"cubby" wrote in message
...
On Jun 14, 7:03 pm, "Robert Green" wrote:
wrote in message

stuff snipped





But he offers this advice: "Don't train yourself or your children [in
work]
that a computer can do or a smart kid in China or India can do. Because
that's ferocious competition."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...0612,0,5466021....
story

Computer "operator"? That is not a particularly skilled job. Was he
thinking "programmer". Even so, I agree, there is a guy in India that
will do that for $40 a day. The internet has made it such that it
doesn't matter whether your cubicle is down the hall or half way
around the world. Halfway around the world is cheaper.

The point is that skilled trades are the last thing to get exported
because
it's not practical to have someone in New Delhi fix your plugged up sink.
Not until they develop cheap teleportation like Star Trek. In the current
market, having a BA in English is likely to get you a job slinging
burgers.

The worst part of all this is kids are starting their careers $50 to $100K
in debt for a college education from a named school. Unless they go to
Wall
Street, there's no way they can pay that loan off in this economy. It's
just another in the row of dominoes that is falling over that used to be a
vibrant national economy.

--
Bobby G.

The trades may be the last thing to get exported, but who's to say
they won't be exported? Modular home construction, in huge warehouses
in cheap areas of the US, is already taking off. It's not a huge leap
to imagine that happening in China. Sure, it will take a few weeks
for your home to arrive, but if you can get it for half price?

At the rate I have to patch things around the house (largely because of
cheap manufacturing techniques or bad design or someother inherent vice)
there will always be work for handymen in this country. Just today the fax
machine failed. I'll probably be able to figure it out myself. Sadly, it's
cheaper to buy a new one than to pay someone to look at it.

--
Bobby G.