The truth is that there is no educational or training program in the world that can train unemployed or underemployed workers for jobs that do not exist. Nor can any training program teach aging employees how to effectively compete against younger employees, with fresher skills, fewer medical impairments, and a lifestyle accepting of a lower wage.
The politicians, pundits, and prognosticators do not realize that artificial intelligence in embedded systems is reducing the education and experience necessary to perform highly-skilled functions. In the manual trades, where a highly-skilled machinist was needed to produce parts with critical tolerances, today’s 3-D printers, empowered by CAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing) systems can do the very same job with only the need for a high school educated worker to load the sacks of feedstock materials into a hopper – and much of that will also be automated.
As for higher-paying work, one can only assume that Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is speaking of government-controlled and monitored artificial wage inflation without any relationship to productivity or the final price of goods and services. In what world, would you pay a burger-flipper over $30,000 a year and pass the costs along to the consumer as a $20 hamburger? That's what the end-result of a $15 per hour minimum wage might be in the near future. Add medical, assuming the government does not impose a single-payer system, and pension benefits for unionized workers and you have an unsustainable economic system that will collapse of its own weight.
The current slogan being used by Schumer is,"Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future.” And it is a lie. If costs are uncoupled from productivity, the end result is economic failure of capitalism.
What this means for the aware individual will be covered in future blog posts.