Economic Reality

By any objective measure most Americans are doing pretty well in today's economy.  They could of course be doing better, but considering how everything almost collapsed during the financial crisis we should be at least a little thankful.

Now while this is going on we are in the midst of a number of social economic changes that impact certain people more than others.  The country has been moving to a service economy for quite a few years now.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but any change like that has winners and losers.

If you are in the group that doesn't have the right skills to succeed in the new reality, you may get bitter.  You want to blame somebody.  Its no comfort to be told that you are an unfortunate victim of a global phenomenon that ultimately benefits the great majority with more efficient economies.

Losing a high paying manufacturing job and having to work in a lower paying service job is clearly not a good experience and might make you feel that the economy has collapsed.  Well your economy has collapsed because of two factors.  Globalization and training.

If you have the right skills for the current economy you can do very well.  If you don't you won't.  Of course this is no different than manufacturing with the biggest difference being that those displaced form good paying manufacturing jobs are not ready to take entry level service jobs.

Well the jobs are not coming back and if you expect the Government to fix this you are clearly looking for a handout.  Its not the Governments fault or the Governments responsibility to fix it, anymore than it ever was.

The jobs left because the business owners determined it was more profitable to automate and use the cheaper labor available in foreign countries.  Purely an economic decision and an outgrowth of our capitalistic system.  Yes, trade agreements facilitated some of this but the trade agreements were not the cause.  The price differential is normally so great that the jobs were going anyway.  Further these products are sold globally so having import duties increases the cost to us and makes our products and services harder to sell.  

Its not nice being the victim is an economic or social transformation, but the forces at work are not going to go away or reverse themselves.