TBH, someone at this age who has spent 25 years in a pipeline probably realizes that, unfortunately, no one in this market wants to hire older folks -- especially with no relevant experience.
"No relevant experience" is a highly pessimistic outlook. This man has demonstrated an ability to hold down a steady job for decades. That alone puts him ahead of many people that simply lack the ability to hold down a job. Working at an auto plant results in skills with with operating industrial machinery. After 25 years he's probably been put in a leadership position, or at least a mentorship position to train new hires. This demonstrates good communication and teamwork ability. He may have much better prospects if he expands his skills by learning a trade. Someone who worked in an auto plant for 25 years is probably a good candidate to become a construction worker, plumber, escalator repairman, etc.
Another big elephant in the room is location. It looks like he still lives in Lordstown Ohio. Employment prospects will be drastically better if he moves. It's harder to move with families but not impossible. I moved 3 times (each of them across national borders, no less) when I was a kid and while its hard to settle down in a new place it expanded my worldview and likely made a better person in the long run. The sort of static mentality I talk about earlier also applies to moving. People put their self-worth in their location and hamper their employment opportunities by refusing to move.
The subtext of one of the images reads: "Mr. Marsh with his wife, Lindsay, and their daughter, Abigail. The Marshes have spent years fighting to get Abigail services in Ohio. Moving would be wrenching." It doesn't actually say that their daughter's cerebral palsy is preventing them from moving. I doubt it would be harder to get services in an economically vibrant location with more tax funds for services, as compared to Lordstown Ohio. The fact that they "spent years fighting to get Abigail services in Ohio" seems to drive this home.
Overall I would be much more sympathetic if the author spent their words explaining how Rick has tried to find employment in other fields, has tried to find apprenticeships or trade school education, and is willing to move across the country but still can't find a job then I would be drastically more sympathetic. As it stands, the piece can be summed up as, "laid off auto worker who doesn't search for jobs in different fields and isn't willing to move has trouble finding employment and blames NAFTA and Democrats for his situation". It's clear the author wants to paint a sympathetic picture, but it reads like a pardoy.
This sounds like a viewpoint that doesn't wholly consider all the edge cases of what it means to lose one's career 25 years in.
"After 25 years he's probably been put in a leadership position, or at least a mentorship position to train new hires. This demonstrates good communication and teamwork ability"
This is a nice to have, but will absolutely not help a man 25 years into a career to find an equivalent salary to support his family and maintain his quality of life in a completely different field.
"Someone who worked in an auto plant for 25 years is probably a good candidate to become a construction worker, plumber, escalator repairman, etc."
No, this cannot possibly be the case, because all those listed job requirements sacrifice the body. At the age of 25 years in a career, it wouldn't be possible to be able to start again in any labor intensive work- the body is no longer there.
"It doesn't actually say that their daughter's cerebral palsy is preventing them from moving. I doubt it would be harder to get services in an economically vibrant location with more tax funds for services, as compared to Lordstown Ohio. The fact that they "spent years fighting to get Abigail services in Ohio" seems to drive this home."
Moving actually causes one to lose residency status, which means a lot of necessary social benefits are no longer available (in order to prevent people from simply moving somewhere with better state benefits). An example that people would be most familiar with would be in state vs out of state tuition. If another state had better benefits, there would be little to say that they would be able to have access fo them. If anything, Mr & Ms March would probably have to wait several years before they have to begin the several years long fight again to secure benefits for their daughter.
"Overall I would be much more sympathetic if the author spent their words explaining how Rick has tried to find employment in other fields, has tried to find apprenticeships or trade school education, and is willing to move across the country but still can't find a job"
It would be more accurate to say that a man who put 25 years into a career no longer has access to this career, has a wife and a dependent daughter, who may be trapped due to fighting a system that holds tons of bureaucracy to avoid fraud, who can no longer sacrifice his body, and is completely out of options in maintaining his quality of life, which he had built up carefully over 25 years.
Enough people like that along with enough underemployed young people saddled with crushing debt, and you have everything you need for a revolution.
