Well, I have been doing some digging on TOTAL national debt, and not just the yearly deficits posted by ** Short **. According to my cite, the total National Debt of the US is 59.3% of the GDP, compared to 65.2% for France, 62.6% for Germany, 117.7% for Italy, and a total of 74.8% for the general Euro area. Cite
Warning, PDF file - info on third page.
The job situation is not gettting “better”, in that we are not creating 100,000 new jobs per week, so more people are jobless now, not less.
I wont argue with your point right now, as long as you admit that we need to create MORE than 100,000 new jobs per week because of new immigrants before we can start to reduce any unemployment of americans. I am only reminding everyone that when you increase our population by 100,000 each week, you have to structurally increase our highways, schools, hospitals, jails, jobs, etc just to maintain current standard of living for everyone else.
If you are saying that letting in an additional 100,000 people each week, year after year, decade after decade, always results in more than 100,000 new jobs being created each week, that is your point to prove.
To continue this minor hijack: I’m with you there. I’ve often wondered why the free-traders aren’t up in arms about this blatant government meddling in the labor market. Who needs immigration restrictions and regulation? Let the market sort it all out. If we’re going to do this global capitalism thing, let’s do it right and proper.
Sorry. That’s probably worthy of its own thread and is way off topic.
Actually, I just wanted to give my own anecdotal evidence as an American who lives in France and has lived in Germany. It is generally much easier to be unemployed in Europe than it is in America—though I should add that I have little personal experience with either. Being poor in Europe (and I have extensive personal experience with this) is definitely easier. Healthcare has been cheaper, easier, and quicker for me here than it ever was in the States. And the French government helps out with rent if you earn under a certain amount, even if you’re a foreigner. There’s a reason why the unemployment rates can perpetually hover around 10% without causing massive riots, or even serious proposals to change the system in any major way. I’ve met some pretty rabidly right-wing French people, and not a single one of them would dream of giving up their beloved sécurité sociale.
I haven’t noticed the “deteriorating social fabric” either, but then I frankly have no idea what that even means.
As for the 35 hour week (which seems to be on its way out, anyway): it really only had any impact on hourly workers. I teach English to business people, and they work much, much more than 35 hours a week. So I suppose this is the only point I have to make which is directly relevant to the OP: the problem with any such law is enforcing it.
By the way, I was under the impression that each government calculates their own unemployment rates and that they all do so differently, so variation in these rates may not reflect reality with much accuracy. Can somebody confirm/debunk this?
The most ardent free traders DO!!! support free movement of labor , that is why so many of our jobs are moving to asia where the average factory wage is 61 cents an hour.
Apparently you are unaware of how many factories are closing in american and moving to asia becuase of cheaper labor.
Getting the cheapest world price for labor, is the whole point of free trade. It makes higher profits for companies that close their offices and plants in Indiana, and move them to asia.
The democrats, republicans, and Libertarians all agree that if a company can hire a chinese communist to do the job cheaper than it costs to hire an american, then foreign labor should be used.
There is no way any american can compete with the price of asian labor, esp when there are no social security costs, no state income taxes, no unemployment insurance , no workers comp, no medical benefits , no osha rules to follow, no environmental epa rules to obey, no unions to contend with, etc.
Susanann:
The government takes unemployment data from the number of people claiming unemployment insurance. No need to actively survey the people.
US unemployment is going down, not up. So I’d say it’s your point to prove.
I suppose I should have been clearer. What I meant by free movement of labor is opening up borders and allowing anyone to go anywhere to work.
It would open up, if nothing else, a discussion of the globalization of labor standards.
I imagine many illegal immigrants work off the books, so neither their employment nor their unemployment would be counted in the “100,000 new jobs a week” that must be created.
Regards,
Shodan
As a free market supporter, I’ve got no problems with cross-border movement of labor, in theory.
The problem is that when people come to a wealthy country, they get net benefits that they haven’t paid for. Welfare, health care, high quality infrastructure… These things were paid for by taxes on people who have been paying all their lives.
The other issue is one of national security. Totally porous borders are a security nightmare.
I would be in favor of an open border policy under these conditions: The applicant has to pass a security check which he or she must pay for, and the person must post a bond worth the price of transportation to the home country.
This person will not be eligible for any social benefits. No unemployment insurance, no welfare, nothing. For a period of five years. At the end of that period, the person can then either apply for legal resident status with full social benefits, or get on the boat and go home. If, during the 5 year probationary period the person can not look after himself (no money, no job), the state will use the posted bond to put the person back on the boat home.
There are still problems with this, of course. The main one being that if America completely opened its borders in this way, it would soon be swamped with people looking for work. Eventually that would sort itself out, but it would be destabilizing as hell. So a further refinement would be that anyone who wants to come must have a job offer in hand.
cmkeller: we just finished putting that canard to bed in the Pit. They do a survey of households, and they also do a survey of employers. Unemployment is NOT constructed from the number of people collecting unemployment.
Link to info: http://www.bls.gov/lau/lauhvse.htm#hvse
This must be about the thousandth time I’ve seen someone say this, and about the thousandth time it’s had to be debunked.
So how does an american citizen compete with an asian?
If an american citizen is hired, the company has to pay social security tax, state taxes, unemployment benifits, workers compensation, medical benefits, osha costs, epa costs, etc.
