Didnβt Trump sign a NAFTA replacement with Mexico and Canada back in 2018 and spend the next five years bragging about it? βMy big beautiful trade deal for America!β Trade agreements used to last generations. Under monarchs they'd last centuries. So what was so great about his last "trade deal" that it required immediately threatening both countries with 25% tariffs? He claimed they weren't "honoring it." Then a pause - off. Then back on. Then off again. It's all such unbelievable, orchestrated horseshit. Only a puppet behaves this erratic while treating his followers like fools. Only cult loyalists believe this isnβt part of a broader economic script to devalue the dollar and cheapen the debt, though probably to continue the distrust of the American dollar mafia around the world. Treasuries are already being abandoned, nobody wants to hold the debt of such a grifter nation that can't be trusted.
Your take on Trumpβs trade policies and the USMCA is off base. The USMCA, signed in 2018, replaced NAFTA with tangible improvements: it raised the requirement for North American content in cars from 62.5% to 75%, secured better labor standards in Mexico to level the playing field for U.S. workers, and opened Canadaβs dairy market to American farmers. U.S. exports to Mexico grew to $324 billion in 2023, up 5% from 2022, showing the dealβs benefits. Trumpβs tariff threats arenβt proof of a failed agreement but a negotiating tactic to address specific issues like auto imports skirting rules or border security concerns. His on-again, off-again approach reflects flexibility, not erratic puppetryβtrade policy often involves posturing to extract concessions.
Your claim about a βbroader economic scriptβ to devalue the dollar or cheapen debt doesnβt hold up. The dollar remains the worldβs reserve currency, with over 58% of global foreign exchange reserves in USD as of 2024. Treasury yields are up (10-year at 4.2%), but demand for U.S. debt persistsβJapan and China still hold over $2 trillion combined. Dedollarization chatter exists, but itβs slow and overstated; no viable alternative rivals the dollarβs dominance. Calling the U.S. a βgrifter nationβ ignores its economic stability and global financial influence. Trumpβs moves may look chaotic, but theyβre more about leverage than a grand conspiracy. The USMCAβs still delivering, and the tariff threats are just hardball diplomacy, not evidence of a collapsing system.
On jobs, youβre overlooking a key USMCA impact: itβs helping bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and with it, jobs. Not the old-school factory gigs, but higher-skilled, higher-paying roles in AI, automation, and robotic repair. The U.S. manufacturing sector added 28,000 jobs in 2023, with a growing share in tech-driven fieldsβthink technicians maintaining AI-driven assembly lines or engineers programming robotic systems. These arenβt low-wage positions; median salaries for automation engineers hit $95,000 in 2024, outpacing traditional factory work. The USMCAβs stricter rules of origin and labor provisions incentivize companies to relocate production stateside, and weβre seeing itβIntelβs $20 billion chip plant in Ohio and Toyotaβs $1.7 billion battery factory in North Carolina are examples.
Bringing back the manufacturing base isnβt just about economics; itβs a national security imperative. Relying on foreign supply chains, especially for semiconductors or critical tech, leaves the U.S. vulnerable to disruptionsβlook at the 2021 chip shortage that crippled auto production. Domestic manufacturing strengthens resilience, reduces dependence on geopolitically risky partners, and ensures we control our tech future. Trumpβs trade policies, including tariff threats, push this agenda by making it costlier for companies to produce abroad. The USMCA is working, tariffs are a tool, and the jobs coming back are the kind that build a stronger, more secure America.
Welcome to the Great Reset!! It arrived a long time ago! They couldn't boil the frogs at a high temperature right away; they had to turn up the heat slowly! We are only a couple of years away from a complete boil cookout! Trump was installed to give the illusion that there will be a semblance of a recovery and that he will MAGA! It is theatrics, it is fake, and what is in front of us in the near future will be real and nasty! It's a good time to get right with God, no Joke!
Top-notch, erudite commentary Good Citizen - dripping with the appropriate amount of disdain, disbelief, and a barely perceptible impression of hope. I will subscribe, I think you're investigating and writing impressive and necessary content.
if I had the power I would make reading your articles mandatory for all people over 14 years old. this piece it totally amazing. I quit school at 15 started carrying lumber.I did mostly framing concrete and roofing. I loved building things more then the money I got from it. I still drive by massive houses I framed and still get off on it.
if your father is still alive tell him to file taxes for a quarter. make up something like painting or lawn mowing. I was short one quarter for SS and just filed 2 quarters and qualified.
the dominatrix kristy noem is a luscious female. there is no better summary of the state of the US then what you wrote
GC, as expected, another thought provoking piece. And as aligned as I am with your overall philosophy one of the thoughts this column provoked was a feeling that you are overstating the case for the glories of heavy manual labor. I wonder if the people who lived that life would see it the same way. I'm not talking about those of us who did it during summers between school years, or in our early 20's while we looked for direction. But the people who lived it long term, 35 or 40 years, with all the shivering and sweating that came with it. All that ploughing of fields and building of barns wasn't usually happening in sunny 70 degree weather. There's a reason plantation owners had slaves doing most of the labor. And with the satisfaction that may indeed come with the completion of jobs well done, bum knees, herniated discs and torn rotator cuffs are often also part of the bargain. My guess is that if someone who lived this life in the 1910's was shown a movie of 21st century office life, heated in winter and cooled in summer, there's a good chance they'd make the trade. And indeed, many a man and woman who busted their arse doing manual labor in the late 20th century surely did so with the hope that their children would find a less physically taxing way to make a living.
