Posted on 09/01/2016 4:21:23 PM PDT by pabianice
"...Now many in that class are turning 58 years old, and Butler is a shell of what it was four decades ago, with the mills long-since shuttered or shrunk — casualties of the globalized steel industry — taking most of the jobs and that old sense of security with them. People here are approaching their golden years with a sense of bitterness about the new, unforgiving economy and foreboding about what they will have to show for this life. Something their parents could count on — a comfortable retirement, debt-free and maybe in a warmer place — seems out of the question to many who say they see themselves scratching out a living until they are buried in the cemetery on the hillside near Connoquenessing Creek.
As interviews with more than a dozen in the Butler High School class of 1976 show, many of those bright-eyed 18-year-olds now feel weary, worn, baffled, furious. They were raised to work hard without complaining. But such stoicism is hard when the old dream they were sure was theirs is slipping away and with it any confidence that the country and its leaders understand their plight or care enough to try to help.
Many voice regret at some of their own choices, that they didn’t put away more money sooner, and sorrow that they will now have to work, as one woman put it, “until the day of my funeral.”
There is frustration, too, and plentiful disgust, at the state of the government and of politics more broadly — an outlook that leads some but not all toward Donald Trump, a candidate they feel is speaking for them like no one before. Or at least not speaking like the politicians they have come to resent...
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
Well, YOU’RE a bundle of good cheer, aintcha?
Haha!
If Trump gets elected, expect the Fed to raise rates and crash it all. The globalists want America to fail. Trump may not have the right friends, but he certainly has the right enemies.
O'Brien is holding "five" fingers up. The Party says so.
YOU still think there are four.
“I’ve never seen multi-generational employment in a factory as an indicator of a strong economy.”
You must have not read the article. It mentions that those factory workers retired at 55 with a company pension and health care.
That type of work may not measure up to your standards, but the ones who retired at age 55 with a pension probably are happy they worked there.
If a country has no manufacturing base, they don’t really have an economy.
Gimme a break. The author wasn’t meaning to slight people of similar circumstances in choosing to write about those in Butler, PA. That was just smart-ass comment that contributed nothing to a serious discussion of the many everywhere who are facing hard times and broken dreams and promises.
The thing about Trump, is that he's an optimist. Me, not so much. I'm voting for Trump. Maybe his optimism can right America and make us great again. He's the best we have to go with right now, because the alternative (Hillary) will certainly doom us all. The debt load of this country scares the crap out of me. With so much GDP going to service the interest on the deficit, there is very little left to keep our nation from going under. Trump thinks he can make us productive again in the short run, and increase the GDP greatly to knock down the deficit while having extra money to rebuild our military and fix problems.
What you said, can happen. What if Democrats pick up more Senate and House seats? Trump, if elected, will face a hostile group of enemies throwing roadblocks into his path. I hope Trump is elected. I hope he is eternally optimistic and spreads hope. Because we really, really, need something to lift our heads from despair about the future.
There a people meant to stamp widgets and there are people made to start and run companies.
Both have a place in the world.
I'm sure the ones who retired at the age of 55 are happy. The problem is that their former employers can only survive by hiring as few Americans as possible. You can only do this with one generation before the entire house of cards collapses.
This is exactly why U.S. manufacturing employment is in decline -- and Pennsylvania is a microcosm of the whole system.
This from the Boston Globe????
Heck, they’ve worked hard for the One-World Marxist economy.
I agree, but that was not my point. The poster seemed to not like factories. My point is that the country needs factories.
there are no hillary posters on my street. one trump. that is a big deal. the guy i think is ex military and i don’t know the family there.
It’s not, but its better than the alternative for a lot of them (which is either MCD jobs or not working at all and living on the taxpayers entirely). I think sometimes people on this board and others forget the average IQ in the US is 100, which means 50% of the population have IQs below 100 and simple factory work which pays lower middle class and middle class wages is as good as a lot of them are going to get (especially those in the 80-90 IQ range).
Bears repeating.
Hillary wants to grab everyone’s IRA and roll them into Social Security giving us back pennies on the dollar as “fair” benefit. It’s like Obama’s treatment of the Delphi workers when he took over GM.
Is it any wonder that so many U.S. industries are moving their operations overseas?
If for no other reason, elect Trump, who will throw-out all of Obama’s “executive orders.”
Yes, and my post is about those who should have done better for themselves with the skills they had, but were tempted by the high pay that was available for a few decades.
Let me give you an example. After my father got out of the army in 1945, he worked for a while in a brass factory as a machinist - for $200 a week! Then he went to college - his family said he was crazy, the money at the brass factory was so good. And, in fact, when he got a BA in business from Columbia, the highest salary he was offered in a white-collar job was $75 a week. But he persisted, got his MBA, and eventually made far more money than he would have made as a factory worker.
But the temptation was always there for people who could do better for themselves in the long run - take the easy money, don’t worry about the future.
A company and/or an economy built on people retiring at the age of 55 and then collecting a pension (and full medical coverage) for another 30-40 years isn’t going to last very long.
...................
The pensions as they were originally conceived— were for people who would not live so long. At the turn of the 20th century the average age of death was about 50. By the 1960’s-70’s the average age of death for men was about 65.
Now its over 75.
In the last fifteen years there has been a decline in life expectancy of lower middle class white men of about a year or two.
Doesn’t help that we put massive required labor, regulatory and environmental cost on business in the US and then allow MNCs to skirt every last one of them with “free trade” by importing from countries with none of those things tariffs free or close to it but you are correct.
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