Good question!

 

With all the talk about bringing manufacturing back to the USA, Zero Hedge asks:  "Can The Work Ethic Make A Return?"

For generations now, we’ve been told that intelligence and skill are disproportionately distributed in the upper tiers of the U.S. class structure.

Personally, I don’t believe it. It is more likely the opposite: the people who struggle for a living, working two and three jobs to pay the bills, have more skills than most people in the upper third of the income distribution who have never had to worry about paying the bills.

Talk to any serious person in any midsize company today and they will tell you of their struggles. The regulations and taxes are vexing but it is the labor problems day-to-day that really inhibit their operations and progress. It is exceedingly difficult to find workers who will do what they are supposed to do in a timely way, with attention to detail, and without constant hand-holding and praise.

This decline of the American work ethic traces to the educational institutions in part, but also to the reality that most young people in the top half of income earners have never worked a day in their lives until after having earned their credentials.

They are clueless about what it means to embrace a hard job and stick with it until they are done. They resent the authority structures in the workplace and attempt to game the system in the same way that they gamed school for 16-plus years.

It’s one thing to develop skills for survival in classrooms, and a radically different thing to have skills for a new world of manufacturing. Shop classes in high school are mostly gone (only 6 percent of students take them versus 20 percent in the 1980s) and two-thirds of teens eschew remunerative employment completely, simply because it is not necessary. It’s been generations since most people knew anything of farm life, to say nothing of factory life.

Trump is seeking to solve a half-century-old problem in four years.

There's more at the link.

I can only be grateful to my parents for teaching me (the hard way) that money had to be earned.  It started out, as soon as we kids were old enough to do simple household tasks, by linking it to so-called "pocket money".  We were promised five cents for every year of our age, and were given household jobs according to our capabilities.  Mine were mowing the lawn, cleaning up after the dog, washing the car, and so on.  If we didn't do any of those jobs on schedule, as required, we were "fined" five cents from that week's pocket-money.  If we failed to perform them three times in a week, we lost all that week's pocket money.  We soon found out that begging and pleading didn't work, and if we slacked off and half-did our work, in the eyes of our parents that was as good (or as bad) as not doing it at all.  We learned.

Also, when we wanted something expensive (such as a bicycle, or a tape recorder when we hit our teens - and yes, my first tape recorder was a well-worn used reel-to-reel unit, because cassette tapes were new-fangled and expensive), we had to come up with at least 50% of its price.  We could earn that by doing extra chores for our parents, or (in our teens) by looking for part-time work.  (My first part-time job was working at a local pet store during school vacations.  I got to clean out all of the cages and boxes - a s***ty job, literally!  When I grew older I became a part-time shop assistant at an upmarket store in town, dressed in stiffly starched shirt and tie, waiting on customers and behaving very deferentially.)  By such means I always managed to raise half of the money I needed to buy something, and my parents kicked in the rest - but only after I'd earned their support.  Again, we learned.

By the time I entered the armed forces, I'd learned that one got somewhere by working hard and showing willing.  The military knocked the opinionated asshole out of me (although some unkind people might suggest I've retained a touch of that here and there . . . ).  It set me up for the rest of my life.

When I look at teenagers today, in most of the Western world they seem bored, opinionated and self-serving.  "I don't WANNA!" is their battle cry.  Talking to small business owners in the area, they all complain that attracting willing young workers is a constant battle.  If they recruit two people, it's because they know one of them is going to have to be fired, so they have to hire two to keep one.  It's expensive and time-consuming for them - two commodities that no small business can afford.  Drug and alcohol abuse, laziness and poor time management round out the complaints.

What say you, readers?  Do you think today's youngsters, with all their problems and issues, will be willing and/or able to make the transition to modern manufacturing work?  If not, what will that mean for President Trump's drive to bring business back home?

Another thought.  I wasn't kidding when I said that military service made a man out of me, taking an opinionated, self-centered brat youngster and knocking the stuffing out of him.  I wonder whether bringing back conscription might not be a good thing, from that perspective - but I have to admit that too many youngsters today would expect to be feather-bedded, and would complain bitterly about any perceived insult or "dissing" from a drill instructor.  (I remember my DI's well . . . I think they'd suffer apoplexy if they had to deal with today's youth!)  Good idea, or not worth the hassle?

Peter