I'm not disparaging manual labor. Quite the opposite. I admire those who can endure it. At the same time, I don't concur with you that it's a superior way to live. Nor do I discount all of your criticisms of modern occupations. Many of them are indeed soul sucking and hard to see value in. Many would go stir crazy and certainly would prefer to work construction or farming. Many others aren't durable enough for a lifetime of manual labor and are better off pushing paper. The pluses and minuses of each way of life depend on the individual.
Understandable, sensible, and well-received arguments. I do not disagree with any of it, and perhaps I wasn't clear enough about what kind of manual labor. The kind of manual labor that builds finished products and the connection between workers (not 12hr -7day a week factory or plantation labor) simply holds more rewards than the abstract "office" labor or gosplan jobs - the seat fillers that prop up economic statistics to prevent high unemployment, stave off recessions, and keep the masses pacified with just enough income to believe in the system that extorts taxes from their labor.
Of course factory or plantation slaves would have traded that spine crunching toil for paper pushing jobs in a heartbeat, but the Amish homesteader, or a new generation of young homesteaders, discovering a real, meaningful existence through labored self-sufficiency are not opting for the Urban cubicle purposeless corporate drudgery, and I believe they're ahead of the curve.
And none of this is to negate the many jobs out there that benefit society - say a good private lawyer working pro bono to ensure the system doesn't prosecute an innocent person - or a sherrif who refuses to enforce an unconstitutional law - or that German nurse who injected saline instead of mRNA poison into over 6500 elderly patients. Millions work purposeful jobs that don't require a drop of sweat, but how many of those will be going away soon?
AI can read a legal brief and memorize every word in .4 seconds, then produce the entire history of federal-related case law, with summaries, quotes, and judgments in another .4 seconds. Anything a patent, trademark, business, real estate, or corporate lawyer could do, can be done with templates now, or AI, for free, in seconds. The same goes for insurance jobs, risk analysis, hell, most office jobs can be automated, and corporations will do it once they realize a couple of AI agents (customized to each job) can do a week's worth of human work of a thousand workers in a single day. The return$ of this capital will not go to humans, but the corporations that control governments, which is why there is increasing talk of UBI crumbs for those not prepared for the world they're engineering.
Those who have already sought refuge in self-sufficiency, sourcing their own food and water, built a sturdy homestead, putting in physical labor each day, building community... to secure their future will be the only ones not desperate to tether themselves to the digital prison for UBI crumbs once this fiat house of cards collapses. Even the intelligent slaves of factory life under the industrial revolution would recognize this Faustian bargain as an impetus to abandon the leisurely and aimless paper pushing (mouse clicking) gosplan job world for the liberty that sprouts autonomy through self-sufficiency.
The case for the usefulness of AI is also overstated. Last I checked it's either wildly racist or wildly left-biased, and often completely inaccurate. Supposedly it's improving, but you still need human eyes to look at things, and you need people to direct the AI. Just throwing everything into the AI black box and hoping it all comes out OK on the other end with no human input seems to me to be a terrible strategy that sets things up for failure. Hell, the Comcast AI couldn't even help me with a problem with my cable box being "out of sync" or something along those lines (it also REFUSED to let me talk to a human no matter how many times I requested it, even though I already KNEW that I'd need a human... no, I had to repeat the same crap I'd already done 5 times already myself).
I have zero interest in a manual labor job. At my age and health, it would NOT go over well (and I hated manual labor jobs as a teenager with a passion, and was brought up to look for something better paying and less grueling). At least my office job isn't useless meetings; I do "build" stuff, mostly in SQL, which the folks at the top then use (...sometimes to make stupid decisions, but I'm not the decider, so, meh). Maybe AI can do it someday, but my understanding is that right now while you could build something faster with AI, the debugging time is longer and possibly more infuriating (probably because it's written by a machine, for a machine). Some work I do is converting shabby old Access databases into something more modern, and trying to figure out those houses of cards that someone else made can be annoying - I can only imagine trying to figure out whatever the AI engine concocted.
Those little 'bot' agents with gay names that every website has, "Ask Fred!" aren't real generative AI. They are models that have been trained at 5B or less, and can just regurgitate the FAQ section of a website, and poorly. Companies don't pay for the top models because they still cost too much per 1000 token output (.02-.05), or they haven't invested in tuning open-source models.
Using three different top paid models (sometimes one will go off the rails, or can't complete a task, so I outsource it to the other two or vice versa), I've coded dynamic applications with only prior experience as a web developer. I'm building a database for an app right now using just AI, including tables, relationships, SQL, JavaScript for edge functions, and it does each task in a matter of minutes. I debug, and copy and paste code and prompt, and repeat. I ask it for workflow from my master documents and we move on to the next tasks. Companies used to pay a dozen people to build what I'm building, and it would take them a year for thousands of dollars, whereas I'm about 50% done after a few months, working alone...paying $40 each month in AI upgrades... with zero experience. When I learned HTML and CSS during web 2.0 all of this would have been unheard of - pure crazy talk.
