Nicely said. I can't disagree with that.

In reading through the comments here a couple of things occur to me.
First, everyone commenting seems to be relatively well educated - most probably have college degrees. Nothing wrong with that. But it seems to me that in talking about "viable jobs" we should not be dwelling on jobs for computer programmers, or infrastructure designers, or physicists. We should be thinking about jobs that will pay a wage that allows the worker to support his family and buy the things that family needs without government give-away social programs.
Second, our primary education system - grades 1 through 12 - should give our kids the very basic skills they will need in the future - math, science, English skills, history, geography, civics, and a dabbling of humanities, art, music, etc. Instead it teaches diversity, inclusion, relativism, white guilt, and on and on. In short, it has become an institution of social engineering and political correctness.
Our secondary education system - colleges - should provide a basis in specific disciplines for students to understand the theoretical principles and practices for each of those disciplines. But instead it has become an intense study in social engineering, political correctness, and in some cases anarchism.
Neither of these systems actually provide what students will need to do a job. That comes with time and experience.
Finally, manufacturing jobs and/or trade skills are taken away as a result of the jobs moving overseas, or hiring illegals, or subbing the work out to companies outside the US. US workers are left with burger flipping, house cleaning, lawn mowing, or other "service industry" minimum wage jobs. OK. So now we are looking at replacing the service sector minimum wage workers with robots. McDonalds is already experimenting with robotic burger flippers.
Let's say this all happens. So what, pray tell, will the average person do to make a living for themselves and their families? Really??!!!

Manufacturing is NOT a service. Basic economics. Manufacturers produce a physical product, push it out the door, and make another. Say cars. The mechanic who works on your car produces nothing physical, and thus provides a service. This is the distinction. Manufacturing requires one set of skills, while service requires quite another.

The problem with your approach of doing most of your research online is that you have no exposure to the reality of the real world. The old saw that "If it's on the internet it must be true!" Is no more apparent than in this type of research.
I suggest you go get a menial job and work at it for a few years, then write your blog.

Not if there is the option of hiring the millions here illegally who will work for less.

With all due respect, the points made in my original post on this are right on target, and portray a situation that is all too prevalent today.
After World War II, American manufacturing was the envy of the world. My father worked at GE's Appliance Park in Louisville, KY, which at one time employed over 22,000 workers in three shifts around the clock, and was the largest appliance manufacturing plant in the world. Wages there were good for the time, and enabled everyone working there to buy a refrigerator, or stove or air conditioner produced there. Today that plant is all but closed, with only about 500 jobs remaining, as most of the jobs there have been shipped to Mexico. Thanks NAFTA.
And why did this happen? Corporate greed, pure and simple. And the same has happened in virtually every industry in the US. Look at Detroit, the world leader in auto production 50 years ago. Japanese and Korean auto makers didn't kill off the jobs there. Their entry into the market reduced the Big 3's market share to be sure, but the greatest impact on Detroit has been due to auto makers shipping their jobs to foreign countries for low wages, fewer government regulations, and bigger profit margins.
Not all of the workers in Detroit in its heyday were "educated" as we think of it today. Ford imported workers from Eastern Europe by the thousands, trained them in their jobs, and even set up mandatory English classes for them to learn the language. But all Detroit auto makers hired and trained local labor, most of whom did not have much beyond an 8th grade education, if that.
Today corporations do not hire such people, unless their business involves fast food, yard maintenance, cleaning services, or similar. Even then, these workers are competing with the cheaper, often under the table, labor of illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico and Latin America. Don't believe it? Just look at the construction industry that I worked in for 40 years. 75-80% of workers on most large job sites today are illegals working for contractors or sub-contractors. The American tradesmen who used to have these jobs are nowhere to be found. On one job I worked on that employed 400 construction workers, word got out that ICE would be visiting the site the following day. 300 of the 400 workers called in sick the next day. FACT!
My call for a return to manufacturing in the US is no call for a return to the 1500s. Yes, there is a need for tradesmen in this country. In fact, there is a shortage of tradesmen. But everybody has been told for so long that the only way to get ahead is with a college degree that the $25/hr carpentry or plumbing jobs go wanting for lack of applicants. And if American companies can pull out of Cleveland (I know there was no iPhone plant there), move their plant to China, and train Chinese workers to produce iPhones (which is what Apple has actually done), then why can't Apple go to Marietta GA, or Compton, CA, or Zanesville OH, and train the locals there how to make them? Again, lower wages and less government regulation.
Jobs by manufacturers like Apple, where a worker can be trained into a well paying job is the key to getting the American people back to work, especially those with limited education or job skills. Bringing these jobs back can be done, but we must decide if we want jobs, or do we want to reduce emissions from 0.03 parts per billion to 0.02 parts per billion.
Finally, the issue of 45% of Americans being on food stamps is not only NOT a different problem, it is the very result of McJobs NOT being able to pay a wage that people - especially those with limited education and skills - can pay their bills and feed their families on. Our corporate culture has decided that if they cannot hire workers at minimum wage (and they can't as long as government benefits amount to more than any minimum wage job), then they will hire illegals who will work for less than minimum wage, or if they are manufacturers will ship their jobs overseas where they only pay $5 a day or less for labor.
I am no socialist. But I am sick to death of corporations who say that their dividends and the price of their stock is their only concern, and those who work for them (or the country) be damned. I know that's the case because I worked for big corporations whose view was precisely that.

