This is one concise explanation of a big problem in the US: it has simply taken the economic "low road":
http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/digest/0108/wilson.htmlTo begin, I consider a (crude) distinction between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ road options that policy makers face in accommodating changing domestic and international realities. The high wage, high skill option for most developed countries aims at ensuring both continuity of some kind of dynamic manufacturing core and strong growth in high skilled services. The low wage, low skill route, by contrast, is premised on the argument that global economic realities create fewer options for successful public intervention and that the growth of low paid, low skill work — especially in services — is an unavoidable consequence of adjusting to the market-driven world.
The contrasting strategies of Sweden and the United States illustrate the logic of high and low road options in real economies. In the post-war period, the Swedish labour movement’s policy of ‘solidarity wages’ forced innovation on domestic business by imposing uniform wage costs, thereby reducing the viability of low wage, low skill industries. Although this wages model has been dealt some blows recently, powerful coalitions of interests continue to block the deregulation and retrenchment of Sweden’s employment and welfare systems (see Palan and Abbott, 1999, pp. 103–120). Relative wage compression and extensive decommodification in the labour market place clear limits on any downward adjustment type solutions. Swedish business thus continues to rely on high productivity, value-added industrial development. While commentators are right in stressing the breakdown of classical social democratic adjustment to global markets, at the very time that outside observers were proclaiming the ‘death’ of the Swedish model, domestic industry was remarkably well placed to enter new areas of economic growth, particularly in information technology. I believe that the institutional legacy of the Swedish model has been a decisive factor.
Developments in the American labour market since the end of the long boom stand in contrast to Sweden: the US provides archetype of the ‘low’ road, notwithstanding its high-tech sector. The United States allowed both the wage gap to increase and a huge growth in low skilled, low wage services to soak up the labour supply (see Mishel et al: 1999: 20). At the same time, average working hours have exploded, bucking OECD trends. The growth of low wage, low skilled services must be put in the bigger picture of institutional design: there are fewer macro limits on downward adjustment in the American model. Hence the growth in ‘low road’ industries, divergent productivity trends and a burgeoning current account deficit.
There's no point in taking offence when it is pointed out that there are more educated, skilled workforces in other countries.
It is the POLICY of your governments that has produced this situation. Those govts have been engaged in a race to the bottom. And the effects of this policy are particularly noticeable in "right to work" states, which are plentiful in the US south -- states where the downward pressure on wages and working conditions is not countered by strong labour organizations and pro-worker public policies.
The phenomenon of low-wage, unskilled jobs replacing high-wage, skilled jobs obviously leads to a dumbing-down of the work force. The workers may be inherently just as intelligent -- no one has said they are not -- but they do not have the knowledge and know-how for technically and technologically complex employment, or for ready acquisition of the specific skills and knowledge such jobs require.
That phenomenon is not present to the same extent in Canada. Unionization rates are higher, income inequality is lower (the huge gap between rich and poor in the US, and the continuing shift of income upward, is less present in Canada), and the social safety net (health care, post-secondary education) that supports both employers and the labour force is more extensive and secure.
The Canadian automotive industry really does happen to be a model of productivity, in no small part because of the skilled workforce.
Stating these facts is not an insult to the workers of the US south. It is merely recognition of what years of right-wing government do to a society. I'd think this would be something that DU members would find it easy to acknowledge.
edited to fix slight grammatical incoherency
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