US Depleted of Skilled Workers

[Big Orange]

How can Americans apply for engineering when the infamously blind spotted multinational corporations have been rapidly moving most of the "hard" economy away in the last thirty years, and in more recent years even moved onto outsourcing/offshoring the "soft" element of the economy as well (ie the unpopular Indian call centres)? In the six to eight years of Bush's reign only a relatively paltry 3 million people got reliable employment, while the Wonder Chimp has outsourced potentially vital elements of the military-industrial complex and even nearly succeded in offshoring naval construction yards to the UAE (!).

[Korto]

The guy next door to me in TAFE (trade college) has griped at length how management has been cutting back on the engineering courses; sheet metal, welding, etc; in order to run music and sports courses, courses that cost next to nothing in comparison.
Our foundry used to take up a whole wing, with a pattern-shop, sand-room, and large foundry room. Now it's one little foundry room that can only take 8 students, and we're subsisting off the old patterns from the no longer existing pattern-shop.

[Darth Wong]

When you strip away all of the bullshit, the outsourcing situation is a fine example of why people (even Americans) secretly want paternalistic government. Sure, they won't say it, but look at their behaviour. In hordes, they mass at the doors of Wal-Mart to buy cheap Chinese-made goods, then they go home and demand that their politicians do something about outsourcing.

The moral of the story is simple: on some level, these people realize that they simply lack the discipline and willpower to do what they want done, which is to protect American industry. So they beseech the government to do it for them, to tie their hands and limit their options and reduce their freedoms in the name of their collective self-interest, because they know that despite all of the "free market" and "invisible hand" wankery, they need someone to watch over them and keep them from fucking themselves.

[Stravo]

I don't think I'd spin it out that far Mike. Attribute nothing complicated to the masses when it can easily be explained by sheer stupidity. People do not understand how the market works. They never will, its designed so that a few people can get over on many. Yeah, simple supply and demand should tell you that if you want Walmart cheapness you can't get it with US wages. But people don't understand that. They want cheapness but rail against the reality of jobs getting outsourced without really understanding why and are they educated by the media as to why?

NO. Stories about outsourcing jobs goes the traditional break out the violins and hankies route and focuses on families eating shitty food and living on unemployment while not touching the issue of American consumer greed playing a large part in this. It's the big greedy corporation looking for more profit. No one wants to point the finger at the consumer of media as a culprit. So they blithely believe they have nothing to do with it.

The same can be said for a wide range of topics such as oil. People want cheap gas, if it crawls over $2 a gallon there's revolution in the air and pitchforks are getting grabbed to string up the nearest politician yet when we go to war to secure that most vital of assets the same masses scream about no blood for oil. Sorry assholes, that's PRECISELY the message you are sending to the politicians when you scream about paying too much for gas. You are saying "Keep it cheap or else." So you pay with the lives of the poor's kids that no one gives a real shit about as they fill up their SUV's. No one wants to admit it or they're too fucking stupid to see the connection and god forbid the media should ever even think of pointing this out.

People are fucking short sighted and stupid.

[Darth Wong]

I imagine it's some of both phenomena. There are plenty of people who are genuinely too stupid to realize that if everything they buy says "Made in China" on it, then they're sending money out of the domestic economy. But there are also plenty of people who understand what they're doing, keep doing it anyway, and want the government to save them from themselves.

[Big Orange]

I'd say mainly overseas factories = cheap products, was a gradual process steming from corporations not wantng to deal with unions, enviromental laws, healthcare and pensions in the West, so they set up their main manufacturing bases in Second and Third World countries. It easily set up a vicious circle where other corporations were forced to compete with other corporations that had set up overseas factories before them, while retail firms (not just Wal-Mart) felt they could sell more goods by stocking a increasing number of cheap Far Eastern made products.

But people in the UK are waking up to the inherent problems of a overly "free" market economy where the once world class British Rail, already long in decline, was made even worse when this quasi-government organization was outsourced to many different independent transport companies, who naturally wanted to run their section of the rail network their own way with varying degrees of efficiency, and as expected abject chaos and gross mismanagement increased. And UK offshoring of industry is getting worse if light manufacturing plants endorsed by Mrs Thatcher are taken overseas to be replaced by more shops selling foreign made goods. Also Cadbury-Schweppes is going to offshore a factory from Keynsham to make a quick profit by selling the land it was on.

[SecondToDie]

Addendum: what's really ironic for me is that I originally considered going into the 'vocational tech' path, but was talked out of it by the counselor due to my high (1280 total-720 verbal, 590 math) SAT score and entered the local college, only to drop out after my first year due to financial and personal (frankly, lack of maturity) reasons.

I also wanted to take a couple of vocational classes my sophomore and junior years of high school, but was talked out of it by "guidance" counselors and friends who told me that I should take classes that prepare me for college.

I'm in college now, but one of my friends never graduated from college and is currently training to install fiber optic cables as a contractor for a cable company. When I graduate from college and get a job with my degree, I'll probably be making 2/3 of what he's making.

