Oh, what should I have done, offered them more money? Would that have made it more attractive? More benefits?
So when I offer them more money, what happens to my production costs, do they go up? Or do they magically go down by 5/9 because Americans are magic?
When my production costs go up, what am I supposed to do? Can I raise my prices? According to your logic my prices can go up five fold because now everyone makes more money, right?
Sure, and imposing a tariff on goods manufactured in China/India was a stroke of brilliance. Still like to know where you studied economics.
Really, nobody? I know at least a dozen. My life was great when my wife got laid off, we used her severance to go to Spain.
4 of my friends used their severance to go back to school, got MBAs and are doing better now.
1 of my friends started his own company writing ipod aps.
Another took her first vacation in 4 years.
Two more decided they’d rather be at home with their kids instead of spending all their money on daycare.
So nobody? Really? Have I told you about dual income households yet? Look it up, tell me how many households in the US have dual income.
Jobs that suck? That’s unpossible. Can’t suck that bad, remember, NOTHING is worse than unemployment, NOTHING! And here, I thought you were trying to get them those shitty jobs from China, remember? When you wanted tariffs?
cite?
There you go, using that term incorrectly. When you understand what creative destruction is, you are welcome to tell others they don’t understand one whit of reality. Until then…
Hold on a sec, so you now admit that tariffs will raise prices? Are you suggesting that raising prices will be good, or bad?
And didn’t you just say, “You don’t even comprehend the fact that wages go up along with prices.”
So who cares if the dollar crashes? Prices will go up, and wages will go up, everyone wins!
And then products made in the US will seem cheap, while products in China will appear expensive (unless they devalue their currency). Now making things in the US will be better than 5/9, jobs will flood back in, unemployment will reach zero. hooray!
Forget tariffs, let’s get that dollar to crash sooner, my gold ETFs will thank you.
FYI a flight from LAX to SYD is about $800 round trip. Not sure about the boat.
But I thought NOTHING was worse than unemployment?
I’d still like to know: if Apple can sell a million ipods at $300, will the sell [more/same/less] if the price was raised to $1500? You have yet to answer that. You also haven’t told me if there is a price where demand would fall to zero.
Are you just working your way through the list at random? It helps if you actually read what the fallacy is before accusing someone of it. Especially False dilemma in a thread titled “creative destruction” that is actually about recessionary job loss, with a sprinkling of tariffs.
Cite?
Oh? And what is China’s defect rate? What is the defect rate in the US?
What, do I need some made up number from a poll I didn’t read, or is that just you?
Wait. I thought you said there was nothing left to debate. Hmmmmm.
You said that millions of Americans emigrate every year.
Mistake #1: your cite points to a poll, not official figures. Next mistake: it says 1.6 million are PREPARING to leave; they have not actually left. Making the decision to leave and actually having left are not the same thing. Then 1.6 million is barely OVER 1 million. It hardly qualifies as MILLIONS, as in multiple millions, as in 2 million or more (usually much higher than that to qualify as “millions”). And the worst part of your argument? That cite you posted didn’t say 1.6 million people were leaving per year - that was 1.6 million overall.
I believe the word you previously used was “hyperbole”. Oh lookie. PKB’s finger is pointing at you. Of course your argument here has bigger problems to worry about - such as horribly misinterpreting your cite.
And you completely ignored what I said about the fact that these are rich folks… not ordinary people who don’t have the money to leave. Rich people can live anywhere. Hell, at the rate that white voters are propelling the GOP back to dominance, I may take my family out of this racist hellhole of a country before Sarah Palin’s minions decide to “water the tree of liberty”.
I sure as hell will leave if America continues its slide toward a corporate-dominated Mexico-style plutocracy.
A whole lot of 401k’s got drained this last year just to put food on the table and to make rent payments. Not to mention retirement. Look up the rate of hardship withdrawals, dude.
Doing an end zone dance after suffering an interception. How cute.
There’s nothing magical about America’s superior productivity. At least, those who actually understand economics - which excludes you.
In your world employers don’t offer more money for superior talent. Of course in the real world superior talent is known to GTFO when another employer offers higher wages for their superior talent.
It is a great insult to this forum’s pledge of “fighting ignorance” when you come along and say you can only get the cream of the crop workers when unemployment is high.
