[QUOTE=Le Jacquelope]
You’re wrong because offshoring does not produce any benefits to the working class.
[/QUOTE]
Jobs aren’t a benefit to the working class?? But then why beat a dead horse? It’s not like this hasn’t been explained to you in the past umpteenth pages on this exact same discussion.
We did because we had a near monopoly on exporting goods and services around the world in the post-WWII period, due to the fact that we still had a vibrant and viable manufacturing base. We STILL have one of the highest standards of living, still have plenty of technological progress, despite decades of ‘offshoring’ and ‘outsourcing’.
Again, why beat a dead horse? It’s been explained to you countless times and YOU JUST DON’T GET IT.
Well, this is the forum for witnessing.
You can lead a horse to water, but sadly you can’t beat it to death while changing mounts mid-stream if you are trying to look it in the mouth to see if the gift is worth getting. The board has been fighting ignorance for decades now, but it’s taking longer than the original founders realized it would to beat sense into the senseless.
It’s ironic to me that you continue to appeal to supposed greater popular opinion and dismiss peer reviewed experts…and then bring up stuff like this. I mean, this is comedy gold…and the fact that you don’t get the joke just makes it that much more funny.
You should really hold your breath on this one…I’m sure your (supposedly populist views) will be born out shortly. Keep holding that breath and keep the faith (based views). Power to the People!!
First of all, let me congratulate you on an excellent post containing some well thought out, incisive questions.
Short answer yes-ish, or no-ish, depending. There is in fact a wealthy cabal of people scheming to take the wealth of the middle class, and they’ve largely succeeded over the last several decades. They are not planning to “get rid of the jobless” though I think they would be all right with it if the jobless would wander off somewhere and discreetly die. The wealthy wing of the Republican Party has embraced laws that harm the middle class and the poor at ever turn – union busting, “right to work” laws that are in fact “right to fire for any reason” laws, NAFTA, seeking to deprive the middle class and the poor of retirement income in the form of Social Security and of health insurance. The middle class social conservatives who join them in the Republican Party don’t care so much about these maters, they are concerned about gay marriage, abortions, and keeping da gubbamint’s greasy fingers off their guns.
The wealthy wing of the Republicans don’t have the numbers to elect an effective minority, much less a majority, in any house of Congress, even much less than that, a President. So they waggle the finger puppets on the social issues that keep the middle class social conservatives voting their way, even though most of them don’t give a damn about the social issues. (Think of the Cheneys with their lesbian daughter and all the elected Republicans who don’t have any problem at all working with their gay staffers, much less the closeted gay Republicans that keep outing themselves in amusing ways.)
It cannot fail to have occurred to the wealthy wing of the Republican Party that the economic policies they are advancing are very much contrary to the interests of the middle class Republicans, if only because the Democrats have repeatedly pointed it out. And they are fairly sophisticated about economics, they would be aware that the top two percent of the country’s wealthy control over 90 percent of the country’s wealth. It would not surprise me at all to discover that many of them harbored a secret contempt for their middle class allies, for being so ignorant that they virtually ask to be economically destroyed.
Many economists are saying the manufacturing jobs are not coming back, and manufacturing jobs have been the engine that made the middle class grow. What, do you expect the Americans who did not graduate from high school to all become wealthy fast food restaurant employees?
Jobs that will get you out of poverty differ from the other kind.
No, of course not, it isn’t necessary to leave the US. Service employees need to unionize, and middle class in general tend to start looking after their own economic interests, as it has always been folly to assume the wealthy will look after their interests. And our current fix was clearly caused by the financial services industry, not offshoring. But offshore jobs are a problem.
Promulgate laws that foster collective bargaining and makes union-busting difficult. Provide tax incentives to companies that grow American jobs, especially lucrative ones, and give absolutely no breaks to companies that outsource. Set up a government agency to spur economic development by guaranteeing loans to Main Street businesses that develop products and services in the US. Reign in the excesses of the financial services industry, especially prevent banks from investing in high-risk financial instruments like derivatives, encouraging, once again, development of financial instruments that lead to the development of REAL services and REAL products instead of goddam Las Vegas style gambling that create “wealth” that is not backed by anything other than a financial shell game.
I find it humorous that on the Straight Dope message board the intellectual self-proclaimed illuminati are shocked at the idea that rich people might be greedy to the point of preying on the working class. I can certainly understand this ignorance - it’s not like humans ever prey on each other or act greedy in other areas. It’s not like humans ever try to acquire wealth by screwing others over. Nosiree. To admit that the rich are engaging in any of these unthinkable vices is to believe in conspiracies.
It’s the Scrooge effect. And whatever you do, do not bring up the word feudalism.
The problem is, these things you suggest have next to a zero percent chance of happening in the short to mid-term future. So what are the unemployed to do? Sit here and stay unemployed until they are permanently unemployable (because employers are very, very well known for not wanting to hire people with long gaps in their employment)? I mean, do the intellectual illuminati not realize we already have generations of people who live on welfare?
Those are awesome ideas, Evil Captor. I propose more radical solutions but what you suggest will be a vast improvement from what we have now.
Yeah, well, I make more money so nana-nana boo boo stick your head in doo doo.
I wonder. I just joined a startup (yes, even in this economy companies are hiring) that makes software that companies use to make their salespeople more efficient. Indirectly, it means companies need to hire fewer salespeople which means fewer jobs.
We’re all PhD/ MBA/ Ivy League / former white shoe I-banking and consulting firm types. Of course, we all get paid well and might even get rich if the company takes off (which it seems to be doing so far). Maybe we should disband the company, sell off all the assets and give them to a bunch of high school dropouts?
