Bill Clinton: “Some will and some won't. But that's always been the case. That is, if you go back to the whole history of America…”

“Some will and some won't. But that's always been the case. That is, if you go back to the whole history of America, first of all, jobs moved from one part of our country to another because of labor costs. Then jobs moved from one sector of the country into another. We used to have a whole lot of people working in agriculture, for example. Now, less than 3 percent of our people can produce enough food to feed all of us and half the world to boot. So they have to find other things to do. The same percentage of our wealth today comes from manufacturing as it did 15 years ago. But fewer people do it because fewer people can make more output in manufacturing. So we're in this constant struggle to create more new jobs than we're losing. And what's happened in the last 20 years for the first time ever--at least since we've been charting these things--we've been creating new jobs, but they're not better than the ones we're losing. That had not happened to us before. And that's why average wages have been stagnant in the country for 20 years. Some are better, but some are not. So what my challenge is is to identify the new technologies of the 21st century, make sure we are targeting investments on those technologies, make sure we are educating and training our people for those jobs, and make sure that the jobs we create are (a) as numerous and (b) better than the jobs we're losing. That is the great test of keeping the middle class alive in America. It's very hard to do, but we're trying to be on the path to do it. I think we're doing the right things. Defense Conversion [A General Dynamics electric boat division worker asked about the Sea Wolf submarine program and retraining for defense workers.]”