[Education] How to substantially retrain US workers for today's knowledge economy?

What country you from?

 

^^ Why would it matter where he's from?

Good thread. Though losing jobs to foreign competition is a cute way for Mr Rajan to say "Nike USA lost jobs to foreign competitor Nike Vietnam".

I think those jobs are gone and they will not come back ever, nor should it be the goal for them to come back. As you said, what are the new jobs? As jobs are exported and technology reduces the need for humans, perhaps it is worth considering that it may be all downhill from here in any country driven by profit? Maybe we're hitting that point at which the export of jobs to another country (to cut costs) and technological advancements are really hitting the supply side so hard that new jobs can't be generated fast enough?

As far as education though, I don't advocate shaping the educational system to suit the economy >>creepy way of manufacturing compliant humans. The economy is not "right", it is just... the economy.

 

Honestly, I don't know if you can.

If more people get a degree, then the degree becomes watered down and more people will have to get higher degrees and sink into more debt.

There are virtually no more family owned farms, and our food production will eventually be outsourced.

Manufacturers won't produce here b/c it's too expensive to hire workers. Even if workers got the equivalent of their counterparts in Asia, they would not have a sustainable wage.

 

Certain types of manufacturing are gone for good, no question. But the idea that all manufacturing is toast is absolute nonsense.

There's a reason why Germany is still able to maintain an export based economy with first world wages. They train their workers to simply be so productive that it offsets the higher wages.

There was an interview with the head of Siemens and he was asked why they don't build more things directly in the US (rather than building them in Germany and shipping them here) His answer was flat out, we can't find workers with the proper skills.

There's a very silly assumption that all manufacturing involves assembly lines which is nonsense. There are very technical forms of manufacturing that involved a very high level of skill and technical knowledge.

Ironically one of the main culprits is the decline of unions that used to create stable workforces via union apprenticeships. Those are largely gone now and companies are now learning that you can't just find workers off the street. Unions were actually very critical to building competent workforces especially since unlike Germany we dont have solid trade schools that can serve as a replacement.

There's also a high level of cooperation there between government schools and nearby businesses to coordinate training so graduates can easily join nearby companies. Those types of programs exist in bits and pieces in the US but there has been no state or nationwide visionary leadership to promote this on a largescale basis. And since we've made it our goal to eviscerate unions, that source of educated workers is also gone.

As for broader education, I think there's way too much focus on higher education. We spend more and more on college but cut funding left and right for elementary schools. We're fighting over preserving pell grants and financial aid (which is a good thing) but then pretend that nothing bad is going to happen when states across the country are gutting the public school system to close budget deficits. Our education priorities here are totally ****ed up and after 20 years of just slashing education spending and support, we're now starting to see the consequences.

Texas was once a pretty solid upper tier state in terms of education. Bill Clements (a Republican governor at that) worked with the Democratic legislature to pass a *gasp* tax increase to pay for schools. Good luck finding any visionaries in the State house today who would do such a thing.

A simple re-orientation of our own priorities could produce great results down the road.

 

Dam mergers and cheap labor in other countries

 

Sounds easy, but with so many people preferring to be unemployed lawyers looking for the next potential civil suit, instead of an in demand software programmer, industrial engineer, or any other well paying high demand occupation that doesn't make an interesting narrative for Dick Wolf sitcoms.... starts to sound impossible.

 

Oh I'm not arguing with this side of it at all.

I'm just saying from a sheer numbers perspective. I'll simplify this since I can't seem to word it properly:

Assembly line manufacturing (an older industry) is probably more labor intensive than cutting edge battery research (a newer industry). That's because while wages are increasing and making it profitable to move least-skilled jobs outside the borders, we shouldn't forget that technology is improving too - so if those jobs stayed inside, they would also continuously require less and less human labor through technological improvements. That technological improvement exists across all industries at varying rates all the time. So maybe right now you guys are shipping out 100 old jobs a year while only realisitically able to create 50 new jobs a year, even if those 50 jobs are "better" than the 100 jobs.

Otherwise, yes, what you describe is IMO too the only way to go.

 

Software automation just takes a lot less people to do the same work. What we need is manufacturing jobs.

Also Germany is much more socialist country than america.