Hey Hellstal, you know, we’re still sending aid to China. Can you believe that? Just one thing… how much are our homeless and jobless citizens getting in aid from them?
Could you translate this into English? And how precisely are your cites not “scratching the surface”?
Is it that web sites and articles you agree with are the Gospel-like truth, and we sites and articles you don’t agree with are lies or “scratching the surface”?
This is neither an error or, for that matter, even a sensible question on your part. It’s analogous to saying “If the invention of washing machines and electric dryers made it easier for homemakers to do laundry, why do people still buy groceries?”
The United States - like every other country in the Western world, really - is both automating and shipping stuff from China because sometimes the most cost-efficient way to get something is to make it here with an automated process, and sometimes the most cost efficient way to get something is to buy it from a company in China. I cannot believe I had to type words so obvious.
How, precisely, did I ignore that fact? Have I claimed the United States does not have a trade deficit? It unquestionably does.
Doing a point-by-point is increasingly, well, pointless; either you don’t have a grasp of what you’re talking about or you aren’t interested in honest discussion - or, more likely, both.
Holy moly.
If the U.S. dollar collapses, imports will collapse. How on earth can imports skyrocket if the U.S. dollar collapses? With what will the skyrocketing imports be purchased?
Sudden shifts in a country’s currency tend to have a positive correlation with imports, and a negative one with exports. It’s a STRONG U.S. dollar that makes substantial importing possible, and puts U.S. exporters at a relative disadvantage. A weak U.S. dollar would make importing (or offshoring) less economically feasible. It’d reduce imports, and would make U.S. exports stronger. That’s… well, so freaking obvious. We live this on a month to month basis in Canada; a rising Canadian dollar means more imports and fewer exports. When the Canadian dollar drops, imports decline, exports increase.
If you want less offshoring and importing, you want the U.S. dollar to decline in value relative to other currencies. That is not just common sense but thousands-of-times-over-proven experience. In fact, it’s the very fucking thing you accuse China of preventing, by complaining about their pegged currency. I would assume you want their currency to increase in value, which means the U.S. dollar would DECREASE relative to Chinese currency, thereby reducing importing from China, right? That’s what’s got your panties in a bunch. And yet here you say that the U.S. dollar will collapse and imports will skyrocket? What? What’s going to be used to pay for these imports? Monopoly money?
We’ll add this to the column that includes your belief that the unemployment rate (whichever one you claim to be using) doesn’t count workers once their benefits run out, and your hilariously wrong attempt in the other thread to pretend you knew what “comparative advantage” was.
We get it; you don’t like the Chinese. It’s understood. You don’t need to keep telling us you want China to be obliterated by a comet. We’ve got it.
Yeah…sort of underlines the fact that the horned bunny there really doesn’t have the first clue on this subject. The funny thing is, I got into this exact discussion this weekend with some friends of mine. The funny part is they are actual conservatives (as opposed to Straight Dope ‘conservatives’), and they pretty much brought up the exact same points as our tusked lapin friend here. Even down to the assertion that the US doesn’t manufacture anything anymore and outsources everything to China (or India…those seem to be the only two countries most folks know about) and the fact that the value of the dollar is on the brink of collapsing and this is going to magically take away the last of our manufacturing jobs and drown us all in imports and outsourcing/offshoring, blah blah blah.
It’s interesting to me that the antlered hare tracks so closely to some of the loopier conservatives take on this subject. I’m not sure what it means…possibly that when you get the the extremes it all looks the same, or possibly that Le Jac is really a conservative in rabbit clothing…
-XT
I hear what you are saying. I am quite familiar with the prescription that the world bank and company doles out to countries that need to be bailed out of economic crisis. It doesn’t apply to the USA. The USA isn’t asking someone else to lend them money, in fact the problem is that China is TOO willing to lend us money to the point they are crowing out their own currency.
Isaac Newton was born after the Rennaisance.
]
Lord Kelvin is more recent than Isaac Newton, heck, ,he barely beat out the fig newton.
So you’re saying that economics employs the scientific process? Or are you saying all searches for knowledge = science?
Well, basically you have an economic theory (free trade is always good) that you can’t defend so you say “well economics says so and economics is a science” in much the same way that a biologist might stand up for the theory of evolution. I say that economics is not a science like physics or chemistry and you keep insisting it is because they both search for knowledge or something like that.
And why can’t they dump the dollar and buy gold as their treasuries mature if we do what you suggest?
Then why are highly automated factories being built in China?
Why wouldn’t they be??