I’m surprised you’re not praying for 50% unemployment on the grounds that you could screen applicants a la American Idol. Your entire theory, in fact all of your arguments, show a remarkable ignorance of the fact that high unemployment damages companies because it also carries with it the immediate consequence of depressed consumer spending. It appears that you don’t even know that consumers spend less when unemployment is high; much less how damaging this is to businesses. You might never understand that; if you ever do, you’ll know exactly why you were so wrong when you said high unemployment benefits you.
So you’re arguing that price increases and wage increases do not usually follow each other. Right? You should tell historians that shocker.
As for the rest of your fantasies, hell, why don’t we lay everyone off? In your universe the jobless can just pay for a trip to Spain and go back to college because getting laid off means a severance package. :rolleyes:
Factcheck.org defined it as the $25,000 to $75,000 income range. Is that not broad enough for you? Those below $25K a year are growing TWICE as fast as those above $75K a year. Or are you saying they’re idiots, too? Factcheck.org even says that there is no standard definition of middle class, you’re own inner-world strawman notwithstanding. And, while you’re recovering from your knee-jerk, do note that the definition of household is changing over time, these figures do not take into account wealth assets. Like I said, there’s another thread for you to take your wild-based, knee-jerking assumptions.
Last I looked, no one could tell me how to vote. There isn’t some fiendish looking man with a handle bar mustache, cigar, top hat, coat and tails telling me to pay my mortgage. Do you care to fully expand this conspiracy theory? I’m not going to make your arguments for you.
Yet what you call arguments assume the amount is fixed. When anyone else has shown you otherwise – you know, with real cites and figures – demonstrating long-term averages, long term trends, you respond with myopic snapshots of a recessionary economy, appeals to emotion, strawmen, and dodges. If you want to belabor class warfare, start another thread. Continue grinding those axes…
Aaahhh…I see that you did not read the link, and most likely did not click through. If you did, you wouldn’t even close to responding with what you did. The part of long term economic development is a criticism, not a feature of Comparative Advantage. If your view of the world weren’t so static and myopic, you would realize that as countries become more efficient and whatever, then comparative advantage changes. And, do you not believe in secure borders?
And the relation between the two are? Oh, yeah, that’s right, there isn’t one. We supposedly knew that stagflation couldn’t happen, it doesn’t mean that people weren’t arguing against it, even in his time. Keynes thinking was not standard accepted thinking, at least not in the sense that comparative advantage is.
PKB.
Another appeal to emotion. And those jobs come from where exactly? Are you going to institute further reforms preventing firings and layoffs?
Congratulations! You have become the master of the “I know you are but what am I?” comeback!
So now spin control counts for “logical” debate?
You kind of already are making them for me. You don’t even understand what a plutocracy is; now you show you don’t know how wealthy corporate lobbyists can walk right in and make politicians do what the voters voted against. Remember how everyone voted in Clinton because he opposed NAFTA and he voted for it anyway? Or how the Republicans said they’d cut $100 billion from the budget and they’re backtracking from that anyway?
You vote for them to do one thing and they do something else. One has to wonder why.
Complete bullshit. It’s growing for the wealthy, and shrinking for the working class.
Is that what you call it? I’ve posted numerous facts and figures that contradict you Numerous. All of them perfectly accurate and error-free. You love to cherry pick, and when you’re caught doing so, the IKYABWAI shields go right up.
That’s what I said, it’s a criticism. Can’t you read?
Speaking of myopic, obviously you failed to get the point that long-standing economic “theories” have been proven to be wrong before, and they’ll be proven to be wrong again.
And people are arguing against your misguided point of view right now. Yes, I know you don’t get the connection.
Appeal to practicality. In short you have no answer. Those 16 million people, in your universe, are on their own.
How many Americans need to be unemployed or underemployed before you begin to appreciate the harm this is doing to society? How many states have to be driven to the brink of bankruptcy?
How is this spin control? You were the one dodging and changing the subject by bringing up the middle class. I pointed out to you that there is no clear definition and is really a political term, even from your own source. Where you should be conceding points (and please spare me how you aren’t conceding anything), you bring up appeals to emotion and class politics. There is another thread on middle class with plenty of cites as to its origination of the term and political ideology behind it. To think that this is a measure of anything in economics belays your class warfare mentality, and really does less to critique the effectiveness of an economic system.
