Intractable Pressure.

[necso]

There was a time when a person of modest education and means could pretty easily make a decent living, (wife at home if she wished to be), and have some choice of jobs, many protected by the union umbrella. Although firm dates are hard to set, call it the 50s/60s. Business, at the time, had fought hard against these gains and would fight relentlessly in the future to make them go away.

And it has been going downhill ever since. The 90s, a strong boom relative to previous years, were not as good for the worker as the 50s/60s. And the next cycle will not be as good as the 90s.

The next cycle will not be as good as the 90s, that is, unless some force acts to stop the long term worker marginalization that is taking place.

That force will not come from business itself... it is pressing forward with intractable pressure. Business wishes only the ready availability of the cheapest possible labor, no matter what the medium and long term costs may be. (There are notable exceptions, but this is the rule.) So any force for change must come from the people themselves, as citizens, as workers, as consumers and as investors.

Even if we succeed in removing smirk this fall, struggles like this will still face us. These are the battles of a life time.

[shraby]

1. That was before the oil companies

began to run things. They got the upper hand in the mid 1970s.

[Veggie Meathead]

2. The worker marginalization problem, if anything, is going to move

up the food chain in the coming years and there will be no place to hide.Whether you are trained as a doctor, lawyer or an accountant or
a business major, you can expect to compete with a large well educated workforce from India, China or wherever because all these countries are modeling themselves after the U.S. and spending money to educate their populations.

Already I understand that many people in Europe and Japan are going to medical centers in India to get procedures like open heart surgery and other complex surgical procedures done at a fraction of the cost in Europe or Japan.It is only a matter of time before our own insurance companies make our people get treatments done in India.If this is the case, our physicians and surgeons will be in the same boat as the farmworkers in california soon.

How we deal with this emerging problem worldwide is going to define
the next thrity or forty years of our economic life.Strap on your seat belt belts.It is going to be one hell of a rough ride.

[necso]

3. Indeed, the problem

has already moved high up the food chain. I know, or know of, numerous people who made very high wages in the 90s, who will likely never do so again.

And while I would not suggest that this is precisely a zero sum game, at least in the long term, there are elements of this problem at any one time. Building one nation's prosperity while weakening another's (growth at least) is a matter that can't be completely left to market forces.

Market forces and other interests are often at variance. These other interests would do well to look after themselves.

[Massacure]

4. Well you guys can partially blame NAFTA and CAFTA for that.

[rapier]

5. notes

One must consider the possibility, probability in my view, that those days were an anomoly. The product of the post WWII worldwide economic landscape, which of course had America at the apex.

3 billion people currently live with incomes that are orders of magnitude lower than most Americans. The numbers were much lower in 1950 but as a percentage of world population the number is probably similiar.

The typical progressive standpoint concerning Americas profligate lifestyle (how I hate that word) which is so destructive environmentally and so selfish and damaging in so many other ways which I am sure you can list, must come to grips with the fact that it is our high incomes which is the very fuel for all those things we decry.

Looked at in this way Americans incomes are out of whack. (In such a short space I can't address the compaion issue of the distribution of income in America)

Sripping away the dogmas concerning globalization or even competition in the 'free market' sense, one must admit that it is natural that many Americans are competing with the worlds other 75% of people seeking more income. Is it fair to want,much less to expect, that we Americans deserve so much better than all those others.

The call for the good old days is an appealing one for us to use in seeking votes but I don't think it is all that honest.

[ramapo]

6. 30 years downhill

The good times ended in the early '70s, about the time my working life began.

When I got out of high school I obtained a union job paying about $3.50 an hour. It was basic stock/warehouse/assembly work. It was great pay and I lived well for a year before going to college (state school at something like $350/semester). Oh yes, the "big boss" made $40K a year.
Unions still had some power, though they were a target.

Now two people struggle to earn enough to survive. The middle-class hardly exists as it has been splintered. Housing and medical costs have skyrocketed. Jobs are being exported. Education guarantees nothing.

Removing the Smirk from our lives would be the smallest of steps. Difficult days lie ahead.