This is all well and good, but can we get some jobs some time soon please, and not just of the $8 an hour variety?

Maybe all this consumer spending means that people will start buying more movies and watching more TV shows which means in a year's time, I'll have an abundance of work again...but the trick is going to be getting there from here without going bankrupt.

I'm reminded of this very relevant post I read a couple days ago on Winds of Change over which the idea of a polarization in the labor market looms like a great, black cloud, as much as a result of outsourcing as other factors (the WoC piece focuses as much on local economic labor market issues, using WalMart as an example of how higher wage local workers are displaced by WalMart's lower wage workforce, and hence, lower cost retail service, with the attendant consequences). It seems to me that depending on the industry one works in, things are only getting more dire, despite the overall optimistic economic indicators.

Regarding that polarization, I have noticed a strange recurrence of "help wanted" signs all over LA, and elsewhere in the country for many months; an abundance that has seemed out of whack with the generally discouraging economy. The problem is, these jobs have been, almost without exception, for low-wage retail jobs. My feeling is that there is a substantial number of people in this country who comprise a class of very skilled, fairly-to-highly educated, well-trained and highly experienced workers across a number of indusries whose liabilities and responsibilities utterly preclude them from taking those low(er)-wage retail jobs. When you have children, a mortgage, cars, insurances, property taxes, perhaps even a small side business and/or other liabilities, $8 to $10 an hour is practically useless. You can't meet $2,500 of monthly expenses when you're making $1,280 a month--before tax.

Yet, with the continual permanent elimination of jobs for this diverse class of workers, eventually--short of moving to India, Mexico, Japan or Canada--some of these people might find themselves in the terribly difficult position of having to downgrade; that's the downward mobility the WoC piece speaks of.

Obviously, the big challenge is figuring out where to go other than down. Retraining is an issue of course, but not an easy one for many people, especially veteran workers with highly specialized skills in specialized industries, perhaps like certain engineers who might have worked for Boeing, or animation timers whose jobs are rapidly disappearing across the Pacific Ocean. I myself have some options; my big challenge isn't not knowing where to go; I know exactly where I need to go with my skills--the huge, looming problem is cracking the door open. In the long term, I'm not so worried about my own prospects--although the immediate reality is really scary--but I do worry more about others who might be in a similar situation to my own, but with even fewer obvious paths to pursue. I worry that WoC's characterization of a shrinking of the American dream of upward mobility might prove to be true, at least for certain classes of people. It would be a terrible shame to see the dreams of past Americans prove unrealized for significant chunks of the population; the dream of immigrants (my mother) and the sons and daughters of immigrants (my father) who fled privation and war, anti-semitism, dire economic prospects, and came here and worked their fingers to the bone so that their children could have a better life than they did; and whose children inherited those values and in turn worked to ensure that their children had a better life than they did...only to see the dream come up short.

Ultimately a sentimental argument? Maybe. But then, the American dream is more than just numbers and economic indicators; it is the stuff of feeling and belief; it's the stuff that draws people here year after year. I don't know what the cure is to ensure that the dream remains believable and anchored in truth, but I'm worried that the dream is losing its mooring....unless you're happy remaining a low-wage worker or being wealthy. Lawyers, professors, doctors exempt of course!

Maybe should have followed my parents' advice after all: be a lawyer or a doctor. Two services that can't be exported, outsourced, eliminated, or automated.

Wow...was that overreach or what?