The New Working Class of America

[NyChe21]

The industrial period of America is coming to an end and a new post-industrial economy based of the service sector and communications technology is the next area of societal progress. The old blue collar working class is faltering in their transition out of the factory and into the cubicled office. They are marginalized in favor of a new working class. The former white collar middle class suburb is now the new working class and suffers a similar overworked and underpayed existence here in America. The booms of the economy that provided the high standards of living are over now. Today, the white collar working class family competes for minimal entry level jobs sitting in front of computer screens pushing numbers. All for the same wages of their parents, but combined with a limited access to the education needed for such jobs, the prospects of white collar family life are not favorable. Yes, a single blue collar mechanic can sacrifice a portion of income to enroll in a technical school such as DeVry to ITT, but the blue collar worker with a family cannot afford to sacrifice such income and can only push his son or daughter to excel in school in order to explore limited scholarship opportunities. And the white collar worker has the same struggle in a stratified class system where the opportunity for advancement is limited. The cost cutting of the era of Reaganomics has cut out the mid-level management jobs and isolated many data pushers into their low wage, high standard of living existence. The blue collar factory jobs are not available in America. But the transition to a post-industrial economy is leaving many of these now unemployed workers without many options.

I challenge the Socialists of America to make this transistion a little easier. How can we? What can the government do to better articulate and provide any alternative opportunities for health care and education?

Please limit this discussion to American politics (not excluding outsourcing ideas).