U.S. Wage Trends
The microeconomic
picture of the U.S. has changed immensely since 1973, and the trends
are proving to be
consistently downward for the nation's high school graduates and high
school drop-outs. "Of all the reasons given for the wage
squeeze - international
competition,
technology, deregulation, the decline of unions and defense cuts - technology
is probably the
most critical. It has favored the
educated and the skilled," says M. B.
Zuckerman,
editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report (7/31/95). Since 1973, wages
adjusted for
inflation have declined by about a quarter for high school dropouts, by a sixth
for high school
graduates, and by about 7% for those with some college education. Only
the wages of
college graduates are up.
Of the fastest
growing technical jobs, software engineering tops the list. Carnegie Mellon
University
reports, "recruitment of it's software engineering students is up this
year by over
20%." All engineering jobs are paying well, proving
that highly skilled labor is what
employers
want! "There is clear evidence that
the supply of workers in the [unskilled labor]
categories
already exceeds the demand for their services," says L. Mishel, Research
Director
of Welfare Reform
Network.
In view of these
facts, I wonder if these trends are good or bad for society. "The danger of
the information
age is that while in the short run it may be cheaper to replace workers with
technology, in
the long run it is potentially self-destructive because there will not be
enough
purchasing power
to grow the economy," M. B. Zuckerman.
My feeling is that the trend
from unskilled
labor to highly technical, skilled labor is a good one! But, political action
must be taken to
ensure that this societal evolution is beneficial to all of us. "Back in 1970,
a high school
diploma could still be a ticket to the middle income bracket, a nice car in the
driveway and a
house in the suburbs. Today all it gets
is a clunker parked on the street, and
a dingy apartment
in a low rent building," says Time Magazine (Jan 30, 1995 issue).
However, in 1970,
our government provided our children with a free education, allowing
the vast majority
of our population to earn a high school diploma. This means that anyone,
regardless of
family income, could be educated to a level that would allow them a
comfortable place
in the middle class. Even restrictions
upon child labor hours kept
children in
school, since they are not allowed to work full time while under the age of
18.
This government
policy was conducive to our economic markets, and allowed our country
to prosper from
1950 through 1970. Now, our own
prosperity has moved us into a highly
technical world,
that requires highly skilled labor. The
natural answer to this problem, is
that the U.S.
Government's education policy must keep pace with the demands of the
highly technical
job market. If a middle class income of
1970 required a high school
diploma, and the
middle class income of 1990 requires a college diploma, then it should be
as easy for the
children of the 90's to get a college diploma, as it was for the children of
the
70's to get a
high school diploma. This brings me to
the issue of our country's political
process, in a
technologically advanced world.
Voting &
Poisoned Political Process in The U.S.
The advance of
mass communication is natural in a technologically advanced society. In
our country's
short history, we have seen the development of the printing press, the radio,
the television,
and now the Internet; all of these, able to reach millions of people. Equally
natural, is the
poisoning and corruption of these medias, to benefit a few.
From the 1950's
until today, television has been the preferred media. Because it captures
the minds of most
Americans, it is the preferred method of persuasion by political figures,
multinational
corporate advertising, and the upper 2% of the elite, who have an interest in
controlling
public opinion. Newspapers and radio
experienced this same history, but are
now somewhat
obsolete in the science of changing public opinion. Though I do not
suspect
television to become completely obsolete within the next 20 years, I do see the
Internet being
used by the same political figures, multinational corporations, and upper 2%
elite, for the
same purposes. At this time, in the
Internet's young history, it is largely
unregulated, and
can be accessed and changed by any person with a computer and a
modem; no license
required, and no need for millions of dollars of equipment. But, in
reviewing our
history, we find that newspaper, radio and television were once unregulated
too. It is easy to see why government has such an
interest in regulating the Internet these
days. Though public opinion supports regulating
sexual material on the Internet, it is just
the first step in
total regulation, as experienced by every other popular mass media in our
history. This is why it is imperative to educate
people about the Internet, and make it be
known that any
regulation of it is destructive to us, not constructive! I have been a daily
user of the
Internet for 5 years (and a daily user of BBS communications for 9 years),
which
makes me a senior
among us. I have seen the moves to
regulate this type of
communication,
and have always openly opposed it.
My feelings about
technology, the Internet, and political process are simple. In light of the
history of mass communication,
there is nothing we can do to protect any media from the
"sound
byte" or any other form of commercial poisoning. But, our country's public
opinion doesn't
have to fall into a nose-dive of lies and corruption, because of it! The first
experience I had
in a course on Critical Thinking came when I entered college. As many
good things as I
have learned in college, I found this course to be most valuable to my basic
education. I was angry that I hadn't had access to the
power of critical thought over my
twelve years of
basic education. Simple forms of
critical thinking can be taught as early as
kindergarten. It isn't hard to teach a young person to
understand the patterns of
persuasion, and
be able to defend themselves against them.
Television doesn't have to be a
weapon against
us, used to sway our opinions to conform to people who care about their
own prosperity,
not ours. With the power of a critical
thinking education, we can stop
being motivated
by the sound byte and, instead we can laugh at it as a cheap attempt to
persuade us.
In conclusion, I
feel that the advance of technology is a good trend for our society;
however, it must
be in conjunction with advance in education so that society is able to
master and
understand technology. We can be the
masters of technology, and not let it be
the masters of
us.
Bibliography
Where have the
good jobs gone?, By: Mortimer B. Zuckerman
U.S. News & World Report, volume
119, pg 68 (July 31, 1995)
Wealth: Static
Wages, Except for the Rich, By: John Rothchild
Time Magazine, volume 145, pg 60 (January 30, 1995)
Welfare Reform,
By: Lawrence Mishel
http://epn.org/epi/epwelf.html (Feb 22, 1994)
20 Hot Job
Tracks, By: K.T. Beddingfield, R. M. Bennefield, J. Chetwynd,
T. M. Ito, K.
Pollack & A. R. Wright
U.S. News & World Report, volume
119, pg 98 (Oct 30, 1995)
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