Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The education hoax

I've thought for a while now that though college is fun and can lead to well-rounded human beings, mass education probably isn't the solution to global outsourcing. But I couldn't have explained why with nearly as much insight as Jonathan Tasini. Don't miss the last paragraph.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree on the education hoax. Life is a pyramid. Get everyone educated and some other mechanism will evolve to differentiate us. However, you can't deny that when this happens the bar will have been raised and overall standards of living will have improved.

Also blaming some vague idea called 'corporate power' for our woes is absurd in the extreme. Let's say the US gets rid of all corporations tomorrow and the government takes over producing and distributing all goods and services, reckon this will maintain Americans standard of living in the face of China and India and their 2.5 billion people joining the global economy?

1:03 PM
Sarah Beth Jones said...

Hey David!

I agree that corporations are not inherently evil - I think he was referring to American companies that outsource for cheap labor, leaving laborers in America unemployed.

I thought the real gem in his piece was the underlying idea that not everyone can go to college - either because they have no desire to, they can't get accepted or they don't have the money. And even if everyone could, it would risk leaving no workers for a huge portion of the economy - sandwich makers and gas station attendants - vital parts of our economy that don't require college.

7:15 AM
Anonymous said...

There was a front page story in the WSJ yesterday about a black guy from Atlanta who is a stucco contractor. He moved his family to Hilton Head in the mid-nineties to participate in the building boom there. During his best year, his company made just short of one million with mostly black crews made up of guys he knew from the ATL.

However, a few years ago he started hiring Mexicans. They worked for him for a couple of years, learned the trade and then formed their own companies and began underbidding him. He's down to about $150k in revenues now and comes to NC to find work.

There are a lot of implications in this story. One is that more competition is good for consumers, but brutal for folks already established which is why big corporations (and their labor advocates) attempt to use their political power to limit it wherever they can.

7:56 AM

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