The 89% Pay Cut That Brought Trump-Mania to America's Heartland

[Purveyor]

March 28, 2016

Amid the rugged cattle farms that dot the hills of southern Kentucky, in a clearing just beyond the Smoke Shack BBQ joint and the Faith Baptist Church, lie the remains of the A.O. Smith electric-motor factory.

It’s been eight years since the doors were shuttered. The building’s blue-metal facade has faded to a dull hue, rust is eating away at scaffolding piled up in the back lot and crabgrass is taking over the lawn. At its zenith, the plant employed 1,100 people, an economic juggernaut in the tiny town of Scottsville, population 4,226.

Randall Williams and his wife, Brenda, were two of those workers. For three decades, they helped assemble the hermetically sealed motors that power air conditioners sold all across America. At the end, they were each making $16.10 an hour. That kind of money’s just a dream now: Randall fills orders at a local farm supply store; Brenda works in the high school cafeteria. For a while, he said, their combined income didn’t even add up to one of their old factory wages.

Just as the Williamses were being informed by A.O. Smith that they’d be let go, a young Mexican woman named Zoraida Gonzalez was hired some 1,200 miles away in the hardscrabble town of Acuna, just over the Rio Grande from Texas. To replace its Kentucky output, A.O. Smith was ramping up production in lower-cost Mexico, a move facilitated by the signing a decade earlier of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Gonzalez was brought in to help handle phone calls.

Now 30 years old and in charge of payroll, she makes about $1.75 an hour, on par with wages earned on the plant’s assembly line. It may not seem like much by U.S. standards. (Or, for that matter, to some of the workers toiling in the heat of Acuna’s factories.) To Gonzalez, though, the money has been life-changing. It’s given her things she says her mother never had: a washing machine, cable TV, a Ford Freestar minivan that she shares with her boyfriend, daily zumba classes at a nearby gym and the hope that her 11-year-old son, Angel, will be the first member of her family to attend college.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-28/the-89-pay-cut-that-brought-trump-mania-to-america-s-heartland

[MisterP]

1. right, while Clintonism burns down the country for the insurance money, pops the champagne

with the people profiting from it, and basically dismisses any complaints as whinging by racist meatheads who need to get with the times; instead of the old corporations and their balding, secretary-grabbing WASP execs the Dems would go after new, diverse sectors that relied on smartness--Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street

so as you can see Clintonism's utterly unprepared to face Trumpism, already relying entirely on personality over character and everyone just voting out of dead inertia

meanwhile Trump's openly saying more government aid and less interventionism and getting his support by crapping all over Reagan's legacy

[Baobab]

10. We need to ush harder for free education. if you're not moving forward, you're falling behind

All those kinds of jobs will be automated soon. they are NOT the future, they are the past. In 20 years there wont be any jobs for the unskilled at all. it willbe a huge global ghetto if we don't all get moving to create a world where learning and doing good things with that knowledge is the #1 priority for everybody of all ages.

[MisterP]

12. actually we're overeducated already--jobs that used to require only HS now need a bachelor's

because there are so many BA/Ss being produced; we're out of IT jobs because of H1Bs, not because we've "turned our back on science"--STEM degrees are overproduced, too; people get degree after degree and still can't leave home because the qualifications keep keeping pace and the mounting debt makes them more and more in need of the job

the industrial base wasn't outdated, it was just sold to Mexico and the PRC, and "smart jobs" were supposed to replace it

people were panicking about robotics in the 70s, too

[Baobab]

15. Are you one of those people who thinks things arent changing?

Looks like it.

>"people were panicking about robotics in the 70s, too"

I'm not going to argue with you, but things are changing a lot faster than most people think.

People underestimate the rate of change- because its what they are used to. The only people who realize how fast things are changing are those who have experienced it firsthand. So its quite understandable, but, wrong.

Don't listen to me, thats okay. Im just explaining this.

be aware though, Its a consistent mistake thats made a lot.

[Hoyt]

2. Yet, there are people right here who will say "screw Zoraida Gonzalez and her 11-year-old son," who

might just be the first to go to college because his mom is doing so much better than before. Thing are a lot more complicated than people believe.

[raging moderate]

3. If things were run right, we wouldn't have to choose between Mexican vs US prosperity.

We could have both.

[Hoyt]

4. We could, but we don't. Fact is, we have a lot of Nationalists even in the Democratic Party.

[Baobab]

16. They would have to settle for lower profits

Global capital would desert us for some other country that was racing to the bottom faster. Or so they say.

the Ponzi scheme would collapse. We've been living high on the hog, you see.

[saturnsring]

5. so... screw randall and his wife now their kids wont be going to college

[Hoyt]

7. Randall has a lot more options than Zoraida.

[saturnsring]

9. that makes it ok then and im sure it'll be a comfort to them

this is an example of race to the bottom

[Baobab]

17. neither has many options.

unless we stop worshiping money

[Hoyt]

19. That might be true, but when we talk about a women in Mexico with a child, they have a future

that wasn't even a dream before which includes food, a place to live, and a better chance for her son. Someday, unless our Nationalists win, Mexico will progress to the point where lots of people will have that chance. It took us a long time, now it's their turn. It didn't happen all the sudden with us.

[Baobab]

20. I really hope so, that would be great

its so horrible all the violence

also, we all don't want this again either..

[Hoyt]

21. We could probably help stop that too by liberalizing our drug and immigration laws.

[Bugenhagen]

13. Well, yeah, just so long as corporate profits increase.

/sarcasm
/bitterness

[saturnsring]

6. Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank critical of free-trade deals, estimat

Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank critical of free-trade deals, estimates these deficits with Mexico alone have cost 850,000 Americans their jobs.

[Hoyt]

8. Yeah he, like a lot of economists, multiply 6000 or so jobs by every billion of deficit to come up

with those estimates. Fact is, if we didn't buy goods made in Mexico -- say cars or guitars -- we'd buy them from Asia. American cars have been losers for decades, although they are getting better. American made guitars are the best in the world in my opinion, but they'll cost you two to three times what you can get from Mexico of Asia -- that are very good if you know what you are looking for.

And, that is a pretty Nationalistic view.

[Baobab]

11. factories are coming back..

by automating. So, those kinds of jobs arent. A factory that might have employed 1000 people likely can run on 150 now, if that. that is just technology. Its a good thing , we have to adjust to it.

neoliberalism is trying to take over the future and get rid of safety nets so that we can't adjust. it wants a race to the bottom on wages.

Hillary is a neoliberal. So is Obama So are all of the GOP, i suspect.

[Baobab]

18. Lots of people die at jobs.

jobs are often dangerous.

[Person 2713]

14. Every non reason you need to vote for trump right there