Nader. Nader and the B-boy. And no, they are merely uninformed about the potential negative aspects, Ms. Beltway. The typical American gets little actual info on what policies a candidate advocates, & a great deal of meaningless patriotic flag-waving & other political tapioca. Worse, most are too ignorant & apathetic to care.
No, the majority of Americans have no real voice in the political system. The people with money have the real voice, & it will remain so until there is campaign finance reform.
**
Then there is no valid reason not to ban import of goods from those nations. After all, if the American Government really represents us as you claim, it does not exist to look after the intrests of free trade, 3rd world nations, or anything else other than it’s citizens.
**
And we shall all be in desparate poverty, which is what I would like to avert.
**
No we didn’t vote for it. We didn’t vote against our own personal & national intrests. We were betrayed.
There isn’t going to be a labor free America, only a frantically poor America.
Because the American Rich haven’t changed one bit from the Robber Barons of the 19th Century. Still the same inhuman swine they always were.
People have been talking about the US economy switching to a services economy for years. We don’t build anything anymore, we just find ways of financing and marketing it. That may be a natural evolution of the economy. After all, no one is lamenting the fact that we are no longer an agrarian society.
The question is can an economy support nothing but bankers, analysts, salesmen, consultants, managers, lawyers and low level service jobs?
What a mess. Some of you are mixing up a whole bunch of issues, which although they are all related to the U.S. economic situation in varying degrees, are not at all the same issue.
An H-1B is not an L-1, and there is a valid place in an open economy for both. Immigration is not the import-export market. Foreign workers are not the sole cause why the tech job market stinks right now; I’d think even the most anti-immigrant person would realize that, because 195,000 visas a year is a very small fraction of 1% of the total U.S. job market. And if you were paying attention to my previous post, you know that H-1B workers are required to receive the prevailing wage, so that if employers obey the law, H-1B workers CANNOT drag down wages for U.S. workers. If they aren’t following the law, then by all means prosecute them, but that’s a separate issue.
And in any case, a significant number of H-1B visas are used for all sorts of professions other than computer programming; in fact, until relatively recently there was a significant debate in the employment-based immigration community whether some programming positions were even eligible to be filled by H-1B holders, because so many programming positions don’t necessarily need to be filled by someone with a degree in computer science (the “degree in a particular area of specialization” required by H-1B legislation); as you may know, a large number of programming positions are held by people who have no bachelor’s degrees at all, or whose degrees are in tangentially related fields such as engineering, physical sciences, or even liberal arts. Out of the dozens of my childhood friends who work in the IT industry now, not one has a CS degree, nor do a significant proportion of the IT workers for whom I draft H-1B and L-1 petitions now.
You all would be well-served to read some basic info on immigration law, particularly as it relates to the U.S. labor market. I recommend the following:
There is nothing inherently wrong with a country having an economy which produces mainly services so long as foreigners are willing to buy those services. It does not matter whether you are getting your income from producing goods or services so long as you are getting your income. Switzerland is an example of a country which has been a producer of services for a long time. Nothing wrong with Switzerland.
Well…services and cool Army Knives.
The only downside to a services-only economy is that there are fewer low-level jobs for less educated folks. Long gone are the days where one could (maybe) graduate from high school and go work in the local mill or factory.
Believing that all the jobs are leaving the US is absolutely ridiculous. There is plenty of stuff that needs to be done right here and not all of it can be oursourced to someone in India or Taiwan.
The american people have “all” the power in this country, all the voice, the people have the vote regardess of how much money anyone else may have. The rich only get one vote, the same as a poor woman. Whatever way the americans vote, is what we end up with.
I find that very hard to believe. I find it hard to believe that you did not see any of Ross Perot’s speeches, debates, interviews in either 1992 or in 1996. If you saw any of his speeches, how can you say you were betrayed? Ross told you straight what would happen, and every american is familiar with his phrase:
“American jobs will be lost by that giant sucking sound”.
