It's the same thing only different here. I was 30 years in the trades with the last 16 being self employed as a freelance carpenter. It was different when i first started out. All of the new construction here was quality stick built on site. That all changed with the mortgage crisis hit. The banks won't lend money for construction loans anymore. They're too risky. They will loan money for manufactured homes that go up quick.
Most of the manufactured homes are trucked in from Canada now. That's a huge chunk of market share lost to our neighbors up north.
I think i became complacent over the years. If someone had told me twenty years ago that my job as a carpenter could be outsourced to a foreign country ... i never would have thought such a thing possible. My bad for not having the foresight to see the next wave of change and adapt accordingly.It's completely my fault. I should have been able to deal with whatever comes my way and i failed.
Another way we're getting hit here in the Northeast is with energy. Almost all of our petroleum products including gas, diesel, propane, home heating oil ... are coming from Canada.The state's electric utility has been consolidated and sold to a Canadian company. Gotta hand it to em' ... the Canadians are doing a pretty good job.
It's the same/same with wood pellets. Mile long freight cars filled with pellets coming in from the north and barely enough to meet demand here in the states.
All in all ... it's billions and billions of dollars flowing north every year. It's making them rich and us poor.
As regards the mentally challenged: I pump gas these days. Just about anybody can do my job. The company that i work for employed three of those with lesser ability on the pumps for well over twenty years. We lost two of the three over the last few years. One was lost to mental illness and another to physical health problems. We've been trying to get them back on the job over the last month but it's a no-go. They got on social security disability. Once they're paid to stay home ... they never come back. They just stay there and live off the system.
The third of the three mentally challenged is still on the job. He's a real trooper. Always nice to the customers, never calls in sick, and works outdoors in the worst of winter weather. I'm trying to save his job but there's a lot of pressure from above to automate the company gas station. He's in his 50's now and pumping gas is all he knows. It would be really hard to re-train him for another job within the company at this age.
Anyway ... it's an ongoing fight. A change will eventually come. I'm just hoping to hold it off long enough to get us both to retirement age before we're replaced by a machine.
Just a thought ... would it be possible for Patriot to find his friend a regular job in the recycling industry somewhere ? That's one of the options i was looking into last year for our guy when it was the company announced that it was going to automate our gas station.
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