People can talk about what others can or should have done, but eventually it’s going to be better and easier for them to burn this system down than try to work within it. Trump was a warning shot. What comes next after he fails to accomplish anything is going to be worse.
Historically speaking such a population is more prone to support authoritarianism than revolution. A good question to ask is: Is it in Trump's best interest for his base to advance economically, or descend further? I am quite confident that Trump and the Republican leadership knows the answer to this question.
> This is a nice to have, but will absolutely not help a man 25 years into a career to find an equivalent salary to support his family and maintain his quality of life in a completely different field.
These skills are useful in any field. Equivalent salary may be optimistic, but it's still drastically better than zero slary.
> No, this cannot possibly be the case, because all those listed job requirements sacrifice the body. At the age of 25 years in a career, it wouldn't be possible to be able to start again in any labor intensive work- the body is no longer there.
What you're writing is also contradicted by the article. His job at the automobile plant was also physically demanding, "The truth was, he never really liked the work. He found it boring and physically demanding. He worked in the paint shop, wearing two sets of gloves, big plastic boots and a full body apron, while he wielded a sanding tool that smoothed the primer on the surface of the cars. Every night he came home drenched and exhausted."
> Moving actually causes one to lose residency status, which means a lot of necessary social benefits are no longer available (in order to prevent people from simply moving somewhere with better state benefits). An example that people would be most familiar with would be in state vs out of state tuition. If another state had better benefits, there would be little to say that they would be able to have access fo [sic] them. If anything, Mr & Ms March would probably have to wait several years before they have to begin the several years long fight again to secure benefits for their daughter.
Tuition is an exception, as it's a very high cost (often tens of thousands of taxpayer subsidy) over the course of four years. Another commenter made the same point, but did not provide evidence for this to be true when asked. If you can find identify documentation on such policies that explain that states discriminate on the basis of residency for disability services, by all means provide it. But until then, I am not inclined to trust these unsubstantiated claims.
Even if this were true, this represents a couple years of overhead cost that could still pay off in the long run. Even at minimum wage, employment would bring in probably $10k a year at least. This could offset loss of services for two years.
> It would be more accurate to say that a man who put 25 years into a career no longer has access to this career, has a wife and a dependent daughter, who may be trapped due to fighting a system that holds tons of bureaucracy to avoid fraud, who can no longer sacrifice his body, and is completely out of options in maintaining his quality of life, which he had built up carefully over 25 years.
This is contradicted by the article. You say that he is physically not capable of demanding work, but the job that he lost (and would have continued working in) was physically demanding. You say that he is out of options, when he does not seem to be considering the options of moving or working in a different field. The article explains that these other opportunities do exist, "Hundreds of workers have already transferred. His nephew packed up his family and moved to Flint. The alternative, working on natural gas wells in Pennsylvania, paid him $13 an hour, about half what he was making at G.M." $13/hr is close to twice Pennsylvania's minimum wage. It's not a terrible job, and it'd at least put some money in the bank and diversify his skills.
At best, you're taking an overly pessimistic view of the situation. At worst, you're tying to rationalize the thinking that if the current opportunities aren't as good as the ones that existed in the past it's better just stay unemployed.
"The alternative, working on natural gas wells in Pennsylvania, paid him $13 an hour, about half what he was making at G.M." $13/hr is close to twice Pennsylvania's minimum wage. It's not a terrible job, and it'd at least put some money in the bank and diversify his skills."
This is overly optimistic. He is losing half his salary, with a wife and a daughter to feed. He will lose his quality of life. That's a huge deal, and is worth pointing out and have sympathy for.
> This is overly optimistic. He is losing half his salary, with a wife and a daughter to feed.
This is false, or at least a misrepresentation of the situation. He has already lost his salary. And now he is unwilling to work in a job that pays half of his previous salary. He is strictly better off financially with the $13/hr job than he is now, and he will have a job to give himself a sense of purpose (which seems to be his biggest issue) on top of that. I still do not see any barrier preventing him from taking such an opportunity.
But crucially this does not require any duration of residency. Literally all that's necessary is a NJ diver's license. He doesn't need to live for years in NJ to get benefits, he just needs to stand in line at the DMV after moving there.
