IS there any way to bring back high-wage low-skill jobs to the U.S.?

[bijedi]

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/real-jobs-future-michael-lind
The Real Jobs of the Future
Forget about computer programming, farming, or laboring on an assembly line. Try nursing, hospital administration, and dog walking—and politics, of course.

I don't think I would call nursing low-skill. But for the near future, most of these are going to be service type roles. I would think there should be lots of options in elderly support services. Even in my relatively small circle of friends I here many comments about how much time people are spending supporting their elderly parents. Seems like there should be some opportunities given the US demographics.

 

[Sean Renaud]

~Snip~

What I do think would help is more and cheaper vocational education. College isn't for everyone, and tradies will always be needed.

College SHOULD be for everybody. We desperately need to start with that because college shouldn't be really about getting a job. If you don't work in a handful of fields STEM or Law (And even then) much of what you learn in college doesn't really have practical applications. That's not really the point. Its about being exposed to other ways of thinking if you move for college. I didn't really believe it until I spent my time in the military and visited some friend over the years between. I'm only exaggerating a tiny bit when I say there are places in the US where its entirely possible you've never spoken to person of color. Maybe you saw one at your local grocery store but you've never worked with one or spoken to one. Your entire experience is watching Rush Hour and obviously that's how blacks and Chinese people interact because DUH how else would it be.

K-12 History is bare bones and I'm not knocking the system specifically at the moment. They are on a schedule and while I might prioritize this over that or teach history with different context I get why they do what they do. That said how people vote is at least partially formed by how they understand history. While I will state that as a general rule I am pro-AI. I do think we absolutely need to have laws and regulations on it. However my point right now is the arguments we are making against AI seem like the Luddites 2.0. When we're talking about water use that sounds an awful lot like environmental debates we've been having in various ways and places for decades. I live in So Cal and have essentially my entire life. I understand droughts and only watering your lawns on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I've been here and done that. Too many people who have opinions on these don't have the bare minimum education to warrant an opinion. I want to crash out every time someone states government never accomplished anything. We have lit fucking rivers on fire! The air in LA was thick enough to chew when I was child. We all remember (or should) when Beijing was hosting the Olympics and what a difference a few days made for pollution. That all by itself should be a reason to be pushing for green energy even if you are too fucking stupid to believe in Global Warming/Climate Change. Knowledge is important.

I'm not a genuine artists, I like to write and I appreciate movies and TV on a deeper level than most. There is a bit of a problem where a good chunk of us would only know two of the Ninja Turtles without the Ninja Turtles. How many of us our sole exposure to classical music is Looney Tunes? Classic plays and novels from movies and that's less of a problem cus I'm not gonna shit on movies. Jurassic Park the movie does as good or better a job of delivering the moral of "Just cus you can doesn't mean you should". I dont' really care if you never really learn advanced math. Though I do wish people would learn something about how statistics actually work. When the president MORE THAN ONCE has spoken about bringing prices down over 100% that should be a red flag. Once or twice is a slip of the tongue. Or an honest mistake, like say not knowing if a nation north or south of the equator which surprisingly is not the US border. This is a repeated statement that should alarm us.

These are things that DO affect our lives because the affect how people vote.

Now lets address vocational education. Trade schools are great, we are losing trained people in the trades at an alarming rate and no I have no looked into why. There has to be a reason but I'm not privy to that. What I am privy to is that supply and demand works the exact same way no matter what you're talking about. It doesn't matter if you're talking about PlayStation 5s, elephant tusks, Taylor Swift tickets or someone fixing your plumbing. The lower the supply in relation to demand the higher the price. I do not understand why people don't understand what happens if everybody and their mother could do their own plumbing, electric or automotive work. Automotive probably being the "hardest" to replicate since I'm never going to build a car lift to work on my car at home. But most plumbing stuff isn't complicated. I don't know how to do it. My father does and as long as I don't mind him getting huffy about how I should have handled this or that six months ago he can walk me through it. Or you know Youtube.

Once enough people start listening to this and attending trade schools you're just going to have a more self sufficient population. And if that's your goal bravo. I'm all for a society that is prebuilt to survive the apocalypse. That I can throw anybody at a plumbing job instead of Mario being untouchable because without him we all die from unclean water in two weeks. But as far as making a living increasing the supply drops wages.

Treating these an either or was never a great thing. Its really the adult version of you can either be a jock or a nerd. I'm not in the same shape I was as a kid or younger man though I am in better shape than many of my peers, I'm also an anime watchin, comic reading, video game playing dinosaur loving check my fucking credentials nerd. And two and a half decades of Lit put me well above average when it comes to understanding political issue as well. Oh and I'm not a slouch in history I just hang out with the kind of history nerds that make you a little self conscious when you realize you don't know if President Garfield is before or after President Cleveland and you only remember them because one obviously loves lasagna and the other lives on Sesame Street. We should absolutely be encouraging both actual book smarts and understanding how things work is important in a democracy. That shouldn't by definition mean you dont' know how to change a tire or your oil.