(10-19-2010, 12:24 PM)ShadowHM Wrote: The key word there is 'workers'. There really are many people who are qualified, by ability and/or education (or lack thereof) only to work at such jobs and those jobs are not there anymore. Such people are not 'workers'. I perceive that as a problem.
Well, there are a few solutions. One is to get rid of the minimum wage, and let North American employers hire those low-skill workers at a pittance. I suspect a combination of social pressure and the popularity of minimum wages makes that unrealistic.
The more usual solution is the services sector. As the labour productivity of manufacturing increases, fewer relatively better off workers can purchase more services, creating low-skill, labour-intensive jobs outside those sectors. The "McJobs" aren't exactly spectacular, but they don't suck any worse than making Levis for a living, or being unemployed.
Bringing Reebok manufacturing back from countries that pay a couple dollars a day to a country that pays a minimum of seven dollars an hour is not a sensible solution for anyone. It would hold back any increase in labour productivity for as long as those jobs stayed in the first world, and it would prevent relatively poor countries from manufacturing at all.
-Jester