I think that automation happens as each business finds it more profitable to replace a particular person with a more efficient process or person. It happens a little bit at a time Repetitive and standardized tasks lend themselves first to automation, as has happened for hundreds of years now. As memory costs have dropped, artificial intelligence is increasing exponentially and making higher level automation competitive with more and more people. We as humans need to recognize our own special competitive advantages and promote them. Things are happening faster now and it’s leaving a lot of people behind

Hi, term2. I'm not disagreeing with you as far as what you've read. I'm simply conveying that in some areas they are not automating in order to provide jobs for people. The theory is it is better to have people in the workplace doing something than doing nothing on the street.

Also, in China, they do not have a problem firing bad workers and they do not have (as far as I could tell) a predatory and litigious legal system that treats such firings as a possible "win the lottery" scenario.

And as I agreed, I, too, do most of my research online because so much is so easily available. No driving around... And here's another advantage to online:

You can find a quote from Thucydides online about how a nation that separates its warriors and scholars finds its fighting done by fools and its decisions made by cowards. Thucydides did not say that. I found the source and found and old copy of an old edition at my local university library. But to quote the paragraph, I went to Google Books and got an image of the page. Easy. No typos.

http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

I just read an article on FOXCONN where they are going gung ho on robots to cut down on workers making iphones. Why would anyone want a worker if you can do the job cheaper with a robot that doesnt get hurt, doesnt sue, doesnt take vacations or get sick, and iin the USA makes you subject to labor regulations.

I look forward to kiosks at fast food restaurants, the elimination of servers in restaurants who expect tips. All automation has to do is be slightly better and more concenient than the human it replaces, and cost less overall. Bring em on.

True enough. Not everything is online, and there is no guarantee that when it IS online that it will hve been transcribed accurately and not revised. Scary thought.

I've said this elsewhere here. That may be true now, but the last time I was working over there building a new factory (2006) some of us were asked to not over automate some processes in order to create jobs.

But not everything is online.

2. Remember 1984: Winston Smith's job was to change the electronic records.

3. "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." Libraries are how you stay in touch with the past. The strongest virtue of traditional conservatism is their understanding and appreciation of the past. On the other hand, progressives roll out "new" ideas that already failed once (or twice...).

I read that Chinese companies are trying to robotize as fast as that can. I guess robots. Are cheaper than even Chinese labor

The free market HAS REPLACED government libraries. YouTube., Wikipedia , google. Much faster, and no driving around is necessary

Maybe we're not on different pages on this after all. Maybe different stanzas.

I enjoyed the slide show and wish I was able to see it presented in person. Anyway, much of the advice in the presentation I already knew and was following decades ago, which is likely why I've been a successful programmer. Essentially, plan before you program! Interesting about the Declaration Of Independence being a level 18 document. I wouldn't have guessed, but maybe I shouldn't have been surprised because I have some 19th century text books in my library and I'm sure the eighth grade English grammar text would stymie high school seniors today. Gosh, some of it might even stymie a high school English teacher today, LOL! I wonder if the grading process of the grading program would be different if its data base only had 18th and 19th (at least pre-radio-TV) works as a comparison for grade expectation.

