I don't know what world you guys live in but everything I noted is relevant. When I started in corporate America one could start at the bottom and work your way up, that has changed in many ways. Contract work and outsourcing are big changes. Americans today buy more communist made stuff than American made. Calls to tech support go to India and several other foreign nations. Do you really think this has no effect on jobs. The poster of the OP lived in what I would consider socialism, for I assume much of their working career, where education did not even matter unless you wanted to be an officer. Should we all enlist? I knew many from the south who did that as jobs were scare and military life is a starting point. Support America, how about that.
http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/128477-did-obama-save-gm-3.html#post2607852
When thousands apply for a hundred jobs you know something is amiss. And not everyone has the intellectual abilities to do high level jobs, education or not. I worked and managed in IT forever, and can attest to that. Now consider the number of Asian Indians or Chinese and you have to acknowledge in both education and simple drudgery tasks, Americans are in trouble for jobs that once lived here. But argument is useless with the right as all that is needed is a foe to point at, and all is explained. For others check out the material below.
"The ruling class thinks that the average American earns too much money. This is an unspoken belief, and one that most of them would no doubt vehemently deny. But the evidence is compelling. The elite show their hand in many ways:
• When they oppose raising the pay of the lowest-paid workers, those covered by the minimum wage
• When they encourage the export of good-paying jobs in fields such as information technology
• When they resist changes in the tax code that would protect American workers
Corporate executives contend that they are forced to relocate their operations to low-wage havens to remain competitive. In other words, their domestic workers earn too much. Never mind that manufacturing wages are lower in the United Stares than in a dozen other developed countries.
Thanks to the rules, many of which are written by corporations, a company can pull up stakes and use cheap foreign labor to make the same product it once did in America. It no longer has to meet environmental standards. It no longer has to abide by U.S. labor laws. It no longer has to pay a decent wage. Then the company can ship the product back to the United States where, courtesy of the rules, it will pay little if any duty. How can American workers hope to compete against that? They can't.
Lisa Gentner worked at a company called Carrollton Specialty Products, housed in a one-story warehouse in Moberly, Missouri, a town of 15,000 in central Missouri. Carrollton was a subcontractor for Hallmark Cards, the global greeting card giant based 125 miles west in Kansas City, Missouri. The largely female workforce of 200 provided the hand assembly for a variety of Hallmark products. They tied bows and affixed them to valentines and anniversary greetings. They glued buttons, rhinestones, and pop-ups inside birthday cards. They made gift baskets.
As in many towns across the country, the plant was an economic anchor for Moberly. Manufacturing is often pictured as a big-city enterprise, but a substantial number of plants are the lifeblood of small to medium-sized cities...."
Quote from p24 'Assault on the Middle Class' in 'The Betrayal of the American Dream' authors, Barlett and Steele.
"Yet by 2011, the Chinese had taken over the market: by then, more than 50 percent of the solar photovoltaic panels installed in America were made by Chinese companies. Chinese solar imports jumped from $21.3 million in 2005 to $2.65 billion in 2011.
What happened? In the last decade, the Chinese government set out to capture the market for manufacturing solar panels. It pumped the equivalent of billions of dollars into the country's nascent solar industry in low-cost loans, subsidies to buy land, discounts for water and power, tax exemptions, and export grants. Government aid to subsidize an export industry is illegal under global trading rules, but the Chinese forged ahead and soon cornered the world market on solar photovoltaic panels. China's exports of solar cells and panels to the United States rose a phenomenal 350 percent in just three years, from 2008 to 2010.
As massive volumes of Chinese government-supported solar cells and panels surged into the United States, prices in the domestic market collapsed. The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing, in an October 2011 trade action, explained the consequences:
The resulting price collapse has had a devastating impact on the U.S. solar cell and panel industry, resulting in shutdowns, layoffs, and bankruptcies throughout the country. Over the past eighteen months, seven solar plants shutdown or downsized, eliminating thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania." Excerpt page 234, 'The Betrayal of the American Dream' Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele
"Pam Sexton, a market researcher and engineer with two college degrees, described her version of the American dream like this: "The American dream is that you can work hard and be rewarded for your hard work. You'll be able to have a home and family and prosper and have medical care and nor have to worry about expenses and bills. This is a country of opportunity." But Pam, along with thousands of others, lost her telecommunications job in 2009, and the dream died: "I feel like the last few years that's all disintegrated or evaporated." It is a refrain we've heard across the country." Ms Sexton lost her job because ATT shipped it to India."
p246 'The Betrayal of the American Dream' Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele
For those still interested in a magazine of ideas, check out Harper's. The quote below is from the June issue. Jeff Madrick writes a piece called 'The Anti-Economist' which is always worth a read.
"Given the evidence that more education alone won’t fix our stagnant wages or rising inequality, one might expect at least some economists to support policies like the ones advocated by Harkin, Schakowsky, and the Congressional Progressives. But usually they do not, relying instead on the assumption that efficient labor markets will sort themselves out. Set aside the absence of evidence for this assumption—in my ideal world, mainstream economists would occasionally invoke economic justice as well as economic efficiency."
[The Anti-Economist] | Education Is Not the Answer, by Jeff Madrick | Harper's Magazine
