re: #200 boxhead

A skilled tradesman is an educated person. And often, more educated than a white collar. But far too many trade jobs that were protected by unions have been decimated by cheap labor. I am old enough to remember when a carpenter was a job that made enough money to raise a family. Now, not much more than flipping burgers, unless you are the contractor, and then competition is ridiculous.

Skilled trades jobs cannot possibly be decimated by cheap labor. The skill set required is hard to master, and necessary to the work, and the work commands a good wage.

The head of Siemens complained today that his company has had a hard time finding American workers for factory jobs, because of a lack of skills. That most applicants simply haven’t the education needed to do the work. hard to find hirable applicants.

Jobs that don’t actually require any unusual degree of skill, that just anybody can walk in off the street and do, are vulnerable to cheap-labor competition.

It does society no favor to erect barriers to entry and protect work of the second kind so that [a lucky few] people can earn a good living. The wider consequence is that [more] people spend their time trying to fix things so they, and not another, get the high-pay, low-skill job. And [many] other people cannot afford to get work done that they need done, because the price is artificially high. And then everybody complains about the high cost of living, and forgets that part of it is high because some government rule has made it high.