By whom? You? You have yet to provide any evidence whatsoever of why I should be anything but happy that you talk poorly of me.
Neither you nor your cohorts here have shown any benefits related to offshoring except lower absolute prices, which aren’t even really lower prices when you compare them to wage growth during the last few decades. So really, you have not proven even ONE benefit that offshoring has provided for America’s working class.
You routinely discount all the damage that offshoring has done, despite a multitude of sources that explain the damage, right up to and including the Economist Magazine itself.
You’re a bunch of racists, on top of that, plus you have a seething disdain for anyone who opposes you. Worse than that, you’re living in complete denial of how despised you are by society.
Ah, the old pathetic “I know you are but what am I?” comeback.
Says who? You? Please explain why anyone should care what you think about the use of the ignore function.
I, on the other hand, can tell you why you should care about what I have to say - I represent the voters out there who are ready to put an end to offshoring American jobs. You have almost no support left. You should listen to me - I’m telling you exactly why offshoring will fail. But then I’m not the only one telling you that.
So why are you here? You say you’ve got the numbers and we’re just the small deluded remnant of America that hasn’t figured out the Truth like you and your followers have. Well then, congratulations, you’ve got us outnumbered. Stop wasting time. Go ahead and outlaw offshoring and save the dollar. You can always come back afterwards and gloat.
And yes, you shouldn’t be happy that I’m talking poorly of you, but that’s not why I do it.
Here’s a hint: Most people don’t talk poorly of others to make them happy–of course, if you were half as smart as you thought you were, you’d know that.
My cohorts? When have I said that there were any benefits to offshoring? You’re disparaging me with stuff I never said, nor implied. Of course, if you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d realize this.
I’m a racist? When I ever said anything that could even be construed as racist, in this thread, or anywhere else on the SDMB? Of course, if you were half as smart as…do I really have to finish this sentence for you?
Rather than wade through 660 posts, can someone back up and give me an idea of what LJ wants?
It should be illegal for someone in China to sell me an item?
It should be illegal for me to hire anyone but a United States citizen or resident legally entitled to work here?
It should be illegal for me to hire anyone but a citizen/authorized worker unless I can prove that no one here is qualified to fill the position?
Can I hire outside my home county? Home state? What about the region?
Should people in New York be prohibited from eating avocados grown in California because locally-grown produce (e.g., onions, Brussels sprouts) are available, as nutritious, and local agriculture is a vital industry? Since we can get vitamin C from local sources as well, does that mean oranges are out as well?
All he knows is that “offshoring” is the greatest evil in the universe and must be stopped at all costs–anyone who fails to see this is a moron, and apparently, a racist.
Except that those same voters are more than happy to buy offshored products, you know like the computer you’re using.
You have access to the internet because your ISP is able to buy electronics at a lower price. Force them to pay 5 times more and your internet will cost 5 times more. Suddenly those working class Americans won’t be able to afford their porn machine.
Yes you are. Even Gonzomax abandoned you. And you have yet to show one other person that wants tariffs.
To actually talk about offshoring for a minute, isn’t one problem the externalities? I mean, prices are high for goods made in the US because we pay people a living wage and we have pollution controls and things like that. So, if you move the job to China, and they’ll let you pay their workers next to nothing and dump industrial waste, that’s obviously going to lower the monetary cost and therefore the price, but you’re creating enormous externalities there; miserable, starving workers and a polluted countryside. So that seems like a pretty bad tradeoff, the moreso because it’s so tempting. The consumer gets cheap goods and doesn’t have to worry about suffering half a world away.
One way to combat that is to continue to increase the living standards of people in China and India. I’d like to believe that at least some of these jobs are giving people a slightly better life than if they were subsistance farmers.
Once they have slightly better lives, the money they earn ends up paying farmers, improving their lives. With that comes improved working conditions and environmental controls–the sort of thing Americans only recently adopted and continue to resist.
