at least a working grasp of technology and how to use it. That most especially includes farming.
Bloomberg need to get educated in more ways than one. This rises to ivory tower bullshit level.
MomSense
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Small farms have transformed the economy in Maine. We started a small program funded by license plate sales to provide loan guarantees and other assistance for small farms. All the farmers who participate are paired with a mentor farmer which keeps the success rate up. Now we produce more beer just in Portland than the country of Belgium. Portland is considered the best city in the country for food. It has rippled out into so much economic growth. The challenge now is to deal with housing – and we will.
germy
@Starfish:
And from what I understand, 59 year olds who try to reinvent themselves as coders will have trouble being hired. Age discrimination is still real.
Joey Maloney
The state university system could be a huge asset in revitalizing rural areas, if we still gave a shit about public goods which we clearly don’t any more.
Someone who actually knows what they’re talking about would have to do the real work to make this viable, but my half-baked idea is to open satellite campuses at various podunk cities and towns, and distribute various programs (considered on what makes sense for a particular area) so that each is only available at a satellite, and then make it a top-tier institution for that program.
It’ll be a lonely few years getting started, but before long the university will drive economic and cultural growth to the podunk town and the surrounding depressed area.
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Given Trump’s view that black and brown countries are shitholes, this might be to India’s short term benefit to stay on America’s good side
MomSense
@Starfish:
David Roux has given Northeastern 100 million to create a tech center in Maine. All because people want to be here now thanks to how farming has made us so appealing.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly:
“Up Comes The Corn – The MIchael Bloomberg Story”
(now in paperback)
Mel
@MomSense: True. It’s incredibly difficult work to run a working farm, and requires a myriad of skills.
I’d like to see him deliver a breach birth calf, deal with crop fungus, repair a tractor engine, work 12 hour days in blistering heat, vaccinate and worm multiple barns’ worth of livestock, or even lower himself to dig a hole for anything more than a ceremonial groundbreaking.
Regardless of the context, the comment serves to reinfirce that he has almost no knowledge of what life / work/ survival in the modern economy is like for anyone, rural or urban, who isn’t wealthy.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Its a match made in heaven of the two bigoted lying liars. BJP is just as ashamed of India’s Dalits and Muslims as the Orange Concealer is of Baltimore etc.
BJP IT cell amplifies the voices of known white supremacists like Katie Hopkins
I don’t know how much it is going to help India.
evodevo
Yeah – he’s way out of touch – I’d be haranguing my staff for not being up on this stuff, if he actually wants those votes. One of the BIG issues with farmers are the restrictions on repairing all that extremely expensive equipment that the corporations have put in place. YOU can’t just repair that harvester in the field…you have to call in the company’s person, at an exhorbitant fee, to get it running again, when all it would take is replacing a sensor or something. The days of baling wire and spit are over. Old tractors like we have on our farm are currently going for a fortune used today, because you can repair them yourself, or your local garage guy can do it. I bet if he brought up some even half-assed solution to that problem, he’d have the farmer lobby eating out of his hand.
Xavier
Bottom line: there needs to be a dignified place in our economy and our society for people who don’t have and will never have an advanced education.
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker: Yes, exactly, anti-dairy protesters attacking Sanders (a long time supporter of dairy subsidies, unsurprisingly) by baring their boobs and throwing around fake blood.
I guess baring boobs makes more sense for this protest than most.
Jager
@Gin & Tonic:
The county where I grew up, Grand Forks, ND, has just over 70,000 people about 800 of those people farm. Non-farm income is around 50k for a family of 4, farm income is Greenwich CT level. The farmers don’t have a problem, the people in the towns do. The biggest employer, health care. The 2nd the University of North Dakota.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy:
Hell’s bells, my 60 yr old wife can write code and paid hell finding a new job after 30 years in her old major corporation job. Companies know how to discriminate on the basis of age and get away with it. Dot a few “I”s, cross a few “T”s and Voila! Consequence free discrimination!
MomSense
@evodevo:
Hell we have farms here going back to horses and oxen. No joke, they can’t afford the equipment.
germy
The topless protesters:
dm
@Baud: from your keyboard to God’s browser.
Ryan
At least Bloomberg doesn’t burn his coffee beans. That will sink your battleship.
germy
@Mel: Or even delouse a chicken.
