# Offshoring - the snake that is eating itself. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 3, 2010, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912 "2010-10-03T14:51:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 16
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/301 "2010-10-15T21:41:25Z")
[QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi] How much does it help the 50 year old factory worker in Indiana to know that eventually someone will get a job that will replace the job that he lost? How much will it help his kids that are applying to college this year? [/QUOTE] How much will your appeal to emotion help? Will it get this fictional 50 year old his job back? Why? How? If the factory closed, do you presume that if there was no offshoring that would have allowed it to magically remain open? And if it remained open, that this guy would have kept his job? I’m over 50…if I lost my job then I’d do the seemingly radical move of going to look for a new one. If the one and only factory in Indiana closed then I’d look somewhere else. If all I could do was turn one screw or tighten one bolt on an assembly line then I’d try and retrain myself to do something else. When I got laid off 2 years ago I went out and got a new job, doing some consulting on the side to make ends meet. When my entire industry collapsed in 2000 and my company went tits up, laying off every network engineer and tossing us all into a market already saturated with IT people and taking the last of my money with them I moved to another part of the country where I could get a job. Are you saying that I’m some kind of super worker, that only I’m able to do stuff like this, and that it’s beyond our theoretical factory worker in Indiana?? > [@](#): > > How sure are you that the job that eventually replaces the job that was lost is going to be anywhere near as good? Should we even be trying to preserve a vibrant working class job base here or are we all going to become investment bankers in the future? I’m sure that some folks will make out better, some worse, and the majority will probably go on the same. Life is full of ups and downs, and luck plays a large role. I’m reasonably sure that, if the economy picks back up that many who were laid off by their companies will be recalled when those companies again are in an expansion mode, as opposed to being in hunker down and see mode, and that offshoring won’t play a significant role in the equation. > [@](#): > > I’m a firm believer in trade. I’m a firm believer in Keynesian responses to recessions. I am a firm believer in not letting your trading partners rape you in the assjust because you are afraid that it might trigger a trade war. How is China raping us exactly? Could you be specific and provide some examples? From where I’m standing it seems to be a two way street, with the Chinese being our number 3 export partner (and buying mainly more expensive and higher ticket items, as well as agricultural products), selling use what we want (i.e. cheap goods), and also injecting large amounts of capital back into our system by buying up large amounts of dollars (of course, as with the other aspects, this is a double edged sword, and has the effect of keeping the Chinese people poor and unable to buy a lot more of our own goods and services, keeping the Chinese currency artificially low while ours remains artificially high, etc etc)…that hardly seems ‘rape’ to me. Thanks in advance for those specific examples…appreciate you helping me fight my ignorance and all that. -XT ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/302 "2010-10-15T22:13:55Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > When you say: economist all agree that trade is good for everyone, you are invoking the authority of the consensus of economists everywhere to strengthen your argument about China’s currency peg which doesn’t enjoy the same universal consensus. I haven’t made any particular argument about China’s currency peg. So how could I be “Strengthening” it with anything? > [@](#): > > Your argument seemed to be that it doesn’t matter if China has a currency peg because it will all even out I said China would most definitely hurt itself in the long run on its current path, which in fact IS the consensus (and, frankly, the only logical conclusion; amassing money and then **never** spending it is obviously pretty stupid.) How that amounts to a defense of China’s monetary policy I cannot even begin to understand. Since you seem to acknowledge that I am aware of the fact China’s currency is not free floating, I am still quite baffled as to your claim that I assumed “Free floating currency.” > [@](#): > > A lot of them think (like Hellestal) that a currency peg is just a form of forced savings that will right itself once the peg is released and the Chinese suddenly find themselves with all this purchasing power. They will buy up all sorts of stuff from America with all the dollars they have saved. You have wildly oversimplified a pretty nuanced position. > [@](#): > > IANAE. I know enough to follow a conversation, I know enough to know that most amateur economists have a very incomplete understanding of economics and of the confounding factors that invalidate what they think they know about economics. Boy, you said a mouthful. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/303 "2010-10-16T03:00:01Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > [QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi] > How much does it help the 50 year old factory worker in Indiana to know that eventually someone will get a job that will replace the job that he lost? How much will it help his kids that are applying to college this year? How much will your appeal to emotion help? Will it get this fictional 50 year old his job back? Why? How? If the factory closed, do you presume that if there was no offshoring that would have allowed it to magically remain open? And if it remained open, that this guy would have kept his job? I’m over 50…if I lost my job then I’d do the seemingly radical move of going to look for a new one. If the one and only factory in Indiana closed then I’d look somewhere else. If all I could do was turn one screw or tighten one bolt on an assembly line then I’d try and retrain myself to do something else. When I got laid off 2 years ago I went out and got a new job, doing some consulting on the side to make ends meet. When my entire industry collapsed in 2000 and my company went tits up, laying off every network engineer and tossing us all into a market already saturated with IT people and taking the last of my money with them I moved to another part of the country where I could get a job. Are you saying that I’m some kind of super worker, that only I’m able to do stuff like this, and that it’s beyond our theoretical factory worker in Indiana?? I’m sure that some folks will make out better, some worse, and the majority will probably go on the same. Life is full of ups and downs, and luck plays a large role. I’m reasonably sure that, if the economy picks back up that many who were laid off by their companies will be recalled when those companies again are in an expansion mode, as opposed to being in hunker down and see mode, and that offshoring won’t play a significant role in the equation. [/quote] My point isn’t that people will NEVER be able to get another job. My point is that the economy’s ability to create new job (enough new jobs to absorb some 50 year old guy that just got out of occupational retraining) is UNFAIRLY impeded by the effects of a currency peg which makes our exports less attractive to Chinese consumers and makes their imports more attractive to ours. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > I’m a firm believer in trade. I’m a firm believer in Keynesian responses to recessions. I am a firm believer in not letting your trading partners rape you in the assjust because you are afraid that it might trigger a trade war. > > How is China raping us exactly? Could you be specific and provide some examples? From where I’m standing it seems to be a two way street, with the Chinese being our number 3 export partner (and buying mainly more expensive and higher ticket items, as well as agricultural products), selling use what we want (i.e. cheap goods), and also injecting large amounts of capital back into our system by buying up large amounts of dollars (of course, as with the other aspects, this is a double edged sword, and has the effect of keeping the Chinese people poor and unable to buy a lot more of our own goods and services, keeping the Chinese currency artificially low while ours remains artificially high, etc etc)…that hardly seems ‘rape’ to me. > > Thanks in advance for those specific examples…appreciate you helping me fight my ignorance and all that. > > -XT I don’t know what it was for last year but our top three export partners have been Canada, Mexico and Japan for a long time. If you tell me that China has topped Japan as an export partner then I believe you. But they still export 4 to 5 times as much to us as we export to them. > **[International Trade](https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html)** There is no reason why we need to be perfectly balanced with all our trading partners but when we are experiencing significant trade deficits and some part of that trade deficit is the result of currency manipulation then you can use whatever word you want to use. I use rape, you can use screwed or taken advantage of, thats up to you. They would export more to us than we do to them even if they didn’t cheat but the magnitude of the trade imbalance is in part because of their peg. This doesn’t just affect one years worth of imports and exports. The currency peg is attracting some capital investment that would have otherwise have gone to us if the pricing mechanism wasn’t screwed up by the peg, this gives them competitive advantages going forward, once a factory is built in China, its very hard for us to compete with that factory, the factory may become less profitable at some point but a new factory in China is almost certainly going to be more cost effective than a factory in the USA. Without the peg, at the margins, there would have been some manufacturing activity that would not have been economical to move to China. Some of those Chinese factories would have been built here or some of the factories that were closed here would never have been closed BUT FOR the peg. That is impacting our economic growth and is reducing the rate at which our economy creates net jobs. > [@RickJay](#): > > > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > > When you say: economist all agree that trade is good for everyone, you are invoking the authority of the consensus of economists everywhere to strengthen your argument about China’s currency peg which doesn’t enjoy the same universal consensus. > > I haven’t made any particular argument about China’s currency peg. So how could I be “Strengthening” it with anything? > > I said China would most definitely hurt itself in the long run on its current path, which in fact IS the consensus (and, frankly, the only logical conclusion; amassing money and then **never** spending it is obviously pretty stupid.) How that amounts to a defense of China’s monetary policy I cannot even begin to understand. Since you seem to acknowledge that I am aware of the fact China’s currency is not free floating, I am still quite baffled as to your claim that I assumed “Free floating currency.” I thought I had explained why China might feel it makes long term sense to peg its currency. Let me go through it again: By the time China lets go of the peg and starts spending that money, we might not have anything left worth buying other than our agricultural products and natural resources. Do you think there is an advantage to being the most powerful economy in the world even if you would have been somewhat richer as a second place economy? Do you think that China would see any advantage to ruining our economy even if its at the cost of losing some of the value of the money they earned with the labor of its masses? > [@](#): > > You have wildly oversimplified a pretty nuanced position. Its what happens when you paraphrase. