Yes, without a change in federal fiscal and regulatory policy this is it. This is the new normal. Welcome to Europe!

But this shift is not being driven by demographics or technology or fate. It is driven by specific government policies and those policies can be reversed.

Just don't expect much for the next two years.

Ben: "But this shift is... driven by specific government policies and those policies can be reversed."

Why should we expect the government to have any interest in reversing the policies driving the process? It seems like this is the effect the politicians and their benefactors want. No politician would come right out and say so; most say just the opposite. But their actions speak louder than their words, and I have a sneaking suspicion they sometimes lie.

I don't know how many of you remember Ross Perot. He warned us about this. It's not just the U.S. Incomes are being leveled across the globe. Wages are up in China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc., down in the U.S. and Western Europe. The serfs get by and the corporations and their enablers do well.
With all the money being printed these days and the easing of interest rates to boost sales; here comes inflation.

Schools can't afford to pay professors because they've decided to invest instead in highly-paid admin and luxury buildings.

I was an underpaid adjunct (or as I liked to refer to myself, a housewife whose hobby was teaching French). I went to an orientation meeting which consisted entirely of a slide show of how great the university was, "And we're building this multi-million building!" "And this multi-million lounge!"

Yeah, when you blow your wad on student lounges with fancy furniture, and your CEO of senior diversity training finance or whatever you're not gonna have much to pay your faculty with.

We have imported the poor and exported jobs.

This would turn around if the gov't would make "Made in the USA" a core principal (starting w/regulations that cripple small businesses) AND simply upgrade all bridges from a "D" rating to a "B" rating. (A hell of a lot of permanent jobs go to youngsters that simply stand in the road holding traffic signs, brushing concrete, and other menial tasks.)

Hell, our local DMV had to let engineers go during the stimulus give-away 'cause there was just no money making it down to our local district. Damn lawyers in our Congress have no clue. NONE.

That is the heart of the problem Bob. Here in Houston Westheimer got repaved twice in a few years. Once because it needed it and the second time because there were stimulus dollars to do it. A complete waste of money. Another company I know of had to drill three dry wells to show the EPA they weren't contaminating the ground water. One, there was no ground water to contaminate and Two, they weren't contaminating in the first place. Talk about waste. Look at how much civil asset forfeiture has increased under the Obama administration.

I could go on and on. But what really takes the cake, look at what happened when the federal government 'shut down' in the budget debates. Despite all the gloom and doom the economy actually picked up. Government is not the solution, it clearly is the problem.

If you want European style of government don't be shocked when you get European style of economic growth. Where 1% is considered bullish.

Well the sad truth is that most menial jobs including all of those in the fast food industry will be taken over by robots in the next forty years, so I am not sure what we are going to do with the extremely large segment of the human population that has no technical skill set.

I was watching Prometheus several months ago, and then read about an anesthesia machine now coming into use in hospitals.

And my thoughts are, we are darn close to replacing most medical workers with surgery and and nurse bots.

The social upheavals will be enormous.

All is kinda proceeding along the lines that Arthus C. Clark envisioned, only faster.

Those bridges will never be fixed, because they make too much money for them looking and being bad. We have a gov't that gets paid based on promises and needs not on results. So to get more money increase needs, if you actually fixed something you decrease needs and get less money.

"Schools can't afford to pay professors because they've decided to invest instead in highly-paid admin and luxury buildings."

NicoleK for the win! I've noticed that Richard Florida is good at noticing trends, but not very good at analyzing the driving forces. The reason universities can't sfford full-time professors is because they are letting administration eat their lunch. Back in the day when labor unions were strong, some unions used to engage in a practice called "featherbedding", in which they'd compel employers to add employees who would have little or no job responsibilities. (Why? So the union would have more dues-paying members.) I recall reading about a GM employee whose job was to reset a circuit breaker in the factory, which was necessary about once a day. The rest of the day, he was free to do as he wished, while getting paid for an eight-hour day. Any other employee could have reset the breaker, but per the work rules, no one else was permitted to touch it.

That was the old form of featherbedding. The new form is for government regulation and political correctness to mandate that employers hire employees who work and get paid, but the work they do is non-productive make-work. I've written here before that the office my wife manages, with about 15 people total, has one person whose full-time job is "compliance officer" (and she's well-paid). A lot of those university admin types Nicole spoke of are there because of demands by either government or campus radicals. Very little of the work they do is necessary to the university's function.

Tying into this, and to pick on something else Florida said: Why are so many young people having trouble finding jobs? Because they are mal-educated. They have shiny new degrees that are utterly worthless, because they've been (a) defrauded concerning job prospects and market need for given degrees, (b) taught a bunch of stuff that's not true, and (c) infused with attitudes of entitlement and grievance. Most of them would be better off if they had not gone to college at all; they would already have job experience, would not be saddled with six-figure debt, and would not have unrealistic expectations about the world and their place in it.

