COTTonLINE has written about the plight of young people who would have been factory workers ... if the U.S. still had factories ... instead of outsourcing most manufacturing to low-wage places like Mexico and China.
See a New York Times article by Jennifer Silva about the plight of blue collar youngsters. Optimists have said the answer for these young people was to get a college degree. The reasoning: people with degrees have less unemployment and make more money. It isn't working.
Some of these young people do get college degrees and end up selling clothes, or working as bartenders. Except they have enormous student loan debts to pay off; debts bankruptcy cannot erase.
When the U.S. de-industrialized, we never faced the issue of what to do with the persons who were formerly employed in factories. Did we presume they would just vanish?
We cannot become a nation of baristas and manicurists, of valet parking attendants and dog walkers. Such jobs do not pay enough to support more than one person, if that.
