(02-17-2018, 02:26 PM)SilverFang01 Wrote: We need to deal with capital mobility in a way that neutralizes or blunts the effect of just moving operations when the regulatory regime is not favorable to their brand of exploitation, just "forcing them" to pay living wages is not going to work.
Another thing that we have to be aware of is the rise of automation which is eliminating manufacturing jobs, warehouse storage, and soon transportation. How is the US economy going to handle between 3.5 million to 8.7 million people who suddenly don't have jobs and cannot or refuse to train for anything else?
Some of my thinking on these issues come from reading this book: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Sight-Corpora...rik+loomis
Your argument assumes that manufacturing is still a viable course, even though you turn around and say that automation is going to eliminate jobs.
First of all, for every manufacturing job out there lost, there's another job in the IT field that opens up. Data center technicians, website designers, programmers, PCB and IC designers, engineers... Need I go on?
I have it on EXCELLENT authority that in a few years America is going to be desperately short on printed circuit board designers. Source? My dad, who's pretty much a PCB Design Guru. You know, the guy I mentioned who did the QA on circuit boards that went into several of NASA's probes: New Horizons, and Juno. He ensured that those designs were perfect before the CAD files ever went to the manufacturers, and that saved NASA and Johns Hopkins APL a load of time and money. He knows the industry. Many of the designers in the field right now are coming up on their retirement. And there's not enough fresh faces in the field to make up for when all these older designers retire.
Oh, and most of these jobs? They pay in the $20-25/hour range just at the opening levels. All of these fields are CLAMORING for warm bodies.
And let's not forget vocational trades. Welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, masoners... These fields are also desperately short-handed, and that is the reason why people in these fields can command such outrageous prices for labor. Supply and demand, you know. It applies to man hours available as well.
The future of America's industry is not in manufacturing. It is in IT and services.
Let China, India, and Taiwan take all the manufacturing jobs they want. There are plenty of other things Americans can do to make money - the majority of us just has to get past the mental block that they can't work in these fields - that they're too technical to learn.
We need fair wages. We need more vo-tech schools. We need more community colleges offering software engineering programs. And we need government programs to help funnel people into these schools.
And yes, there have been programs in the past to help people realign their careers. There were several at work in West Virginia, providing training to the coal miners out of a job to become software coders. It was succeeding very nicely until Trump's administration cut their funding.
So don't tell me people are unwilling to change careers. Don't tell me that businesses aren't willing to pay these wages. The only ones that argue otherwise are the ones that stand to gain the most off of forcing the government to pick up the tab on everything they can get away with.