I know what a plutocracy is. You merely stated a conclusion, like the rest of your arguments. Do you care to connect the dots? Have these lobbyists broke any laws? Can you point to the lobbyist and their specific actions that caused Clinton to vote for NAFTA or Republicans to shy away from their voting pledge? Can justify it against the rational claims that politicians make campaign pledges and are free to choose to their detriment their own actions? Or, how about just simple fact that politicians have to compromise?
The fact that you acknowledge growth of the economic pie really fails the idea of protectionism.
Have you actually responded to anyone’s direct attack on any of your cites? How many times have you been told that your cite does not say what you think it says? I’m too lazy to look. I’ll just address the one below, which is as good as an example as any.
You didn’t say “criticism.” I said it. What you wrote infers that it is a feature of comparative advantage (re: lack of long term economic development). Every theory has criticisms, so bringing up the sheer fact the one exists (and really, a minor one at that), is no real rebuttal (as third worlds are clearly developing). Let’s look at something more significant like long-term performance, of which there is little critique. Proof is in the pudding. Look at the amount of wealth, GDP, income, what have you generated between countries, between US and EU, and so on.
Keynesian theories are not long standing and had opposition from the beginning. The trouble with tariffs are well-known and well measured, that even using them for nascent industries in third world nations causes their own populace real economic and measurable harm. I am arguing from decades long research, peer reviewed analyzes, from institutions and academics alike world-wide. You are arguing from pop-culture.
Yet, those 16 million are not a static number. There are these things called business cycles which include recessions. Some are worst than others. Increasing tariffs and putting downward pressure on an already depressed demand is really helpful? If you want government intervention, I have no problem with increasing the societal safety net. In fact, I’d rather have direct transfer payments with minimal government bureaucracy than make-work projects.
If you want debate state solvency, that really is another whole can of worms, where protectionist policies are really doing no service.
The issue of the middle class has been central from jump.
And you failed to understand the basic fact that Factcheck pursued the $25,000 to $75,000 range to define the middle class - which is excessively broad and more than broad enough to encompass the entire class.
I’m sure you don’t believe we’re being reduced to a third world country, or if you do realize this is happening, that you think it doesn’t matter.
I don’t show any more of a class warfare mentality than you show a class ignorance mentality.
Obviously you don’t.
What kind of counter-argument is “have they broken any laws”? We’re talking about politicians not doing what they’re voted to do. There’s no law against them doing that. I’m sure you’ll deny that Clinton pledged to oppose NAFTA and then signed it into law as soon as he got into office. The only possible reason he could have ever done that was because of lobbyists. He sure didn’t have the People asking him to do that.
Wow, you’re just not reading what I’m saying. The growth of the economic pie is not being enjoyed by the majority of the country. Water, water everywhere (for the rich) but not a drop to drink (for the working class). That is clearly the economic situation we’re descending toward.
Ah, you call those ‘direct’ attacks. There lies your problem.
Unsupported excuses - my cites always say exactly what I said they say. And I will be using them a lot in real life now that I know you guys have no effective counter points beyond “I deny, I deny!!!”
You mean like the way tariffs are harming China by creating a booming middle class. :rolleyes:
Pop culture? More like reality. As in I have clearly demonstrated the devastation that offshoring has inflicted. And you have consistently just played the “I deny!” card.
What hurts your feelings is you started this mess with me by playing the appeal to authority card with your “majority of economists” and then you got mad when I retaliated by playing a bigger appeal to the majority card with “most of the American (and British) people call bullshit”. Now you want to go right back to appealing to authority. While crying foul if I retaliate AGAIN with appeal to majority.
Hint: your decades long research is wrong. And the fact that it is wrong is playing out all over the world right now.
Countries that offshore jobs are having big time economic problems. And their people are pissed. Let’s see your peer reviewed theories dispel that or dismiss it as emotional appeal. And while you’re at it get these peer reviewed journals to stop the sun rising tomorrow, too.
Economics is and always will be about human beings - and unlike physics, human beings will always foil your peer reviewed theories.
Which is why economics will never be a true science.
Direct transfer payments? That’s impossible. It’ll never outlast a recession. In fact it’ll only make things worse. It’ll raise taxes and drive even more businesses out of the country. Aren’t we bankrupt enough without engaging in craziness like this?
