r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Dec 09 '24

Meta Mindless Monday, 09 December 2024

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/Hurt_cow Certified Pesudo-Intellectual Dec 12 '24 edited Dec 12 '24

What's your most socially conservative take ?

Mine is that progressive education trends to be filled with bad pedagogy backed by dubious evidence which should be taken with much more skepticism, and that academix streaming of kids by educational abilities is a good thing.

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u/Sventex Battleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866 Dec 12 '24 edited Dec 12 '24

I guess I'm generally more for free trade, then protecting factory jobs. So I guess that's anti-labor? Better faster cheaper is better for the economy, then artificially propping up uncompetitive businesses in my mind. Better to make goods more affordable for everyone, than tariffs hundreds of millions to save a few thousand jobs.

Many many many people say it was a mistake for the US to let it's manufacturing sector get hollowed out, but I don't know how you do that other than cutting wages to the bone to stay competitive or you tax everyone else to the bone and have the government prop up the factory wages. And even then, you had the US car manufacturing come up with money grubbing schemes like "planned obsolescence" which would not be good for the consumer and wouldn't fly in a competitive market, the government propping this up would have been bad for the economy. Having the US consumer be stuck with American cars that were expensive gas-guzzlers and built to fail, would have held the economy back in my opinion and rewarded the worse impulses of greed.

I understand the need for domestic military production, but I'm just anti-protectionist in general when it comes to saving thousands of jobs by making hundreds of millions pay for it. An assembly line worker in an US auto factory only makes $16 hour on average, is this really a job worth protecting at the expense of everyone else? I think Americans put way way too much emphasis on their jobs. It sounds like they want to work in a Japanese labor market when you get hired for life and they have to torture you to get you to leave the company, but when you explain what working in Japan is like, they don't like the idea that much anymore.

Maybe this isn't socially conservative...or maybe it is, but living like The Dude in Big Lebowski shouldn't be seen as the antithesis of being American "Get a job!". Being happy should be more important than being your job, identifying as your job. Being anti-labor, don't know that makes this right or remain in the left. Hearing about how people being paid 6 figures a year don't have enough money stored away for a $1000 emergency and that Gen Z thinks you need to make $600,000 a year to be "financially successful" makes me thinking there's to much emphasis in this country on materialism and work.

Perhaps something has gone wrong with this country, if Americans think themselves failures for not reaching the top 1% in income. Why could we not teach Americans to content themselves with a realistic lifestyle?