[hinckley buzzard]

What matters is whether that $27-per-hour worker is pricing his employer's goods out of the market.

What market are you talking about? The market that is flourishing because even the "untalented" have money to spend?

The first beams of the new Freedom Tower( I think that's the name) were erected this week, and they were of European not American steel. I find that symbolic of much of the real issue underlying this thread.

[gas0linealley]

I met a former NYC steel warehouser/distributor. He said that he was able to place an order, at the close of the business day, with Bethlehem Steel, and the order would be sitting on railcars in his yard the next morning.

Now, six months wait for foreign steel is not unusual.

Yikes.

[nopardons]

The American steel business was crippled and then ruined by the UNIONS! This goes way back and between the constant strikes and blackmailed gross wages, not to mention "ghost jobs", has been the cause of America's steel manufacturing decline. That has had it's effect on such disparate things as car bodies to girders for buildings.

If you aren't old enough to remember, please go look up what the steel unions were pulling during JFK's administration.