Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is a stupid post by the OP, we are lacking people who does real work across the board. Too many do nothing workers in America. We don't need the number of managers, we need more workers. We don't have enough specialist in every field. The American dream for many is to enter a corporate job and get promoted then do less and less with each step on the ladder. We have companies that promote this as well. People are told that the more stuff they outsource the better. When you outsource stuff, someone still has to do the work somewhere for you.
We see work being outsourced to cheap areas that's how wages are stagnant. Globalization allows companies to profit by exploiting wages. If wages are the same or adjusted like currency then why would companies outsource work to India?
We don't have enough technical, vocational, and skilled workers to help us modernize our country. If anyone ever visits China, it will change everything. They have made tremendous leaps because they have skilled and low-skilled workers in every area and don't have the large amounts of office managers we do. They don't have huge pay gaps between a manager and a worker like we do. The only big pay gap is between a business owner and a worker.
If anyone ever visits China, it will change everything. They have made tremendous leaps because...
... because they have started from scratch with current generation gear.
We had a similar issue in the wake of WW2 with Europe, Japan, etc. vs our PRE war industrial base.
Every good source I have ever heard has said we need more skilled labor, not less. It takes years to get a laborer of any kind to reach that "skilled labor" level. The higher they start, the faster they get there.
Having a good system of vocational schools like Germany has, would really help jump start the abilities of new hires and accelerate their advancing skills. I mean, who would rather train a welder OJT rather than hire somebody coming from a welding school? It takes years of appreticeship. Would you rather train a chef right off the street or hire a graduate from a culinary school?
The OP makes good points. There is down side to everything. More competition means, the less skilled labor gets pushed to the side and gets reduced value vs. the more skilled labor. But it is a huge net positive to have trade schools.
Less skilled labor will never go out of style. There will always be cheapskates, corner cutters, and frugal owners who refuse to pay top dollar for top work done the fastest. There will always be a market for minimally skillled from people who want minimal skill at minimal cost, not caring particularly about the quality of the end product.
A lot of ignorant people are ranting about how our colleges need to be restructured to provide more vocational training - aka the trades - plumbing, electricians, and so on. This idea is so stupid on its face that we really don't need to go far to show why it is such an epic failure in the making - but economic education isn't all that great in America so I'm gonna have to go at least half the distance. Although you fellow filthy America-hating commie pinko scum (hey, we all know who we are - I'm one, too!) pretty much already know what I'm talking about on an instinctual level. It goes a little like this. Think about what electricians and other tradesmen are paid today. It doesn't matter what the actual numbers are. What matters is that in basic economics, a tradesmen's pay is a function of how many people want their services versus how many competitors there are for those customers. It's called supply versus demand: Predictably, if the supply of tradesmen goes up relative to the demand for tradesmen, tradesmen pay will go down due to increased competition, until it drops close to the break-even point. (See: Iron Law of Wages.) Basic economics, right?
I think you all see where this is going. When you see someone pontificating about how we need more tradesmen, guess what happens if this transpires: there is more competition for customers of tradesmen. Plus a double-whammy: now you have a bunch more tradesmen who can do their own work for themselves, doubling the downward pressure on tradesmen pay. Supply goes up, competition goes up, price wars happen, pay goes down. Because economics. But wait. There's more. Subscribe a civilization to the scam of converting millions of useless Feminist Dance Theory graduates to Plumbers and Electricians and you also create higher demand for Plumber and Electrician training. Guess what that does: that makes Plumber and Electrician education IMPACTED. That's just a fancy schmancy college-verse word for "demand for training has skyrocketed in relation to and has overwhelmed the supply of trainers." Impacted majors is an already common problem in colleges, and the trades would not in any case be immune to the problem once you shift all those Liberal Arts / Women's Studies majors over into those fields. Now ask me what impacted courses mean? C'mon ask. I'll tell you. It means two things - far higher tuition costs and a giant bottleneck in which enrollment will be limited. Kinda like the way medical school is today, but now also for Plumbers and Electricians in this bleak scenario where the Vocational Boom advocates get their way. So of all the masses who buy into the vocational education scam (which is not a scam in today's reality but will be in that proposed reality), a large percentage will be weeded out simply by enrollment limits - thus being forced back to pursuing that useless Feminist Dance Theory degree. Well, not Feminist Dance Theory in particular, but in the minds of those who think we should convert millions of people to vocational training, everything that's not vocational training is Feminist Dance Theory, aka a "useless" college degree. Disclaimer: I honestly can't tell you if Feminist Dance Theory is actually a real college course anywhere, nor whether it's actually useless.
And that is why the calls for a mass conversion of college students over to the Trades will become a disastrous failure not more than a few galloping steps out of the gate.
This makes no sense to me. If there's a shortage in a vocational area, and people who need jobs, it makes sense to train people in the area where there are shortages. Just like we opened more nursing programs due to shortages of nurses.
I don't think colleges need to be restructured though, and can't say I've seen talk about that. I think more vocational high schools need to be opened (my nephew, who was never college material, couldn't get in because so many kids applied they had to use a lottery system). Now he does Gig jobs. I also think there should be publicly funded vocational schools just like community college.
Part of the push if from businesses for this reason. The more people flooding the market the less they have to pay them and the easier it is to get rid of them. People love to glorify the trades (people who don't work in them or have real knowledge of them), but the reality is they don't pay that much compared to college graduates. They are good to get into if your working retail for in the food industry or can't go to college.
