Reichs Boats essays

Reich's Boats essays In the late 1970's it was customary for families to have the dad as the bread winner. The Leave it to Beaver persona poured from home to home and engrossed the budding families to come. Now in the modern day Gucci society, a one person income is not adequate enough to keep a family above water. Everything is getting to be more and more expensive, but the income of modern families, is not rising to the occasion. Robert Reich in Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer, describes a metaphor of three boats, explaining the fates of the following American workers: the routine producer, the in-person server, and the symbolic analyst. The first group of American workers that Reich discusses is the routine producer, or factory worker. He stresses that in the mid twentieth century, routine producers were to make a decent living: they could buy homes, take annual vacations, and save toward retirement(254). However, Reich states that this is no longer the case. His metaphorical boat containing the routine producers is sinking steadily(254). Because of ease of transportation as well as advances in communication, modern factories can be installed all most any where on the globe(254). Therefore, it is a simple process for factories simply to relocate wherever labor is cheapest. Reich cites the example of AT Louisiana relocated to Singapore where labor cost were cheaper. However, by the late 1980s, ATs strategic brokers found that routine producers in Thailand were eager to assemble telephones for a small fraction of the wagers of routine producers in Singapore(255). Thus, the factory was once again moved in the quest for cheaper labor(255). Reich stresses that routine producers in the united states, then, are in dir...