How Now Brown Cow?

What if I can't stay
What if you can't stay
What if I can't leave
What if you can't leave
--What Do We Do Now?,
John Hiatt

With people running round and round,
bringing one another down
People running round and round,
bringing one another down
--Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush,
Steve Winwood
_______________

On yesterday's 60 Minutes, Andy Rooney suggested that middle managers -- a group among those hardest hit by today's job losses -- reeducate themselves to become plumbers or other trades craftsmen.

Well, it sounds like a ginger peachy, can-do populist idea, except if all the middle managers do so, they will still be out of a job.

National Public Radio did an in-depth feature on "Retraining and Long-term Unemployment," in which craftsmen themselves were retraining for Information Technology positions, and not enjoying a particularly favorable placement rate. So perhaps Mr. Rooney should have presumed the transition of these hapless middle managers into tradesmen, and then taken them into their next possible incarnation and beyond, until some future imagined period when they might gain security.

The building industry cannot support the tradesmen it presently has. Also, has Mr. Rooney considered the impact of his suggestion upon all the illegal Mexican tradesmen so diligently plying their trade who would be displaced by the earnest middle managers who would be now vying for their jobs?