Mark P. Mills, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation wrote a fascinating report on the future of the American economy:
The quickly settled International Longshoremen's Association strike takes us one more step toward the Great Inversion: a future in which people in the skilled and semi-skilled trades boast higher average wages than most college graduates. If the justification for most college degrees — only 10 percent of them in STEM fields — reduces to their boosting future earning power, then those graduates will have a problem. (Granted: a college education should be about more than just maximizing earnings.)
It has escaped no one's attention that the settlement with the longshoremen's union will bump up annual starting salaries to about $80,000, with mid-career salaries over $150,000. Both benchmarks are higher than those of 90 percent of college grads. The longshoremen's victory will likely set a market norm, not just for union members, who account for just 10 percent of the workforce, but for the skilled workforce at large. The explanation is found at the intersection of technology and demography.
The quickly settled International Longshoremen's Association strike takes us one more step toward the Great Inversion: a future in which people in the skilled and semi-skilled trades boast higher average wages than most college graduates. If the justification for most college degrees — only 10 percent of them in STEM fields — reduces to their boosting future earning power, then those graduates will have a problem. (Granted: a college education should be about more than just maximizing earnings.)
It has escaped no one's attention that the settlement with the longshoremen's union will bump up annual starting salaries to about $80,000, with mid-career salaries over $150,000. Both benchmarks are higher than those of 90 percent of college grads. The longshoremen's victory will likely set a market norm, not just for union members, who account for just 10 percent of the workforce, but for the skilled workforce at large. The explanation is found at the intersection of technology and demography.