You have still failed to provide evidence to back up the claim that his daughter's condition is preventing him from moving due to loss of benefits (at least, not for any loss of benefits longer than 30 days). In fact, your sources show that if he moves to another state for a job then he will be able to get benefits either immediately or within a month. If anything you're disproving the claim that loss of benefits are preventing him from moving.
30 says is hardly prohibitive to you. The story is much different when someone is needing to move someone who requires medical care. It may be very prohibitive to someone else, especially given that moving is very expensive, it's well known that benefits are regularly denied the first time, and they're already in a multi-year fight that can become complicated through moving.
Also, I say that this position being made is again failing to consider that 13$/hr may not be adequate. It is not strictly better- one has to pay the cost of moving, then spiral into debt assuming 13$/hr isn't enough to cover the medical expenses and living requirements of one's family. Assuming he's an intelligent man, he will likely already have examined the economics and found it doesn't check out.
I think this position is really unsympathetic and assuming an incompetence that isnt there and is overly gatekeeping. Someone is in a situation in which there are no good options due to little fault of his own, and that sucks. That's all the article is saying.
The article mentions that it took the family years to get these services in the first place. Which indicates that they are indeed capable of living for extended periods of time without care. Your claim that the family cannot make it through 30 days without government services for their daughters remains unsubstantiated. Seriously, trying to say that 30 days of no government services is prohibitive when the article states that they lived for years without these services is grasping at straws.
> Also, I say that this position being made is again failing to consider that 13$/hr may not be adequate. It is not strictly better- one has to pay the cost of moving, then spiral into debt assuming 13$/hr isn't enough to cover the medical expenses and living requirements of one's family. Assuming he's an intelligent man, he will likely already have examined the economics and found it doesn't check out.
How is he somehow going to spiral into debt with a $13/hr job, but not spiral into debt with no job? This makes no sense. You're trying to say that by making more money he is going to go into debt.
> I think this position is really unsympathetic and assuming an incompetence that isnt there and is overly gatekeeping. Someone is in a situation in which there are no good options due to little fault of his own, and that sucks. That's all the article is saying.
I don't think he is incompetent, that's my whole point. He has opportunities, he is competent, but he feels like he is incompetent because there's something holding him back from taking these opportunities. And in the end, this lack of employment is eating away at his sense of self work. This man seems to have it ingrained into his identity that he is an auto plant worker in Ohio, and he will never be able to be anything but an auto plant worker in Ohio. He is aware of opportunities elsewhere. The article explains that hundreds of other plant workers have done this, "Hundreds of workers have already transferred. His nephew packed up his family and moved to Flint". I don't necessarily blame him for his refusal to accept the available job opportunities. I blame the society and culture he grew up in that hammered it into his head that he'll never be anything but an auto plant worker. Feeling sympathy for whatever it was that leads him to make his decisions doesn't mean we need to to try and justify these decisions.
Getting help is tricky. States with good programs don't want freeloaders to move in. They often require you to be a resident for a while before they will help you - the idea being if you come with the intent of not being a freeloader and something happens it is bad luck. It isn't unheard of for states to pay to move someone to a different state just so they to get that person out of their system.
I can see both sides, Mr. Marsh is caught in the middle.
> States with good programs don't want freeloaders to move in. They often require you to be a resident for a while before they will help you - the idea being if you come with the intent of not being a freeloader and something happens it is bad luck.
I've only heard of this for university tuition. If a student starts university in a state school, and their parents move to the state they have to pay out of state tuition for 2 years. States with good programs are usually liberal ones with high taxes. Discriminating on the basis of origin for disability services seems like a good way to piss off liberal voters. If you can find documentation to demonstrate that someone with cerebral palsy would be denied services because they moved there from out of state, I'm all ears, but I find this claim is dubious.
> It isn't unheard of for states to pay to move someone to a different state just so they to get that person out of their system.
Each state is different. There are 50 of them with different programs and rules. States are changing their rules all the time. Depending on the destination state he might or might not have problems. It is a consideration he unfortunately has to face.
