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Originally Posted by Azure
Of course all of this is dependent around the argument that automation will lead to a net loss in jobs. I don't believe that will be true.
EDIT: A good example would be German manufacturing over the last 20-30 years. Many businesses have become highly automated replacing the need for manual labor. In comparison to similar North American companies the German ones would be years ahead. They handled that change in the workforce by getting more high school students involved in the trades at a younger age. Many large firms offer apprenticeship programs STRAIGHT out of high school. In comparison to North America where we have kids going in a for an 'Arts' degree and wondering why they are not employable when they graduate this is a big reason why Europe is years ahead of us.
North America is going to have a severe shortage of skilled labor in the next 20-30 years. The job market for red seal electricians alone is going to seriously deplete as the average age of electricians is nearing retirement. Instead of adapting to this change we continue pushing our kids into getting non-employable degrees. The trades are looked at as a second tier job that nobody wants. I have personally heard teachers and guidance counselors telling students to not go the trade route because who wants to be a lowly plumber?
We deserve every problem we are going to have in the next few decades when it comes to higher levels of poverty, shrinking wages and more unemployable morons graduating with their 4 year degree in 'how to be completely useless to society.' We should be subsidizing NOT post secondary in general, but actual post secondary programs that lead to sustainable jobs. Half the bloody problem is giving out student loans for kids to get degrees that serve no purpose for anyone.
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The German system is interesting, and a great example of one way to do things, but you have to understand the unspoken reasons why it works there, and wouldn't be able to be transplanted whole to North America.
Kids in German school are very tied to their grades. The grades they get in elementary school determine their entire life - and I'm not exaggerating. The reason is because starting in Junior High, a kid will be placed in one of three levels of high school - the Gymnasium, the Skilled Trade school, and the other school. A kid can be demoted, but never (as far as I was told) promoted - once in a "lower" level of school, forever. In many ways, the kids there described it as a kind of caste system. In grade 11 back in 1996, I was able to do a German exchange, where I went to live with a German family for 3 months, and they got to live with us for that same amount of time. I was able to go to a Gymnasium (university entry high school), and my cousin was in the next lower high school, because of who our exchange students were. Now, his student was a brilliant guy, but a bit of an anarchist. It was his punk leaning tendencies that had him in that lower level of school - he was told he was lucky he wasn't in the even lower high school, which was only good enough to prepare a student for a life of bagging groceries, or working at the mall. A kid like that, would not be given the opportunity to shake off teenage issues there, whereas here, he would have little difficulty.
However, because everyone in the schools you were in were all heading to the same paths in life, there was very little looking down on people from within their social circles - they merely had their social circles decided for them, based on the grades they got in grade 2. For someone who's life was destined for the trades, this was a likely highly positive thing. For a guy like me, intelligent, but dealing with social issues, I have no idea how it would have worked out. For my friend in Germany, it was very difficult.