So you’re going to ignore the fact that I just proved you wrong and keep regurgitating the same crap? I should’ve expected as much.
Geez man, you can’t help but contradict yourself, even in the same paragraph. Which is it: do I live off of a trust fund or do I have a low paying job?
Once again, I’m asking you to state where I, personally, have supported offshoring. You cannot do this. Once again, I’m politely asking for you to admit that you are wrong about me, and for an apology.
Le Jacquelope, telling other posters to fuck off is a violation of our language rules. Please refrain from doing this in the future.
No warning issued.
You’re just saying that because you’re pro-offshoring! Why do you hate America?!
He doesn’t hate America…he’s just bigoted against America and Americans. He hates the Working Man(aar). Miller, like this board, is a known insurgent for the Pro-Offshoring and Outsourcing Society, a small but fervent group fighting to keep the American working man down by sending all our jobs (and women) overseas to the yellow, brown and red people who are stealing our jobs, our livelihood and our entire way of life! When you read the proceeding you need to be humming American the Beautiful, slightly offkey and with a slight echo and haunting melody…
All of us are on Le Jac’s list, and comes the revolution you all will be going against the wall. Me, I’ll be shipped back to Mexico most likely, since that’s where folks like me belong…
-XT
And how many dimensions does argument have that tariffs mean higher wages? Let’s count shall we:
For those following along at home, the higher wage Le Jacquelope’s argument requires, is based on two very flimsy assumptions
The idea of having consumer electronics like ipods is based on the cost of that item relative to wages. An ipod is considered cheap based on current US wages. Aggregate wages in the US are high enough that people earning a low wage can afford to buy ipod. But compare and contrast with aggregate wages in China or India, where an ipod is considered a luxury good. The same item is expensive relative to wages.
Making an ipod in the US means that the cost of the ipod goes up relative to aggregate wages, making it a luxury item. So instead of selling 100million, the number starts to go down. If it falls enough Apple either won’t bother making them (for the US market), or won’t need as many employees. Either way we’re no better off.
This is simply absurd. Making an ipod is energy intensive, hence vulnerable to changes in energy cost. I can’t believe I had to write that. This is truly a new low for Le Jacquelope.
So like I said above, if we go with that assumption, the 100 person factory in China isn’t going to higher 100 Americans. Even if we pretend that there is direct conversion of wages to productivity, the $10/hour American means that 100 person factory is only hiring 10 people. So simply forcing companies to manufacture in the US isn’t going to “bring back all those lost jobs.”
And we’d remind you that this is once again a massive logical fallacy, and the cornerstone of your position. I know a Russian with a red truck, are all trucks in Russia red? Or in simpler terms: Le Jacquelope sad something stupid once, so everything Le Jacquelope says is stupid.
The left over result of tariffs on imported cars, good example.
But that’s the point. The point is that you’d still rather BUY the car made in China because it’s cheaper. As an example, you chose to buy your laptop, router, and modem at a lower price than a hand crafted American version.
Instead of what the gardener is good at, which is gardening. So how the gardener is that bilingual, and trained to provide technical support.
Holy fuck this is retarded. 2 years to get into biotech research? What the fuck magical world created biotech researchers in 2 years? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it’s possible a former “manager of a call center” doesn’t know the first thing about biotech research.
Really? America is now just low-paid gardeners? I’m not, and neither is Le Jacquelope.
Once again you confuse job loss to a recession with lobs lost to offshoring. Further to that, low paying temp jobs have more to do with health care costs but that’s another debate.
Several giant leaps of logic hear. Not sure how the cost of tuition fits in to offshoring but somehow it all comes back to offshoring. Long story short, bring back low paying factory jobs will not help people afford tuition.
No we haven’t.
I hate to be the one to tell you that, but all those jobs were BECAUSE of offshoring, not inspite of it. The “explosion webistes” was the result of dramatic reductions in the cost of home computers, changing it from a high cost luxury good to a low cost consumer staple. Note that the first computers were handmade by US specialists, filled a room, and cost a fortune. Offshoring brought down the cost of computing, everything we have is based on that one simple fact. Oh, and porn, let’s not discount the importance of porn on the explosion of web sites. Credit where credit is due after all.
So still no experience with biotech? Or any training in basic economics.
Crap, there is still more drivel, but no time to address it. For more information consider visiting your local library, or looking up “basic economic principles” on the interweb. It’s all there to be had, thanks to our friend offshoring.
