probably true, although the Democrats don't have any positive agenda or answers either - but indeed they will simply "inherit" these votes because they will be there offering more government programs, funded by more taxes on those who do have higher earnings.
right now, all of my friends who work(ed) in technology - are piling their kids into law schools, finance, real estate, or education (public school teachers), etc. Its an unsupportable trend - the economy can only support so many people working in non-productive jobs - earning a living by swapping real estate or financial securities back and forth, or earning a living through jury verdicts in civil cases, or through government employment.
Tech is dead in the US - if only because the current generation of engineers in the field, aren't letting their college bound children pursue it. So the next generation of engineers are either going to have to come from immigrants into the US (engineering school enrollments are increasingly made up of foreign nationals), or having those jobs exported to China and India (more likely scenario).
What fustrates me is there doesnt seem to be anything that will stop this trend. Anyone who understands history and politics will see that the higher percentage of the population that is economically displaced. the higher the possibility that they will vote for those who promose to protect their standard of living. Now this may have been counter acted in the past when those in the professional classes tended to be Conservative, but that is not true anymore, as examples I have given in my previous post.
Another example is the state of IL. The GOP strongholds of the Chicago suburbs that used to give upwards of 70% of the vote to GOP canidates are now barely give over 50% to statewide GOP canidates. These people have been greatly helped by tax cuts, and their cost of goods have been held down by outsourcing of jobs and the importation of cheap labor, but they are not moving any further towrds the GOP because they vote mainly on issues of being "pro choice" the enviroment, and other "soccer mom" issues.
The working class but socially conservative voters who are in parts of the Chicago area and in downstate IL would be fertile territory to pick up votes, but the economic policies, and to be sure these policies started during the Clinton admin under Robert Rubin, have been continued and have shoved these voters towrds more marginal economic territory, and as this happens, not only do they not move towrds the GOP, but because of economic stress, they move towrds the Democrats.
The new Result, IL is out of reach for the GOP, where before 96, it was a swing state that had a slight GOP lean.
There was an interesting thread today that showed the highest salaries paid to college graduates are to those with engineering degrees. Who do you think is paying those salaries, Wal-Mart?
Last year, my company budgeted for an mid-level software engineer. The salary range was between $50-75K. Ultimately, that hire was canceled because the company was bought out.
During the hiring process, we had occasion to interview several recent college graduates who were still registered with their respective university placement offices. We interviewed graduates from several University of California schools -- LA, Santa Barbara, Irvine, San Diego, in addition to Pepperdine, Caltech and my own alma mater, the University of Southern California. Guess how many Americans we talked to?
None.
According to the placement offices, the top American students coming into college are not going into the technical disciplines for the very reasons you cite. The only remaining scientific curriculum they were pursuing was the biology/chemistry/physics majors with the intent to go the medical school. But even that has fallen off with the influx of foreign medical students to U.S. med schools, underwritten by their own govts. and the U.S.
Law school remains the last lucrative career pursuit for the cream of the crop, at least so far as the discerning American student is concerned.