Well, because gold isn’t really all that great an investment and wouldn’t really help them that much. Also, dumping the dollar would be painful for them at this point, since they have sunk so much into keeping the dollar high and their own currency low. Dumping large amounts of dollars is going to drive down the price of dollars, especially relative to their own currency, which would mean that the US would find imports from China less appealing, while our own exports would suddenly be looking pretty good. That’s not exactly a recipe for success in China right now (though it will probably happen at some point). If China were going to buy anything, I’d say they would start buying up Euros instead, in the hopes of doing the same thing in Europe they try to do in the US by keeping the Euro high relative to their own currency, thus making their own exports look attractive while making European exports less attractive.
-XT
That is a bloody bizarre question. If we do as I suggest and China dumps its dollars, then it’s like Christmas come early. The peg is maintained by dollar reserves–a relaxing of those reserves (up to and including a dollar dumping) will end it. We get everything we wanted. Ho ho ho.
You were the one who posted this Krugman article. You might want to read it carefully once again, focusing on the econ. (I still disagree strongly with the political suggestions.)
- Yes. If you aren’t aware of the fact that economics employs experimentation and the study of objective evidence to test and disprove hypotheses… well, I find it hard to believe you took any economics classes and would not know that.
- It depends.
That isn’t a “theory”. It’s barely even a hypothesis. ** And nobody in this thread is just repeating “Free trade is always good” as an argument.**
Because a company in China is trying to save on labour costs? Why do you think?
I am really puzzled by the idea that a country wouldn’t both automate some things and offshore others. Is it some sort of amazing revelation that you can get products and services through different means? Should every product be sourced the same way? Why on earth would anyone expect that?
I find this line of questioning almost incoherent in its lack of logic or awareness. Can anyone seriously doubt that some jobs have been eliminated due to automation, and some due to offshoring? That both phenomena have been happening at the same time? Why would anyone find this confusing?
A summary of the flaws in the pro-offshoring position, as demonstrated here in this thread:
- Offshoring has many benefits for America’s working class.
The only proven benefit of offshoring is lower prices. But as the pro-offshoring advocates have rigorously argued, this has no effect on the cost of living: cost of living has not changed much against wages… except that over an extended period of time - ten years, in fact - the cost of living has consistently inched upwards in relation to wages.
Offshoring is keeping companies profitable - but not the workers. Ever wonder why CEO pay is so much higher now than before? Offshoring is one reason.
- Offshoring benefits American companies and it means more American products will be bought.
A dubious argument at best. It benefits the CEOs. These “American” products are being produced overseas.
- Anti-offshoring is the result of hatred for the Chinese. Americans who oppose offshoring want to deprive the poor in other nations of economic opportunities.
It is the worst case of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice to accuse people of being racists just because they want to keep a good paying job and not see their standard of living decline. This pro-offshoring argument is highly akin to thieves’ logic: “I need that money more than you.” It is most certainly an effeminate attempt at guilt-tripping.
But since guilt-tripping is so popular here, let’s examine this argument’s massive flaws from that perspective: offshoring is racism against America. Other nations want to rob America’s working class of its jobs and leave them jobless, homeless and without the tax base to support a social safety net. An offensive statement? No more or less offensive than the pro-offshoring argument whose logic is identical to this.
But there are deeper flaws that are actually more serious. Regardless of the major flaws of this pro-offshoring myth, the poor in other nations desperately rely on exports to America. America is running a massive trade deficit with other nations, and the enormous numbers of Americans put out of work by offshoring has put a major strain on America’s social safety net, which is raising the national debt, although not as fast as the trade deficit.
The poor in other nations will inevitably be sacrificed upon the altar of natural economic events. How? The national debt will eventually have to be paid down or else the dollar will lose a great deal of value due to the excessive printing of dollars. This will drive up the price of imports and drive down their sales, putting foreign workers out of business.
The poor foreign workers that anti-offshoring activists are accused of hating should beware about relying on America for their prosperity: 20 million Chinese workers lost their jobs in the historical blink of an eye because of the 2008 US financial crisis and the fact that consumers drastically reduced the amount of goods they buy, imported or domestic.
There is only so far the poor workers of the world can get, economically speaking, by relying on America to surrender its jobs and prosperity to them. Eventually we’ll be unable to support them… and then what?
As if this “America is poorer if we are an exporting country” myth wasn’t dead enough already, allow us to go back into history: America was mightily prosperous when it was exporting more than it was importing, back in the 1960s.
Being a net exporting country is synonymous with increased prosperity. America is a net importer by far: no wonder we’re in debt.
- If offshoring is stopped then automation will take these jobs anyway.
This is absurd even on its face. When manufacturing jobs left America they didn’t go to machines. Toyota has onshore factories here that use machines and workers: they are not fully automated. The manufacturing jobs that left America are still being done by workers - overseas workers, that is. If automation were such a big thing then why are workers still doing these jobs and not machines?