Those who have yet to use AI have no idea how fast it's progressing, how deadly efficient it is at concrete tasks (NOT creative tasks) and how each iteration will be better the next (every few months). when they want to deploy it to replace humans in the workforce, they'll do it. Without warning. Anyone who is not secure in their job (most private workers) should probably be using it to accelerate workflow. Those who don't will be embarrassed by the efficiency of their colleagues who do.
All excellent points. I'd add one thought to your "manual labor that builds finished products and the connection between workers (not 12hr -7day a week factory or plantation labor) simply holds more rewards than the abstract "office" labor jobs" statement. There is some abstract office labor that contributes to those finished products. I cut my teeth in 1980's finance as a cog in the mortgage backed securities (MBS) business. To be sure, at first what I was doing seemed quite abstract. Punching trade information into the firm's computer system. What am I doing? Well, as I researched the business I came to understand that those securities played a critical role in the ability of thousands of small banks across the country to offer financing to home buyers who otherwise would be unable to get a mortgage. When I saw that there was a tangible outcome to all that paper pushing it certainly gave me a better sense that I was actually contributing a teensy weensy bit to something that was worthwhile to society.
Of course, that was 40 years ago and jobs like I had at that time have long since been automated out of existence. Are there current day equivalents? I'm happy to say that I've been out of the work force for a few years, so I'm not in a great position to know. What I can say is that even in my working days there were many people I worked with who did, as you say, seem to be doing nothing more than contributing to the statistics that let the political class claim we have full employment. Their most important role was to make those of us who were actually working feel like at least there was someone who would be on the chopping block ahead of us, LOL.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful response to my initial comment GC.
Interesting work history John. My first corporate job was selling those mortgages (A paper) for a big time lender that was eventually absorbed by Chase (I think). Around late 2004, things got wonky in a hurry. The entire underwriting binder was tossed in the garbage, and anyone with a pulse was auto-approved by the computer underwriter - early software automation.
One day a sketchy realtor with a polyester leisure suit came in with an old Chinese lady wanting to do a $480k cash out refi - $50k cash back. Her husband abandoned her and went back to China. No assets, no income, no savings, and no ability to speak English. I told him it probably wasn't going to happen (he wanted to list her property after the refi and help her avoid foreclosure). That afternoon, the computer underwriter auto approved it. When I called the "risk" officer for the entire state's mortgage dept. she said, "no problem, it'll go through and she can sign in a few weeks." Before I could question the wisdom of the transaction for the bank, she asked, "Anything else?" And that was that.
About another half dozen of those so-called "A paper" loans came through (including a deaf couple buying a 1bd apartment on very low wages), and I submitted my resignation on July 4, 2006.
Two years later, living in Prague I watched the Big Short movie play out in real time. That's when all the other pieces came together - MBS, ratings agency scams, CDOs, and I understood that I was just at the bottom rung of the entire operation. I recently read somewhere that mortgage delinquencies are pushing 2008 figures again, but the government is papering over it by subsidizing the federal defaults - IOW - paying the mortgages of thousands of loans that should have defaulted, some of them years ago. More Gosplan USSA "economics" to avoid a collapse? Who knows what they're doing behind the scenes to keep up appearances?
When I started (Morgan Stanley) in 1987, 99% of the business was in the government backed agency pool sector (Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie). CMO's were just starting to bubble up, but were still pretty safe because they were all backed by agency pools. By the time the market got corrupted as you described, I was in other areas of fixed income and had no idea how far the underwriting standards had been allowed to fall. It was amazing how many stories came out similar to your polyester suit fiasco. All it took was W pushing for an "ownership society" and before you know it every asshole in the world was either A) looking for a mortgage, or B) waiting to rubber stamp asshole A's application.
Or perhaps like an American Indian giving up his well crafted, well used, custom bow at the first opportunity to obtain a rifle. We all gravitate toward making the curse of Adam easier.
I read that book 25 years ago ...thought it was ok...but later found out Frankl was a liar. Turns out he was only at Auschwitz on a train lay-over. He also was involved as a hospital doctor doing dangerous experimental brain interventions on unsuspecting victims before WWII (in Austria I believe -if memory serves). Sadly I have learned that most of the Holohoax memoirs i read years ago, were fabricated out of whole cloth.
Brilliant as always, Good Citizen. A few additions: Yes, the purpose of the tariffs is not against China but against the US consumer. We are being priced out of living.
Before Appalachians worked in factories, they were homesteaders who'd carved out and cultivated the land, keeping it in the family for generations. William Morris with the help of Alex Hamiltoon took their land under the pretense of no deeds (which didn't exist at the time) and later by tricking them into mining agreements that were supposed to only be for what was under the ground but ended up stripping them.
Oh and you've read David Graeber's Bullshit jobs, yes? He makes much the same point.
Last, Auschwitz was build as a tourist attraction after WWII. In Dachau, the majority of inhabitants were Catholic. 15M Germans were killed, starved, enslaved or exiled AFTER the end of WWII. WWII was caused by WWI where the Bolshevik AshkeNazis of Germany betrayed her and caused the US to enter the war--after Germany had won and offered peace with no reparations--in exchange for the Balfour Declaration.
So the Great Reset is being brought to you by the same people who brought it to Germany. Buyer beware.
