One of the traditional ways to get people to do what you want is to MAKE IT WORTH THEIR WHILE. Shocking concept, right? But look at what former engineering student Patrick McKenzie said:
“When I was in college, I knew I wanted to be a software engineer, but I was worried about my job prospects competing with 100,000 engineers graduating every year in China and India.”
McKenzie still got his software degree, but he double-majored in the Japanese language so that he would have something to fall back on. After graduating, he moved to Japan and began working as a translator.
McKenzie eventually went to work as an engineer for a large Japanese company.
This particular engineer was literally driven out of the country by our immigration and trade policies. The American middle class was built on a deliberate policy of shielding American workers from competing with the teeming masses of the world. We have reversed that policy, and are now in the process of crushing the middle class with a policy of global labor arbitrage.
And it’s working.
Poverty is exploding in the USA as huge profits accrue to multinationals and their shiny new Asian workforces.
President Obama has not lifted one finger to change that policy.
However, things turned out well for Patrick McKenzie. In fact, he’s a software-developer legend now. Read his story here. But that just goes to show that you can’t keep a good man down.
Most college graduates today move back in with their parents, and an independent middle-class lifestyle is a distant dream. Instead of asking “how do we motivate more young people to become engineers?”, maybe the more relevant question is: “how much longer will young people pursue education for jobs that now reside in foreign lands?”
Great story Matt. Even worse is the fact that these boomerang kids living in the basement are saddled with student loan debt with very poor prospects of paying it back due to the issue you chronicled in this meme. If you make $30k a year and expect to live a middle class lifestyle while servicing at least that much in “higher education” debt, that expectation is going to meet a rude awakening.
the real question is what will this country look like once the baby boomers are gone?
it has been a while, hope all is well with everyone.
best wishes to Matt, George, and all the rest for a happy and healthy July 4th and summer
Glad to see you here after. Same best wishes to you.
Thanks after. Long time. Hope you and yours are well.
Enjoy this pic of the monster move by SPY on the Renko.
http://i51.tinypic.com/20aqavd.jpg
SPY gap filled.
And bounced back down nicely by a few points. Hanging onto the big gains from last week though. PM are moving nicely higher.
Matt, a CNBC interview near 10 AM this morning talked about a college educated person has a 4.5% unemployment rate–they were talking about importing more engineers, etc… That implies that the non-college educated are WAY, WAY unemployed to balance out that 4.5% stat. Do you have any insight into the demographics of unemployment? Thanks.
2th,
There have been stories about how many people with advanced degrees are working in low-paying service jobs. So, that 4.5% rate is likely to be an overstatement.
Here is the CNN story about how 85% of college grads move back in with their parents:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/14/pf/boomerang_kids_move_home/index.htm
I’m sure that many of them do indeed have jobs, waiting tables and such…
Matt
Ah, great point Matt. Hadn’t thought of the downgrade to waiter from computer programmer. Thanks for the insight. And yeah, I’d rather have a waiter with a college degree than with no education.
CMG is $320…mexican food will save the planet!