As many of us know, the future does not look too hopeful on the jobs front. Not necessarily because of the government, though that does play a role, but also due to the advances of technology. I have given this a lot of thought and below I will list a few of my thoughts about the decline with some description of what i mean.
1. Job issues that arise from the governments handling.
The governments handling of tax issues and attracting companies to keep low requirement jobs such as manufacturing has been rather dismal. Not only do we now have to deal with an influx of 11 million new workers who have broken the law to get them, and seem to be getting rewarded for it (as a note, I am not talking about regular immigrants who went through the proper channels to enter the U.S), but also we have to try to compete with the wages that companies can pay to workers overseas. Be it manufacturing, or call centers, going overseas is cheaper. Why is it cheaper you might ask? Minimum Wage is the reason. In our country, we are not allowed to negotiate our wages downward. If you are a U.S citizen, you can mainly only work for what the government says is the minimum (at least taxable work). So yes, you are a "free" citizen, but you obviously cannot handle making a contract for your own wages.
Then there is the tax code, Taxes that have to be paid by companies can get rather high, and to make sure their profit margin is high enough to meet the shareholders demands, they go for much cheaper labor overseas. Sure most large companies like Apple could easily both pay the taxes AND have their manufacturing workforce, but why should they, paying a work force minimum U.S Wage or paying MUCH less to overseas workers, I in all honesty know which I would choose.
2. Job issues arising from Technology.
Now do not get me wrong, I am not a technophobe, I love gadgets and gizmos and techie things. But when you start automating more and more manufacturing jobs or piecemeal jobs such as egg sorting or paper packaging or even putting together the starter for a tractor, you have to realize that is a job a living human cannot fill now. As time passes we see jumps in the technology of robotics, nothing like autonomous thought, but enough for robots to have dexterity and enough hard drive space to do more and more complex jobs. Yes companies will state that the robotics are much more efficient, and over the course of time are much cheaper than human workers. After all, You do not have to pay a machine a wage, You do not have to buy them health insurance or dental. No 401 k plan. No Pension. You only have to pay for the minimum 2 or 3 techs to maintain and program them. But, as robotics continue to grow and have leaps forward in capability, companies do not realize they are shooting themselves in the foot. If all you strive for is the most efficient way to do something, sure in time you may get it, but then who will there be to buy what you produce? the few techs that you employ? Not everyone has the aptitude for highly technical jobs, I for one do not. So companies have to start thinking of the future, and decide if the trade off is worth the decrease in sales.
3. Job issues stemming from education and colleges
Job issues from education problems is easy to see. Anymore you read about the high cost of colleges. It is getting to be to get any kind of education in anything that pays well, You have to spend most of your life savings and take out a loan on top of it. Then what happens? You get that nice paying job, and spend half of your remaining life paying back the loan you took out, and if you get a family, you are now paying back that loan, maybe paying a mortgage, supporting your family (or half supporting if your spouse is also a worker), paying out to taxes, paying Social Security, Paying into medicare, paying into your 401k (because pensions are sooo passe), paying for juniors schooling, paying for doctors visits, and when junior goes to college (or little miss), here you go with refinancing your mortgage to help out with their tuition. So through all this, YES, colleges getting greedy, charging more tuition, but not raising the standards of what they teach does impact jobs. I mean what is the psychological effect on a young person when you tell them they have to go into deep debt to even have a shot at a job, a job no less, that they will probably barely see any real profit from until they are in their 50's or 60's, if that?
so those are my thoughts. I may blog again about possible solutions I have thought of (no I am not a college educated economist, but one can still express thoughts) so maybe ill see you next time.
