I have been thinking about this subject for some time and finally think that the pieces are coming together. Here is the deal. If we want the highest quality of life here in the USA, we need to get as many of our citizens doing the jobs that they can do best. We don't need to go so far as the "Peter Principle" where everyone is promoted to higher and higher jobs until all are incompetent and in jobs that are over their heads. We need to start at the bottom and get smarter or better qualified people "up" and out of the lower skilled or valued jobs. Here are some examples of what I am talking about.
During your progression thru life, what are the chances that the "first" job that you ever had is the "best" life time job for you? I think that it is less than 10%. That means you need to change jobs or careers as you go thru life in a way that allows you to "climb" the ladder so as to optimize the use of your skills. Remember that your skills should grow as you go along. As you switch jobs, you gradually optimize your value. If you follow this logic, then it is clear that you should not expect to be working in the same job at age 65 as you were at age 20 or 25. Now, let's look at some job situations.
First, the US Post Office. I see letter carriers walking down our streets with a bag over their shoulders who are in their 50's or 60's. I know that these people have been doing this job since they were in their 20's. Now, what is wrong with this picture? Why didn't these people progress in their careers? Why didn't they produce more value for the USA? That's right, they have a social responsibility to produce value so that we all can enjoy a higher quality of life. What these people do is to steal value form all of us by extorting with their labor unions, more compensation than the value that they produce. What they should have done is to carry the mail for a few years while they were in their 20's and then "progress" to a higher value producing job. Are you following this?
Next, take our school teachers. They are similar to the postal worker in that they start teaching little kids when they are in their 20's and keep doing the same thing until they are 65 and expect to keep getting pay raises for doing the "same" thing again and again. Why don't we expect our school teachers to grow and develop over time so that they can produce more value? If your kid has a school teacher who is 25 years old and my kid's teacher is 60 years old, is your kid being cheated? My kid's teacher gets paid a lot more than yours! What we have is some kid about 18 years old who decides to become a school teacher, often after they have been rejected from more difficult majors, and they are teaching your kids by age 25. What are the chances of this first job being the optimum job for that person for the rest of their life? Zero.
I could go onto many other examples, but I think that you get the idea. The problem is "How do we correct this problem?" How do we get more and more people into more optimum jobs as they progress thru life? In the military, they have a system and it goes like this. If you do not progress thru the ranks as a fast enough rate, you are mustered out. This does two important things. First, it assures that the skills of the troupes are optimized. More and more troupes are pulling their own weight. The second thing that it does is to remove road blocks above so that better skilled people are not blocked into jobs that do not utilize all their skills. You know what I am talking about. In many jobs, you have to wait until the person above you dies before you can get a promotion. How well do you think a system like that optimizes the skills of people?
In the case of the Post Office, we should only allow a person to carry the mail for a maximum of 5 years or until they are 25 years old. If after that they are not promotable or can't find a better job, they should be let go. I think we should do the same with school teachers too. In the case of school teachers, I would go one step further. I would try to get more older teachers who have done some other kind of work where becoming a school teacher would be a promotion. If students who have graduated with teaching majors are so smart, we should try to get them into jobs that maximize the use of their skills. If we turn over our school teachers on a regular basis, we would get rid of he poor teachers and give the more skilled individuals a chance to produce more value. This is what I am talking about with "Work Force Optimization".
PS---I would eliminate labor unions form situations where the employer can not go bankrupt. That means that I would get them out of the public sector. Labor unions are the enemy of "Work Force Optimization" and you know it.
PS---Life's work is like a ladder with a lot of rungs. If we remove the lower rungs with a minimum wage law, many people will not be able to start out on one of the higher rungs and thus not be able to enter the work force. If we don't have some way to keep dead beats from blocking of rungs, lower people will have no way to progress upwards. See the problem?
