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My question was do you consider laws that make child labor and sweatshops IN THE US as part of "the war on american business"?
and my answer was you are already patronizing those businesses, in china.
and you exploit mexican people every day doing your garden and house work.
sweatshop and child labor
americans are not anti child labor and anti sweatshop as long as its not their kid or them, they are fine with it, they are anti american business.
The US is hampered by Americans' own wide and deep streak of anti-intellectualism which denigrates learning and lionizes physical labor. It says that all you need to do in HS is "get by" unless you plan to go on to college. Well, when all you do is "get by", you come out of HS without the math or reading skills and without the work habits needed to succeed in the manufacturing sector today.
That's the real division in high schools in the US today: the motivated kids who plan on going on to college, community college, trade school, apprenticeship, etc and the unmotivated ones who simply mark time until they "escape". The unmotivated ones don't have a plan at 18, and often don't have one at 28 or 38 or 48. These people can't find good jobs because they don't have good skills.
You find this to a lesser extent in colleges, but there, too, there's a big difference in the success rates between the motivated and the unmotivated.
, and we should do nothing to mitigate the side effects of a lack of motivation.
and my answer was you are already patronizing those businesses, in china.
and you exploit mexican people every day doing your garden and house work.
sweatshop and child labor
americans are not anti child labor and anti sweatshop as long as its not their kid or them, they are fine with it, they are anti american business.
Again... that wasn't my question... but since I can't get a straight answer, I will work with it.
I think what you are saying is that it is ok as long as everyone else exploits it. (by the way, I do my own house work and garden work)
This is part of the reason why my initial post stated that "we are screwed". As long as we condone and turn a blind eye (never mind the obvious ethical issues) to this type of business behavior, the value of labor can be literally driven to zero (slavery).
In these conditions, the American labor force will NEVER compete unless drastic changes are made at the risk of political leverage.
If you are attempting (its hard to tell) to equate anti-child-labor and anti-sweatshop with anti-American business you are incorrect. Both these laws benefited all sides; business, labor, and society. What is anti-American Business are things such as attaching health benefits to employment.
The old school factory and agriculture jobs aren't ever coming back. Once people accept that, we can begin to consider policy for the future, but we can't uninvent things.
That's the real division in high schools in the US today: the motivated kids who plan on going on to college, community college, trade school, apprenticeship, etc and the unmotivated ones who simply mark time until they "escape". The unmotivated ones don't have a plan at 18, and often don't have one at 28 or 38 or 48. These people can't find good jobs because they don't have good skills.
Lack of motivation in the schools has always existed throughout history. Nothing has changed.
What has changed is how we have turned schools from a system to build good people that contribute to society looking forward to entering the workforce into systems that simply prepare for college.. trained to take tests. The same systems that have alienated a gross portion of our students (and their parents) and left them ill-prepared for the work force.
I am a product of that system. My high school failed me miserably even though it is one of the highest regarded schools in my home state. Opinions of my school are extremely polarized. If academics came easy, you had a good experience. If academics didn't come easy, you were often treated as a second class citizen and left behind. The experience resulted in my initial abandonment of the idea of entering college. Family support gave me the motivation to try anyways. College wasn't easy either but I learned that I wasn't "academically challenged" but I simply learned in a different way.
The fabled blue collar jobs of the past required strength and the ability to endure frequently unbearable and/or dangerous conditions. They didn't require much smarts, so any dumb kid who quit school at 17 or barely graduated from HS could find a job. If he had a "connection" to get him into an automobile or steel plant, he could make big $$$. If he had to settle for a smaller manufacturer or a non-union plant, he made quite a bit less.
Automation not only makes cheaper products, it makes them better because it eliminates flaws caused by human error, but the initial set-up has to be exactly right, and that calls for workers who are intelligent and conscientious as well as well trained. They have to pay attention to detail. They have to be willing to take the initiative in running their machinery and to actually think for themselves.
The US is hampered by Americans' own wide and deep streak of anti-intellectualism which denigrates learning and lionizes physical labor. It says that all you need to do in HS is "get by" unless you plan to go on to college. Well, when all you do is "get by", you come out of HS without the math or reading skills and without the work habits needed to succeed in the manufacturing sector today.
That's the real division in high schools in the US today: the motivated kids who plan on going on to college, community college, trade school, apprenticeship, etc and the unmotivated ones who simply mark time until they "escape". The unmotivated ones don't have a plan at 18, and often don't have one at 28 or 38 or 48. These people can't find good jobs because they don't have good skills.
You find this to a lesser extent in colleges, but there, too, there's a big difference in the success rates between the motivated and the unmotivated.
You've said a lot here, much of which is on point. I think that two major forces are driving the decline in so-called "blue-collar jobs": 1) automation, and 2) foreign competition.
Automation is an old and unavoidable force, and we should all expect it to accelerate in the coming years and decades. If automation becomes deep enough and smart enough, we may need to look at "basic income"-type solutions to a permanent job crunch. As individuals today, all we can do is develop skills that are unlikely to be matched by machines and computers in the near future.
Foreign competition, too, will accelerate in the coming years and decades. The world's population is growing rapidly, and most of that growth is not in the United States, but in the developing world. We can somewhat mitigate this competition, but to do so risks harming our economy by cutting off global trade ties. It is possible that non-discriminatory (meaning imposed on both foreign and domestic products) taxes on carbon could increase the competitive advantage of domestic manufacturing somewhat by internalizing the environmental impacts of shipping goods long distance (but shipping is pretty efficient, so this may be a drop in the bucket of the market factors at work).
I think we need to look at a reality where a lot of jobs that were once considered opportunities primarily for high school students and unskilled workers will become the "blue-collar" jobs of the future for adults with limited skills. I think that the consequence is that we need to ensure that these workers are able to receiving a living wage-benefit compensation (which may need to be shared between the employer and the government).
Quote:
Originally Posted by usayit
Again... that wasn't my question... but since I can't get a straight answer, I will work with it.
I think what you are saying is that it is ok as long as everyone else exploits it. (by the way, I do my own house work and garden work)
This is part of the reason why my initial post stated that "we are screwed". As long as we condone and turn a blind eye (never mind the obvious ethical issues) to this type of business behavior, the value of labor can be literally driven to zero (slavery).
In these conditions, the American labor force will NEVER compete unless drastic changes are made at the risk of political leverage.
If you are attempting (its hard to tell) to equate anti-child-labor and anti-sweatshop with anti-American business you are incorrect. Both these laws benefited all sides; business, labor, and society. What is anti-American Business are things such as attaching health benefits to employment.
Child labor and forced labor are real problems with real victims. I think that most people oppose both, but there is insufficient attention on this topic, including from the media and from political groups. At the same time, it is not child labor and forced labor so much as the larger category of cheaper labor that makes low skilled American labor uncompetitive.
Factories were not an agent of mobility. Just the opposite, in fact; the rise of the factory brought about a much more defined class system and made it more difficult for those at the bottom rungs to move up. Nearly impossible, actually. So you are talking about moving backward in history, not forward.
What?
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, and we should do nothing to mitigate the side effects of a lack of motivation.
