In Towns Hit by Factory Closings, a New Casualty: Retail Jobs

If everybody has phd's then phd's would become HS diplomas in their added earning capacity.

 

Really kinda stoopid response.

Try harder - this is a debate forum, not Message Board ...

 

One generally "trains oneself" to do a particular function, really quite limited. But, if that is all one wants, why not?

Education is about broadening the mind to think in parallel fashion and is based upon either theory or historical fact. Moreover, one is generally asked to take a good number of different courses in order to get rounded out. Meaning buffing the sharp-corners that specific instruction can make of one, especially in any technical subject.

I am not suggesting that we force anyone to do any particular thing. I am only saying that we are in a major Age-change - going from the Industrial to the Information Age. And it is proving to be just as upsetting as was the transformation from the Agricultural to the Industrial Age in the 19th century ...

 

This is political forum and no it is not a stoopid response. You won't receive an economic advantage if 200M other workers else have the same "advantage".

 

The information age is over. Anybody with a device and internet access can have all the information they want for free.

 

Reread what you wrote.

It appears that you are contradicting yourself. Logically if anybody can have all the information they want, then correspondingly we are IN the Information Age ....

 

High school diplomas were an advantage, then they weren't. College degrees were and advantage, not not so much. The same would happen if everybody had a phd. it would make you one of millions and not make you any more desirable than the other hundred million with a phd.

 

It is not a contradiction. I can have a bronze statue, but that doesn't make it the bronze age. I have corn in my back field but that doesn't make it the agricultural revolution. The information age is over.

 

Maybe one of the reasons companies used to do their own job training was because their employees tended to stay at the same job for their whole lives. But today there's a far higher rate of job mobility, and less certainty, and a worker may hold 8 to 12 different primary jobs throughout their lifetime. More job mobility isn't necessarily a good thing when it comes along with a high level of job insecurity. Employee loyalty used to be rewarded. Now employees are expendable.

 

don't be silly, no school teaches people how to make Ford cars or how to work in the Ford culture. your training begins your first day on the job and continues a lifetime if you want to move up. its 100% absurd to pretend a school can teach a person to work at a company when they have no idea what company or industry a person will work in.

 

It is essentially free to educate one's self as you have described.

 

No, it isn't. Real education is done by acknowledged institutions of higher-learning. They are not "free" in the US - and that is the problem ...

 

Supply& Demand determine our lives more than we determine Supply & Demand.

What has happened in America is due to the simple fact that - as of 1991, when the Bamboo Curtain came crashing down and China started exporting - Americans rushed to buy its goods at the amazingly low prices.

What happened to jobs in America since 4 decades is the consequence of that historical fact. And now Chinese manufacturing has gone up-market. That new smartphone you bought came from there. Other similar high-tech products will be developed here and manufactured there.

This very same phenomenon happened in the 18th century when Americans rushed off farms to work in factories - and Europe suffered a loss in exports to America supplanted by "Made-in America" produce. Particularly clothing, because America had a vast production of cotton (at very low cost due to slavery in the south), which was shipped up to the mills powered by water in the north.

Our national production has long since largely gone up-market, and for some produce (car manufacturing) we share markets with foreign producers. Maybe Trump can do something about that in talks with China, but I doubt the outcome will change much.

He's barking up the wrong tree. We need very importantly to educate our work-force with the skills a largely Services Market has evolved (wherein most of our workers are employed). Which is why I keep harping about free Tertiary Education programs.

If not, we are just shooting ourselves in the foot ...

 

Bollocks - you refuse to face facts. Never mind, I tire of repeating them to those who refuse to understand the Brave New World We Live In.

Anyway, such inanity will inevitably simply die away - it is condemned by the factual economic evidence of the past forty years ...

 

The e-commerce push will never absorb all the retail workers and those with lower than average intelligence its a waste of time pumping education dollars at them most won't be employable in the new economies, it would be better to find other options of public welfare for those who can't work and forget about them in the long run.

 

Wrong and the present evidence of employed labor proves you wrong.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here - Employment by major industry sector
(Percentage of jobs by Industry Sector, 2014)
Total - 100%
Non-agricultural - 92.9%
Goods-producing, excluding agriculture - 12%
Services-providing - 80.1%
Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting - 1.4%
Non-agricultural self-employed workers - 5.7%

Also from the BLS, here: Usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by selected characteristics (2017, population and average weekly salary by highest decile)

Less than a high school diploma - 6.7 Million; $994
High school graduates, no college (1) - 25.1M; $1482 (*49%)
Some college or associate degree (2) - 27.2M, $1600 (*8%)
Bachelors degree or higher - 42.2M; $2884 (*80%)
(1) Includes persons with a high school diploma or equivalent.
(2) Includes persons with bachelor's, master's, professional, and doctoral degrees.
*Percent higher salary from previous level.

My Point: The higher the level of degree certification, then the higher the average salary. The difference between the highest salary range (Bachelors degree) and the lowest (Less than high-school diploma) is 190%!

NB: Services producing industries require a higher level of skilled-competencies than goods-producing, and they obtain a higher level of compensation.

 

There is only a salary differential because of job prerequisites. If everybody was a lawyer, being a lawyer would just be of no economic benefit. All you have done is illustrate my point. Educational attainment is part of the rent-seeking system..

 

I am not the one living in the past you are. The information age is over.

 

I think it would be safe to say that one could learn any skill required for a job for free using the internet.

 

You should talk to your liberal universities that are completely gouging most normal American citizens with the lone goal of indoctrinating them with liberal philosophies rather than give them a proper education to excel in their elected profession. It's an absurd, disgusting practice. And you worry about minimum wage.

 

error

 

More piffle 'n drivel from the Rabid Right.

When you look at the data-numbers, America is not the "heroically fair country" that you think it is.

Dream on ...

 

the higher the degree the better they are at learning so they would do just as well without a formal education anyway. Businesses likes it when govt pays for some of the training of course but in the absence of such training they would do it themselves as part of the huge on the job training they must do anyway for their particular industry and business. Do you understand?

 

Food, too. Bread lines would be sooooo much better than what we have now.