Do we need ACTUAL engineers, or can we train some fairly bright people to do the work of an engineer without an engineering degree, and perhaps give them a path to work at becoming an actual engineer? (you know...apprentice, journeyman, master?)  Can't we, in the name of patriotism, hire a few fixer uppers, rather than demanding the full workforce have Ph.D.s, and low wage requirements?  How much of a degree is the actual nuts and bolts of the job and how much of it is simply uppity hoops to jump through so the student thinks they're getting the education they paid for, and the faculty can use THEIR useless degree claiming to be shaping the future.

Have you seen the videos of Foxconn?  Relocating seems like a move up, considering most of the workers live in dormitories on the factory grounds, that look a little like our prisons.  When the alternative is peasant wife, I guess factory gulag is the better choice. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/farmers-wives-paying-a-terrible-price-for-progress-616209.html

That is fine with me LightStar if you will build them better. My comment had more to do with product quality then economy or logistics. I am not American and all i want is an iPhone I will not have to use as a paper weight.

We are going through the same thing down here. The mining industry is complaining about not having enough skill workers, but are not prepared to train the workers. The will import workers from other countries before they put in the time to train someone. It's a lazy, faster way to have a flexible workforce. Good in the short term, hurts Australia in the long term.

There is no reason why US can't have workforce they need. The problem is the Government is not prepared to put the policy in place to achieve it, they(and the people) expect the commercial sector to do so. The commercial sector will always do what is right for themselves and not what is right for the Nation. Nations are strong with strong Governments having a proactive role.

Western Governments are always looking at the next election ...

I am a panda bear.

In economic and financial circles a bear is someone who thinks stocks are going to go down, and a bull is someone who thinks they are going to rise in value. A panda bear is someone who has a negative China outlook.

There is no shortage of people who point out serious vulnerabilities and flaws in the Chinese economy. Look up china bubble on Google. The celebrated China economic model is just plain old crony capitalism and the command style of government is not a good thing either.  It is a parasite that exists on the actual productive part of the Chinese economy and miss-allocates tons of capital. Introduction of advanced technology to china combined with its demographics, and globalization has simply created the right environment for a huge economic boom. That boom will fade in the coming years if not months for so many reasons that I could list them forever, again look it up on Google.

That said the US will never get it's manufacturing industry back, that ship has sailed. If not China some other country will do it. The huge drop in labor from globalization has hidden other trends, even in China workers are starting to be replaced by cheaper robots! What chance do workers in America have?

Umm no that's not the businesses fault. As others have said the fault their lies with the Education Industry, which is really what you would expect from the weird combination of public and private that make up universities and colleges.

Well, you could explore this trend of replacing workers by robots. Every branch of industry that has made people redundant because of automation has become more productive. Production has become inverse to the number of employed people. Pretty soon there won't be any technical reason for human labor in most branches of industry. The service sector can't absorb everyone that has become redundant, and it too will feel the effects of automation in the not too distant future. So then what?

People will then just sit on Facebook and twitter........

Oh....

.......Right......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wa4U6TQlNI&feature=player_embedded

Luve the people scoops. Good analogy of workers on Wall St  
and the dummies don't even try to jump out of the scoop

I think Charles has a Soylent Green alergy

That is very true, the truly disturbing trend however is how advanced computer programs are replacing mid level employees, ie they can search databases and do paper work. It is called the great hallowing out.

Really productivity is the most basic and truest way to increase wealth. The more productive its members the richer a society. The introduction of farm machinery displaced agricultural workers into cities, and was incredibly disruptive and harmful to many many people. However eventually the available labor that was channeled into manufacturing and became the basis of modern society. Similarly the economy could adapt to to a huge increase in manufacturing productivity but I don't expect it to be easy and I'm not happy about having to live through it.... Eventually though society will probably be better off, as more people move into other fields. The main problem is our inflexible education system because of the unprecedented amount of skill and education required for people to make the shift. Pretty soon you will need a specialized degree to make more then minimum wage.

Luckily for Stardock programmers will be relatively safe.

In the past every time there was so much eccess population there was a world war to take out a large chunk  and then what-ever countries are left tend to go through a golden growth phase. I think the next WW will probably see US soil being invaded and since that's where I live I'm not exactly routing for that to happen.

Are your sure ??? More and more business outsource their software development to India...

I agree with you on that point for sure JC.

Oh, and one other thing. After reading that article at SlashDot that Brad referenced I know one thing now, I will never buy another Apple product again, nor will I buy it from any company with that type of attitude. They basically accused American's of being lazy and not worth their time or effort to employ.

I worked for a company that represented the majority of major players in the aerospace community (Boeing, Rolls Royce, Pratt Whitney, Air Bus, Goodyear, G.E., etc.) Outsourcing has always been about money and how to reduce the cost of the end product.

I won't go into the those examples of how outsourcing has decimented our manufacturing base, impacted our economy from the worker's standpoint or the selling off of our tooling and technology.

and don't forget China's long term plans for world domination.

Hey there Raven, long time no hear.

Indeed my friend, too long.

A good statement as well. I've been of the opinion for quite a while that China will be the worlds next leading Super-Power.

Because saintly Steve Jobs wanted to make a billion not half-billion.

American corporations have no allegiance to this country only the almighty dollar.