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Wrong and so very wrong. There is a surge of private companies in the area drawn by schools, state incentives (Virginia) and the available talent pool. It has become a self fulfilling chain. If anyone thinks the upcoming election will change the role of government in the NOVA/Maryland economy they are kidding themselves. Trump can close several departments and the intended increase in defense and national security spending will require a level of technical skill available in the DC area and not available or attracted to many other areas of the country and a surge in related spending and hiring.
I know all about it. I had a work center with the phone company in Manassas in the early 1990s. And several others in Falls Church. Everyone in our work center was ESL and sent all the phone bills out to the wrong companies when the company names started with "Tele-[something]". Cheap contract labor. It was a huge scandal and caused the tremendous controversy with telephone resellers in the industry stealing each other's customers and slamming people switching their networks without authorization. I had to work down there for months and YEARS off and on to straighten it out.
IMO, this thread belongs in Politics not Retirement. You can't talk about the economy and globalism there without talking about the Federal government. Just like you can't talk about the economy on the West Coast without talking about tech. ANOTHER bubble, IMO. Because when the TPP gets pushed through in DC, the tech employees will find out what globalism REALLY means. Starting with international companies allowed to come to the US with their entire work force - NOT hiring ours.
I don't see it different than in the past. In the past a great many jobs were also outright eliminated. When armor was no longer needed, the armorers found new jobs making canons and firearms. The people who used to make wagon wheels and buggy whips have been replaced by millions of people who work in the transportation industries.
You are talking about the product changing, not the production. The next big revolution in transportation could (should in my mind) be a move to self driving electric cars. I don't think they will just retool existing factories; maybe some will be gutted and the new factory will have the same exterior and address but not the same process. I think it could be as bad as 500,000 displaced workers competing for less than 100,000 new jobs; possibly far less. Social pressure may cause this to happen slower here than elsewhere, but I think it will happen. But both of us will probably be long gone before it's clear which of us is right and like the article says, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.
I work in tech and have done some robotics work; it is amazing how much that has advanced and how much costs are coming down (what used to be specialized and expensive tech is now mass produced). I can get a high res camera that includes a computer on the board that can figure out what part it is looking at and what orientation the part is in for under $80. Parts identification and placement is one of the more common jobs done by humans on assembly lines that are highly automated with previous generations of tech. Poof - gone...
That doesn't make me right, but I base my opinion on first and second hand knowledge of what is technically feasible.
I don't see it different than in the past. In the past a great many jobs were also outright eliminated. When armor was no longer needed, the armorers found new jobs making canons and firearms. The people who used to make wagon wheels and buggy whips have been replaced by millions of people who work in the transportation industries.
You're making a critical error in judgment here.
All of these items involved progression, but that progrssion involved human labor and a lot of the work was still manual work.
A guy hammering out swords that then made guns is still manufacturing. He's doing it - not a machine. As the Industrial Revolution came about, a lot of people doing previously manual work initially lost jobs in the restructuring, but humans were still needed to either run the machinery or they found new ways to use the machines, creating new jobs that didn't previously exist. We probably continued to have a net gain of available jobs for centuries.
That tide appears to be turning. Many of the factories that produce the goods can be mostly automated and run on a handful of skilled staff. The guys packaging the stuff, palletizing it, and loading onto trucks for shipping are also easily automated away. All the truckers that move the stuff from A to B are also probably on their way out in a generation.
There are going to be fewer and fewer tasks that humans previously did or currently do that we will do in the future. Honestly one of the reasons that more low end jobs haven't been automated away is because low end labor is so damn cheap and the technology still relatively expensive to automate them, that the value proposition isn't quite there yet.
Rural and city populations are changing by design and subtle coercion. Agenda 21 and other globalist agendas are engineering all this. Up till now this has been slowly, but, now the push is on and it is really obvious once one is aware and looks for it. Most are oblivious though so ...
As for why anyone should get spun out over 40 million people (even if that is an accurate number) ... if we shouldn't then how do you explain the push for LGBTQ 'rights', MJ use, etc? Those are for a much smaller group of people than 40 million. The new trend is (unless it is inconvenient for people/governments to talk about them so far) is to push for minority over majority rights and freedoms.
