Well, one can make lots of claims. I can claim that the moon is made out of green cheese.
It is actually backing up the claims with cold hard facts where things start to get dicey.
Yeah, it’s those Dems and Libs that want to teach creationism in the schools. :rolleyes:
From an economic viewpoint, outsourcing has clear benefits. The problem we face is not outsourcing per se, but the fact that we are not creating replacement industries and jobs (please, no “something will happen because it always has” BS).
A government, just like a company, has to plan for the future. There has been some planning for the manufacturing sector over time, but this was predicated on blue collar displaced manufacturing workers being able to be retrained for white collar jobs. But the rise of white collar outsourcing PLUS the rapid increases in productivity seem to have caught everyone in government flat-footed. They have failed to realize that there are repercussions for every event that occurs, if not immediately, then at some point down the road. Proper planning would have allowed the government and business to possibly get ahead of the curve, being proactive instead of reactive.
You can’t suddenly drop a 40+ worker with a family to support and a mortgage to pay into a possibly multi-year reeducation program, for some unknown future career! You can’t create new industries overnight. You can’t change the structure of our education system overnight. You can’t change our tax laws overnight (if at all).
Government and business have an implicit social contract with the people that live under the government control or work for the business. This is why people pay taxes for services and security. As such, corporations desire to reach for ultimate efficiency needs to be balanced by the needs of the society that they live and operate in. It can no longer be solely about corporate profits at any cost. Both entities need to cooperate to provide for ALL workers actually displaced and those to be displaced. Corporations will simply have to pay more taxes so that the government can better fund new research to create new industries so that people will have new jobs to transition to when old jobs get displaced.
Appreciate it if everyone reading this would take a step back and look at what the big picture is of what I’ve written, rather than the usual approach of extracting individuals phrases or sentences to rip apart.
JShore and FearItself – I was just responding to Voyager’s unsubstantiated dig at the Bush Administration.
But it’s getting us off subject – no amount of education is going to help the situation. What good is educating for jobs that don’t exist – that are being filled by educated workers abroad who will work for far lower wages?
If that were true, income levels within the US should already be equal everywhere - every state, and every part of every city.
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Wonderful. Jobs will come back when the US is reduced to Third World poverty levels, which will then enable us to compete with Third World workers. (Or to be more charitable, the US and the Third World meet in the middle somewhere.) Somehow, I don’t think most Americans would find this a satisfactory solution to the problem.
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Exactly. And this is the SOLUTION that the free market types think is so wonderful. While you’re living in your car and going to the food bank for a food loan, think about the wonders of the free market, won’t you?
You keep saying things like this, but I see little evidence that anyone is advocating a repeal of any of the government controls on markets. What you are really asking for is more government control of markets. Not some control, or reasoned control, but more. If as you say, you do not know exactly what the government should do, I do not understand how you can maintain this position.
No, but it is class warfare to consider every piece of property and every effort to create wealth as up for grabs in some “they need it more than you” riot. To look at the tax cuts and notice that most of the money returned went to rich people is fine. To then claim that this is unfair, because tax cuts should benifit poor people regardless of whether they paid taxes or not is class warfare.
This is ok too, as long as it is also recognized that increased wealth allows for the resources to deal with some of these problems. As long as we consider government regulation the only solution to such things, we will never solve them for the vast majority of the world’s population.
Well, this is rhetoric and little more. There certainly are smart people who have though hard about these problems. They are not all liberal, however. And they are not all outside this administration.
If I may suggest an answer. It may be that education is not merely “job training”. That it is a process by which people become more knowledgeable and more importantly more proficient at learning. That is, education might not simply be training for some job, it might be training to handle any job market in a more efficient way.
I am not fanatical about the market. I am all for governmental regulations to ensure fair competition, safe products, strict environmental standards… and yet I don’t believe the government should ban or seek to tamper with issues such as off-shoring. In other words, please do not assume that those who support what you call the “big picture” at the expense of the “small picture” are mindlessly devoted to ideology. It is conceivable and in fact real that we have taken a hard look at what’s happening.
Organizations out-source programming jobs to India to urban middle and upper-middle class adults, and a lot of them make enough money to lead good lives. There is no exploitation necessary because the exchange rate and standard of living takes care of the cost savings. It may be a similar situation in China as well where a lot of manufacturing is going on and the environmental and labor issues may not be as bad as you think. I plan to read up on the impact of globalization on the environment as soon as I get some free time. I agree that this is an issue that needs to be continually addressed.
Exactly how? What have they not done? Admit that off-shoring is bad when they believe otherwise. Someone from his cabinet says that off-shoring is good for the economy and the whole media is up in arms.
I’m trying to do this.
The problem with your big picture is threefold. First, it is based on the premise the “we are not creating jobs”. This is simply not true. At least no to the degree that you mean. There are jobs. There are new jobs. Not, perhaps in your neighborhood. Not, perhaps, in your salary range. But there are jobs out there.
Secondly, the economy has never been “solely about corporate profits at all costs”. Economic activity in a free market is based on the free association of individuals for their own benifit. That is, the workers have benifited greatly from the economy of the last several decades.