Zzyzx
As someone who was nearly out there looking for a new coding job, the knowledge they want to get past an interview is challenging. The easy problems have been mostly solved
Gin & Tonic
@Fair Economist: I refrained from making the obvious joke because it was too obvious.
Gin & Tonic
@evodevo: And to tie in Ukraine, which it seems everybody has completely forgotten about as Biden has faded, this was a great story about “right to repair.”
Ohio Mom
Starfish@22: We already have coders in really remote places, places so remote they are on other continents: China, India, Ukraine, etc..
OH@37: You were right about Ohio Dad not getting unemployment. The lawyer he consulted (who has helped several friends in tight spots quite successfully) said, Yeah you can try but I wouldn’t bet on it and I wouldn’t hire me, it’s too long a shot.
Sign me, Bitter spouse of older computer engineer
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: Tribune of the masses was staring pretty intently at the bounty. But then I guess most men would. Can’t really blame him. Were they trying to give him a second heart attack?
Baud
@germy:
Tits for teats!
Betty Cracker
Yang was the “one weird trick” candidate, and I wasn’t sorry to see him drop out. But he identified a real problem. We — not just America, the industrialized world — need to rethink “work” in all its facets.
Exregis
I’ve been thinking about Mike Bloomberg buying the election ever since I got my first robocall and third postal mail flyer from his campaign. There’s no financial offer in those paraphernalia unless I miss the silent whistle. In order to buy an election, he has to buy votes, ‘cause that’s the only (legal) way to win an election. I figure I ought to get at least twenty bucks for my vote — that’s two billion divided by a hundred million (I did the arithmetic in my head so don’t blame if I’m off by a magnitude or two). Where’s my twenty bucks? How am I supposed to get the cash? Will he trust me to vote properly after having bought my vote?
Well, shit, let’s see what’s going on here in the BJ community. How many of you folks are willing to allow yourselves to be bought? Hands up. Waiting. 1 … 2 … 3 …
Son of a gun! That’s no hands. If we’re afraid that Bloomberg can buy the election, it must be that the typical Democratic voter out there is less scrupulous or less incisive or just plain dumber than all of us.
So I called Mike. After all, I grew up at a hun-twenty-first and Park, hence knowing all about the supposed crime in the city, so he and I share a connection. He said he was not buying the election with cash, but with some word I didn’t know but meant goods or trade-in-kind. And the other end of the barter was no-more-DJT.
Now I am confused.
OzarkHillbilly
@Xavier: That’s just crazy talk.
Mel
In addition to the problem that most medical assisting and home health aide positions don’t even pay a living wage, re-training rural residents for low-paying medical field jobs might be a fruitless effort, considering the ongoing closures of rural hospitals as Catholic hospital groups buy out smaller hospital networks and close down rural hospitals and smaller hospitals that don’t provide a large profit margin.
No hospitals, no clinics = retrained workers with no place to work.
Baud
@Exregis:
I believe that’s the Democratic Party motto.
germy
@Baud: They know how to get attention.
But their stunts discredit the whole animal rights movement. I’m against the cruel excesses of factory farming, but this sort of “protest” doesn’t help anyone.
Ohio Mom
For many years now, whenever I hear of a young fellow about to go off to college to study engineering, I suggest that they look into allied health fields, for example, physical therapy instead.
I never convince any of them. I end by telling them they should think of engineering like a career in sports or ballet. Something you do during the first part of your adulthood, with the knowledge that you’ll need a second, different career for middle-age and beyond.
Engineering is very cyclical, always has been. But in the olden days, companies kept you around inbetween the big projects. Ohio Dad’s BFF started his career at Boeing. He remembers weeks and months of reading the paper and playing card games during the lulls. That’s quaint.
Baud
@germy:
IMHO, most protest end up being counterproductive. It’s simply a hard thing to do well.
Shalimar
@MomSense: Yeah. There is absolutely no chance that Bloomberg could teach anyone how to farm.
Mel
@germy: I would pay to see that. Chicken would win that cage fight, hands (claws?) down…
Back me up on my chicken bet, Betty Cracker?
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom: On the off chance that wasn’t just a brain fart of mixing issues, he should be able to get unemployment, I’d be very surprised if he couldn’t. It won’t be much but every little bit helps.
I was speaking of an age discrimination law suit (which I’m fairly sure you already know).
Unemployment is for people who lose their jobs thru no fault of their own. A buddy of mine once got fired for “incompetence”. The judge asked the employer, “But you hired him and kept him on anyway?”
