So it’s bad that Buicks built in China are sold to the Chinese?
OK, so it’s bad that American-made Toyotas are sold to Americans and are not exported to other countries?
What is the difference between these two cases?
Because from what I can see, Americans building Toyotas (and then purchasing them) and Chinese building Buicks (and then purchasing those) is just the free market and globalization at work. You have people in both countries working and building cars, and presumably this is good for the companies as well, or they wouldn’t be doing it.
And your constant assertion that this is a “permanent structural unemployment” is bullshit. As the wealthiest, most productive nation on the planet, why wouldn’t we continue to innovate and create new products and the resulting jobs and industries? What makes you think that at some point, wages wouldn’t rise in places like China until they are on parity to the West? It’s already starting to happen and China is finding that they have to outsource to places like Vietnam in order to stay competetive.
Well, one reason would be if there are enough people like you who are ignorant on the subject who pressure policy makers to enact policies historically shown to be bad for economic growth.
Since there probably won’t be a billion people, you don’t need to worry about it. And if there are a billion people on welfare alone there would have to be several billion more who aren’t. It’s extraordinarily unlikely there would ever be a billion people in the U.S., period. The census bureau thinks there will be about 420 million people by 2050, and Pew Research thinks it will be 438 million.
Your use of exclamation points has convinced me of the error of my ways.
I didn’t ask you why people come to the U.S. I asked you why people would pour into your future U.S., which is broke and illiterate and has no industry.
I don’t think there is any overpopulation, but if you do think that, you could try supporting your opinion with facts. This issue does not have anything to do with immigration. It’s true that a lot of these jobs are not coming back and they have to be replaced by something else. That’s a real issue that needs to be addressed. The above is not.
The economic history of the United States under the 200 year tariff system that enabled the United States to be the richest and most powerful nation on earth is well established for all to see. The 200 year tariff system is a very long established base to compare to. We know what America was like in the 1960’s before we started to dismantle the tariffs.
The 1930’s, Smoot Hawley, and the Great Depression, have nothing to do with today, have nothing to do with today’s long term permanent unemployment. Smoot Hawley and Franklin Roosevelt’s policies were of very short term, and are irrelevant about today’s permanent unemployment. Those things were long gone!!! before Dole, bush1, Clinton, and bush2 pushed thru “free trade”. They have nothing to do with “free trade”, NAFTA, CAFTA, trading with Communist China. The few years of the 1930’s had nothing to do with recent passing of the laws that gave us “free trade” today.
The topic of this thread is the current permanent unemployment of today that is a result of today’s “free trade”, NAFTA, CAFTA, trading with Communist China, and today’s absence of tariffs.
We know that since the 1970’s we have dismantled a 200 year-old protective tariff system, and we have replaced it with “free trade”, NAFTA, CAFTA, and trading with Communist China.
If adding immigrants causes unemployment, why isn’t the unemployment rate 95%? The U.S. has taken in more immigrants over the course of its history than the total number of jobs in the entire economy, and yet the unemployment rate is what, nine percent? Assume that’s underreported and it’s twelve. It still doesn’t square with your claim that immigration causes unemployment; if in fact those 100 million immigrants all took jobs away, there should be 80% unemployment, at least.
Please explain why the unemployment rate isn’t 95% if population growth causes unemployment.
Also please explain why Canada’s unemployment rate is only 7.7% last I checked; as a percentage of population we have MORE immigrants than the USA. Shouldn’t our unemployment rate be like 97%, then?
Why dont you just tell us all the American manufactured things that YOU now buy every day, versus, how many things you buy that were made in china, india, vietnam, japan, mexico, canada, etc?
Please cite the relevant Canadian laws that spell this out. I’d be curious.
Let’s play a game - you be the U.S., and I’ll be the other country who currently trades with you.
You throw up a massive tarriff wall on products that I make. What do you think I will do?
a) Accept it - after all, U.S.A = teh awesome.
b) Lament that the market size for my products has gone from 6 billion to 5.7 billion, but then comfort myself realizing that yours has gone from 6 billion to 300 million.
c) Sit back in my chair and wait for it to dawn on you that the U.S. is not self-sufficient and requires many imported items that it cannot produce itself. “I’m sorry, your price on that has just tripled.”
Also, you focus too much on everyday consumer items for your “proof” that U.S. manufacturing doesn’t exist. Sure, you don’t make t-shirts anymore (and frankly, why would you want to), but the heavy equipment in the electric generating that is allowing you to see it there on the shelf station wasn’t assembled in a remote province of China for $.35.
I abhor that the arsenal of democracy no longer exists . We used to have the ability to crank out tons of munitions if we were in a crisis. Those days are gone. We outsource so much, that we would have trouble gearing up for a war.
The inner cities have had a permanent lost generation and are working on two. They are no longer needed to work in factories to produce goods. The city dwellers have a destroyed school system ,very little in services and only minimum wage jobs to compete for. They are not needed .
The middle class with its educated work force is also less and less important. Corporations can get the work done offshore for much less money. Engineers, programmers ,and middle executives are permanently being phased out. College graduates have trouble getting a first job in their fields. teachers are getting laid off. The days of getting a semi secure career are ending.
To the OPs original point - about 40 year olds who may now be perpetually unemployed.
I’m about that age and I have a number of friends who fall into two broad categories.
We all graduated from college in the late 80s recession, when jobs were scarce. We all also were young adults through the 90s dot com boom period of low unemployment.
