StuPidwish
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Why do we even bother educating anyone? 

Friday, June 26, 2009  

From another story about the troubles in the heartland, which is actually about how high school kids are going to college instead of working at The Plant:

Fred Gehron, the principal of West Carrollton High School, remembers what happened when he graduated from high school in 1966 and told his parents he wanted to go to college. “I remember them rolling their eyes,” he said. “My father asked, ‘Are you sure that’s necessary? Why not get a job at the steel mill where your brother works?’ ”

Rob Alsept, financial secretary for the G.M. union local here, says he took a job at the plant in 1989 at age 19, and bought a house and had a family the next year.

The G.M. plant’s basic wage was $28 an hour when it closed. “For the laid-off guys, the highest-paying job I’ve heard anyone find was $13 an hour,” Mr. Alsept said.

My last year in teaching -- 5 years experience, 2 graduate degrees, and oh yeah, it was a fucking nice thing to do -- I earned just under $28 an hour, and I did it in a more expensive state than Ohio.

I will go on record: I really don't care if there are no $28 / hr jobs for people right out of high school. I really don't care if it turns out that that was an un-sustainable rate of pay. I really don't care if 19-year-olds can't buy fucking houses.

Year after year, every high school teacher in America told their kids, "Go to college, because that's where the money and the security is." And for 100 years, people went to work at the plant anyway. And now the plant closed because apparently, starting people at $28 / hr for unskilled labor isn't a wise business model, and The News can't get enough of it.

And the worst part is that the horrible consequence highlighted here seems to be that people are having to get trained for better work. Noooooo!!!!

Another gem of heartland wisdom that's complete bullshit:

“My father always told us, ‘As long as you put in an honest day’s work and are an honest person, you’d be O.K.’ That’s not even close to being right anymore.”

Bzzzzt: it's completely true, still. 'Honesty' means looking the facts in the face, and the writing has been on the wall about changes in 'an honest day's work' for years and years and years. Telling yourself or your kids that you're entitled to a low-skill-high-paying job is dishonest -- especially as factories closed and closed and closed and closed and closed.

There's nothing honest about hard work in and of itself. There are hard-working con-men and hired killers. And there are lots of honest people putting in long days at jobs that don't pay $28 /hr, too.

(This is the subtext, of course -- apply modus tollens and you see that this guy's father believes that the working poor are dishonest. So you're honest until you don't have a union to bargain collectively for pay above market rates, I guess.)

I'm sick of this sob story. If it turns out that there's an economic incentive for people to go to college -- even in Ohio and Detroit and West Texas -- what can I say? That's good. The old shit is over. Maybe the fucking Etruscans are hiring, or the Phoenecians, you can go work at their car plant.

Or you can go to college and get some skills that are portable and relevant. Either that, or the Phoenecians.

posted by henry | 6/26/2009 01:38:00 PM|

Comments:

The public hating on the UAW's skill at negotiating and the fatcat auto workers is justified in the context of the government bailout, but is totally outsized compared to the self-dealing labor contract negotiating in the finance. industry.

The last 20 years lets say there have been 1 million UAW members on average. Lets ignore that half of them are retired and say that they each got overpaid by $20k per year. So we're talking $400 billion in excess costs.

The AIG Financial Products debacle, in which a single guy made $300 million in salary and bonuses by selling CDS protection, caused the value of AIG stock (mostly owned by Americans'401ks and pension funds)to drop by $200 billion in value. Further, the US government has extended $173 billion in credit to AIG to keep it afloat.

So we're looking at 1 million auto workers getting overpaid by $400 billion over the past 20 years. And we're looking at one fatcat getting overpaid by $100s of billions (plus $300 million). The actual overpayment of the workers in the financial industry is in the trillions, this is just one guy. Of course in the financial industry the 'union' that sets the pay includes both labor and management.
# posted by Blogger ETLTBlogger : 10:06 AM :  
Nobody's hating on the UAW's skill at negotiating. Good for them.

What I'm hating on is the notion that

a) no one saw this coming, and
b) if you saw it coming, you didn't do anything to prepare yourself for it.

Manufacturing has been dying in the US for 30 years. Everyone knows this. And if you knew this and didn't do anything about it, what can I say?

Comparing the dollar amounts to the financial industry misses the point. Everyone knows that wall street doesn't deserve sympathy because they did a shit job managing risk -- why isn't the same burden on all of us? It's like I said: Gung Ho came out 25 years ago -- that's how much warning auto workers had that their livelihoods were at risk.

And I will repeat: I don't care if it's impossible for a HS grad to earn $40K. I just don't care. If the UAW can make that deal, that's great for them. If they can't, oh well.
# posted by Blogger henry : 12:41 PM :  
"was his manager dead or alive?"
# posted by Blogger biw : 5:09 PM :  

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