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Alleged ‘Skills Gap’ Takes Spotlight Off Who’s to Blame for Massive Jobs Shortage
Lately, the usual stream of stories about America’s jobs crisis has been displaced by a story about the shortage of crucial skills among the jobless.
"In short," writes Bybee, "the Education, Training and Skills "frame” on our economic problems plays several useful functions for the CEOs and the rest of the richest 1 percent. It takes the spotlight off CEOs' decisions to wipe out decent-paying job opportunities." This new narrative—fed by new studies from corporate sources like Deloitte & Touche—has seemingly displaced information about the plight of the unemployed. Suddenly, stories about the unemployed—except for jobless college graduates who are carrying part of the country's $1 trillion in outstanding student debt—have virtually disappeared from the mainstream media.
What’s happening to the growing numbers of “99-ers,” people whose unemployment benefits have expired? How are families and communities coping with a rising tide of mortgage foreclosures—that, as GOP presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann of all people reminded us—painfully force families from the security of their “nests”?
Worry not, a new hook for economic coverage has arrived. A major study on the perils posed by the "skill gap" to our economy warns:
American manufacturing companies cannot fill up to 600,000 skilled positions, even as unemployment numbers hover at historic levels, according to a survey released Monday from Deloitte & Touche and The Manufacturing Institute.
…Some companies are not bidding for projects because they lack skilled manpower to do the work, according to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
It's the "jobs paradox," said WMC President and CEO Kurt Bauer.
"We have high unemployment, yet companies can't find the skilled help they need," he said.
Another report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce National Chamber Foundation and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce received prominent play in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as have a number of other recent stories on the predicted shortage of skilled workers looming soon in Wisconsin’s future:
The report also warns that the state's workforce is aging, an ominous sign for a labor market that faces an ongoing shortage of skilled workers.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman quotes the CEO of Caterpillar about the dangers of inadequate education in what Friedman calls “The Age of Austerity”:
Doug Oberhelman, the C.E.O. of Caterpillar, which is based in Illinois, was quoted in Crain’s Chicago Business on Sept. 13 as saying: “We cannot find qualified hourly production people, and, for that matter, many technical, engineering service technicians, and even welders, and it is hurting our manufacturing base in the United States. The education system in the United States basically has failed them, and we have to retrain every person we hire.”
The highly influential Fareed Zakaria, columnist, TV host and "apostle of globalization..., who has long argued that free trade and globalization are win-win propositions and good for America, now argues that while globalization has been good for American companies, the way it has been operating has not been so good for American workers and job creation,” notes former globalization enthusiast Clyde Prestowitz. Prestowitz goes on to point out:
Astoundingly, Zakaria says this is because the U.S. workforce is not well enough educated. He quotes Pimco bond fund founder Bill Gross as saying that: "Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today's market place."
One could easily conclude from these stories and accompanying headlines that a substantial part of America’s unemployment problem is caused by jobless workers’ individual failures to update their skills.
Further, the public schools and the unionized teachers—under attack not just from Republicans like Scott Walker, but also Education Secretary Arne Duncan (see here, and here) and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (see here and here)—have been failing to properly provide 21st century skills to their students.
Perhaps far too much attention has been devoted to the government role in job creation and retention, when American CEOs need to demand more from their employees and from the U.S. educational system to solve the jobless problem over the long term, this narrative suggests.
But in reality, this whole “Education, Training, and Skills” narrative serves to divert attention from the massive shortage of jobs and Corporate America's misdeeds to “failing” teachers and supposedly under-educated workers. Corporate America has failed to produce virtually any net gain in U.S. jobs since 1999; the period was the only decade when U.S. employment grew by less than 20 percent.
In short, the Education, Training and Skills "frame” on our economic problems plays several useful functions for the CEOs and the rest of the richest 1 percent. It takes the spotlight off CEOs' decisions to wipe out decent-paying job opportunities. As Gordon Lafer writes in The Training Charade,
Workers are encouraged not to blame corporate profits, the export of jobs aboard, or eroding wage standards—that is, anything that they can fight—but rather to look inward for the source of their misfortune and the seeds of their resurrection.
It also distracts from a few other things:
THE PROBLEM IS MICROSCOPIC
With 15 million Americans officially unemployed (the number rises to about 25 million when you include the discouraged jobless and those involuntarily working part-time), the relative number of positions going unfilled is infinitesimal in comparison. Just 5 percent of all current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to a lack of qualified applicants.