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > IANAE. I know enough to follow a conversation, I know enough to know that most amateur economists have a very incomplete understanding of economics and of the confounding factors that invalidate what they think they know about economics. > > Boy, you said a mouthful. OK so then enlighten me. Tell me how the peg DOESN’T increase unemployment here. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/304 "2010-10-16T04:43:15Z")
I’m still drafting. Didn’t mean to hit enter yet. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/305 "2010-10-16T05:46:29Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > How sure are you that the job that eventually replaces the job that was lost is going to be anywhere near as good? I have already answered this question. Post 280: > [@](#): > > The richer they get, the more they’ll be able to buy, and that will be good for everybody, up to and including our own workers. There’s nothing “magical” about this. It’s just what happens. People have been losing jobs to mechanization and trade for, literally, centuries. Some people do lose out for the present. But our standard of living tends ever upward over time, and that is precisely because of more efficiency from specialization and trade. That’s the engine of growth, and even when we want to help the losers transition to new jobs, we don’t want to stall that engine. This shouldn’t even have to be mentioned. Even the OP realizes this–from the beginning, he has continually made a distinction between developing countries and developed countries. And why? _Because trading with developed countries is an unmitigated advantage_. The only question is whether the current round of offshoring to less-developed countries is an advantage for our own workers. The OP’s own cites say that that isn’t conclusive. So we have an indisputable advantage on the whole, especially so over longer time frames, up against a plausible yet hazy disadvantage for a subset of our population. And yet you have to ask this question? Really? We can only cite the same information so many times. Eventually, you have to read it on your own. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I’m a firm believer in trade. I’m a firm believer in Keynesian responses to recessions. I am a firm believer in not letting your trading partners rape you in the assjust because you are afraid that it might trigger a trade war. I have already responded to this sort of argument as well. Again, from post 280. > [@](#): > > Is it friendly? No. Is it having a huge negative effect? Maybe not. What the Chinese are doing, essentially, is engaging in a form of mandatory savings. Saving is not a bad thing in ordinary times. Frankly, the US should engage in much more saving, too, as we escape this downturn. So what happens with the exchange rate if the Chinese drop their strict capital controls, but the country still wants to save more than they consume? Potentially very little. If the peg is dropped, and the Chinese people save money through a different technique, then the exchange rate won’t alter much. Even if the Chinese drop their peg, that’s no guarantee on its own that our trade balance will level out. The peg works by mandatory government saving. As I already pointed out to you, the Chinese could save the same amount using a different technique, and the result would be roughly the same. They are being unfriendly. That does not mean that they are “ass raping” us. It is in their best interest to let their currency appreciate. It will happen eventually. But even without their capital controls, it could still happen relatively slowly. Even if they dropped their controls overnight, that would still have a much smaller effect than what we could do for ourselves. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > What do you mean put our own house in order. What is out of order? > > And what are you suggesting we do short of triggering inflation (which could very well get out of control considering all the pent up inflationary pressure I think exists in our economy right now). I think wage inflation might be pretty good about now, drop the payroll taxes, increase government salaries, stuff like that. I have already answered this question as well. Yet again, from post 280. > [@](#): > > The real problem is the same problem that FDR faced many years ago. Our solution should be along the same lines. > > FDR’s best move was abandoning the gold peg. We don’t have the particular option available to us, but that’s no matter. A fiat currency leaves us with plenty of options. ZIRP is simply an empty excuse for inaction. Almost everybody in the popular media concentrates on interest rates, but that’s not where we’re off course. Well, not exactly. The underlying problem lies somewhere else. > > There’s no barrier here at zero percent that couldn’t be overcome by a credible response from the Fed. And credibility, ultimately, is just about doing what you say. The Fed could say, tomorrow, that it’s going to do everything within its power to return to our long-term price level (or better, NGDP) trajectory, the path we were on in late 2008 before expectations plummeted. Then it could take immediate action to demonstrate that it meant what it said. > > The economy would react positively to that, and the benefits would be seen fairly quickly. There would be more jobs. This wouldn’t drop unemployment back down to 5%, but it would be a significant push in the right direction. Now, to be honest, I don’t believe they’ll do that. Although the Fed has started talking about long-term level targeting in its minutes (a very encouraging sign) I don’t have a lot of confidence that they’ll backdate the level targeting from late 2008 to help with the current downturn. They could, but they probably won’t. > > Still, that’s where our big problem lies at present. We’re facing a massive drop in aggregate demand, with heavy private debt loads in the wake of a financial crisis. That’s the number one issue for today. (Number one issue long-term is debt.) The Fed could take action for this big problem at present, and they’re not (yet), and so they’re the people we should be complaining about. Often and loudly. Blame the Fed, blame the Fed, blame the Fed. They’re not doing what they oughta. > > That’s the short version, anyway. This is the [long version](http://209.104.5.198/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12529738). The answers are already there. We are not, in fact, suffering inflationary pressure. We are suffering deflationary pressure. That is our entire primary problem at present. The entire point of Keynesian economics is to come up with methods to fight this deflationary pressure. That is why Keynesian economics exists. We have run out of political will for fiscal stimulus, but the Fed can still implement monetary stimulus. And there is more and more news every day, little hints from speeches that say the Fed (finally) agrees with me. (I’ve been complaining about this for some time now. It’s nice that they’re finally listening to me.) Come the November 3rd meeting, they are in all likelihood going to engage in more quantitative easing, and perhaps even set a long-term price level target. That will help the economy. That will simultaneously put pressure on the Chinese currency peg. It will do both at once, because what we are suffering from at present is a money problem. If you want to know more about this, I’ve already posted [the link](http://209.104.5.198/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12529738) before. It’s technical, but this is what we need to do. If the Fed gets us back on track with long-term level targeting, it will put pressure on the Chinese currency peg. This is no guarantee that the Chinese will do the right thing, but it’s pressure we can and should apply, and what’s best, it will improve our domestic economy right away even if it fails to push the peg. If the Chinese are still being ornery after we fix our own money problems, then we can discuss other solutions. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > OK you’ve sold me that trade is a good thing (I already believed that). What do we do about the currency peg? The same things I’ve already said. We have our own currency. **We have our own currency.** **We have our own currency.** Let’s get back on our old price level trajectory (or better, our NGDP trajectory). Let’s look at our trade balance situation once we’ve accomplished that. If the Chinese are still being ornery after we fix our domestic money problems, then we can discuss other options. In the meantime, though, people need to get angry at the right people. It’d be best if we all chilled the fuck out about China. If the Chinese float their currency, but save money in other fashions, then practically nothing will be happen with our trade imbalance. Saving is saving, and that’s true whether it’s mandatory saving from the government itself, or private saving that goes into similar investments. But a change in dollar policy on our end can have immediate positive effects both on our own domestic demand situation, and also on our trade balance. So get angry at the Fed. They might start level targeting at the November Fed meeting, but they would’ve saved the US economy quite a lot of pain if they’d started two years ago. Look to US dollar policy before you look to RMB policy. In addition, any moves toward balancing our budget, increasing savings, and reducing US debt will also put pressure on the Chinese peg. These policy options are all win-win. They’re good for us in the long-run, and they’ll favor us internationally as well. We can think about “retaliation” after we’ve implemented alternative beneficial policies. