Posted on 03/14/2015 5:18:15 AM PDT by maggief
I know a guy who just cleans gutters off of apartment building roofs and does other handyman work. He controls his own time (usually listed as #1 in ratings of personal life satisfaction) and makes a middleclass living. He works just half a day so he can be with his family as often as possible. A single roof is $100. It’s spread out over 6-12 apartments so it’s nothing for the manager, but it is a ‘scary’ job.
During the RE crash he bought two condos in the same building for 1/4 of their pre-crash prices. He rents one out and the rental pays for all his living expenses in the other. They’ve both recovered about 3/4 of their value, so he’s sitting on a very nice gain.
He’s industrious, hard working and grew up in the 3rd world. He loves America. Of course, he came here legally and can speak English.
Lefty economist Menzie Chinn has recently done a write up on RTW laws and their effect on income. Workers on average make 2-3% less in RTW states. There are a lot of errors in this analysis of hers, but here are two biggies:
1. Control of your time. RTW states saw the birth of more small businesses and trades work. People who work for themselves may work harder and longer, but they also can control their workflow and have is suit their life needs.
2. Union dues which often total up to 3%+ of your income, not to mention crazy rules and the higher cost of living in non-RTW states.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (self-defined) are the bedrock of American liberty, not a high income. Degreeism is just another form of government created discrimination.
Companies need to be able to discriminate again. Every good decision comes from prudent discrimination between choices, products and people. If you don’t discriminate then you’re a dummy.
I graduated from HS in 1963. Back then, high schools and local communities did just fine determining the education that best met the needs of the students and the community. In the small HS I went to, nobody graduated without some shop, home etc, or business skills. Near as I can figure, no one in that class ever had trouble being employed when we wanted jobs.
And, the surest way to upper class is basketball.
Sounds like we are both near the same age.
My parents were considered “middle class” when I grew up. At that time, that was a large segment of the population. I was motivated to go to college but I needed to work virtually full time at minimum wage, then $1 per hour or so. Finished school, no debt and some savings, enlisted in army for 3 and then began my career. My wife and I are in what may be called above middle class but not rich. I got there because of self motivation and the realization that working means bringing value to your employer above your pay. Today, many feel they are entitled to start at levels beyond what their parents achieved in their whole lives and want the government to subsidize that life style. I deeply resent that along with the moochers who are content to ride along on various government programs which are nothing more than enslavement through voting. And yes, I can change a faucet washer, paint my house or fix an electrical problem because my dad made certain I could which points out that growing up in a stable 2 person family is the best way to assure success in our society.
WHAT YOU SAID. However, in terms of college, the wage gap between high school and college has shrunk pretty substantially, to where college is not an automatic middle class ticket. Anymore it’s post-graduate degree, esp. engineering, law, accounting, business. The post-grad gap with mere college grads is widening.
Well, that was then. Those jobs do not exist anymore. In fact, the newest data shows that the gap between college and high school grads has narrowed substantially, while the gap between post-grad, especially in law, medicine, engineering, and business, has dramatically grown. So college is the new high school, and post-grad is the new college.
The fact is, the key is now and has always been "value-added," and menial jobs relatively speaking add very, very little value. So it's either retool as a tech economy or whine and be poor. There is no going back to assembly lines.
A big fat tariff would fix that.
True, if the final degree is a mere BA. As I say in this thread, the earning power of BAs/BSs has shrunk, barely above that of high school grads, but the earning power of post-grads, especially engineering, law, medicine, and business has grown substantially.
Danko and Stanley's "Millionaire Mind" and "Millionaire Next Door" research showed that most millionaires did not think their education was the PRIMARY cause of their success, but all of them cited it as "a" contributing factor.
So half the population has an IQ below 100, these people are either going to work at "menial" factory jobs or revolt. Your choice.
It's already happening now.
proletariat revelation = proletariat revolution.
They did. My dad raised a family, helped send two kids to college, lived a solid middle-class life, and retired with a pension on a high school degree and a career at the Ford plant. He's not alone. Manufacturing and construction provided middle-class lifestyles for millions of people in this country. But now manufacturing is chasing the cheapest wage overseas and construction has been populated by foreign workers willing to work for a fraction of a U.S. worker will.
The fact is, the key is now and has always been "value-added," and menial jobs relatively speaking add very, very little value.
Amazing how you concluded that working in manufacturing is menial and adds little value. What do you think creates the product from the pieces? Pixies? U.S. factories consistently out-perform foreign workers in terms of quality and productivity. You don't do that with a dumb workforce. But corporations still look for the cheapest salary rate.
Not to mention:
And designers, inventors, innovators are not pixies. They are the ones who add the value. It should tell you something that these jobs can be performed by incredibly low-skilled people overseas. If they were as value added as you say, only a handful could do them. It is precisely because these jobs add little value overall that they can be outsourced.
BTW, you seem to be making a case for college by citing a "dumb workforce." In fact, American workforce is getting much more educated---as it always has been throughout our history. US skilled workers have always outpaced other countries because of availablility of land and ability to start your own business.
Free trade is the only trade. Anything other than that is duress. I don’t believe in forcing anyone to work, nor forcing them to eat. Utterly silly to try and prezel-ize this into Marxism.
Not when the degree you worked so hard for won’t land you a job being a janitor.
We've been hearing our political leaders say for decades that losing existing manufacturing jobs wasn't a problem because the next generation of jobs and industries would replace them and we needed to educate our workforce to prepare for them. Well the next generation of jobs are also going overseas too, and for the same reason. Cheap labor. Manufacturing, IT, Financial, Medical, all those careers are being gutted by overseas resources and foreigners brought in.
Karl Marx 1848
You are a Marxist tool.
How about applicant 3: “I have a degree in statistics from a 4-year university”. Why do you assume that the only degrees are in transgender studies? The departments of engineering, business, math, etc. are all full of students at virtually any major university ou care to name.
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