Notice that the number of American students is declining.
Posted on 04/16/2004 1:24:31 AM PDT by sarcasm
Last week, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announced her Skills to Build America's Future" initiative. This is a "nationwide outreach and education effort designed to attract young people and transitioning workers to" the "key" occupations of the [near] future: "skilled trades."
This initiative, understandably, was proclaimed with little fanfare. While President Bush looks toward Mars, Ms. Chao can hardly be proud of her decidedly pedestrian prophecy that "construction laborers, operating engineers, carpenters, iron workers, cement masons, bricklayers, truck drivers and many other construction related crafts are among the trades expected to see the greatest demand in workers over the next 6 years." (This demand will be filled, I predict, by "guest workers," i.e., illegal aliens awarded shiny new government permits.)
Telling America's young people that the best they can hope for is careers as tradesmen certainly casts a pall over an administration given to grandiose planning and posturing. Essentially, the mathematically precocious – youngsters with aptitudes for science, engineering or accounting – must be yanked down to earth. Reaching for the stars in the America of the future will be the exclusive province of "American Idol" participants.
And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics latest Employment Situation Summary, Ms. Chao's future is now. For all the din sounded over the addition of 308,000 jobs to the economy in March, the government-fed news filters failed to mention which job sectors were surging. Sure enough, it transpires that employment opportunities are optimal in construction, retail trade, food services, social assistance, and (naturally) in government.
As economist Paul Craig Roberts – a rare independent thinker on the issue – observes: "Only labor involved in non-traded goods and services is safe from foreign substitution." In other words, young Americans had better learn to live by their hands lest their livelihoods be outsourced.
If President Bush intends to revive America's space program, engineers will be at a premium. Yet the IEEE-USA, the world's largest technical professional society – representing more than 225,000 electrical electronics, computer, and software engineers – reports that "American high-tech firms shed 560,000 jobs between 2001 and 2003, and expect to lose another 234,000 in 2004." This contraction cannot be dismissed as the nadir of the dot-com correction. The jobless rate for electrical and electronics engineers was in fact lower in 2002 (4.2 percent) than in 2003 (6.2 percent).
Meanwhile, the Computing Research Association's Taulbee's Survey found that total enrollment in bachelor-degree programs in computer science and computer engineering fell 19 percent in 2003, a factor it attributes to "the decline in the technology industry and the moving of jobs offshore." (Curiously omitted are the impacts of the H-1B and L-1 work visas.)
College administrators are already hip to Ms. Chao's future. For example, San Francisco State University is considering the closure of its engineering school.
Indeed, today's college graduate cannot even expect to find entry-level jobs in the hi-tech industry, warns entrepreneur Rosen Sharma. Sharma heads a Silicon Valley start-up that "could not survive without outsourcing." Nevertheless, he fears for America's future. "As a father my reaction is different than my reaction as a CEO," he admitted to Time.
Pay no attention to such Chicken Littles, high-tech-industry lobbyists counter. Outsourcing is good for America, they claim. Their studies employ the "impregnable" science of econometrics to prove that outsourcing high-tech jobs creates more jobs than it kills. One such study, commissioned by the Information Technology Association of America, predicts 317,387 such jobs will materialize by 2008. The study's premise, however, begs the question, as it assumes the new jobs are and will be as good as the old (vanished) ones.
Why, they'll be even better, brags economist and outsourcing enthusiast, Catherine Mann. Dr. Mann, who also labors under the illusion that only bottom-rung jobs are vanishing, plays Pollyanna to a doubting Thomas, Ron Hira of IEEE-USA. Professor Hira confessed to Washington Post readers that he, an industry insider, had no idea what shape the "new" putative high-value jobs would take. "Is it nanotech, biotech, bioinformatics?" Of one thing he is certain, however: "Other developing and developed countries are targeting those very same industries and jobs."
Thankfully, author Virginia Postrel has located America's burgeoning (and indubitably "dynamist") occupations. She faults the Bureau of Labor Statistics for failing to recognize the rise of spa-related personal services – e.g., manicure and massage therapy – for the powerhouse growth industries they are. Of course, if Ms. Postrel is to remain faithful to the central thesis of her first book – that all change is always good – she is obligated to remain, like Ms. Mann, a Pollyanna, despite the new employment reality. Ms. Postrel's second book, the sum of which is that all that glitters is gold, even better encapsulates her enthusiasm for the role eyebrow waxing and other crafts will play in an economic recovery.
