Beyond Work
Corey Robin | Dani Rodrik on Good Jobs | Factoids
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There is no way to make life easier beyond work than to make it better at work. The two are linked.
| Corey Robin, To Make Life Easier: Socialism and the Mamdani Campaign
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I stumbled on Robin’s work this weekend and will be returning with an in-depth look at his thoughts on work freedom… and unfreedom.
Dani Rodrik on Good Jobs
In This Is What a Good Job Looks Like, economist Dani Rodrik argues that efforts to reclaim manufacturing job in the US are misguided. Countries like China have lost millions of manufacturing jobs in recent years as they transition to a more technology-based economy.
Economic populism should instead focus on service jobs, especially good jobs: one that pays a decent wage, a degree of autonomy1, and opportunity for advancement. Also, a populist agenda should focus on technological innovation, ‘deploying government programs to redirect it in a more worker-friendly direction’, although she doesn’t detail what ‘worker-friendly’ entails.
Despite recent commentators and pundits clamoring for a move to the right, Rodrik believes ‘it is not clear that Democrats have given economic populism a real chance’, despite Biden’s industrial policy attempts. Economic populism should not be framed in the way Trump and his cronies have, with protectionist tariffs and calls for a return to manufacturing.
The sorts of service jobs projected for the coming decades -- home health and personal care aides, fast food and counter workers, and retail sales -- won’t be turned into good jobs just by raising wages: that might increase unemployment among younger workers, as we’ve seen in Europe.
Rodrik looks to China’s green revolution as an indicator of how an industrial policy focused on technology jobs can change everything. The US has history to draw on with the DARPA example of a concerted long-term technology agenda, leading to advances in myriad areas, like the internet.
