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I make more money now than I did 25 years ago.
However, the tax bite is bigger ... Income taxes have gone up.
Everything has gone up. Every bite is bigger.
The Q is has your ability to earn kept up.
This sort of exercise can get very complicated very fast, but...
How many hours did you (or your Dad) have to work in order to afford the weekly grocery order?
Or to have a new Chevy? Or take the family to a lake for a week in summer?
How many hours do you have to work now to do those things?
Everything has gone up. Every bite is bigger.
The Q is has your ability to earn kept up.
This sort of exercise can get very complicated very fast, but...
How many hours did you (or your Dad) have to work in order to afford the weekly grocery order?
Or to have a new Chevy? Or take the family to a lake for a week in summer?
How many hours do you have to work now to do those things?
In the early 1960s, an average new car cost half an average middle class worker's yearly salary.
Going to the lake and camping for a week in the summer was a "cheap" vacation.
Let's see.
Honest lawyers.
Doctors who make house calls.
Cops who protect and serve.
Pirates who say "aargh" and don't wear suits and ties.
Drug-free athletes.
Astronomers who look through telescopes.
People who answer business telephones when they ring.
Bank tellers who can do sums.
Investigative reporters.
Farmers with tans.
What we are good at is cutting edge work. R&D and high-tech manufacturing. We're good at that because of our CalTechs, Standfords, MITs, and the like. We're good at that because of a robust IP system.
Actually, we're good at this because the Japanese are good at building high tech automated machines. We're also good because private companies are able to find highly skilled workers to utilize these machines to their full potential.
Two problems facing this work... We seem to want to play the part of the slave... That is, making what we are told. We should be building cutting edge equipment and paying someone else to do the actual work of making products. More money at the top of the food chain. The life of a bottom feeder is not a good life.
Another problem... Private companies are good at posting ads to find available skilled workers. They are not good at training new workers because that is an expense. We are loosing many necessary skills, and once their gone, they're gone for good. Many companies are working "retired" workers because young ones have not been trained to do the work.
Many of the "high tech" manufacturing guys are merely tradesman level workers that have decades of experience. Used to be you started on the floor making products and operating machinery. As you progressed, you learned new things and climbed the ladder. Today, boarder jumpers are doing most of the entry level work, old Americans are doing the actual brain work, and we aren't training anyone to take the grey haired worker's place.
We're going to see our standing in the high tech manufacturing realm diminish if things continue as they are.
This isn't true. Some software dev positions get outsourced and some new ones get created domestically, the demand in the field grows faster than outsourcing can put a dent in it.
Every projection I've seen shows the job outlook to be higher than average thru 2020 for computer programmers, and from an anecdotal personal view where I work we have trouble finding/keeping talented developers I don't go one week without at least a few people contacting me about openings.
I'm frequently contacted but they're almost always contract positions with a crappy hourly rate and a truckload of responsibilities; I'd be working 60-80 hours a week guaranteed. No thanks!
Econ isn't zero-sum. The size of the population isn't the problem. Each new person is both a consumer and a producer. Your argument was made when the population wasn't yet 1 billion, and it didn't hold true then. It's not true now.
As I noted before, the real problem is that the world changed and we didn't change. We shouldn't be doing unskilled manufacturing. Even some skilled manufacturing should be done elsewhere. Clothes and toys and cars should be built where it's cheapest without an appreciable loss of quality.
What we are good at is cutting edge work. R&D and high-tech manufacturing. We're good at that because of our CalTechs, Standfords, MITs, and the like. We're good at that because of a robust IP system.
But we're losing that edge. We're cutting funding to higher education. Primary and secondary education haven't adapted to a changing understanding of what kind of people we need for the workforce. Our infrastructure is failing. Our IP system hasn't adapted to the realities of a digital, mobile age, creating an automatic "tax" on R&D; you can't develop anything without stepping on some patent that shouldn't have been granted.
I respectfully disagree. The vast majority of our citizens are NOT going to fit into high tech, highly educated, highly skilled jobs even if they were available. Most people who are willing to work are qualified to do a job whether working on an assembly line, driving a delivery vehicle, or some other sort of work that does not require acute skills and high tech educations. The Bell Curve won't allow it. The mantra that college degrees are the answer is just not so. Even many college degrees don't train people for any type of work in a high tech environment. It is sad that we respect only some type of work and avert our eyes on other. We scorn "fast food" jobs but many people try and earn a wage in that sort of work. They just cannot earn enough doing it. The answer to that is for that person to go back to school and get some education in some field. Really? Is that realistic? I think not. Perhaps for a few people, but not most.
The problem is, we have to live with people who are average and just want to work but either cannot find work or cannot earn enough to have a decent quality of life. Personally, if we are going to have a nation that is secure, prosperous with a good quality of life for most, then we are going to have to make some adjustments in how we do business internally. This philosophy of "I've got mine, too bad for you" has got to cease. If one person out of 10 or 20 is very successful, there are 9 or 19 who are going to be in trouble and a few of those are going to cause some trouble. It is a travesty that people over 65 are in better economic shape than those much younger.
We have got to have average jobs for average people. Right now we do seem to be in a zero sum economic game. Winners vs. losers. More and more are falling into the loser category. I think we are in an ongoing social disaster and not just an economic one.
