On Tue, 05 Sep 2017 17:01:31 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Mon, 04 Sep 2017 12:49:06 +0700, John B wrote:

Apprenticeship used to be a method of learning a trade. Abraham
Lincoln, I believe, "read for the law" which was realistically an
apprenticeship program.

It eventually became a term used to describe a learning period for the
manual trades (one might call them) and then the manual trades became
obsolete. Does anyone get up in the middle of the night to knead
tomorrow's bread? Or dig a ditch by hand?

Yes to people getting up early to make tomorrow's bread. We have dozens
of bakeries around here with people doing exactly that.

Ditches seem to be dug with mechanized equipment rather than a shovel
these days, and that's probably just as well. That kind of labor ends
up being destructive to the laborer.

Destructive? Exercise? Swinging a pick for eight hours a day. Or doing
any other manual labour. How so?

I completed an apprenticeship to be a "Machinist", although I
subsequently went to an engineering school, but I can remember as
early as the mid-late 1960's that very little work for a qualified
machinist existed. One or maybe two in a big shop and the rest were
machine operators.

My apprenticeship, as such, was as a glazier which was my father's
trade. I did that for 7 years during high school and college. But even
in more technical fields like medicine, nursing, etc., there is a period
of apprenticeship by another name.

I know that The Donald talked about apprenticeships, and increasing
employment, and increasing minimum salaries, and reducing costs, and,
and, but I haven't seen much progress being made.

Well, he's made plenty of progress in being a douchebag.

Now there is an exercise in logic. (1) Increase wages which certainly
contributes to higher sales prices, and (2) reduce costs? -- Cheers,

One of the many knots in capitalism. It's a system we're dedicated to
but doesn't really work that well- even though it works better than all
the alternatives tried thus far.

Yup, that paraphrases Winston Churchill, who actually said " Indeed it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except
for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

But still, the basic problem with democracy is the politician gets up
and says, "Vote for me." The audience says, "Why?"

As for capitalism.... what else is there?
--
Cheers,

John B.