[temp246810]

The sad thing that I've observed is that any mention that this gets in the media or any earnest attempt to address this gets met with:

"Oh now that it's white people dealing with drugs, it's a crisis. America is so racist".

That's a load of crap on so many levels. I hope we figure out our next chapter here as a society.

[ebola1717]

It's true though. We talk about the loss of industrial jobs and NAFTA as a white working class phenomenon, despite the fact that people of all races are affected. We pathologized drug use for decades, until the recent opioid crisis hit rural areas. We talk about the loss of mining jobs, but rarely mention the loss of retail jobs. The Brookings report showed that while white people are dying more, they're still dying at lower rates than blacks. Gentrification, which is a huge economic issue for marginalized populations, is batted away as the way things have to be. Not to mention the treatment of issues like redlining. The biggest political impediment to social welfare policies that would have helped poor white communities has always been "welfare queen" rhetoric that pathologizes black poverty. Moving forward as a country requires us to acknowledge the racial biases in the ways we talk about economic issues.

[ChrisLTD]

Why is it a load of crap on so many levels?

To take one example, the media and politicians have put a huge spotlight on the plight of coal and manufacturing job losses, while only recently did we learn that in fact we're losing even more retail jobs. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/the-sil...

Want to guess at the racial and gender makeup of those manufacturing jobs vs. retail?

[jnicholasp]

I'm not making an argument here, since I don't know the answer to my question, but is it possible that a higher proportion of coal and manufacturing jobs were traditionally living wage, support-a-family type jobs, as compared to retail jobs? And if so, wouldn't it be reasonable to focus attention on the losses in the two categories somewhat differently?

[ChrisLTD]

That's an interesting point, but it leads me to a different conclusion. Given the higher numbers of people employed in retail, shouldn't we focus more attention on the fact that those jobs can't support a family?

[jnicholasp]

> those jobs can't support a family

Should they be able to? Absent some kind of deliberate regulatory or collective-bargaining action to prop up the price of labor in a given category, I assume the prevailing wages tend to reflect an implicit agreement between employers and potential employees on what that labor is worth. What is the argument for propping up the price of labor beyond what people are willing to do it for?

Or, put another way, what is the argument for why jobs should be seen as existing for the sake of giving workers enough money to live on, rather than as existing because some people want certain things done and are willing to pay a certain amount to have them done? In the second case, the value of having certain things done is not infinitely variable: some actions will create x value in the world, and can only be worth doing if they cost <x to do. Requiring that those actions be paid >=x will simply mean that those things will cease to exist. Is it a better world if we regulate out of existence those jobs whose performance is worth less than a family-supporting wage?

[ChrisLTD]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. The argument for propping up the price of labor is that 1) we don't want working people to starve on the streets, 2) politically we've decided it's not the government's job to keep able-bodied workers off the streets. #1 is clearly right, while #2 should be up for debate.

As for wage floors killing jobs, the effect would depend on the height of the floor. Modest increases in the minimum wage have had practically no effect on employment, but I'm sure massive hikes would cause problems.

[jnicholasp]

Thank you, too.

I'm not convinced that propping up the price of labor directly follows from your point 1), which I do of course agree with. It seems better to me that the government do what it can to encourage the creation of jobs that are valuable enough to support living wages, rather than mandate that jobs which are not valuable enough to do so cannot legally exist. The former, I think, encourages creativity and the development of new possibilities, while the latter restricts freedom and limits the diversity of the economic ecology.

[wcummings]

Harder to unionize service and retail workers unfortunately.

[wcummings]

It's because it's hard to unionize retail. Manufacturing is nearly synonymous with union jobs in this context.

[jnicholasp]

Why is it hard to unionize retail?

My (naive) guess would be that retail is a less-skilled job, so attempts by labor-groups to make themselves a controlled source of labor supply are easily circumvented by the readiness with which those jobs can be filled by nearly anyone. Whereas manufacturing jobs that involve some degree of skill are more able to corner the market on their own labor, and thus better able to negotiate from a position of power.