“Yes.”
My buddy got his UI.
Kraux Pas
What’s all this about coding? Is coding the only skill we could ever impart on another person?
OzarkHillbilly
I’m waiting for the bidding to reach $100K, not taking a penny less.
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: Yang identified a real problem, but his solution was terrible. “Everyone gets $1000 a month and those at the bottom who can’t get jobs try to live somewhere on that without any other government assistance” was really, really bad.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom: My old man got a job at monsanto (boo! hiss!) right out of college as a Chemical Engineer. They held the job for him after he got sent to that little Korean dust up, then kept him on for another 40 years or so after. He even had a nice defined benefit pension to retire on.
Those days are long gone.
Kraux Pas
It isn’t quite like that. Every vote is different. Plenty of people give up their votes for free, sluts.
I would for someone I like, but for Bloomberg I’m asking 30 grand. And that’s just before I’m willing to claim I’ll vote for him. The real thing would be much more.
Betty Cracker
@Mel: Yep. I would pay to see that cage match and bet heavily on the chooks.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
I used to plant corn with my grandfather. It was more like I followed him around while he planted corn. He didn’t dig a hole, put one seed in, cover it with dirt, and water. Nope. That’s not how planting corn works.
Betty Cracker
@Shalimar: Agreed, it was terrible. But something like UBI isn’t a crazy idea, IMO.
MomSense
@Kraux Pas:
I hope he has a better accounts payable team than Soros, because I still haven’t seen my Soros money.
dimmsdale
@Cheryl Rofer: Friend of mine was ga-ga over Marianne Williamson; he’d gotten the idea from somewhere that if you just pick someone for the presidency who’s spiritually attuned to the ills of the world, and competent as a spiritual leader (I hear someone in the background chanting “grifter, grifter, grifter” but let’s put that aside for now), all they’d have to do, to acquire governmental competence, is HIRE a bunch of really really good advisers. I mean, out of touch is out of touch, and it’s not just confined to squillionaires who’re insulated from gritty reality by their wealth.
The original post prompts me to say that there is so much misery abroad in America, that could be ameliorated by a flood of caregivers with proper training and support (not only in the rural areas), that it incenses me to see the kinds of money the Yangs and Bloombergs and Steyers are spending on their vanity sh8t. (Also, the distraction they inject, away from candidates who a) DO give a damn, and b) have ways to crack the problem.)
OzarkHillbilly
Yeah, it’s hard to do, but I have noticed that the people who yell the loudest about protests are the same ones who feel they should never suffer any inconvenience. I am thinking of a little dust up I had with somebody (not here) over the Statue Of Liberty BLM protest a while back. He said something along the lines of, “I’d be sympathetic if they only…”
No, no he wouldn’t be sympathetic. He doesn’t care because the issue doesn’t effect him.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mel: Given the chance chickens will delouse themselves with diatomaceous earth.
Xavier
@Betty Cracker: UBI isn’t a crazy idea, but the kind of economic dignity I’d have on mind ought to include the ability to have a contributary role in society.
Ohio Mom
OH@59: The executive summary is, the manager who hired Ohio Dad announced his retirement two months into Ohio Dad’s tenure. Then he did everybody’s annual performance review early, as a courtesy.
The next manager declared First Manager had overrated everyone, slashed Ohio Dad’s performance review and declared Fired for Cause.
There wasn’t any paper trail, no written warnings, but the lawyer said Ohio has “become a very business friendly state.”
Which translates to, Too many Republican administrations in a row, leaving workers with no recourse.
So Ohio Dad eventually filed and we are waiting for the official denial. He’s already had a couple of job nibbles so I’m not too crazed, yet.
schrodingers_cat
@Xavier: It is a good idea iff it is in addition to the safety net not as a replacement for it.
iff (if and only if)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Agree. There are many people who like to pretend they would support us if not for that certain one little thing. And they exist across the ideological spectrum. Democrats should offer courses on how to deal with disingenuousness.
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: Yeah. I grew up reading Mack Reynolds, who basically made a career writing about post-industrial societies where everyone lived off of UBI and people only worked at what they wanted to do, so I love the concept. It’s a question of how we can get there. Maybe Yang’s way is best, start smaller and gather support before making it enough to live on. I don’t know.
MomSense
@Ohio Mom:
Fuck those “right to work” states.
