Offshoring - the snake that is eating itself.

Great Debates
141

You’ve cited something that hasn’t actually happened? How about that. Where did that cite come from? The Amazing Kreskin?

Hoo, boy.

You’ve provided no reference to this alleged quote. And yet I have at hand a direct quote from Henry Ford stating, unambiguously, that his reason for raising wages was to stop employee turnover, NOT to allow employees to buy his cars. Since the former reason actually makes sense and the latter does not, and I have a quote and you don’t… well, I’m going with the one that makes sense that I have actually seen, as opposed to the one that doesn’t that is “in his memoirs.”

I don’t seem to recall those cites, but I do recall that when I tried to explain that the average wage in 1955 was lower than today and used inflation-adjusted dollars, you didn’t understand what inflation adjusted dollars were. When I re-explained it you didn’t return to the subject.

Average U.S. wage in 1980: $32158 (IN 2009 DOLLARS)
Average U.S. wage in 2009: $43000 (depends a little on the source)

So people have 33% more income than they did in 1980. And that’s after a recession hit.

142

Cite. So now the United Nations is this “Amazing Kreskin” thingy? Or are they just someone that you disagree with and must vilify?

Well here it is again. Wages were falling against inflation back from 2001 to 2004. BEFORE THE CRASH. Cite #2.

I’ve cited these facts several times before but it seems you ignored it every time. I wonder why?

It doesn’t make sense to whom? You?

Really? Even the Conservopedia seems to buy into this “myth”.

Correction, I challenged you on that. A car cost $2200 by 1959 on average. By 1995 the average car price jumped up almost TEN FOLD to $20,000. And that was the last year I could find a cite for. It probably got higher than that by 2005, before the crash.

So cars have gone up almost ten fold. How much have wages gone up? Average income in 1959 was $5010. I’d love to see what that is in adjusted 2009 dollars. But basically 20,000 / 2200 (=9.0909…) is greater than 43000 / 5010 (~8.58).

Going by that sampling, wages did not keep up with inflation, at least for cars. Cars were, on average, more affordable back then compared to their wages.

With gasoline at 25 cents per gallon back then and well over $2.50 now, the math really gets unfriendly to your case. Gasoline was cheaper back then in relation to their income.

You were saying?

143

TWEEEEEEEEEEEET!

There will be no more claims that another poster’s submission is “idiotic” or “stupid.”

There will be no more snide remarks regarding other posters’ submissions.

(Pretty soon, there will be no more open thread in which to post insults.)

If you cannot make your points without hurling snide remarks around, then go open a separate thread in The BBQ Pit.
**
[ /Moderating ]**

144

You really have no idea what inflation adjusted dollars are, do you? Here is a little calculator you can use. Let’s see…$.25 in 1950 dollars equals $2.20 in 2009 dollars. So…the real price of gas has gone up only a tiny bit from what it was in 1950, when adjusted for inflation.

Your $2000 car? It’s about $17k in adjusted dollars.

:stuck_out_tongue: Seriously…if you are going to take this high and mighty tone, you might want to consider actually doing some research on the subject before trying it out…you will look less like a <deleted in light of Tom’s warning>…um, less like you don’t know what you are talking about I suppose. Just a thought…

-XT

145

I’m honestly surprised that you think you can fling straw men at me and then claim it’s me who doesn’t understand the issues.

Of course, I never claimed that manufacturing would move back to the US. In fact, if you would actually read my posts, I indicated that other low-cost countries may gain some of the manufacturing jobs. For all I know, they may absorb a lot of them. If all you can do is argue with strawmen, you might want to be wary about calling people “idiots.”:rolleyes:

I’m not even going to bother responding to the rest of your post. It’s clear you are not arguing in good faith. Have fun making up viewpoints to argue with.

ETA: I’ll clarify. I claimed it’s a possibility that manufacturing might come back. Not that it would definitively come back. And I included the possibility that it would move to other countries.

146

I said I wondered what those numbers would be, adjusted for inflation. If I’d had a link to a calculator I’d have done all those figures myself because I was looking for that information.

My point was that wages did not keep up with inflation and they buy less now than they did back then. It appears that considering inflation, car prices and gasoline prices have gone up faster than wages. Workers’ wages are slipping backwards.

But in actuality the average car was $3000 more than that by 1995. I cited that for you.

I knew exactly what I was talking about. I did not have a link to an inflation calculator. But now that you’ve posted it and shown us the numbers… they show clearly that wages have not kept up with inflation. The negative margin is less dramatic than I imagined but it is still substantial.