Yes, but if we do that…if we improve the working conditions and environmental controls, then won’t that just raise the prices of the goods back up, leading you to the same problem you had to start with? I mean, that’s sort of what’s happened, right? Originally, all our cheap crap was made in Japan. Then the Japanese economy took off, living standards improved, and the factories moved to South Korea. The same thing happened there, and the factories moved to China. Now, since China is taking off, the factories are moving to places like Laos.
It seems like you always have a choice. You can pay more and avoid the negative externalities, or you can pay less and accept them.
Which is exactly the point. China and India are going through their industrial revolution, and in a few years they won’t want those jobs any more than Americans (other than Le jaqawhat) want them. Then the next country in line can go through their industrial revolution. It’s possible at some point countries will make a decision to skip it all together.
That’s just one of the many reasons we’ve all be laughing at this absurd notion of putting tariffs on Chinese products, it will move eventually.
Which is again the other point we’ve been trying to drive home. People have a choice. Right now the overwhelming majority wants cheap shit from China, just like they still want feed lot beef and factory chickens.
At some point there will be another “organic” market for products made in countries with fair living conditions and evironmental protections.
Forcing tariffs will take away the option though. It’ll say to people, “You can’t buy cheap shit from China. Either expensive shit from China (because of the tariff), or expensive shit from here (because of high production costs.”.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Forcing tariffs will take away the option though. It’ll say to people, “You can’t buy cheap shit from China. Either expensive shit from China (because of the tariff), or expensive shit from here (because of high production costs.”.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. Le Jac thinks that this is acceptable (plus, he doesn’t agree that it will cost more through a truly staggering series of ‘logical’ loops and twists) because, according to him, it will bring back nearly full employment to America, as those juicy low wage high volume jobs come back to our shores (never mind about automation…he figures that we’ll toss that aside somehow). Since every American will have a job, they can afford to buy all the stuff we do today but at higher prices (this leaps over how America could possibly produce all the stuff we current import using only our own resources of course).
To him it’s worth the price…especially since, as I said, he doesn’t accept that it would be a price at all.
Wow! I actually read through most of this thread and learned a lot about offshoring and the economic reasons for doing so. My conclusion on lurking through this thread is that Le Jac has no clue what he is talking about and practicing the same sort of appeal to emotion that the Communists used to employ (Oh! The poor working class!).
And while I can see that there are some problems with offshoring, tariffs don’t seem to be much of a solution to those problems. The thing is, I can see there are points worthy of discussion and that possibly some changes need to be made. But, ye gods! Le Jac is waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy to far off in left field on this and cannot have a reasonable discussion at all.
I know he has probably lumped me in with the pro-offshore people by now, but the fact of the matter is that I still do not consider that I have sufficient facts to make an informed decision on this subject, so I am neither pro nor anti at this point. So far, the pro-offshore side (which seems to be about 3 or 4 posters, not the entire SDMB) has more logical and better arguments. Le Jac does bring up some points which may be relevant but they are very hard to see in and amongst the outrage, name calling and spittle flying from his mouth.
Word of advice (probably wasting my breath here) Le Jaq – discuss in a reasonable manner without the name calling and with good citations, and some people will be listening. You might even change some minds. But, the frothing at the mouth routine and calling everyone stupid gets you no points and undoubtedly harms the cause you are trying to forward.
Just my 2 cents. Take it or leave it at your own desire.
Aren’t we going to have to do that anyway, though? It seems like we’re running the Red Queen’s race here. As more and more countries industrialize and the standard of living in them increases, and the world demand for goods increases, we have to keep finding new poor laborers to exploit. Eventually, if the trend continues, every country will have a developed economy and they’ll be nobody we can pay slave wages to to keep prices down. So, the system sort of seems unsustainable.
Heh. My comment that he was the one being laughed at was this point. I didn’t say a single thing that was pro-offshoring, but I got a facefull of his spittle with accusations of racism to boot!
You missed the third option: not buying the stuff at all. If there isn’t a market for ipods in the US, there is no reason for Apple to have it’s headquarters and RnD in the US.
Of course its unsustainable. Think about a farm in 1920 that could produce 65 bushels of corn per acre and you could just as easily say, “there is no way we could ever feed 320million people.” Now that same farm can produce 183 bushels per acre, things change.
