When I was in college, a PhD professor told us a story about himself on his first job. He was given a set of specs and asked to build a prototype of this circuit board. He did not know it but a tech was given the same assignment. Within hours, using published tables and guides, the tech had the prototype on the bosses' desk fully tested and operational. At the end of the day the professor was still performing calculations.

I did not understand this story and when I encountered the real world I felt betrayed by the educational system that "wasted" my time with a lot of theory and math but didn't put me ahead of a high school dropout.

What I did not understand was the advantages of division of labor. If the relatively rare engineer develops new tables for new devices, his hours of calculations provide the means by which the relatively plentiful, good techs can produce many unique products in short order. Management is utilizing each to his best advantage resulting in increased productivity.

Any actions taken by government that limit the rights of those involved in this process reduces productivity and therefore prosperity. The success of the companies and their profitability is tied to their innovation and organization. The income of the managers, engineers and technicians is tied to their supply and competence. They are rewarded for their abilities and will fail due to their incompetency's. Those that are needed will be employed and those that do not meet a need must find a new profession.

The risk/reward of the free market is the motor that drives the economy and it will malfunction if it is tampered with by outside forces.

Thanks for this post.

The problem is not not enough workers coming out of school skilled and dependable. It's more that we still train people for a world in which being skilled and dependable is enough. In the modern world robots are way more dependable than people at doing repetitive tasks. The value is in knowing how to utilize automation and technology to get people what they want.

Technology will continue to increase productivity, but there's a huge risk that it will lead to more wage stratification and calls for socialism, which would be bad.

PPACA certainly has its problems and has too much socialistic gov't handholding, but the idea of improving health insurance portability and improving how insurance spreads risk promotes labor mobility, which leads to more productivity.

I agree completely that unemployment as an indicator is over-rated.

I also agree that people say we're in recession throughout most of the economic cycle. You can get back and read people talking about the recession of '91 as late as '97, when the tech boom was well underway. That's where we are now.

I agree with that the regulatory issues might be part of why we don't have higher growth in this expansion. I also think we desperately need more spirit of entrepreneurship and self-reliance.

Similar to warming results in higher CO2, not the reverse.