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/306 "2010-10-16T18:33:12Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > For the record, the BusinessWeek article has this to say: See my comments about the article’s productivity projections and my comparison with job and wage growth below. > [@](#): > > This article is from three years ago. Got anything newer that suggests offshoring to lower wage nations is NOT costing us jobs? > [@Hellestal](#): > > At that time, it could not substantiate the actual overestimate from “Phantom GDP”. > > Since then, there is no newer information. We have no reason to believe this was ever a significant problem, let alone that it’s still a problem today. There is nothing here we can rely on as an indictment of offshoring. > > The other article you cite is scholarly, but it still doesn’t convey quite what you think it does. The first thing to notice is that they’re not talking net effect, as I was. They’re talking labor market exclusively. That’s fine. It can be useful to narrow your scope. But we should notice that even with that narrow scope, the effect in the labor market is still not clear, as they say themselves. They have their own conclusions, of course, but even they admit that the information is not conclusive. There’s a lot of noise in the system. I’m surprised you didn’t notice that the article’s LOW end projections for productivity were 1.6% in the positive during Bush’s 2nd term. What direction did wages (against inflation) and job growth (versus population growth) go during that period? Or Bush’s 1st term? > [@](#): > > The article cites Paul Krugman, who suspects that this offshoring has led to increased income inequality, but doesn’t believe it’s possible to prove it. The weird thing here is that I actually do agree with him. I think it’s perfectly plausible that the wave of offshoring might have led to certain labor problems. In fact, I said this in my own post: “That doesn’t make the process painless. It sucks, and some workers take it on the nose.” There are winners and losers here, exactly as your own cite says. The winners are clearly the investors and company heads. You want to compare their income growth versus that of the workers? Tell me, how are the workers faring? What have their wages been doing against inflation since 2001? Where is there any evidence to support the oft-spoken contentions that offshoring to lower wage nations has created better jobs for them? > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > We show that while some US workers have been adversely affected by global competition, others have benefited from these changes. > > People in the US, even some US workers, Yet > [@](#): > > The short explanation is that the growth of domestic manufacturing has been substantially overstated in recent years. That means productivity gains and overall economic growth have been overstated as well. And that raises questions about U.S. competitiveness and “helps explain why wage growth for most American workers has been weak,” says Susan N. Houseman, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research who identifies the distorting effects of offshoring in a soon-to-be-published paper. There’s a telling omission in your statement: some are gaining, but MOST are losing ground. > [@](#): > > are benefiting, and that’s according to your cite. You titled this thread “Offshoring - the snake that is eating itself”. And the only evidence you’ve brought to bear is that maybe the net benefits aren’t as big as otherwise believed, and that maybe a subset of unskilled :smack: :smack: :smack: There we go again, throwing the unskilled workers under the bus. Okay, fine, let them eat cake (or, as another poster here said, go dumpster diving). So why do you ignore the effect that this is having on skilled labor? > [@](#): > > workers are suffering a loss. Well, that is important information to discuss, but it’s not anything remotely on the lines that offshoring is destroying itself. Odd. You left out the part > [@](#): > > “As these [low-cost] countries move up the value chain, the problem becomes worse and worse,” says Jerry A. Hausman, a top economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Translation: up the value chain means moving into _innovation jobs_ like biotech research and alternative energy. This affects high end college grad whiz kids, who will have to go overseas for a job. How many computer engineers do you know of who work in America? Is that a unskilled job? Why is the offshoring of skilled innovation jobs such a huge blind spot for defenders of offshoring? > [@](#): > > It’s very possible that offshoring is at least partly responsible for our “jobless recoveries”. But we have to keep in mind that these recoveries were not, actually, devoid of job growth. It’s just that the job growth came later and slower than improvement in other broad macroeconomic indicators like GDP. Actually the job growth failed to make up for the jobs lost AND also failed to keep up with the growth of the working class population. Not only that but the last jobless recovery practically gave back a ton of its gains in 2008. > [@](#): > > The US economy can create jobs. Low wage growth for unskilled workers might, again, be attributable to offshoring. Again, this is plausible. But it’s not an overwhelming case against offshoring in general, if you bother to read your own cites. My cites point out warning signs like “up the value chain” (meaning: innovation jobs are next to go) which totally contradict what you say about this being limited to hurting unskilled workers. My cites point out that productivity grew at LEAST 1.6% and history shows that wages grew less than 1.6% against inflation. > [@](#): > > A richer China and India will still make us all better off in the long run. Where do you get that from? Have you seen our trade deficit with them? They don’t buy anything from us, aggregately speaking. How is this making US better off? Maybe the investors who invest in China, or the CEOs, yeah, but not “US”. > [@](#): > > We don’t know the exact effects of offshoring on _current_ wages–it might be negative for some groups–but we do know the long term effects. Richer trade partners can afford to buy more things from us. But they don’t, because our goods cost more than theirs. Can you do me a math problem please? How much do we import from them? How much do we export to them? > [@](#): > > _The richer they get, the more stuff they will want._ India and China have more than a billion people each. Someday, the economies of both will be greater than that of the US. That’ll happen in the 21st century. They’ll want to buy what of ours, exactly? At a higher price than they pay at home? Really? China is gearing up to service its own market, just like India is. If they do outsource to Africa or S.E. Asia then the world’s wealth will start to flow to those nations. Then when the corporations run out of places to outsource maybe _at that point_ when the rest of the world’s workers are pummeled to death and none of their wages are keeping up with inflation and no nation’s job growth is matching population growth (as is the case right now, right here) then those jobs will come back. How many American generations will be lost by then? We’re looking at half of one down, now: ten years with job growth not keeping up with population growth and wages not keeping up with inflation. How long can we go sustaining our cost of living with “some day, over the rainbow, we’ll be able to sell them stuff” ? You do know that America is facing a declining standard of living, right? Or do I need to cite that and have you claim it doesn’t say that, either? :rolleyes: > [@](#): > > It will take much longer for per capita GDP to catch up, but even so, the US will be able to sell them stuff. A lot of stuff. I love these half-statements. Case in point: is this counting or not counting what we’ll also be importing? The only way we will ever be exporting more to India and China than we’re importing is if our wages or the value of our dollar collapses. You will not see us get there any other way. I guarantee it. > [@](#): > > Maybe the net effect for unskilled US workers is negative at present. And now it’s getting worse for skilled workers, too. As I said… how many jobs are out there for computer engineers? Biotech researchers? > [@](#): > > But it’s not negative for the US as a whole at present, Let’s see. Workers’ wages have been falling behind inflation at least for the last 10 years. Job growth hasn’t kept up with inflation growth in the last 10 years. Oh yes, the CEOs and investors have been making a killing. How else has it not been a negative for the US? Ah yeah, low prices… which fewer people can afford. Think I’m wrong? Have you checked Dollar Tree’s stock lately? > [@](#): > > it’s not negative for the Chinese at present, Wow, 1 out of three. Congrats! > [@](#): > > and it won’t be a net negative for our own workers in the future. Translation: “Some day… over the rainbow…” > [@](#): > > The richer they get, the more they’ll be able to buy, and that will be good for everybody, up to and including our own workers. There’s nothing “magical” about this. It’s just what happens. People have been losing jobs to mechanization and trade for, literally, centuries. Some people do lose out for the present. But our standard of living tends ever upward over time, and that is precisely because of more efficiency from specialization and trade. That’s the engine of growth, and even when we want to help the losers transition to new jobs, we don’t want to stall that engine. Woefully inaccurate talking point overload. When we get to the point of a trade surplus with China and India then your talking points will be based on reality. So far you have yet to back up your outrageous claim that “a lot” of the jobs we lost are coming back. Or retract it. I guess now you’re basically doubling down with… > [@](#): > > > [@RickJay](#): > > > > > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > > > > > You want me to give you a date on the economic collapse… fine, after you give me a date on when these jobless recoveries will stop and robust job creation will begin. > > > > My guess is 2014. I’ll put a hundred bucks on it, and invite you to come up with the first definition of how we’ll determine if the condition is met or not. Now put up or shut up; when is the U.S. going to collapse? > > Jobless recoveries turn into robust job-creating recoveries by 2014? Are you serious? Ok, 2014 it is. I’ll cite 2014 as the time our currency goes KABOOM because that’s the only way robust job creation is ever going to happen. Hell we’re not even keeping up with population growth. We haven’t been since the dawn of this century. > > $100? You can’t be serious. If I win then don’t even bother me with a check - donate the money to charity for