And if this “total automation” fantasy does occur - which is possible - who will build the machines? Most likely workers overseas. Which will inflict a double-whammy loss of jobs for Americans.
- America is not competing against China for manufacturing.
American workers are competing against any country who is producing goods for the American market. With unemployment as high as it is and with at least a ten year history of unemployed workers giving up the search for work due to a minimum of 1.5 workers fighting for every available job opening, we are in an employer’s market that has existed at least since ten years before the 2008 recession. These Americans who’ve been out of work and who have given up looking for work (since none has been available for them) could have had jobs in manufacturing.
This argument is also flawed in that America is losing jobs in the research sector (read: innovation jobs) - see: biotech offshoring. China now makes photovotaic cells, which are an essential element in America’s new alternative energy intiative. So now is America also not competing against China and India for biotech (and other) research jobs?
- Offshoring of jobs allows American workers to move onto other better jobs.
Those jobs being…? So far pro-offshoring advocates have failed to provide an answer for this question. They would have millions of unemployed Americans, including over 6 million long term unemployed Americans, wait until these jobs finally show up. Meanwhile, America must suffer years of lost tax revenue and an increased drain on social services because of these unemployed Americans. There is nothing here in the pro-offshoring argument but “suffer until the whimsical global market decides to let you work again… if it ever does.” And people wonder why the market is in such poor shape? It’s because America, the buyers of the goods of the world, is not spending. Why aren’t they spending? Because their jobs went overseas, and offshored American workers rarely ever get a job that pays as much as the job they lost.
Jobs sent offshore are not being replaced by equal-paying jobs. They’re being replaced by lower paying jobs.
- Offshoring reduces the cost of goods.
Disproven by Straight Dopers’ own arguments that vigorously assert that the cost of living has not declined against wages; also disproven by the fact that wages, for the last 10 years, have not even kept up with inflation.
- Stopping offshoring increases the cost of goods.
Disproven by Straight Dopers’ own arguments that vigorously assert that the cost of living has not skyrocketed against consumer wages over time. At worst it will cause a temporary price spike against wages; and then wages, due to the flood of jobs coming back, will rise to match.
- If America regains its lost manufacturing jobs this means it is a poor country. More specifically it means there is a misallocation of skills.
Truth: millions of Americans out of work means there is an even more severe misallocation of skills. And a major loss of tax dollars. And a bigger strain on America’s social welfare system.
- People who lose their jobs to offshoring can be retrained for something else.
What else? Pro-offshoring advocates have been unable to answer this. What else can workers train for that won’t be offshored? How many jobs will this emerging industry actually create? Most importantly… how long does America’s jobless population have to wait before this great free market fantasy job boom occurs? It’s been ten years so far. How much longer do millions of Americans have to wait in the unemployment line for this answer to come? How many billions of taxpayer dollars do we have to lose in lost income tax revenue before this happens?
- If we stop offshoring, American companies won’t be competitive with foreign companies.
This is happening anyway. American companies are being robbed of their intellectual property or being forced to give it up, in the case of China; cheap labor nations, in particular, flood the American market with cheap knockoff products, sometimes created in the same offshore factories as the legitimate product. In the case of China and India, offshoring is actually accelerating the downfall of American companies.
- Only 4% of jobs have been lost to offshoring. (http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/workforce-management-hiring-consulting/1055783-1.html)
Take a look at the United States’ unemployment levels now: close to 10%. Imagine if that were reduced by 4%.
- Offshoring brings economic gain to the United States.
Yes, to the upper 1% and the corporate elite. The working class has suffered a double whammy of declining wages over the last decade (compared to inflation) and job growth that has, over the last ten years, failed to keep up with population growth. Ten years is a very long time in this high-metabolism economy.
Take notice of how offshoring advocates cannot talk about the amount of economic gain that trickles down to the workers… because there is none. Their own rigorous proofs show that.
Worse yet, these claims of offshoring benefitting the United States are grossly dishonest in that they fail to calculate the trade deficits that are generated and its effect on the national debt. The benefits from offshoring are again negated, in whole, by the massive size of America’s import-export deficit, its effect on the US dollar, and the effect it has on America’s swelling debt.
America is not the wealthiest nation in the world: it is many trillions in debt. Put it this way: if you are making $1 million a year and approaching $1 million in debt, are you wealthy? Now compare the trade deficit to the budget deficit. See the problem?
In closing: the entire pro-offshoring argument is based on fantasies about mythical benefits that will occur at some point… somewhere over yonder rainbow. It is based on little more than superstition and wishful thinking.
Offshoring is highly unpopular with America for a good reason: the benefits that offshoring advocates have been promising for decades, are not happening.
So while pro-offshoring advocates are busy desperately trying to find fault with the finding of major faults in their argument, ask yourself this: where are all those great, better paying jobs that offshoring was supposed to give us?
