How do you feel about melting down slag in foundries to recover the different metals? Or about melting metals in small scale to alloy them and make jewelry?
Both of those are tasks that can be done in multiple levels of safety.
I see a pattern of more jobs in the U.S., more manufacturing in the U.S., higher real household income after taxes and transfers, and better standard of living.
I did click the link … and was reminded why clicking Forbes links is almost always a waste of time.
[QUOTE=Tim “I have opinions about economics, finance and public policy” Worstall, Forbes Contributor]
An interesting little point here, that extra cost, that $600 million, would not actually be an addition to US GDP… And yes, it is a detail of US GDP statistics that Apple’s foreign profits are counted as part of US GDP.
[/QUOTE]
Two points about Tim “I have opinions about economics, finance and public policy” Worstall’s little point:
(1) It is false. Worstall might have guessed the correct answer if he knew that the D in GDP stands for Domestic. IPhones produced in China count towards China’s GDP. (This is the major difference between GDP calculations and the GNP oft-encountered in bygone days.)
(2) If it were true, it would be irrelevant anyway. The subject under discussion, both in this thread and in Worstall’s own opinion piece, is bringing manufacturing jobs to America. Chinese labor doesn’t suddenly become American labor if the government collects its statistics incorrectly.
Perhaps Worstall’s point is that if Apple pays $600 million in additional wages but makes $600 million less in profits, then Peter is being robbed to pay Paul; where Peter represents Apple’s stockholders, many but not all of whom are American. The alternative way out for America’s unemployed? Buy stock in Apple, I guess.
So, my advice to Forbes’ contributor Tim “I have opinions about economics, finance and public policy” Worstall — crank up the knowledge; until then crank down the opinions.
(And if one did want to treat money flows as a zero sum game, one would note that tax breaks to please Apple shareholders would eventually be paid by the working class as regressive taxes rise to compensate, but I think this is beyond the ken of Forbes contributors.)
There is one silliness about Forbes’ articles which isn’t Worstall’s fault: Whenever an American company is mentioned there’s a clickable link and an indication of how that stock-price is doing today. :rolleyes: Not wrong, perhaps, but it certainly tells us a lot abut Forbes’ perspective.
TL;DR: Just because there were Forbes magazines on newsstands before the Internet was invented doesn’t mean Forbes.com is anything but another Fake News site.
Under Obama, more people of color search for recyclables in my garbage cans. Are those the jobs you’re talking about?
Perhaps some day you will be ashamed of that post. We’re rooting for you.
This is bordering on trolling. Dial it back.
[/moderating]
Yep, there’s obviously no correlation between government mandated wage floors and displacement of labor at the low margins. It’s not coincidental that the automation is being implemented with a priority to displacing those in higher minimum wage municipalities.
Automation will be cheaper no matter how low you make the wages. So, what’s your plan, what do we do with all these useless people?
When liberals scratch their heads and ask why they lost the election, they are oblivious to what goes around them. I made an observation that was occurring as I was reading. You don’t believe someone was digging in my garbage can this morning? The economy isn’t nearly as good as the news constantly reports.
I constantly get these warnings while others use profanity constantly and name calling of our duly elected President Donald J. Trump and anyone on the Right. A number of these posts appear to be from people on the verge of a mental breakdown.
With much love and respect. PCP.
Automation is a double edged sword. It still takes someone to run the machine and the labor cost per unit becomes less relevant. This type of production might suggest cutting hours to allow for more employees. If labor per unit cost is small enough it might need meet too much resistance.
Stick with the minimum wage for entry level type part time jobs but increase the wages for industrial or semi skilled type jobs.
I have believed for a long time that America could increase tourism to a level not thought possible before through some special programs. They might take some federal funding too develop but I think they would pay off in the long run.
Capex? Opex? Have you ever performed a cba on labor vs automation? Because that is a very strange claim to make.
What that appears to be is a statement of expertise accompanied by an accusation of ignorance, both substantiated by…what?
my question always has been this :
What if a privately owned company of apples stature gets these ultimatums and decides "ill piss in everyones corn flakes and just leave the country or shut down entirely leaving hundreds if not thousands jobless across the county and possibly the world ?
You’re making factual claims in GD that fly in the face of reason. So did you run a simple analysis to reach your conclusion? Guess? Something else?
Ultimately labor is valueless in a robot-centric economy. So eventually we either
A) Leave a large fraction of the US populace out of the US economy, much as tribal Africans and Native Americans in Chiapas in Mexico are presently left out of the world economy
OR
B) We decouple a living income from any/all labor.
Actually, there is a third option: remove all rights of citizenship from non-self-sufficiently-wealthy Americans and simply exterminate them as vermin.
We (the US) *are *going to get to a place where it’s A, B, or C; pick one. We’re in the early stages now and the people who will live through that transition are already born.
It behooves us as a society to think about how to handle this. Bickering about whether or not minimum wages help or hurt this worker, that worker, or all or some workers is pennies around the edge of the real problem.
Which loops back to a point I make now and again: Does our society exist to support our economy, or does our economy exist to support our society?
If the reason American citizens exist is to labor for their betters, then yes, we ought to exploit and abuse them insofar as possible.
If however, the reason the US economy exists is to support all American citizens in fulfilling their needs and wants insofar as possible, then once we have a robot-centric post-scarcity economy we want to fulfill everyone, not just a tiny fraction of 1%.
So how do we do that? Not through incremental trivial changes driven by blinkered ideologically-driven 1850s-era thinking.
The Strange New World is approaching rapidly. Will we be ready? I see negligible evidence for it.
Jesus. Seriously, read a little closer. I said Apple, given a tax cut, wouldn’t pass the savings on to YOU. I didn’t say they might not relocate an assembly plant.
But if the market price for a iPhone is $600, why the hell would they charge less?
Because they are Americans, by gum! That’s why whenever America gets into a war, American companies stand tall, and supply our heroes at cost! And hang profit!
I’ve mentioned it above. It includes things such as a basic income, no minimum wage, and an expanded need based safety net. This should serve well until strong AI and robots take over and we either live in a robotic socialist paradise or are exterminated.
Again, luxury goods that have a marquee brand name might not pass any savings. However, competitive markets would. Really, do potatoes benefit from brand loyalty? And since money is fungible saving money on needed commodities such as milk, gas, grains, etc. does improve quality of life. I know when gas dropped to ~$1.99/gal from over $4 in my neck of the woods the savings were noticeable. That translates into a lot of Hearthstone arenas.
There’s a reason my local grocer stocks both Ore-Ida and Shur-Fine in the freezer case–Ore-Ida costs more, and has a lot more shelf space and a lot higher sales.
While shoppers are probably more likely to go for generic potatoes than generic phones if the price differential gets too great, brand-name groceries are widely sold precisely BECAUSE people have brand loyalty. How much difference is there, really, between Hiland milk and the store brand? Probably not much, but Hiland commands a higher price.