Depends on who one talks to, OJ.

I myself have had more than 1 conversation about this.

Was paying the mortgage last month, somehow got on the topic - seems the clerk's 28 y.o. brother just got canned from Motorola and had survived 5 purges.

I suggested he's young and might want to think about electrician or plumber. Mostly good hours and 1 can make $100G/yr.

And in front of the purchaser of my home, a recent master's from U of C, wife in residency, we were discussing it w/the home inspector and basically said who wants to spend all that money on a degree? Neither my husband nor the home inspector had a degree but make really good money.

I spend far more time telling my kids the importance of finding work they find satisfying and fulfilling rather than education for education's sake. I'm extremely well educated yet certainly earn far below what one would expect for that amount of education. My husband, who did not complete college, makes far more because he saw where jobs were going and seized the moment. We tell our children endlessly that making a good living doesn't necessarily have anything to do with education and they should pursue their interests more than a degree.

I don't exactly see where you're making the connection between the self-help industry and what jobs are valued by Americans.
I know that in the small city in the Northeast that I live in, there is a shortage of neither auto mechanics, nor lawyers, but their is a shortage of certain types of engineers. As business has moved South over the past few decades, most of the tech jobs left, and the few that stayed are now overqualified, unemployed, or switched careers. That's not to say that there were far, far, more applicants than their are jobs when a certain military contractor got a local contract recently, but more that most of the smart skilled people have left the small cities in the Northeast, along with the manufacturing laborers.
But I agree that the glamor of certain careers misleads children into having somewhat unrealistic job fantasies, and the self-help industry is there to support them when they become waiters instead of actors, high-school teachers instead of professors, construction workers instead of architects.
I think the lack of skilled labor positions being filled has more to do with the demand for this type of labor being filled by companies trying to make a profit. Can you give more examples of the problem as you see it?
The thing I notice most about self-help products is their startling similarity to certain aspects of religion; mostly in how both give people simple answers to complex questions. Would you agree?

Grog:

I think the lack of skilled labor positions being filled has more to do with the demand for this type of labor being filled by companies trying to make a profit

I understand what all those words mean, but I am totally unable to parse what you mean there. What?

Grog believes profit is a dirty word.

[T]he pop-psychology menu increasingly has been flavored by [...] empowerment — that can be summarized as: Believe it, achieve it.

Millions of everyday Americans owe their feelings of "personal power" to [...] Tony Robbins...

...a bizarre disconnect between perceived self-worth and provable skill.

It's true that one must have a foundation of knowledge, talent, and/or skill in order to take advantage of the "empowerment" message, but it's equally true that millions of people don't fully realize the potential of their talents, knowledge, or skills because of self-doubt, or even just an unfounded pessimism.

Tony Robbins hasn't said, (in the few hours of exposure that I've had to him), that if you believe, you cannot fail to achieve, but rather that if you DON'T believe, you will surely never achieve.
Not all who dare find glory, but none of those who sit at home do.

President Clinton is the perfect example of such.
When he set out to seek the Office of POTUS, it seemed as futile as searching for the Holy Grail.
But, simply by being in the race, "believing that he could achieve", he was able to capitalize on the seemingly endless lucky breaks that came his way.

Dell, Gates, Yang, Bezos, Kroc, Brin, and Paige didn't get to where they are/were by believing that they couldn't.

Couples write partnership covenants based on the utopian blather of John Gray.

I know a couple whose marriage was saved by the works of John Gray.

While, in the bits of Gray that I've read, he's never written anything that I haven't read before, it's certainly true that different presentations resonate with different people.
Most teachers and instructors are presenting the same knowledge, but some students don't get it with one instructor, but see the light with another.

Therefore, although Gray might not be introducing anything new, it's valuable for him to present it uniquely, and so connect with that small group of peole who didn't "get it" with other presentations.

The thing I notice most about self-help products is their startling similarity to certain aspects of religion; mostly in how both give people simple answers to complex questions.

Sometimes the questions are needlessly complex, and a simple answer gets right to the heart of the problem.

For instance, if a person, couple or organization is near bankruptcy, their financial situations might be complex, but the core of their problem is simple: They're spending too much money.
How they cut back might not be as important as their initial acceptance that they need to cut back, that their problems aren't going to self-correct.

As the rehab community puts it: "First, you have to want to change".

People have widely varying reasons for despair, but religion can give them a very long-term perspective, or a bird's eye view, and allow them to see the forest, not just the trees.
That simple insight is sometimes enough.

Vo-tec certainly CAN be for winners.
Spend a year learning to be an automotive tech, a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) tech, or just SIX WEEKS learning how to drive truck, and you can easily make $ 40K/year with a few years of experience, and top out around $ 60K/yr.