There is no societal safety net that can hope to replace jobs. Make-work projects are a hell of a lot better than transfer payments - at least something is actually being done. If you disagree with that then I’m sure you disagree with rural electrification or the public works projects during the Great Depression - projects which benefit us even today.
Ugh.
You mean you don’t understand what our swelling debt will do to our currency, and thus the very feasibility of importing anything at all?
At the rate we’re going we won’t need protectionist policies - the dollar will be so low that your iPods will go from $300 to $1500 by the sheer cost of imports.
All we have to do to see that is stay the course. Then offshoring will be done for anyway. Along with China and India’s economies. And ours. But hey, we’ll know who got us in that mess.
And those 16 million people is not a static number - most likely the only way we’re ever going to see unemployment drop is the unemployed get lower paying jobs than they had before. While the cost of living continues to rise. I’m sure you can find someone out there to explain to you the consequences of that.
$25,000 is $12.50 for a 40 hour week. Are you calling that middle class? And is that what you want more of?
Have you been to a third world country? Is the US really going skip right over being a developing country and head straight into the crapper?
Classy.
That’s not now, nor ever has been, how the US political system works. History will prove that to you. For a guy that knows so much about history I’m shocked that you didn’t realize that.
The US has been offshoring to China for decades now, but yet life continues on, funny that.
Wait, what? Are comparing “majority of economists” to “majority of the population” and suggesting that they are equal authorities?
If a doctor tells you not to take anti-biotics because you have a viral infection, but the “majority of people” tell you to do it anyways, are you not able to evaluate the information? Guy trained in medicine vs a bunch of people who watch the guy on Opera.
Maybe that’s the issue at hand here, you think a majority of Americans (or Brits) know more about economics than people that actively study it. Own many time shares?
Cite?
Those three issues are not causal. The economic issues experienced currently are not related to offshoring, therefor your conclusion that “people are pissed” is flawed.
Do you have examples of countries that don’t offshore such that we could compare them to countries that do?
Exactly. What we need is the government paying people to do stuff so that we won’t have unemployment.
Problem solved. Do we still need tariffs?
And our salaries will go up, remember.
That, or it means we don’t need tariffs. So either way you can relax. If the dollar goes to shit Chinese labour will seem expensive and people will build stuff in America again. Problem solved.
So?
Lots of people can, you’re the only one that can’t. If salaries go down, won’t prices follow? Didn’t you say that and then call someone a retard?
I’d prefer an explosion of $75,000 a year jobs but with offshoring around, that will never happen.
$12.50 in 1995 allowed me to rent a livable place in Los Angeles AND buy some investments in gold on top of meeting my living expenses. $20 an hour allowed me to amass money to buy my own storefront in 1997.
Jobs in that dollar range are going away, and have been, since before the recession. One has to wonder where they’re going. hint
“Tens of millions of people are hungry every night, including milllions of children who are suffering from Third World levels of disease and malnutrition. In New York City, one of the richest cities in the world, 40 per cent of children live below the poverty line, deprived of minimal conditions that offer some hope for escape from misery, destitution and violence.”
Noam Chomsky, speaking about the United States
Wow, you’re one to talk about classy. You went there with that “class warfare” comment, what makes you think your spades can’t be called, too?
It’s happening that way right NOW. Politicians promise to do A if we vote for them, then they get in office and do !A. I just showed you a historical example of exactly that happening. If you weren’t around during the whole Clinton-NAFTA mess where he campaigned on his opposition to it and then signed it into law as SOON as he was elected, then maybe you should read up on… you know… history.
Obviously you do not understand the fact that the structural changes happening to this economy is PART of the process of creative destruction. That chart clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the structural changes we’re facing.
Life goes on for the rich. For most, however, it’s instability and financial hardship.
And yeah, as a business owner, that affects me. Can’t sell as many auto and home policies if people are being foreclosed on and their cars are being repo’d. Unlike you I’m a business owner on the front lines. I see the end results of the empty promises of these structural changes that are going on.
I asked you to explain what jobs have been created by offshoring and where the “next big thing” is. Or, to satisfy your response to that, “things”. We’ve been waiting for these answers for 10 years.
Wait. LOL. You’re equating an economist with a doctor? A doctor, while he isn’t perfect, can far more accurately predict what medicine is good for you. Medicine is a real, hard science. Economics is not anything NEARLY as exact as medicine. Not even close.
