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Zero hedge is a respected online news and op ed for finance and is read by plenty on Wall Street. While they lean towards drama, like ever other American news outlet, their message is correct. I would like to see more data sets though as this seems skewed to me. Zero Hedge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The other thing to remember is costs of living vary dramatically and technology prices have enabled us to get more for the dollar. It is easier to travel (GPS, cell phones, traffic reports). Easier to get wider ranges of foods, the labor pool is much larger and so forth.
Yes it is true that back in the day all someone had to do was show up at some factory and work for 30 minutes of training and then a month to join a union but that's gone. The era of grunt mindless factory work is over.
You want a job? Learn it, own it, master it. You have to have some standards to hire someone and unfortunately there's still some that cling to the old mentality that anyone should be accepted at xyz. There's nothing wrong with asking for experience or a degree.
If you have a STEM degree and you can't get a good job, then something else is wrong with you.
Rubbish. STEM majors with good jobs are the exception, not the rule. There aren't nearly enough good jobs for the thousands of STEM majors who graduate every year.
How you may feel about those facts is an entirely different issue, although your feelings about those facts still doesn't change them.
Facts are facts, correct. For example, 1+1 = 2. That is a fact.
The problem is determining if the information provided are actually facts or if they are some mishandled, skewed, or otherwise adulterated data masquerading as facts.
In the case of 1+1 = 2 we can verify that as a fact because we can do the calculation ourselves.
In the situation we have at hand, we can't all personally poll the entire working population of the US to verify the information we have been given is actually factual. So we have to trust that the source that is providing the information is giving us the correct information in the correct context.
And therein lies the rub. Do I trust the New York Times? Mostly. Do I trust the Wall Street Journal? Mostly.
Do I trust this website, which an anonymous person or persons, writing as a fictional character from Fight Club, speculated to possibly be a Bulgarian penalized for insider trading whose family has been involved with European tabloids, described elsewhere as " is a bat**** insane Austrian economics-based finance blog", accused of being involved in a pump and dump stock scheme, and generally known for stealing other publications research and spinning it in a doom and gloom fashion?
It's a good question. Does that mean if this blog says 1+1 = 2 it isn't true? No. But I am not going to trust a clearly dubious blog as my sole source of economic information to get my panties in a bunch about. It doesn't have the credibility.
You want a job? Learn it, own it, master it. You have to have some standards to hire someone and unfortunately there's still some that cling to the old mentality that anyone should be accepted at xyz. There's nothing wrong with asking for experience or a degree.
Unfortunately that leaves out a broad swath of the population that are not smart enough, motivated enough, or otherwise able to do so or to earn/afford a degree.
To which you may say, "That's their problem." Which would be true, until 500,000 of them rise up and riot because they can't afford to eat. Or until they are all on some form of public assistance because they can't get a job.
The nice thing about having an ample demand for low-skill manual labor is almost anyone can support themselves in that type of environment. Not so in your scenario.
Truth is half the country doesn't have the right skills, ambition, knowledge to plan their careers.
This type of response fails to take into account the huge problems with our national economy. If everyone did as you said, went back to school and planned the way go getters do, it still would not help the situation at all. Education does NOT create jobs, and you would simply have more people with degrees expecting to have good middle class white collar jobs that do not exist. Over the past 20 years we have gutted our manufacturing and service jobs by offshoring them to the third world. Trade agreements have made this possible, corporations increased profits by paying workers fifty cents an hour to make goods and services to be sold to Americans. We used to build our electronics, we made our clothing, we made our cars, we made our toys, we made our tools. Today all those things are all made overseas by wage slaves, and the Americans who used to build them are the ones you are suggesting "don't have the right skills, ambition, knowledge etc" My fathers generation did not need college, they simply applied for and got jobs, and most could support a family on them. Today both the man and woman must work, and when they do its for half of what one "bread winner" earned a generation ago. I do not accept that education level and career planning are the problem, as I think the problem is obvious. Offshoring of jobs caused our situation, and we need to return to a protectionist tariff system in order to keep our manufacturing base in our nation.
We just observed D day, and that brings to mind the real reason we won the world war. We out manufactured the Axis powers, they shot down a flying fortress, five more rolled off an assembly line in Detroit. They sunk a liberty ship, two more were built in Virginia. Our factory workers played as big a role in the victory as did the troops overseas. Could we do that today???? Are we going to ask the Chinese if they mind stopping the war so we can place an order with them for tanks???? If we have a war with the Chinese we will be in trouble. Heck you wont even be able to buy underware. Better start studying mandarin.
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