The blog link was a nice read, but I'm running out of time here and had to move over it rather quickly. One part that jumped out at me was the part where the colleges may be behind the invention curve (steam engine paragraph). Since I was a programmer (software) in the late '70s I figured I would attend night school at our community college to get some digital electronics (hardware) theory to augment my career and actually got asked to give a few lectures on how to program the "new" microchips - by that time I'd already written thousands of lines of assembler for the new chip sets. It was a fun time and I was only in my 20s.

The police officers... "Something else is engaged" would be interesting to know what it is. Perhaps the background that enabled them to get to college in the first place had a bearing.

Interesting conversation here. I'll add this: I helped develop the process programming for an ink dye making apparatus at a plant here in the States. Gosh, those colors were gorgeous and we got the system to make them very consistently - important for printing over time. Marvelous product! However, the whole apparatus was strangely built on a giant metal frame and the dimensions of the space the system was to occupy were carefully specified. When we got done and it was running perfectly, it was shut down, slid into a big "seatainer" and shipped to China. Oh well...

That's a funny thing. As a libertarian, I agree with your sentiment: we should not have to pay for what we do not use; and elections don't make theft moral. I get that. But you what? My grandparents were so happy not to be living in a theocracy that they always voted for public school millages, even after they had no kids of their own. And as a delegate to a White House Conference on Libraries and Information Systems, I learned why libraries are more important than schools.

It is a bit unusual, but libertarians who claim to want to privatize all government services, do not perceive the bookstores as free market libraries. They spin off stories of colonial lending libraries that were fee-based, but they do not see the working world here and now. Just to say, you must buy a lot of books...

It is not the smattering of real world skills that is "Soviet style" it is the expectation that public education can know now how to mass produce the workers of the future. And at the opening, I said that I knew that that was not your intention, but that's how it came across to me. In fact, I had a letter to the Editor of Notes from FEE on that very point, based on an article from an engineering magazine c.1900 that called for "hundreds of young Edisons" to be trained, as they were in Germany of time (it was claimed).

I believe that I underscored the value in a complete education. And I tried to make it clear that my school system let me down by undervaluing the very shop classes that they required me to take. I am sorry that you and I are having a hard time getting on the same page (an allusion to music).

Your "4D Thinking" is unique to you. It might be teachable, but I suspect not. It can be learned but not taught. Entrepreneurship is like that, too: somewhat ineffable because you have to experience it from the inside.

Liberal arts is not just the humanities. Liberal education is the humanities plus the sciences. Mathematics is a liberal art. In the eponymous book by Mark Van Doren, he begins with the Trivium and the Quadrivium: Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic; Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.

I agree that the best programmers know the substantive literature of their subjects. I cite that from Joseph Weizenbaum when I speak to software user groups on "Documentation for Developers." (I got into technical writing from computer programming.) It is a problem evidence by "compulsive programming" when coders start designing from the keyboard. You have to think it through better than that. You call it "4D Thinking."

I have given that talk several times since 2013. Here is the original set of slides. (I went back and annotated them for Slideshare.)
https://www.slideshare.net/michaelmar...

"We know from measurable results that police officers with college degrees both make more traffic stops, and yet have fewer negative interactions with the public: they work harder and better. But college classes in criminology do not teach traffic stops or public relations. Something else is engaged." -- The Economic Value in a Liberal Education on my blog, here:
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

Good point about printers. They last for years and years. The toner cartridges are probably made non China by automation or maybe here with automation I do think that printed items are headed for eventual extinction due to computers and smart phones. We have been into a long period of developing and benefiting from automation and robotics, but I wonder what the future Autonomous trucks and cars will eliminate taxi drivers and truck drivers. Robotics will eliminate servers and order takers. Maybe we all become slave repairmen to robots? The world is about to radically change as robot technology expands exponentially in the future

Interesting. I wasn’t careful to define “government” when I said how old school physical libraries are paid for. Around here it’s the county that wastes money on them. My point is that they are dinosaurs headed for mass extinction. Are they dead yet, no. Not everything of value is in electronic form (yet). Speaking for me only, I haven’t used a library for about 50 years

There are so many $50 expenditures that county property taxes pay for that add up to the $6000 per year they steal from me. I don’t want to pay for schooling for other people’s kids and the countless other. Programs the politicians dream up.

