Dem
47
GOP
53
Paul Krugman wrote another interesting posting about Charlie Kirk. Last week, we had an item about Krugman's view that what Kirk was selling to young men is the idea that women were put on earth to serve men, not compete with them. In his follow-up, Krugman took a closer look at men and economics. Here is the key graph:
The graph shows the percentage of men 25-54 who are not working and not seeking work. Before 1960, it was below 3%. Now it is above 10%. There is something going on here. Men who should be working aren't. Some of them were looking to Kirk for help.
A little bit of that is caused by women entering the workforce, but factory automation and foreign competition are much bigger factors, especially for "manly jobs." After all, how many women are lumberjacks or mine for coal or do heavy work on construction sites? MAGA, including Donald Trump and Kirk, have been exploiting "male rage" by blaming the problem alternately on cheating foreign countries, immigrants, lying environmentalists, solar energy nuts, the deep state and sneering intellectuals.
The trouble is that while these excuses may make unemployed (and unemployable) men feel their situation is not their fault, it doesn't actually solve the problem. And inexorable economic trends are making it worse, as "manly jobs" (e.g., working on an oil rig) are giving way to "womanly jobs," (e.g., in health care). Kirk's solution, telling women to marry young and have lots and lots of kids, really isn't going to help the men much because women are not going to follow his orders.
What Krugman says the Democrats need to do is to recognize that the problem is real (see graph above) and come up with actual solutions. One is to make "female-coded jobs" more attractive by paying them better. Men are quite capable at teaching. (V) had a male teacher in elementary school. Nothing wrong with that. As medical equipment gets more complicated, men can be encouraged to train to be lab, x-ray, MRI, and other technologists in hospitals. Also dental assistants, EMTs, pharmacy technicians, and other health-care jobs that don't require a college degree. Nothing wrong with that if the pay is good.
Community college and vocational education could be free. Apprenticeship programs could be subsidized. Green energy could be protected by tariffs, so the manufacture, installation, and maintenance of solar panels and wind turbines could be sold to the public as programs to create blue-collar "manly" jobs. Just downplay the spotted owl. Providing broadband Internet to rural areas requires digging trenches with heavy equipment or stringing optical fibers from telephone poles. Sounds like "men's work" to us. In short, a focused, coordinated, very explicit and realistic program that is (nominally) aimed at men should be one of the pillars of the Democrats' platform, argues Krugman, along with pointing out that job opportunities have gotten worse, not better, during Trump's reign. (V)