How substantial? The real price of gasoline and cars are over 10% higher than they should be considering straight inflation from 1959 to now.

10% is not a “tiny bit”.

147

Where in the report does it predict unrest in the United States?

I mean, I can believe unrest in Nigeria, sure.

WEll, in this case, you cherry picked a three-year period. I can pick a three-year period where wages went up, too; that’s easy. What matters is the long term trend - which is inexorably upward.

That isn’t to say the USA doesn’t have economic problems. It most certainly does; huge personal debt, a fiscal disaster in 2008, a ridiculously backwards health insurance system. But none are due to international trade.

As HENRY FORD HIMSELF SAID, the purpose of raising wages was to reduce turnover.

Raising wages will certainly reduce employee turnover (all other things being equal) but attempting to raise wages to sell more of your own product is… well, it’s just flatly stupid. You can’t pay the employees enough money to buy back your own products and make a margin. It’s mathematically impossible. Ford raised wages so he could retain good employees so he could sell cars to other people - as Henry Ford, again, said himself, very clearly.

The Conservopedia, really?

Yes, you said “well, gosh, $26,000” (the adjusted price) “went a lot further in 1955,” or words to that effect, completely missing the fact the dollars were adjusted for inflation. Do you really want me to pull the quote?

Okay. So, rather than looking at inflation, you instead cherry-pick the price of one specific item, and try to pass that off as inflation - which, of course, it simply is not. Inflation is a summation of the price change of ALL things, not just one thing. I could point to things that went down in real dollars from 1959 to 1995, too. (And might I point out that a car in 1995 was a hell of a lot better than a car in 1959. You get what you pay for.)

For instance, the gasoline you use to power your car was cheaper in 1995, in inflation adjusted dollars, than in 1959. Why didn’t you choose gasoline as your example? Oh, you tried to, but got your numbers all wrong. Here is an accurate price chart for gasoline in constant dollars:

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm

Heaven knows where you’re getting your made up numbers, but the price of gas in 1959 was about $2.25 in today’s dollars; in 1995, the year you used as the endpoint for your car price comparison, it was about $1.60. Where did you get your numbers?

148

No…you seemingly don’t. The average wage in 1950 was $2,992. That works out to $26445.55 (in 2009 adjusted dollars), using the handy dandy calculator. The average wage in 2009 was…$41,334.97.

But, you see, the average salary when adjusted for inflation has risen MORE than 10% since 1950. So, in terms of actual buying power, people today have much more than they did in your golden age during the 50’s. Get it?

ETA: And, as Rickjay says, you are cherry picking one single item, instead of looking at the aggregate. Consider something as basic as a TV, and tell me how a person in the 50’s had more buying power than a person today…

-XT

149

Oh, please. All everyone here in this thread has done is to make up viewpoints, attribute them to me and then claim I don’t know what I’m talking about. As usual, in these economic threads, you have no idea what you’re talking about, and then you try to pin it on me.

150

It’s not my lookout if you want to associate your position with our French friend here, and also make claims that run counter to the majority view point of folks who are experts on economics and trade. If you think that means I don’t know what I’m talking about, well…that’s probably a good thing, from my own perspective.

If you think you’ve been falsely strawmaned with Le Jac’s whack-a-do assertions, then that’s perhaps a fair statement. You SEEM to be agreeing with him, at least that was the impression I got when I wrote what you quoted there. If I’ve mis-characterized you, then apologies.

-XT

151

That’s a great argument.:rolleyes: It’s obvious you can’t actually make an argument to any of my posts so you just keep bleating about these so-called “experts” (are they from the Niagra Falls area?). Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Yeah, right. I never quoted Le Jacquelope in any of my posts, and my primary debate in this thread has been with John Mace and penultima. But as usual, it’s easier for you to deal with strawmen in order to try and hide your lack of basic economic knowledge. No, I don’t accept your fake apology.

152

Anyway, I’m off the boards until the weekend. Everyone is free to bash me over things I haven’t said, since I won’t have an opportunity to respond.

153

Well since you want to nitpick… Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski predicts it can happen in the U.S.. Of course, he’s a former national security adviser… what does he know?

None, especially the jobs part? Really?

But that isn’t the only purpose he said it was for.

I guess you haven’t heard of the term ‘Fordism’, have you?

No it’s not. Historians widely agree (since you like that “widely agree” part) that it was an end result of his wage increases.

