[rockofullr]

I know what you mean . . . but you're accepting the premise that American blue-collar workers should have to compete with Chinese blue-collar workers. Global labor market competition is not "natural." It's the direct result of our trade policy with China.

Telling blue collar workers to go to college to become retrained to be white-collar-knowledge-economy-professionals who supervise off-shored factories in Mexico, India, and China.... just aint gonna cut it as public policy. But that is exactly what's going on right now.

Other people have said similar things, but much better than I can.


See some of the response comments to this article:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/06/trade_0

I'm not saying that we should give up on manufacturing. There are good points on both sides of the argument presented in your link. I agree that it is important to protect the manufacturing jobs that we have.

My point is that protecting manufacturing jobs is not the way forward for the US IMHO. Just like a business which is facing new competition the best way to stay relevant is to innovate. Do something your competition can't.

 

[MMike]

http://www.skepdic.com/paradigm.html

Some, like Joel Barker in his video "The Business of Paradigms," use paradigm and paradigm shift to explain how some people or companies fail and others succeed. The ones who succeed are those who can shift to a new paradigm; the ones who fail are those who remain hidebound and fixated on traditional ideas because they have proved successful in the past or because they can see no use for some new idea. The Swiss failed to patent or market the quartz watch, even though they invented it, because they couldn't shift paradigms. They couldn't shift paradigms because they couldn't see that there would be a market for another kind of watch besides the kind they'd been successfully making and selling for generations. The Japanese made all the money from the quartz watch because they didn't have an old paradigm that locked them into a way of thinking that precluded patenting and marketing quartz watches.

This model might be called retroactive clairvoyance because it sees always and only after the fact who failed to make a paradigm shift and who benefited by having foresight to take advantage of other people's creations. This model is useless for predicting what creations will prove profitable and useful. But it is excellent in hindsight. It infallibly sees that Xerox didn't do a paradigm shift and screwed up when it did not pursue ethernet or graphical user interface or the laser printer, and that IBM screwed up when it initially rejected the notion of the personal computer.

 

[lovebunny]

in his defense....i think english is his second or third language...

whats your defense then?

 

[Nerf Herder]

I have worked for and know a few sheeple with degrees that make you want to stab them self for the lack of intelligence they have.

what?

one of the 6%