God’s sake. > > > [@](#): > > > > Both, in all likelihood. But let’s get past all the zero-sum stuff to the real howler that, really, underpins everything: > > Zero-sum? Who says this is zero-sum? This is a negative sum game. Compare wage growth against inflation for the last 10 years. Compare job growth against population growth for the last 10 years. Positive? Zero-sum? Negative? Help me out here. You have been avoiding this one all along while throwing out every last empty talking point ever employed by fanatical free market adherents. “Economics is not a zero-sum game” is a pile of pseudo-religious claptrap that should have been discarded AGAIN at the outbreak of this financial crisis. This whole trade thing is a plus sum game for the rich but not for anyone else. Hell, it’s an argument that depends entirely on the integrity of the fractional reserve banking system, but that’s for another topic. > > The real source of the problem is the fact that jobs and capital can go around the world, but the workers can’t. It sure would be nice to be able to chase those biotech research jobs to India or manufacturing jobs to China. Pity about those political, immigration and law barriers that a million American workers rushing overseas would face… assuming everyone can just up and learn Mandarin. > > > [@](#): > > > > Because of course scientists in other field never make laughable mistakes. > > > > Scientists, for instance, never believed in luminiferous ether, or that the world could not possibly be older than 50 million years or so because the Sun couldn’t burn any longer than that, or that continental drift was impossible and ridiculous, or that… no wait, in fact, _they believed all those things_. Not cranks, mind you, but legitimate scientists. > > Today’s “economics sciences” is more akin to defining the Earth as the center of the universe. (Earth, in this case, being globalism; the universe, in this example, being prosperity. The welfare of the working class, in this example, being the parts of their equation that are the most ignored.) > > > [@](#): > > > > If you’re going to just invent stupid shit and attribute to me positions I don’t hold, such as that I’m a believer in “Laissez-faire economics” - I can’t even begin to guess how you’d define that but it’s probably bullshit > > How else can you define laissez-faire but a “hands-off” approach to the economy, which strongly mirrors your stated beliefs? :rolleyes: > > > [@](#): > > > > - or that I think the free market is “god,” > > It’s a metaphor for holding the free market sacred, infallible, “the best and only possible option”. Any of that ring a bell? Your arguments all point in that direction. > > > [@](#): > > > > [QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi] > > Economics today is no more science than medicine was a science when they were using leeches to balance the humors. > > > > Where is the repeatable experimental verification of falsifiable hypotheses? > > In every decent economics school in the world, I’d think. You’ve never heard of economics experimentation? > > Are you getting all your economics information out of the newspapers? You do understand that policy claims and political arguments are not “economics,” right? Now you’re making wild assumptions as to Damuri’s sources of information. You know what the difference is between your views, America’s views and that of China? China actually cares about its COUNTRY. They at least are working the global market to bring jobs and prosperity home for its people. China does not care about free trade; they care about China. You, on the other hand, like most American capitalist thinkers, don’t even bring up the well-being of the working class in their theories: it’s irrelevant to them. This country is irrelevant to you - it’s not even a part of your arguments. It’s all about the free flow of capital - and if America has to suffer a staggering 10% unemployment until God knows when, so be it. China, at least, cares more about their people than that. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/307 "2010-10-16T20:59:25Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > How else can you define laissez-faire but a “hands-off” approach to the economy, which strongly mirrors your stated beliefs? There’s no point in trying to answer anything else when you’re now just spewing outright falsehoods about what other people are stating. I’ve stated no belief that even begins to approximate the “Hands off” approach to the economy. In fact, on probably a half dozen occasions in these threads I have listed **government intervention in certain areas as being a necessity for economic growth.** (The part about how I don’t care about working class people’s rich too, inasmuch as I am 100% convinced your ideas would be a catastrophe for working class people and that’s why I oppose them.) If you’re just going to make shit up, why are you ever bothering to reply to people’s posts? You can make shit up on your own without using the quote function. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/308 "2010-10-17T01:53:27Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > > How sure are you that the job that eventually replaces the job that was lost is going to be anywhere near as good? > > I have already answered this question. Post 280:This shouldn’t even have to be mentioned. You post 280 (and the link to the post regarding the need for more monetary stimulus) while very informative doesn’t really answer how quality of job replacement is inevitable, in fact it seems to highlight how we are NOT doing the things that are needed to right our ship if anything. Maybe I’m just missing something. > [@](#): > > Even the OP realizes this–from the beginning, he has continually made a distinction between developing countries and developed countries. And why? _Because trading with developed countries is an unmitigated advantage_. And if the European countries current “austerity” turns into mercantalism? Is that OK because we will be better off having a trade deficit with every country in the world? I’m not arguing against trade with Europe but I am trying to figure out if you really think there is no circumstance under which we should object to trade with a developed country. > [@](#): > > The only question is whether the current round of offshoring to less-developed countries is an advantage for our own workers. The OP’s own cites say that that isn’t conclusive. So we have an indisputable advantage on the whole, especially so over longer time frames, up against a plausible yet hazy disadvantage for a subset of our population. And do you think that it is possible for one country to prefer less wealth and economic dominance over more wealth on an absolute basis or do you think the absolute level of wealth is the driver for most decisions made by countries like China? > [@](#): > > And yet you have to ask this question? Really? We can only cite the same information so many times. Eventually, you have to read it on your own.I have already responded to this sort of argument as well. Again, from post 280.Even if the Chinese drop their peg, that’s no guarantee on its own that our trade balance will level out. It almost certainly WON’T. But it will help. > [@](#): > > The peg works by mandatory government saving. As I already pointed out to you, the Chinese could save the same amount using a different technique, and the result would be roughly the same. Yeah and we could retaliate against that as well. > [@](#): > > They are being unfriendly. That does not mean that they are “ass raping” us. It is in their best interest to let their currency appreciate. It will happen eventually. But even without their capital controls, it could still happen relatively slowly. Even if they dropped their controls overnight, that would still have a much smaller effect than what we could do for ourselves.I have already answered this question as well. Yet again, from post 280.The answers are already there. > [@](#): > > We are not, in fact, suffering inflationary pressure. I said pent up. But on further reflection lets forget about that ppoint its not relevant to anything. > [@](#): > > In the meantime, though, people need to get angry at the right people. It’d be best if we all chilled the fuck out about China. A nobel prize winning economist seems to disagree with you. > **[Opinion | Taking On China (Published 2010)](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=1)** > > It’s time for America to confront China about the undervaluation of its currency, which is adding to the world’s economic problems at a time when those problems are already severe. It is entirely possible that you have thought this through more than he has because he has been so busy lately but I find it hard to believe that his reasoning is so deeply flawed, so OBVIOUSLY flawed that someone who takes much the same position that he does should be causing the sort of exasperation that experts like you and Rick Jay seem to be experiencing. > [@](#): > > If the Chinese float their currency, but save money in other fashions, then practically nothing will be happen with our trade imbalance. Saving is saving, and that’s true whether it’s mandatory saving from the government itself, or private saving that goes into similar investments. But a change in dollar policy on our end can have immediate positive effects both on our own domestic demand situation, and also on our trade balance. So get angry at the Fed. They might start level targeting at the November Fed meeting, but they would’ve saved the US economy quite a lot of pain if they’d started two years ago. Look to US dollar policy before you look to RMB policy. In addition, any moves toward balancing our budget, increasing savings, and reducing US debt will also put pressure on the Chinese peg. These policy options are all win-win. They’re good for us in the long-run, and they’ll favor us internationally as well. We can think about “retaliation” after we’ve implemented alternative beneficial policies. OK, so let me get this straight, you think we can respond to China by engaging in inflationary policies. Not only will it be good for our economy, it will put pressure on the Chinese to drop their peg, right? Great, I agree, now shift the political environment so that we can bring that sort of leverage to bear against the Chinese and I’ll sit down and shut up and be relatively happy about it. But right now the only politically available levers are things like tariffs and if given a choice between sitting here doing nothing and retaliating against the Chinese. I think we should retaliate. If the political environment makes more monetary easing or deficit spending almost impossible and your only choice was tariffs or just let the Chinese do whatever they want, which would you choose? ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/309 "2010-10-17T02:06:32Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > Got anything newer that suggests offshoring to lower wage nations is NOT costing us jobs? No, I don’t. I’ve already pointed out that I largely agree with Paul Krugman’s comments–the ones from your own cite–that indicate the potential impossibility of giving an exact number to these costs. You’re asking for suggestions in the data when your own cites point out the problems with getting those very suggestions. > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > The short explanation is that the growth of domestic manufacturing has been substantially overstated in recent years. That means productivity gains and overall economic growth have been overstated as well. And that raises questions about U.S. competitiveness and “helps explain why wage growth for most American workers has been weak,” says Susan N. Houseman, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research who identifies the distorting effects of offshoring in a soon-to-be-published paper. > > There’s a telling omission in your statement: some are gaining, but MOST are losing ground. That is from the same article that explicitly mentions the large uncertainty in measuring phantom GDP. You keep implying a certainty that simply does not exist in your own cites. If you can demonstrate that this phantom GDP problem still exists in the data, and if you can further demonstrate that this phantom GDP problem is a significant error factor in calculating US productivity gains in recent years, _then_ it would be relevant information about the current crop of inequality we’re experiencing. But for present, you can’t point to effects that your own cites say are uncertain and then pretend that your conclusions are a clear implication of the unclear data. The data you’re citing is unclear. The conclusions you are attempting to draw from said data are similarly unclear. > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > :smack: :smack: :smack: > There we go again, throwing the unskilled workers under the bus. Nowhere have I said anything like this. I have, in fact, said the exact opposite already in this thread. You might have missed this since it was in response to **Damuri Ajashi** : > [@Hellestal](#): > > Before the crisis, it was more fair to say that we had 1 person winning big, another few doing fairly well, with the lower half keeping on keeping on. Now, that’s not an ideal situation either. And what’s more, that’s not an ideal situation regardless of the reason for the inequality. Even if this situation has nothing to do with offshoring, I would still be looking for ways to help our low-income workers, including: more progressive tax rates, more benefits like health care for low-income workers, a stronger unemployment net, etc. I advocate for all of these things, and I would do so even if offshoring has nothing to do with our rising inequality (which is a possibility). That is to say: I’m advocating ways to mitigates the effects of current US inequality problems which won’t interfere with our long-run growth potential. I’m concerned not just about present-day inequality–which is a problem, yes–but also about benefiting our children and our children’s children on down the line. > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > Odd. You left out the part > > > [@](#): > > > > “As these [low-cost] countries move up the value chain, the problem becomes worse and worse,” says Jerry A. Hausman, a top economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology It is not odd that I left out that part because he is referring, yet again, to the statistical error in phantom GDP. He is saying that that statistical error can potentially compound over time. But that’s still not for certain. I mean, Christ, read the very next sentence of your own damn cite: > [@](#): > > Alternatively, as Landefeld notes, the size of the overstatement could be smaller. One possible offset: Machinery and high-tech equipment shipped directly to businesses from foreign suppliers may generate less phantom GDP, just because of the way the numbers are constructed. The entire BusinessWeek article is about a problem (phantom GDP) whose significance, the writers cheerfully admit, is not known. The BEA has had three years to tinker with their GDP calculations since that article was published. This is a math problem with GDP calculations, and it could potentially already be fixed. You are not reading, or perhaps not understanding, your own cites. You can’t make such certain statements, when your own cites point out the potential problems in making these measurements. If phantom GDP still exists, and if the statistical error is large, it means we would have a serious problem measuring US productivity growth. _But we don’t know if it still exists, and we have never known how large the problem is._ This whole discussion is going to remain problematic for you until you start paying attention to the uncertainty in your own cites. This is like your error with unemployment benefits, the error you still haven’t admitted. You are making some basic mistakes here, jumping to absurdly certain conclusions on the basis of uncertain data, and meanwhile ignoring the long-term benefits which your own cites do not dispute. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/310 "2010-10-17T02:07:51Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > Today’s “economics sciences” is more akin to defining the Earth as the center of the universe. (Earth, in this case, being globalism; the universe, in this example, being prosperity. The welfare of the working class, in this example, being the parts of their equation that are the most ignored.) What was wrong with my analogy to when doctors used leeches and called it a science? > [@](#): > > You know what the difference is between your views, America’s views and that of China? > > China actually cares about its COUNTRY. They at least are working the global market to bring jobs and prosperity home for its people. China does not care about free trade; they care about China. You, on the other hand, like most American capitalist thinkers, don’t even bring up the well-being of the working class in their theories: it’s irrelevant to them. This country is irrelevant to you - it’s not even a part of your arguments. It’s all about the free flow of capital - and if America has to suffer a staggering 10% unemployment until God knows when, so be it. China, at least, cares more about their people than that. Its a very academic perspective. “it’ll all even out in the end, heck China will actually be worse off for their efforts because somewhere over the rainbow…” ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/311 "2010-10-17T03:01:07Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > You post 280 (and the link to the post regarding the need for more monetary stimulus) while very informative doesn’t really answer how quality of job replacement is inevitable, in fact it seems to highlight how we are NOT doing the things that are needed to right our ship if anything. Maybe I’m just missing something. If we get our money situation on track, it will create jobs. That’s Keynesianism. (And also Keynes influenced macro theories like Monetarism.) It’s even more clear that we would have job growth when you realize that our last “jobless” recoveries also created jobs… eventually. Jobs will come if we get our house in order. The question is: What kind of jobs? How will they pay? Maybe not so good, if current inequality trends continue. So let’s work on those inequality trends with better domestic policy. That’s what I’m saying. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > And if the European countries current “austerity” turns into mercantalism? Is that OK because we will be better off having a trade deficit with every country in the world? > > I’m not arguing against trade with Europe but I am trying to figure out if you really think there is no circumstance under which we should object to trade with a developed country. Then I would suggest taking all possible positive actions on our part before potentially compounding the situation with a lose-lose trade dispute. This isn’t a Hitler situation. It’s a Ghandi situation. Smoot-Hawley was a bad idea at the time, and it would remain a bad idea today. That isn’t to say that there are no possible circumstances at all where trade retaliation would be inappropriate. But I’d like to exhaust other options first, because the net result of an aggressive trade dispute is a genuine loss for both sides. That’s not a first resort technique. It’s what you do when you run out of other good ideas. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > And do you think that it is possible for one country to prefer less wealth and economic dominance over more wealth on an absolute basis or do you think the absolute level of wealth is the driver for most decisions made by countries like China? Increasing their wealth is an all-consuming passion for the Chinese at present. They want to re-gain face after their century of humiliations. That’s the national narrative. Creating more growth is the whole purpose of undervaluing their currency. It’s a long-term mistake, but the short-term growth advantages are outweighing their common sense. The Chi-Coms are basically bribing their people with economic growth in order to maintain political power. Gaining wealth is the over-riding goal here. The extra influence from that wealth is a nice added incentive. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Yeah and we could retaliate against that as well. If everyone in China freely put their extra savings in bank accounts, and those banks freely chose with no government coercion to invest in international securities, and the completely free-floating exchange rate didn’t alter much because of the Chinese propensity to save, and you arbitrarily decided to punish them for those market decisions–with no arbitrary capital controls anywhere in sight–then that would seem to me to be pure malice and nothing else. If they have a culture that concentrates more on saving than getting into debt, then good for them. They shouldn’t be punished for being more responsible as individual savers. It’s the strict capital controls that are the problem, not the drive to save money. The controls mask their real propensity to save. I want to unmask that propensity. But if the result is roughly the same, then at least that’s the market speaking instead of the Chinese government. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > A nobel prize winning economist seems to disagree with you. > [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/opinion/15krugman.html?