Anecdotal evidence is exactly that, anecdotal. Trying to judge today's situation by the standards some of us enjoyed several decades past is folly. I bought my first house for $12,000, my first business for $21,000 including inventory, and while I was in school I rented a very nice apartment for $35/month. On the other hand, my job driving tractors off the end of the line at Massey Ferguson paid $7.35/hr, so paying for the $800/yr college expense was a minor challenge. The 65 Lotus Cortina I drove cost me $1500 used and allowed me the luxury of racing affordably at Waterford Hills. Just because, through an accident of historical timing, some of us had relatively easy access to upward mobility doesn't translate into anything more than that.

By contrast, while the 400 richest people on Forbes 400 richest list increased their wealth by 10% to an aggregate of $955 billion between 2002 - 2003, the census bureau figures reveal that the number of working age individuals in the 18-64 age group under the poverty line actually increased between 1989 -1999.

The fact is, the most reliable indicator for educational and financial achievement in the US in 2004 is a persons parents education and financial situation. Don't believe me, look on the Census Bureau site for yourself. Look at the average rent paid, factor in food, transportation and the cost of a year at a state university, then and ask yourself what chance you would have to put a spouse through college on wages from non-skilled labor. Good luck.

There is indeed large scale class mobility in the US in the 21st century, but it is downward mobility as those with skilled jobs fall into poverty after their workplace is closed. The ranks of the working poor are swelling, people working two low wage jobs are lining up in food lines in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and now the "jobs of the future" are being exported as well. Few IT analysts I know have been able to avoid extended periods of unemployment over the last 5yrs. What shall they train for this time, biotech or basket weaving?

There is currently a dire shortage of automotive technicians, however the price of the required certification is two years of tech school, which is beyond the reach of most when living expenses are factored in. Most that manage to pull this off are those with post-separation military benefits, which is a relatively small pool of people.

If we ignore, or worse yet deny, the current realities, we do so at our own considerable peril. People that see no future for themselves, or worse, feel they have nothing to lose, represent a serious threat to any society if they exist in great enough number. Some may not be aware of, or have selectively forgotten what happened in US cities between 1965 and 1968, but it wasn't pretty.

I watched this played out when I saw the city I lived in burning, one of several during 1965 -1968, and watched an armored division of the US Army pass by on on the main avenue on it's way to restore order. At the conclusion of 5 days, 43 dead, 1189 injured according to laughable official numbers, as was the custom of that period. The real numbers were on the order of ten times the official numbers. It was a whole lot more like last week in Falluja than anything most people have witnessed in the US. Tanks reduced entire buildings to rubble with artillery fire. An entire section of the city, measuring in square miles, was laid to rubble, and never rebuilt. Today there are great fields of grass where the city once stood as a distant reminder. It didn't happen to white people in the suburbs, so those events have mostly been forgotten, or ascribed to race issues.

While the causes had to do with both race and economics, the salient detail is that the people didn't feel that they had anything to lose. Anyone that thinks this country can survive intact should sufficient numbers lose all hope are deluding themselves. What happened in Detroit, Newark, LA and other cities can, and will, happen on much larger scales in the future if current trends are not reversed.

oc

Education, it is not only easier to get into college, but more people go to college. There are more college grads now then 20 years ago or 10 years ago. Manufacturing jobs are a thing of the past as people move into better paying and more skilled positions. There's a severe shortage of physicians in certain fields and there's a nursing shortage. The cost of education is irrelevant because nearly everyone can qualify for school loans. The fact is if you go to school and study you will get into college and if you can't afford it you can load up with school loans (just like I did). It's more than anecdotal evidence.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/f03.html

Every income level (adjusted for inflation) has increased historically. Over the last 10 years (using quick math) income brackets have moved up as follows: bottom 5th - 14%, second 5th - 10%, third 5th - 13%, fourth 5th - 17%, fifth 5th - 31%, and top 5% - 48%.

