Important headlines for January 24th
Bottom Line: These are stories you don't want to miss and my hot takes on them...
Good-paying ‘middle skill’ jobs go unfilled - Palm Beach Post
Excerpt: Palm Beach County employers say they struggle to find qualified mechanics, machinists and welders, not to mention air conditioning technicians and workers skilled in the construction trades. Considering that workers can collect a decent paycheck in all of those fields, the labor shortage is something of a head-scratcher.
Hot Take: This is a really effective and meaningful story so I don't mean to impugn generally...however this shortage is anything but a head-scratcher. It's a product of a false messaging and a strong economy. The strong economy is the easy part. We're in the middle of the best economy in over 20 years right now. As a result, there's a demand on the average industry that was relevant then that likely hasn't had as much demand for its services in about 20 years. But what's changed over the past two decades? Just about everything to some degree, right? But let's focus on career paths.
Twenty years ago, only 23% of Americans in the workplace had a four-year college degree and 67% percent of high school grads attended college. One-third of those attending college attended a trade school. Today 33% of Americans in the workplace have a four-year degree, 70% of high school grads attend college but only 17% attend a trade school. Any questions? The education establishment in addition to many politicians have failed to properly educate generations of students. Far too many students have four-year degrees, a bunch of student loan debt and a job that's unrelated to the degree anyway. Conversely, we have a shortage of skilled trade labor that generally only requires two-years of school (that's generally a lot cheaper to begin with), and often carries higher average salaries.
When you consider that the average full-time salary is $48,000 but the average earnings for a welder earns $65,000 - you can further see the disconnect. It's time to stop shopping four-year college degree expectations and debt down every students' throat and to embrace the trades with those who're inclined. Everyone would benefit (except for some in academia).
Mythologies of Illegal Immigration Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness
Excerpt: The entire image of the United States has been smeared in most discussions of illegal immigration.
The thrust of ethnic studies departments, the narratives of open borders activists, the pageantry and symbolism of mass immigration demonstrations, and the chauvinism embedded into popular culture is mostly couched in implicit anti-Americanism. At least we are led to believe that a culpable America has done wrong in the present and the past, and has to restore its morality by allowing open borders and illegal immigration. But who are the arbiters of American ethics? Vicente Fox? MS-13 gang-bangers? Those whose first act in entering America was to break its laws?
Millions are fleeing paradigms that they apparently judged as wanting, either politically, economically, or socially, or all that and more. Why, then, would foreign nationals have ceased romanticizing their new generous hosts upon their arrival and begun idealizing, instead, their rejected birthplace? And if these are their true feelings on the matter, why did they leave?
Hot Take: Brilliant. Lost in this entire immigration argument is almost always a sense of victimization and entitlement. No immigrant, legal or illegal is a victim. Coming here was a choice. Staying here was and is a choice. Conversely, illegal immigrants are by definition perpetrators of Americans who are intern the victims of their laws being broken and resources paid for and used by those who aren't entitled to them. But this day in age something empirical and factual as I just stated makes me sound like the one out on the ledge. How's that right and acceptable. That shows you just how backward and politicized this has become.
Until tomorrow...