SR is right, there very much is a shrinking of the middle class, but its not just based on income and education. In some cases the difference is wisdom or foolishness. Probably a majority of the poor are poor because they were lazy, wasteful, drug or alcohol abusers, or criminals. Lots of middle class people have done well,not because of white privilege or any such thing, but they stuck with a conservative lifestyle, little drinking and smoking, saved and invested, lived under their means, paid off their house, stayed married, worked hard in their career.
You are the only one that touched on the component that is accelerating the impact of the changing Global marketplace. With the loss of these manufacturing jobs (most never to come back) your personal behaviors have never been more important. Despite this delicate environment the differences in behavior between the haves and have-nots have likely never been this drastic. Fewer marriages, more divorces, more children out of wedlock, more adultery, more obesity, more spending on credit, less saving, more gambling, more alcohol/drug abuse (meth use a major problem especially in rural areas),... So, what is society's answer to all of this? Further de-stigmatization and attempts at modifying outcomes which only leads to more of these self-destructive behaviors. 'You don't call me out on my destructive behaviors and I won't call you out on yours", while we collectively walk hand in hand into the abyss. It's a recipe for disaster. There are not enough potential tax dollars to chase to deal with these ramifications. Yes, we need the people pushing the wagon to push harder, but it certainly would be a lot easier if less people (and smaller people) were on the wagon and more were helping push.
I know all about it. I had a work center with the phone company in Manassas in the early 1990s. And several others in Falls Church. Everyone in our work center was ESL and sent all the phone bills out to the wrong companies when the company names started with "Tele-[something]". Cheap contract labor. It was a huge scandal and caused the tremendous controversy with telephone resellers in the industry stealing each other's customers and slamming people switching their networks without authorization. I had to work down there for months and YEARS off and on to straighten it out.
IMO, this thread belongs in Politics not Retirement. You can't talk about the economy and globalism there without talking about the Federal government. Just like you can't talk about the economy on the West Coast without talking about tech. ANOTHER bubble, IMO. Because when the TPP gets pushed through in DC, the tech employees will find out what globalism REALLY means. Starting with international companies allowed to come to the US with their entire work force - NOT hiring ours.
That's why your article was in POLITICO.
Perhaps if you or a moderator who you may have contacted were to read my OP and the stated context it was presented in you might realize the relationship between the article and many threads in this forum. If you are familiar with Politico you would realize they cover a wide range of topics.
Again from the OP
Quote:
This isn't about politics but about the fact that America may well as the article suggest have two economic realities very different from each other. Our lives in that reality can create a very different retirement mentality, life style and mind set about it all.
followed by the link which was followed by:
Quote:
Perhaps in one area a retirement income of 50k is satisfying and in another area couples need a lot more to feel comfortable and meet THEIR expectations.
The intention seems pretty clear of the OP. Now about folks off topic? Oh well hope the weather breaks soon I need to get back to the beach
Folks as Run with Scissors has noted most of you have gone way off topic and beyond the scope and intent of the OP which was to understand how regional economics can and does shape our opinions and views on retirement. A post many of us have noted before and now we have a census report to help provide some framework if that still works for folks these days.
Honestly one of the reasons that more low end jobs haven't been automated away is because low end labor is so damn cheap and the technology still relatively expensive to automate them, that the value proposition isn't quite there yet.
Yet another tangent...
According to some accounts, that is the reason the Greeks didn't make use of Hero's engine or try to come up with alternatives. We have been converting oscillating motion to rotary for eons (the bow drill appeared in Egypt over 6,000 years ago), so it wouldn't have been a huge leap to invent the piston instead of spinning the ball with jets.
Essentially what you have today is an educational and skills arms race where a seemingly shrinking percentage of people and mostly a handful of mega cities are disproportionately prosperous
We had strongly considered retiring to a small, western town but have realized that these changes going on in our society may not play out well in such places over the next decade. In the meantime, trying to find more affordable housing options in or near a "desirable" city becomes increasingly difficult and will force out those who can't quite keep up with the rising costs.
We had strongly considered retiring to a small, western town but have realized that these changes going on in our society may not play out well in such places over the next decade. In the meantime, trying to find more affordable housing options in or near a "desirable" city becomes increasingly difficult and will force out those who can't quite keep up with the rising costs.
That's a good point.
We decided to retire at a location close to Medical facilities. That is increasingly difficult to find in rural areas.
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