Which is why China wants to have the largest market share of mines and refineries. Then they can cut exports (which they are starting to do) and tell foreign countries if they do manufacturing or R&D in China they will not face quotas. But they have to share R&D tech with the government.
Which is what I mean by the China model. An interplay between the public and private sector rather than just assuming the private sector will work itself out w/o any interference or direction from the public sector. If it works out China gains a head start on R&D and manufacturing tech for the most important industries of the 21st century like communications and renewable energy. Liberal economics like we preach in the west seem to my amateur eyes to be meeting resistance all over the world. There are negative effects of it (income inequality, plutocracy, environmental degredation, short term thinking). And several of the fastest growing regions are rejecting those negative effects.
Whenever you say anything about economics, business or jobs it is usually a mixture of condescension/arrogance combined with optimism bordering on naivete. I know you have an undergrad degree in engineering, but there generally are not a flood of good paying jobs with benefits and security for engineers, scientists and technology workers. Good jobs exist in those fields but they are becoming fewer and farther between.
It’s not bloody likely you make more money than me. I don’t join startups. I retired from the financial industry and from working for someone else, to actually make a successful start-up of my (and my wife’s) own.
Nah, we stand by while you encourage millions of other businesses to do the same. That is, until we wind up in the situation we fell into in 2008 - tons of people without jobs and businesses closing by the truckload. When it hits you guys will be going to Washinton DC begging for a bailout.
[QUOTE=Le Jacquelope]
It’s not bloody likely you make more money than me. I don’t join startups. I retired from the financial industry and from working for someone else, to actually make a successful start-up of my (and my wife’s) own.
[/QUOTE]
I thought you said you made your millions/billions/trillions in insurance. I have to say that if you made your big pile (yuck yuck) in the financial industry then it’s amazing how you did that without even a basic grasp of finance, economics or trade. Of course, there is always luck. There could be other, um, alternative explanations as well…
The solution of welfare programs for people displaced from their jobs by structural and institutional changes in the system is great until you have persistently high unemployment.
As we’re seeing in Europe, when you fail to get people jobs - whether it’s make-work projects or something - there simply isn’t enough revenue coming in to support them.
Funny, though, that the developed economies have this problem and are deep in debt… but the third world isn’t in debt. What. The. FUCK. :rolleyes:
But so which of you is bullshit then? The former finance guy startup entrepreneur or the working class people’s champion? Because your claim seems diametrically opposed to your political position. What you made your money, started some vanity company with your wife and now you spend your time ranting about the woes of the downtrodden working class as if you are one of them?
Maybe he worked for Lehman?
That’s funny. I was about to say the same thing about you (but pessimism instead).
I also have a degree in business and significant experience working with distressed companies. I try to base most of what I say on facts & figures, practical advice and sound economic and business theory.
What are you basing that on? And compared to what?
A lot of what you say doesn’t make sense:
And those regions (China and India) have some of the worst records in inequality, plutocracy, and environmental degredation. You think being poor in the US is tough, try it over there. The only reason they are growing is because they have adopted a more liberal western economic approach.
Part of the problem is that while offshoring jobs did not help, the real job losses came from companies getting effiecient. They can tailor the amount of employees depending on what they have for available work. Temp employees bridge the gap when a disparity of employee occurs in event of more work comes in.
I’d say that there is a structural problem with the job market, but bringing home offshore jobs won’t solve the whole employement problem. The reverse is also true, that I can’t see companies going back to what they would probably concider the stone age of doing business.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
I have news that you might find…disapointing.
[/QUOTE]
Oh gods…his head is going to absolutely explode. And it was blocked by the evil Republicans to boot! :eek: Of course, this was quite a while ago, so maybe he already knows and is planning his uprising accordingly…
Just a wag, but the ones that think about it at all probably believe that recessions are cyclical, once the economic times are better, then the unemployment rate will fall and the pressure to do something will ease off. Anyone who is ruined by the recession is an acceptable casualty.
Which really is a gamble in this day and age, before the communications feed back was not fast enough to generate change. In the old days, the first thing that was done in the middle of a revolt or revolution was to seize the radio and television outlets, so as to make sure that only your version of events was able to be broadcast.
Today, we only have to look at Iran, Tunisa and Egypt to determine that something that may never have happened back in the 70’s due to the nature of communications then, has happened over the course of ten days, in part because of the nature of social networking tools.
Now, after the cow escaped and the barn door was closed, did the Iranian and Egyptian governments do something , like shut down internet access, but that game is played by two sides. The next wave of social unrest, depending on where its going to happen, is going to be looking very carefully at the governments ability to stop internet traffic and bring in methods of dealing with this.
I dont see North America going that way re an armed revolt that throws the bums out, but its very possible that you can engineer a flash voting campaign that could change the balance of power in a short time, you dont need to influence the entire electorate, just enough that the remaining bums grasp the sea change and react accordingly.
You obviously did not at all read what I said. Let me bold the part you missed. What I said was, “When it reaches the initiative process level, you have no hope of stopping it.”
Please, before you go on with this, get to know the difference between passing bills in Congress and statewide initiatives. Statewide initiatives are exactly the kind of recourse Americans have when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s misguided lobbying power drives the GOP to override our will in Congress. Initiative processes force corporations to fight voters by making their arguments in public, instead of manipulating politicians behind closed doors. Corporations have lost COUNTLESS (though not all) fights at the statewide initiative level.
I have to say that if you made your big pile (yuck yuck) in the financial industry then it’s amazing how you did that without even a basic grasp of finance, economics or trade. Of course, there is always luck. There could be other, um, alternative explanations as well…