Empiricism: Reality Bites Edition

 Not content with being profoundly silly and wrong about education and history, Matthew Yglesiashas decided to be silly and wrong about industrial policies and economic opportunity. He insists that making things is making things and restaurants can replace factories as engines of economic opportunity. Empirical reality suggests that he has yet again embarrassed himself.

As I mentioned a Koch Brothers owned paper mill recently laid off 158 workers and replaced them with machines. In that post, I used the figure of 30k per worker: I was wrong to guess. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean salary for all workers in the productive side of the paper mill industry is 43,670. The mean for food prepares and related jobs in full service restaurants is 21,150 and the mean for managers is 53,750. So it's true, I guess, that if all 158 displaced workers find work as full service restaurant managers, which is impossible, they will be better off. If, on the other hand, they end up in the elsewhere in the full service restaurant industry making things, they will be much worse off. The reason, in other words, people want to increase the number of factory jobs want to increase the number of factory jobs is that they pay better, for which fact we can all thank, or -- if you're a Neoliberal and hate people-- blame, unions.

Of course, we could also all go to work at Olive Gardens and live here, it's only 200 bucks and it's size would allow for high-density Hoovervilles.