You want to know what is taking middle class jobs?

[Chan790]

78. This actually goes back to MGB's point...

and coincidentally I agree with both of you. All of those jobs are and were important...but at this point, construction and infrastructure is not an economic driver of our economy because we don't build anything anymore and haven't in decades, not in large enough quantities to make an impact. All those steel jobs went away because we stopped building and repairing infrastructure in large measure.

I wish we'd return to domestic infrastructure and investment...the reasons we abandoned it were militaristic (and I know that better than most, my family fortune comes from defense manufacturing) and the companies that fight for greater defense spending are being foolish, they lose nothing if we reinvest domestically. Let's pretend that we decided tomorrow that we were going to run defense spending by 70% and that 100% of that cut had to be directed to domestic infrastructure...how many jobs would be lost? 0. Actually a large negative number, because the construction would create jobs...but let's not even consider that for a moment. There would be zero net jobs lost in the defense sector...and less than a million total job eliminations once things shook out.

Why? Why is interesting...you know who produces a large percentage of the world's high-speed trains? Boeing. Also, McDonnell-Douglas. The same technology, machinery, specialized labor and engineering that makes great planes...makes great high-speed trains. The expertise is interchangeable, the challenges nearly identical. Producers of propulsion for those trains? Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, General Electric. These companies also lead the way in the manufacturing of turbines and windmills. Tank manufacturers are generally also construction equipment manufacturers. Weapon-guidance systems, sensors and fire-control all have civilian-sector uses. Drones are highly-useful for a number of things beyond warfare--from firefighting to law enforcement to agriculture to forestry to construction to research sciences. And so on. We have what is actually a highly-diverse and highly-skilled manufacturing base that over the past 40 years has crammed itself down into a highly-specialized sector and seems to have forgotten that they're actually better at non-defense manufacturing than defense manufacturing.