I remember in the 70's and early 80's when I worked on peoples houses or rebuilt a collapsing barn they greatly admired the work that was being done and respected me. but for the last 40 years people now look down on hard workers in the trades and tell their kids they will never do that work. I had a 30 year old woman tell her son in front of me when the kid showed interest in what I was doing...you will never do that kind of work. saw and heard that many times
There was a family of Serbs in the neighborhood where I grew up. The uncle was a plumber who had settled there for years. One year, his nephews showed up and enrolled in our high school (NATO war refugees). Smart, diligent, and learned English quickly. After high school, they went to work as apprentice plumbers. By 25, they each had their own crew, and by 30 they were earning double what all the kids of parents who assumed college was essential were earning without any debt. When I ran into the older nephew last around age 35, he was happily married, had a big house, three kids, and his wife didn't need to work. Parents who scream, "you're going to college and that's final!" still don't realize most BS degrees today are worth less than a GED in 1950, and so they make their kids' future more about them and their egos - community perception. It'll be a long time before robots replace plumbers, mechanics, electricians, and home builders, and that's where the cheddar and dignified work will still be.
for 35 years I have told every young kid and all the sons of guys I know exactly the same thing you said about college and always told them about plumbers. being on the job I saw they made the most on a new house then any others.
I would frame complicated roofs with offset hips octagon turrets and make less then then the sewer rats did. there is even more money in house calls. it was the parents who would not allow their little darlings to get their hands dirty and told them to go to college like you said.
another thing is a White kid will have to battle non whites trannies homos women dykes and communists to even get in a good college and battle the same people for jobs and housing
βThose who gutted that America still walk freeβnever tried, never forced to answer for their treason, never drawn, quartered, or hanged. They sit on corporate boards, sip wine at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and whisper policy into the ears of their oligarch masters, while the kin of the gutted manage quiet despair, buried in debt, drowning in pills, dying slow deaths by OxyContin and fentanyl.
Those towns now lie still. Main streets boarded up. Church bells silenced. Family homes turned into trap houses. The mills collapsed into rust. The factories were auctioned off to the lowest bidder. What remains are fentanyl deaths, unemployment lines, and strip malls full of pawn shops and probation offices. Purdue Pharma (Sackler Family- still billionaires and free) finished the job the politicians and their corporate masters beganβmassacring the remnants of a class they first hollowed out and then buried in paperwork, unemployment lines, and despair. Today Appalachia rots, and not a single rich man north of Richmond gives a damn because there are no lobbyists for unemployed coal miners.β
I was born and raised in an industrial Appalachian town. Now mostly brown fields and decaying housing occupied by dying elderly or passed on to children unable to find anything but service jobs or addiction. I left for college and to pursue a career my hometown could not provide. Now returned to witness a landscape as you describe. Started a business meant for my sons but struggle due to unproductive trade workers overwhelmed with family social issues and drugs.
Current economic gyrations are in no way about reindustrializion. If so there would be a multipoint plan to provide incentive. From my perspective, all see is a push for militarization and giveaways to tech oligarchs. Those are careers for the few. Not a large general population.
I want to memorize and recite your brilliant rant at the "conclusions"...preach! Its exactly what I try to get my kids and others to comprehend and embrace (born in the 60's and still work as does husband in manual labor-only way to be fulfilled is to use your body to create something that wasn't there yesterday.
"..warrior crescent pose..." I had to look this up. Lord almighty! Did that ever get used again and again and again ad-nauseum. There was an expression used, long before the covidian psyop, something from the UK I believe... "up skill"... Which simply meant you needed to "get with the program" and figger out what in the hell will pay you to survive. Being in IT I saw how my role was being shipped overseas. Part of that grand and glorious globalization. They told us "learn to code" until the day arrived where cheap programmers were outsourced once again making you redundant. And every time you asked what in the hell was happening some HR nimrod would chime in about how you needed to "upskill" for that nebulous career that would soon be made redundant by some AI algorithm. Fuck that shit! It's clear to me that following the herd is a sure fire recipe for extinction.
Always a great morning to find TGC has posted another work of art. This one gave me a hankering for some Chotchkes and a side of flair. Thank you, dear Ram!
You can never have too much flair HM! I just noticed after seeing office space a dozen times back in the day (usaully on TV with nothing else good airing), the heading of the whiteboard in the conference room with the Bobs reads: Planning To Plan. After 25 years maybe I need to go back and rewatch the whole thing. Mike Judge puts out some top stuff.
Perhaps we are on the verge of free unlimited energy and combined with AI automation the owners don't want a bunch of useless eaters defiling their planet. The next bio weapon may just do the job that the fake one didn't do.
"But the same class of oligarchic parasites that gutted American industry now pose as its saviors."
This is so plainly evident that I cannot fathom how anyone can believe these people. This is all orchestrated.
Didnβt Trump sign a NAFTA replacement with Mexico and Canada back in 2018 and spend the next five years bragging about it? βMy big beautiful trade deal for America!β Trade agreements used to last generations. Under monarchs they'd last centuries. So what was so great about his last "trade deal" that it required immediately threatening both countries with 25% tariffs? He claimed they weren't "honoring it." Then a pause - off. Then back on. Then off again. It's all such unbelievable, orchestrated horseshit. Only a puppet behaves this erratic while treating his followers like fools. Only cult loyalists believe this isnβt part of a broader economic script to devalue the dollar and cheapen the debt, though probably to continue the distrust of the American dollar mafia around the world. Treasuries are already being abandoned, nobody wants to hold the debt of such a grifter nation that can't be trusted.
