Will Your Job Survive?

[LiviaOlivia]

Will Your Job Survive?
Nothing short of a radical reordering of our economy will stop 56 million jobs from being sent overseas.

By Harold Meyerson
Web Exclusive: 03.23.06
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11346

In case you've been worrying about how the war in Iraq will end, or the coming of avian flu, or the extinction of the universe as we drift into the cosmic void, well, relax. Here's something you should really fret about: the future of the U.S. economy in the age of globalization.

~snip~

The threat of globalization and the reality of de-unionization have combined to make the raise, for most Americans, a thing of the past. Between 2001 and 2004, median household income inched up by a meager 1.6 percent, even as productivity was expanding at a robust 11.7 percent. The broadly shared prosperity that characterized our economy in the three decades following World War II is now dead as a dodo.

Also dying, if not yet also kaput, is the comforting notion that a good education is the best defense against the ravages of globalization -- or, as Bill Clinton famously put it: What you earn is the result of what you learn. A study last year by economists J. Bradford Jensen of the Institute for International Economics and Lori Kletzer of the University of California at Santa Cruz demonstrates that it's the more highly skilled service-sector workers who are likely to have tradable jobs. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of jobs in the United States that require a college degree will rise by a measly one percentage point -- from 26.9 percent in 2002 to 27.9 percent in 2012 -- during this decade.

~snip~

So, here are three immodest suggestions:

# We need to entice industry to invest at home by having the government and our public- and union-controlled pension funds upgrade the infrastructure and invest in energy efficiency and worker training.

# We need to unionize and upgrade the skills of the nearly 50 million private-sector workers in health care, transportation, construction, retail, restaurants and the like whose jobs can't be shipped abroad.

# And, if America is to survive American capitalism in the age of globalization, we need to alter the composition of our corporate boards so that employee and public representatives can limit the offshoring of our economy.

~snip~

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11346

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. As long as there's some kind of government, my job will survive.

That's part of why I picked it.

[LiviaOlivia]

2. Well good for you.

"That's part of why I picked it."--quite the "let them eat cake" statement.

Wow, you picked your job!?! Do you work at the White House?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. I picked my career.

As long as there's some kind of government, or even the beginnings of one, there will always be politics. You can't outsource that!

[RazzleDazzle]

4. An earlier thread

Holy Crap! Up to 56 million American jobs could be outsourced.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x723961

in case any one's interested

[sarcasmo]

5. Unless someone can control my cab from India, my job is safe.

Plus no one else wants my job. I have always had jobs no one else has wanted, job security I figure.

[teryang]

6. There is security in that, I guess.

I also have a job that no one else would want. The trouble is I don't want it either. The boss once asked me, why do work for such low pay? I told him I was desperate. It was true. Still is.

[sarcasmo]

7. I feel the same way. The only benefit I get is that I can take off a week

or two at a time whenever I want. The only thing is that the time off is with out pay. If my wife didn't have benefits I couldn't do this job. However, to have a job in Michigan where there is at least ten to fifteen percent unemployment, regardless of what the numbers say is a good thing.