Posted on 10/24/2009 11:44:00 AM PDT by george76
I think a college degree is wonderful, for those who can meet the qualifications. Right now we have a shortage of plumbers, butchers, electricians, skilled Air Conditioning specialists, skilled home maintenance, auto mechanics, the list is endless. We need more Tech schools. A university degree sounds great, until your plumbing goes haywire. Yes, I have a degree, nursing.
Work in personnel for awhile. There are some like that.
That is sad. If you're lucky she may be one of the few to strike a genuinely good teacher who kindles a spark there, but it's unlikely...
Myself, I'm in a role where I have to hire and fire a lot. With rare exceptions (eg specialised engineering or software roles), I also prize degrees because it demonstrates the person has the ability to acquire knowledge and write formally (When you've seen the business documents I receive from some people, you'd have nightmares!).
Personally, I find Arts graduates have the best adaptability in terms of thinking creatively and well, with exceptions for faux subjects - we all know what they are and they tended to spring up over the last three decades. In terms of degrees - eg Science, Commerce, etc I always favour (all else being equal)those who have studied outside their specialty - Arts graduates who've done Science papers or vice versa. Indicates more flexibility and a willingness to look around - My one pet hate are Business Graduates who assume that because they have a Business qualification they automatically know how to manage staff and run business units without any real world experience. They especially improve their value in my eyes with real coalface experience and cross-fertilisation from other disciplines.
What I am saying is that because of affirmative action, all degrees that blacks receive these days are suspect.
Here is the scenario to which I am referring:
Imagine a black man who can't even read, who attends a inner city high school which gives anyone who shows up for class an “A”. He learned nothing in school, but managed to graduate at the top of his class because he had perfect attendance.
He then applies to several liberal arts colleges with aggressive minority recruiting programs, and because of his high school ranking and race is admitted to every one he applies to, even though he scored 600 on his SAT.
Once in college, he is then steered towards degrees and classes like African American studies, or the special classes the athletes are sent to, which churn out A's to anyone who bothers to show up. He eventually graduates and receives a BA degree, which he can't even read.
The same scenario happens ALL the time with athletes (all all races). They are passed through high school and college based on their sports performance and can't even read the degrees they are given.
Unless you want to seal the borders from all trade, we are naturally in competition with them. Demands for higher compensation must be met with delivery of higher productivity.
So, if I understand correctly, your answer is to only trade with people who have comparable standards of living. OK, I don't agree with that.
We are not talking about free trade here; you are parroting the "corporate" line that this is all part of "free trade." This goes beyond that.
I'm parroting nothing. I stated that if you allow free trade, you will be in competition with people who will accept less monetary reward for their effort. I suppose other people including Corps. do say that, as it is clearly true.
We are talking about companies moving operations from the United States to an overseas location to allow them to pay its foreign employees less money than they were paying its American employees. This goes on with the tacit approval of the United States government.
Again, unless you seal the border, those plants will go out of business in the U.S. vice moving. You seem to think that they don't have to compete if they stay here. I'm not sure which world you are living in. As for "tacit approval of the United States Government", its none of the governments damned business one way or another what private individuals or corporations do with their money.
Your only possible, reasonable argument here is to argue to put in place a very complex and ever changing tariff structure designed solely to prevent poorer countries from selling their products here (not exactly a boon to American Consumers). I'd be happy to make an answer to that argument, but I'd first like to have you clearly make it.
OK, I guess there is nothing more to say then.
What I am pointing out is that jobs are going overseas to cheaper labor, and our government allows it. You may not have a problem with it; so be it. Many people, myself included, would step back and ask what I owed this government (other than my civic duties and my duty to obey the law) in return.
Oops. I guess you do want to argue about it. As I said, it is economic forces at work, not political. The only way to "stop it" would be to cease trade. That would mean a de facto closed and protected market where your evil corporations could charge whatever they wanted to. Simply forbidding U.S. firms from investing overseas won't save any jobs here, it will just mean that a foreign owned company will be importing the cheaper goods.