That was by far the worst analogy EVER.
Of course not. Yet every time this offshoring goblin is caught prowling around, economies that they visit take one hell of a hit. That stands pretty strong in, say, a court of law.
Empty promises of new job creation. The middle class getting gutted. Perpetually swelling unemployment with severe undercurrents of undocumented people who’ve given up looking for work. Happens every time this goblin comes along.
Is it against the rules to laugh out loud at this?
China and India have been kept a fairly good lid on it; their economies are growing, along with their middle class.
Yes, we know, they’re poor. But at least their middle class is EXPLODING and their outlook is solidly getting better.
Because part of the idea is to have Americans manufacturing photovoltaic cells for American projects, instead of the Chinese. And to have Americans network administrating an expanded Internet infrastructure, instead of people in India and the Ukraine. And to have Americans doing Government projects - which is why I give a huge shout-out right now to Ohio for outlawing offshoring in state projects. Hoorah. I hope other states join the rebellion and tell India to shove it.
If the dollar collapses your dream world collapses with it. God knows when globalism will ever recover from a US dollar collapse, with the world’s largest export market suddenly being closed off to everyone. Even that great smuggled Chinese goods from Canada master plan would fail then.
Oh and it’ll also mean the end of the Chinese middle class. And perhaps that of India, too. Of course the U.S. loses out but they take most of the WORLD with them in the process.
Hint: the dollar collapsing is not a wish. It is a highly likely consequence. Know the difference.
If salaries go down then, again, there goes free trade. Consumer and national debt won’t go down; deflation magnifies the size of debt. We’ll have higher taxes, less services, more money flowing out of people’s pockets to service that. All of that is happening right now. Oh and oil prices, this next time around, WON’T plummet because the oil industry has figured out how to cut oil production to keep prices high. And then the gasoline refineries will get into the act, too. You saw all of THAT, clearly, in 2009.
Prices will fall but who’ll be able to afford them? That’s happening now, too. People who are unemployed weren’t Christmas shopping. Except, of course, on that fantasy planet where everyone gets severance packages and flies to Spain for a vacation when they lose their job!
So to answer my question, you haven’t been to a third world country?
But wait, jobs are flooding into third world countries and their middle class is booming. It’s all so clear now: We need the US to become third world so we can grow the middle class.
I did? Where?
Which part of that is new and which part of that is surprising to you? Did you think Western style democracy worked in some other fashion. I’d be much more amazed if you found a politician that promised A and then did A (instead of an intern, heyooooh).
I’m still not convinced you know what* creative destruction* is. Wouldn’t looking up the definition be one of the first few things you do after posting a thread with that in the title? I personally like to get a sandwich then take a nap, but right after that I go back and look up the definition of the terms that I used.
That chart has been thoroughly debunked, got anything else?
Dang, I guess it’s not as good being poor as it used to be. Crazy, I had the choice to be poor or be rich. I thought, “ummmm, being poor sounds pretty good, and it might get better, but then again, being rich, that could be nice too.”
Interesting. If you increased the price of an auto policy from $300 to $1500 would you sell more, the same, or fewer of them? How long until you were able to raise everyone’s salary?
I switched from Gieco to Alstate and saved $300, I shit you not, I actually saved $300. Was that wrong of me? Did I cost someone their job?
And I asked you to name what the last “next big thing” was.
ROTFL no, once again you failed to understand how an analogy goes. It was not to compare an economics with a doctor. It was to compare authorities in their field with the general population. You’d have a much easier time in life if you learned to understand how an analogy goes.
TV is to DVD as couch is to chair. Am I equating a tv with a couch?
You sure about that? Makes me wonder why so many doctors prescribed so many antibiotics for so many years.
See above. Then review what an analogy is.
Cite?
Cite?
As I’ve said before, offshoring isn’t new, but there has been job growth and job creation. Explain.
Nope, but you do realize we can’t hear you right?
From what percentage to what percentage? How does that equate in real numbers? If India, country of a billion people, had one middle class guy, and then got another, that would look like explosive growth.
Seriously, go to India, it is a beautiful and crazy place, and smells kind of funny all the time. All of this will make soooooo much more sense to you.
