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How far do we roll back the rules or do we just expect that business will do the right thing? The cynical side of me says that business must protect and enhance shareholder value=Cuyahoga River on fire again.
And by the same token, the cynical side of you should also say government bureaucrats like to create ever more rules and regulations to justify their existence and consolidate power. It's a question of balancing one evil against another.
You know, when I hear people use catchy and cliched sayings like "do what you love" or "live for today", I first think "wow, that's what we should do!"
Then i think, the better saying is learn to do some things that there are wages that will be paid to do. It will likely be more than one thing you must learn to do in your life. And these things you learn to do may be more of a means to an end than some pie in the sky dream job.
It seems to me that reports of the death of the US Manufacturing sector have been greatly exaggerated. It's not dead yet.
No one is saying manufacturing is dead. But the % of jobs in our labor market related to manufacturing has declined and will likely continue to do so--and precisely because of all the increased productivity that you mentioned.
Sure. If they pay fast food wages like $8-$9 an hour, manufacturing will come back in droves. But we've already got McDonalds/TacoBell/etc. if you want to work for that chickenfeed. We've already got too many low wage jobs as it is. My own factory job started at $10 an hour(I'm now up to $14.50/hr). The only thing positive about this is that it will reduce our trade deficit a little. It will not improve the low wage problem in this country, only add to it.
The sad thing is that too many people will still try to get that degree which will only end up with them being in more debt that they cannot pay off. We need better paying jobs in this country for people who can not or should not be getting a college degree. If we don't then the downward spiral will continue until we become another third world country, with over educated idiots, after the educated non-idiots migrate to other countries that have both high level service jobs and manufacturing to go along with it.
A study of economic growth of countries would likely show that their greatest improvements were during periods of high levels of manufacturing.
What are people supposed to do if there is no real jobs? Become pizza delivery drivers? We don't need more student loan debt. We need real jobs. I've got a bachelors degree and I'm working at a factory for $14.50 an hour. Uneducated my ass. I'm browsing the job ads and all I'm seeing is a bunch of jobs for $9-$10 an hour, janitor jobs, crapass jobs.
Well, the U.S. still leads the world in advanced manufacturing.
As far as medium-low skilled manufacture, we COULD bring those jobs back. As others have said, we'd have to adopt callous disregard for environmental and human health. We'd have to create conditions where entry level workers in these factories would be paid a maximum of $4.20 an hour, which is what Mexico's minimum wage is.
If we really wanted to entice manufacturing to move from Mexico to the U.S., we would need to do more than match Mexico's minimum wage, we would need to undercut it.
That would not bring back all manufacturing, since the lowest skill labor is paid about $1.50-2 or so an hour in places like Bangladesh, Honduras, etc...
So I guess the question is, what are we willing to give up to get crappy jobs back?
You might want to read a little more carefully. Minimum wage in Mexico is about $4.20 PER DAY, not per hour. Quite a difference.
Biggest issue was NAFTA. It didn't set enough guidelines on how those jobs that leave here will benefit the places they go to. or how the companies that moved those jobs need to put that back into the economy they left. Simply, ship the job overseas, pay those people a fraction of what you did pay. Don't lower your product prices, rake in the profits, then attempt to avoid paying US taxes on those profits.
What are people supposed to do if there is no real jobs? Become pizza delivery drivers? We don't need more student loan debt. We need real jobs. I've got a bachelors degree and I'm working at a factory for $14.50 an hour. Uneducated my ass. I'm browsing the job ads and all I'm seeing is a bunch of jobs for $9-$10 an hour, janitor jobs, crapass jobs.
You recently wrote: "I cannot do certain jobs. My personality limits me to manual labor occupations. A college degree is useless in such a situation."
Because you have a health issue does not mean that there are no jobs for others. My 20 something daughter and her contemporaries have not needed to settle for crapass jobs. She and most of her friends are well on the way to successful careers. The least successful has opted to work on a cruise ship so she can travel, have fun and party 24 hours a day.
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