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.
The solution for the U.S. is to create another industrial revolution by becoming the world's foremost producer of alternative energy products, and by exporting those goods to other energy markets. It solves all of our problems in one fell swoop. Jobs, at the high end (engineers, scientists) and the low end (production line). Reliance on fossil fuel products. Pollution and environmental concerns.
But the right wing is dead set against this common sense solution and have brainwashed a significant portion of our population to believe that alternative energy is bad and domestic drilling is good. We have a world market for oil so it's not like we keep what we drill anyway. Most people don't know that. Well, most people don't know much of anything.
How much do you know about alternative fuel sources? Do you know their limitations? Do you realize that even if we did become a world leader in alternative fuel sources, it wouldn't create enough jobs to replace what we lost from the auto industry alone let alone all other industries that have left our shores. As to exporting alternative fuel technology built here....we're competing with China's cheap labor so it's far more likely things would be designed here and built there. Not to mention the huge cost outlay that would be necessary to get this project off the ground...Which it would on its own IF there were really a market for alternative fuel sources (slowly building as oil prices rise).
This is an industry still in its infancy and until we run out of oil, it will stay in its infancy. As long as we have access to, relatively, cheap fuel, there is no reason for John Q. Public to pay more for energy generated through alternative fuel programs. Just look at the lack of popularity of alternative fuel vehicles. Do you see people lining up to buy them???
When there is actually a demand, industry will follow. The problem with your "logic" is you're building a product that the public doesn't yet want. You have to have the resources to keep your factory open while you wait for demand to meet supply and that's IF there ever is a demand for your particular product. The first logical step we'll take when economics forces our hand is cutting use. When gas crosses $5/gallon (maybe $6) and stays there, you'll hear cries for mass transit, car pooling, telecommuting, fuel efficient vehicles AND drilling our own oil. Until then, it's status quo. Seriously, you're talking about a nation that refused to buy American to save it's own hide. Do you really think alternative fuel sources will take off BEFORE there is an actual need for them?? And when it does, Americans will do what they have always done. Demand the cheapest product which won't be made here becuase we don't have the cheapest labor. The very factors that resulted in industry leaving our shores will keep industry from building here. They're still in place. If you want to compete with China, you need to pay China wages and benefits. That will never float here no matter what the industry.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 02-18-2012 at 04:13 PM..
I formerly held several corporate positions. There was NO sense of 'walking on eggshells' like I felt when I was a teacher. In corporate, you are only going to get fired if you mess up in a royal fashion. (I was in HR and we only fired people for things like stealing or not doing their jobs (ie running their own company when they were supposed to be making outbound sales calls!)
With teaching, if you don't have tenure (and we never will in FL), you are micromanaged and treated like a temp worker. The HR dept here tells us "Annual contract teachers have no expectation of re-employment." So you are a contract worker, as we used to call them in the corp. HR world. Nobody wants to sign on for a corp job that ends in June. In the "real world", your job is presumed to continue unless you mess up (or the company has a layoff these days). So many administrators now are overworked and stessed out - they take it out on teachers. You are chewed out for not doing "X" so the next time, when you make sure to do "X", they yell at you for doing it! Crazy...
I just want a job where I have at least a chance of a raise. Teacher salaries here in FL are either frozen for years, or flat out going backwards (Manatee County just approved a teacher salary CUT).
This is my experience too. I miss feeling secure in my job. While I did get downsized out, the writing was on the wall for that for a while so it came as no surprise. You can't combine three labs into one without letting , at least, half of the people go. I feel I have zero security as a teacher. It depends on how the wind blows.
I'll second knee jerk responses from adminstration as well. I've seen too many of them. I've never been pro union but I'm seeing, for the first time, that sometimes you need one. In the professional world, I didn't need one. As a teacher, I do.
I know this is "radical" but if we take away the incentive to ship jobs to China, etc., which is lower labor costs/higher profits, then jobs will stay here. Not only are we losing jobs to China, we are losing tax dollars that American workers would've paid on those wages too. And we are losing the economic stimulus of those American wages that would have been spent here. It's a triple whammy. I propose that American companies that employ overseas workers pay a penalty for each and every worker equal at least of the amount of tax dollars lost. Call me a &^%$ socialist or whatever, I don't care.
