The correct word is “affect” not “effect”.
And how are the rich different from everybody else in this respect? We all do what we consider in our best interests. The rich and the poor all buy Chinese crap because it is cheaper than American crap. Or do the poor buy more expensive crap so long as it is crap made in America?
sailor I am not referring to who buys what.
I am referring to Susanann’s naive little notion about all of us becoming an idle nation of pseudo-aristocrats. :rolleyes:
Any and all profits obtained by the process of globalization will go solely to the people who are already wealth. The remainder of the nation will be abandoned to it’s fate.
So what are you saying?
Are you agreeing that most of us will be idle when most of the american jobs are eventually transferred to asian nations with no unions and very cheap labor?
Are you saying that americas welfare system will end and that our political leaders will not provide for all the idle ?
Are you saying that the republicans and democrats will not cater to and provide for tens of millions of unemployed voters?
If tens of millions of americans are permanently idle and not provided for, are not fed and given homes do you expect them to be passive, homeless and starve without taking any action?
Therefore, if tens of millions of americans are idle, and provided for, just what would you call it?
Im not sure I understand Susanann´s umm… “theory”.
In the future, the USA will be driven out of business by competitors, will become more and more deeply endebted and yet GAIN in power?.. how is that exactly? In that scenario, doesnt it seem more likely that the USA will go belly up?
Yes.
Yep. Sure stinks don’t it?
Don’t you mean "millions of non-voters? Otherwise, yeah, that’s what I mean.
Yup. That’s it. They didn’t during the Depressions of 1884, or 1929, they won’t now. They’ll just indulge in moron grunting about the “work ethic disappearing” and that “there’s work out there, but lazy people don’t want it”–same as always, too dumb to live.
But they won’t be provided for, that’s my point.
And in a system where most candidates don’t even talk about the issues, why is voting relavent? The elections are decided by money, & by small, fanatical groups, who are mostly single-issue in nature. i.e.– NRA, Anti-Abortion, etc. If the elected officials can just indulge these limited issues, & give the bulk of the masses a load of bs, then the election goes to the guy with the dough. The guy that panders to the rich.
This is what I mean, when I say we have no voice.
Oh, BTW? Perot? Wasn’t he that billionaire politician-dilettante who dropped out of the race every other week, & never took the election seriously? If he had been elected, he’d have pulled a Jimmy Carter----no Congressional support. That’s what happens to a President that doesn’t have a faction in Congress. No power to do anything.
I guess you and I will disagree a little bit.
I think whoever is in office is the one who gets the most votes.
I think that FDR catered to the unemployed, and in doing so, held the democrats in power for a generation. I think the next smart politician who caters to the great millions of unemployed(by foreign labor) will do the same. It isnt really necessary for the candidate to actually improve the situation(some can argue that Roosevelt did not really improve things) as long as the public thinks that politician is doing all he can for the unemployed.
Obviously, it is not bush.
Bush is not concerned with H-1 and L-1 visas, factories closing, 3 million losing jobs since he got elected. Bush’s primary concern right now is occupying Iraq and possibly gettting involved in Africa.
Bush is much too busy to be thinking about the long term health of our economy. A smart democrat will easily get elected and make bush a one-term president much like his father.
Anyways, we will soon see what happens, and whether or not any politician wants the votes of tens of millions of unemployed.
The Americans of today are not the Americans of yesterday.
Sweet fancy Moses!! I feel like I’m watching a debate in Washington Square between a crazy homeless guy and an NYU freshman (you decide which one of you is which)! Neither knows what they are talking about and both are arguing the same craz side of an important issue.
The USA has the highest GDP of any nation on Earth…by almost DOUBLE the next highest nation (China I think). It’s completely idiotic to believe that somehow ALL those jobs are going to disappear. There aren’t as many IT jobs as there once was. That sucks. Get over it. Find something else to do. I worked in IT related services for five years. Now I do business development for a power company. I suppose I could continue developing those IT skills like a buggy-whip manufacturer trying to make a buggy-whip that will compete with these new automobiles. That wouldn’t pay the bills though.
Someone needs to explain to me why unempoyment has hovered around 4-6% for the past 50 years even as agriculture, manufacuring, automotive, steel, and now technology jobs move overseas. Please explain to me like I am two years old why now is any diferent than the 80s, 70s, and so on where this industry or that industry was threatened by foreign competition?
Sorry but no nation of leisurely welfare aristocrats…no nation of homeless people. Just the same old America filled with people working jobs, loosing jobs, finding new jobs and so on.