Stupid, clueless, out of touch with society and totally lacking in any ability to think for yourself. How much practice did it take for you to master all those failings in one lifetime?
I can’t wait to see your gang of insular sunlight-deprived ignorami caught out in the open choking on the fumes of reality.
You’ll get an apology over my cold, dead body, you slithering snake in the grass.
You’re making Gadhafi sound in touch with reality.
Once again, I am asking for you to prove your unfounded and baseless accusations against me. It is obvious that you cannot do so.
This is either because 1) these accusations are unfounded and baseless, or 2) you are too stupid to do so.
Either man up, and apologize, or stop with your stupid comments towards me.
What’s interesting about tariffs, is that the issues surounding them very closely parelle that those of minimum wage laws. Essentially, we’re either trying to force the price of an item (ie labour).
In both cases we’d like to believe that positive outcomes will result: We tell ourselves that if we move minimum wage from $4 to $8 the poor will be better off, they’ll have more money to spend, so companies will have more profit, that profit will pay for the increased cost of labour. Le Jaq is trying to tell us that if we make the cost of electronics higher the manufacturers will increases wages, cycling back to the idea that those wages will turn into profit.
The problem is that it rarely, if ever, works out that way.
Le Jaci,
A few questions about implementation and practicality. These aren’t “gotcha” questions – though I disagree with you, I do genuinely want to know how your proposition would be pulled off. So, no need to call me a retard yet (though you may if you’d like).
These questions focus on manufacturing as that sounds like it’s an important part of your platform. Other types of jobs get outsourced too, but I’ll focus on this for now.
1a. What would be the goal of tariffs? A target % of products made in the US, a target % unemployment? (What I mean is, if linked to % products made in the US, tariffs would be raised until that goal was met.)
1b. Would these tariffs vary by product category? If so, who would determine categories? If a new product were introduced, say a refrigerator with a tablet built into the door, and the company disputed a regulator's placing the product into a tablet category instead of refrigerator category, what would be the venue for resolving the dispute?
1c. How would tariffs be collected against materials purchased directly from the producer and sent via mail direct to the customer?
1d. How would you deal with products partially made in the US? (I believe I read an article about the iPhone and how much more of it is made in the US than people think, maybe even a majority of the manufacturing costs are US based, but final assembly is in China so it gets the Made in China sticker.)
2a. If a company manufacturing in the US claims it needs parts currently only made outside the country to continue making a product, would you grant it an exception? A temporary exception?
2b. If a company has a product mostly made in the US, what percent foreign made can it be without being an illegal product?
2c. If someone is caught smuggling illegal foreign products, what would be the penalty?
2d. If someone is caught possessing an illegally made foreign product, what would the penalty for the consumer be?
2e. If a US based company produces a product for global consumption at a single location is now faced with having to build another facility just for US consumption and decides this isn't worth while, will you grant them an exception? What if they decide to move the headquarters out of the US?
2f. Will foreign companies with current US-based production facilities be allowed to continue to manufacture in the US and send the profits to the home country (for example, BMW)?
2g. We only have 9% unemployment. If we find that isn't enough to fill the jobs of all the new factories, will you become less restrictive, or will we just have to do without some products because we don't have enough labor for the factories?
3a. Would you grant exceptions for products that cannot be made in the US (for example, single malt scotch from Eastern Scotland)?
3b. Would you grant exceptions for products that really are a lot harder to make in the US than other countries (saffron? rice? there are probably better examples).
3c. Will crude oil be exempt?
3d. If this pisses off a country like China who retaliate, for example by preventing the export of minerals needed for modern batteries (which apparently we do not have in sufficient quantities in the US for our current demand, let alone future demand), would you strike a deal with them so our battery-based industries and products wouldn't be crippled?
3e. Would you exempt products in that were invented, patented, and manufactured in another country? (These products will not have "stolen" jobs as there were never US jobs associated with them, nor could we create jobs for a decade, the product being patented.) If so, what would you do if someone claimed these new products, though not directly displacing US jobs, were being bought as a substitute for US-made goods? What if it undisputedly displaced US-made goods but saved lives (a novel safety or medial device)? Who would make the determinations? Where would the determinations be appealed?
How would you try to enforce intellectual property theft in other countries given that other countries are going to be even less inclined than now to enforce US-based patents and copyrights?
What if, when partially implemented, the economy improved and all goals were met. Would you stop there or continue to implement?
