With His Job Gone, an Autoworker Wonders, ‘What Am I as a Man?’
I think the most important thing here is the difference in outlook. The people in this story lived their lives with the assumption that they will live the same lives as their parents. This hasn&#x27;t been true since the industrial revolution (&gt;80% of people working in agriculture shrunk to ~2%). This reminds me of British coal-workers striking over layoffs, even though they would receive the same paycheck for life if they were laid off. Their rationale is that they were striking for their <i>children&#x27;s</i> future jobs in the coal mine. That just struck me as depressing, that parents just assumed that their kids&#x27; lot in lives would be a coal miner just like them. Maybe this is the immigrant mentality that people talk about, but<p>&gt; Cheering the deal might check a political box for the president, but getting hired by the buyer would probably mean making $11 an hour, he said, a wage he last made in his early 20s. “It would be back to square one after 25 years in the plant,” he said.<p>Rick seems to be following the same line of thinking. The notion of working in a different industry just doesn&#x27;t seem to be considered.<p>This is probably one of the best times in recent history to start looking for a job. Unemployment is at record lows, and growth is fairly strong. I think the biggest issue here isn&#x27;t layoffs, it&#x27;s people putting their sense of identity into their job instead of viewing it as a transaction. 80% of employees at the beginning of the 20th century worked in industries that are either non-existent or drastically smaller by the end of the 20th century. I see no reason why we should expect the 21st century to be any different. Rick&#x27;s assumption that he would work in the same industry as his father for the entirety of his life seems to be the biggest culprit here, not NAFTA.