\_r=1](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=1) > > It is entirely possible that you have thought this through more than he has because he has been so busy lately but I find it hard to believe that his reasoning is so deeply flawed, so OBVIOUSLY flawed that someone who takes much the same position that he does should be causing the sort of exasperation that experts like you and Rick Jay seem to be experiencing. I hope it’s clear that I disagree with his politics, not his economics. I especially agree with this part: > [@](#): > > It’s true that if China dumped its U.S. assets the value of the dollar would fall against other major currencies, such as the euro. But that would be a good thing for the United States, since it would make our goods more competitive and reduce our trade deficit. On the other hand, it would be a bad thing for China, which would suffer large losses on its dollar holdings. In short, right now America has China over a barrel, not the other way around. We are in an especially good position to get ourselves on the right money track. The Fed could engage in: 1. Not particularly helpful: more quantitative easing with no target. 2. More helpful: a long-term price level target. (From my reading of the news this is the most likely result of the November meeting.) 3. Even more helpful: a long-term NGDP level target 4. Ideal fairyland situation: long-term NGDP level targeting starting from our late 2008 trajectory. Any of these would help us with our trade imbalance with China and undermine the currency peg. A sufficiently aggressive push, along the lines of #4, would increase long-term bond yields, thus dropping the value of bonds already in circulation, which would take a neat little chunk out of the reserves that the Chinese have bought up in order to maintain their controls. And Krugman is exactly right in the economics: There would be absolutely nothing they could do about it. We’d have the added benefit of more domestic job growth, too. So why pursue other uglier options, when we have our own currency? Why play “hardball” when we haven’t even tried yet to play softball? > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > OK, so let me get this straight, you think we can respond to China by engaging in inflationary policies. Well, I wouldn’t call it “inflationary policies”. I would instead say: returning to our long-term price level trajectory. I don’t like inflation. But I don’t like deflation either. I want price level (NGDP) expectations to be stable over a long horizon, not ever increasing. But yeah, you seem to understand the underlying reasoning. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Not only will it be good for our economy, it will put pressure on the Chinese to drop their peg, right? Great, I agree, now shift the political environment so that we can bring that sort of leverage to bear against the Chinese and I’ll sit down and shut up and be relatively happy about it. > > But right now the only politically available levers are things like tariffs and if given a choice between sitting here doing nothing and retaliating against the Chinese. I think we should retaliate. If the political environment makes more monetary easing or deficit spending almost impossible and your only choice was tariffs or just let the Chinese do whatever they want, which would you choose? I’m paying attention to Fed whispers, and I’m telling you that not only is more monetary easing not impossible, it is likely that it will be coming in November. I can’t change the political situation in Congress. But I can and did add my own tiny little voice to the chorus that is blaming the Fed. It is that chorus of people who now have the Fed’s attention. We could have a price level target very soon. Why? Because a group of economists and other financial observers kept blaming the Fed. _They kept their criticisms where the criticisms would do the most good for job growth in the US._ And it seems like they’ve almost succeeded. (And I have to say, it helps that two of Obama’s appointees were recently approved by the Senate.) I’m not saying I’m against retaliation in all circumstances. If the Chinese continue unfriendly policies into the future, then I’ll consider other options. But for now, I’m going to keep pushing where the pushing’s good. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/312 "2010-10-17T05:29:54Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > This is like your error with unemployment benefits, the error you still haven’t admitted. You are making some basic mistakes here, jumping to absurdly certain conclusions on the basis of uncertain data, and meanwhile ignoring the long-term benefits which your own cites do not dispute. Long-term benefits that clearly have not ever materialized except in the area of lower prices (yet not low enough since wages _aren’t keeping up with inflation_): in other words I read it, but history has contradicted it. And this is a historical error, an outright myth in fact, that you and many others refuse to recognize. Or are you still pushing the “it will have long term benefits… somewhere over the rainbow…” argument? [quote] It’s even more clear that we would have job growth when you realize that our last “jobless” recoveries also created jobs… eventually. [quote] Define “created jobs”? This last jobless recovery’s job growth never kept up with population growth. Yet another glaring historical error. And why do you keep bringing up Smoot-Hawley? Who here is proposing such a thing? Certainly not Damuri Ajashi’s argument which you are purportedly responding to. Certainly not any argument I’ve made; my argument is against trade with low wage nations, and for removing trade barriers with Canada or Europe. Who are you referring to when you bring up the Smoot-Hawley straw-er, I mean boogeyman? How many times must you guys keep pushing this Smoot-Hawley thing when it doesn’t even apply and you keep getting reminded of the most obvious differences? > [@](#): > > The Chi-Coms are basically bribing their people with economic growth in order to maintain political power. Oh, my God… this again. You name me one politician who would not secure economic growth and an explosion of jobs for their people if they could. You think following the rules of Capitalism is some kind of higher calling for a political leader? Really? No way, man. From the dawn of time human beings have sought to take care of their tribe. Take care of your own before you take care of others. It is a basic law of survival that you circumvent at your own and your people’s peril. China will go to whatever lengths it needs to in order to lift their people out of poverty and into prosperity. We would be wise to do the same, or we will become a consequence of that basic law of survival. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > > > Today’s “economics sciences” is more akin to defining the Earth as the center of the universe. (Earth, in this case, being globalism; the universe, in this example, being prosperity. The welfare of the working class, in this example, being the parts of their equation that are the most ignored.) > > What was wrong with my analogy to when doctors used leeches and called it a science? Zippo. Nothing wrong that I saw. I came at it from another angle, that’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/313 "2010-10-17T13:47:31Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > Or are you still pushing the “it will have long term benefits… somewhere over the rainbow…” argument? Evidence for long-term benefits of trade is, in fact, present in the very links that you personally provided. Your distinction between high-wage and low-wage countries is itself a logical acknowledgment of that. It isn’t too much to ask that you start reading your own evidence more carefully. > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > You name me one politician who would not secure economic growth and an explosion of jobs for their people if they could. I can name any number of dictators who drove their countries into the ground. You can argue that they thought they were doing the right thing. But that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? It takes a helluva lot more than good intentions. We have to consider the evidence carefully, and not continually misread it, in order to have a shot at pursuing the best policy. > [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > You think following the rules of Capitalism is some kind of higher calling for a political leader? Really? No way, man. From the dawn of time human beings have sought to take care of their tribe. Take care of your own before you take care of others. It is a basic law of survival that you circumvent at your own and your people’s peril. > > China will go to whatever lengths it needs to in order to lift their people out of poverty and into prosperity. We would be wise to do the same, or we will become a consequence of that basic law of survival. And here is where your self-righteous moral posturing is revealed for the hypocrisy that it is. You spat out the accusation that I was some “let them eat cake” aristocrat, unconcerned for the plight of the poor. When I pointed out that, no, I am concerned about income inequality in this country–even going so far as to offer very briefly a few ideas on how to combat it without risking long-term economic growth–you immediately changed course and started talking about looking out for ourselves. Is that how it works? We should look after the poor, but _only our poor_? We eat caviar, and let the Chinese eat grass and wallow in poverty? Is that it? That’s fine, if that’s how you wanna play it. Then you’re not my tribe. I’m disowning your ass. I’m glad we were able to resolve this dispute. You can continue advocating for your tribalism and get more and more outraged as those durn, dirty, dangerous Chinese become an economic power, and you no longer need to worry about convincing me to join with your provincial nonsense, because I’m not part of your little in-group. I deserve no special privileges from you. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to advocate for positions that I believe will provide the most good to the most people, and I won’t worry about sending any fliers to you when you’re hiding inside of your pillow fort, wildly waving your miniature stick flag and shouting yourself hoarse about lines on maps. All settled then, as different tribes can go different ways. Swell. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2010, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/314 "2010-10-17T15:15:17Z")
> [@Le\_Jacquelope](#): > > Zippo. Nothing wrong that I saw. I came at it from another angle, that’s all. The same angle, one presumes, whereby unemployment rates exclude people who aren’t collecting UI benefits, except for the fact that they don’t. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/315 "2010-10-18T01:21:20Z")
