Don’t European countries have higher permanent unemployment levels than the U.S.?
The job situation is indeed dire for some, but TBH, it was always a matter of time before the unsustainable became, well, unsustainable. The cold hard fact of the matter is that we have a big, soft, underskilled, overpaid “middle class”; folks that were able to secure good jobs when there was more demand than supply. Now that the demand has abated and the cost of labor here makes it not worth it, the pain begins. I’m very sorry that it’s happening, but it was inevitable.
That is NOT!!! “capitalism”.
Capitalism assumes a free flow of labor and capital BOTH ways, perfect knowlege in the marketplace, no trade restrictions, equal government regulations and taxes, and a free flow of goods and services with no restrictions of goods by BOTH/either of the countries.
One-sided trade agreements and unequal restrictions and unequal limitations is not capitalism.
Historically yes, but the United States is changing and the trends are reversing. Historically the United States used to be a major superpower industrial and technological giant with the highest standard of living in the world, the most best jobs, and the highest wages.
Historically, the United States had protective trade tariffs, it had a trade embargo against Communist China and it had limited immigration.
In the 1960’s the US had the highest wages in the world, and in manufactured goods the US out-produced all of the rest of the world combined! Moreover, manufactured goods “MADE IN USA” up thru the 1960’s were the best products in the world and the most sought after.
For the last 30 years, since the 1970’s, we have been steadily closing our factories, we have been steadily eliminating our trade protections, eliminating our trade tariffs and we have changed our immigration policies to now let in record numbers of third world peoples instead of the old way of letting in a much smaller number of immigrants and most of those used to come from traditional Western Europe.
Come back and ask that same question in 2040 when there will be 400 million people, mostly illiterate and unskilled, living in the United States, or come back when there are a billion illiterate and unskilled people living in the United States at the end of the century and come back and ask after the last American factory closes its doors and moves to asia.
A country, any country, that (1)overpopulates, that (2)gets rid of its industry and its manufacturing, and (3)amasses huge national debt, is on a fast course for permanent unemployment and permanent economic depression.
On what planet did you find that number? It’s flat-out ridiculous. You think the population is going to go from 300 million to a billion in a country that’s already industrialized?
Susanann, I hate to interrupt your anti-corporate, anti-immigration, protectionist, xenophobic rants with actual facts. According to the World Trade Organization and The CIA World Factbook here are the top exporting countries in 2009:
1 People’s Republic of China $1,204
2 Germany $1,159
3 United States $1,046
4 Japan $542
5 France $472
(all numbers in billions)
Here are the nations with the top 5 GDP (market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year) in 2009:
1 United States $14,430
2 Japan $5,108
3 People’s Republic of China $4,814
4 Germany $3,273
5 France $2,666
(all numbers in billions)
According to this economists chart, the US manufacturing output exceeded China, Russia, Brazil and India COMBINED in 2007.
What people like you seem to forget that while China is experiencing a boom, they are still ranked 102nd in per capita GDP ($6,600 per person).
(1.) U.S. population to hit 1 billion by 2100
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
4/30/2008
If the USA seems too crowded and its roads too congested now, imagine future generations: The nation’s population could more than triple to 1 billion as early as 2100.
The nation currently has almost 304 million people and is the world’s third most populous, behind China (1.3 billion) and India (1.1 billion).
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2008-04-28-onebillion_N.htm
(2.) **The United States in the year 2100 **will NOT!!! be industrialized. We are already well into the process of **de-industrializing **the US. The United States is moving its industry and it manufacturing to other countries. It already is VERY hard to find clothes, appliances, computers, kitchenware, televisions, toys, etc that are still manufactured in USA. The United States , very shortly, is NOT going to be an industrialized society. It will also be broke, it will be unable to feed its population or provide energy to its 1 billion people, and the United States will be too far in debt to buy manufactured products from other counties.
Also, most of the manufacturing jobs lost have not been lost to offshoring, but automation. We produce MORE now than we have in the past, we just produce it with more machines and robots. Robotics was really in its infancy in the 1960s and a lot of manufacturing labor was required for production. That isn’t the case anymore.
And while this was happening, we didn’t simultaneously increase the education and knowledge base of our working class. We have a lot of people who historically are fit for menial labor jobs, and machines doing the menial labor now.
So menial labor has become service industry jobs, and low level service industry jobs don’t pay well because you need to serve a cheeseburger for $1 and there isn’t any room in your margin for anything approaching a living wage.
Well, I don’t know about that. I’m sure that once China has a chicken in every pot there will still be poor people somewhere else and we’ll be outsourcing to, say, Africa.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I hate to break your bubble, and cause you to lose faith in your government statistics, but I go to the stores, and I have eyes.
I can see where all the goods currently sold in the United States are being made - and it is NOT!!! America. I can see all the foreign cars and foreign car parts and the foreign steel.
I can read the all labels on clothes, shoes, toys, computers, tools, pots and pans, light bulbs, televisions, DVD players, bicycles, scooters, shovels, brooms, mops, refrigerators, microwave ovens, pencils, sports equipment, lawn and yard equipment, hardware fixtures, plumbing fixtures, electrical equipment, etc. and see what **foreign **country made them all.