Universities are bad examples and good ones all at the same time. The "bad" part is that there is a demographic change. There just aren't as many kids! Small to mid-range liberal arts schools are in trouble. How to attract students? Luxury dorms, gourmet meals, shiny new student centers, pretend scholarships (really discounted tuition), grade inflation, even bigger-time athletics (proven to work), etc. The most entitled generation ever gets its collective ass kissed even more!

Meanwhile on the academic side, the fixed costs of salaries, & benefits, including for tenured (many dead-in-the-office) profs. keep dragging the institution down the rat hole. Like most institutions, you pay lackeys to do low-level work.

How do you attract students without incurring more costs?

For manufacturing industries, especially, their issue is globalization. Why pay a unionized cog-worker $55/hour (sal+benefits) in Indianapolis, when you can pay $5 in a developing country? Before you go all high-and-mighty on me, developing a workforce in a developing country (in most cases) will go a long way toward alleviating poverty, promoting education for the next generation, and staving off the ignorance that breeds nationalism and pseudo-religious fanaticism.

So, do we trade off unrealistically high wages in the US/Europe for a more peaceful world? Not a straw man; plenty of historical examples.

Wambut has an interesting point.

Americans need to give up their jobs and our strong economy so India (ally of the former Soviet Union) can get out of poverty.

They'd do it for us!

Or is that naive bullshit?

Yet one more reason to encourage a good global pandemic with a 15% to 50% mortality rate.

Free up resources for the survivors

You can't have it both ways. You can't have cheap foreign goods and not lose jobs to cheap foreigners.

All of which is a bit beside the point. US workers aren't losing jobs to cheap foreigners. They are losing jobs to robots. For every US job off-shored there are thousands eliminated through automation. Some of the most noticeable are in supermarkets and fast food joints. Obamacare among other regulations keep increasing the minimum cost of a worker. So those workers lose their jobs. Instead of one person manning a cash register you now have one person manning 16.

So, are you going to become a Luddite and start smashing the computers?

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/bloated-university-administrative-ranks.html

Bloated University Administrations
=== ===
What is going on in the UNC-system represents a national trend of administrative "bureaucracy run amok."

The chart below shows what has happened at the University of Michigan-Flint over the last 7 years: full-time professional administrative positions have grown by 67% during a period when student enrollment grew by only 13.5%, and the full-time "core faculty" (mostly tenure-track faculty) decreased by 2.3%.
=== ===

Americans need to give up their jobs and our strong economy so India (ally of the former Soviet Union) can get out of poverty.

They'd do it for us!

Or is that naive bullshit?

Naive BS is that protectionism will work. Globalization *is* happening. I am not saying that it is good or bad, just that it is happening. Clearly bad for unskilled workers in the US. But, as Ben said, even if manufacturing doesn't go overseas, it will go more and more to automation.

Similarly, fuzzy-brained minimum wage laws that send wages too far above the market rate for unskilled labor will result in long-term loss of those jobs through automation.

Ben, I encourage you to visit Sunnyvale or Mountain View in Silicon Valley.

I'm talking about companies that build and sell multi-million-dollar carrier-level routing and switching systems, not cheap plywood guitars and plastic consumer crap.

Those tens of thousands of Indians on H1-B visas aren't here to make Barbie doll heads.

I am opposed to the H1-B visa system Gog. It is a great way for employers to exploit workers unfairly. But lets be real. 65k people is a drop in the bucket for a ~150M labor force. However little you think about what the products the rest of us make.

Yes, Ben, let's be real.

65,000 people spread across America is one thing.

65,00 people in the tech sector? That's something else entirely.

However little you think about those of us competing within it.

Hey, I feel for you Gog. I also feel for the guy who make buggy whips. Doesn't mean I am going to do anything about it.

Look at the top of the page. The topic was the US economy. Not just Gog's economy or even the city of Sunnyvale's economy. There are a lot of industries hurting a lot worse than the tech industry.

And you are the one disparaging anyone who does something different than you, not I.

"And you are the one disparaging anyone who does something different than you, not I."

Buggy whips.

What's wrong with buggy whips? I know a guy who makes them. The industry certainly is not in it's heyday, what with all the horseless carriages and all. But they are a lucrative market for a few skilled individuals. Similarly the US blacksmith industry is heavily pressured by cheap stamped parts. But I've got a few friends who still engage in traditional metal-working practices.

You gotta get out of your bubble Gog. I design oil field tools. Talk about an industry beset by foreign influences. At least you see the guy wiping out your job. I get a press release from the Saudi prince's press secretary.