Part of the push if from businesses for this reason. The more people flooding the market the less they have to pay them and the easier it is to get rid of them. People love to glorify the trades (people who don't work in them or have real knowledge of them), but the reality is they don't pay that much compared to college graduates. They are good to get into if you're working retail or in the food industry or can't go to college.
In 2003 I had a plumber come to my house in NNJ to do some fixes. I mentioned that I was about to put my house on the market and he asked what I planned to list it for. $550K, I told him. He didn't even flinch. "I'll have to tell my wife", he said. "She wants to move into a house in this school district."
Part of the push if from businesses for this reason. The more people flooding the market the less they have to pay them and the easier it is to get rid of them.
This is a weird dynamic.
Some industries are like this and some are not.
A huge reason Med school is so hard and takes so few people is because limiting the number of doctors artificially raises their salary.
There are many professions where member organizations and licensing powers conspire to screen out potentially great workers in order to inflate salaries.
As a licensed Professional Engineer, I know that a big part of the difficulty with the licensing exam is to screen out people to keep the licensed pool of engineers relatively small in order to bolster higher salaries. The less competitors, the higher the pay. Yet I know many people who were better engineers than me in practice, but they simply test poorly. Some were just slow, some got caught up in details, while some just had a mental block with timed tests, right back to college. They knew the material but just didn't test well.
This is why licensing boards love timed tests. It is screens many people out who otherwise would pass the test. If they really wanted to find people with the most knowledge and ability, they would give you all the time necessary. I mean, if you don't know it, you don't know it.
So yes, there are organizations trying to flood the candidate pool to lower wages, but then there are organizations like membership groups, licensing boards, and employee unions that are trying to shrink the candidate pool so as to artificially raise wages.
Part of the push if from businesses for this reason. The more people flooding the market the less they have to pay them and the easier it is to get rid of them. People love to glorify the trades (people who don't work in them or have real knowledge of them), but the reality is they don't pay that much compared to college graduates. They are good to get into if your working retail for in the food industry or can't go to college.
Who is glorifying anything? Since when is saying we should have more vocational training equal to glorifying? It's a bit hyperbolic, don't you think? Why do you think we are better off with fewer choices? I really don't get that.
You don't really believe an English major, Psychology major, etc make more than a general contractor, do you??
Part of the push if from businesses for this reason. The more people flooding the market the less they have to pay them and the easier it is to get rid of them. People love to glorify the trades (people who don't work in them or have real knowledge of them), but the reality is they don't pay that much compared to college graduates. They are good to get into if your working retail for in the food industry or can't go to college.
All I can say is, the harder the job, the less competition, the higher the pay. That goes for both college and labor.
In college, people with STEM degrees like engineering and computer science make good solid pay. Then you have your Philosophy majors, Music, English, Anthropology, Basket Weaving, and Womyn's Studies -- not so much.
Labor is the same. If you can weld aluminum, you are getting good pay.
I agree with you that overall, a college STEM degree pays more over a lifetime than a trade. Just like having a Masters pays more and a Doctorate pays even more.
There are caveats though.
The tradesman is earning money from age 18. The college grad is lucky to start a career by 24, so he is out 5-6 years of pay. Make that 8-10 years for a Doctorate. So the tradesman gets more years of pay. It is not as if college is sitting home playing video games. It is unpaid work.
Then there is the cost of college. Whether a loan or out of pocket, somebody is out $50,000 to $150,000 right off the bat, so add that on the plus side for the tradesman.
I agree with you. A hard college degree beats a hard trade practice most of the time, unless the tradesman does a boat load of OT to make up the difference, and then he is out his free time. But a hard trade is going to beat a worthless college major most of the time. 5 years and $100,000 college to be a Starbucks barrista for the next 20 years.
A huge reason Med school is so hard and takes so few people is because limiting the number of doctors artificially raises their salary.
There are many professions where member organizations and licensing powers conspire to screen out potentially great workers in order to inflate salaries.
As a licensed Professional Engineer, I know that a big part of the difficulty with the licensing exam is to screen out people to keep the licensed pool of engineers relatively small in order to bolster higher salaries. The less competitors, the higher the pay. Yet I know many people who were better engineers than me in practice, but they simply test poorly. Some were just slow, some got caught up in details, while some just had a mental block with timed tests, right back to college. They knew the material but just didn't test well.
This is why licensing boards love timed tests. It is screens many people out who otherwise would pass the test. If they really wanted to find people with the most knowledge and ability, they would give you all the time necessary. I mean, if you don't know it, you don't know it.
So yes, there are organizations trying to flood the candidate pool to lower wages, but then there are organizations like membership groups, licensing boards, and employee unions that are trying to shrink the candidate pool so as to artificially raise wages.
This happens with college level jobs too, in any case. In occupational therapy, they reacted to shortages (I graduated in 1996) with opening a ton more OT schools, and more significantly, luring foreign OTs (and PTs) from the Philippines. You can see this all over health care. The same things happened with pharmacy, which actually pays less now than when my bff graduated in the 80's and has many less jobs now. I don't know why OP thinks this is unique to trades.
Last edited by ocnjgirl; 09-09-2020 at 10:13 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
