Nobrainer’s Think Tank

(I begin by apologizing for not providing any links or resources and admitting that I may be horribly wrong in many ways. I’m not worried about being right.)

A few days ago, I read some article about the jobs situation in Ohio, my home state. It very much reminded me of the jobs situation in South Carolina. And not that I really know, but I sounded like what I hear out of Detroit and the rest of Michigan.

In my own words, these three states are losing high-paying, low-skill manufacturing jobs. In Ohio/Michigan they are steel/auto-manufacturing jobs and in SC they are textile jobs. In many cases, these were very sweet jobs. I grew up just south of Middletown, Ohio. Middletown is the home of what was ARMCO steel, which has been in the area for well over 100 years. (Family history says that one of our ancestors declined making an early, massive investment because he felt that a rolling mill could not operate in that part of Ohio). Anyway, it seems that ARMCO, now AK (ARMCO & Kawasaki) Steel made quite a habit of taking poorly educated local guys and giving them very high paying jobs — not a bad gig if you can get it.

The same can be said for major employers like GM, Ford, and Delphi.

But in all these states, the now high unemployment rate is blamed on poor education. The logical path is that the labor pool lacks education. Therefore the education system failed. But is that so? Is the education system that bad? Or were the alternatives to good education that sweet?

Think about this for a minute folks. If an average high school education — if not a complete lack of high school diploma — can land you a very solid middle class job, then why bother with higher education? If a bad education can earn you a solid 40 large, why bother with 4 years of college and tuition bills so that you can graduate and earn a 45 or 50 large engineering job? When you’re a teenager, this is a no-brainer.

So I propose that the educational system is not the problem. No. NO! The problem is expectations; all the people who believe that being average should be a ticket to Easy Street. In other words, the incentive for a good education is becoming outweighed by immediate cash payoffs.

So my theory is that pro-minimum wagers and pro-living wagers actually reduce the education of the nation as a whole. Whereas I think those folks believe that if those living off those wages have more money, they’ll send their kids to college. But why the fuck should they send their kids to college if abso-fucking-lutely no education can provide you a solid, above-poverty lifestyle?

Whoops, I’ve slipped into curse words again. So I’ll once again defer to the folks at Cafe Hayek (the thesis, as usual, is that giving money to people who haven’t earned it is money wasted).