We all know that in nearly every speech he gave, he brought with him plenty of visual aids, with charts and graphs, showing what would happen, how many jobs would be lost, how many factories would be lost, etc in black and white. If you listened to just one Ross Perot speech or interview, none of what is happening is a surprise, nor is it news. All the jobs and closed factories and trade deficits, and eventually budget deficits were well predicted and plainly shown to all the american people.
The people(most of them) saw Ross Perot’s graphs, they saw the future and chose NAFTA and shipping our factories and jobs to asia.
Collounsbury: *It’s threads like this that make me think of The Economist’s lament that it was founded 160 years ago to promote informed thinking on economics and trade, and it seems as if they’re getting no closer to their goal.
Bloody, bloody hell.*
Not much of a contribution to the debate, Coll old buddy. I respect your knowledge of international trade issues, and I see a lot of merit in many of the arguments for economic globalization. But it seems to me that you and many like you are digging your cause’s grave with your pens (or keyboards).
If the pro-globs’ best response to the genuine anxiety felt by many American workers—who, however much you may disagree with them, honestly worry that their security and prosperity are seriously threatened by offshore job relocation—is to label them (as you literally did in a recent thread) “whinging crybabies” and bemoan their deplorable failure to read the Economist, then I’m sorry to say this, but the anti-globs have already won.
If the best you can do is moan about how selfish and ignorant the masses are, while anti-glob crusaders are telling millions of angry and frightened unemployed and underemployed people what they should do to take back their destiny from the selfish fatcat exploiters who betrayed their trust, your goose is cooked. Power, wealth, and even the favor of the Economist are ultimately insufficient to enforce a policy that has no real popular support. If the pro-globs don’t want to see a serious protectionist backlash over the next decade, it’s up to them to explain clearly and convincingly why globalization isn’t a real threat to prosperity.
Most of the jobs you mention are in the process of being outsourced to foreign countries. Low level service jobs are already being done by immigrants, most of them illegal.
Although lawyers themselves may stay american, there is already a glut of lawyers in america, and routine legal research is already being outsourced to India by most large legal firms.
Column: Reassessing where manufacturing fits into Michigan’s economy
Wednesday, July 2, 2003,By Rick Haglund
"Michigan has lost 19 percent of its manufacturing employment – nearly 172,000 jobs – since the state plunged into recession in mid-2000.
Jobs in the transportation equipment sector, which includes the auto industry, also fell 19 percent between June 2000 and April of this year. The office furniture industry lost 15,000 jobs in that period, a mind-boggling 38 percent employment drop.
Young recently told securities analysts that GM is aggressively looking to buy parts from suppliers in lower-cost countries, such as China.
And GM, like other automakers, is farming out more of its highly skilled engineering work to tech centers in India and China.
Global engineering has helped GM cut engineering costs by 47 percent . "
It would also help if the pro-globs would list and document all the jobs newly available from free trade where the unemployed displaced american workers can find alternate places to work.
If the pro-globs can document new opportunities, new jobs, new factories in america, then the pro-globs would get plenty of support, not only from unemployed workers, but from still employed people who have to take up an increasing share of income taxes no longer paid by those no longer working.
If it takes a decade to see a serious protectionist backlash, it will be too late to do anything about it anyways, by then, there will be no industry nor jobs to “protect”.
The pro-globs should be better able than I to show/prove in black and white why an america with no factories and no high tech will be more prosperous. We already know/realize that american companies will make more money/higher profits with their costs of production being slashed, but some pro-globs better able than I has to show how the average citizen who no longer spends time at a job will be better off, and how it will all work out in detail with us not producing or working anymore.
I think the numbers are closer to 3 million jobs lost since bush got elected.
Education is a great idea. But in what professions?
Also, what education do you recommend for men and women esp over the age of 40 or 50 who got permanently laid off becuase their jobs were sent to asia?
Do the jobs which you know of/speak of hire 50-55 year old trainees?
Exactly what industries, trades, professions and jobs can absorb not only the 3 million already lost, but the additional 20 million jobs that India thinks it can take over the next decade, plus a few million more that china thinks it can take?
