The Sage of San Antonio has the level-headed figures and analysis. We can count on Peter!
And what fun it will be to see the figures for manufacturing and wage growth as Trump’s policies take effect. I hope we can count on the Trump administration the way we can count on you, Magnificent Man!
I hope you are right that Trump's policies will spur increases in manufacturing employment and manufacturing wages.
Manufacturing jobs tend to involve more hours and more dollars per hour than service jobs. If we want to improve people's economic circumstances, we need to be making more things here in the United States, not importing them and trying to get by on service sector jobs.
That's not a disparagement of the service sector worker. Every job with a paycheck is at a fundamental level a "good" job, and every person who holds down a job should hold their head up high.
But as we look to the types of jobs we want to see increase, we need to be focusing on manufacturing. We need to be making more things, and we need to be cultivating a society that prioritizes making things.
Making things is what made the American economy great. It is what will make the American economy great again.
Lately, when I’m running errands, I’ve made a point of engaging in small talk with young cashiers to hear about their lives. In every conversation I’ve found that they are college grads with no specific career plans. They’re taking a “gap year”, or they’re “not sure what I want to do yet”. I walk away thinking, they were lead down wrong paths leading them to English Lit or Gender Studies, when they should have been directed to actual careers. They need better options! You’re right, Peter, they need high-paying jobs in manufacturing, innovation, and productive work. If Trump’s tariffs work as planned, and there is available capital and government support in policies, whole new industries should spring up. Let’s hope!
I worked my way through college to get a degree in accounting because I'd tried manual labor and decided there were better options (working landscaping in a hot Houston summer is a great way to learn the value of a college education!). Why accounting? I took a bookkeeping course in high school and thought the subject was "cool" (yes, I am that much of a nerd. I'm a lost cause!).
I wandered into computers when I got laid off from my accounting job because more people wanted to pay me to write a quick database application for them than keep their financials in order. I have been programming computers since I was 12, and always considered it an interesting hobby. Then I found out that my "hobby" had more value than my college degree.
30 years on, I am burned out on being in IT (love the technology, hate the politics), and so I am reinventing myself yet again as an independent data journalist.
So I'll give some grace to those younger folk who don't know what they want to do when they grow up. I'm closing in on 60 way too fast for my tastes and I still don't know the answer to that question!
I liked the accounting courses I took In college so much that when I was laid off from an engineering job I considered becoming an accountant
- until I read that almost all accountants have to work 70-80 hours per week. I was already burned out on working evenings and weekends ‘for free’.
Peter, you’re so smart and insightful that you’re never going to run out of interesting things to do. I think that AI is going to have the unintended consequence of rendering most things on the internet highly suspect (GIGO). No one’s going to believe the junk narrative that AI is programmed to spew out. That will make a fact-based, evidenced-based, data-based guy like you in high demand, with many options. You’re also an excellent writer, and now you have years of experience. The intersection of your quality with rising demand for it is coming up soon. Just watch for your opportunities and don’t hesitate to make the leap. I’ll be cheering you on!
Do you honestly believe there will ever be actual (human) hands-on manufacturing jobs when AI can do them all? It's difficult for me to envision good paying factory jobs ever returning to the USA.
The Sage of San Antonio has the level-headed figures and analysis. We can count on Peter!
And what fun it will be to see the figures for manufacturing and wage growth as Trump’s policies take effect. I hope we can count on the Trump administration the way we can count on you, Magnificent Man!
I hope you are right that Trump's policies will spur increases in manufacturing employment and manufacturing wages.
Manufacturing jobs tend to involve more hours and more dollars per hour than service jobs. If we want to improve people's economic circumstances, we need to be making more things here in the United States, not importing them and trying to get by on service sector jobs.
That's not a disparagement of the service sector worker. Every job with a paycheck is at a fundamental level a "good" job, and every person who holds down a job should hold their head up high.
But as we look to the types of jobs we want to see increase, we need to be focusing on manufacturing. We need to be making more things, and we need to be cultivating a society that prioritizes making things.
Making things is what made the American economy great. It is what will make the American economy great again.
Lately, when I’m running errands, I’ve made a point of engaging in small talk with young cashiers to hear about their lives. In every conversation I’ve found that they are college grads with no specific career plans. They’re taking a “gap year”, or they’re “not sure what I want to do yet”. I walk away thinking, they were lead down wrong paths leading them to English Lit or Gender Studies, when they should have been directed to actual careers. They need better options! You’re right, Peter, they need high-paying jobs in manufacturing, innovation, and productive work. If Trump’s tariffs work as planned, and there is available capital and government support in policies, whole new industries should spring up. Let’s hope!
I worked my way through college to get a degree in accounting because I'd tried manual labor and decided there were better options (working landscaping in a hot Houston summer is a great way to learn the value of a college education!). Why accounting? I took a bookkeeping course in high school and thought the subject was "cool" (yes, I am that much of a nerd. I'm a lost cause!).
I wandered into computers when I got laid off from my accounting job because more people wanted to pay me to write a quick database application for them than keep their financials in order. I have been programming computers since I was 12, and always considered it an interesting hobby. Then I found out that my "hobby" had more value than my college degree.
30 years on, I am burned out on being in IT (love the technology, hate the politics), and so I am reinventing myself yet again as an independent data journalist.
So I'll give some grace to those younger folk who don't know what they want to do when they grow up. I'm closing in on 60 way too fast for my tastes and I still don't know the answer to that question!
I liked the accounting courses I took In college so much that when I was laid off from an engineering job I considered becoming an accountant
- until I read that almost all accountants have to work 70-80 hours per week. I was already burned out on working evenings and weekends ‘for free’.
Peter, you’re so smart and insightful that you’re never going to run out of interesting things to do. I think that AI is going to have the unintended consequence of rendering most things on the internet highly suspect (GIGO). No one’s going to believe the junk narrative that AI is programmed to spew out. That will make a fact-based, evidenced-based, data-based guy like you in high demand, with many options. You’re also an excellent writer, and now you have years of experience. The intersection of your quality with rising demand for it is coming up soon. Just watch for your opportunities and don’t hesitate to make the leap. I’ll be cheering you on!
Do you honestly believe there will ever be actual (human) hands-on manufacturing jobs when AI can do them all? It's difficult for me to envision good paying factory jobs ever returning to the USA.
AI can't "do it all", and it never will.
The amount of text input required to keep "training" the LLMs guarantees AI's eventual collapse.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not allow for any other outcome.