On 30 Dec 2015 03:00:27 -0400, Mike Spencer
wrote:


Ed Huntress writes:

What Gunner is seeing is mostly the result of the segment of industry
he deals with -- the absolute bottom feeders. Mismanaged,
under-capitalized, dragging their feet technologically, they are
declining and the business they did (which is still there) is being
picked up by better, smarter companies.

The big picture seems to show that what Gunner is seeing is a good
indicator for the big picture. The "better, smarter companies" may be
doing good for their shareholders but they're putting increasing
numbers of people on the street or, a la Gunner, on the couch/dole.

Yet, there are an estimated 600,000 unfilled jobs in manufacturing
right NOW, and Deloitte is projecting a shortage of 2 million over the
next decade.


('Ware linebreak)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-1...d-and-its-neve
r-going-back-good-old-days

Some nice charts there. The companies, the shareholders, the
executives are doing fine. The blue-collar working folks (or even the
uni grad programmers and techies) are never going to have good again
unless the whole system is changed.

As the author you're referring to says, history doesn't have a reverse
gear.


You can't start a mold shop today with a Bridgeport and a Logan lathe
in a garage. Technology has moved on. And if you try to run a business
today the way you ran it 20 years ago, you're toast.

Or you're prepared to get along without a lot of conveniences,
consumer crap and conventional living standards in order to be
stubbornly independent.

No. That "lunchbox" mold business is long gone. We make the best molds
in the world in the US, but the bottom-end, startup-business end is
gone.


Then Gunner gets to help move the machines out and Iggy buys them for
scrap. Welcome to the 21st century -- which you'll probably catch up
with in a decade or two.

The 21st c. promises to be increasingly the pits (if not an outright
****storm) for a very large number of people able to work and willing
to do so in exchange for a living wage and enough stability that they
don't have to devote large amounts of effort to looking for work,
managing multiple part-time jobs, coping with the crap of markets,
commerce, finance, regulation etc. that would otherwise be the task of
their employers.

Without the education and the skills, they're toast.

--
Ed Huntress