ORIGINAL: Briman
The person to blame is in your bathroom.
Yep- if there is a reason why a person can't make a good wage they should look right in the mirror at themselves and ask "why didn't I study harder in school so I could have become an engineer, a computer programmer, A CNC programmer/machinist, a plumber, an electrician, a mechanic, a nurse......"
The days of going to work and mindlessly pressing a button to get a peanut are in the past. Some people will not face it and will stand by and bitch about how their standard of living is slipping, others will educate themselves with marketable skills and live a higher standard of living than any of their ancestors ever dreamed of.
Ihave toagree withRedAllison. Bottom line, factory jobs are beingoutsourced and they're not being replaced. Everyone says the answer is better education, but honestly, if every adult in America was educated with a BS, BA, Masters, or PhD, there wouldn'tbeenough jobs for them. Only about 35% of jobs require higher education, according to a government statistic I read a few years ago.
Macroeconomics says thatoutsourcing jobs should increase our exports, since those countries nowhave more revenue to purchase American goods with.But this is justan ideal model,we still have atrade deficitin the billions. In other words, we're buying loads from countries and they're not buying from us. China is experiencing a 10% economic growth every year. What's their secret? Theyhave a booming ecomony that doesn't import hardly anything.
I've heard that oursourcing increases American's living standard. This is a catch 22 to me. How does your living standard go up when a local ecomony is crippled when several thousand jobs are lost?
For example, lets say 1person works 50 hours a week(10 hours overtimeat time and a half) foroneyear in a factory. He makes$11 per hour and works 48weeks ofthe year. He'll make $29,040 a year before taxes. If the factory has 1,000 workers with similar employment, the local revenue is $29,040,000. Most economists say that money spent locally has about a multiplier effect of 7, meaning that each dollar spent will get spent 7 times over before it leaves that economy. If every factory workerspends or invests all their money locally (it's a model, just go with it), the local economy earned $203,280,000. That factory is now outsourced, crippling the local economy, soAmerican's can save $1.50 per crockpot at Wal-Mart. Did we just increase our standard of living?
I know it's just a made up example, and I ignored a lot of real worldfactors,butthat modelisn't too far from the truth. America's economic power is slipping everytime we outsource factory jobs, because they're not being replaced. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think American's are going to continue to experience the level of luxury we're used to. Does it matter if the products are cheaper if you no longer have an income to purchase them with?