We already know that getting an education/retraining in IT, engineering, medical, etc is a waste of time, even if you are not over 50.
(I am greatly interested in where you think all the unfilled jobs are. Please enlighten us.)
Give me some evidence that MOST and not SOME jobs are being oursourced overseas.
I could stand in Grand Central Station one afternoon and extrapolate exactly when New York will be empty of people, given the current rate of outbound commuter trains.
I am also waiting for the Japanese to finish buying up the USA (which started in the 80s)
So, what gives?, no economic services, hmmm, I´ve got it: the USA will turn into a giant artists community, they´ll sell paintings, sculptures, music, films, etc, to the rest of the word… no?
OK, how about this, the USA will simply turn into a aristocracy, every american will be a Victorian English aristocrat, never working but supported on it´s lands and servants labor. I find this one particulary depressing, in both sides of the equation.
So, what do we have left?. Well, the obvious, no work, no production, no food or shelter, pray the rest of the world forgets the offenses and reminds the kind gestures and comes to give a hand.
You greatly underestimate the dependency of the rest of the world on the amerian economy, and the american consumer.
If foreign countries ever called in the United Stated debt, causing america to go bankrupt, causing US bonds to be worthless, causing the dollar to fall to zero, ending the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, losing all the american citizens as customers, then all the other economies of the world will go into a depression.
China and India’s economies are only booming because they have customers in the United States. If the amerian dollar becomes worthless, all the chinese industries and Indian industries will go belly up. Japan, mexico, and Canada could not exist without trade to the United States. All of asia is mostly dependent on american consumers. Europe would go into a depression without americans buying their goods.
Without the United States market to sell to, industries all over the world will shut down.
Every other country knows this, and that is why they will never pull the plug, and call in the debts, even if(WHEN) the United States soon becomes a country that produces nothing.
Foreign countries would be committing suicide(and they know it) if they made the United States balance its trade, honor its debts, or stopped loaning money to it.
There are plenty of immigrants coming in each week for the lower level jobs still here to sell hamburgers, go into construction, work at hotels stores and restaurants, be maids and servants, pick grapes, etc.
So, basically the low and middle-tier end of the high-tech spectrum is gone, while the upper-tier will probably remain here (although I don’t see why those jobs won’t eventually go as well).
I’m in the “superdeveloper” category, but I’m going back to school to get my MBA and learn Chinese and Hindi. I’m also working on my PMP and GSE certs right now, as well as accumulating all the certs from MS and Sun. Of course, I have to do all of this on my own time and at my own cost. I’d suggest that anyone who seriously wants to have a career in IT in ten years do the same.
Then go work in a deli or a Starbucks something. Or figure our what the 100 million+ people who HAVE jobs are doing. Or ask why EVERY company hasn’t moved overseas in the past 30 years.
The world’s economy does depend on that of America but America’s also depends on the rest of the world. The idea that China and other countries depend exclusively on the USA is BS. China has a lot of trade with the EU and has a huge internal market. For instance, foreign tourism in China is tiny compared with internal tourism. China has a huge internal market which is developing very fast. And their trade with the EU is also huge. It was the Germans who built the Three Gorges Dam and the Guangzhou metro.
Although some fields are quickly moving overseas, there’s always academia to keep one employed. I’m working towards being a lecturer in classics. University jobs are somewhat scarce but, for those who can deal with children (which I probably can’t, little brats), schools are also a place which will hire. The country is always looking for new teachers.
Software design is directly analogous to the textile industry of the 1800’s. What started as the well-paying profession of the genteel nations quickly went to the developing world. Now in 1st world countries people knit or quilt as a hobby, but wouldn’t want to work full-time in the field. Same for software, it’s now know that a fellow in China or India can do the job just as well as some poor fool demanding $60,000 a year starting salary in the US. Like people who quilt, I enjoy contributing to free software in my spare time, but I’m not so crazy as to think this will pay me when in the West it is being relegated to a mere hobby.
