“Do we really need thousands of shoe workers or textile workers in the US?”
Just curious....
Who the hell died and left you in charge of making that decision. Not every American kid is college bound.
If you look back at my previous posts, you will see that is the reason I'm against illegal aliens. The government is subsidizing minimum wage jobs to eliminate the US workers that would do the jobs for more money. You can't import housing, but you can import workers. The average illegal costs the taxpayer $33k per year for their services. That means a builder can pay a worker $10 an hour, but the cost is actually much higher, it's just the taxpayer picks up the tab. If a builder had to pay an American $20 an hour, at least that worker would be supporting the economy instead of leeching off it.
One thing my dad taught me as a child was that if I was willing to work, I would always be able to make a living. People will always be willing to pay for things they don't want to do. A business just crying to get started here is trash collection. I live in a rural area with most of the residents outside the city. Anybody could buy a truck and charge people to pick up their trash here. We've had several here, but most are drunks, or don't show up on the promised days. At $10-$15 a month, you can see, with a few hundred customers, there is a good living to be made right here with a pickup truck. A high school grad should be able to do better than making shoes for minimum wage. I know plenty that are truck drivers, loggers, sawmill workers, etc that do fine. If you just can't find real work, there's alway the government. I think even trash collectors in my town make about $15 an hour with medical, and vacations.