Conceivably, a firm commitment by Corporate America and the federal government to maintaining and expanding America’s industrial base, accompanied by an equitable sharing of the massive productivity gains accruing almost solely to corporations, would make work in skilled manufacturing once again attractive. But as illustrated by the direction of leading corporations like General Electric, major firms seem less committed than ever to keeping their manufacturing production in the US. Moreover, leading figures in both political parties resist the notion of an “industrial policy” to foster U.S. manufacturing, as economist Jeff Faux has emphasized.
THE LIMITED VALUE OF TRAINING
When displaced workers successfully complete retraining programs, they are generally unable to find jobs comparable in pay and benefits to the ones they lost. "Out of a hundred laid-off workers," says New York Times economics writer Louis Uchitelle in his book The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, "27 are making their old salary again, or more, and 73 are making less, or not working at all."
COMPANIES DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR BETTER SCHOOLS
CEOs like Caterpillar’s Oberhelmer feel free to demand that our schools produce well-trained workers. However, corporations like Caterpillar and GE are unwilling to pay the taxes necessary to support quality education for all children. These and other corporations have skillfully avoided paying any federal taxes in some years, and paying minimal taxes in others.
Caterpillar’s Oberhelmer used a frequent corporate ploy in response to tax increases in Illinois. Despite massive increases in profits for the Peoria-based firm, he sent a letter to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn with a thinly-veiled threat to relocate the corporate headquarters because of a 2 percent tax increase for wealth executives.
Without corporations paying their fair share of taxes, how can they expect a top-notch workforce?
Let us be clear: more education, training, and skills for the unemployed will not produce job opportunities when Corporate America is unwilling to invest in new U.S. jobs, despite the deceptive arguments presented by corporations and allies like Friedman and Zakaria. Nor will public education be able to improve for the children of poor and working-class children when corporations like General Electric and Caterpillar use blackmail threats of relocation to reduce their taxes.
Lafer offers a cold splash of reality on the whole Education, Skills, and Training charade:
Whatever the problem, it seems job training is the answer. The only trouble is, it doesn't work, and the government knows it. . . . Indeed, in studying more than 40 years of job training policy, I have not seen one program that, on average, enabled its participants to earn their way out of poverty.
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77 Comments so far
Show AllWhat sorts of skills and training does Caterpillar need? Please, I'd like to see an outline. I am betting their Human Resources department excluded many qualified applicants because of factors like: age, sex, credit rating, and employment status. Not to mention those vague questions on applications like what did you make in your last job. If it was too little, you're not taken seriously, if it was too much they exclude you as over qualified and think you'll be dissatisfied. Perhaps they now require a foreign language so you can speak to the outsourced labor pool.
What's amazing to me is how many people who lost their jobs to outsourcing had to actually train their foreign replacements before being severed completely from the companies they worked for.
I took part in a retraining program after I was hurt on the job. First they wanted to throw me into a field that was oversaturated. I pointed out the folly. Then they were set on a program located in the next city from my town which would have made the program too expensive with travel allocations. I had to outline to the counselor how I could take part of the classes locally, and transfer to the expensive program for the last 3 weeks. He couldn't figure that out on his own. Yet his salary was the biggest expense in my retraining. And I had no choice in his selection. Workers Comp assigned me to his firm for retraining. I could have and did design my own retraining program but his firm received 15,000.00.
You are so right Gardener. Many companies exclude people that can be easily trained inadvertantly by having Human Resources filters that are too restrictive. Workers with BA degrees and above typcially have the critical thinking skills needed to learn new tasks or roles, even if they have never performed the actual work before. How can a person with a proven work history/ethic, no history of drugs/violence, no criminal record, and a college education not be transferrable to nearly any industry? My favorite screening question is "Have you ever been party to a lawsuit against an employer?". Pretty easy to guess why they want to know that one. Employers also just do not want to spend any $$$ training people anymore, plain and simple. I see it often in the mortgage industry where we are nearly all temps, regardless of experience or education. Thrown to the wolves but expected to perform at the highest level of perfection.
" I see it often in the mortgage industry where we are nearly all temps, regardless of experience or education. Thrown to the wolves but expected to perform at the highest level of perfection. .."
