HappySqurriel said:
I guess you are the embodiment of the statement "Ignorance is Bliss" ... If you would have bothered to watch the video you would have gotten the point The economy needs both knowledge based jobs and people in the skilled trades but for decades there has been a massive push to emphasize "higher education" and de-emphasize the trades. To make matters worse, the emphasis has not been on getting higher education to give you valued skills but to get people to follow their passion. The net result has been that we're graduating an excessive amount of people from Universities with no skills, while we're failing to graduate enough people from tradeschools with skills that are already in high demand. Outside of Engineering, Computer Science and Nursing I would not recommend anyone get a university degree because they will be no more qualified to work in a knowledge based economy than a highschool graduate. Years ago I remember reading an article about the typical millionare in Canada and it wasn't what people expected. It was an individual in their mid 30s who worked in the trades, owned their own business, drove an 8 year old Ford F150, had no debt and lived in a modest house. I have seen this in my own life several times as the people I knew in high-school that are living the "good life" are in the trades, while most university graduates are struggling to get by. Believe what you want, but for every college graduate who is really using their degree there are (currently) dozens who are underemployed because they failed to even consider the trades. |
Our economy is not in the situation it is in now, because we have a lack of supply in carpenters, cleaners, and whatever fucking jobs Mike Rowe covers. If that was the source of the problem, Jesus, they must have huge influence on the global economy.
So IDK. I guess I'm just confused. You're trying to make this some kind of philisophical argument about what "value" and "work" is (again, you're starting to sound socialist, that try to equate value as labor), or trying to make the economy as a function of the nation's "character" (oh, it's because everyone wants to get rich and do no work).
The problem with all those arguments (aside from the fact that they're wrong), is that they're too easy. In a way, it's kind of like that with Japan. By tying everything as a matter of "national character" (BTW, now it's a bit remincent of fascism) or something like that, you sort of doom yourself (in the case of Japan), or make it sound like you can solve EVERYTHING by fixing the nation's "character". And making that fix involves making some huge, radical changes like cutting all the government agencies and dismantling all social welfare (and I'm terrified of what the OWS folks are going to propose, once they become more organized).
America's "character" or Japan's "character" have nothing to do it with it. We don't need sweeping radical changes to our society. We need technocratic solutions that have worked pretty consistently and well for the past few decades. Not ideology.