Finally, heavily taxing corporations will not achieve the goals you have set out. If you increase the taxes on corporations in America, they will simply do business elsewhere. Remember that many of the biggest corporations doing business here now are built on foriegn capital. If you raise the cost of doing business here, they will simply do business elsewhere. For instance, Toyota has several plants here in America. If you raise the taxes enough on those plants, they will simply move them elswhere.
Look, the bottom line is this, I understand that you are hurting. I understand that you had a job which paid a good wage until recently, and that you cannot find another to fill the same needs. But this does not mean that the economy is failing. It does not mean that we need massive new government programs to pay you those lost wages. And, if it helps, it does not mean that there is not a job which will do just fine for you somehwere.
I have not tried to pick apart you post. I have tried to address the big picture argument you aremaking.
Thank you.
You keep repeating the same stuff over and over without apparent regard for all the links and evidence that have been posted before. I just don’t understand this. Do you actually read the posts others do or do you just shoot off replies? The government statistics themselves show there are approximately 3 million jobs less as compared to 3 years ago. I don’t care WHY we are down (recession, market crash, 911, outsourcing, enhanced productivity, whatever). None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that there aren’t enough jobs for people to work at that will enable them to maintain their standard of living. If you want to flip-burgers or be a cashier, yes perhaps there are jobs available. But $7-10/hour jobs (that’s $360-400/week) are not suitable for an adult with a family and house to support. I dont’ remember if I posted this here or not, but in last Sundays newspaper, the big local paper (SF Chronicle) had exactly 9 jobs (about 2 inches) listed under the Computer heading. That listing used to stretch to 3-4 PAGES in 1999/2000!
Listen, I don’t care what happened 200, 100, 30, 20, 10 or 1 years ago. I don’t care what so-called benefits may have been gained in the recent past. It doesn’t change the fact that too many people are unable to find equal work for their displaced/lost jobs NOW. I don’t care about economic theory or capitalistic theory. I/we just want the problems to be addressed NOW, not 5, 10 or 20 years from now. I/we don’t want to hear platitudes, we don’t want promises of better things to come. What we do want to see is some real and concrete action taken right now to start on the road to solving the problems. And the government can start by passing the unemployment extension act that the Republican leaders in the Senate have been blocking for the past 3 months.
Companies will not be able to do business elsewhere. The U.S. IS 50% of the world economy. Corporations are paying the lowest taxes since 1930 (expect for 1983) and look what it has gotten us. If they don’t want to pay their fair share, if they scream and struggle and threaten to leave, then let them try. When they then try to sell into this country, they might find that their products face a heavy tariff.
There is a huge groundswell of dissatisfaction with how the present administration and corporations are both contributing to the loss of jobs in America and at the same time, doing little or nothing about fixing the problem. Something is going to happen in the not distant future and corporations and free traders are not going to like it. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it often swings too far in the other direction before it returns to the middle
Whether I find a job or not is immaterial. The system is broken and it needs to be fixed! One would hope it would be a reasoned fix but based on how we, as a society, simply react to most everything that occurs, I doubt that it will be…
Well, I keep posting very similar stuff, because you do. Yes, I do read many of the links posted. If I respond to them I try very hard to read some of it.
The bottom line, is that the system is not broken. We lost 3 million jobs recently. So what? This is surely evidence of lost jobs, but it is hardly evidence that the system is broken. It is certainly not evidence that we need to institute vast new government programs.
One would certainly hope that any new programs would be reasonable. However, with the trend away from reasoned discussion on this issue I doubt it as well.
Go back and read your last post. Notice how it is simply a cry for “action now” without any reference to reasoned arguments.
Can I ask you a question? Where did you get the idea that the number of jobs will increase steadily from day to day? Where did you get the idea that the salaries earned will increase for each and every worker from day to day? Why is it so hard to comprehend that downturns happen and that they may simply be that, downturns. They do not indicate that capitalism has failed us.
I’m gonna cut and paste my answer from another thread:
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Originally Posted by Another Poster
One of the main claims of the free market system is that the competition between various businesses is the best way to improve life for the majority of people. So tell me again, how does moving jobs to places where people make a bare subsistance wage and having US workers take other, and lower paying, jobs here improve the quality of life for the majority of people. In short, how does having workers compete for ever lower pay do that?
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By providing the majority of people with a less expensive product leaving them more money to spend on other goods or invest. It’s really important to seperate the economics from the politics. I don’t know any reputable economist who would deny that the overall wealth of the US economy would increase in the medium/long term by allowing free trade. Some economists would, however, disagree with the equity of the distribution of that wealth. But that’s a seperate problem and confusing the two creates more problems.
Outsourcing computer chip manufacturing saves Intel about 50% in labor costs, 30% of which gets translated to the consumer. Of course X thousand Americans lose potential jobs to Asia. But what about the effect of a 30% savings in computer chip prices for ALL consumers? How many more people can now afford computers who wouldn’t have been able to previously? How does this expand the market for online retailers and how in turn does that expand the market for web page developers and e-commerce solution businesses? How does this effect the number of people working for publishers of “How to Program in HTML” books? Where were all these jobs before the computer revolution? They didn’t exist. The beneficial effects of cheaper products are pervasive and cascading.
