edward said:
Spoiled is a very poor choice of words to describe America's older generation of workers. I don't know your age. But I do know that unless you have worked 12 hr. days machining parts for military aircraft, you really aren't qualified to make that judgement.
What does that have anything to do with my qualification to make any judgement? Are you suggesting I have never gotten my hands dirty or worked up a sweat or worked long hours, and that disqualifies me from determining someone might have gotten spoiled with such a long spell of job security? I don't see how it would be a disqualification, but if it matters to you so much, my research all involves farm animals, and I've done my share of shoveling sh*t, herding sheep and goats, dragging water buckets out to pastures in the dead of winter, arriving to work at 2 AM in an ice storm because the experiment had to be done and animals needed to be fed, collecting blood samples from sheep every 5 minutes for 8 hours at a time, or every hour for 24 to 72 hours at a time. I've slept on barn floors so I could catch a half hour nap in order to keep going another 12 hours. We spend 9 hours standing for surgeries and then spend another 2 hours scrubbing the OR from top to bottom because nobody else does it for us. I've been kicked and stepped on and knocked on my butt in filthy pens, even hobbled around for 2 hours AFTER spraining my ankle out at the barns because I wasn't done doing what needed doing. And I'm not complaining. The past 3 years I've been spoiled by not having to do that on a regular basis, and I'm looking forward to my new job and getting my hands dirty again.
From what I have read, American CEO's are grossly overpaid for what they do compared to CEO's in other countries. Perhaps it is the CEO's who are spoiled by first being overcompensated, and then running a company into the dirt and getting away with it. Doing what is best for the current bottom line isn't necessarily best for the future of a company. GM has only recently discoverd that aspect. They looked only at the bottom line and stockholder satisfaction, when they should have been updating their product line and producing higher quality vehicles.
It seems a little odd that you complain about jobs being outsourced to other countries because people work for less there and then try to make comparisons between wages of other countries to use that as evidence CEOs are overcompensated. By that same reasoning, all those workers whose jobs are being outsourced are overpaid too. Updating a product line is better for the bottom line too. Your examples aren't of what's better or worse for the bottom line, but what's going to bring in short-term profit vs long-term profit. Sure, some CEOs should get canned when they do a bad job, just like anyone else should get canned when they do a bad job. That doesn't mean they're all doing a bad job just because you can cite some examples where someone made bad decisions for their company.
And the last I heard their was a teacher shortage.
Sure, and a teacher's union that seems to like keeping it that way. I'm not joking. I'm can teach at the university level, and I can teach med students, and I can teach grad students (for all of which there are few job openings), but I would be required to do "student teaching" and take additional courses to be certified to teach high school biology, despite being more qualified than most of the high school teachers currently teaching the subject. That's not to say I wouldn't do it if I found myself unemployed, but I'd prefer to do something that didn't require having to resort to living on an unemployment check for a year or two while satisfying the certification requirements when there are other things I could do right away and for better pay.
People over 50 have already done these things several times over. And SIAB was right, it is stressful to retrain and start looking again, and even more so the second and third time around. At the rate the current job situation is changing, even the younger generation will be suffering from PTSD by age 35.
If America wants to stay on top its work force must be on top.
I know you were saying it a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but
life is stressful. Anyone who thinks they are going to coast through life without ups and downs and periods of stress is being pretty unrealistic. I was told very early on that most people change careers about 3 times in their lifetime. Sure, it's a bit more stressful when it was someone else's decision and not yours that it's time to change, but ultimately, the outcome is the same anyway.
Why do we have to wait for this to happen. Weren't you just talking about planning ahead? Why can't a country plan ahead for it's economy and its workers? Could it perhaps be because the country's government is dominated by big business?
It's because we don't know that will be the outcome. It could also not come to that. If your concern is that government is dominated by big business, then vote for someone else, but it's rather hard to find someone who will defend our capitalistic economy and simultaneously be in favor of restricting big business. If you don't like what a company is doing, vote with your dollars and don't buy from them.
But is the American worker and the American economy which will suffer the most. Many companies who have filed for bankruptcy have risen out of the ashes only to start using the same old failed policies again.
Well, there's no law against being lousy at what you do and going out of business. A lot of businesses try and fail. That has little to do with the outsourcing debate. But, when big corporations fail, and there's suddenly an open space in the market, it gives some of the small and mid-sized companies an opportunity to grow and fill that gap.
All I can say to that is: This is not the same America I grew up and originally prospered in.
No, it's not. That's one of the beauties of this country, that it changes, adapts, and new opportunities arise for new people all the time. We don't have to stick to doing something only one way just because it's always been done that way.
I doubt that there will be many older blue collar workers moving to South Africa or anywhere else to gain employment. Of course from your point of view it would be their fault for missing out on an opportunity.
As for moving to other countries, I mentioned that in response to the question of what YOUNGER workers would be doing, not the older workers. But, they don't have to go all the way to South Africa. There are a lot of people who are not even willing to move to another state for a job. And it annoys the heck out of me when I hear that there are jobs we supposedly need to give to ILLEGAL immigrants because no Americans will do them. If you're unemployed, and have NO job, and there is a job available, you do it, even if it's only temporary while you continue looking for something better.
Perhaps you are a bit out of touch with the working class.
Why, because I worked my butt off to create options for myself and don't sit around taking the "I'm a victim of the big, evil, corporate CEOs" attitude?
And the last I heard their was a teacher shortage.