Bush’s Record on Jobs: Risking Unhappy Comparisons
The New York Times ^ | July 3, 2003 | DAVID LEONHARDT
For George W. Bush, the race has begun to escape comparisons to Herbert Hoover.
With more than two million jobs having disappeared since Mr. Bush took office in January 2001, he finds himself in danger of becoming the first president since Hoover to oversee a decline in the country’s employment. Economists disagree on how much blame, if any, Mr. Bush deserves for the long slump, but even White House aides view the economy as one of the only big threats to his re-election campaign.
Even if the economy merely adds jobs at the average rate of the last 50 years, he will rank roughly in the middle of modern-era Republican presidents, who have held office during weaker periods of job growth than Democrats.
Employment gains would have to average about 120,000 a month for the American work force to return by the end of next year to its size in January 2001.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, has begun summarizing Mr. Bush’s economic record as “$3 trillion deeper in debt, 3 million fewer jobs.” (While private-sector payrolls have fallen by more than 3 million, the overall decline has been 2.4 million because of government hiring.)
There will still be some jobs left, so those who are still working can pay enough increased taxes to make up for all those who lost jobs to foreign countries. Those who will still have jobs will be the ones privledged to pay for all those who lost jobs to foreign countries.
2. What is different now is OPIC. OPIC is a taxpayer funded United States government agency that provides political risk insurance, currency convertability insurance, and financing to companies investing in overseas operations. This is what is fueling the permanent closing of factories in america and replacing them with foreign factories. In the past, american companies were not so likely to replace an american factory with a foreign one, in fear of that government nationalizing its plant. Today, the american taxpayer is insuring any american company who wants to build a factory in a foreign land, so that if something happens, it will be the american taxpayer who will pay the cost, and not the company that relocates to a foreign land.
In addition, in past times we did not have H1-B visas, L-1 visas(something the rest of the world does not have - e;g; an amercian cannot get a job in china or india like an indian can get a job over here).
Another thing that is different is that the United States is now educating about 800,000 foreign students in our colleges and universities. It is us who are training the foreigners and giving them our skills to take away our jobs.
**Susannan, ** you are full of it when you say that Americans can’t get jobs legally overseas. My firm processes overseas work visas for thousands of Americans, and others, every year. They are not called H-1B or L-1 in other countries, but there are analogous visa categories all over the world. And work visas have been part of the U.S. legal system for a long, long time.
I will provide more details and cites tomorrow, workload allowing, but now I have to leave and go to class now, and then home. If I feel like it, I will debunk part of your assertions about OPIC, but that is a topic far less cenntral to my area of expertise, so perhaps some other enterprising Doper will address it first.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
Eva Luna mentioned before how things are being merrily mixed up here. H1-Bs are not causing Americans to lose jobs in hordes. There is a government-set cap for H1 visas and it is marginal compared to the number of total jobs in this country. These workers are for the most part not working for lower wages than Americans. Please get this into your head, Susannan. They are here to peddle their skilled labor and make money much like an American joins the Shell research division in Netherlands. (Though the flux is much more one-sided between the Third world and the US.)
One can probably make a case that jobs in the IT and financial sector are being increasingly outsourced to skilled workers from countries where given the exchange rates, the wages would work out cheaper. I have read articles to the same effect but again I don’t think the numbers are high.
All of the above is distinctly different from manufacturing being moved overseas due to a glut of cheap (predominantly unskilled) labor. Which is not what the OP is about. So, let us forget about this.
So, in my eyes, it boils down to the IT jobs that are being outsourced. However, one is forced to wonder (as msmith did) as to why the unemployment rate hasn’t changed significantly over the past decades.
Check out how much tuition is being paid to these universities which ultimately goes to benefit who?.
Also, you forget to mention the rewards reaped by this country by attracting bright foreign minds to do research and work in industry.
And your evidence is where?
From www.opic.gov
I read that as “Immigration Pararegal”… sounded pretty impressive!
And if Microsoft has to choose between paying you $60 000 a year and paying someone in India or China $10 000 (or whatever), you lose everytime. And as an American company that pays taxes, Microsoft would like the government to act on it’s behalf, and not make good American companies uncompetitive by forcing them to hire workers that cost more.
And if I have to choose between paying $80 for a foreign product or $100 for am identical domestic product, the domestic one loses every time. Sorry, but i’m not going to pay an extra $20 so you can keep your job
[aside]Alot of the arguments I hear from IT guys on other boards sound like they were ripped from the past. One post I made was “I’m sorry, but did you dig up a time capsule, find something written by a textile worker a hundred years ago and type it out as your argument?”[/aside]
This exact thing has been happening all throughout history, and nothing ever becomes of it. You’ll always find people screaming about losing jobs, the foreign threat, etc etc. Someone already mentioned it, but according to the fear mongers of the 80’s, the Japanese should own everything in the United States right now. Obviously hasn’t happenned.
