I think a big driver of left wing economic doomerism is because between the end of ZIRP and the anti-DEI push, it’s a really bad time to be in leftish non-profit circles in a lot of places, and those people tend to have loudish megaphones
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I think there is totally some truth to this, but in general these ppl in my experience have really transferable/marketable skills. I’ve simply seen a lot of friends switch from working for like Environmental Group to working for Trade Organization or Consultancy. Might apply to a limited set of ppl
The people who make the transition and sell out effectively aren’t going to be posting about how they are so glad they are making six figures as laptop job havers nearly as much though.
Oh for sure. Tho I personally would never give any of my non profit friends grief for going corporate. Selling out is such a mean way to conceptualize needing to work for $ and not wanting to put up with NGO bs and low pay anymore
Depends on what level you are on in your career imo. The more established you are the easier it seems to be. For early career organizer/activist type ppl I think it’s hard. For midcareer wonks and managers it seems much easier.
We should see more fiscal support for journalism and colleges as an important piece of coalition management in addition to an actual public good. Same with well-funded civil legal services/civil enforcement agencies.
Yeeeeah... I can't speak to journalism, but the job market in academia has been little short of apocalyptic for like a decade and a half now, mostly for adjunctification-related reasons. I am not shocked that it would drive some folks a bit batty.
That's probably happening. But I talk to a lot of young people outside of that demographic - who didn't opt out of wealth, but would have liked to be able to opt in - and economic frustration and anxiety is running really high - esp. about housing, food, utilities. And elites don't seem to care.
The anti-DEI push sucks in corporate America too, conservative activists destroying the LGBT employee resource group that got medical transitions covered by our health plan at my old employer was not great.
Another issue that gets overlooked in discussions of American higher-ed econ is the looming collapse of a large number small-endowment private colleges due to declining religiosity, expanded public higher ed, and regional population shifts.
While less ideological, I think another issue is "reddit doomerism"--like whole threads about how McDonalds is now unaffordable. Since it's a self-selecting forum, there isn't much pushback.
BK gives the better discounts on the net most of the time I find but the whole " won now enjoy this discount" thing the Micky Ds app does every few days or so can be clutch
It's not some big mystery. A lot of the doomerism was and continues to be from the type of leftist who holds as a first principal the idea that the American economy, being based on capitalism, is always failing. It can never do anything else. Any minute now, the house of cards will fall.
as usual i should write about this at length, but i think so much of the doomerism is not about general economic decline, but the disappointed economic horizons of a *very specific* class of culturally-overrepresented people--in that legendary phrase, "downwardly mobile gentrifiers"
Gamedev is full of these people, who seem to be experiencing genuine shock that 'independence' means you can't make a comfy FAANG salary while making software toys without some hustle now.
The same group just pretends to be speaking on behalf of fast-food workers or whatever rather than just voicing their own complaints and owning them, so they can't even get closer to a solution.
It's kind of like the change in music industry. When I was in college the only way to make money was to get signed with a label - incredibly low probability. Now lots of people can make some money off music, but probably not enough to live on.
This is the kernel of truth in the 'passive income' trend, nothing creative (writing, art, music etc.) will earn you a living *by itself*
If you get a lot of small revenue streams, then it can work. But since most people are only good at one art form, grifting is the only way to make it work
I also think this ties into the issue we see around audience capture in media spaces, people are so terrified of losing their writing or presenting job that they'll pander to whatever audience they have just to keep it.
Substack in particular is seems almost designed to create this kind of dynamic.
After about 10 years in the nonprofit sector, I decided to go to grad school for nonprofit management. Then after a semester and a half, got so disillusioned that I switched to the MBA program. It was a good move.
I think another part of this is that entry-level NPIC jobs often lead to disillusionment--highly motivated people oftentimes winding up doing "generic business things" for worse pay.
Tech sector suffering a lot from end of ZIRP, which affects much more than the devs. Bunch of my old marketing / bizdev colleagues have lost jobs in the past year
Doctor, as a child of immigrants, "downwardly mobile" is an insane thought to me because if I was downwardly mobile, I'd be skeeting from a homeless shelter
Friend of mine whose father was an affluent doctor in a well-off Philadelphia suburb has two younger siblings who could never get their shit together. One at least works at a supermarket and is dating a guy with a decent job. The other does nothing. That’s the “downwardly mobile”.
Yeah someone on the other site (mightve actually been @opinionhaver.bsky.social) pointed out that while the overall economy is good, disconnected tech+structural issues made it very bad for a few industries (Hollywood, games, culture writing, tech) with outsized cultural influence
Games are weird because they're still growing, but the top 100 games ate basically all the revenue and so most of the new and many small developers have been squeezed out.
I do think this was a semi reasonable bet if you went in with sober expectations. A lot of people started gaming in 2020 so there was a chance that maybe then they get their friends involved etc and there's huge growth for several years.
specifically, the children of the upper middle class who were told to follow their dreams--and did!--and discovered not fame and fortune but dead-end career prospects and all the while being radically out-earned by people who went in for the "boring sellout" majors
I think a narrow segment even among those. People with degrees that have no jobs outside of academia knew they had to put those degrees to non traditional uses when I was graduating from college.
Like I have a degree in the liberal arts (nothing more specific than that) and I work in tech! I am fine. But the folks who sold out by going to law school because it was the way to make a liberal arts degree pay are broke or miserable or both.
I have a friend who got a masters from the top j school in the country and who hates her job on comms and wants to go to law school because she apparently never learns. I tell her this.
honestly the thing is I think this is a completely fair source of distaste and dismay! shit is genuinely fucked, and not even guaranteed to work out if you take one of those "boring sellout" jobs!
We live in a hostile universe that is ambivalent to the existence of life, the fact that nothing is guaranteed to work out no matter how risk averse you behave is a universal fact of life and not an indicator that “shit is genuinely fucked”
Do you think it might create a bit of a disadvantageous asymmetry if right wing people celebrate the economy as long as their team is in charge, but left of center people only celebrate the economy when we’re all immortal gods who have transcended time and space?
You will honestly wildly reactionary takes by people who think that their social inferiors are getting the better deal. See the entire student loan forgiveness discourse. And probably funding artists vs "those people" would probably benefit from trade school
I rather expect the 2008 financial crisis plays a major role here. I know a *lot* of people who were essentially told "if you go to college you'll be fine" and then when we were in college... oops, job market basically implodes for most of a decade.
Yeah, I'm a chemical engineer who does DEI stuff as an "extracurricular" at work and the folks in that field are extremely doom and gloom about where things are heading.
Colleges apparently now have an extremely popular major that just teaches how to be angry that you aren't getting checks from the government for sitting at home and playing video games.
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As Bernie, starting another 6-year term, goes full DiFi, lefty fury at old centrist legislators will reach the temperature of fusion plasma.
https://bsky.app/profile/danlehner.bsky.social/post/3ldgvutcv722s
If you get a lot of small revenue streams, then it can work. But since most people are only good at one art form, grifting is the only way to make it work
Substack in particular is seems almost designed to create this kind of dynamic.
Housing costs are a bitch.
But otherwise fine.
Corporate speak is sulphuric acid to the soul. The NPIC just experiences a higher molarity and lower pay than, say, LockMart engineers.
And they're all doomed.
It was not that likely, but it was possible.
People with masters degrees in journalism though…
https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Passion-Searching-Fulfillment-Inequality/dp/0520303237
Took years to get out of that hole.