[Big Orange]

I dropped out of college because I thought my English and History degree were going to be of relatively limited value in finding proper work, so now I'm on a training course that teaches GCSE level mathematics then move on from there. I'll perhaps move abroad if Britain hollows itself out even more of it's manufacturing and bureaucracy, at the expense of common sense, enviromental concerns, and society.

I'd say Britain today is facing problems similar to America, by being superficially wealthy in general, but having many basic civil amenities falling apart at the seams, rubbish everywhere, a lack of civil pride among many, and too many people sliding into poverty. Over on Spacebattles.com, the reasonable Victorhadin seems to be in blissful denial of the whole mess when over half of his company he works has already been stolen from the UK, and is grossly underestimating the future R&D capabilities of China.

[Sam Or I]

Would a Pat Buchanan brand of protectionism start to solve some issues?

[Illuminatus Primus]

I imagine it's some of both phenomena. There are plenty of people who are genuinely too stupid to realize that if everything they buy says "Made in China" on it, then they're sending money out of the domestic economy. But there are also plenty of people who understand what they're doing, keep doing it anyway, and want the government to save them from themselves.

Right. At least as a progressive/leftist, I believe in dirigisme and know that presented with economic choices, people and I among them will often make the short-sighted choice. While I try to do otherwise, it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things; which is why we must act collectively - through the state - in order to do things in collective self-interest. Game theory even advocates this; it permits the collaboration between prisoners rather than leaving us all individualized and separated and making selfish, group-damaging decisions.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I'd say mainly overseas factories = cheap products, was a gradual process steming from corporations not wantng to deal with unions, enviromental laws, healthcare and pensions in the West, so they set up their main manufacturing bases in Second and Third World countries. It easily set up a vicious circle where other corporations were forced to compete with other corporations that had set up overseas factories before them, while retail firms (not just Wal-Mart) felt they could sell more goods by stocking a increasing number of cheap Far Eastern made products.

But people in the UK are waking up to the inherent problems of a overly "free" market economy where the once world class British Rail, already long in decline, was made even worse when this quasi-government organization was outsourced to many different independent transport companies, who naturally wanted to run their section of the rail network their own way with varying degrees of efficiency, and as expected abject chaos and gross mismanagement increased. And UK offshoring of industry is getting worse if light manufacturing plants endorsed by Mrs Thatcher are taken overseas to be replaced by more shops selling foreign made goods. Also Cadbury-Schweppes is going to offshore a factory from Keynsham to make a quick profit by selling the land it was on.

No one wants to admit that the real story of Reagan and Thatcher was a short-term fuck-the-masses rich/financier boost to the economy and mostly the end of the tight energy of the '70's. UK develops the North Sea in the '80's and the U.S. had a peak at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and all the while the ME oil price dropped considerably.

[Big Orange]

No one wants to admit that the real story of Reagan and Thatcher was a short-term fuck-the-masses rich/financier boost to the economy and mostly the end of the tight energy of the '70's. UK develops the North Sea in the '80's and the U.S. had a peak at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and all the while the ME oil price dropped considerably.

Well the main complaint about Mrs. Thatcher was that she destroyed most of the original heavy industry in the British Isle, even though it was generally outmoded and run by corrupt unions, in addition to being further wreaked by Old Labor's bad nationalization policies. The ruthless dismantlement rendered millions unemployed, but on the relative bright side she was given something back through North Sea Oil and oversaw the set up of lighter, more modern industry. However getting rid of the vast majority of steel works, ship yards, coal mines, and also seriously neglecting the rail network for decades has made a big hole in Britain that would probably be never get fully fixed.

Maintaining a first rate railway service, a solid manufacturing base, and heavy industry in the UK would not be cost effective according to hack bean counters and greedy executives for quick big profits, but at least it would work out much better two or three decades later...

[K. A. Pital]

Thatcher? A ruthless follower of "specialization", which means basically people in countries which are most suited to be used as labour facilities or resource extraction points would be used, instead of locals. Her ideas were pretty much in line with what most of the upper class do now - they relocate capitals and entire production sectors at will, chasing higher profits against the prospect of a falling profit margin.

That's a boon for capital owners, no shit. As for the people, it allows for cheaper goods but simultaneously damages domestic industries, so that it becomes unclear what the country really contributes to the oh-so-beloved "world division of labour".

The idea is to avoid a diversified economy if someone, somewhere, might be exploited more efficiently for the same goal. It's really clear to anyone even mildly accustomed with logic that such ideas are not correlating with moral choices in any way - they're just a heartless mechanism, much like a cog.

This new ideas didn't just propose "let's cut down benefits for home workers", but another thing alltogether - "let's look for the cheapest possible producer - and fuck everyone else"

[Big Orange]

At least she had an healthy contempt for the EU, the Falklan war was brief and successful, but I guess on hindsight she was more of a detriment than blessing if she destroyed so much of Britain's foundations, even if they were rotting away by the 1970s. Excessive, dogmatic privatisation sucks ass in most cases, with too much money going to too few people, and services going down. Although the tyranny of the employees through selfish unions can do severe damage as well (power cuts, arbitary strikes, and outmoded industries past their sell by date).