So invest in it. Make yourself rich. Then start your own make work projects. Why are you waiting around for other people to do all the heavy lifting? You seem to have an uncanny ability to predict the future with 100% certainty, why are you waisting your time here?
My dream world? The one inside of my head? How is that going to collapse?
You wouldn’t happen to have a more concrete date for when the dollar is going to collapse do you? Does it have anything to do with the movie 2012?
Na, we’d make it work.
I know I asked before, but again, do you have a more specific date for all this? Right now I’m 100% in dollar futures, I guess I should switch to 100% gold, but when?
Really? You brought it up to belabor one of your points.
And, not only is not there a good definition, the view is entirely small (from that cite). Given the bubble of the late 90’s and the Great Recession these last few years, the fact that there isn’t a larger variance should be comforting enough. But, God forbid there is any variance – lo and behold, the sky is falling. Again, these are income inequality arguments. Yet income purchasing power parity continues to increase, prices and inflation remain low.
We are not being reduced to a third world country. Have you even been to one? I go to India and China every year, at least once, for about 60 days total. I also go to Europe for a week or two, all on business. If you have any idea of the living conditions in these countries, not to mention the business conditions, I really don’t you would be railing this hard on your argumentum ad populum.
Do you even read what you write? Seriously, what is class ignorance is what again? That I don’t believe in class? That I choose to see class doesn’t exist? I believe in a classless society? Isn’t that what we want? However, a class warfare mentality is easily defined and is written about extensively. Your bemoaning of all the wealth going to one particular segment of society is more complaining that wealth isn’t shared equally amongst the populace. That is an inequality argument. The fact that you make these arguments without taking into account investments, risk, education, market conditions, etc., but rather appealing to emotion and calls for fairness (again without context) belabors a class warfare mentality.
Is the “People” a defined term? If you think lobbying is so wrong, why haven’t the “People” made a law against it? Again, other reasons don’t exist? Congress wouldn’t have passed it without it (I don’t remember, and frankly don’t care, I would care more about the repeal of this law than anything)? Politicians don’t compromise? Obviously it wasn’t that unpopular as NAFTA is still law. Clinton got two terms Again, can you point to how lobbyists influenced his decision. Was there bribery? Can you name the lobbyists? I’ve asked this before, that you can’t point to it suggests that yours is the weaker argument.
The growth of the economic pie is enjoyed by others in that we have a continued rising in the standard of living. We have seen and continue to see increases in PPP. GDP has never been higher. Prices remain constant and in some cases low. Inflation remains low. Are things bright and rosy? No, not by a long shot. But that’s the situation given recessions. When we talk about income and wages, the differences are more pronounced, but we need to also take into account that spending habits and savings rates are shifting. We need to discuss overall value of wealth and non-wage income. The rich were always in a better position in these regards.
So, you haven’t addressed the inadequacy of your cites or your misreading of them? Have you even addressed your misuse of the term “creative destruction” or answered the claims against your cite in this very thread?
Have you been to China? Booming isn’t exactly what one would call it. It looks like it’s booming because 100 million people can now enter a somewhat 1st world market. The other 1 billion are poor, much poorer than the average poor here. This is what tariffs will do. It protects a certain class of worker or industry segment, at the expense of all others. That is well documented. Do you not deny that prices increase with tariffs? Since you haven’t picked up on this, here’s a hint: Wages are not determined by prices of goods. Prove otherwise if you don’t believe me. Wages are determined primarily by supply and demand.
You claimed a misreading of information, and a hand-waving denial of anything to the contrary. Can you even attack the counter-cites people have given you? Look at the lobbyist argument earlier in my post. Yes, neither of produced cites, but you claim with absolute certainty that it was lobbyists that forced (:rolleyes:) Clinton to sign NAFTA. I replied, more reasonably, that other reasons may exist for Clinton to sign in NAFTA. But, since it’s your claim, provide cites.
You haven’t even looked at the research. Can you even see the difference between arguments from popular opinion vs. arguments from research (despite how you may even feel about that research)? The popular argument doesn’t even look at research. They don’t study these areas. They haven’t been looking at the data, recalibrating their efforts, or reviewing each others opinions since the 1870s. These arguments, like you, look at a myopic trend, and exacerbate wild conclusions. Does this sound familiar? This is how you have been arguing ever since you’ve come to this board. Your handwaving disdain even for nobel prize research is telling that you are not really interested in a debate.
