>>>If you don't learn, you've got NO chance at all.
>>
>>So you MUST learn, and I agree with that. It's just the elegant path how it changed from "not guaranteed" to "not even promised" :).
>
>And I'm still not clear on how somebody who is not capable of learning more skilled jobs is supposed to learn a more skilled job. I just wish people would stop equating the entire world with themselves. I can learn a new skill, therefore everybody can. Simply not true.
That's also a part of the (neo?)-lessez-faire capitalism, the "it's not the corporation that closed your job to reduce cost, it's you who allowed yourself to become obsolete" mantra. And a nice way to dampen protests is to offer the laid off some courses in whatever was new and prosperous... sounding. Their new skills won't get them jobs, as the whole re-education thing is usually a scam to, well, disperse the moment when people are truly left without a job. They'll finish their hopeless courses at different times and places, and they'll never gather again in the mass they had on the last day before the layoff. And they'll only have themselves to blame if they fail the final exams, or just aren't able to find a job when they pass. So the system will tell them, at least.