I meant the price of imports would skyrocket. Which is consistent with what I’ve repeated over and over again prior to that.
So you’ll get your wish.
Too funny. And the really funny thing is…he doesn’t get the joke. This thread has been hilarious in a sad sort of way…
-XT
I thought the argument was that our jobs are being replaced by higly automated plants here OR cheap Chinese labor. If the automated plats are being built in China too then whats left for us again?
You’re probably right about the euro being more attractive to teh Chinese than gold. I was jsut saying that they could get their money out with relatively little destruction to the value of their investments.
Can anyone seriously doubt that some of that offshoring wold not have occured without Chinese currency manipulation? Of course not.
My premise is that we can and should retaliate with tariffs among other things. You’ve simply drawn a line in the sand and said, no matter what happens we should never retaliate with tariffs. I happen to think this is the quickest clearest way to send a message to China to cut it out. Trade wars are bad for everyone but it will hurt them a lot more than it hurts us and it will knock some sense into them.
That wasn’t my argument. I obviously can’t speak for anyone else. It’s silly to think that the Chinese aren’t bright enough to want to either build automated manufacturing themselves or allow foreign companies to build them.
SOME automated plants are built in China. Some are built in Canada. Some are built right here in the US. What’s left to us? Whatever we can build for ourselves. No one is going to give us a free ride. We’ve priced ourselves out of the low end labor market due to labor unions and more importantly our own standards of living and the expectations of our citizens. We aren’t ever going to be able to play in that game again. C’est la vie. If we want to play at all we have to work towards our strengths, not piss and moan about the fact that other countries are not playing fair and buying stuff from us because we are American’s…or are willing to sell us goods and services cheaper than we can make them here.
What’s left to us is quality and innovation…we have to build products and services here that are more niche oriented or that are innovative enough that we’ll have an edge in production for a time.
Or, we could impose stiff tariffs that a lot of folks in this thread seem to think are a good idea, legislate laws forbidding US flagged companies from outsources or offshoring, and see where that takes us.
Gold in general isn’t that great an investment, and for the Chinese it wouldn’t do them any good as an alternative to buying large quantities of dollars. In fact ‘wouldn’t do them any good’ is an understatement of epic proportions.
Out of US dollars? How so? How could they get their money out of US dollars in such a way that it doesn’t destroy or at least cripple their economy both in the short term as well as in the medium term?
-XT
No, but that has nothing to do with your question. You’re careening from pillar to post. You yourself seemed very confused when you said:
The only people who’ve suggested such an asinine argument are you and Jacquelope.
I have said nothing of the sort.
… But I can’t help but be rather unconvinced by an argument that amounts to “let’s knock some sense into them.” As long as you want a quick, clear message, why not just launch an attack with nuclear weapons?
No, it will hurt you more than them.
If you haven’t the sense to realise that the cause and solution to this situation are US domestic issues, that the USD:RMB rate is no more than a convenient rallying point for dissent, and that aspiring to sell US made T-shirts and toys to China isn’t a solution, then when it comes to “knocking some sense”, you really need to start a bit closer to home.
Agreed, I would have thought that incontravertably a good thing for the US?
I think that over all it’s a good thing, yes…but it’s going to depend on an individuals circumstance. It’s painful when you are on the short end of the stick and you’ve been laid off because your industry is tanking or the manufacturing plant you work for simply can’t compete with one making the same things at a third the cost somewhere else. It’s particularly painful right now (which is why this subject has started to crop up more again) because we have multiple wammies going on right now. We have a particularly nasty recession (which is the REAL cause for the high unemployment and sluggish economy and non-existent upward flow of jobs back into the market place) plus a housing and banking crisis tossed in…just in case we didn’t think things were serious enough.
China has been playing games with their currency for years now…it’s nothing new, really. It IS a problem…a serious problem, and one that needs to be addressed (don’t ask me how…I haven’t got a clue what we should do). I don’t think that tariffs are the way to go (and I KNOW that across the board tariffs on every country that has cheap labor in some sort of loopy punishment move as proposed by the OP is, well, just nuts), but I don’t know what would work. I do believe that eventually the Chinese will hang themselves with their own short sighted policy, and not just with the US…our European friends aren’t too happy with them either, for similar reasons (and a lot of Europeans have similar attitudes about free trade and outsourcing to the OP as well).
Offshoring, though, is a red herring. It’s a populist rallying cry (as I’ve said, ironically it’s a rallying cry that is used by elements on both the left and right, and I’ve mainly heard it from right wingers usually), but it’s not the real problem…just an easy, low hanging target that a lot of folks who don’t know much about this subject will respond to viscerally, and thus can be exploited by politician types to get the mob moving in the desired direction.
-XT