America Is Preparing Kids For a Fool's Paradise

In the 1950s 30 percent of U.S. employees were in manufacturing – almost one in three jobs. This country was a relative manufacturing super power, we were the world’s richest and most productive country. In 1994 approximately one in eight jobs were in manufacturing. In 2014 if the U.S. government (Bureau of Labor Statistics) projections are accurate that figure will have slipped to one in 12 jobs.

The government is telling us in black and white that the policies they are enacting will decrease both absolute and relative manufacturing employment to levels below that of the 1950s – over 2 million below.

In less than 20 years since America put in place some of its most self-devastating policy decisions (NAFTA, WTO, CAFTA, etc.), this country will have almost completely converted from a self-sufficient sovereign state, capable of manufacturing what it needs to sustain and protect itself, to a country of servants – serfs, working at the behest of foreign employers or engaged in the sales, marketing, and distribution of foreign-made goods – working at their discretion, for wages they determine, and forced to pay their prices for needed goods. This is the definition of a servant.

A country that ends up producing little of value will have little to consume at home and little to trade abroad, and will have a low standard of living. The way this country was built was by developing world-leading industries and dominating the markets for products that we invented. Now we have conceded that we are instead going to exist by selling our assets and eliminate most of our ability to produce for ourselves. This would make any country extremely vulnerable.

From 1994-2004, manufacturing was the second fastest job-losing sector in our economy (second only to agricultural employment). From 2004-2014, the government predicts that most of the employment growth will come from retail, health care, leisure and hospitality, government jobs, and “professional and business services.”

This country needs salespeople, waiters, attorneys, doctors, and managers. But how could we have ever built a superpower country on those professions alone?

Many say that we are shipping jobs overseas because they are too low-paying or too rudimentary. Anyone who has worked in factory operating a million-dollar piece of equipment can tell you the satisfying difference from being forced to work in a restaurant as a waiter because of lack of alternatives. Why would we send factory jobs overseas to replace them with jobs in retail and hospitality? Factories sustain communities. Retail and hospitality enriches absentee corporations and shareholders. Offshore outsourcing strips us of technology, taxes, profits, and career opportunities. Why would we choose that path as manufacturing jobs pay much more on average than service jobs?

Some other countries, like Japan, pay wages as high as or higher than America because their manufacturing is capital and knowledge intensive and requires fewer workers per unit of output. In addition, other countries like China that pay wages as low as 1/10 of ours, also does not have the same cost of living as the US. Their goods cost a fraction of what they cost here in America; therefore it is not possible to compare the wages on an absolute basis.

Many people also say education is the key. They say that not enough Americans are being trained for engineering, science, or production occupations. There is no point in educating people when there are no jobs – when these industries are being systematically and predatorily destroyed by foreign subsidized competition producing and operating both externally and here in this country through insourcing.

We are living in a fool’s paradise, being propped up by foreign loans to our government and foreign subsidized consumption of our incredulous trade deficits.

The net takeaway of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report is that if you expect to earn a decent living by producing a product – any product – in this next 10 years, you will have little opportunity to do that in this country.