They never expected them to perform well. They were only interested in scapegoats and speed.
"In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.
In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud. "
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/14/910243/-Hairdressers-hired-to-review-Foreclosure-Documentation!
It would appear the banks found these people had the requisite skills necessary for the performance of their duties.
I guess they could pay these hairdressers less than an unemployed real estate paralegal w/ past income history...but could not have paid me enough to commit fraud.
That's the crux, isn't it. How much it takes to get someone to commit fraud. And lately the price get's lower and lower. I am glad to hear you can't be bought.
Just take a look at the hiring page for Caterpillar. There are only 10 'skilled trades' jobs even advertised at Caterpillar right now. How many unemployed trades people are there? I can't believe there is trouble filling these few positions.
Let's also take a look at what Caterpillar produces, machines dependent on fossil fuels mostly used for furthering dependance on fossile fuels...paving machines, plows and graders, and, equipment used for mining, oil and gas exploration, pipeline construction, and power generation. We need a national policy that not helps create jobs for skilled trades workers but that focuses those jobs on industries that will provide for the long-term sustainability and economic stability of the country. In the next decade I want to see antiquated manufactures like Caterpillar complaining that they can't find skilled workers, both blue and white collar, because they have all found satisfying and sustaining work in providing solutions to a post-carbon fueled world.
In addition to age, sex, etc, I would also add arrest records. It has become easier than ever to access criminal records, and many companies automatically disqualify anyone who has been popped for marijuana possession or a DWI. And in a country that accounts for 25% of the world's incarcerated people, that's a hell of a lot of unemployed. Many companies also have a policy of hiring only people who are currently employed; the unemployed need not apply. The solution to this crisis is socialism. Time to take that word back from the reactionary redbaiters.
We need to take a page out of the German education system. They take their students and place them in internships with various industries and let them learn by working on the job. They start this in high school and they must do three internships per year. By the time they graduate they have had hands on experience and skills with a number of career fields and are ready to hit the job market. This type of training has served Germany well as their blue collar workers and their industries has provided Germany with a strong economy They are the ones leading the way with the bail out of the European Union problem nations.
When Caterpillar and other corporations say they are having trouble finding skilled workers, what they really mean is that they can’t find highly skilled workers willing to work part-time at minimum wage with no benefits.
I wonder if they are also having trouble finding skilled “interns” to work for free in their PR and legal departments for the possibility of being considered for an entry level job years from now (well, that and the free coffee and donuts in the break room).
Many of the jobs Caterpillar needs people for can be easily done by skilled UNION workers, but Caterpillar, like many greedy, selfish, short-sighted American-based corporations doesn't want to pay a fair wage. So, IF they find anybody to fill those positions, they will be inferior workers, who will produce an inferior product, and EVERYBODY loses.
Wall Street is a casino, and it is clear who benefitted. I saw this a few minutes ago before reading this article and will say that this infuriated me to no end.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/10/21/massachusetts_senates_casino_bill_would_aid_affluent_schools_leave_out_some_of_poorest/?p1=News_links
Sounds like the obama education model.
Thanks for info link. And many still believe the bs theory of equal opportunities within merit based system...hmmm just begs too many questions.
Even if one accepts the argument advanced by those who blame the lack of skilled labor, the fact remains that the educational system is not being funded and cared for as it should, and that the government AND THOSE THAT LOBBY IT (i.e. the corporations) bear the responsibility for the failure of our educational institutions in forming properly skilled and knowledgeable individuals.
How can so many be in debt with educational loans, and argue that education has not been adequately funded? It's a highly profitable segment of the economy. Where is all that money being spent? Is this another example of the failure of privatization? Are people overpaying? Is this a case of people overpaying for something that provides no return?
Yes. They tell you that you need a degree, so you go into debt to get one. Then they say you need another degree, so you go into more debt. Then there are still no jobs. That's why everyone's all pissed off.
So now these predators are aruing that China has a better education system than the USA does? These people are dangerous - we should start treating them as such.
I suppose tariffs that average 20+ % on our goods going to foreign countries and an average of 3% on their goods flowing into the USA is Free Trade?
Doesn't sound very free or fair to me -
These people LYING plain and simple.
They don't let something as inconsequential as the TRUTH get in the way of their failed ideology - an ideology that is Anti-American.
