The terms offered by Delphi Corporation to its workers make it starkly clear what the average American worker can expect in the future.The blue collar worker who used to enjoy $25-30 per hour wages with full benefits is going to be a thing of the past soon, to be replaced by $9-10 an hour worker with no benefits whatsoever.Training in specialized skills such as numerically controlled machining may temporarily stem the tide of low wages but even in those cases the fast rising countries of Asia have such a massive number of people coming into the workforce with the same skills and willingness to work for $2-5 a day wage rates, I do not expect our labor to become competitive soon.
What is at work here is that the countries of Asia have absorbed the lessons of the US well and invested in the education and training of their workers instead of squandering their resources on war making equipment.
In the white collar segment, of course, India has become a leader in software, medicine and biotechnology, while China is fast becoming a leader in manufacturing and pulling the entire economy of Asia along with it.
At a time like this, we need wise and competent leaders able to transition us into the new state of affairs by educating people on the realities ahead for most workers.The old fixations on ideology will not work.Illusions of power and might makes right have to be given up.Only then can we start challenging countries like Japan and Germany which have learned these lessons the hard way and are now the models for many Asian countries.
