Creator Forum - Racial Loyalty News Online

Of all the workers I got to know from  the plant, Wally was the most optimistic. He believed in the American  dream, or at least in his own ability to achieve it. Unlike many of the  white men who broke down in tears at the thought of the plant closing  and their machines being taken to Mexico, Wally focused on his goal of  opening a barbecue business. Owning your own business meant you could  never be laid off or offshored — and you never had to rely on a person  who might be racist to earn your daily bread. "I'm either going to make it or I  won't,"... " I come from a long line of makers." That heartbreaking experience taught me how deadly the loss of work can be in a country where health care is tied to employment. Men with high seniority who get laid off  experience mortality rates that are 50 to 100 percent higher than their  co-workers. Of roughly 300 workers who got laid off from the Rexnord  plant, I counted three who died within a year of stress-related or alcohol-related illnesses.

In addition to those who passed away from Covid, some  90,000 people in America perished of opioid overdoses in 2020, a 30  percent increase from the previous year. It's not clear if that's  because treatment got shut off, or because people suddenly had nothing  to do all day long. But we do know that, even before Covid, studies  showed an unmistakable link between unemployment shocks and opioid  deaths and hospitalizations... Too often those who claim to champion  the working class are culturally, geographically and economically disconnected from their everyday realities. Nothing makes this more clear than political language grounded in social safety nets and entitlements, instead of jobs. After the Rexnord plant closed, John had to appear regularly at an unemployment office to jump through hoops to collect a check that came to a grand total of $335 a week.

Once, he was asked if he'd been willing to take a "survival job" just to put food on the table. That question annoyed him. "Of course I'd take a survival job," "What other choice do I have? Go on welfare?"... Many of the  steelworkers I followed felt the same way. They all knew people who  gamed the system. They took pride in earning a paycheck, something that  distinguished them from a lazy relative or a drug-addicted acquaintance  who didn't work. Even proposals like free college, which Democrats crafted to help families like his, rubbed John the wrong way. There is no such thing as free, in John's book. "Free this, free that," John  complained one day down at his union hall. "Who's going to pay for  that?" he asked, rhetorically. "The workingman, that's who." ... it made no sense  to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans just to live and eat, when she could do so far more cheaply at home. He believed in higher education, within reason and to a point. He had gotten his associate degree in piping design at community college, while living at home with his parents.