We used to call these people Tories and tarred and feathered them during the revolutionary war -
FDR called them Economic Royalists and taxed the hell out of them.
They have gamed the system and take ALL the gains from economic growth for their 1%. The very definition of a flawd and corrupt economic model.
I say for the next 30 years the top 1% have falling and stagnant wealth and wages - imagine the whining and crying we'd hear from these pathetic greedy SOB's.
And they would threaten to leave the USA - we couldn't get so lucky.
Our president in his State of the Union speech went on about how Chinese education surpasses ours. Who are we to argue? Funny thing... he didn't address the fact that many Chinese factory workers have no education and live in cubicles only big enough to lie down in and have the rent for those cubicles deducted from their pay.
"Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They're investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer."
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133224933/transcript-obamas-state-of-union-address
Funny thing. Solar and home computers were invented in the US not China or India. Chinese and Indian labor were educated in this country, or by outsourced workers from this country, not Chinese and Indian educational systems. Multinational corporations took technology and innovation developed in this country and handed it over to these nations for development, and no one raised a concern. Not a businessman, not an elected official. Why is that?
Wouldn't it have been in our national interest to keep some technology national? Isreal is now selling drones. What do we have remaining that is considered distinctly "American"? Not Levis, Stanley Tools or Fords? Not even our instruments of war.
Strange state of affairs when even low level employees have to sign "privacy" and "non-disclosure" agreements but our corporations hand secrets and technology over to other nations for development.
I strongly agree that we should renounce all corp charters when they are not serving the common interest of our nation. However, please note that "China’s first computer was developed in 1958, only one year after Japan’s and its first integrated circuit was produced in 1964, only five years behind the first US patent. A microcomputer was developed by 1977 (even before IBM unveiled its PC), a microprocessor by 1980, and a supercomputer, along with an IBM-compatible PC, by 1983." http://monthlyreview.org/2010/02/01/the-u-s-economy-and-china-capitalism-class-and-crisis
Your point is? Why aren't we all using Chinese computers? Where are those early Chinese computers?
By the way I am getting a Page not found message to your link.
Sorry, my point was only that the Chinese were just as industrious as the US while under Mao, which I found to be a contradiction to what we have been taught in re: communism. Here is the link again, which I copied directly from site http://monthlyreview.org/2010/02/01/the-u-s-economy-and-china-capitalism-class-and-crisis Check it out, plenty of well sourced articles by many authors including Chomsky, Herman, Foster, etc. (Browse/archive/author or...) The author for above article was Martin Hart-Landsberg.
That's not a quick read but deserves taking some time to even begin to understand the issue which is complex, as I already noted.
There are many things that go down in both American education and MSM that aren't completely correct, especially about China. One is the catchall "Made in China" which is true enough but in many cases, by American Companies operating in China using Chinese labor. Further, although I have no evidence for this, I would suspect that "made" also covers "assembled" which is clearly laid out in Friedman's "The World is Flat" and can be substantiated by looking at the various components on a desktop computer's motherboard: they're from various companies in various countries.
UPDATE
Here's the operative paragraph that shows that "Made in China" involves countries, referred to as transnational corporate investment:
"This restructuring cannot be understood simply through a nation-state lens. Rather, as China’s reforms proceeded over the 1990s, Chinese accumulation dynamics became increasingly dependent on transnational corporate investment and export activity. As a consequence, the Chinese economy became more and more enmeshed in a broader process of East Asian restructuring—one that was driven by the establishment and intensification of transnational, corporate controlled, cross-border production networks, which linked and collectively reshaped all the economies involved. In other words, the Chinese experience, and in particular, its export drive, can only be understood in the context of broader capitalist dynamics."
A few more paragraphs down it says "Most analysts assert that Chinese working people have gained from their country’s pivotal role as the region’s export platform; they tend to equate China’s export accomplishments with progress toward national development. However, a more direct examination of how Chinese economic policies and restructuring have affected the lives of Chinese workers and the country’s technological capacities points to a different answer."
It goes on to say that ordinary Chinese working people aren't doing as well as one might think which supports what I've heard from somebody I know who is working for an American transnational company. In sum, American companies operating in China don't operate differently than in the US: pay the workers as little as possible.