European farmers are making noise about potentially losing their subsidies, but why should they farming if they can’t make money by taking it out of my paycheque every week in the form of taxes?
Why should I pay for an anonymous programmer in the US’s job in the form of higher prices?
Most importantly pure, what CAN a developing country compete on, if NOT on price?
I’ll be perfectly frank here… I could quote a list which went on forever of Australian jobs which have been shafted by American and European protectionsist policies - and they are very compelling, and overwhelming arguements. But ask yourself this… as an American, or a European, do you honestly give a shit if an Aussie got shafted in the work place by your protectionsist policies a year ago? Or 10 years ago? Or 20 years ago?
No… I thought not. Recognising this, we Aussies realised that it was no good whining about it - we simply had to reinvent ourselves and become more competitive in other areas.
Sadly, time after time after time, I hear arguements emanating from the mouthpieces of US labour representatives which would have you believe, that by default, as a permanent gift from God, that the USA shall always have, forever and ever more, the most supreme labour market and quality of lifestyle standards of any country on earth. Well, things change… nothing lasts forever.
The trick is to recognise when the landscape is changing and to maintain one’s competitive advantage by ADAPTING to new changes, as averse to the destructive and perilous choice of artificially propping up a dying era.
As for the “but do you know how many American jobs are at stake” angle? I gotta say, now ya know what it’s been like for most of America’s trading partners for the last 35 years. Time after time, we’ve heard statements like “Tough… that’s why America is Number One”… well now that the worm is turning, don’t expect too much sympathy.
One point I would like to stress (again) is that protectionist measures are not protecting Americans at the expense of foreigners, they are protecting a few mericans at the expense of the rest of the americans who will be paying the higher prices.
You can do this temporarily and for a small sector but once you get to a point where you are protecting many sectors then it just becomes a stupid exercise in futility because you cannot protect all Americans as workers while shafting them all as consumers.
When I start getting adequately compensated I’ll start engaging this debate. Otherwise, if ignoramuses want to impoverish themselves through backwardass and self-impoverishing protectionism, they can fucking do so. The staggering ignorance on the subject is more than I care to tackle as a hobby.
Actually come to think of it, I’d love to see the whinging crybabies throw up a full scale protectionist wall to save the American economy, and throw in capital controls to boot. It would be instructive. Let the anti-globalization ignoramuses finance US economic expansion off of its own wonderful (near negative) saving rate. It would amuse me even more if they went back to the gold standard as well.
I rather think I could make a pretty penny investing in the aftermath, vulture capital so to speak.
Oh by the way, dealing directly with OPIC for various insurance and finance products, I can report one has to file econometric data on US effects. It’s netted out, but hardly a signficant financing for ‘job flight’ given the restrictions.
Ummm… that’s not quite correct.
Although, in the interests of fairness it has to be said that the distinction is determined by how one “defines” protectionism. For most Australians, we perceive “protectionism” as any means which either artificially raises the cost of “our” products when exporting them from Australia to be imported into other countries, or, alternatively (or in combination with) a policy of subsidising the unprofitiable existence of local products by reducing their costs of production, which in turn reduces their overall sale price.
Some particularly notable examples are the agricultural and steel industries - both of which are extremely world class competitive on the part of Australia - and yet time after time potential export markets are hijacked by countries who use either subsidised products to undercut the fair and honest Australian prices, and/or impose tariffs to make Australian products uncompetitive at an export level.
To contend that protectionism doesn’t hurt forgein countries in this context is quite incorrect I would respectfully suggest.
It results in a situation where a country which attempts to trade fairly, and with integrity, gets constantly shafted by those countries who would not trade with such integrity. It becomes particularly galling when it’s your allies who are doing it.
It should be noted that by and large, Australia has had a pretty good trading history with the USA, although traditionally, when an imbalance has occurred it has usually been in the USA’s favour due to the economies of scale. But in all honesty, it’s the Europeans who have genuinely shafted we Aussies big time - particularly the French, and particularly in the agricultural areas.
So, we don’t whine - we just cop it sweet on the chin and try and work out another way to be competitive. We seem to be doing OK.
Soon, however, we will have a permanent free trade agreement with the USA and my American friends won’t believe how many quality Australian products will be available at mega cheap prices in the USA due to the weaker Australian dollar. That free trade agreement is being pushed right from the very top by President Bush himself.