What if, while implementing, the economy shrank, and economic conditions continued to get worse, and your economic advisors said they thought the tariffs/trade restrictions were at fault. Would you fire them and speed the implementation, keep the steady, or reverse course?
Ooooh, and if I decline to give you the time of day what are you going to do about it? Cry some more? Get more people on the SDMB to flame me? Oh, I’m so terrified.
You know, I’m done with you. I’ve always known that no apology was forthcoming, but I was enjoying prodding you with my sharp stick. Except now, my arm is getting tired. I guess this means you win. Enjoy your victory, jackass.
You are so one dimentional, why do you hate America?
If only I could burn each of those 13 stripes individually…
Wow! It’s still going!! As I suspected, Le Jac decided I’m “pro-offshoring”. You other guys really should stop poking him with a stick. I think 15 pages of this insanity is enough. Nobody is going to reason him out of his position as he has not been reasoned into it. I swear, he’s worse than the bible thumpers! 
Hey, Le Jac! Can I fuck off too? I mean I’m soooo pro-offshoring… 
Careful there Doc, you’re going to get the jackass to accuse me of forcing you to post this in order to flame him.
Well, lo and behold! I can hold the stick in my other hand!
It is important, but textile industries, service industry work like tech (programming, etc.), knowledge industry work such as research and development jobs are also highly important parts of my platform. We’re seeing jobs in those sectors moving overseas, too, although people here deny this despite the fact that job migrations in these sectors have been heavily documented and cited here many times.
It would be one of 2 or more primary enforcement mechanisms.
Good questions.
The primary goal of tariffs would be to balance out trade deficits more than to enforce percentage targets. The more severe the trade deficit the more severe the overall tariff on that country. I would also put additional tariffs on countries that refuse to impose First World workplace safety protections and pollution controls on their industries. They can trade with me when they learn to treat their people like human beings and not disposable capital.
Now, let’s wish upon a star and say that we find out that the broadly-defined knowledge based industry has more positions available than we have out of work manufacturing people. If this impossible scenario ever comes to pass I would lower tariffs on manufactured goods and raise them to protect the knowledge-based industry. I’d also start funding retraining for knowledge-base work, since unlike today, there would be enough jobs for all those retrained applicants. (The problem with job retraining under the current climate is 80% of those who get themselves qualified for “Today’s Jobs” will not get them because there aren’t enough jobs to go around.)
Basically the tariffs will remain until the fantasy of “comparative advantage” actually comes true, and America’s workers are actually facing the opportunity to transition to better work, instead of what we have now, which is labor arbitrage, which has resulted in a handful transitioning upward to new industries while the rest transition downward to… gardeners.
Moreover there would be an outright ban on outsourcing ANY Government work or any use of personal information (SSNs, financial info, and especially medical info) outside the country. To clarify: if you want to open a bank account in the Cayman Islands then that’s on you, but no one who opens an American bank account will be put at such an elevated risk for identity theft in countries where the FBI has no jurisdiction.
They would vary by industry. The most important industry to protect, with the highest tariffs, would be the knowledge-based industry; then manufacturing, because of its sheer size; then the tech side of services, because it’s more advanced than manufacturing and it used to be very big; then textiles gets the least tariff protection.
The categories would be determined by the number of jobs at stake and their average pay, and where the industry is on the food chain. Emerging industries get the highest protection.
What’s the relevance of this question?
If it crosses into our borders from another country it can be assessed a duty. Of course I’m sure there’ll always be the problem of smugglers.
See, that’s the kind of complex stuff that you don’t see around here much.
Stuff that is built here and assembled there should have lower tariffs. It’s a fallacy to believe this can’t be accounted for.
I never advocated banning imported manufactured goods; only tariffs. Bans are for most service industry cases involving exporting personal information overseas.
A very temporary exception. I’d follow up with short-term subsidy offers for companies to make it here.
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2b. If a company has a product mostly made in the US, what percent foreign made can it be without being an illegal product?
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Well for one I’m not taking the “illegal product” approach. I support very heavy tariffs for bad actor countries whose factories pollute the hell out of their cities and who have horrible workplace safety laws. Plus I also support stronger emissions caps on American industries - since we as a society pay the consequences after the fact for the pollution they generate, we might as well pay to keep it under control.
Same as anyone who’s caught smuggling. Fines or imprisonment.
What is the law now for owning contraband?
Good for them. They will be subjected to tariffs. Or, in the realm of services, VAT taxes.
