Of course, the workers have obsolete skills.
The truth is found in the Bell Curve. It is a statistical fact that one-half of the population is below average in intelligence. Since the industrial revolution, workers in the west have been conditioned to believe that they should work 40 hours per week — no more, no less — for their wages.
The average factory worker is capable of working with physical objects in a repetitive task. This person does not think abstractly or learn new things easily. I’m not knocking them, just stating facts.
You say that the market will not support paying Americans $ 30 per hour for the same job that can be done by an asian coolie at 25 cents per hour, and that is true. But the people on the “wrong end” of the Bell Curve don’t just disappear.
OK, I’ve come across as elitist, now I’m going to go whole hog and say someting that sounds Marxist: somebody is making big bucks off the labor arbitrage, so those somebodys need to pay up to fund the welfare needed to support our jobless citizens.
The Market would say, “Let them starve”, but that’s too Dickensian for me. Also, I don’t want to have to have to build a security wall around my house like they do in South America.
“Of course, the workers have obsolete skills.”
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Obsolete skills that are now being employed by many thousands of workers across the globe for pennies. Using machines that used to be manufactured in this country for good wages but have now gone to countries overseas. I don’t know why so many try so hard to defend companies that have screwed over the American manufacturing base.