I am a college professor and therefore teach the results of American high schools. Based on that evidence, this is what all the self-esteem stuff has done: Told students who are literally incapable of writing a sentence with a subject and a verb "You're an excellent writer!" The student, not knowing better, takes this at face value and makes no effort to improve. Thus we have US college students who cannot construct an English sentence.

Every single "educational theorist" - note I don't say educator - should be shot. These people are killing our nation.

Michael - Yes, a certain amount of confidence is a necessary but not sufficient condition to succeed. And so is effort. But many people are not making this point; rather, they're saying, self-confidence is a SUFFICIENT condition to succeed. And regarding effort, they're saying it's not necessary, since they're telling every incompetent, "You're a completely perfect hypergenius!!!"

I retired at age 55 as a senior executive of a major aerospace manufacturer located in the northwest. I and many of my fellow senior executives had little more than a high school education. Instead we had intense interest in the work and we managed our careers. Obeying the rules posted on the bulletin board will keep you from being terminated but they will do little to advance your career. There is a set of unwritten rules for effective career management. Some of those rules are set forth in a concept titled ‘Emotional Intelligence’. It also helped that my wife was willing to relocate from west to east coast and back four times in thirty years. It sure was exciting.

Grog:

They can't be engineers, they can be skilled manual laborers. They can learn to fix watches, not design them.

Yes, self-help, just like Marxism, Darwinism and Freudianism, fills the God-shaped hole to some limited degree for many people, but being based on lies instead of Truth is generally ineffective.

white collar work just isn't that much fun anymore. my only goal for my kids is that they don't end up in a cubicle somewhere.

Mike Earl: I know its awkward. Give me one more chance. Its cheaper to higher one engineer and 20 unskilled laborers to work on his plans than it is to hire 20 skilled laborers to work together to do the same work. I know that this analogy is almost simpliflied to the point of meaninglessness, but I think you might know what I mean. Engineers and slave laborers are much better adapted to the corporate model than the small business and union-certified skilled laborers. Thus, the middle class disappears, and America becomes a nations of drones and overseers.

OJ: There is becoming less and less niche for watch-fixers when you can just buy a new watch at Walmart for $5. I agree with you, that the occupational trends that you are commenting on are something that is cause for concern; but to blame self-help books is to overlook factors that I would say are a lot more influential.
No, Marxism, Freudianism, and Darwinism do not offer definite Truth, but they offers concrete methods of analysis whereby an observer can pursue truth; God-based truth wants definite, concrete, and terminating conclusions. The three aforementioned schools of secularism offer reasoning without resort to supernatural concepts.
All are rooted in faith, even the self-help industry, and all are entitled to be freely interpreted. I won't even comment on your opinion of Marx/Freud/Darwin basing their ideas on lies; but I'm sure that their must be much less reliable for 21st century humans than the collected myths of ancient Jews are.
So please, tell me how you think the self-help and judeo-christianity are radically different from each other?

Thus, the middle class disappears...

Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal and Lincoln Anderson of LPL Financial Services recently pointed out that the latest Census data show that, far from shrinking or losing ground, the middle class in America has become a good deal richer.

“Back in 1967,” they write, “the income range for the middle class [that is, the third of five quintiles] was between $28,800 and $39,000 (in today’s dollars). Now that income range is between $38,000 and $59,000.” In 1967, one family in ten had an income of more than $75,000 (in 2004 dollars); today, it’s one in four.

[T]ell me how you think the self-help and judeo-christianity are radically different from each other?

The basis of self-help is to look inward; the concept is that humans are perfectible.

The basis of religion is to look outward; the concept is that humans aren't perfect, and could use a little help.

Both are valid, but if self-help isn't subordinate to religious philosophy, then bad things happen.

Grog: Small businesses are expanding rapidly. Big corporations (other than in new tech) are mostly stagnating or shrinking. One of the unheralded effects of computuer technology, ironically the opposite of what was expected to happen, is that it has decreased the advantages to being in a large firm. The advantages that big firms had in the middle of the century had to do with administration and centralized systems. That has become less and less of an advantage over the last 30 years and, as with General Motors, can even become a hindrance.

One exception is WalMart but even that exception proves the point. WalMart's original advantage was in highly efficient distribution that allowed it to be profitable on a lower margin than its competitors. Even now, when it uses its market power to push its suppliers for lower prices, it still makes do -- over all -- with lower margins.

Rereading, I see that Big corporations (other than in new tech) are mostly stagnating or shrinking is unacceptably hyperbolic. However, the point about the relative dynamism of small business v. large business remains.

David:

Not that hyperbolic.

