[Shermy]

It is by switching jobs that people learn new skills and find a better match for the skills they already have, thus earning higher wages.

LOL!

[Digger]

GW to Congress - send me an extention & I will sign it & don't worry, your children can pay for it. Ask Teddy if he needs another fix.

[Redbob]

That point isn't made often enough;
As painful as it might be for some, the jobs we're "losing" are the modern equivalents of buggy-whip manufacturing and hand-weaving.

[Cicero]

As a matter of fact, creative destruction within our domestic economy is a good thing. Socialist economies suffer because they can never get rid of useless workers and industries, which drag down the productive ones.

But exporting jobs overseas is another matter entirely. That's not creative destruction, that's national suicide, IMHO. It's not Bush's fault; he inherited it; but he isn't doing much to fix it.

[LizardQueen]

It is by switching jobs that people learn new skills and find a better match for the skills they already have, thus earning higher wages

If they were talking about voluntary job switching I might agree. But I know too many technical people (especially those over 40) who were laid off and are now working low-level jobs as security guards, airport screeners, and truck drivers to believe this is the case for those forced to switch involuntarily.

When I got laid off I took a 30% pay cut to get another job where I could learn new skills. It took me 4 years to match my old salary. I'm finally doing better than my old salary (after 7 years) but I bet if you averaged the post-layoff years the average over time would be barely more than the salary I was at when I got punted.

LQ

[ex-snook]

Won't someone please list any company with a higher percent of creating more jobs than the tax-eating government?

[sixmil]

Public policy should be leery of anything that discourages this churning in the job market. (Otherwise, four out of 10 of all Americans would still be working on a farm, as we were a century ago.)

Where is the job creation part though? People left the farms for better paying jobs in the cities. The only thing equivalent to this is foreigners coming here to work, which in no way helps us out, no matter what corporate intersts tell you. I would believe we were experiencing creative destruction if retail clerks were becoming software engineers, but it seems like the exact opposite is happening.

[MissAmericanPie]

horse manure