Of course I’m assuming these companies think they are irreplaceable; that Apple thinks it can never be beset by a competitor. I invite them to go with that.
I’ve no problem penalizing bad actors who want to access our market without contributing the jobs necessary to keep this market strong.
Isn’t this what Toyota is doing? They’re paying their US workers Union level wages (but not Union level benefits). China gives preferential treatment to companies who hire Chinese workers to serve China’s market. I’d do the same for American workers.
That 9% is deceptive. It doesn’t count people who have been discouraged from looking for work, or those who are underemployed - essentially those who are qualified to do higher value work but are instead low-paid gardeners for people like Rhythmdvl. That pushes unemployment - real unemployment - close to 20%.
Not having enough jobs for our labor pool presents more problems than not having enough labor for our job pool. America has done quite well during the times long past when we had employees’ markets. I vastly prefer employees’ markets over employers’ markets.
Yup. Exactly my response to the “but what about coffee?!!” crowd.
Yes, to an equal or lesser degree.
Complex question. Crude oil should be taxed higher, overall, period. The taxes should be used to maintain roads, enhance public transit and subsidize an alternative energy infrastructure. We have the means to build solar panels on gasoline stations and develop automated battery changers. An electric car could pull up to a station, swap out an old battery for a fully charged one, and keep on going. I’d also use these taxes to accelerate research on next generation batteries… essentially putting electric car research on par with existing money thrown at digging deeper oil wells.
On a side note: there is no such thing as cheap oil. Again, we pay for “cheap oil” in the form of more pollution, acidic oceans, global warming and smog… and all the health problems and environmental damage that this causes. I’m only moving the hidden costs out into the open.
China’s working on doing that right now with rare Earth minerals… and we haven’t really clamped down on their mercantilist behavior. I’ve got little to lose here. I’d call their bluff. China lost 20 million jobs the last time we had an economic crash. If they cut us off from essential minerals we’ll dig deeper for ours, recycle what we’ve got, and wait them out.
First of all, and this should not be a surprise, I do not like the World Trade Organization. The WTO has jumped bad at America and told us we can’t enact certain environmental laws within our own jurisdiction. That, without anything else they’ve done, is cause enough for me to take America out of the WTO, if it were up to me. I suspect that the WTO would try to have a hand in determining the answer to this question.
Again, this is highly complex. Foreign countries are always inventing something using their own domestic intellectual talent. However, what is increasingly happening is they’re taking jobs from the United States and those workers are inventing the next generation of things we used to make here. For example China’s photovoltaic systems. You better believe I would have people studying the history of those industries and I would certainly slap tariffs on them if it can be reasonably determined that their innovations came as a result of offshoring. Moreover, if they want to sell to America’s enormous market then they must have a relevant factory or two in America, and they must make America a contractual “partner” in the use of their intellectual property. China does it (along with other countries, in fact) and they seem to be progressing just fine.
Furthermore, in China’s case, they are outright stealing intellectual property on the sly and flooding America with knockoffs from the same offshored factories where legitimate products are being made. Nothing they “invent” would be safe from outright espionage and theft. Yes, I fight dirty with people who fight dirty. If China wants to complain about it then they can stop doing it themselves. My policy is, you get what you give, until you stop.
What can we do about intellectual property theft now, as it is? Their war on intellectual property and copyrights will do them in on its own. Piracy rates of Chinese-made software is off the charts. Bollywood and Nigerian movie makers are utterly plagued. Let them bring it on; we’ll respond in kind and wait them out.
I’d gradually lower tariffs but keep them tied to the conditions of our job market.
Reverse course, or alter course? I’d alter course.
Hey Beavis… I’ve been prodding you guys with a stick for months now. This whole thread was intended to rub it in that America thinks you’re a bunch of idiots. For the last 400 or more posts you’ve been jumping to my organ grinding tactics and now you think you’re the one with the stick? You will never poke sticks at me. You respond to me because you know America has awakened to your bullshit and we’re not tolerating your lies and scam arguments anymore.
Read this one very slowly or get a reading comprehension aid to help you: you go after me because I’m one of few who even bothers to engage you. The rest of America wishes you pro-offshoring fucktards would just go away and ruin another country with your beliefs.
Yeah, I’m the one with poor reading comprehension…
You’re the idiot that thinks I support offshoring. When, let me make this clear to you:
I have never said anything as such!
Do you understand?