Off shoring isn’t the problem. Protectionism is.
We already have transfer payments. You clearly don’t know what you are talking about. This isn’t an insult, so save your outrage. I want them to be more direct. It’s a re-tooling of the money that is already out there.
I am against inefficiency which is what make-work projects are inherently. Societal safety nets are not jobs, nor should they be. The government isn’t a business. They do not respond to market forces (or don’t have a need to). All it cares about is votes, and lives off of taxes. These are more detrimental to business conditions than direct transfer payments ever will be.
Well taxes have to be raised in order to pay down the debt More taxes mean less disposable income (or higher prices, which has the same effect). Therefore, the need for importing cheaper goods will continue.
Then you should be happy. The amount of education in this country, as well as the number of other resources make it a desirable place for investment. The cheap dollar will make it more desirable. Protectionist policies guarantee this to happen.
You know what, I’m going to stick with $25k-$75k, which may change over time. You go with “there is no good definition”. You and I both know which is growing fastest between the poor and the rich classes. The poor are growing faster than the rich and have been doing so for years BEFORE the recession.
Obviously you don’t mind that this is happening and worse than that you claim that protectionist policies are what’s causing it. We have so few protectionist policies as it is - what do you want America to do, cut its economic head off and hang itself upside down to bleed ALL the jobs out of this country so that you can’t even get a job at McDonald’s because they found a way to offshore their work? (Who’d have thought fast food would find a way to offshore order taking… for fuck’s sake.)
And yet wages have been falling behind inflation since at least 2001. Job growth lagging behind population growth for just as long.
Just because we’ve got a long way to fall doesn’t negate the fact that we’re in freefall without a parachute.
And yet you push appeal to authority at me, again, trying to equate the knowledge of a laughably imprecise thing as economics with that of something far more precise, like medicine.
Economics has everything in common with sectarianism. Being an “expert” in economics is not at all comparable to being an expert in a real science like medicine.
Drugs have a reasonable expectation of achieving the same result over and over. Economic policies, tried again and again under the exact same conditions, can and do result in different reactions because you are dealing with a highly volatile element that is constantly changing: the mentalities and reactions of people.
No, your analogy did not work. Not at all.
You refuse to see the fact that one class of people will prey on another in order to hoard wealth. You refuse to accept the fact that income inequality is off the charts right now, as high as it’s ever been since the Great Depression. You refuse to accept that you can pretty much predict how associations like the US Chamber of Commerce will move - if it makes life easier on investors and businesses and harder on workers, they’re for it. The entire system is rigged to make the rich richer. And guess what? They’re getting richer while everyone else is getting poorer.
Ya damned skippy I have a class warfare mentality. It sure beats the “let the rich suck everyone else dry” mentality you’re pushing… and which fewer and fewer people are selling.
At some point you have to peek out from behind the “argumentum ad populum” shield and ask yourself why fewer and fewer Americans support globalism and why opposition is swelling in the Western world. You’re not making a good case for globalism by telling the working class that their concerns are wrong even while the problems they complain about are exploding in their faces, that their situation is going to turn around for the better “somewhere over the rainbow”, and all those other things for which you have ZERO evidence to back it up. While you’re screaming “argumentum ad populum” the polls show the counter-argument for you is “extinction”. Your side is facing extinction… but hey, you’ll go out feeling you’re right. Right? I guess that’s all that matters.
Offshoring and globalism is like that guy who keeps popping up in your store right before half the candy bars go missing. Everyone in the Western world sees that - hell, even India and China see that, because they are desperate to protect that jobs pipeline. They dared to come to America and politically fight US, on OUR SOIL, when Ohio passed its ban on offshoring of Government jobs. They know offshoring is good for them. But what you have totally FAILED to do is show how offshoring is good for us.
Show. Us. The. JOBS. I’ve asked you to do this several times and you cannot. Show us the jobs created by offshoring. Show us what this “next big thing” is supposed to be. Lots of people are going into college right now, amassing piles of debt, if globalism is all that you say it’s cracked up to be, we wouldn’t be seeing so many people with so much debt they can’t repay (and THIS has been going on for years before the recession).
From now on I will only respond to you with that: show us the jobs created by offshoring.