You have some good points about the market for alternative energy...I don't have all the answers. All I know is capitalism is long past the point of finding needs to fill...all our needs are met. Now they are just trying to convince us we "need" stuff we don't really need. But one need that hasn't been met is energy. It is an ever-increasing, worldwide need. That's why, to me, it is the obvious direction to move in to bring back our manufacturing base, and create good jobs with a living wage.
And perhaps we would be further along in the process of developing technology if, as I suspect, wealthy oil companies had not been buying up patents and suppressing technology. We have damn well known for over 30 years we have an energy crisis.
You sound as if you're giving up. I am not giving up on this country, not yet anyway.
I know this is "radical" but if we take away the incentive to ship jobs to China, etc., which is lower labor costs/higher profits, then jobs will stay here. Not only are we losing jobs to China, we are losing tax dollars that American workers would've paid on those wages too. And we are losing the economic stimulus of those American wages that would have been spent here. It's a triple whammy. I propose that American companies that employ overseas workers pay a penalty for each and every worker equal at least of the amount of tax dollars lost. Call me a &^%$ socialist or whatever, I don't care.
You have some good points about the market for alternative energy...I don't have all the answers. All I know is capitalism is long past the point of finding needs to fill...all our needs are met. Now they are just trying to convince us we "need" stuff we don't really need. But one need that hasn't been met is energy. It is an ever-increasing, worldwide need. That's why, to me, it is the obvious direction to move in to bring back our manufacturing base, and create good jobs with a living wage.
And perhaps we would be further along in the process of developing technology if, as I suspect, wealthy oil companies had not been buying up patents and suppressing technology. We have damn well known for over 30 years we have an energy crisis.
You sound as if you're giving up. I am not giving up on this country, not yet anyway.
What are you going to manufacture to sell abroad? Countries that are not dependent on the automobile aren't going to buy alternative fuel vehicles. They're going to put in mass transit (which we should have done LONG ago). They're not going to buy solar collectors or wind turbines, they're going to put in nuclear power plants. We MIGHT have a market for solar lighting in 3rd world countries without power, in outlying regions, but they wouldn't be able to afford any products we made given our wage structure.
We sold the farm because we wanted cheaper goods. Now we have plenty of cheaper goods and no job to pay for them. We shot ourselves in the foot and now it's time to pay the piper. We demanded cheaper and cheaper products and now we don't make them anymore. JVC used to be one of the best televisions you could buy and it was made here. Not anymore. We used to have the big three automotive companies but we kept buying Honda's and Toyota's that, ironically, cost as much these days (they came in, undercut us on price and stole the market from us -- Actually, we handed it to them...). Just try to buy a piece of clothing made here. I tried to find a pair of boots made here before shelling out $200 for a pair of Uggs. Even Minnetonka boots are now made in China (so are the Uggs I just bought).
I don't know that I'm giving up so much as recognizing that we made our bed and now it's time to lie in it lumps and all. I'm not sure what we're going to do. We'd need several major investments in manufacturing here AND for our workers to accept much lower wages. I don't see either happening any time soon. Honestly, the only industry I see bringing us back is oil. We have enough shale oil to become an oil exporter. Oil exporting countries enjoy lower taxes, lots of benefits from the government and income. Too bad the left wing will never let it happen.
Your problem is you're trying to figure out how to get the rest of the world to buy what you want to sell instead of selling them something they want to buy and they aren't going to do it. If we couldn't get Americans to buy American to save our economy and our jobs, why do you think you can get another country to buy American to save our economy and our jobs?
Oil companies are not suppressing technology. Demand drives advancments in technology. People don't want to pay more for the new technology. Therefore it's not built. Companies make what people will buy. People aren't clammoring for alternative fuel technology. You are failing to see that until there is a demand, there will be no supply. When there is a demand, companies will jump through hoops to meet it. They're in it to make a profit. They can't make a profit on what they cannot sell. If you want companies to invest in new alternative fuel technology, create a demand for the product!!! It's not like we have a captive consumer. If we don't make that they want, someone else will and they'll spend their money there...which they already did...which is why we're in this mess in the first place.