And poverty stats:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/f03.html

It's dropped sharply since the 1950's, but using that same 10 years the poverty rate is down 20%. So the stats do back our case.

And then after college you can find that the career you expect with your degree isn't as readily available as you would like. Just because more go to college doesn't mean they're moving up. Granted the potential is greater, but it isn't necessarily an indicator that you're gonna move up.

Stats show that if you earn a college degree you'll make more than someone who doesn't. I don't remember the exact percentage, but about 25% more.

Not if the job you trained for has been outsorced to India. I don't think Mac Donalds pay enough to cover those loans.

Come to think of it, people has been fighting wars for the right to resources since the dawn of time. Jobs are todays resources, this could become frightening. There are already calls for protectionism, what will we do when that is not enough? It is customary to bomb an adversary's industry into oblivion during war as a way to put pressure on the enemy and hamper their war production. What if the very reason for a war was to reduce someones production capabilities? It is even possible to launch an attack secretly, just mask it as a terrorist attack and blow up that critical resource in the target country. "-To bad that the terrorists destroyed your dam, that hydro plant did produce 40% of your country's electricity, to bad..." Let's hope that it doesn't go that far but who knows what will happen in the future?

Shouldn't future economic considerations be part of the equation when choosing a career? I'm always amazed when people are shocked that jobs go to other places, where people are more grateful to have the job, and are willing to do it for less.

Luckily for me, they aren't outsourcing American Historian jobs...

__________________
Any man who can render himself unconscious with a pretzel isn't smart enough to lead the free world.

I think the real distinction in class mobility is between the middle and upper classes. Yep. It's not hard to become uppper-middle class if you work hard. But if you aren't born upper-class the likelihood you'll get there is pretty low. You may get rich, but being upper-class means a lot more than a big bank account. Since the upper-class is where the real power exists, I can see why people are a little bent out of shape.

__________________
Any man who can render himself unconscious with a pretzel isn't smart enough to lead the free world.

Well, that's been the Republican party line since Reagan in any case. However, it doesn't hold water. Exactly which jobs pay better and require more skill than manufacturing, and which has the highest blue collar wages?

Sending manufacturing overseas is a fad de jour. Once the true hidden costs are evident, there will be the inevitable backlash. Michael E. Porter of the Harvard Business School, and leading world authority on competitive strategy and the competitiveness and economic development of nations, made the same prediction yet again just last week during an interview with Charlie Rose at Harvard. US companies are currently obsessed with share price, not with return on investment as they should be, and one consequence is that they are making poor strategic decisions.

Aside from being nearly 20% of the economy, and representing high value added, manufacturing jobs also pay considerably more than any other blue collar sector. For that matter, tool makers, mold makers, job setters and the legions of technicians that run all the computerized machinery in modern plants are often paid more than senior electronics engineers and programmers simply due to their scarcity and the value of their output. In the real world it's digital electronics engineers and programmers that are a dime a dozen, and competent manufacturing techs that are rare and expensive.

Were the theories de jour correct, are we to suppose multinationals like Siemens, Krup, Bosch, Saint-Gobain,Theiss, Fuji, Toyo, HSK, NTN Bearing, Bridgestone, Michelin, BMW, Daimler Benz who are investing heavily in US manufacturing plants must simply be misguided and ignorant? We even had a Chinese company purchase a Federal Mogul camshaft plant in Jackson, Michigan last year. What were they thinking? Guess they don't know that labor rates are cheaper in China, eh?

The truth is that US industrial productivity is the highest in the world, and the labor rates, relative to productivity, are actually quite favorable. These companies, and many more, have located here and are profitable. What we really lack is competent management personnel.

Add to that the fact that much of manufacturing is strategically important, at least according the CIA's annual summary every year since 1983. How do you propose we conduct future military adventures when the components the military needs to operate are sourced from countries that might decide they are opposed to our foreign policy? I'm not willing to roll the dice and take that chance.

oc