If there was a point in continuing this farce, it would be one long call of ‘cite’ to Le Jac to backup any of his assertions in this latest post (which has been done numerous times with nothing substantial to show for it…not exactly holding my breath for Le Jac to stand and deliver at this point). The poor are growing faster than the rich over the last 10 years? Really? Well, I guess depending on your definition of ‘poor’. Job growth has lagged behind population growth? I don’t even know what this is supposed to demonstrate, to be honest. Our economy is in ‘free fall’? Based on what data? Show you the jobs? He’s been shown, repeatedly, in many threads, yet he refuses to see…‘Jobs’ don’t equate to ‘Manufacturing Jobs’. Most of the jobs have moved from agriculture and industry to service related. Hell, even if you don’t know anything about economics at all, intuitively anyone who hasn’t had their head, um, buried in sand, knows that sectors like IT and telecommunications have exploded in the last 10 years. There are whole sectors of jobs that didn’t even exist 20 years ago. In 1990 how many people were employed in the cell phone sector, for instance.
He absolutely is convinced that unemployment is being vastly understated (the standard ‘liberal’ line about how the unemployment figures used by the US understate things, and how there is some vast amount of unemployed people who have given up), and nothing will convince him otherwise. He’s, simply put, a fundamentalist. He doesn’t accept any sort of cite by any economics expert, since he thinks economics is a farce. What he accepts are blog entries by populists types who don’t know their ass from a grasshopper wrt economics or trade theory.
He won’t read this (and won’t understand it anyway, or believe it in any case), but someone who wants to bother answering him can show him this:
Nearly all of these jobs were ‘created’ due to demand and the fact that freeing up labor that has moved offshore means that other sectors can use that labor for something else. If the labor is worth using it gets used.
Jobs that get created by offshoring include every fucking sector, since the labor that was building low skill widgets now made in China can now be used to do something else in the US. Sadly, this never seems to penetrate Le Jac’s head, since it’s been explained to him numerous times. The reason we currently have approximately 10% unemployment (not exactly The End of the World levels…and it’s dropping) is BECAUSE WE ARE IN A FUCKING RECESSION! This has nothing to do with offshoring or outsourcing, and everything to do with, well, the fact WE ARE IN A FUCKING RECESSION! If we weren’t in A FUCKING RECESSION, then unemployment levels would most likely be where they were before we were IN A FUCKING RECESSION…which was something between 4-6% unemployment. Well, unless you don’t believe the figures, in which case it would be whatever people who don’t believe those numbers THINK it is…generally IIRC from this discussion in the past, something like 8-10% (which would make the current figures something like 12-20% I suppose). Even at 8-10% we aren’t talking about the end of the world exactly…and unless someone has a cite, I’m not seeing how the majority of those folks are out of work because of either offshoring or outsourcing. And this leaves out the assertion that tariffs could or would save us in any case.
At any rate, this thread has become a total farce and I don’t really see any further point in it. It was fun to play with the fundamentalist for a while, but unsupported assertions that fly in the face of even basic economic theory just gets old IMHO.
Still waiting for you to provide cites to back up the assertions you made, and answer my questions. You know this is the GD, if you want to make stuff up and express your opinion we have other forums for that.
De tuk ur jabs! : How a temporary increase in unemployment, caused by the financial crisis and recession, is really caused by unscrupulous people doing the same job for less money (even though Americans are the most efficient workers), and zero-sum economics.
No, you made a variety of assertions, which require you back them up, or preface them by IMHO or YVMV.
You need to provide cites to show that there is anything more to this than just a rant by a guy who lost his job to offshoring.
You said “every time” so now provide data from a country that offshores, and then show how their economy took a hit as a result. And I’m only asking for one, technically you’d need to show a trend, as in multiple countries that had economic problems resulting from offshoring.
You also need to be able to show more than just a tenuous connection between the economic down turn and offshoring. The chart in the OP contains none of that.
What that chart does show is that following a recession there is recovery. Happened in each of the last recessions, during which there was plenty of offshoring. You’d be better off blaming it on the cycles of the moon and our reluctance to offer sacrifice to Cthulhu.
Show us that the economy isn’t able to absorb jobs lost by offshoring. This is your thread remember? We don’t have to prove anything. You are making a great deal of claims that you have yet to back up.
Then, tell my what next weekend’s powerball numbers are!!!