It's like a dead cat bounce - or maybe a dribble? - to shake out the last drops of remaining value from the economy.
I'm sure there are insiders who are making lots of "loose powder" from the rollercoaster ride that has been the stock market of late.
They are breaking the dollar right in front of our eyes = Problem.
We will scream for China heads erroneously = Reaction
Dismantle the dollar and replace with digital = Solution
Your take on Trumpβs trade policies and the USMCA is off base. The USMCA, signed in 2018, replaced NAFTA with tangible improvements: it raised the requirement for North American content in cars from 62.5% to 75%, secured better labor standards in Mexico to level the playing field for U.S. workers, and opened Canadaβs dairy market to American farmers. U.S. exports to Mexico grew to $324 billion in 2023, up 5% from 2022, showing the dealβs benefits. Trumpβs tariff threats arenβt proof of a failed agreement but a negotiating tactic to address specific issues like auto imports skirting rules or border security concerns. His on-again, off-again approach reflects flexibility, not erratic puppetryβtrade policy often involves posturing to extract concessions.
Your claim about a βbroader economic scriptβ to devalue the dollar or cheapen debt doesnβt hold up. The dollar remains the worldβs reserve currency, with over 58% of global foreign exchange reserves in USD as of 2024. Treasury yields are up (10-year at 4.2%), but demand for U.S. debt persistsβJapan and China still hold over $2 trillion combined. Dedollarization chatter exists, but itβs slow and overstated; no viable alternative rivals the dollarβs dominance. Calling the U.S. a βgrifter nationβ ignores its economic stability and global financial influence. Trumpβs moves may look chaotic, but theyβre more about leverage than a grand conspiracy. The USMCAβs still delivering, and the tariff threats are just hardball diplomacy, not evidence of a collapsing system.
On jobs, youβre overlooking a key USMCA impact: itβs helping bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and with it, jobs. Not the old-school factory gigs, but higher-skilled, higher-paying roles in AI, automation, and robotic repair. The U.S. manufacturing sector added 28,000 jobs in 2023, with a growing share in tech-driven fieldsβthink technicians maintaining AI-driven assembly lines or engineers programming robotic systems. These arenβt low-wage positions; median salaries for automation engineers hit $95,000 in 2024, outpacing traditional factory work. The USMCAβs stricter rules of origin and labor provisions incentivize companies to relocate production stateside, and weβre seeing itβIntelβs $20 billion chip plant in Ohio and Toyotaβs $1.7 billion battery factory in North Carolina are examples.
Bringing back the manufacturing base isnβt just about economics; itβs a national security imperative. Relying on foreign supply chains, especially for semiconductors or critical tech, leaves the U.S. vulnerable to disruptionsβlook at the 2021 chip shortage that crippled auto production. Domestic manufacturing strengthens resilience, reduces dependence on geopolitically risky partners, and ensures we control our tech future. Trumpβs trade policies, including tariff threats, push this agenda by making it costlier for companies to produce abroad. The USMCA is working, tariffs are a tool, and the jobs coming back are the kind that build a stronger, more secure America.
Welcome to the Great Reset!! It arrived a long time ago! They couldn't boil the frogs at a high temperature right away; they had to turn up the heat slowly! We are only a couple of years away from a complete boil cookout! Trump was installed to give the illusion that there will be a semblance of a recovery and that he will MAGA! It is theatrics, it is fake, and what is in front of us in the near future will be real and nasty! It's a good time to get right with God, no Joke!
And what does that look like? Getting right with God, I mean.
Top-notch, erudite commentary Good Citizen - dripping with the appropriate amount of disdain, disbelief, and a barely perceptible impression of hope. I will subscribe, I think you're investigating and writing impressive and necessary content.
Thanks for the kind words, Jake. And thank you for joining the flock.
I subscribed two paragraphs in.
Good work!
I am posting this on my substack, good work
https://palexander.substack.com/p/shrestha-et-al-cleveland-clinic-study-abb
if I had the power I would make reading your articles mandatory for all people over 14 years old. this piece it totally amazing. I quit school at 15 started carrying lumber.I did mostly framing concrete and roofing. I loved building things more then the money I got from it. I still drive by massive houses I framed and still get off on it.
if your father is still alive tell him to file taxes for a quarter. make up something like painting or lawn mowing. I was short one quarter for SS and just filed 2 quarters and qualified.
the dominatrix kristy noem is a luscious female. there is no better summary of the state of the US then what you wrote
GC, as expected, another thought provoking piece. And as aligned as I am with your overall philosophy one of the thoughts this column provoked was a feeling that you are overstating the case for the glories of heavy manual labor. I wonder if the people who lived that life would see it the same way. I'm not talking about those of us who did it during summers between school years, or in our early 20's while we looked for direction. But the people who lived it long term, 35 or 40 years, with all the shivering and sweating that came with it. All that ploughing of fields and building of barns wasn't usually happening in sunny 70 degree weather. There's a reason plantation owners had slaves doing most of the labor. And with the satisfaction that may indeed come with the completion of jobs well done, bum knees, herniated discs and torn rotator cuffs are often also part of the bargain. My guess is that if someone who lived this life in the 1910's was shown a movie of 21st century office life, heated in winter and cooled in summer, there's a good chance they'd make the trade. And indeed, many a man and woman who busted their arse doing manual labor in the late 20th century surely did so with the hope that their children would find a less physically taxing way to make a living.