I appreciate your summary of the main point of the article, however, you missed the point that I was making: "China under Mao Zedong (1949-1976) had a highly centralized planned economy, in which production was organized by state-owned firms and directed at meeting domestic needs." and that this economic system can be just as industriously efficient as capitalism in producing technological advances: "In the 1950s, the new communist state established a science and technology R&D network, modeled after the Soviet system, and its electronics arm went on to produce several generations of computers, in many cases with little or no gap behind the capitalist powers. China’s first computer was developed in 1958, only one year after Japan’s and its first integrated circuit was produced in 1964, only five years behind the first US patent. A microcomputer was developed by 1977 (even before IBM unveiled its PC), a microprocessor by 1980, and a supercomputer, along with an IBM-compatible PC, by 1983."
"And they would threaten to leave the USA - we couldn't get so lucky." ----- I've often wished someone would do a cost/benefit analysis of the 1% and their impact on society. Maybe somebody has, who knows? Yeah they contribute a lot of money (I guess), but they are also the people most responsible for starting and supporting wars, overthrowing democratically-elected governments of other countries, corrupting our own government and destroying our democracy. Seems to me that all things considered we'd be better off without them.
The 1% are as Mike Hudson puts it, "rentiers," people who make most of their dough by renting out the assets that they own. He points out that the more they charge for rent, the less revenue flowing to productive investment.
Privatization is about increasing the range of assets that the 1% can charge rent on. Rent is not limited to housing rent, but also things like highway tolls and prison expenditures (states rent cells from privatized prisons). Google Mike Hudson, he explains it better than I do.
He also quotes Adam Smith, founding father of capitalist thought: for capitalism to remain productive, income to the rentier class must be strictly limited in order to have funds available for productive investment, public and private.
So our current crop of financeer overlords are quite clearly an immense negative, and we would be far better off without them. Short of that, their class must be highly regulated by the State and an active informed populace.
So, it's obvious why the US has lost so much productive capacity. It has been taken over by a financier class that finds it much more profitable to control the gov't and use that control to increase all manner of rentier income.
As usual, the problem is more complex than one might think.
From what I know, there are (at least) three vectors that lead to the jobs situation: 1) Many of the workers currently laid off don't have the skills needed for different kinds of jobs that are open. 2a) Some of the jobs that used to be accomplished in the US have been outsourced to China, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. (read "Made in …" on goods in WalMart). 2b) Workers in other countries work for less money compared to what they would get in the US$ but are upgrading their spending power in their home countries due to the US$ - foreign-country exchange rate. 3) Many of the jobs have simply disappeared because of computer-based automation allows fewer people to produce the same amount of goods and services. 4) Companies and corporations economic function is to produce profit for their shareholders, not necessarily the best thing for their workers or customers.
According to this scenario, any article laying out "The Problem and Its Solution" is incomplete.
The above aren't simply my ideas, but things I've researched but it would take too long to document them here. That said, here's an easy place to start: http://dauckster.posterous.com/a-31-year-old-video-clip-absolutely-worth-you
A more complex history of the economy from the time of Adam Smith to the present is in Part III of Jeremy Rifkin's "The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming The Economy and The World."
To understand better why jobs are not simply "shipped to China," read Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat."
To dig even deeper, here's a hard but useful read: Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilization in China, Volume 7" where Needham reflects on the reasons the (first) scientific and industrial revolutions didn't happen in China.
What sort of college education is required to push a broom, clean a house, mow a lawn or care for the children of the elite. Those are jobs currently being created. I guess we have to be multilingual so that we can communicate with those that now hold those jobs.
Obviously one doesn't need a college education to push a broom or do similar physical labor. However, there is the ability to be able to work without direct supervision as documented in Barbara Enrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed On (not) Getting by in America."
Closer to home I went to Home Depot in Prescott, AZ, yesterday and ran into the Ryobi Man and had a short talk with him as I wasn't happy that the chain saw I'd bought that wasn't working well.
I found that he was a Mormon from Utah, graduated with a B.A. in Marketing, married and living in Phoenix. His job as a Sales Representative (I think that was the name, didn't write it down) was with a company who handles the distribution of not only Ryobi products but a few others as well.
He was given a company truck and visits four places in Phoenix and one in Prescott to make sure things are going well, the products displayed appropriately, and to note any problems. He doesn't punch a time clock and has no specific working hours, "Somewhere between 2 and 18 hours a day" is how he put it.
