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2008-06-20 Fifth Column

Sausage Eaters, Sausage Makers & the True Cost of Oil

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Posted by 3dc 2008-06-20 01:09|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top

#1 Preach it!

Word!

'Nuff said...

Posted by FOTSGreg">FOTSGreg 2008-06-20 02:03|| fots.cdgroup.org]">[fots.cdgroup.org] 2008-06-20 02:03|| Front Page Top

#2 I don't know, but I do get a little bored by the yearning for some imaginary time when everything as marked 'Made in the USA'. I lived through those times. You really want to live in circa 1960 with the income and access as a consumer to those and only those items? It's a socialist stasis dream. You can still see relics of that concept in Eastern Europe and Russia. What's gone is a lot, a lot of decent paying jobs for the under skilled and under motivated/educated. That means you need to adapt to your environment as it changes. Those who don't adapt or won't adapt should not degrade everyone else's opportunities to expand their lives. Do we recognize the absurdity of bitching about the export of jobs and industry on a device that, instead of being Big Iron in a closed room in a major business or industry, is a consumer product sold off the shelf and made accessible precisely because it is manufactured by and large overseas. Just remember it's only useful because of the programs that run on it. How many programmers were there in 1960? How many are programming today in America while we whine about losing line manufacturing jobs of the '60s? Adaptation.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-06-20 09:12|| 2008-06-20 09:12|| Front Page Top

#3 Procopius2k, one of the underlying complaints is the damage inflicted on the American way of life by lawyers and MBAs in pursuit of short term profits. If you really think that our quality of life was improved by the continuing consolidation of businesses through leveraged buyouts funded by junk bonds, then perhaps you were living overseas during the 70's and 80's. The outsourcing of manufacturing is the result of a perfect storm: taxes, burdensome regulations, environmental activism that makes it almost impossible to do business in the US, and the unholy bargain between shortsighted management and blinkered unions on wages and benefits. One example near and dear to my heart is the manufacture of printed wiring boards. If you don't already have the necessary permits or were grandfathered an exception to the EPA regulations, you can't manufacture in the US. As a result almost all of the circuit boards that go into electronics are made overseas where opposition is less strenuous. The other factor has been the steady compromise of the educational establishment in the US. You can point to occasional exceptions, but for the most part, high school graduates and most college graduates are useless as employees. They don't have the fundamental reading, writing, reasoning, and mathematical skills to function in modern industry. Were it not for foreign students educated where diversity and self esteem are less important than real learning, our technological society would collapse.

Posted by RWV 2008-06-20 10:35|| 2008-06-20 10:35|| Front Page Top

#4 You can point to occasional exceptions, but for the most part, high school graduates and most college graduates are useless as employees. They don't have the fundamental reading, writing, reasoning, and mathematical skills to function in modern industry.

News alert. They didn't have the capacity back in the 60s either. You understand that the US Army ran education programs for draftees to upgrade their basic skills in reading and writing till sometime around mid decade when the first batch of the 'Sputnik' kiddies who's education system was boosted as a result of the 'scare' started showing up in the service? I know, most of our understanding of the past doesn't begin till we become cognizant somewhere around mid to late adolescence. Even in the 60s high school drop out rates were still high because social promotion hadn't set in as standard in the educational establishment. Today, to manipulate data, the educational establishment hands paper out to show that the drop out rate is down, but the paper is generally useless as a measure of quality. In other words, even though they have the paper, they might as well have dropped out anyway and not consumed the educational resources of others. How do you blame the CEOs, MBAs and lawyers for the lack of basic skills in our public education system? You can try, but the fundamental issue there is the 'professionalizing' of institution with paper over performance. Just like junk pushed out of a smoke stack industry, the junk the professional there push out doesn't sell well on the market.

I'm not a socialist. On a board that promotes individual liberty and freedom and decries the nanny state when did any advocate that business or industry owes anyone a job? It comes down to responsibility of the individual and groups. It's the individual's responsibility to apply himself in obtaining the skills for employment or entrepreneurial advancement. It is the group's responsibility to not 'kill the goose that lays the golden egg' as so many unions have. Insert comment here about heartless and cut throat businesses. Right, with all the union pension fund money out there, they could have bought and owned a number of business, but they didn't and haven't. They are just as heartless and cut throat as any businessman in looking out for their own interests as well. You think the union pension funds aren't pushing those MBAs and lawyers too?

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-06-20 11:14|| 2008-06-20 11:14|| Front Page Top

#5 Nostalgia is always fun, but everything has opportunity costs.

Yes, America had lots of heavy industry, and it helped our "national productivity" a lot. But it did so at the cost of our individual lives.

People don't generally *like* to do physically demanding and dangerous work that makes you hot, filthy and tired. So if you have a choice, you have to be paid a LOT of money to do such a job.

Our individual wants and our national productivity both support each other and balance each other.

And by the standards of the rest of the world, every citizen of the United States is a rich person. Even our unemployed homeless get so much relative support that they are wealthy by these standards.

This means that over time, while America has an abundance of scientists, it is short of people who pick vegetables, dig ditches and work at other jobs that are dirty, nasty, dangerous, and couldn't possibly pay enough to make it worthwhile.

Yes, the good old days had some good things, and today we have some good things. But you can have one or other. Take your pick. If you choose the old days, you'll have to go to a country with those kind of values.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-06-20 12:05|| 2008-06-20 12:05|| Front Page Top

#6 In other words, even though they have the paper, they might as well have dropped out anyway and not consumed the educational resources of others. P2k, I call that the "Scarecrow Principle". It started in the 60's. The "Scarecrow Principle" is best described in "The Wizard of Oz" when the Wizard tells the Scarecrow, "You don't need an education. All you need is a Diploma".

Posted by Deacon Blues">Deacon Blues 2008-06-20 17:41|| 2008-06-20 17:41|| Front Page Top

23:55 RD
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