Quote:
Originally posted by BRISK
One word for you: Equilibrium
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Yes, of course. It's a nice theory.
But you don't think the insane xenophobia, jingoism, racism, and general lack of respect Americans have for people who happen to live in other countries will EVER abate enough to allow the US workforce to participate in a global labor economy?
It will ALWAYS be easier to HATE than to WORK.
And, so long as it's easier to become a member of a priveleged class in America (and by that I mean a member of an entrenched race-based class with the means to self-preserve by keeping "others" down and out), blue collar workers will never surmount the ideological hurdles that keep them from graduating high-school and keep them having babies they can't afford. So long as they have Wesley Snipes and Dre to hate and blame for their ills (looka the bad guy, breaking the rulez and getting paid), empoverished white America will remain as shackled by false ideas about who the ENEMY is as empoverished black America is for being thought the ENEMY.
What's happening in America is the widening of the rift between the haves and the have-nots.
When the dot-com bubble burst, the work pool was flooded with a shitload of people whose only qualification for white-collar employment was the memory of a six-figure income. Our economy did NOT fail to re-absorb them because their skills were no longer needed in the marketplace. It failed to re-absorb them because the economy decided that the "value" created by this type of worker was ILLUSORY. Hundreds of thousands who'd been livin' high on the tech-hog, were exposed for the unskilled impostors they truly were.
So, i'll sum it up:
1. Nobody who works at McDonalds goes to college and gets a cushy corporate job. The members of this quasi-slave labor class are more rigidly trapped there than at any other moment in US history.
2. The Children of Privelege are graduating college with NO skills, (for the buckling of academic standards under "leave-no-child-behind" bullshit GOP political pressures) and, what's worse, are coming into the labor force with a feeling of ENTITLEMENT to big salaries without ANY dues-paying.
3. A job going overseas DOES mean there is something wrong. It means our labor force has no high-value MIDDLE. On the one side, we have the unskilled and cheap, on the other side we have the unskilled and expensive.
IF WE HAD AMERICANS WHO C O U L D DO THOSE JOBS AND WERE W I L L I N G TO DO THEM AT A VALUE-YIELDING PRICE POINT, THERE WOULD BE NO OUTSOURCING.
J-