The Roux tech center is opening in Maine. It’s affiliated with Northeastern University. Maybe Oh Dad could look into it now while it’s being set up. I’ll see what I can find out about it, too.
satby
in rural Michigan, they made between $10-14/ hour. To spend their own money on gas going to all their clients, depreciating their own vehicles, and often assuming the liability for driving clients to stores or doctor’s offices. It is a shit job. And I have nothing but respect for the people doing it.
OzarkHillbilly
A couple things to note:
#1 What cause? (thievery?)
#2 Does he still have a copy of that job review?
#3 It sounds like he wasn’t there very long. If he was recently employed before this job he should be able to draw anyway.
#4 From what I know, lawyers only get involved in UI cases on the side of management and they need to earn their retainer.
Misery is also a “Work At Will” state. The laws are written very much to favor employers but UI is a federally funded program administered by the states. I suspect the rules are fairly universal.
As a gypsy carpenter I quite frequently got laid off from jobs after short stints because I was only hired for a short stint. No body ever contested that, it was just the cost of doing business. The only time I ever had my UI contested I was chomping at the bit for my appeal hearing but unfortunately I got hired by someone else making the whole thing a moot point.
Whatever the initial determination is, your husband has the right to appeal it, and that original job performance review (hoping he still has it) should cut the ground from under any denial of UI the company might fight for.
IAMNAL, so take everything I’ve said as coming just from some dumb ass union carpenter who has been down this road many times before, but I hope you can gain a little hope from my experiences.
Xavier
@schrodingers_cat: Of course. A job guarantee would replace much of the existing safety net, but never all. And the jobs couldn’t just be dead end digging holes and filling them in, they have to fill real unmet needs and at the same time provide growth opportunities for people. Decent jobs, in other words.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: Just to straighten up something: Misery is not a “Right to Work” state (we just beat that back again) but it is a “Work at Will” state.
In a “Work at Will” state, employment can be terminated for any reason whatsoever by either the employee or the employer. MO doesn’t have any anti age discrimination laws on it’s books (if they do they are very weak) and the federal laws have loopholes one can drive a semi thru.
Right to Work is about union representation.
My guess is Ohio is the same as Misery, I don’t know about Maine.
joel hanes
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
no Presidential campaign is going to bother
… and I suppose that there’s effectively no state or local Democratic Party to do so.
*sigh*
The Democratic fixation on the Presidency will be the death of us all.
Ksmiami
@Ohio Mom: I used to live in Michigan and the economy there is doing quite well would you consider moving up river?
Capri
@Starfish: I live in Indiana and yes there are coders. The last one I talked to worked for a company based in San Diego. His co-workers are all over the globe. Not a one lives in CA
Ohio Mom
It’s so wonderful to be part of this caring community.
I don’t think we are quite ready to think about moving, yet, for two reasons.
Reason number one is Ohio Son, who has autism and has a Medicaid Waiver here. Unlike SSI for disabled, Waivers do not transfer across states. Different states have different rules, wait list times, and so forth, so changing states can mean losing benefits. It’s very complicated.
Reason two is 88 yo Ohio Grandma. She’s getting to the point that she needs a fair amount of supervision.
I will convey Ozark’s comments to Ohio Dad. He’s pretty fatalistic about the subject of UI but as the saying goes, You don’t have have to hope in order to persevere.
suezboo
Not that I have any direct knowledge at all, but I believe that correctional facilities – prisons, detention centres – are also important employers in rural areas. Possibly, some people would accept retraining as a correctional officer and still be able to remain local.
Starfish
@germy: Yes, the age discrimination in tech is real.
Starfish
@Ohio Mom: Some of that is different.
1) Some of that is entrepreneurs who think they cannot hire people in the same country going to learn some lessons the hard way about code that is unmaintainable.
2) Some of that is that we are truly working in teams that extend beyond the places we are.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom: I hope he takes it for what it’s worth and doesn’t go down without a fight. He has that right.
wenchacha
Just a reminder that “the Heartland” isn’t only in the centrally-located states. Plenty of states with giant metropoli also have wide swaths of rural poverty.
JustRuss
I’m so tired of the “tech will save us!” trope. There’s a reason it pays well: It’s really hard, talented coders are rare, and like the top talent of any profession employers are willing to pay for them. Your re-educated coal miner just isn’t going to be in the same league as a nerd who’s been passionate about tech since he was 10.
