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Roachboy: thanks, that clarifies things a bit. I think that what confused me was the notion of talking about 'choice' as related to system outcomes and not to indvidual intent. Choice isn't something I usually think about as a characteristic of systems. What does it mean to say that a system makes a choice if that is divorced from the meanings of individual choices?
The formulation aside, I think I see your point.
I think the reason behind the choice is that it's much easier to simply dig in and ignore the problem than to... well, to do what exactly? Is the ability of the American workforce to compete in a changing environment really a function of US policy and social reproduction (the assumption being that the status quo as it relates to our economic order could be maintained given the correct changes to our social system)? I would think that globalization is a too large a force for that to be the case, though not to say that there is 'nothing to be done' to better adapt to it.
But the kind of changes you're implying to be necessary - and since it is not explicit in your post, I can only guess at this - seem to be radical changes in the social order and especially radical changes as concerns the distribution of wealth, a subject which is in itself almost taboo in our political landscape. I agree with you, as you point out elsewhere, that the notion of wealth as a political commodity is here collapsed to the point that wealth is seen as a 'natural' variable that relates only to individual chutzpah and upon which the political system therefore has no claims. I can only venture that this kind of redistribution would leave those who the system represents, primarily the well-off, significantly worse off than a scenario in which the american middle class economy is allowed to decline. And to play devil's advocate, radical social upheaval can be a really traumatic and destabilizing thing - postcolonial experiences in a number of countries come to mind, and Egypt is one I'm particularly thinking of. I'd note that in that case the country spiralled back into a similarly stratified economic order, with wealth simply having changed hands and class identities having shifted. Arguably, though, the kind of adaptation you're talking about would be designed to head off precisely this kind of breakdown.
But perhaps in this case it's not that there's nothing to be done, but that the costs of doing something meaningful are seen as too high. In any event I think the discussion would be well-served by an elaboration on what particular steps might address the gap you note between our labor pool and the changing job market.
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