brainwidth

When I wake up early on Sundays, I sit around thinking deep thoughts

reagank:

jamiek:

earlier this week, Mike Rowe testified before Congress and asserted part of the reason for a faltering American economy is the lack of skilled physical labor jobs.
But what if the kids who once were tinkering with cars are now the kids building iOS and Android apps? What if our manufacturing is no longer physical, but mental, and entirely different skilled labor is needed?
How does a Post-Industrial Revolution (not after the Industrial Revolution, but an entirely new one, which makes us Post-Industrial) America work?

It’s certainly true that creativity and tinkering can be expressed in software and not just physical artifacts. But still, the proportion of people who are working on things like this is far lower than the proportion of people who were working in the trades 30 years ago.

Moreover, while I wouldn’t argue that a piece of software couldn’t be essential it certainly isn’t more essential (and likely much less essential) than the physical infrastructure that workers in the building trades provide. That’s just the reality of living in a physical world - the need for physical necessities isn’t going anywhere.

Ah, but who says we have to produce those things? The reason American car manufacturers are in decline is that their cars aren’t as good as other companies. Is it necessarily a bad thing if our skilled labor shifts to doing something else?

That’s a fair point - there are lots and lots of things that we don’t necessarily need to manufacture. But there are lots of things that simply can’t be produced elsewhere. Houses and buildings. Roads and bridges. These are the things that keep the building trades employed. We need these and we need to make sure that people can make a good living building them for us. To put it facilely, you can’t outsource a plumber.

Refrigerators, TVs, cars, and computers might be better or cheaper produced elsewhere and brought in (setting aside climate change arguments for the time being), but there are immovable physical artifacts that demand skilled labor to produce and maintain. We don’t have nearly enough of that skilled labor, and that’s the point he Mike Rowe was trying to make.

Source: jamiek