Good article.
Seems like the Corbyn/Sanders movement wasn't so much fuelled by blue collar working class wanting to lift themselves up, but rather by the white collar uni/college graduates wanting to avoid downward social mobility.
The disappointment at the diminishing returns of the expanding higher education was at the core.
Lot of talk about free college & uni, which is a good idea. But didn't hear ANY democrat mention the awesome union apprenticeship system even once in the debates?
@LeoSammallahti Your argument for union apprenticeship makes the assumption that it's a viable option. I don't know about the UK, but Thatcher and Reagan put both on a similar course. In the USA, union jobs are hard to come by and they don't pay nearly as good as in the past.
The article doesn't mention outsourcing, which is a key factor in the decline of both union and office jobs (now including management). Outsourcing in manufacturing is due as much to looser regulations ...
@LeoSammallahti ...reducing costs as to cost of labor. In engineering and management, it's mostly salary and benefits cost, so it has been a slower adoption.
Hardware engineering was hit much harder than software engineering, because the costs are fully understood. Software has not adopted a viable measurement definition, so it is still "magic" to management (and unfortunately many practitioners). This same mechanism has made management view software engineers as fungible...
Outsourcing point is good.
Regarding union apprenticeships, the system in the US works still quite well, and provides good and well paid jobs.
It's under attack by the Republicans, but I didn't hear any Democrat address how to defend and improve it.
Lot of talk about college and university education though.
@LeoSammallahti Yes. I agree that the emphasis on college is unsustainable. The majority of the jobs in the USA is in the low paid service sector, and that's also where the biggest shortage lies.
Obviously not accusing you of this sort of rhetoric, but rather the politicians and the media both in the left and right.
@lwriemen
There is also a well intentioned but bit snobbish undertone in the whole "equality of opportunity" narrative.
It can easily come across as "We will give everyone an opportunity to go to college, but if you don't, you are a loser (probably with a bad mother that lacks cultural capital)."
Of course we should give more equal opportunities to go to college, but we should also focus at least as much to think how to improve life for those who don't go.