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Topic: The homeless, are they in YOUR backyard?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 08-12-2003 10:18 PM
quote:
The US no longer has a manufacturing economy, so get over it. We have a information/technology and service economy for better or worse. Unfortunately, the technology economy still isn't doing well and the service economy pays cruddy wages.
We still have a lot of heavy industry in the United States, but only in terms of industry automated for very high volume turnout. A good number of assembly plants exist in the US because the combination of overseas labor cost and shipping can still be more expensive than making the product here. BUT! If sales drop down below certain levels because Americans don't have enough disposable income to spend you can look at those plants closing.
The Information/Technology end of our economy is in the process of being exported overseas as well. During the 1990's, many technology oriented companies lobbied hard to relax some immigration regulations on letting in computer scientists from places like India and China. Now companies like IBM are forecasting 3 million tech jobs will move out of America overseas to places like India within 5 years.
I have one theory on why this is happening: the vocations promoted in popular culture such as TV shows and movies. What do we see? Lawyer, doctor, cop, lawyer, doctor, cop, etc. It is no wonder America has over 70% of the world's attorneys! Few bother to think about becoming a structural engineer or chemical scientist or anything in high demand like that. Top it off with America's laughably low average in science and test scores over the last two to three decades and you have the makings of our technology industry almost as a whole leaving this nation within a generation. We're too busy hitting the beer bong dreaming about law school. If some serious change is not made a lot more Americans are going to wind up homeless --and not have being nuts as an excuse.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 08-13-2003 04:13 PM
quote:
have one theory on why this is happening: the vocations promoted in popular culture such as TV shows and movies. What do we see? Lawyer, doctor, cop, lawyer, doctor, cop, etc. It is no wonder America has over 70% of the world's attorneys! Few bother to think about becoming a structural engineer or chemical scientist or anything in high demand like that. Top it off with America's laughably low average in science and test scores over the last two to three decades and you have the makings of our technology industry almost as a whole leaving this nation within a generation. We're too busy hitting the beer bong dreaming about law school.
The legal industry is hurting itself. One of the reasons we've become such a litigious nation is because there are too many lawyers - there are over 1 million in the US. The law schools should limit admissions as some other industries do.
The reason why no one thinks about becoming an engineer or a scientist is because our popular culture only cares about the rich and the famous and of the famous, mainly only of music/TV/movie stars and athletes.
In schools today, kids who strive to excel are put down. Urban black kids who strive for achievement are accused by their peers of "going white." We've been dumbing down the country for some time and I don't see it getting any better in the near future.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 08-17-2003 08:56 PM
Bobby said, Few bother to think about becoming a structural engineer or chemical scientist or anything in high demand like that. Top it off with America's laughably low average in science and test scores over the last two to three decades and you have the makings of our technology industry almost as a whole leaving this nation within a generation.
Hey, we are a nation who couldn't even handle the change to the metric system -- and you want structural engineers! Even third world countries were able to handle the metric system.
We are also a nation that found the SAT science and math scores taking an alarming nose-dive about 10 years ago; how did we step up to the plate to remedy that situation....we ADJUSTED the scores so that what was up till then below average, now became the average! That's akin to finding a voltage that's supposed to read, say, 12v but is reading 3v below spec, so you recalibrate your meter so that 9v reads as 12v, stand back and say...."Ah, everything's fine -- it's now at spec." Or, as Dave Barry once put it, "I consider myself quite adept at automotive mechanics; when the red warning light comes on the dash board, I am able to fix the problem with just a small piece of black tape that I carefully stick over it."
Betcha that's how the blackout started. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Frank
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