And what I and millions of other voters have been explaining to you (or a least we will over the next decade as we get sick of your snake oil), cheap products is worth nothing when you are unemployed.
Unless you live on planet emacknight where being laid off gets you a severance package and a trip to Spain.
The term ‘high cost of low prices’ probably goes right over your head.
Then why don’t you and they VOTE WITH YOUR POCKETBOOKS??? You don’t seem to grasp the fact that while these supposed millions of voters SAY they don’t want cheap good and would rather have the jobs and pay more for the products made right here in the Good Ole USA(TM…all Rah Rah! reserved), they don’t actually go out and do that. Instead, they buy the cheapest goods and services to give them the biggest bang for their buck…which means that in most cases they buy goods and services manufactured or provided in countries other than the US.
I realize that you don’t read my post because you are a fucking childish idiot who has me on ignore, so perhaps someone else will explain the above to you…AGAIN. For about the 20th time. And you will come back with more clueless drivel that simply shows that YOU DON’T GET IT.
No, but the term ‘vote with your pocketbook’ is obviously nuclear physics to an ant wrt your ability to grasp a point. Hell, the ant probably has more chance of understanding the nuclear physics, come to think of it.
-XT
To show just how STUPID you guys are for buying into emacknight’s one-dimensional iPod propaganda… have you ever checked out American Apparel? They’re in the textile industry and their products are made in the USA. Do they cost 5x as much as the crap made in India? Are they hurting because of that?
Oh yeah and… what benefits does your mighty offshoring globalist bullshit economy have for the working class? Ah yes, you still got exactly nothin’.
I was reading a story today about J.P. Morgan makes a fortune processing food stamp cards across America. The have outsourced the call centers to India. So tax money goes abroad so Morgan execs can get richer. Isn’t that special?
There should be no outsourcing of anything paid for by taxes. There should be no outsourcing of any military purchasing. If American taxes pay for it, it should employ American workers.
… yeahhh. I’ll just leave this here.
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But, hey, if you want to support a dying company by paying $40 for a t-shirt modeled by barely-clothed teenagers, be my guest.
Well, that makes perfect sense. Each tax dollar should pay for as little as possible. In addition to buying American, why don’t we pay even more than the price of such goods and services? After all – it’s for American workers.
There you go again with your one-dimensional obsession with prices.
Maybe if JP Morgan hired those people in the U.S. instead of India the Americans who are on welfare could actually communicate with their staff - or, maybe, even get one of those jobs.
You idiots seem to think it’s better to be jobless than to have a job. Then again you also have a rabidly insane definition of the word “wholesale” as demonstrated by your village idiot of a moderator.
Here’s one for ya… maybe if those welfare recipients actually had a job they might make up for the tax cost of JP Morgan hiring Americans by contributing more taxes? That means less welfare payments AND tax revenue income! But NOOOOOOOOO, you’re too dim to think about those aspects. Hell, you don’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about here.
I do believe that tax dollars, ostensibly directed toward aid for the needy, should not be unduly wasted by paying more than is necessary for goods and services. I don’t consider that a negative.
? Who said it’s better to be jobless than to have a job, full stop?
Sometimes the pursuit of some good requires unemployment. There is research to indicate that a college graduate can be much better off, in the long run, waiting until she receives a good job offer (instead of accepting a poor or middling one). Or something could make society better off overall even though it puts some people out of work (e.g. greater automation in factories). I’d be rather surprised – astonished – if someone here argued “it’s better to be jobless than to have a job” without any qualification.
Well, yeah, I’m not sure I do. You seem to be suggesting that it would be a good thing for welfare recipients to have jobs, and of course I agree. But I don’t see what this has to do with my reply to Gonzomax. Are you arguing that requiring J.P. Morgan to hire within the US will result in jobs for every welfare recipient?
When Halliburton or any other company relocates their headquarters to Dubai to avoid taxes, they should forfeit all government programs and get removed from the vendors list.
Every company that is located in the Caimans to avoid taxes should be investigated by the IRS and have all government work taken away.
All work done by governments, national, state and local, should have to go to American companies with work done in America.
The number of would-have-been-unemployed it may help: Possibly a few hundred. Maybe a few thousand in extreme cases.
Number of consumers higher prices impact: Hundreds of millions around the globe.
Seeing Le Jerkoff’s idiocy sing to new lows: Priceless.
Draggin’ asshole you’re good at hyperbole when you need to be. And your one-dimensional obsession with prices. Once again, the high cost of low prices is something that flies right over your pin head.
And you’re good at being racist against American workers. Isn’t it funny how you argue for anything that hurts the American worker? What do you have against our country anyway?
Maybe we need a revolution in this country to make this happen.
