Thomas Friedman has been on fire the last couple years, there isn’t much he has said that I haven’t agreed with. His latest column is entitled Average Is Over and is a MUST read.

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

In the last decade Americans have found that they are now competing for more and more jobs against people in other countries as well as gains in automation technology. I’m not going to call this good or bad, just inevitable.

What I find kinda funny is politicians in the USA complain about companies hiring people abroad, or moving factories abroad, but in the next sentence they say they don’t want the government in a free market. A free market doesn’t necessarily produce the best market for the people working in a specific country. It produces the best market for buyers and sellers.

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