As far as your criticism of tariffs, let me remind you (or inform you) that this country had tariffs in place for most of its history, both as a means of generating revenue for the federal government and as a means of protecting American industry. In addition, with some of these countries, like China, we are paying tariffs to get our products into their countries. This is more than free trade; this is a free-for-all.
So you are against free trade and want an insular market. You want $40/hour so that you can buy a $100 American toaster, instead of $20/hour so you can buy a $50 Japanese toaster. Good for you.
(I wouldn't spend too much time with this; as the dollar continues to decline [making it cheaper to have Americans manufacture things here in the US], I think the subject will soon be moot.)
And as we will be able to purchase very little with our dollars, oil,copper, etc. will cost us much more, while what we make will not have risen at all. There is a country that prides itself on self-reliance. It motto is that nothing should come from foreigners. It is the economic power house of North Korea.
Your comments concerning restricting trade and your desire for government control of private and corporate investment cannot be rectified with your protestations to the contrary. Perhaps you don't understand the entire premise of freetrade, as what you have proposed (or proposed to propose) so far is not freetrade.
So far you've supported the idea of restricting trade based on a foreign country having cheaper labor, and you've stated that entities must be stopped from moving jobs overseas. You don't really have any ideas beyond what appeared to be a side note defense of tariffs.
When you are willing to present an idea, I'll consider it. Perhaps you can pass a law forbidding layoffs too?
OK
What I am pointing out is that jobs are going overseas to cheaper labor, and our government allows it.
As far as your criticism of tariffs, let me remind you (or inform you) that this country had tariffs in place for most of its history, both as a means of generating revenue for the federal government and as a means of protecting American industry.
We are talking about companies moving operations from the United States to an overseas location to allow them to pay its foreign employees less money than they were paying its American employees. This goes on with the tacit approval of the United States government.
We can certainly have free trade with countries that have a comparable standard of living to ours (Canada, Western Europe, for example) without "(sealing) the borders," as you put it.
Silly me, I read all of the above to say that you want the government to stop jobs from going overseas and that you want tariffs. Probably because you referred to both. I asked you to specifically say what you wanted, but you want to rant about my pointing out your attack on free trade.
When you can't, at least come back and admit that I did not say that, and that you should not have attributed a comment to me that I did not make.
Is someone else using your screen name?
Ah...
Like when someone makes the observation that the government is allowing someone to freely speak and also simply observes that we are all harmed by that allowance. I get it now. Silly me to assume intent in your completely harmless observations concerning government inaction vis a vis restraining the free market.
And when you observed that you had no problem with us trading with countries with similar wage scales, I should have never inferred that you had a problem with countries that don't. Silly me again, I think your rant against those countries suckered me in.
Here is an observation for you. People who want the government to restrict the free actions of others for their own monetary benefit are tyrants. Just an observation mind you. Don't read anything into that.
Is that an observation or an implication. I don't want to have to infer anything from your writing. It appears to upset you.
Good observation.
For clarification, I consider a tariff designed solely to price another country's products out of the market as "sealing the border" to them. No glue or machine gun nests involved, but generally as effective on items such as cars, textiles and other bulk goods.
So yes, there are many, many things that the government can do to restrict rights without deeming the practice of those rights to be outright illegal. Many Socialists continue to propose new taxes on firearms and ammunition (I've heard upto 10,000% proposed) that will effectively take them out of our hands.
Tariffs should be used as a leveler against other countries using unfair practices and I think that placing trade restrictions on undemocratic countries might also be a good move in order not to strengthen our enemies. However, that is a far cry from tariffs designed solely to protect U.S. domestic manufacturing. If Japanese cars carried a $5000 tariff, GM would be in no better position than they are today, all cars would just cost $5000 more, and people would be buying fewer of them.
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