I'm not disparaging manual labor. Quite the opposite. I admire those who can endure it. At the same time, I don't concur with you that it's a superior way to live. Nor do I discount all of your criticisms of modern occupations. Many of them are indeed soul sucking and hard to see value in. Many would go stir crazy and certainly would prefer to work construction or farming. Many others aren't durable enough for a lifetime of manual labor and are better off pushing paper. The pluses and minuses of each way of life depend on the individual.
Understandable, sensible, and well-received arguments. I do not disagree with any of it, and perhaps I wasn't clear enough about what kind of manual labor. The kind of manual labor that builds finished products and the connection between workers (not 12hr -7day a week factory or plantation labor) simply holds more rewards than the abstract "office" labor or gosplan jobs - the seat fillers that prop up economic statistics to prevent high unemployment, stave off recessions, and keep the masses pacified with just enough income to believe in the system that extorts taxes from their labor.
Of course factory or plantation slaves would have traded that spine crunching toil for paper pushing jobs in a heartbeat, but the Amish homesteader, or a new generation of young homesteaders, discovering a real, meaningful existence through labored self-sufficiency are not opting for the Urban cubicle purposeless corporate drudgery, and I believe they're ahead of the curve.
And none of this is to negate the many jobs out there that benefit society - say a good private lawyer working pro bono to ensure the system doesn't prosecute an innocent person - or a sherrif who refuses to enforce an unconstitutional law - or that German nurse who injected saline instead of mRNA poison into over 6500 elderly patients. Millions work purposeful jobs that don't require a drop of sweat, but how many of those will be going away soon?
AI can read a legal brief and memorize every word in .4 seconds, then produce the entire history of federal-related case law, with summaries, quotes, and judgments in another .4 seconds. Anything a patent, trademark, business, real estate, or corporate lawyer could do, can be done with templates now, or AI, for free, in seconds. The same goes for insurance jobs, risk analysis, hell, most office jobs can be automated, and corporations will do it once they realize a couple of AI agents (customized to each job) can do a week's worth of human work of a thousand workers in a single day. The return$ of this capital will not go to humans, but the corporations that control governments, which is why there is increasing talk of UBI crumbs for those not prepared for the world they're engineering.
Those who have already sought refuge in self-sufficiency, sourcing their own food and water, built a sturdy homestead, putting in physical labor each day, building community... to secure their future will be the only ones not desperate to tether themselves to the digital prison for UBI crumbs once this fiat house of cards collapses. Even the intelligent slaves of factory life under the industrial revolution would recognize this Faustian bargain as an impetus to abandon the leisurely and aimless paper pushing (mouse clicking) gosplan job world for the liberty that sprouts autonomy through self-sufficiency.
The case for the usefulness of AI is also overstated. Last I checked it's either wildly racist or wildly left-biased, and often completely inaccurate. Supposedly it's improving, but you still need human eyes to look at things, and you need people to direct the AI. Just throwing everything into the AI black box and hoping it all comes out OK on the other end with no human input seems to me to be a terrible strategy that sets things up for failure. Hell, the Comcast AI couldn't even help me with a problem with my cable box being "out of sync" or something along those lines (it also REFUSED to let me talk to a human no matter how many times I requested it, even though I already KNEW that I'd need a human... no, I had to repeat the same crap I'd already done 5 times already myself).
I have zero interest in a manual labor job. At my age and health, it would NOT go over well (and I hated manual labor jobs as a teenager with a passion, and was brought up to look for something better paying and less grueling). At least my office job isn't useless meetings; I do "build" stuff, mostly in SQL, which the folks at the top then use (...sometimes to make stupid decisions, but I'm not the decider, so, meh). Maybe AI can do it someday, but my understanding is that right now while you could build something faster with AI, the debugging time is longer and possibly more infuriating (probably because it's written by a machine, for a machine). Some work I do is converting shabby old Access databases into something more modern, and trying to figure out those houses of cards that someone else made can be annoying - I can only imagine trying to figure out whatever the AI engine concocted.
Those little 'bot' agents with gay names that every website has, "Ask Fred!" aren't real generative AI. They are models that have been trained at 5B or less, and can just regurgitate the FAQ section of a website, and poorly. Companies don't pay for the top models because they still cost too much per 1000 token output (.02-.05), or they haven't invested in tuning open-source models.
Using three different top paid models (sometimes one will go off the rails, or can't complete a task, so I outsource it to the other two or vice versa), I've coded dynamic applications with only prior experience as a web developer. I'm building a database for an app right now using just AI, including tables, relationships, SQL, JavaScript for edge functions, and it does each task in a matter of minutes. I debug, and copy and paste code and prompt, and repeat. I ask it for workflow from my master documents and we move on to the next tasks. Companies used to pay a dozen people to build what I'm building, and it would take them a year for thousands of dollars, whereas I'm about 50% done after a few months, working alone...paying $40 each month in AI upgrades... with zero experience. When I learned HTML and CSS during web 2.0 all of this would have been unheard of - pure crazy talk.