There’s tons of work that needs doing that doesn’t require coding skills. Problem is we’re not willing to pay for it. Somehow that has to change, and I don’t see how without raising taxes.
Kent
Its just the flip side of Klobuchar and Buttigieg suggesting that those heartland guys sitting on tractors can solve all of Washington’s problems with a little midwestern common sense.
Utter bullshit flying in both directions.
Kent
Neurosurgeons and white shoe corporate attorneys also make a shitload of money. Why don’t we re-train a bunch of middle-aged coal miners to do those jobs too?
It is about as fucking realistic as expecting them to compete with digital natives who have been coding and hacking since age 10.
Miss Bianca
@MomSense: You’re making Maine sound attractive to me again, dammit! Two of my sisters live up there and three of my family are buried in Deer Isle, it almost seems inevitable that I’d end up back there at some point…
Quiltingfool
@Mel: I used to raise chickens, and have deloused them…if you hold them right, the worst thing is they might bite. Some chickens go a step further – bite and twist! Once, though, I was holding a chicken being deloused, and I notice he was gently nibbling on my jacket. It seems he was eating some of the critters that escaped him! I will say this – if you have chickens roaming about your yard, you won’t have a problem with ticks and chiggers; but they will poop on the porch!
Chris Johnson
@OzarkHillbilly: Diatomeceous earth is THE BOMB. I love the stuff. I keep ants away from my kitchen using it. They learn to not try and path through it.
When people talk about ‘learn to code’, to me it’s like they’re saying, the people will learn to word! Yeah, but to say what? ‘to word!’
With code, it’s like, code TO DO WHAT? What needs doing? Why is that person going to compete against a trained coder out of India, or Taiwan? The bullshit detector goes off instantly, because what’s really being said there is ‘we don’t care, not our problem, your fault for wanting to do something dumb like exist’.
Bloomberg would love the 500K harvesters held hostage by code where you have to be from the company to fix it. That sort of thing is naked power, pure capitalism finding mechanisms to harm the farmer. He would love it, and invest in the company. And if the company allowed right to repair he would punish them by disinvesting in the company.
Ohio Mom
ChrisJohnson@96: That 500k harvester you thought you bought and own?
If you need permission from the manufacturer to fix it, you are no different than the person leasing an apartment who needs an okay from the landlord to paint a wall. You are a renter.
Of course that appeals as a business model to the one recent of the one percent.
Starfish@88, re: Unsustainable code. Ohio Dad has seen this many times. Employer decides to outsource more routine coding to say, Company X in Ukraine.
Company X puts their ace team on the small, initial project. When the big project is landed, it’s assigned to the B (or C) team. With predictable results.
One of his employers had this bait-and-switch pulled on them by three different companies on two continents. Slow learners.
Cathie from Canada
My dad was a farmer – he was a smart and well-read man, wore nice suits, invested in the stock-market, but he only had a grade 9 education. He used to say, if he hadn’t been a farmer, the only job he would have been able to find would have been a janitor.
Mart
Met a crew at a hotel bar, 3rd party contractors for Monsanto. Frankenseeds are engineered by Monsanto almost by zip code to optimize growth for particular soil, heat, rain, etc. conditions. This crew used their high tech equipment to plant the seeds. They monitored seed growth, analyzed nutrients, moisture, etc. as the plant grew. Then harvested with the corn and beans lab analyzed. So yeah, pretty much like putting a seed in a hole and covering it.
Jay Noble
Doofus. This is how you teach someone to garden. Farmer’s are carpenters, welders, CDL driver’s of tractors, combines and semis with sophisticated computerized control systems. They are accounts and agronimists. and on and on.
jl
@Jay Noble: Yeah, I don’t know if the context makes much difference.
” This is just bog-standard business conference stuff. ”
In other words, horseshit. Bloomberg on policy is almost as bad as Biden. Though we know Biden can do better than he has this cycle, since his initial strategy this time out, IMHO, seems to have been an Obama nostalgia tour, and playing up his Obama era irascible but lovable Uncle Joe persona.
Bloomberg need to cut the standard business conference horseshit schtick. It is condescending towards voters we need in the general election, and means next to nothing in terms of what policies he’ll pursue. What comes from that boilerplate. Who knows? An gig economy app or farmers and manufacturing workers for just in time production? Or are they too stupid?
Can’t tell whether he is talking about farming 300 years ago or now. And he is wrong about farming even 300 years ago.