…and so can everyone else.
That estimate is complete crap that does not deserve to be taken seriously, and the author of the article you’re quoting doesn’t stand by it. (That’s not good journalism.) And you left out this bit. Since it came between two other paragraphs you did quote I can say you did it on purpose:
Fertility rates and immigration are not going to remain constant and it’s ridiculous to project them over that kind of period.
Then why the hell will so many people be immigrating? For the view?
I do international project management. Doesn’t make any difference if you could get a job in China or not. A fully loaded “professional resource” in the U.S. is $90 an hour. That includes health benefits, taxes, etc. In China - $4 an hour for the same skill sets. How many people in the U.S. do you know would be willing to work for $4 an hour as an electrical engineer - and not get any benefits with that?
We could not offshore, but then our cost of goods sold would be too high for the market and we wouldn’t have jobs in the U.S. or in China.
So what we’re going to do is run our economy into the ground because it makes the most sense for…wait now…our economy.
Unfortunately, robby is “sort” of correct.
The workers in the United States will continue to lose jobs, continue to have permanent unemployment, and have lower and lower wages until the (total)price of labor and benefits in America is equal to the price of labor in all the third world countries.
It will most likely be some combination of higher wages in China and Africa, and lower wages of Americans…but I would guess that the eventual global wage for labor(including benefits) will end up being closer to what is now being paid to Chinese workers.
The goal of “free trade” is to have a standard global wage rate for all workers in all countries of the world.
Then the cost of living needs to be reduced as well. Look, I made $5 per hour working as a security guard back in the mid 80s coming off a disasterous relationship. I took the first job I could get just to get the money to support myself.
I got pretty solid 40 hour weeks, a whopping $800 before taxes. After all my assorted deductions [and I refused medical to save the money as I was healthy] which left me a whopping $576 for everything - and the cheapest studio I could find cost me $280 per month, with a huge $5 electricity bill and thankfully the building owner paid heat, hot water and air conditioning. This lovely place was on 13th Bay St in Norfolk Va, nicely tucked in the slums with whores, biker gangs shooting out transformers for fun and drivebys. Because I owned a yugo [yeah, stop giggling, I owned it outright because I needed a car to get to work and it was cheap to insure and did not take a lot of gas] I did not qualify for food stamps. I spent on average $5 per week for food, did my laundry by hand because I could not afford to go to a laundromat, and my entertainment was hanging out in a game store playing D&D because there wasn’t a charge and it was something I liked doing.
I can guarantee that the minimum wage has not doubled, but the costs of everything else have more than doubled, or tripled … so it is virtually impossible to make a living on minimum wage, and you want to cut it?
Why do you think that I advice people to join the military - they get a steady income, housing, medical care and unless they fuck up, they can’t be fired … and they have enough income that they can actually save towards retirement. God alone knows that with the economy in the shitter you can’t depend on any civilian job right now. Look at the auto industry, those guys thought that the unions would protect them, and look what happened.
I had 3 of my last 5 jobs outsourced to some foreign country. I can categorically state that I am not an underskilled over paid middle class … I worked hard for my money and I learned new skills and did continuing education in several fields. Now that I am handicapped, it is impossible to find a job, and I am theoretically a protected class of worker. Companies get brownie points for hiring gimps, but that doesn’t go far when there are no jobs available. I am yet again looking into go back to school in an attempt to find something I can fucking do in this shitty economy.
If the global wage for labor is $4, then in the long run, with “free trade”, you MUST either take the $4 job, or else you are permanently unemployed.
“Free trade” allows American companies to obtain its labor at competitive global wage rates, lower its production costs, and thus to maximize its profits.
That is the whole point of “free trade”: maximize profits!!! That is why voters voted for “free trade”.
(the only exceptions would be some jobs that cannot be outsourced nor relocated such as medical, retail, law enforcement, etc)
I know a couple purchasing agents working at auto companies. They have been told not to even quote to American suppliers. Their lists of suppliers is China, Taiwan, Korea etc.
What do you mean by “run the economy into the ground”?
Low global wages result in higher profits. Most well run American companies are doing just fine with “free trade” and the low cost of labor.
I guess I mean killing off the consumer market for the sake of the investment market. I’m one of those people msmith would classify as “pretty fucking stupid” about business, probably because I entertain frivolous notions about something called “society.”
Actually, our margins, and most margins, have gone down. Because industry is competitive. You now buy our product - a better, faster, higher quality version of our product than was available ten years ago - for about 10% of the cost of what it was ten years ago. And you buy our competitors product for the same.
We could not play the “free trade” game - but then we’d be trying to sell something for $1000 that our competitor sells for $100. Somehow, the marketing people don’t think the American public will pay that much more for something just because it was made here.
We had a CEO that was a liberal living wage former hippie for years. He tried to keep as many jobs in the U.S. as he could while remaining competitive on pricing.