It just doesn’t seem to occur to you that he said both; and he is well known all over the place for that.

I’m sure you realize they’re a Conservative organization that prides itself on being accurate. They also agree with my interpretation of things: that Henry Ford raised workers’ wages to $5 a day in order to BOTH retain good employees AND enable them to better afford his cars. He increased wages and cut prices. In your world what does higher wages and lower vehicle prices do to their affordability? Just wondering.

I’m not sure, though, how much it matters, considering that you misinterpret my posts repeatedly, like when you claimed that “If the US isolates itself economically, that means that US companies aren’t going to be able to compete on the world market” (among other misinterpretations) even though I never once said we should isolate ourselves, and in fact said we should blockade the low wage nations while lowering trade barriers with places like Europe and Canada. Speaking of which, I challenged you on that and you had nothing to say. Hmmmmm.

Okay. So, rather than looking at inflation, you instead cherry-pick the price of one specific item, and try to pass that off as inflation - which, of course, it simply is not.
[/quote]

Not one, two.

Yes, like no front fenders so a shopping cart can pretty much cause a few hundred bucks of damage. But hey, I’d trade that in for a nice electric SUV besides my aging RAV4-EV… oh wait, car companies kept killing that idea up until recently! Argh.

I tried to get 2005-2007 prices for cars but there’s no link. I said that I was sure that 2005 car prices were in fact higher than 1995 prices. I used 1995 prices for cars because that was the last year I could find them, and then speculated that 2005+ average prices were higher. You don’t even want to know what gasoline was in or after 2005.

154

Since certain folks here are bent on citing the support of “90% of economists” in favor of offshoring, let’s show what the public thinks of it.

(Excerpt)

So you guys who say my arguments are crap… take notice. 62% of Americans would not vote for a Presidential candidate that supports offshoring.

62% is a LOT of people to be calling idiots.

155

Jobs are the issue Americans care the most about. More than health care, more than killing Muslims, more than abortion or homos kissing. Basic livelihood is number one on the list. Any viable candidate who promised to do anything about the outsourcing of jobs would be elected in a landslide. Strangely, the only political movement I think might ever stand up to this wholesale corporate theft of American livelihood and wealth are the teabaggers who, as ridiculous as they are in most respects, are still ground level enough to prioritize domestic jobs and not give a shit about the corporate piggies.

156

But then I’m not sure how serious they’ll be about stopping offshoring. They are, after all, funded by the Koch brothers.

I’d like to hope that they’ll join the 62% of Americans who oppose offshoring. More importantly I hope the Tea Party will force some MEANINGFUL action, not just yelling and saber rattling.

157

This is sarcasm, right?

You do not seriously believe that there is any adherence to facts on a website that produces this sort of nonsense, or, worse, this crap, do you?

158

Well, yeah, they also endorse the guys who want to rewrite the Bible for crying out loud.

I’m doing the tactic of bashing these guys with cites from their own allied sites’ sources.

159

Please cite one single, solitary poster who has cited from anything remotely resembling a conservative source.

Regards,
Shodan

160

Yes I have. The fact remains that Henry Ford raised wages to reduce turnover, and said so himself. That is established and well-cited fact. If you don’t want to accept it, I can’t force you to accept a fact.

They can take pride in whatever they like, but the fact is they are famously inaccurate, dishonest, and their crap is full of religious nonsense.

I believe it was someone else who said that.

Yes, I do know you’re advocating free trade with Europe, Canada et al. Your posts are still chock full of factual errors and logical holes.

Are you now seriously arguing that cars in 1959 were better than cars today? Honestly, are you completely divorced from reality?

If they sold a car new today that was just like a car from 1959 I wouldn’t accept it as a gift, much less pay for it. They were hideously unsafe, had the fuel efficiency and engine response of a cargo ship, had few options or comforts, and the best of them would have been considered a colossal lemon by modern standards. They didn’t last as long, either.

So now your contribution to the facts at hand includes the notion that cars in 1959 were better than cars today. Holy crap. Pull the other one…

Then you should have used consistent years for price comparisons.

As to what gasoline prices have been recently, I provided a cite for you. **2005 gasoline prices were the same as 1959, about $2.50 in today’s dollars. ** As you can clearly see they spiked in mid 2008 but then plummeted to well under $2 a gallon and have settled back to levels essentially the same as the historical average, which is what they’ve always done. The overall trend for gasoline prices has been flat for eighty or ninety years; they vary up and down depending on the latest politics but overall have never gone up for an extended period of time.