And in that case there are huge externalities that we’re dealing with. The cost of corn appeared to fall, but in reply a market for high cost organic corn emerged. In 20 years we’ll probably see farms producing less than they do today but charging more.
The system isn’t meant to be sustainable. As increasing cost of labour will increase the desire to automate and technology will meet that demand. We’re essentially watching the evolution of the automobile all over again. Take a look at Henry Ford’s first production lines, it would seem unsustainable. But now we’re able to produce massive numbers of high quality cars at a very low cost relative to what Ford was producing in the 20s. Things change.
It’s not about being pro or anti. Frankly, there is no such thing as being pro-offshoring, it makes no sense. It’s the same retarded debate pattern people try to use when discussing abortion. What the hell is pro-abortion?
And you can’t really be anti-offshoring, because that in and of itself is meaningless. You can be a protectionist, and an isolationist. You can seek to limit contact with the outside world. You can attempt to have the government manipulate market forces in the hopes the magic hand will do what you want. But at least have the decency to acknoledge what it is you’re asking of the rest of us.
I don’t like the thought of exploiting workers in third world countries any more than I like the thought of some whore having yet another unborn child sucked out through a tube.
But as Captain Amazing says, it’s about choice: I respect your decicion to buy American, and I ask that you respect my decision to buy from what ever country I think best suits my needs.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Aren’t we going to have to do that anyway, though? It seems like we’re running the Red Queen’s race here. As more and more countries industrialize and the standard of living in them increases, and the world demand for goods increases, we have to keep finding new poor laborers to exploit. Eventually, if the trend continues, every country will have a developed economy and they’ll be nobody we can pay slave wages to to keep prices down. So, the system sort of seems unsustainable.
[/QUOTE]
Ultimately it’s unsustainable, but that will take decades or even centuries to get there. Basically, you’d have to have exhausted every pocket of cheap labor world wide and brought everyone up to the same standard of living.
But even if all countries did have equal labor costs (as well as other associated costs, benefits, regulations, etc) there will still be comparative advantages that apply. At that point I would expect an even freer flow of goods and services world wide. Our products going out to markets that aren’t available today, and goods and services coming in both from markets we use today and from markets that don’t produce anything today.
The point isn’t to hold the rest of the world back so that we (in the West) can have a semi-monopoly on both labor and high standard of living, but to allow a free flow of labor, goods and services that will open up new markets for our own goods and services. Once China actually becomes the fantasy that Le Jac portrays them as there will be a huge demand for everything that Americans and Europeans (and all the first and second world countries) take for granted. It will be a huge market and America will have a piece of that market. We ALREADY export billions of dollars in high value manufactured goods and services to China (I think they are either are 2nd or 3rd largest export partner) and that’s only going to go up as China’s people become more wealthy and their standards of living goes up. Same with India (I think they are our number 3 or 4 export partner).
[QUOTE=emacknight]
I don’t like the thought of exploiting workers in third world countries any more than I like the thought of some whore having yet another unborn child sucked out through a tube.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t see it as exploitation. I see it as a necessary step for those country to take on a path to more prosperity. Poor as China and India are today, they are hugely more wealthy today than they were even a decade ago. And that wealth is translating into more infrastructure, and higher standards of living. True, the average Chinese worker only makes something like $3k/year…that would be almost off the charts poverty wise in the US or other first world countries. But it’s an order of magnitude more than workers made 10 or 20 years ago, even adjusted for inflation. Same with India. Eventually those workers will be making on average $10k a year…or $15k a year. And eventually the greater wealth in their individual pockets will bring them the power to force their governments to adhere to their own regulations on work place safety and environmental laws…which will further enhance their quality of life.
And then the really low wage high volume jobs will move away to some other country (hopefully) and they will move on to making goods and services of higher quality or that they have a specific advantage in making.
Yeah, I’m not ‘pro-offshoring’…that’s simply a label that Le Jac has tried to put on me and others. I’m pro-free market (I’m also pro-choice…not ‘pro-abortion’ which is another label people try to put on others).