I don't know if this can be fixed but a good attempt is in order.
I respectfully disagree. The vast majority of our citizens are NOT going to fit into high tech, highly educated, highly skilled jobs even if they were available. Most people who are willing to work are qualified to do a job whether working on an assembly line, driving a delivery vehicle, or some other sort of work that does not require acute skills and high tech educations. The Bell Curve won't allow it. The mantra that college degrees are the answer is just not so. Even many college degrees don't train people for any type of work in a high tech environment. It is sad that we respect only some type of work and avert our eyes on other. We scorn "fast food" jobs but many people try and earn a wage in that sort of work. They just cannot earn enough doing it. The answer to that is for that person to go back to school and get some education in some field. Really? Is that realistic? I think not. Perhaps for a few people, but not most.
The problem is, we have to live with people who are average and just want to work but either cannot find work or cannot earn enough to have a decent quality of life. Personally, if we are going to have a nation that is secure, prosperous with a good quality of life for most, then we are going to have to make some adjustments in how we do business internally. This philosophy of "I've got mine, *********" has got to cease. If one person out of 10 or 20 is very successful, there are 9 or 19 who are going to be in trouble and a few of those are going to cause some trouble. It is a travesty that people over 65 are in better economic shape than those much younger.
We have got to have average jobs for average people. Right now we do seem to be in a zero sum economic game. Winners vs. losers. More and more are falling into the loser category. I think we are in an ongoing social disaster and not just an economic one.
I'd only partially agree. Far more people than you dismiss as simply being capable of average stuff are , quite frankly, underachieving. We should do SQUAT to subsidize their willingness to slack off. A rural county 30 miles from my home has a college grad/pop rate of 6.5%, while my town nearer to Nashville has a rate more than 4 times as high (and our locals are 3x the rural rate 30 miles away).
That rural county celebrates a lack of education, very similar to the inner city "acting white" label often tagged on high achievers.
I would be the first to admit not all can do high skill jobs, but until the percentage who can do those jobs is reasonably maximized, the dumbest thing we could do would be to subsidize the lack of effort towards increasing skill sets.
I think I will! MasterLock is another company that insourced, so is Apple even (to some degree, there's a mixed bag with that one).
It's called "insourcing" ... Google it.
The basic gist is, there's a maelstrom of reasons why the USA is becoming competitive again in terms of jobs:
1) Culture. Employers know the culture of the employees and in many places the culture of where you have your helpers is a big plus. I dunno about you, but every time I get an Indian on the line I always cringe a little because 1/2 the time it will be a rude experience. If it is, I hang up, and call back, and ask to speak to an AMERICAN. Or at least a Brit.
2) Folks are desperate enough.
3) Wages are competitive in some sectors. Manufacturing is one of these areas. Don't believe me? Then why are Chinese companies desperate to bring jobs back? Their GDP is woefully small now and most of it is based on government spending. THe reason is simple: you can only sustain 10% raises per year for so long before the wages of your average Chinese combined with intellectual property rights violations (more on that later) ruin your business plan.
4) The right trade protections are here (finally). Ever since Obama came to office, he's put up trade barriers against certain goods that were mainly from China and flooding the market. The result? Well, many of those companies now have factories here, because it's cheaper to pay Americans the wages they want and keep the distribution local, too.
5) The weak dollar. Cheap dollars means more goods based in dollars will thus mean American made goods are (artifically, at least) more competitive.
6) Intellectual property violations in other countries (mainly China). China is known to slant the business playing field steeply in favor of their local companies. Many times you see a plant in China built by a foreign firm, within 5 years there's two or three from a Chinese firm making the same goods at bargain prices. With stolen IP.
7) The real innovation is happening in America. And Europe. So what do you do when your IP is being stolen left and right? You insource it back to the USA, and there comes all the technician jobs that are not quite engineering or scientist but higher than unskilled laborer. They're the ones running the tests, maintaining the computers and equipment, operating them, and basically troubleshooting where engineers don't have the time / resources to troubleshoot.
So ... while I agree not ALL the jobs will be coming back (see people sitting in desks on an electronics line in China), many jobs are coming back here just because American companies have realized there is a time and a place to invest abroad, and there is a time and place to invest locally.
I sincerely hope the last 2 posters are correct. I think we have had a permanent paradigm shift in this country in regard to jobs and especially with the so-called "good" jobs. We have bled away manufacturing jobs for years now which typically were the good jobs for the average American--especially males. Some plants might be built albeit it is challenging into today's activist environment. Even China is losing jobs to less developed countries who allow even lower wages. Dog eat dog anymore.
They are correct as far as they can go.
They question is to what degree these trends may become more; let alone real change agents.
I remain highly doubtful these insource positions will (can) do more than fill in some of the gaps
along the edges. That's still great and should be encouraged but it won't change the larger realities.
Take a hard look at the reasons (#2, #3 and #4 above in particular) touted as "why the USA is
becoming competitive again" above.
Quote:
I think we have had a permanent paradigm shift in this country in regard to jobs
and especially with the so-called "good" jobs.
Those are the ones with enough in wages and benefits to actually support family off of.
Not a situation where BOTH parents are working FT plus to make... ONE income.
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