Thoughts on the decline of middle America? Is it globalization or just poor planning and ignorance? Immigration?

This. Automation and efficiency have completely unraveled rural and blue collar work and it's only going to get worse. Pretty much the only thing that could save rural regions now is automation magically reversing itself.

post God-tier books on rural America

too much baby-boomer filth.

>immigrants are a non-factor
You are a fucking idiot.

>make free trade agreements that ship industry to countries with cheaper labor
>only thing we have left are farms
>advocate for open/porous borders
>demonize anyone who's against stronger borders
>don't properly enforce laws against companies (farms) hiring illegals
>all of the agriculture jobs are taken by Mexicans and Central Americans because they'll do it for cheaper than an American
>companies will literally hire a bunch of Americans and Mexicans, then fire all the Americans over weeks to skirt labor laws about having to hire Americans
>Cesar Chavez and his group would patrol the border and fought the Bracero Program because they knew the end result would lead to undercutting of the American worker and exploitation of the immigrant worker; he was right
Immigration is a non-factor though. Open borders exist largely to flood the first world with cheap second/third world labor and nothing more.

Immigration also increases the demand for housing, medical care, and education, all of which have sky rocketed and lowered natives purchasing power.

Immigrants also tend to be poorer, and resources that go to EITC, food stamps, ESL teachers, etc. for immigrants reduce the amount of money for natives since as a whole immigrants are less likely to be net contributors to the welfare state than natives in the US.

The amount is by no means small. If America had kept it's pre-1970 immigration laws, which still allowed a lot of immigration our population would be 270 million verses 320 today.

Immigration also drives up inequality and makes class politics harder since people are divided on ethnic and religious lines. So part of the poor planning is tied to the politics generated by mass migration.

>Construction/Farming Jobs

If you're a white american you can get these jobs easily but seasonality is a bitch and the pay isnt what they feel is their worth for the pain.

>White Collar Jobs

If you have a skill in this and you arent totally stupid, you can easily find a job but you might have to move to a big city area

We've lost the relatively easy jobs with security and pay. Even if we move all factory jobs back to the states, the cost of labor would mean robots are mostly doing the jobs anyways.

I guess people don't want to hear this but a cushy life for 50% of the population is no longer an easy option and that we seriously have no viable alternatives at this point. Even truck and cab driving will become automated at some point.

>immigrants are less likely to be net contributors to the welfare state than natives in the US

On average immigrants are more likely to be net contributors to the welfare state

Maybe if you break it down by country source it could be true, but this isnt the case as is.

Samefagging here but there's also the negative result on those other countries i.e. destroying Mexican agriculture and causing a drain in labor as they migrate to the United States.

Not even a commie or anything myself; all countries should be free from clutches of globalism and neoliberalism.

If you remove blacks from native households it would go down even further.

Productivity hasn't risen in years

*expensive employees for cheap ones

Brown and yellow people are perfectly willing to trade native employees for foreign ones too, including whites.

What gets me is that people accept automation in everything as a fait accompli. The day's coming where we won't even be able to drive ourselves anywhere and people just seem resigned to it.

>if we had people till their own wheat or make a car by hand we wouldn't have unemployment

The viable option is scaling back of essentially everything and not living on a global scale. The scale of the world and connectedness of it has become utterly infeasible. Everything is done globally now, not locally (or even nationally). As long as we're living in a world that requires everything done as quickly and cheaply as possible things are only going to get worse until the entire system collapses or utopia magically appears.

Bring back serfdom.

I'm only half-joking when I say that. It's not nice at all but a somewhat symbiotic relationship with a feudal lord where you're guaranteed some level of work vs. a wholly parasitic relationship by the global elites that provides nothing for nobody except cheap entertainment to distract them.

Again, the scale of everything has become completely unwieldy.

Sure, but in those times handmade goods will likely become a serious luxury and create a role more akin to Craftsmen of previous centuries. Yeah, the mediocre or mundane workers will no longer be necessary, but there will be a place for skilled craftsmen

>my brain can't comprehend the scale so we should destroy economies of scale and go back to backbreaking labor.

Bullshit. Globalization is being used as a stop gate so companies can put off investing in automation, allowing them to maximize short term profit

So what's your alternative? The scale we live on nowadays and the scale of the global economy require automation to make it work. This then means that more people will be put out of work and more people will now have to compete for less jobs as industrial work, things like trucking, retail, etc. become automated. And even then, when things advance, all of the FIRE jobs can eventually be done by robots and computers too so then those guys will start joining the trucker, factory worker and burger flipper in the unemployment line.

So what do you propose we do? Sit around and wait until the robots are doing all of our jobs and then rebel and kill us all when they gain sentience?

Immigrants factor into everything, good or bad.

The only solution is mass scale population decrease globally. It will happen when we reach peak. Then logarithmic population dynamics will take effect.

The obvious solution is to cut working hours. If we have federally mandated 30 hour week, say, the demand for labour will go up.

It's also about fucking time, really. What's the point of economic growth if we don't have the time to enjoy it?

I'm fine with cutting hours but wages would need to start rising drastically to compensate for it. I mean they should be rising anyway but they'd have to rise even more.

A lot of things caused it but I think one of the biggest factors is the way mainstream American culture became completely merciless towards rural whites. Hillbillies and rednecks have always been the butt of jokes but then again so was everyone else and its easier being mocked when you're not being singled out. However the whole political correctness movement in media changed that and it was no longer okay to make fun of blacks or mexicans or gays or any other minority but it was still fine to joke at the expense of those inbred dumb cousin-kissin trailer trash. Furthermore, the media started to frame poverty as something that only affects non-whites because after all if you have "white privilege" you're not *really* poor. You can see this especially in the messaging from the Democratic party that basically equated poverty with being a minority and this is part of the reason why Democrats don't win the poor white vote despite being the party that is supposed to represent their interests.

Essentially poor whites got completely left behind by American culture that didn't depict them as anything other than a joke or a nuisance. The poverty that affects black communities is given tremendous dignity by the media and there are innumerable documentaries, news reports and popular music that put a spotlight on black poverty and shame the audience into doing something to help them. Meanwhile poor whites suffer anonymously and in silence as they are completely written off as racist rednecks who deserve whatever they get. A vivid example of this dichotomy is the tremendous attention that the crack epidemic in black communities received in the media while the opiate epidemic that has wrought similar turmoil in poor white communities is barely touched on. The suffering of poor whites has basically been erased from mainstream American consciousness and they are disappearing as a result.

This, basically. It benefits the top 30% of society greatly, and they run everything, they make the laws, so it's kind of inevitable.