If a business moves its factory to china, it pays the chinese communist worker 61 cents, and does not have to worry about worker safety, polluting the air and water, no medical benfits to pay, no social security , etc.
Who do you free traders think is going to pay/make up the lost income taxes that unemployed americans now no longer pay?
I am still waiting to hear from someone who was surveyed by the Department of Labor, who was actually surveyed in the monthly unemployment counts.
Uh, by being more productive?
Why do you think Americans make more than people in Singapore? Do you think it’s because the American government has cleverly gamed the system to funnel most of the world’s money to Americans?
Americans make more money because they are more productive. They are more productive because they have better educations, they have access to good roads, a large market is nearby (other Americans), a stable government, etc. But most importantly, they are more productive because their work is greatly magnified by intensive capital investment.
Auto workers don’t make good wages because they have a good union. They make good wages because they have pneumatic tools, assembly lines, hydraulic lifts, precision tools, easy acces to high quality raw materials, and most importantly - they have a multi-billion dollar organization behind them that designs, engineers, markets and distributes the things they make.
In a world of free movement of capital, America still has massive advantages. The industries that tend to move are ones in which the cost of the end product is determined mostly by the cost of the manual labor that went into making it. So you see shoe and shirt manufacturers moving overseas, but you don’t see a lot of aircraft companies setting up in Bangladesh.
You can screw with the market if you want, and prevent capital from flowing to places where it is most effective. But you do so at your own peril. You can prevent American companies from moving to places that are more economically efficient, but you can’t stop British, Japanese, and Canadian companies from doing it. So you’ll put your American companies at a permanent disadvantage. Either way, the jobs are leaving. But if you opt for efficiency instead of protectionism, new jobs will be created with the additional profit that accrues.
Intensive capital investment is not being made in america anymore, it is now being made in asia.
Nearly every american company is closing american offices and plants, and building new ones in asia.
American companies are building offices, and factories, the most modern and productive in the world, lots of them- in asia, not here.
If capital investment, modern factories, high tech are what makes the difference, then it will be asia that leads the world in the future, it will be asia that is most productive, it will be asia that will have the future jobs .
Capital investment doesn’t just involve office buildings. It includes capital invested by others in the surrounding infrastructure. Good roads, rail systems, telecommunications, waste disposal, etc. ad infinitem.
Then there is the competitive advantage that comes from being in an area of high industrialization. If a factory in Detroit needs some new bearings , it can find a manufacturer locally, or use Fed-Ex to bring things in overnight. If a factory in Bangladesh needs a new bearing for a critical machine, it may be days to get a new one.
Then there’s political stability. No one in the U.S. worries about investing their billions and then losing the investment in a coup. 3rd world countries have immature governments. Not just the threat of coups, but of radical changes in the tax structure or regulation happen all the time.
But in the end, you’re right - capital is flowing into the 3rd world at a pretty good rate. This makes them more competitive. This is a good thing! Increasing wealth in the 3rd world raises world GDP, makes the world more stable, and most importantly, improves the lives of the people who need improvement the most.
And if enough capital gets invested there to make those people as productive as workers in the U.S., do you know what will happen? Their wages will rise.
Given free capital movement around the world, you will not wind up with the same wages everywhere. Rather, what you will find is that wages stabilize in a way that reflect the actual worker value in each country. Again, that’s a good thing. It’s moral and just. If someone can be productive, but you prevent them from making a living by using the force of government to stop people trading with them, you are acting immorally.
Free trade is economically efficient, raises the wealth of all people engaged in trade, and is the moral course of action.
Sure, you can legislate wealth. Rich people and big corporations do it all the time. Ever hear of “special interest legislation”? Every wonder why the Repubs campaign coffers are always full to overflowing? Simple logic will tell you that when people have enough wealth to affect the rules under which they do business, they will use that wealth for that purpose.
To answer the OP, 40 hour work weeks are an EXCELLENT answer to unemployment, but free market types will oppose them because they violate the principle that “Regular Folks Must Always Bend Over and Spread 'Em for Rich Folks No Matter What” which lies at the heart of free-market capitalism.
BTW, an economy is NOT like an ecosystem. It’s an artificial construct created by human beings. We make the rules. Whole different kettle o’ fish.
You can legislate the distribution of wealth. You can not legislate the creation of wealth.
I’m sorry to poke in here at the end. But this is an old misconception which should have been abandoned many years ago. An economy is very like an ecosystem (not identical surely, but many of the key characteristics are similar). Many aspects of ecosystems can be understood as an exercise of the law of supply and demand. Organisms demand life, and the environment supplies the resources necessary to sustain it. Massive explosions of species occur after massive extinctions because vast ecological niches (resource supplies) become available. New species succeed at a greater rate because of the increased availability of said resources.
My only point is that the law of supply and demand is not simply an arbitrary rule that people have created. It is just as natural a law as gravity. Not as easy to measure or understand, perhaps, but just as natural. We create institutions to work against it at our peril.
Exactly. You cannot violate fundamental laws of economics. It’s like trying to change laws of physics.
Many governments have found out the hard way.
Look, if I agree to give you a pig for a dozen chickens, which is what economics is at base, there’s no mystical “law of nature” about it. No watery tart clad in shimmering white samite threw some damn First Economist a scimitar. Give it up, people. It’s a SOCIAL CONVENTION.