I used to work for an automotive company that made fuel efficient and alternative fuel vehicles. In order to meet the government requirement to have X percent on the road, they put them in the company fleet because no one was buying them. Gee, that did a lot of good.
Companies make what people will buy. Period. Consumers not asking for alternative fuel technologies and they balk at the pricetag when they are offered and then go buy something made in China that is cheaper. It doesn't matter what we make if no one is buying what we make and if they don't like what we make, they WILL go elsewhere. This has nothing to do with a conspiracy by the oil companies. It's simple supply and demand. Either please the consumer or they shop elsewhere.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 02-18-2012 at 06:58 PM..
I've read about the Finnish education system. It seems to offer some interesting ideas and approaches, and I absolutely agree that the U.S. needs to get over its fear of the outside world and accept that some ideas from abroad might be superior to our way of thinking. At the same time, though, we should be careful about taking too much from one system. We can't just use one model as a shining, silver bullet example to follow.
Other systems produce good results, too, like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. And as Riipa points out, just because their education outcomes say one thing, doesn't mean that they don't have problems in other areas. I'm sure that the Finnish system is just as human as ours.
The real problem I see with the American system is really cultural more than anything else. I used to think it was a matter of state control vs. local control, but local control can be an excellent thing, even if that responsibility is misused in some states. Canada's system employs local control to a large degree, with some central oversight.
I think the issue is that Americans typically see education as largely a good thing, but they've never accepted educated people as a distinguished class, and they never will. We as teachers and people who otherwise interested in education need to just accept that and get over it. The sooner we can, the sooner we can stop screaming about how we're disrespected and just get down to teaching, the better we'll all be.
We need to stop demanding that our profession be respected and we need to get back to quietly supporting the other classes of technocrats, bureaucrats, traders, and laborers as they advance and establish their places in the socioeconomic hierarchy. I think too many moves made by the education field are regarded with suspicion as trying to get favorable treatment. Teachers don't do themselves favors by taking orders from unions and striking to get better contracts. Maybe that makes me an Uncle Tom in the field of education but that's how I feel about it.
We'd be far more respected if we'd just shut up and do our jobs. We're not going to get a lot of sympathy from people when millions of others are underemployed or collecting unemployment themselves. We just need to get in and teach. Do what we do best.
On the flip side of that coin, ordinary people need to stop taking swipes at the field of education. So what if they get a nice pension? So what if they get more time off than you do? Do you really want to make the field less attractive to people who essentially end up being glorified babysitters? The real problem is that this dysfunctional political 'discourse' that we have ends up finding its way into the school system too, which is really bad. We don't need politics in our schools. We need facts. We need knowledge and training. That's the other part of the problem, and it's a dangerous one.
Science classes capped at 16??? And only having to teach four hours a day??? The sky wouldn't be the limit in my class. Do you know how many labs I could do? How much I could teach?.... One can only dream...
Here, they're pushing past the 24 student safety limit to save money. My classes, routinely, have 28 (I have lab stations for only 24) and the logistics of monitoring that many kids in the lab raises my blood pressure just thinking about it. The bigger my classes get, the fewer labs we do. I just can't handle so many kids in one class up doing labs when I only have 50 minutes and I really don't have time for the set up and tear down after teaching 6 hours a day.
Maybe I need to move. I was in the top 5% of my engineering class, probably, the top 1% of my ed class and I have two masters degrees. I wonder if they'd want me??
I have 42 students in each period and have 4 periods per day plus homeroom.
One thing you're missing here. The attitude of the students.
I suspect that's also something that's different in Finland. Americans have a disproportionate number of unruly brats whose parents make excuses for them. I suspect that's a lot less prevalent in Finland.
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.
and have brainwashed a significant portion of our population to believe that alternative energy is bad and domestic drilling is good. We have a world market for oil so it's not like we keep what we drill anyway. Most people don't know that. Well, most people don't know much of anything.
I wonder if they'd want me??