Those who have yet to use AI have no idea how fast it's progressing, how deadly efficient it is at concrete tasks (NOT creative tasks) and how each iteration will be better the next (every few months). when they want to deploy it to replace humans in the workforce, they'll do it. Without warning. Anyone who is not secure in their job (most private workers) should probably be using it to accelerate workflow. Those who don't will be embarrassed by the efficiency of their colleagues who do.
All excellent points. I'd add one thought to your "manual labor that builds finished products and the connection between workers (not 12hr -7day a week factory or plantation labor) simply holds more rewards than the abstract "office" labor jobs" statement. There is some abstract office labor that contributes to those finished products. I cut my teeth in 1980's finance as a cog in the mortgage backed securities (MBS) business. To be sure, at first what I was doing seemed quite abstract. Punching trade information into the firm's computer system. What am I doing? Well, as I researched the business I came to understand that those securities played a critical role in the ability of thousands of small banks across the country to offer financing to home buyers who otherwise would be unable to get a mortgage. When I saw that there was a tangible outcome to all that paper pushing it certainly gave me a better sense that I was actually contributing a teensy weensy bit to something that was worthwhile to society.
Of course, that was 40 years ago and jobs like I had at that time have long since been automated out of existence. Are there current day equivalents? I'm happy to say that I've been out of the work force for a few years, so I'm not in a great position to know. What I can say is that even in my working days there were many people I worked with who did, as you say, seem to be doing nothing more than contributing to the statistics that let the political class claim we have full employment. Their most important role was to make those of us who were actually working feel like at least there was someone who would be on the chopping block ahead of us, LOL.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful response to my initial comment GC.
Interesting work history John. My first corporate job was selling those mortgages (A paper) for a big time lender that was eventually absorbed by Chase (I think). Around late 2004, things got wonky in a hurry. The entire underwriting binder was tossed in the garbage, and anyone with a pulse was auto-approved by the computer underwriter - early software automation.
One day a sketchy realtor with a polyester leisure suit came in with an old Chinese lady wanting to do a $480k cash out refi - $50k cash back. Her husband abandoned her and went back to China. No assets, no income, no savings, and no ability to speak English. I told him it probably wasn't going to happen (he wanted to list her property after the refi and help her avoid foreclosure). That afternoon, the computer underwriter auto approved it. When I called the "risk" officer for the entire state's mortgage dept. she said, "no problem, it'll go through and she can sign in a few weeks." Before I could question the wisdom of the transaction for the bank, she asked, "Anything else?" And that was that.
About another half dozen of those so-called "A paper" loans came through (including a deaf couple buying a 1bd apartment on very low wages), and I submitted my resignation on July 4, 2006.
Two years later, living in Prague I watched the Big Short movie play out in real time. That's when all the other pieces came together - MBS, ratings agency scams, CDOs, and I understood that I was just at the bottom rung of the entire operation. I recently read somewhere that mortgage delinquencies are pushing 2008 figures again, but the government is papering over it by subsidizing the federal defaults - IOW - paying the mortgages of thousands of loans that should have defaulted, some of them years ago. More Gosplan USSA "economics" to avoid a collapse? Who knows what they're doing behind the scenes to keep up appearances?
When I started (Morgan Stanley) in 1987, 99% of the business was in the government backed agency pool sector (Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie). CMO's were just starting to bubble up, but were still pretty safe because they were all backed by agency pools. By the time the market got corrupted as you described, I was in other areas of fixed income and had no idea how far the underwriting standards had been allowed to fall. It was amazing how many stories came out similar to your polyester suit fiasco. All it took was W pushing for an "ownership society" and before you know it every asshole in the world was either A) looking for a mortgage, or B) waiting to rubber stamp asshole A's application.
Or perhaps like an American Indian giving up his well crafted, well used, custom bow at the first opportunity to obtain a rifle. We all gravitate toward making the curse of Adam easier.
For those unfamiliar, you might wan to pick up the book "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. It talks about the meaning of work.
And yeah... West Israel. For years, it was said that Israel was our 51st state. In reality, we are a territory of Israel.
One of the most important books I ever read, along with Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death.
I read that book 25 years ago ...thought it was ok...but later found out Frankl was a liar. Turns out he was only at Auschwitz on a train lay-over. He also was involved as a hospital doctor doing dangerous experimental brain interventions on unsuspecting victims before WWII (in Austria I believe -if memory serves). Sadly I have learned that most of the Holohoax memoirs i read years ago, were fabricated out of whole cloth.
I'm stunned, but apparently, your info is true.
That being said, I don't think the conclusions that Frankl puts forth are wrong-- man needs meaning in his life to be fulfilled.
Brilliant as always, Good Citizen. A few additions: Yes, the purpose of the tariffs is not against China but against the US consumer. We are being priced out of living.
Before Appalachians worked in factories, they were homesteaders who'd carved out and cultivated the land, keeping it in the family for generations. William Morris with the help of Alex Hamiltoon took their land under the pretense of no deeds (which didn't exist at the time) and later by tricking them into mining agreements that were supposed to only be for what was under the ground but ended up stripping them.
Oh and you've read David Graeber's Bullshit jobs, yes? He makes much the same point.
