- refuse to put money aside for difficult times;
- buy homes with large mortgages;
- have more kids than they can apparently support;
- have been inflicted with high medical bills; and
- have suffered a loss of self-esteem.

I’m not sure I understand why such people should be a concern to me or to the professors.

First, I doubt that happens very much. Why would Walmart even bother to hire a man who thinks he is too good for the job offerred? Walmart generally rejects dozens of applicants for every person it hires.

Why would a person who earned $80K a year find himself without funds to tide him over until he was retrained?

It’s really simple, Arrowsmith. American consumers decided they were no longer going to pay premiums for the goods produced by overpaid union factory workers. That battle was fought and the outcome decided 25 years ago. You may not have been around then, but retailers such as Walmart advertised heavily that they sold American made products. Bob Hope appeared on television every hour to plead with consumers to Buy American. Lee Iacocca pushed his American-made K-cars. And the American consumer ignored them all. The American consumer realized that he was better off paying less for a quality Toyota. He discovered that the toaster made in Taiwan for half what it cost to produce in Ohio was just as good.

So what has happened to the U.S. economy the past 25 years? Solid economic growth. Our nation’s production of both goods and services are much higher than 30 years ago. The boogeyman the unions tried to scare us with – inexpensive imports – didn’t hurt us at all.

That’s one statistic I have not seen. Can you provide a link to any data showing that “we’ve lost several million manufacturing jobs – gone forever”?

It’s the act of a central bank raising the ceiling of a fiat money supply, whatever the ceiling may be, that constitutes a confiscatory redistribution of wealth to the central bank.

IMO, every single one of the laid off factory workers can be retrained and employed as skilled labor. Whether that skilled labor position pays $50K or $25K depends on supply and demand.

You must be very young. Anyone who’s been around a while – or who bothers to read history books – has seen economic miracles.

My first thoughts were:

Why would anyone allow themselves to be so dependent on the success of a single industry? If one did become so dependent on one industry for investment and for wages, why would that person be so foolish as to not put aside something in case of disaster?

Americans have been adapting to changes in fortunes of industries and places of employment for at least 150 years. Whether it be automation or changing fashions or imports or natural catastrophe, Americans have proven they are resilient.

Why should today be any different, thordeer?

Of course, the prudent man will never see his entire human portfolio wiped out by imports in his industry.

Also what % of 50-year old laid off factory workers do you think can realistically can be retrained for a professional job that pays more then $50K+/year? Come on, you know and i know they are headed straight for Wal Mart or permanently on the dole.