Let’s get this out of the way before someone attempts to ambush me about three paragraphs down; I have no axe to grind with education; I’m an education junkie. I have an uncontrollable urge to gain knowledge in about any subject that one could mention. The pitfall of my broad based education was that reality crept into my life when I was sleeping.

Now that I’ve confessed, we can move on. Americans aren’t working, of that fact, few would argue. Why Americans aren’t working becomes the scathing question.

President Obama believes that it is because child tax credits aren’t high enough, or child care deductions should be increased. Or, perhaps creating a way of forgiving student loans is the answer? Our president will promise the moon and stars tonight at the behest of his fellow Democrats, who have lost three important elections in a row. But will he address the core cause for unemployment? Did Obama’s Republican predecessors address those core issues? I think not.

We must realize that many young men and women aren’t working due to their educations. Say what? Sure, a young bright or dim mind (either can attend) goes off to college and comes out the other end with one of two things; huge debt or broke parents. They also come out with the expectation (as promised) of a $60K starting salary and no heavy lifting.

Last year, the 2009 college graduating class was the largest in our history. This year, it is reported that college enrollment is up. The problem of course is that many of last year’s kids and the kids from the year before are still looking for jobs.

This all reminds me of the old Johnny Carson Christmas joke. Carson announced that he had an important message from the post office. “Don’t mail packages early! Otherwise, they’ll get mixed up with last years.”

America went through a long period of time that went like this, “Oh, William, it’s so nice to see you. What have you done with your life?”

“Well,” William states proudly, “I’m an electrician apprentice these days.”

“Hmmmmm, I see, couldn’t qualify for college huh?”

College became an American industry with massive government subsidy at all levels, student loan programs, low qualifying standards, and the promise of $60K per year to start and no heavy lifting.

During this period, the trades in general suffered significant losses of apprentice programs and trade schools. They were guffawed as expendable lower class blue collar workers; who needs them?

In the interim, America attempted to covert our vibrant economy from one of a broad based agriculture and manufacturing nation, to that of a service and information basis. One where the college educated would work and play and all wealth would be anchored by an endless stream of high paying information and service sector jobs; jobs with no heavy lifting.

Our industrial might was shipped to Korea, China, India, Japan, and other countries who valued tradesmen and manual labor even less than we did. To the point in fact, that much of our food now comes from China, South America, Mexico, and other distant ports of call. It is soooo much easier to simply pay the foreign peons to grow food, than to tolerate the sweaty business of growing and packaging the same in America.

How has our government’s plan worked out for Americans? Why are we in the third year of a full blown crises when all a person has to do is go to college and earn $60K per year to start with no heavy lifting? Why is the Chinese economy growing while ours is suffering terrible decline?

In short, the answer to the above questions is that the world that our leadership and academics imagined, was exactly that; imaginary. In the harsh realm of reality there must be a balance that includes those who produce real goods and a mindset that values this sector, rather than labeling them as underachievers.

In the old Jim Croce song, “Workin’ at the Carwash Blues,” there is line regarding a man who was on a search for a good job that goes like this, “I told the man that I was genius, he said we got all that we can use, I’ve got those steadily depressing, low down mind messin’, workin’ at the carwash blues.” The point here is that in a finite world there are limits; we have all the geniuses that we can use.

Today, the entire plan has backfired on the crafters of the same, as accounting, engineering, research and development, computer programmers, and systems designers, to name just a few, are being outsourced, as now, we no longer value these occupations if in fact ANYONE on the planet can do it cheaper.

The irony here is that those who engineered our phantom service and information economy, no longer have the base employment (and the thus the tax base) to support their own formerly considered, invincible institutions. What goes around comes around. Unfortunately it has come around to all of us; we have become casualties of friendly fire.

Americans are not above producing the clothing that we wear on our backs, nor the food that we put on our tables, nor the autos that we once drove to our former jobs. We are not above producing the furniture that we sit on, the textiles that we lay on, or the utensils that we use to feed ourselves. Beliefs counter to the above, exist only in the minds of those who would do just about anything to get out of the heavy lifting.