An interesting problem is that this is primarily a prescription for the stable functioning of the working class (don’t strive for upward mobility but to deepen the ties you have within the local community of your birth, start apprenticeships at a young age, etc.).
The structure of working class life largely evolves out of the pressures (financial, cultural) that they are subject to, and these pressures are defined by the decisions (political, economic) made by the elite (middle class and upwards), and beyond that, to international macro-governance.
So the question becomes not how the working class should best live in order to secure their stable flourishing (which I think you’ve captured well), but how a new generation of elites can engender domestic conditions that create the right pressures for the working class to flourish, while allowing the country to be competitive on the international stage and to not plunge the country into chaos. Without being financially and culturally competitive, nations inevitably suffer tremendous brain-drains, and the youth long to live in culturally dominant nations like the US.
For better or worse, our economies are now built on the presumption that almost all women will work, for example, and transitioning away from that in a stable manner that doesn’t collapse everyone’s livelihoods will be a challenging task. There’s also the question of how you muster the political will and power necessary to implement these changes given the challenge they would pose to existing powerful agents that profit from them.
There’s a lot in here that rings very true.
An interesting problem is that this is primarily a prescription for the stable functioning of the working class (don’t strive for upward mobility but to deepen the ties you have within the local community of your birth, start apprenticeships at a young age, etc.).
The structure of working class life largely evolves out of the pressures (financial, cultural) that they are subject to, and these pressures are defined by the decisions (political, economic) made by the elite (middle class and upwards), and beyond that, to international macro-governance.
So the question becomes not how the working class should best live in order to secure their stable flourishing (which I think you’ve captured well), but how a new generation of elites can engender domestic conditions that create the right pressures for the working class to flourish, while allowing the country to be competitive on the international stage and to not plunge the country into chaos. Without being financially and culturally competitive, nations inevitably suffer tremendous brain-drains, and the youth long to live in culturally dominant nations like the US.
For better or worse, our economies are now built on the presumption that almost all women will work, for example, and transitioning away from that in a stable manner that doesn’t collapse everyone’s livelihoods will be a challenging task. There’s also the question of how you muster the political will and power necessary to implement these changes given the challenge they would pose to existing powerful agents that profit from them.
But this remains an essential task!