I guess I just plain disagree with the notion that teaching our young a smattering of real world skills is somehow "Soviet-style" education. Too often the default alternative result is dumbed down burger flippers, sales clerks, Walmart greeters, and welfare recipients. To get out of those positions those people have to learn those "Soviet-style" skills later in life anyway, but by then it's more difficult.

As I said elsewhere I became a programmer mainly for chemical making and manufacturing systems. I was very good at what I did and was in demand where I worked initially and then later as an independent contractor. A large part of the reason for that success was having a good understanding of real world systems and behavior, which began in exploratory shops. I call it 4D thinking (3D + time), which you don't get from the liberal arts. 4D thinking for me was virtually intuitive by the time I got out of high school because of combining the various shop experiences along with all the other subjects (side note: by the time you understand what's going on when you melt metal to cast a part, the workings of an engine, and the workings of a motor/generator set, then taking a physics course the following year was a breeze - not to mention college courses much later). Those shops weren't to indoctrinate us into a "Soviet-style" factory-bot, they were there to give us an idea of how the real world worked by actually experiencing pieces of it. I've met a lot of good programmers and some not so good, but in my branch of the programming universe it seems the best ones were the ones that understood how the real world worked before they learned to code.

The first Fords cost $850. By 1920, the price was below $300. However, it remains that in order to afford the early automobiles of 1920, you needed to make $5 per day, about $1500 - $2000 per year, about five times the wages of an unskilled worker.
See wages across skills here:
http://panam1901.org/visiting/salarie...

See these union wages from 1911:
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/scribd/...

30 cents per hour is about $3 per day.

One early model of the Ford included in the back seat a rack for a Burroughs adding machine. Both firms were local to Detroit. The idea was that the business man could do office work while being driven by his chauffeur.

Storo's cliche about workers being paid enough to buy the product is fine for bread and shoes - and maybe was a benchmark for an automobile that was cheap enough to sell in mass markets, versus being a mere oddity or novelty, which is what is was at the time, but that thesis was exploded 50 years ago in Cliches of Socialism from FEE.

You and I are about the same age. I had my shop classes over four semesters 7th and 8th grades, one semester each of wood, mechanical drawing, metal, and printing. I still use printing. A lot. Mechanical drawing did not do much for me then, but I had two college classes later. Similarly, I had two community college classes in electronics.

By comparison, in an article on the value of college humanities classes, it seems (no surprise) that some lawyers reported a value in drama classes. However, the article quoted a lawyer who found it a waste of time.

You had a great shop class program. Mine was not-so-great. The final outcomes however were up to us.

I stand by my initial statements. It is not the business of public education to produce skilled workers for the jobs of the moment. It has to be more general than that because the future makes new demands.

I agree with you that some education in mechanical arts is helpful. The same is true of music, drama, and sports, as well as literature. I am a professional writer, but I got through high school literature with Classics Illustrated comics. Still, literature is as important as shop and music. (I had four semesters of chorale and three semesters of French horn. Twice a year from 3rd grade to 12th we attended children's concerts by the Cleveland Orchestra. I can read music. And earlier this year, I was awarded a medal for composing a march for my state guard. I just wrote the lyrics. The real musician did the heavy lifting.)

Some time back, in a similar discussion of our high school shop classes. I said that I was never encouraged at it. Shop classes were for kids going to work in factories. I was in the college bound tracks. However... the public schools of my time did not see me 25 years later having to disassemble and reassemble a 6-axis robot in order to write the maintenance manual. It took me two years. In the mean time, I taught operations and programming.

Then, there were the kids in the 1960s who took typing. I did not. Back then, it was, at best, a convenience, unless you were going to be a secretary in an office. That speaks to the problem with expecting schools of the present to produce what we will need in the future. After 10 years of two-fingered keyboarding, I got a typing tutor program for my IBM-PC. I still do not follow the rules, but I have good speed. And it is all over the keyboard because typing classes in 1965 did not include Function keys, Page Up, CTL-ALT-DEL (only Shift), and an integral numeric keypad...

Again, you cannot plan Soviet-style to crank out millions of workers to do the work of tomorrow, but I do applaud your skills in mechanical arts.

Yes, and in this new era we appear to depend, for many of our resources, on trading with those who make most irrational choices. If we had to fight a war like World War II again, we would have to win it quickly, or not at all. The Confederate States of America fell because it did not have the resource capacity and would not move fast enough.