Alabama gets $1.6 billion auto plant

[Anomalocaris]

Oh, yes.  The future of American greatness clearly rests with technical college education and blue collar manufacturing jobs.  

Those certainly could be a part of a vibrant economy. Your attitude is part of what's preventing that.

In my area, a journeyman steamfitter makes $60,000 - $80,000 per year. The local union was looking for 70 apprentices this year and they're not going to reach it. That number is unprecedented. It used to be that you needed to know someone in the union to become an apprentice. Now there just isn't enough interest to fill all the slots. Everyone's told to get a college degree and the associated debt, when there are good alternatives. Don't look down your nose at a technical education. A good welder makes more than a lot of college grads.

Uh, no.

The reason why there are $60,000 for some journeyman steam fitters is because somewhere else in the economy large amount of value is being added by highly educated people.  It is out of value these educated and extremely skilled people add that the 60,000 is made available.

Let those jobs flow overseas, and replace them with steam fitter caliber jobs, and not of the remaining steam fitter will get paid even $5000 a year.   How much does an equally skilled steam fitter get paid in a “shithole” in the sub saharan Africa?

This is the difference between a developed economy enriched by high value added jobs fulfilled by the highly educated, and a developing one that lack such jobs or such highly educated people.

The entire republican, and trumpian economic policy, is to short thrift education at all levels, and thereby let fewer and fewer native born Americans be equipped for a proper university education.  In effect the republican economic policy has been to undermine the fundamental basis of the United States’ ability to internally sustain its own status as an developed economy.

At the same time, trump is dissuading people who have excellent primary and secondary education courtesy of other country’s education system from coming here to get University education and stay to take up the slack made possible by america’s Own chronic and extreme underinvestment in our primarily an secondary education.  For much of the last 4-5 decades, America has in effect made up for the shortfall in its ability to internally sustain its developed economy by leaching off of the better primary and secondary education systems in the rest of the world.  Now trump wants to turn off the tap of this life blood.

Basically trump is trumpeting another step in the conversion of America into a third world sweat shop.

The former sweatshop, China, is moving upscale.  Wages in China is no longer cheap.  China is making colossal investment in primary, secondary, university and professional training so their workers will increasingly not be of the journeyman steam fitter type.   Instead they aim to equip their labor force with the education, sophistication and ability to add value to their knowledge based economy commensurate with rising wages.

However, it is not this that appears to impress trump.  It is the sweat shop china of 15 years ago that had nothing but manufacturing sweat shops that appeared great to trump.   It looks like trump is so impressed with where China was 15 ago he is aiming to make the “great again” America 15 years hence into a sweatshop replica of where China was 15 years ago.

But who could blame him.  Would he win any elections if more American workers were, like, University educated?