I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento
As David Runciman has pointed out in his book How Democracy Ends and on the Talking Politics podcast - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;71-how-democracy-ends" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;71-how-demo...</a> - if you could only ask one question of someone you&#x27;d never met before, which would give you the best possibility of guessing whether they&#x27;d voted for Brexit, it would be whether they went to university (Remain) or not (Leave). He argues that, in the UK at least, there&#x27;s a bubble of professional politicians who all went to university and were completely blindsided by the result of the Brexit referendum because they knew almost no-one who&#x27;d consider (or admit to) voting Leave.<p>Also John Lanchester&#x27;s compelling (to me) argument that the bailing out of the banks after the crash (which was, on balance, right) followed quickly by austerity (where everyone else unfairly picked up the cheque for the bailout) lead directly to Brexit and Trump, because people were (to paraphrase the film Network) &quot;mad as hell, and not going to take this anymore!&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lrb.co.uk&#x2F;v40&#x2F;n13&#x2F;john-lanchester&#x2F;after-the-fall" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lrb.co.uk&#x2F;v40&#x2F;n13&#x2F;john-lanchester&#x2F;after-the-fall</a><p>It really does feel that the university crowd (which I&#x27;m a part of) have completely detached from the lives of large chunks of the rest of the country. I get that this account of Amazon workplaces may be rose-tinted. Perhaps this facility is run by a good manager, and others aren&#x27;t. But as it says, for this to be a specific kind of evil it needs to be compared to all other jobs in a similar environment. There are things that can be made better, sure, as there always are. But I find quite a bit of this middle-class hand-wringing tricky because it always seems to be well-paid journalists going &quot;undercover&quot;. They&#x27;d probably find any manual labour degrading when compared to their comfortable Aeron chairs and plate-glass offices.