America Needs Some Work...........

As Joanna previously mentioned, nearly the whole WAIP crew made our way to Chinatown Sunday to celebrate communism.......I mean the Chinese New Year! Even given the tension the Dalia Lama's recent visit to the White House stirred, many parade goers were upbeat. Many thanks to Andrea for purchasing snap pops so that I could join the kids in some revelry.

I come now to mention, as I have before with my infamous "mug post" one of the simplest concepts in economics: comparative advantage. Yes, this is the concept that made you tear your hair out in ECON 101. To be put simply many Americans are not willing to work for $1 an hour, even if their skill set warrants it. And thus as a country full of greedy corporations (thank you Supreme Court for your recent brilliant decision extending their power in government, idiots) jobs, mainly manufacturing of course, have moved overseas to places such as China and India where a pair of Nike sneakers can be made for one dollar and then sold back to consumers in the U.S. for $100. Countries like China thus have a comparative advantage in the supply of labor. The fact is there is absolutely no way to save most manufacturing jobs here unless Americans are willing to work for $1 an hour, the manufacturing jobs problem is literally that simple, seriously it is that simple.

My suggestion is as follows. Why doesn't the United States move vertically and become a leader in up-and-coming industries? This is how this great country has become a world leader thus far. Why don't we, as a service-based economy, serve ourselves and shift resources into EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES and not stay heavily reliant on old ones? I am referring here to the renewable energies sector. I am by no means a tree hugger, just someone with common sense sometimes. The only way to create jobs here that can't move overseas is to be better at what we do than anybody else is because the labor will always be available elsewhere. But the fact is that even in the renewable energies sector we are far behind, we have been set in our ways. But perhaps there is time, I certainly hope so. As John Glenn and our friends at the embassy of Finland suggest it all starts with education which by the way we are way behind in also. Move vertically so your job doesn't move horizontally.


--Mike