It's only unpopular because it flies in the face of economics. You say you're fine paying $300 for a pair of shoes - but are you okay with your livelihood being making shoes? If you're capable of doing higher-value work then isn't it a "waste" for you to be doing lower-value work?
The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars building an infrastructure that has led its citizens to being some of the best-educated and most-productive in the world. Those citizens are capable of doing higher-value work. Should they do that low-value work when it can be easily and eagerly performed by other countries where the populace hasn't benefitted from such an infrastructure investment? Thereby raising the standard of living for all the parties involved? That's the economists' argument. Moreover the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries taught us that focusing on the nation-state leads to widespread warfare. Better to have those nation-states in economic cooperation that leads to peace than economic competition that leads to war.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am saying you need to really think through why and how we got here when considering our next steps. You're going to need to address how doing what we did before won't lead to the same problems we experienced before. I suspect you're not going to be able to do that, but I'm willing to be shown to be wrong.
> The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars building an infrastructure that has led its citizens to being some of the best-educated and most-productive in the world.
Remember what you said: some of the population is capable of doing such things, but a relatively large portion of the population are doing gig work. The distinction isn't "why take the highly skilled segment of the workforce and retrain them," but instead "why not take the 'low-skilled' portion and upskill them." Ultimately we know the answer, but your framing was off.
> but are you okay with your livelihood being making shoes? If you're capable of doing higher-value work then isn't it a "waste" for you to be doing lower-value work?
This assumes that everyone can do the higher-value work per their standards, right? US is probably the most educated country in the world, while in the meantime we still have millions adults[1] who don't have college degree. We still have millions of kids who struggle with basic algebra. And per my interaction with kids and college students in the past many years, I have to conclude that not everyone can or like to take on "high-end" jobs. In any class except those magnetic schools, you can see the bottom 20% or more students are hopeless in learning STEM or sophisticated writing. However, they may get decent jobs if there are other demand in the market.
That worries me, actually. Are we leaving a large group of people behind? Have we written them off because they're not able to do "high value" work and yet our life expenses in the U.S. are such that they're not economically viable for doing the "low value" work, either? Is living on public assistance really the best option? Or working in the gig economy? I don't have answers to these questions but I do think about these things.
> That worries me, actually. Are we leaving a large group of people behind? Have we written them off because they're not able to do "high value" work and yet our life expenses in the U.S. are such that they're not economically viable for doing the "low value" work, either?
The answer to both of these questions is "yes". I've worked in education and am very familiar with homeless communities and their issues. It's very obvious that in some locations (like the Bay Area) there simply isn't enough low-complexity work for the bottom 10-15%, people for whom "dishwasher" is a complex job. Technology has just been slowly eating away at those jobs for a century and replacements have not come in as fast the jobs are disappearing.
> Moreover the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries taught us that focusing on the nation-state leads to widespread warfare. Better to have those nation-states in economic cooperation that leads to peace than economic competition that leads to war.
I think it has taught us the opposite? Pre WWI, the world was already very integrated and globalized, to the point that many pundits said that a large war is impossible, because it would hurt businesses everywhere too much. And yet it happened.
The story I've always heard is nobody thought there would be war in Europe to the magnitude of WWI because so many heads of state were Queen Victoria's grandchildren. Surely the family wouldn't war with one another?
> The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars building an infrastructure that has led its citizens to being some of the best-educated and most-productive in the world.
Citation, please (and yeah, I see you using weasel words.)
The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars building an infrastructure that has led its citizens to being some of the best-educated and most-productive in the world. Those citizens are capable of doing higher-value work. Should they do that low-value work when it can be easily and eagerly performed by other countries where the populace hasn't benefitted from such an infrastructure investment? Thereby raising the standard of living for all the parties involved? That's the economists' argument. Moreover the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries taught us that focusing on the nation-state leads to widespread warfare. Better to have those nation-states in economic cooperation that leads to peace than economic competition that leads to war.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am saying you need to really think through why and how we got here when considering our next steps. You're going to need to address how doing what we did before won't lead to the same problems we experienced before. I suspect you're not going to be able to do that, but I'm willing to be shown to be wrong.