[QUOTE=Le Jacquelope] You name me one politician who would not secure economic growth and an explosion of jobs for their people if they could. You think following the rules of Capitalism is some kind of higher calling for a political leader? Really? No way, man. From the dawn of time human beings have sought to take care of their tribe. Take care of your own before you take care of others. It is a basic law of survival that you circumvent at your own and your people’s peril. [/QUOTE] You seriously have no idea what Hellestal was saying there, nor do you have a general idea or basic knowledge of the subject, do you? Too funny. > [@](#): > > China will go to whatever lengths it needs to in order to lift their people out of poverty and into prosperity. We would be wise to do the same, or we will become a consequence of that basic law of survival. Funny that their actions are having just the opposite effect, isn’t it? Of course, you’d have to have an inkling of a clue of what is being discussed to see that…which, it’s fairly obvious from this post, you don’t. Not. One. Clue. > [@](#): > > Long-term benefits that clearly have not ever materialized except in the area of lower prices (yet not low enough since wages aren’t keeping up with inflation): in other words I read it, but history has contradicted it. And this is a historical error, an outright myth in fact, that you and many others refuse to recognize. Or are you still pushing the “it will have long term benefits… somewhere over the rainbow…” argument? The irony is nearly too much for even the most hardened. I don’t always agree with Hellestal (though I freely concede Hellestal knows more than I do on this subject), but it’s just hilarious to watch this conversation unfold, with him trying to explain the subject to you and you clearly not following it at all. You should definitely stay with this line of ‘debate’, where someone explains to you why you are wrong, shows you why you are wrong, and you simply handwave it away and then state that they are wrong and should acknowledge your clear superior knowledge of the subject…it’s really working out for you in this thread, to be sure. 😛 > [@](#): > > Oh, my God… this again. Interestingly, I thought exactly the same thing reading your post here… -XT ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/316 "2010-10-18T02:11:43Z")
Yet another source that points out exactly how offshoring to lower wage nations is depressing jobs and wages here, while also attempting to tout the benefits of offshoring: > **[Home](https://www.industryweek.com/)** > > IndustryWeek is the premier online source of news and information on manufacturing, leadership, continuous improvement, talent management and other issues critical to industry. > [@](#): > > The most widespread and lasting impact of the maturation of global labor arbitrage is the decline in real wages in the developed nations. CFOs of U.S. companies can prepare now for a permanent resetting of wages for many workers in the upper salary ranges. And another point I made, is supported here: > [@](#): > > The shift toward lower wages in the developed nations is most evident in the compression of real wages and the bifurcation in hiring that now characterize U.S. employment trends. When hiring here finally resumed in 2004 after three years of stagnation, low-end jobs accounted for almost half of the job growth – double their share of the workforce, according to research conducted by Stephen Roach, chief economist and director of global economic analysis for Morgan Stanley in New York City. The compression of real wages that began soon after the 2001 recession and continues today is the sharpest ever recorded by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. But now here’s where they, just like all the other articles try to backtrack and defend the benefits of offshoring, which RickJay and others keep trying to bring up as a defense of offshoring. Except in this case they’re trying to be specific about the benefits. Since this article does make the same points, and these points are where BIG mistakes are made… I’ll bring them up, too, since I mistakenly assumed everyone already understood the glaring errors. Note that another poster here pointed out that no economist is going to flat out call offshoring what it really is, for fear of losing their job. The truth gets watered down for the sake of one’s career. > [@](#): > > Real wages will grow rapidly in the developing countries at the forefront of the offshoring movement, according to Robert E. Kennedy, executive director of The William Davidson Institute and professor of business administration at the University of Michigan’s school of business in Ann Arbor. “But this is good for the United States,” he notes. “Ask yourself: Is the U.S. better off if the average Indian makes $500 per year or $5,000? The obvious answer is $5,000 – India’s cost advantage would be lower, and Indians would have more income to spend on U.S. goods and services. If you walk around offshoring complexes in India, China and Indonesia, you see that they are filled with U.S. computers and telecommunications equipment, that the workers spend the day surfing U.S. Web sites, and that they aspire to U.S. educations and holidays.” This is the most glaring error made in defense of offshoring. These “U.S. goods and services” are not actually “U.S. goods and services”. For instance, “U.S. computers and telecommunications equipment” means computers and telecommunications equipment that are made in China, Taiwan or Singapore. The only thing U.S. about them is, maybe, the company headquarters is in the U.S. And holiday vacation travel? If it’s in the U.S. they’ll be served by minimum wage service people. How many hotel workers do you know who own a home on their salary? Education? How much has that field grown lately? > [@](#): > > “Everyone who uses a General Electric product benefits from the fact that GE employs high-skill, low-wage workers in India doing everything from answering phones to software development,” And where are these GE products made? > [@](#): > > Although the overall benefits of global labor arbitrage vastly out-weigh the costs imposed on displaced workers, For the CEOs, of course. > [@](#): > > the costs are more visible because they are borne by an easily identified group, he notes. That group being the working class. > [@](#): > > The wages of U.S. workers rose for decades, supporting a steady increase in the standard of living. But now, wages have reached a plateau, and further improvements in living standards will depend more on falling prices than on the traditional annual wage hike. CFOs can shape long-term planning around lower wages here, higher wages in offshore locations and an ongoing need for global labor arbitrage as a prerequisite for competitive success. Alas, prices have not been falling here. Has education fallen? Health care? Gasoline? Well, maybe, from its obscene $4/gallon highs. How’s the cost of food in your area? Didn’t Wal Mart just roll back its rollback? Ok so who was it here that attempted to rigorously prove that the cost of living hasn’t gone up all that much with regards to inflation? You dug yourself a hole here: we’re now stuck in a cycle of declining U.S. wages and a cost of living that is not declining. And for those who are jobless and earning $0, the cost of living divided by their wages equals infinity. But no one wants to talk about the cost of living for those who have had no job for over 6 months - which amounts to over 6 million Americans _that we know of._ I’m also sure no one gets the irony of CEOs talking about lower wages in America for the working class while the CEO pay is skyrocketing. Little do they know that overseas CEOs are going to inflict some arbitrage of their own. Offshoring… still the snake that is eating its own tail. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/317 "2010-10-18T02:17:39Z")
[QUOTE=Le Jacquelope] Yet another source that points out exactly how offshoring to lower wage nations is depressing jobs and wages here, while also attempting to tout the benefits of offshoring: [/QUOTE] Just curious…did you know that it’s not 2005 anymore? In fact, it hasn’t been 2005 for, well, 5 years now. Why are the majority of your ‘cites’ years out of date? Curious minds want to know… -XT ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/318 "2010-10-18T07:33:47Z")
So offshoring is supposed to be this great process of creative destruction. What no offshoring proponent here has been able to show us is what jobs have been created by offshoring. Perhaps they dodge this issue because the jobs that have been created, are jobs that pay less. [http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2003/11/27/stories/2003112701990100.htm](http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2003/11/27/stories/2003112701990100.htm) > [@](#): > > Also, offshoring of low value-added services to overseas destinations would let US workers take up other jobs. > > “If redeployment continues at the rate it has over the past two decades, then for every dollar of spend offshored, the economy will capture an additional 45 to 47 cents per dollar of offshoring from the new jobs that are generated,” the report says, while it points out that service workers find employment more quickly than manufacturing workers do. > > Offshoring, in effect, creates a net additional value of 12-14 cents for every dollar offshored for the US economy. > > “Indeed, of the full $1.45 to $1.47 of value created globally from offshoring $1 of the US labour cost, the US captures $1.12 to $1.14 while the receiving country captures, on average, just 33 cents,” the report says. 1. What other jobs? You mean those jobs that lie somewhere over the rainbow? 2. Where does that $1.14 go? Certainly not to the working class. Offshoring… still that damned slimy snake eating its own tail. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/319 "2010-10-18T14:30:26Z")
