So, here's the solution -- we reform our education system, and get more kids going to college and then going on to get graduate degrees. Then, they get out and start companies, and invent "stuff" and manufacture the "stuff" and hire people!
Yeah!! In 10 or 15 years, all the people who have been out of work for 17 years will be getting jobs! Whoo-Hoo!
My Walmart, Target, Costco and just about every other retailer out there doesn’t care about innovation they care that their shipments from China keep rolling in.
US politicians and officials of trans-national corporations have been telling the same lies for years: that more must be invested in education, and that displaced American workers will be retrained for the high tech, high paying jobs of the future.
What they don't say is that the high tech, paying jobs of the future will also be exported to cheap labor and lax regulation nations (and nations that apparently heavily subsidize (bribe) US companies to relocate).
That should become the policy of the US of most all nations: produce it where you plan to sell it.
Must disagree with Mr Lind.
Innovation is great. But it’s only one step. After a product is “innovated”, it must be manufactured and distributed. And, with certain counter-balancing considerations, companies will ALWAYS opt for the overall most economical means of manufacturing their products and distributing them to the global marketplace. For all Mr Lind’s complaints about Chinese cajolery, pressure, bribery, etc, the simple fact of the matter is that Asia today offers the best overall manufacturing venue. China is an easy target today, but the fact of the matter is that the manufacturing economies of just about every Asian nation from Japan, to Taiwan, to Thailand, to the Philippines, to Singapore, to Malaysia, to Indonesia, etc, have grown at the expense of the post-WW2 US manufacturing economy. It’s neither right nor wrong; it’s simply a fact of economic life. America has no divine right claim to perpetual global manufacturing dominance; we have to work to earn it just like anyone else - and in that we have been embarrassingly lax over the past thirty or forty years, sitting on our well-larded asses and fantasizing about the false allure of “the service economy” as a substitute for real industrial activity.
My opinion.
And if that's true, it would seem such practices would definitely be in violation of GATT and WTO rules. Seems some one in the US should be filing unfair trade practices complaints.
When they are not shunted from the economy and politics, those desirous enough to teach themselves can be inventive enough to give America what it needs. Enjoy the ride. Our business, political and academic leaders earned it.
No one seems to understand what education has to do with Obama’s plan for jobs. Obama’s mention of education was nothing less that a shout out to the minorities and the SEIU. Obama’s plan for education is to make the 11th and 12th grades optional and put the little gang bangers directly into union apprenticeships and training schools for jobs in the SEIU, for health care and other first responders.
Obama doesn’t care about health care or insurance. He cares about union jobs in health care and plans to fill them with inner city minorities who don’t even legitimately graduate from high school.
The governor of WA state has already made proposals to the state legislature to create public pre-school/day care and make the 12th grade a “launch” year, launching the potential drop outs into labor union apprenticeships and training schools.
Watch out, it’s coming to a school district near you.