A Haitian immigrant and two and a quarter wannabee engineers for your ‘random’ sample, huh.

I love it when you opine: “It required wrenching(sic) adjustments as the economy shifted from one based on natural resources to one geared toward technology and information.”

Read the “wrenching” adjustments this way: Oregon has shifted away from the solid, bedrock industies – who produced a variety of products from an overwhelming gift of natural resources and who gained Oregon global significance – to an economy of janitorial, service-related technocrats whose jobs depend solely upon the drifting whim of fickle foriegn and domestic consumer markets.

Since your own occupation as a consultant is obviously a highly suspect service-based labor with a questionable future, I can onyl hope that your engineering degree taught you enough to lubricate tractors and harvesters on the farm.