Oh, for crying out loud. The proposal is that we need to train workers for very highly skilled jobs that require much higher education, and to train workers for personal service jobs (that can't be outsourced). One off the cuff example of a personal service job (here quoted as off-the-cuff indicates all kinds of important unspoken ideas): brain surgeon. Ok, look: Click &c.
1. People of average and lower IQs will not be trainable for highly skilled jobs that require lots of advanced education. There are limits to individual human potential, and while we are equal before the law (in principle), we are not all equally gifted or socially advantaged. --- GW has an average IQ, and he's president, and you can see how well that's working out, just for (biased) instance.
2. Brain surgery can be out-sourced, and is being out-sourced (sort of) as richer Americans go to other countries to acquire such personal services at lower prices than possible in the US. Many non-emergency surgeries are being performed abroad -- on people who can afford to get abroad.
3. These people keep imagining an American economy in which there is a fairly rich Managerial and Ownership Class that runs the businesses that leave manufacture and labor to the third world; and then the people who wash their cars, cut their hair and toe nails, give them massages, and sell them goodies. To be overly blunt. This is really not a great idea for a host of reasons economic and moral.
4. "Government ought to do a much better job helping people through the transition with re-training," to do what? How many manicurists do we need, can we support? (i for one cut my own hair, do my own nails, as the price of these personal services is just silly to me) Seems to me a much fuller re-imagination of our economic structure is required. I'm doubting that a two-tier structure is going to work out.
5. You bet I want economic improvement and development in the third world. You bet I do. And you bet I grock that massive historical shifts like this are messy and hard on lots of actual people. Mitigation of that mess is incumbent upon an ethical society.
6. Yes, the more integrated international economies are the less likely those inter-dependent nations are to go to war with each other. However, there are ways to do damage that don't involve war. And there is a point at which the dependence really runs in one direction, say that one in which the US manages and Others make stuff we Need (not Ipods, stuff we Need). And, honey, ave you looked at Iraq lately?
Could we please just not gloss over the whackingly obvious.
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Ya, I was listening to that same show. It made me feel bad, 'cause how hard is it to outsource tech writing? I guess the guy didn't want to give cleaning the toilets as an example, because then he'd have to admit the nightmare vision where the whole wealth/class spread in the US is defined by those who don't clean their own toilets (the "service workers" stock brokers and brain surgeons) and those who clean others' toilets.
Bingo. Fantasy and denial will not be anyone's allies in this process. Should be incumbent upon theorists and strategists of globalization to have a working knowledge of class dynamics, kinds and levels of intelligence, trends in production and consumption. Seems our esteemed speakers on this occasion did not. And there was no challenge to it. Not from Diane, not from the other guest, not from a caller, and the lines were full, so not from me either.
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