Last, Auschwitz was build as a tourist attraction after WWII. In Dachau, the majority of inhabitants were Catholic. 15M Germans were killed, starved, enslaved or exiled AFTER the end of WWII. WWII was caused by WWI where the Bolshevik AshkeNazis of Germany betrayed her and caused the US to enter the war--after Germany had won and offered peace with no reparations--in exchange for the Balfour Declaration.
So the Great Reset is being brought to you by the same people who brought it to Germany. Buyer beware.
I remember in the 70's and early 80's when I worked on peoples houses or rebuilt a collapsing barn they greatly admired the work that was being done and respected me. but for the last 40 years people now look down on hard workers in the trades and tell their kids they will never do that work. I had a 30 year old woman tell her son in front of me when the kid showed interest in what I was doing...you will never do that kind of work. saw and heard that many times
There was a family of Serbs in the neighborhood where I grew up. The uncle was a plumber who had settled there for years. One year, his nephews showed up and enrolled in our high school (NATO war refugees). Smart, diligent, and learned English quickly. After high school, they went to work as apprentice plumbers. By 25, they each had their own crew, and by 30 they were earning double what all the kids of parents who assumed college was essential were earning without any debt. When I ran into the older nephew last around age 35, he was happily married, had a big house, three kids, and his wife didn't need to work. Parents who scream, "you're going to college and that's final!" still don't realize most BS degrees today are worth less than a GED in 1950, and so they make their kids' future more about them and their egos - community perception. It'll be a long time before robots replace plumbers, mechanics, electricians, and home builders, and that's where the cheddar and dignified work will still be.
for 35 years I have told every young kid and all the sons of guys I know exactly the same thing you said about college and always told them about plumbers. being on the job I saw they made the most on a new house then any others.
I would frame complicated roofs with offset hips octagon turrets and make less then then the sewer rats did. there is even more money in house calls. it was the parents who would not allow their little darlings to get their hands dirty and told them to go to college like you said.
another thing is a White kid will have to battle non whites trannies homos women dykes and communists to even get in a good college and battle the same people for jobs and housing
A well articulated tour de force.
βThose who gutted that America still walk freeβnever tried, never forced to answer for their treason, never drawn, quartered, or hanged. They sit on corporate boards, sip wine at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and whisper policy into the ears of their oligarch masters, while the kin of the gutted manage quiet despair, buried in debt, drowning in pills, dying slow deaths by OxyContin and fentanyl.
Those towns now lie still. Main streets boarded up. Church bells silenced. Family homes turned into trap houses. The mills collapsed into rust. The factories were auctioned off to the lowest bidder. What remains are fentanyl deaths, unemployment lines, and strip malls full of pawn shops and probation offices. Purdue Pharma (Sackler Family- still billionaires and free) finished the job the politicians and their corporate masters beganβmassacring the remnants of a class they first hollowed out and then buried in paperwork, unemployment lines, and despair. Today Appalachia rots, and not a single rich man north of Richmond gives a damn because there are no lobbyists for unemployed coal miners.β
I was born and raised in an industrial Appalachian town. Now mostly brown fields and decaying housing occupied by dying elderly or passed on to children unable to find anything but service jobs or addiction. I left for college and to pursue a career my hometown could not provide. Now returned to witness a landscape as you describe. Started a business meant for my sons but struggle due to unproductive trade workers overwhelmed with family social issues and drugs.
Current economic gyrations are in no way about reindustrializion. If so there would be a multipoint plan to provide incentive. From my perspective, all see is a push for militarization and giveaways to tech oligarchs. Those are careers for the few. Not a large general population.
I want to memorize and recite your brilliant rant at the "conclusions"...preach! Its exactly what I try to get my kids and others to comprehend and embrace (born in the 60's and still work as does husband in manual labor-only way to be fulfilled is to use your body to create something that wasn't there yesterday.
Fantastic essay! It took me on a real journey.
"a numbing loop of neurobiological sedation"
precisely, sleepwalkers galore!
"..warrior crescent pose..." I had to look this up. Lord almighty! Did that ever get used again and again and again ad-nauseum. There was an expression used, long before the covidian psyop, something from the UK I believe... "up skill"... Which simply meant you needed to "get with the program" and figger out what in the hell will pay you to survive. Being in IT I saw how my role was being shipped overseas. Part of that grand and glorious globalization. They told us "learn to code" until the day arrived where cheap programmers were outsourced once again making you redundant. And every time you asked what in the hell was happening some HR nimrod would chime in about how you needed to "upskill" for that nebulous career that would soon be made redundant by some AI algorithm. Fuck that shit! It's clear to me that following the herd is a sure fire recipe for extinction.
Always a great morning to find TGC has posted another work of art. This one gave me a hankering for some Chotchkes and a side of flair. Thank you, dear Ram!
You can never have too much flair HM! I just noticed after seeing office space a dozen times back in the day (usaully on TV with nothing else good airing), the heading of the whiteboard in the conference room with the Bobs reads: Planning To Plan. After 25 years maybe I need to go back and rewatch the whole thing. Mike Judge puts out some top stuff.
Perhaps we are on the verge of free unlimited energy and combined with AI automation the owners don't want a bunch of useless eaters defiling their planet. The next bio weapon may just do the job that the fake one didn't do.
Welcome to Bleak House.