Employment at big companies, as a group, is shrinking, regardless of what their profits or production growth might be.

i guess in a few years al queda will have to crash piper cubs into strip malls, once the distributed architecture takes hold :)

Grog, If English isn't your native language, please forgive me for pointing out that you make numerous errors in spelling and usage.

If English is your native language and you are a product of the public school system, you were probably told that your feelings are as good as someone else's facts and that there are no absolutes. That simply isn't true.

There are absolutes and one of them is that many words that sound alike, have very different meanings. For instance, the word, higher, you used in the phrase, "Its cheaper to higher one engineer ... " is an adverb meaning, in a relatively more elevated position. I believe you meant to use the word, hire, a verb which means, employ the services of.

Your comments simply can't be taken seriously if you continue to misuse, among others, the words, there, their, and they're.

Of course, I'd still disagree with everything you say even if you wrote as well as oj and the others who comment here, but at least it wouldn't painful on the eyes to read it.

Erp: Eye love ewe two.

Employment at big companies is shrinking because of outsourcing.
The Walmart effect can be seen in all industries; someone please name one where there is more competition among smaller firms than there are mergers and fewer firms.
The income disparities in the world are more unequal than they have ever been, and there is no sign of this process stopping. Give me something that isn't written by the WSJ that would prove otherwise.
I think that in certain industries, the small business vs. big business dynamism described above holds true; and I think this is in large part due to the internet and other recent tech/communications developments that have given small businesses an edge that big businesses once had. But, in traveling throughout the Northeast, I notice very few town where strip malls with franchises haven't taken over. And I think that the income disparity cancels out the positive notions associated with the recent growths of small businesses; More people are starting businesses, but they were already rich in the first place.
I see very little to be optimistic about when I think about the future of jobs in the United States. Somebody please make be feel better.

Michael: Both Self-Helf and Religions are selling simple answers to complex problems; I don't see where you're coming from when you say that self-help posits that humans are perfectable. And I don't why you don't think that religion is personal changes; Both systems have the same dynamics in my eyes.
I don't see a problem with either religion, self-help, or AA giving people ways to change their live; I have no data to back this up, but I am certain that Christianity and AA has helped more drug addicts recover than any other institution in the history of the world. The only problem I see, is that the claim from an outside source to have the simple answers to the complex problems can sometimes manifest itself in a very violent and destructive hubris (i.e. the war on terror) that allows for the powerful to manipulate the desperation of the powerless.

Grog:

You live in a world that produces more food than its inhabitants can eat and where the only places folks go hungry are where the distribution of that food is poorly handled. To fret about income disparities at such a time of unparalleled plenty is truly trivial.

Grog:

AA is Christian. The only effective programs for addicts are.

Grog:

The income disparity in the world today is worse than ever? Worse than in 1789? 1215? 30?

You can't possibly believe 2006 is the nadir. Even 1936 (for a relatively recent example) was much worse than today.

Now, the foundational labor structure has changed a lot since 1936, but that has little to do with income levels. In other comments, you have said you aren't a leftist, but the idea of trumpeting income disparity is very much a leftist chant.

And how can you call "more people" who are starting businesses already rich? My wife's hairdresser is on her third solo try in 5 years - she's not rich. The sub shops and laundries and other small businesses that I frequent aren't run by rich people, so far as I can tell. Most small start-ups don't make it, and their owners aren't rich.

Read some P.J. O'Rourke ("Eat the Rich") for a different perspective. Economics isn't your strong suit right now.

Did I miss something?

I thought grog was talking about income disparity in the US, then it becomes the world.

Grog:

If the unskilled workers are there anyway, surely the business is doing a positive service by putting them to good use?

You would have a better argument if unemployment in the US were not near a historic low. Globalization is just like any other increase in productivity (eg, robotics), but for some reason labor-lump fallicies cause people to think it is uniquely harmful to the working class, rather than another necessary step in making the whole planet absurdly rich.

We are the world.

Heck, and all this time, I believed that the power of 12 step groups was GOD stepping into individual lives and performing mind surgery on willing patients. In real life, only wacked out doctors are the only ones who insist on performing surgery on themselves.

I see very little to be optimistic about when I think about the future of jobs in the United States. Somebody please make me feel better.

In 2030, the U.S. GNP is likely to be approximately $ 19 trillion, in 2005 dollars, and require a labor force of at least 180 million people, 35 million more than are currently employed.

However, by 2030, 95% of the 78 million Baby Boomers will be retired, and only 40 million new American-born workers will have joined the workforce by then.

Results ?
Massive immigration, as well as acute labor shortages, particularly in jobs requiring high skills or education.

The effects will begin by 2015.