I said it sounded like he was more like an independent contractor than an employee. He agreed, and said, "Yes, and I like it that way. I'm responsible for the results, not the hours."
In my experience, this kind of job started back in the early '60s when computers began to become part and parcel of both manufacturing and sales. There were two kinds of work, hourly and salary for workers. I worked hourly as a check sorter operator for BofA. I worked hourly as a computer operator for System Development Corporation but changed to salary when I became a computer programmer where we only needed to be at the company for 2 hours a day but there was no limit to how many hours we had to put in to get the required results as the company was open 24/7. This kind of work was completely independent of administrators which were on a separate track.
I can't help wondering how many people who learned how to work hourly aren't able to work towards results as there was a great sorting out back in the early '60s where some people could make the change and some couldn't.
Or Maybe the need to re-read Rouseau where one man's freedom is contigent upon the freedoms of all or there is no security of said freedom within the framework of the social contract; and to actually read Adam Smith, not some interpretation thereof. Moreoever, may I suggest you open your mind and expand your perceptual research. See my comment above in re: your china industial revolution remark.
OK which is it? New college grads are too poorly educated to get a job or overeducated for the jobs that are available we keep coming abck to this old blame the victim routine....the jobless can't get work because they have poor educatiion, the wrong kind of education or too MUCH education. Just rediculous garbage!
People are out of work for several reasons, but the primary reason in my own view is that as long as companies can make horrendous profits on the backs of very few workers, further as long as people can't afford to spend or refuse to spend on things they don't need, unemployment will remain high.
Hey we still have our highly paid pro athletes, celebrities and Wall St. gurus. Michael Vick got more press time from our president than all the people that have been foreclosed on.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-praises-chances-michael-vick-eagles-owner/story?id=12487824
Ironic. Their "free" market is leading us to communism.
Not "leading" us into communism...selling us into it. I guess it's been profitable. Leadership had nothing to do with it. Leadership has been totally lacking for decades.
Yes. The greedheads thought they could grow richer forever on the flesh and blood of the 99%
How so?
Is this anti-red rhetoric surfacing once again?
It suits the republican narrative.
Its blowback
What a pile of horse shit. The guilt for engendering a stinking and sinking economy is shifting from overpaid and underworked public servents to the lazy, unemployed citizens who are on the public dole to the destitute who don't have the wherewithal to pull themselves up from destitution and now to an untrainable or untrained work
force. The only professions that the US social order shows any sign of competency in is building weapons and training a segment of its work force to use them.
All the douchebags referred to above are boosters of the self satisifed, selfcentered, both non-criminal and criminal, capitalist class, or as in the case Thomas Friedman, themselves members thereof.
You left out K St., highly prized and highly paid and recruited from congressional and political offices. No wonder GW and Bill Clinton are highly prized speakers at events of eathshaking momentum. Let's not ask why Clinton hasn't shown any noticeable results in Haiti, or what exactly GW has been doing since he left office.
We have a system where if the labor is not available at the wage level the corps want then they say see we need immigrants to take these jobs no one wants --
In a free market system Wages would rise until people would take the job.
If we can't win the war on language then we'll never win the war on the streets.
Take back the language or we'll always play catchup.
There is no such thing as a "free market system". And today if you can't speak Mandarin, it's like trying to pick lettuce in the San Joaquin valley and not knowing Spanish. You'll never find the "bano".
Highly recommended reading is Steven Hill's "Europe's Promise," in which he describes how, in Germany, when a worker is laid off, he or she is immediately given access to training (and funds to pay the rent, and full medical coverage) to raise their skills to cutting-edge levels. Germany is the world's leading exporter, and their workers weathered the 2008 crash with grace. Investment in high-quality affordable education always pays off. Everyone wins.
I am guessing the IMF and WTO will address that dynamic shortly like they have in Ireland, Greece, Spain, etc..Can't be allowed to stand.
Back to the future? Alleged Skills-Gap, is this anything like the missile-gap of the sixties? Could there be a military solution to this problem, don't they teach "skills"? Come to think of it didn't WWII end the last depression? So here's the answer, A global never ending war. It would teach our young people skills, and end the economic depression. A win win for everyone. Oh, and it would also help with that pesky overpopulation problem too. Continuous war problem solved, man that was easy, maybe I should run for President. I'll bet I could get me one of those Nobel Peace Prizes for this plan!
