Sounding Off on the State of Things

In a Forbes article today, I see where manufacturing is moving back to the U.S.A. but sadly the jobs are not coming back. 

Just as it was on the farm many years ago, machines are taking the place of people. In a mill that employed 2000 workers at one time, the jobs of those people will now be done by 150 people using high tech machinery. 

In the rural deep south we saw that affect on farm workers when expensive farm equipment was built to harvest cotton and peanuts, corn and soybeans. Many hands became idle and farm workers swarmed to the cities and little towns looking for some way to make a living. Untrained men and women had to take menial jobs and often found no work. They lived in abject poverty.

This trend is not new. As companies look for cheaper ways to make the products so they can sell them at cheaper prices to us, the public, they are coming back to this country because the shipping costs have risen and in some foreign countries the wages have risen. A manufacturer here can afford to pay higher wages to fewer people when he has the machines that do the job.

Where will our population go for work? College registrations are falling due to the extreme tuition costs of universities. Young people have to find other means of education. The service industries, health and caregiving, are fields where many women find work. I advise young people in our area who haven't gone to college to find a job, any job they can get, at one of the colleges or one of the hospitals. Those institutions provide health insurance and have other benefits for their employees. A good worker has the opportunity for long term security and a chance to move up. 

The men and women who can afford to attend college will take the higher paid jobs upon graduation -- doctors, lawyers, engineers. 

Perhaps more creative types will invent more machines to take the jobs of less educated men and women.