We’re already approaching a rebellion over offshoring. The Left is opposed to offshoring. The Tea Party is screaming about it. All they need is a leader who’ll combine all this opposition and before long you’ll be seeing emacknight and Dragon asshole wailing and gnashing their teeth as their globalist paradise comes crashing around their ears.
Still thinking one-dimensionally, as usual.
The tax dollars you save by sending jobs overseas are lost paying more welfare benefits for those who can’t get a job because you sent those jobs overseas. Plus you’ve also lost income tax revenue. Plus you’ve also introduced a security hazard by putting personal information in the hands of foreign countries which are outside FBI jurisdiction.
Oh, but I forgot. One-dimensional thinking is what the Straight Dope calls “logic”. Complex issues are WAY beyond you guys.
Let’s examine your logic, and emacknight’s logic, and msmith’s logic, rickjay’s, john may’s and everyone else’s logic on here:
Essentially, every time an American gets a job instead of someone in China, prices go up. 5 fold, in fact.
Going by your one-dimensional logic our economy would be a UTOPIA if not even one American had a job and we sent them all to (name your low wage country here) and we replaced domestic-only jobs with illegals. In your universe lower wages means lower prices and lower prices are all that count.
Bull. Fucking. SHIT.
Okay and if you don’t have a job how do you put food on the table and keep a roof over your head? Oh I know, you got emacknight’s severance package! Oh noes, first you need a job to get that. Whoops!
Where in the hell do you get your bullshit from? Employers do not like to hire unemployed people. Haven’t you been reading the news as of late?
Plus, every month a college grad has no job, they’re losing out on a lifetime of income potential. Plus they have student loan debt penalties that are piling up.
No, but it’s a good start.
Put your overblown delusions of debate victory aside here for a moment - let’s say a Statewide initiative is put to the ballot: “(Pick your state) will not contract any work to any business that outsources state contracted work overseas”. Who wins, your side or mine? My bet is that opponents to that initiative - the pro-offshoring side - couldn’t even get opposition ads on TV. The TV stations would be too scared of losing viewers. My bet is that your side will find large rocks to crawl under. Call them fallout shelters.
I admit, I’d love to see those initiatives happen - if for no other reason but to humiliate the likes of you.
Just when I think Le CantEvenJerkHimselfOff can’t possibly get any stupider…seriously, you must have to really work at being this dumb.
Do you really think the 85% of farmers in the 1920s suddenly and seamlessingly stepped of their farms on Friday and walked in to manufacturing jobs on Monday?
But god damn you are a really special kind of dumb. You’d need at least three promotions just to get to retarded. I mean, I’d really like to see things from your point of view, but I can’t seem to get my head that far up my ass as you.
You clearly think we can end unemployment simply be making productivity worse - i.e., instead of having 10 people and some farm equipment treat acres and acres of farmland, we give 500 people a shovel and hoe. Bingo, everyone’s employed. Of course, no one’s actually making anything that the rest of the world wants to buy. Hurray, we’re all employed and poor as dirt!
I hereby propose that you lead this nobel initiative by no longer using your computer and instead write your messages in rock please.
My my, what a monster temper tantrum you just threw there. Pimple faced, vacuum-brained and involuntarily celibate are no way to go through life, dude.
As usual you’re just making stuff up now. Offshoring is not analogous to replacing farm equipment with shovels and hoes. It’s analogous to having the work done HERE instead of somewhere else. On your planet we’d be better off if all Americans were unemployed and their work was being done elsewhere.
Iggy. Back to the trailer park for you.
All of that depends on a comparison of the amount saved by offshoring and the amount spent on new welfare benefits. Given the wage differential between US and foreign workers, and the fact that surely not everyone who would have been hired is now unemployed, I don’t consider your scenario anywhere near certainty.
Since you seem to avoid even considering these issues, I wonder who in this conversation the charge of “one-dimensional thinking” best applies to.
It’s mildly depressing if you consider that a damning reductio ad absurdum. “My logic” informs me that there are multiple issues which must be weighed when considering whether offshoring is a net benefit, among them: the extent of immediate job loss; the money saved due to lower prices; the eventual equilibrium reallocation of jobs. What you ignore or dismiss is how – at least in principle – offshoring could eventually lead to a societally improving allocation of jobs. It isn’t at all controversial to say that a society should (figuratively) produce what it is comparatively “best” at; this is NOT to say that a particular society should produce nothing at all.
With respect, you seem to be mixing up your objections. Presumably the college graduate in question does not already have long-term employment; she nears graduation (or has recently graduated) and currently searches. By accepting a bad/low-paying job, she can “lock in” a lower wage, lower benefits, lower responsibility, giving herself an inferior springboard for advancement. But if in the short term she can continue to search (living as she has: on parents, left-over student loans, etc.), this may be avoided.
