IS OUR CASTE SYSTEM THE PROBLEM? 

North Americans often pride themselves in their version of democracy. "Everybody's equal" is the political cry. That simply isn't true.

Our own caste system may be the cause of our decline in the new world order. Consider how we view people by job classification. The factory sweeper is "common labor" and gets paid minimum wage or close to it. Guys and gals on the factory floor are "blue-collar workers", "paid-by-the-hour". Office workers are "white or pink-collar" and receive a fixed salary. Engineers and computer programmers are classified as "nerds". Without any of the above the operation would quickly come to a halt, yet that vision doesn't seem to penetrate management. They see that work force as flexible, meaning the quantity of that work force can be increased or decreased as demand requires. Much like increasing or decreasing the plant's electrical power requirements. This effect on attitude is disastrous.

In many ivory towers North America it is more lucrative, and long-lasting to move into management, finance or marketing. And, increasingly the best minds have been travelling in that direction. It wasn't always thus: During America's best times -- the period between 1950s and 1960s veterans from World War II, in many instances, chose engineering. A victorious nation rewarded them by ploughing vast sums into educational opportunities that created the training level that gave the cream of the survivors opportunities never before available. What they produced in innovative products and systems not just on earth with unmatched highway systems, but also in the air and space beyond, was directly attributable to that investment in the new education of the day. It provided the intellectual thrust that propelled the mechanical/industrial age into their new-term future.

Anywhere in North America today there are more lawyers, confronting, delaying, obstructing, litigating and destroying what that earlier group built up than there are engineers trying to jump start today's after-burner. When there are more lawyers than engineers in any sizeable political district you can expect more trouble than triumph. And, that's what we are reaping from what we have created.

When a lawyer can pull in annual salary of $200,000, that role-model image can't help but affect young high school students considering. Imagine those power lunches, classy office space, pretty secretaries, corporate Mercedes, partnership bonuses, unlimited expense accounts, and what up-to-now has appeared to be a more socially acceptable pedestal. An environment ruled by the "precedent of the past", that resists new intellectual thinking and where the heaviest physical thing ever lifted is the phone or an American Express card. How does that look compared to using your brain to penetrate the unknown, create the new and actually getting your hands dirty? And working in merely adequate operational quarters and being paid the "industry standard". North America is now paying, and paying dearly, for this economic caste system. Management raised in such a system forces engineers and designers to listen more to marketing forces than creative ones, more to bottom line results for the next quarter than to long-term success and survival of their company. Dumb.

With proper social incentives and availability of training, that floor sweeper can come up with another $7 billion idea equal to the one Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed with just a garage and $500.

Are any North American companies seeing the world through this type of visionary eyes? A few. I wrote a year ago about the Weyerhaeuser Corporation plant in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan that have introduced "the fifth shift" system. One week out of five, a shift of the entire production labor force attends in-house classes to update training, not just for their present job or the next one they may be promoted to, but also the one after that. Wait until their competition feels the results of that investment. It is done in-house because no scholastic institution has the latest equipment to train such workers for the new fields this company is moving into.

Another is EDS (Electronic Data Systems) soon to be ensconced in third millennium-style headquarters in Plano, Texas. They are already spending $100 million a year in training and retraining. Do you really think they are going to have any substantial competition with what that trained workforce will be able to accomplish? Already they can balance 5.4 BILLION checking accounts in one second. And they can handle the communications section of any business -- anywhere in the world -- from Plano, Texas. Think that isn't going to downsize some industries? By remote control?

Try to stick around. Another new game has just begun.

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