It’s not 2003 anymore either. That cite is 7 years out of date. [QUOTE=Le Jacquelope] 1. What other jobs? You mean those jobs that lie somewhere over the rainbow? [/QUOTE] [These](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=13036509) kinds of jobs, I’d say. > [@](#): > > Top 12 U.S. Exports > > The following product categories were America’s leading exports in 2007. These categories represent about 38% of total U.S. exports during the year. > > 1. Semiconductors … US$50.2 billion (4.3% of US total Exports, down 4.3% from 2006) > 2. Complete civilian aircraft … $48.8 billion (4.2%, up 19.6%) > 3. Automotive parts and accessories … $44.2 billion (3.8%, up 2%) > 4. New and used passenger cars … $43.7 billion (3.8%, up 28.6%) > 5. Other industrial machines … $38.3 billion (3.3%, up 17.1%) > 6. Pharmaceutical preparations … $35 billion (3%, up 13.2%) > 7. Telecommunications equipment … $31.4 billion (2.7%, up 10.8%) > 8. Organic chemicals … $31.4 billion (2.7%, up 15.7%) > 9. Electric apparatus … $31.1 billion (2.7%, up 4.2%) > 10. Computer accessories … $29.4 billion (2.5%, down 18.7%) > 11. Plastic materials … $29.1 billion (2.5%, up 15.6%) > 12. Medicinal equipment … $23.8 billion (2.1%, up 5%). Granted, this list is from 2007 (:p), but it’s silly to state that it’s just pie in the sky. The US, after all, does export goods and services…it’s not simply a one way street. > [@](#): > > 1. Where does that $1.14 go? Certainly not to the working class. Well, you obviously assume it’s not, but then you are basing all of your statements here on an article from A cite called The Hindu Business Line (not exactly a well known source) that is over 7 years old… Why should that money go to the working class, out of curiosity? I found [this](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/10/technology-explains-drop-in-manufacturing-jobs) cite (it has the advantage of being from 2010, while the disadvantage is that it may not be acceptable considering the source) that talks about manufacturing jobs in the US and why there are less of them today than there was a decade or two in the past: > [@](#): > > Abstract: Attempts by Members of Congress to save U.S. manufacturing jobs by restricting international trade, particularly with China, are misguided and futile. Technological improvements, not international trade, are reducing U.S. manufacturing employment by automating many rote tasks. During the past decade, manufacturing employment has fallen by one-third while manufacturing output has remained roughly constant. Congress can best help the manufacturing sector and the rest of the economy by improving U.S. competitiveness and by creating a better business environment in the U.S. > [@](#): > > Manufacturing employment has fallen by one-third over the past decade. Some Members of Congress contend that foreign trade has allowed American employers to offshore these jobs. In fact, technology has driven down manufacturing employment. Computers have made manufacturers more productive by automating many routine tasks. American manufacturers now employ fewer workers to produce more goods. This means less expensive manufactured goods, more manufacturing jobs for highly skilled workers, and the elimination of millions of low-skill assembly line positions. These same forces have reduced manufacturing employment around the world. Increased productivity led Chinese employers to eliminate millions of manufacturing jobs in the late 1990s. > > Congress should not restrict trade in the mistaken belief that such a policy would bring back American manufacturing jobs. Instead, Congress should create a better business climate for all employers. > [@](#): > > While foreign trade has put some domestic manufacturing companies out of business, it has also created new opportunities for domestic firms to export their products. Research shows that trade has had little effect on overall manufacturing employment. Instead, it has shifted jobs from less productive firms to more productive domestic firms.[3] > > The argument that Chinese trade has cost U.S. manufacturing jobs has even less support. Trade with China has increased, but this increase has come largely at the expense of other U.S. trading partners. Chart 2 shows imports of goods to the United States from the Pacific Rim as a percent of all U.S. goods imports.[4] The share of imports coming from China has increased by 14 percentage points since 1992. However, the proportion of U.S. imports coming from Pacific Rim nations other than China has dropped by 19 percent. The overall proportion of goods the U.S. imported from the Pacific Rim actually fell during that period. > [@](#): > > U.S. manufacturing employment has fallen primarily because U.S. businesses have changed how they manufacture goods. Advances in computers and robotics enable machines to perform many rote tasks that once required human labor. Manufacturers have replaced human labor with these machines in their production processes. > > Chart 3 shows an index of the capital services used per hour worked in manufacturing and an index of the information processing equipment, such as computers and software, used by all American manufacturers. Manufacturers used more than six times as much information processing equipment in 2007 as they used two decades earlier. The amount of capital used per hour of employee work has nearly doubled in that time.[5] Computers and robots now do tasks that once required workers on an assembly line. > [@](#): > > This has changed the types of workers that manufacturers need. Manufacturers need fewer unskilled workers to perform rote tasks, but more highly skilled workers to operate the machines that automated those tasks. Manufacturers have substituted brains for brawn. Chart 4 illustrates this, displaying total manufacturing employment (in millions of workers) by education level since 1992 and the percent change since 1992. > > Manufacturing job opportunities have increased for skilled workers even as overall manufacturing employment has fallen. The number of manufacturing workers employed with an advanced degree (education beyond a bachelor’s degree) increased from 841,000 to 1,065,000 between 1992 and 2000. That figure has continued to increase over the past decade. By 2009, manufacturers employed 1,214,000 workers with an advanced degree—a 44 percent increase since 1992.[6] > > Manufacturing employment among workers with a college education has also held up much better than manufacturing employment overall. It rose 20 percent between 1992 and 2000 and fell by only 15 percent between 2000 and 2009—an overall increase of 2.4 percent since 1992. To me, this is the most telling point: > [@](#): > > This transformation has made manufacturers more productive. Manufacturing productivity has doubled since 1987 and has increased during the past decade. Today, manufacturing workers produce 38 percent more per hour than they produced in 2000. It seems that technology and changing manufacturing processes has more to do with the lower over all number of manufacturing type jobs in the US than ‘offshoring’, since it’s allowed US manufacturing facilities to produce much more using far fewer labor resources. Sort of like our agricultural sector…today we produce many times the output of even a century ago using a fraction of the labor they used. What happened to all those out of work farmers? Why isn’t unemployment 50% or greater (considering the percentage of Americans who used to work in the farming sectors in the past)? Did they find ‘jobs that lie somewhere over the rainbow?’?? 😛 -XT ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2010, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912/320 "2010-10-18T15:27:19Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The same angle, one presumes, whereby unemployment rates exclude people who aren’t collecting UI benefits, except for the fact that they don’t. That’s funny coming from the guy whose ‘angle’ is that a lot of jobs lost in the crash will be coming back, except that all the economists say most won’t. Or the guy whose ‘angle’ is that economics is a science. > [@](#): > > The U.S. commercial aircraft industry, were it a nation unto itself, would be one of the 40 largest exporting nations on the planet. And it represents less than a tenth of U.S. manufacturing exports, and far less than a tenth of U.S. manufacturing overall. Wait a second. Susanann, ask this guy what America’s export level is versus its imports. Do we have a trade surplus or a trade deficit? How big is that deficit? > [@Hellestal](#): > > Evidence for long-term benefits of trade is, in fact, present in the very links that you personally provided. Your distinction between high-wage and low-wage countries is itself a logical acknowledgment of that. Wrong. This ‘evidence’ is all hypothetical and not even specific. When someone dares to get specific their ‘evidence’ is contradicted by reality. > [@](#): > > You spat out the accusation that I was some “let them eat cake” aristocrat, unconcerned for the plight of the poor. Worse, now you admit you want to throw this country’s working class under the bus for China’s prosperity. “It’s for the good of the world” and all that nonsense. News flash: China doesn’t care about anyone but China. Tell ya what, though. When China and the third world is done sucking America’s working class dry and we have nothing left to sacrifice, China will still be trying to take care of China. Where will our citizens be able to go and find jobs? > [@](#): > > When I pointed out that, no, I am concerned about income inequality in this country–even going so far as to offer very briefly a few ideas on how to combat it without risking long-term economic growth–you immediately changed course and started talking about looking out for ourselves. I didn’t change course. You show where I ever went down the course of selling out my own country and ruining my own people’s standard of living to raise another nation’s standard of living. Why don’t you go tell this nonsense to the millions of unemployed we have here? That we shouldn’t look out for ourselves? Oh yeah, in your aristocratic thinking you actually think you’d be justified in repeating what you said here. > [@](#): > > Is that how it works? We should look after the poor, but _only our poor_? Look after your own family first. Ever wonder why most families around the world feel that way? It’s not because they’re stupid. > [@](#): > > Then you’re not my tribe. I’m disowning your ass. Oh, noes. I’m being disowned by the doomed “taking care of my own country comes second to taking care of everyone else” tribe. What ever will I do! I bet you’re a citizen of the world, ain’t ya? “You will be assimilated”, and all that. To hell with globalism. This ain’t a course change: I never believed in globalism. I don’t believe in economic intercourse with the Chinese any more than I would the Nazis. Dirty? No. Undemocratic, holocaust-like (to their girls), one-child-policy anti-life and anti-choice? Yup. I don’t want such a horrific place becoming a superpower. China undermines every concept of human rights. I want to be counted against those who are for China. China is NOT the future; and if they are, the future is one without democracy and human rights. In short? Go live with them if you think you’re so great. Or better yet go ask the Tibetans if they think China is not dangerous. They might have a different perspective on these poor, put upon people than you do. The Africans ain’t so hot about them, either… except the dictators that they sell arms to. Disown me from your tribe? What tribe? A tribe of a handful of people who don’t believe in “lines on maps”? Yeah, whatever. Whenever you wake up from this misinterpretation of “We are the world” that you’re selling, guess what? There’ll still be those lines on those maps, and 6.9 out of 7 billion people are both restricted by and loyal to them. You better check up on the size of the “little in-group” you’re bashing here: it’s almost all of the human race. I suspect this’ll be the last time you try to sell that line of thinking. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912.md?page=15) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/offshoring-the-snake-that-is-eating-itself/555912.md?page=17)