Although preliminary – even tentative – the Bureau's Employment Situation Summary suggests that high-value knowledge jobs are being replaced with low-value service and manual-labor jobs. The ensuing loss of income to American workers will surely outweigh the lower prices outsourcing engenders.
If I refuse to genuflect to this brave new world, it's because the idea of living in communities where applied scientists are unemployed while colonic hydrotherapists thrive isn't particularly enthralling. I'll leave it to the motion obsessed, ever-evolving Ms. Postrel to celebrate that kind of future.
What about work? Financial aid is not a must ---- many people work their way through college --- I worked full time when I was in college.
Consider a course in spelling.
I'll do what it takes to get mine,
Welfare mother mentality.
It depends --- an 8th grade education of today is not a level it was back a couple generations ago. My grandfather had to leave school after the 3rd grade but he did quite well in life and was definitely educated and literate but many getting high school diplomas today cannot perform simple math problems or read with any comprehension. We're starting to see a lot of that with college graduates now.
The Radical Republicans,at first liked Johnson, after Lincoln's assassination, but only turned on him, when while Congress was not in session,he implemented much of Lincoln's lenient policies for the South.They wanted blood,errrrrr...revenge,which is NOT what Johnson gave the Southern states.The Radical Republicans also HATED President Grant,BTW.
Now while many PANICS and even Depressions have been world wide,the Panic of 1873 made a complete circle,if you will. It started in Austria,then hit Germany,spread over Europe, jumped the Atlantic, but when it hit America, it then jumped back across the Atlantic and re-hit Europe.So, in a way,we caught that "cold",made it worse,and then sent it back.But,by 1870, without any the European induced Panic,America was beginning to suffer from monetary problems.The Chicago real estate BUBBLE of 1870 and it's bursting, predates the European Panic of 1873!Once that Panic jumped over the ocean and landed here, we were already in a whole lot of hurt.And, don't ignore my reference to the army of bums! This menace started just after the Civil War ended and grew and grew and GREW,as times got bad,then worse,then horrific!
Yes,there was racism, in regard to the Chinese immigrants,but what has that got to do with what I posted? In 1878, the Congress drew up a Bill, which Hays vetoed,to exclude ALL immigration from China and it had NOTHING to do with what we were discussing! And the Chinese immigrants, didn't just work laying track for the the railroads, though many of them did.After all, the Chinese immigrants didn't just wind up on the West Coast,many of them went to N.Y. and other cities as well.
And as long as we're talking about racism, the Irish were looked at as a different races, when they came here, which makes no sense at all to me, but it's a historical fact!
Now, back to Grant. You CCPed what I posted and then went completely off on quite a different tact, implying that it had something or other to do with what I posted. Now, why is that? Could it possibly be because the facts are in conflict with what you implied earlier?
Look, the fact is that Grant lost his money and the money he had borrowed, because he went into the investment business,after he left the presidency,with a crook and the business went belly up about 7 years later.I didn't say that he wound up penurious, because he was dishonest.Was he personally responsible for that firm going into bankruptcy? No, he was a silent partner.But YOU implied that he almost died in penury, because he was oh so honest...which is NOT the case at all!
Did he accept lavish, expensive gifts, while he was president? Yes, he certainly did. Did he also hang around with Gould and Fisk? Yep, he did. Were Fisk and Gould " working him", because they wanted to corner the gold market? You betcha! Did he finally scupper their plans? Yes, he did and I already told you that, which I doubt you knew. :-)
Grant was a lousy judge of character.He was NOT some "perfect" man/president/Conservative.
You imply that you understand free trade and the implications thereof, while at the same time you you seem unable to spell the words "America" and "claim" correctly.
The irony is delicious. Thank you for making an absurd spectacle of yourself.
That's nice. Their total economy, however, is second in the world. It is the total economy that funds military budgets.
Make no mistake, China is a growing power. They are not our friend. One day, we will find ourselves in conflict with them - and, at that point, I will pointedly remind everyone that the American blood being shed is a direct consequence of feeding the Chinese dragon.
Notice that the number of American students is declining.
“The masses live by, and are ruled by, subconscious and emotional thought process. The crowd has never thirsted for the truth. It turns aside from evidence that is not to its taste, preferring to glorify and to follow error, if the way of error appears attractive enough, and seduces them. Whoever can supply the crowd with attractive emotional illusions may easily become their master; and whoever attempts to destroy such firmly entrenched illusions of the crowd is almost sure to be rejected.” Gustave Le Bon
That's nice. Their total military budget in 2003 was 55 billion. Our total 2003 military budget was over 400 billion.
Ah, spoken like a true Free-Traitor !!
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