Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
Makes a lot of sense. I graduated high school in 1989. I grew up in a small town that was a lumber milll town. At that time the minimum wage was around $3.25 per hour. A person at 18 years old could get a basic job in one of the lumber mills and make around $10 per hour. My brother did and within a few years he was making $14. So he was 21 making about four times the minimum wage.
Here is the kicker. The wages at the mill have been stagnate. My brother left because he knew that his future there was not good and had a better opportunity and it was the best thing he ever did. In the town I grew up in there were three mills. One of them has shut down and the others only run a day shift, not 24/7 like they used to. The starting jobs there are now around $11 per hour, but minimum wage in my state is now $8.50.
The country is changing. The number of jobs a typical high school grad can get right out of school that turn into jobs that they can live a normal middle class life on are quickly disappearing. It is sad that now the choice seems to be to live on much lower wages, or go to school and get $50-$100K in debt in order to get a better paying job.
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The problem is that we were sold this bullshit about America moving towards a service sector economy that has come home to roost. The problem with a service sector economy is that there is nothing tangible produced to support a nation's currency, it's all stuff like "consulting" and "finance", and it's caused massive inflation. Not to mention most well paying service sector jobs require a college degree.
The American quality and standard of living will be stagnate over the next few generations, perhaps it will degrade slightly. As the global economy settles in on some equilibrium, developing nations standards of living will need to increase. Until that time, there is nothing that can be done short of out-and-out protectionism. And no self-respecting American consumerbot would ever go for that.
An 80¢/hr. factory worker in a plant in Xian Shaanxi Province is not improbable, but impossible to compete with today. The only thing to do is wait until his wages go up 400%(better hope they unionize over there and quick), and our buying power comes down 50%. At that point, when he is making about $2.80/hr, then and only then will domestic manufacturing begin to return, and thats in a scenario where some enterprising fool doesn't open a new plant in Burundi, Ethiopia, or the Democratic Republic of Congo.