(Of course this isn’t all-or-nothing, black-and-white; it is subject to qualification; so please think a moment before you try to reductio ad absurdum me into the position that no college graduate should ever have a job.)
Erm, you should look up “permanent income”. Two scenarios: I can accept a job now that pays $5,000 a month, or I can wait a month and accept a job that pays $6,000 a month. If I can wait, I’m better off doing so despite losing out on one month’s pay – I make up the loss after just a few months.
How much do you know about student loans? They’re about as forgiving as possible; you pretty much don’t have to pay anything while unemployed. Student loan “debt penalties” are a nonissue.
Are you back on the argumentum ad populum kick again? (“Not back on it, Joe, still on it.”)
Actually, that’s a good question. For the purposes of your arguments, why is offshoring substantively different from advancements in equipment, machinery, and automation in general? If you accept that we can be better off by replacing farmers or factory workers with a machine, are you not open to the objection that – “on your planet” – we’d be better off if all Americans were unemployed and their work was being done by machines?
And I’ve been asking you to show how this improved allocation of jobs has actually happened through offshoring.
It would be FAR easier to show how automation achieves that.
See, that’s the problem with comparative advantage. It completely ignores the conspicuously interfering issue of high unemployment that always accompanies offshoring. Furthermore any comparative advantage you think you have can eventually be overwhelmed by cheap labor. Take for instance the knowledge based industry. Anything you can do in that industry here can be done overseas for cheaper. The entire industry is vulnerable to going overseas, and whole sections of it mostly have already. Just you try and get a computer engineering or biotech job here now. You have a very low chance of getting a job in America in those fields even if you have a degree for it.
Worse yet, the comparative advantage argument ignores the damage that unemployment is doing to the country’s solvency and currency valuation. We’ve got budget shortages all over the country. Texas (who was that asshole here who said Texas was doing great?) is now coming out with a $27 billion budget hole. We’re now $14 Trillion in debt. At some point America has to be declared insolvent. The same crisis is facing Europe.
What’ll happen to offshoring then? (Oh, I know what’ll happen… do you?)
Keep putting Americans out of work and sending jobs overseas. Comparative advantage won’t mean a hill of beans when the US dollar takes a dive.
The problem is we put too many people out of work hoping that they’ll be “efficiently allocated”.
When is this “efficient allocation” ever going to happen? Ah yes, to quote emacknight, offshoring’s GOT NUTHIN’.
But how do they “lock in” a lower wage? When a job opening comes that fits their education they’re more likely to get the job if they already have a job. This is because employers are extremely prejudiced against people without jobs. You can get away with it if you are still in school but once you graduate and you still have no job? Your attractiveness plummets.
Or you can take a job now that pays $5000 a month and move to a job that pays $6000 a month. That happens, too. ESPECIALLY in an employee’s market - which, if offshoring does not stop, America will never, ever see again, and this I can absolutely guarantee you.
Unless you’re the one stuck with them.
You guys started it by saying I’m not popular on the SDMB. You trotted out the claim that I’m the “lone voice in the dark”. You are completely unable to grasp the irony of the fact that you play argumentum ad populum and then cry foul when it’s done right back to you.
Crying “Argumentum ad populum” is the last pathetic refuge of an idea that is facing extinction and is unable to come to grips with the fact that its power is fading. In short: pro-offshoring = followers of Zeus. How many people worship Zeus today? That’s you, in the not so distant future. THAT, I can guarantee you.
With offshoring the jobs still exist - they’re just being done elsewhere. With automation the jobs no longer exist at all. Strangely enough automation does what offshoring cannot and has not ever done - it has actually directly created new industries and new types of jobs.
At some point, though, automation will kill more jobs than it creates; particularly when nano-manufacturing happens, or artificial intelligence matures (allowing for larger-scale automation of customer service, etc.). But even then that won’t be too big a problem - because the Sons of Stuxnet will kick automation so hard in its metallic ass that rollbacks will be done for national security’s sake.
Computer viruses have yet to have their say in the automation game.
Company A fires one worker and hires someone in India.
Company B fires one worker and buys and maintains a robot.
According to Le Jackass, the robot replacement has ‘created new industries and new types of jobs’. Something Company B ‘cannot and has not ever done’.
So this whole time, you’ve been railing and railing that offshoring kills jobs…but you’re for automation, even though with offshoring ‘the job is still there’, while with automation ‘the job doesn’t exist at all’.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Huh? Are you really really that dense? Is this thread really just one big whoosh? I know imitation is the greatest form of flatterly…is there some brain-dead chimpanzee you’re carrying a torch for?