WWII didn't end the depression. What it ended I think was discrimation and social classism. War is never a solution only a profit motive. Only an anomaly. It's not normal for humans to wish to murder other humans. Most individuals could meet and never feel threatened to the point of murder or war.
"What it ended I think was discrimation and social classism."
You actually believe that these problems have ended? This is delusional.
"Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They're investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer."
What exactly have India and China invented? They're highly educated labor pool must have advanced and come up with something new? Their parenting skills must have led to societal advancements...anyone? Mr. President?
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133224933/transcript-obamas-state-of-union-address
Funny thing China and India didn't invent computers or solar. The US did. India and China only starting educating their kids earlier and longer only after US/Multinational corporations moved their industries to their countries and shared or handed over those technologies..
This new world didn't even exist for them until the multinationals moved their manufacturing there. Shouldn't our nation/s have considered "proprietary" rights like corporations do?
Tangential, maybe, but I couldn't resist "What exactly have India and China invented?". The usual stock answer is paper, printing, gunpowder and the compass (China), or the button, the maritime dock and Ludo (India, though I might be stretching a bit with the last one). But you knew that.
All very old, but computers and photovoltaic cells have been around since the 19th century [Jaquard (F) and Babbage (UK); and Fritts (D) respectively]. US involvement came much later - though the microprocessor and the silicon cell, which were US inventions, were biggies. Like the light bulb (Davy, De la Rue, Swan, Edison / vacuum enclosure, carbon filament, compact flourescence, etc.) a lot of it depends where you draw the line of what constitutes a "proper" lightbulb - and people seem able to change this to suit the argument they're putting forward (I know I do...).
Where I think I'm going with this is that dominant nations in science and engineering shift as much as they do with military or economic influence. Empires are all ephemeral things, and I think we're at one of those shifting points now. Wikipedia's list of countries by patent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_patents) is worth a nose - particularly the percentage increase in the 2007 figures.
Obama's address played on ideas of exceptionalism, but even a cursory glance at statistics suggests that much of what he said was questionable (compare, for example, the idea that "no workers are more productive" with GDP per capita tables). He was trying to make the target audience feel good about themselves - his primary modus operandi.
Corporations are moaning about a "skills gap" because they seem to think that providing skilled and conscientious workers to boost their profits (and consumers to purchase their products) is what society is for. This was not always the way - training and apprenticeships were part of a company's remit until someone decided that getting someone else to produce ready-made workers was an expectation they could put forward so it could become somebody else's problem - so their unwillingness to invest in workers could be portrayed as society's failing.
Apologies if that rambled a bit. We live in interesting times (wasn't that phrase based on a Chinese invention?). But I think that if nations had proprietary rights, the Western industrial powers might not do so well as they might expect.
But, meanwhile, what have the Romans ever done for us...? [grin]
As a semi old fart let me tell you about my intro to the working world back in the late 70s. I "just" had a high school education, along with a 6 month certificate in computer operations. My first job was as a metallurgical lab technician where I analyzed precious metals using X-Ray and optical emission spectroscopes. It was a VERY technical job, where I worked under a chemist with a masters degree in chemistry.
My high school education gave me the necessary background in chemistry and physics so I knew all the basics needed for the job, all I needed was some basic training in how to use the equipment which the company happily provided via on-the-job training.
After that job I moved into the computer field, where again though on the job training and taking classes after work and classes provide by work, I learned RPG II, COBOL, Wang, VMS, and Unix operating system along with several different hardware platforms.
The companies that invested in training their employees back then did just fine. They didn't go broke training people. So what the hell happened over the last 30 years? Have people gotten so stupid that they cant be trained any more? I find that quite hard to believe. Or is it more that companies have no interest in investing in their employees and have such onerous hiring practices they eliminate many totally qualified people, because of less than stellar credit ratings, and because they just happen to be out of work through no fault of their own.
I am guessing these companies feel secure in their current personifications, that they don't really care where the next innovations come from. They've got enough money they think they can control the universe. I wonder what they're going to do when China, India and the other nations cut them out of the equation? Like they've cut the citizens of the US out of the equation. Probably fall back on law...but if they are successful in "tort reform" they may find that used against them.