Most Important Jobs

I think it is excellent policy for there to be enough decent-paying jobs for the least-educated quartile of men. 

The least-educated among us star in most of the "bad" social statistics - unemployment, crime, etc. In addition, they are (it seems) often the fathers of the children who are being raised by unmarried young women - children who are very likely to be poor and to face the longest odds at getting out of poverty. It's part of the cycle we hear so much about.

If We the People desire to have fathers support their children, and the mothers of their children, then those fathers are going to need an income, yes? 

But the least-educated men are less and less employable with every passing year. The jobs that the least-educated men are most able to do are less and less available, such as any of the "Ten Worst Jobs in America," including manufacturing. 

The overall policy seems to be to try to make the least-educated men more employable by making them more educated: job-training programs, adult education, and even "school reform" for schools full of poor kids. 

I know this is taboo, but focusing on the education side of the equation seems weird to me. It assumes that the people we most want to educate - the least-educated men - are ready, willing and able to be educated. But if that were the case, then... wouldn't they already be educated? In other words, doesn't the proposed answer (more education) merely beg the question, which is: why didn't men get more education? 

From a labor cost perspective, the least-educated men are the easiest to replace: the work they do can be most easily mechanized, or most easily replaced by workers in other countries. 

It would be more expensive for companies to have less-educated American men do the same work, and would result in more-expensive goods and services. But if more men were working, supporting more children, wouldn't that be better for all of us? 

This assumes that the least-educated men would work the jobs if they were available. That's a different question for a different post. 

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-Erin M Lillie
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." - Delos B. McKown