Raw LLM Responses

Where were you when automation and outsourcing was stealing the heart and soul of middle America? Where was the push for 'universal basic income' then. Where were you when the factory closed its doors, not only on a livelihood, but people who had worked together for decades. Had become family. Where were you when a fifty-year-old master industrial weaver in the textile south stared in bewilderment at a lay-off brochure in his calloused hands, a brochure telling him to pursue a career in the hospitality industry? "Your world has been destroyed, but the good news is that you can become a hotel clerk!" This to a man who wore overalls to work for thirty years, only shaved on Sunday, and hadn't spoken a sentence of more than fifteen words in his life. He was told to adapt. To embrace change. That this was not a crisis, just the natural order of progress. That man was my father, my uncle, my older brother-in-law. Have you ever seen machine operator with a GED education, long forgotten, try to sell insurance? I was lucky. I adapted sure enough. It took me far from my home, and took things from me I never recovered, but I made it. So perhaps you at last understand. Hey, financial advisor, grant writer, consultant, television commentator, white collar worker... Have you considered a career in concrete finishing? Yeah, I am a pretty hard sell on sympathy. You never understood. Or maybe you did and destroyed it anyway. Industry was our social welfare system. It was one that paid for itself, and we pissed it away.