[wcummings]

A few notions, in order from what I think is most likely/important to least:

1. Retail involves large numbers of part-time workers, making the workforce harder to organize.

2. An idle factory is incredibly costly to the owners. Factory workers have more leverage.

3. Employer hostility/union breaking efforts, you need only spend a few minutes on google to find some nasty stories about wally world or your least favorite retail chain.

4. Lack of identity: if the last few years have taught us anything, it should be that people in manufacturing clearly have integrated their jobs into their identity. You can see programmers et al doing the same thing right here on HN every day. I doubt most people in retail consider "working in retail" to be an important part of who they are in the same way factory workers or programmers might.

5. Men ("breadwinners") have historically worked in manufacturing and women have historically worked in retail, lack of focus on retail historically by organizers

A more interesting question that "Why is it hard to unionize retail?" is "Why is it hard to unionize programmers?" I don't have as many good answers for that one. #3 is the only one which applies to programmers.

[fav_collector]

You're sort of proving his point.

Manufacturing and coal towns are isolated. Manufacturing and coal are sometimes literally the only fields with jobs available in those towns.

Retail is generally located in places with many opportunities

[nonaime]

But you've missed his point about the racial gender make up of those who are employed in those types of jobs. Especially in places with "many opportunities".

[heavyheavy]

In my perspective, it IS racist that American cares so much about rehabilitation and empathy for the white drug problem while the black drug issue was dealt with with violence and tearing apart famalies. Is it wrong to want white drug users to go to jail just like black ones were?

[marcosdumay]

You tell me. It is wrong to make things worse for everybody just because when it was less worse for a powerful group it was ignored?

[okreallywtf]

The issue is this problem never went away. Minorities are still being punished disproportionately for drug use [1]. I don't think that we should let spite dictate our reaction to the opioid crisis but it indicates maybe its time to stop pretending that the drug war was a necessary evil, especially given we might be about to double-down on it (and most likely continuing to disproportionately convict minorities) [2].

[1] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/141027_iachr... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-sessions-vows-to-ramp-up...

[marcosdumay]

So, you think it's wrong and that we should strive to make things better for everybody. I can agree with that.

[okreallywtf]

Yes, but I can understand well enough where that sentiment comes from to not overreact when other people find it frustrating that we find empathy on drug issues that affect large numbers of white people. It doesn't have to be right for it to make sense and to have enough class to not pretend the drug war never happened. Just acknowledge it and take the high road.

[rfrank]

> Is it wrong to want white drug users to go to jail just like black ones were?

Yes, if you're of the "drugs should be legal" perspective. Revenge isn't justice.

[nonaime]

Revenge isn't the answer. The answer for the problem presented is for other groups to receive the same empathy that poor whites are receiving. For other groups the answer is "we'll build more jails".

[Steuard]

I think that the despair that people in these situations are facing is terrible and destructive and yes, a crisis. We need to find some way as a society to address the deep structural issues that has created this malaise. It's a really big deal.

But... can you explain why it's a load of crap to point out that this crisis of despair and drugs and early death is being treated differently than previous ones that mostly affected blacks and other minorities? Reporters could have written awfully similar articles about hopelessness in the inner city at just about any point in the past few decades, and at least a few of them did, but society's response wasn't "Oh no, how could we have let this happen? How can we give them hope and a future worth living for?" as it is in this case, but rather the War on Drugs and mass incarceration and police militarization and condemnation of black culture (and many other minority cultures).

To be clear, I'm absolutely not advocating for white, rural America to be targeted by no-knock raids and public blame for its own predicament! I think that "How can we help?" should be the response to all crises like this. But we as a society are still heavily invested in the War on Drugs and a whole host of other forms of structural racism. So yes, I'd be a lot more comfortable with this treatment of the drug crisis facing white communities if it were going hand in hand with a similar reevaluation of the parallel challenges facing minority communities as well. But it's not.