Affordability and a Quest for Meaningful Work

Over the last decade we’ve learned a lot about the effects of globalization on the working people of America and the towns and smaller cities where many live. Jobs off-shored to Mexico, Vietnam, and Guatemala meant the collapse of once-thriving towns and communities. Into the vacuum rushed predatory Perdue Pharma, creating widespread and catastrophic drug addiction in the same regions now bereft of work and livelihoods. Barbara Kingsolver told that story take in her powerful 2022 novel, Demon Copperhead.

Another chronicler of this disruption has been sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. One of the things Hochschild stresses in her 2024 book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, set in the same Appalachia as Kingsolver’s novel, is how much people’s work is integral to pride and meaning in life.

While those far away may have looked at coal mining as a grim dead-end, those who made their living in the mines saw it differently. They saw themselves as “the ones who kept the lights on,” who powered the economy and practiced a dangerous and demanding craft, passing knowledge and jobs from one generation to the next. Their work had meaning. It was a source of pride, until pride was stolen and many were overwhelmed by the shame of unemployment.

To people in different economic and social worlds that was regrettable, but far away and little understood. Yet now, it appears, economic forces are coming for those in the high tech and information-economy world, who until recently have enjoyed remarkable prosperity and security. Most all of the major tech companies have been laying off thousands of people as they have invested huge sums in AI and cut jobs. Once the sure pathway to a solid future, degrees in computer science are no longer being rewarded with good jobs aplenty.

In other words, what happened to people in the extractive economies of coal and logging may now be happening to those in the tech economy. This may be the Black Swan — the one you didn’t see coming — not only for kids with a freshly minted degree in computer science, but for a president who has promised to “make America great again.”

Time will tell whether big tech — where those at the top are still making such fantastic sums (see Elon’s recent trillion-dollar payday) — will see further cut-backs, lay-offs and a downturn. Or whether an AI-bubble-induced recession will undermine MAGA. For now it appears that those with computer science degrees and coal miners may have more in common than anyone would have imagined even a couple years ago.

Hence the new (overdue) emphasis on “affordability” in major American cities, from New York to Seattle, both of which elected socialists as mayors this fall. Even Trump is scurrying to catch this latest wind, proclaiming a reduction in the cost of weight-loss drugs and telling grocery shoppers, as Biden did before him, that they just don’t understand how great the economy really is.

This has a generational fault line as well. In both New York and Seattle it was young voters who broke for Mamdani and Wilson. Why? Because a lot of them are carrying a ton of debt from educational loans, even as they realize that their chances of getting into the housing market, and owning a home of their own, is receding further and further into the future.

“Making America Great Again” has to include this staple of the American Dream, home ownership. But for many Millennials and now Gen Z, that’s out the window, especially in blue states and cities where Boomers stand guard against development to protect their property values as their hedge against aging and its assorted threats and also unaffordable costs.

In other words, this economy where the rich get richer and richer (think Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill) isn’t working for many, and not just the working class of small towns and rural areas. I don’t know that Mamdani’s rent controls or Wilson’s housing for the homeless are the answer. But neither is the answer in Trump’s version of trickle-down economics. Some of the uber-wealthy may be starting to suspect that in this kind of economy someone will be coming for them.

There is the issue of affordability. But there’s a deeper issue, meaningful work. This is what Hochschild points us toward, work that matters. Work which allows people to support themselves and their families. Such work is about an income, yes, but far more. It is a source of pride and meaning in life. People want to contribute. Most people actually want to work.

They, we, want to play a part, to make a difference, to help solve problems. They want to “give back” not only by volunteering or donating to the least fortunate, but through work that serves others. A well-funded retirement is not enough of a goal in life. Managing and maximizing your assets isn’t really a vocation, a calling. Meaningful work that makes a contribution to people and society, Hochschild tells us, is what people want and need.

Can leaders, economic and political, deliver not only a more affordable economy but an economy where work is meaningful and a source of pride?