“My Two Cents” - Guest Commentary - Breaking of American Traditions

8/23/2006

I’ve been home this evening not more than an hour and a half, and so far I have received 8 calls from telemarketers trying to get me to listen to their sales pitch. Some where actually live people on the other end while the other calls were pre-recorded bait for whatever service they were trying to hock. Now this is the time of the day when I usually get caught up on news, and sort through the mail. Then briefly check my email to see if there is anything that needs my attention. Afterwards generally dinner or making plans for the evening with friends. I work all day and get home after what most would call the middle of the traditional dinner time, depending on when I leave the office. There is something that has me puzzled. Why do telemarketing companies insist on calling during this time on a regular basis? Maybe it’s because they know people are generally home at this time. But isn’t dinner supposed to be a traditional family time? I know that this not a new phenomenon, after all we have had federal legislature write up an act creating a “do not call list”. This in my opinion is a farce. I won’t even go down that road.

One call in particular really had my mood tweaked. The woman who called was representing a non profit organization that was calling to get opinions on “American values and traditions” and the shaping of TV in the US today and it was not a solicitation for donations. She had a few short answer questions, the yes and no type, and a few that needed an actual statement. So I agreed to listen. When it came time for the actual opinion part I was poised to give some good answers. I thought well I might as well be honest about how I really feel. As you and I have discussed in numerous conversations, there just seems to be something a miss with the way things are going compared to just a short time ago, when we were in our younger years looking for a path in life. Right when the first opinion started to be given, she cut me off and asked would I be interested in having a group they are representing get in contact with me to discuss how I could donate to this other group and help get their word out. I immediately said “No way, not interested.” So this got me to thinking how things have changed.

Telemarketing has become a quasi industry in itself, I guess this falls into area of those service type jobs. It’s a shame that a majority of the jobs out there now a days are of this type, and they seem to run the gamut. Now I’m not talking about a service that requires a skill that you must go through a training program, or schooling to acquire. Where being that the skill and expertise you are using is the catalyst for the end result, your product so to speak. Where you have something tangible, or an object, whether it's a house, computer, or whatever. I refer to the ones that basically anyone off the street can perform. I don’t knock anyone who has a job and being productive members of society. In fact I wish more people had the ambition to do so. My feelings though are that “we” as a collective have sold ourselves short.
This where my thoughts get a little hazy as how to tie this all together. I want to somehow illustrate that there is stll the need to have a skilled work force, and has some professional ethics.
Being in job that requires a trade skill and some serious technical knowledge, I wonder where our future is going. I think that my pay is fairly decnt for what I do, having to be a blend of artist and mid level machinist, granted I would like to make more, but I have seen the demand for the type of work I do slowly shifting into more technology, and move geographically with in the US. Plus the ever common outsourcing of jobs oversees, and south of the border.

Chris in MD/DC

Editor's Response...

This is what happens when we sell out our comparative advantage in manufacturing in favor of a 'service economy'. This trend is nothing new. From Volcker's 'attack' on inflation in the early 1980's, one industry after another has been sold up the river, workers displaced and capacity wasted so we could be bugged a half dozen times an evening by a drone selling this or that. Yes, we've created tons of jobs during this recent economic 'boom', but are they good jobs? I don't think so. Even the government's skewed numbers show the creation of massive amounts of 'service sector' opportunities, mostly paying a few bucks an hour over minimum wage. Restaurant, retail, and financial services jobs have seen the biggest boom. These jobs will all be lost in the upcoming depression brought on by the collapse of the housing market. Yes, I'm calling it a depression. Its about time someone took off the PC gloves and called a spade a spade.

Many people have been urging us to 'retool' and recapture our manufacturing base. This will not happen for several reasons. First, there is no political will to make the United States competitive. Secondly, we no longer have the leverage associated with being the world's biggest creditor. Thirdly, the labor force, at least on the younger side consists mostly of kids who wear ballcaps sideways, cannot utter a single coherent sentence, and are generally lazy. Of course I realize this is an dangerous generalization, but go to any mall and walk around an hour and tell me how wrong I am.

The take home message here is that we cannot expect to have anything but a flimsy service economy as long as these conditions persist. The final two bastions of American manufacturing (Ford and GM) have one foot in the grave and the other on the proverbial banana peel. As the popular cliche goes, its all over except for the crying."