The question is, Should EVERYONE benefit a good amount at the “expense” of a few people being financially crushed? I personally don’t want to see anyone crushed but preventing outsourcing isn’t the way to help them. Mind you that other instances of price control have contributed to the problem in the first place, ie, the minimum wage, tariffs, etc., it’s just that the effect isn’t linear or obvious. The key is this: Don’t fuck with the inner mechanisms of the economy. If you must, fuck with the end product: profits. Rather than stop companies from outsourcing, raise everyone’s taxes and pay unemployment to those who lost their jobs. That way, everyone shares the burden and nascent industries aren’t nipped in the bud by prohibitive wage costs. Screwing with the inner workings of the economy to achieve political goals is like throwing sand on the gears of a motor to get it to slow down.
And your job was not one of those lost. Amazing how those who think that nothing is wrong are all still employed. I’m reminded of the folks who live up in Carmel and around Geist who can’t believe that there could be ANY crime problem AT ALL in Marion county. After all, it’s obvious that it isn’t happening to THEM.
It’s easy to say that everything is just fine when you’re riding and not being ground up to grease the wheels.
Its never going to be like 1999/2000 again. Thats was an anomaly. If thats the standard of comparison youre going to use for the rest of your life as to what the job environment should be like, youre always going to be living in the past. It was a blast, it was fun, we got our kicks but now its over.
My impression doesnt match yours. Going by www.Craigslist.org, not the Chron, there are far more IT jobs listed now than a year ago. Int eng gets about 5 a day, software/QA about 10 a day. For networking, there are over 20 since Mon. Theres far more work in IT than there was a year or two ago, especially in the bay area. I doubt too many companies hiring IT bother to use the Chron to advertise for people; there are too many more effective alternatives.
I stand corrected. My apologies.
Well, that’s like asking your car mechanic to fix your car so it will get 200 MPG and telling him you just don’t care to hear about physics or thermodynamics or about the accumulated knowledge about internal combustion engines. It is just a silly rant.
The USA is definitely NOT 50% of the world economy or anything close to that. Stop dreaming. And all economists agree and experience shows that protective measures and trying to control the economy have terrible results in the end. It has been tried many times and it failed. Of course, economists are burdened with their knowledge and you do not have their problem.
You are just ranting. It ain’t broke and it don’t need fixin’.
xtisme, and others: why is it that so many folks seem to be willing to see that if we allow labor to move freely and follow jobs that there will be this huge negative impact on country X, but pretend that allowing businesses to do so is somehow impact free? This whole equation seems unbalanced to me.
Sure, if countries were required to open their borders to labor (and we had to do the same) as a condition for doing business there would be an immediate strain on that counties infrastructure. Ours would no doubt feel a similar strain. There would be a lot of new problems that we would be forced to deal with. I am not sure that this is inherently a bad thing, and indeed could be the “small-picture” equivalent of being willing to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Folks that seem to only see the overview don’t have a lot of problem with “breaking a few eggs” so this notion should seem familiar and right to them.
But let us not pretend that when a company relocates to a different country that they are also not impacting that country. In addition to lower wages, we also have looser environmental standards and fewer protections for labor. And let us not forget (and this seems to be a virtue extolled a lot by these same companies) that although the wage that they are paying is low by our standards, it is often a rather handsome bit of change by local standards. So, do all of these factors exist in a vacuum? Am I to believe that they do not have an impact?
All that I am saying is that if we really want to have some wonderful global economy that labor should enjoy the same privileges of mobility that businesses do.
I believe outsourcing is very damaging for an economy.
The problem as I see it, is that money leaves from US to India, but no money comes back from India to US.
Suppose the US based company X is outsourcing to India. What happens if Indians (for various reasons) do not buy X’s products? It is much like the Ford principle: I pay my workers well, so they can buy my cars. If Ford was outsourcing to India and Indians don’t buy Model-T, then there is a broken chain.
Another problem is that while US outsources to India, India is not outsourcing to US, because it is too expensive. That’s another broken chain.
I don’t have anything with India. It was just an example.
So you are giving the hypothetical that some country is willing to work long hours for little bits of paper they do not plan to redeem. It is never going to happen but supposing it did, what would be so bad about it? Your views are just too simplistic. China does use the money they get. They are buying huge quantities of foreign goods and services and they are investing millions in the USA and other countries. But if they decided to stuff their mattresses with dollar bills that would be even better. You get a color TV in exchange for a bit of paper. It’s the guy getting the paper who is getting screwed, not you.
Every single last dollar sent abroad will eventually be redeemed and in the meanwhile it is a loan to the USA. They send you a TV in exchange for a bit of paper they can redeem in the future for goods and services. Some of those dollars buy other goods and services, others are invested, some in the US treasury.
Your understanding of how the economy works is just too simplistic.