The first group applied themselves to a career. In some cases they spent some of the last two years laid off. All but one is re-employed (although one is underemployed and several are contracting without benefits - making for scary health insurance situations) - the one who is unemployed got laid off three months ago. They used the boom to gain skills and gain responsibility. They built professional networks. Broadly speaking, they also used the boom to “grow up” - marry, have kids, get mortgages, save for retirement, get furniture that matched. The boom for these folks was a fantastic opportunity - people my age who took advantage of it were lucky to have had it - and some of my friends took full advantage of it.
The second group didn’t. They used the boom to prove to themselves that they could “always” get a job and that jobs were for their convenience - i.e. when the job “sucked” they went and got another job. They didn’t bother to gain skills, get good references, build networks or gain responsibility - generally, they chose to run from responsibility. They generally didn’t “grow up” either - they are the ones without retirement accounts, matching furniture or spouses (although they often had spouses) who are still renting. They are the ones far more likely to be having a rough time through this economy - they don’t have professional networks, they don’t have any assets to fall back on, and they are looking at “retirement” in 20ish years - and they haven’t started CAREERS yet, and it doesn’t look now like they’ll be able to. For those people, they are looking for jobs, and their age and their resume in combination aren’t inspiring confidence - they are obviously, when you meet them - old enough for someone to wonder “what HAVE you been doing with your life?” For them, the boom was anything but a fortunate circumstance - they took away from the boom the belief that jobs were easy to get and that no one really need to WORK in order to get paid.
(These are broad generalizations about my group of people who are all 40ish years old in the Twin Cities - in a different group of people, different decisions are wise or unwise - or even possible.).
I really feel for those graduating into this economy - I have a feeling for it since 1988 was not a great year to graduate into - we didn’t have recruiters showing up on campus that year either. But I don’t think its the end of the world - the world may be different place at the end of this recession - but I think humanity will survive.
humanity “will” and did in fact survive Auschwitz. That did not help the people who were in Auschwitz, about to be killed. Humanity likewise survived perfectly well the near complete destruction of entire nations in the past, as witness the Aztecs or the various nations destroyed by Assyrians. It looks all nice and tidy in the textbook (“in the year so-and-so internal political disunity coupled with the rise of militarily superior …”) but it is not nice to be stuck right there in the midst of the country about to be destroyed. Humanity survives, but you and all your relatives, friends and neighbors don’t.
With respect to what you say about the fate of the two groups among your acquaintances, very interesting. The most interesting part is this “what HAVE you been doing with your life?” There we have it, the winner who (for now) keeps his job and apartment figures out why the losers belong in the homeless encapment. Here is a subversive question, though - you are a part of the “lucky” group now, but what if that group stops being “lucky” tomorrow? Do you not realize that the next temporary “winners” are going to laugh at you in the same manner?
I’m not laughing at them - for one thing, buying them dinner every time I see them and - in two cases - contributing to their financial support sort of puts me at ill humor. But I am saying that they, by and large, did not make hay when the sun shone. They sat around and enjoyed the sun. That put them in a situation where when the rains came, they had no savings, no network and no skills. That doesn’t apply to everyone - I know there are plenty of Dopers that it doesn’t apply to, but its pretty obvious in my group of friends which group lived through the 90s with pasty white skin from working and which ones didn’t.
It says bad things about the political culture of the United States that there is not a political movement of the unemployed and the under employed. The political movement is the Tea Party. The goal of the Tea Party is to keep the government from doing anything to help the unemployed and the under employed.
But yes, I do think something really structural has happened.
I read that people who grew up during the lost decade in Japan, even when the economy got better, had long term mental health problems and lower incomes for life at rates either somewhat or much higher than their counterparts.
I really don’t know what will happen. We can’t take another 30 years of all the GDP growth going to corporate profits and the top 10% while the bottom 90% are expected to pay for ever more expensive health care, education, transportation, etc. on stagnant wages.
A family health care policy will cost $25,000 in 2020. How many people can afford that with 30k being the median wage and a 0-3% annual COLA.
I really don’t know what the long term effects will be. But I know our path isn’t sustainable much longer on a wide variety of economic fronts.
‘Confused’. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I dinna thin’ that word means what you thin’ it means, kimosabe.
But your use of multiple exclamation points really does a lot for your argument, so even though it’s fairly obvious you don’t have an inkling of a clue what you are talking about (and since you refuse to even read cites provided for your education), that alone will win the day. I recommend you try more of them…perhaps 8 to 10 will do the trick.
Kind of the point I was making, though granted I didn’t use multiple exclamation points, so that’s probably why I didn’t get it across. The ‘tariff system’ as you put it had little or nothing to do with job creation (just the opposite in the long run)…it was innovation that created jobs, not an attempt to monopolize our labor. The only way countries can impose tariffs is if they have a monopoly on some good or service and can MAKE other countries pay tariffs for them.
And, basically, if you knew the first thing about trade, you’d know that just about every reputable economist on the face of the planet thinks that the ‘tariff system’ is A Bad Idea™, while most believe that the ‘free trade’ you so despise (without understanding) is a good thing.
Luckily for you, you’ll get some traction with your rantage around these parts…this is the one area that I can think of where loonie lefty thinking coincides with wacky tea party snuflings…though for different reasons, obviously. Neither seem to be able to grasp the principals of trade, or learn the abundant lessons of history.
Just as a thought, you might want to try actually clicking on msmith537’s link. You don’t have to actually believe any of it, but you’d sound more convincing if you actually had any idea what you are taking about. Even cursory knowledge of the subject would at least make your posts worth debating.
Do try more exclamation points, however…they really add a certain something to your posts…
