I was waiting and waiting… and waiting… for you to say just that.
The economy has been absorbing jobs lost by offshoring because jobs have been created IN SPITE of offshoring… not because of offshoring.
It’s like a boat that’s sprung a leak and is filling with water and you’re there bailing it out with a pail. Eventually unless you plug the hole you’re going to tire out and sink. This economy has hit that tiring out point.
Yes, I know you never read about that in economics textbooks. But it’s happening right now. The economy isn’t absorbing the jobs lost by offshoring. Look at the unemployment rate. Since 2001 it was NEVER as good as it got at the height of the tech boom which was the last real “big thing”. You yourself posted that cite in the BBQ Pit. Unemployment since 2001 got below 7% entirely because of exploding consumer debt - caused by (which I’ve cited many times for you) jobs not keeping up with population growth and wages not keeping up with inflation.
I’ve got the unemployment rates from 1998-2011 (thanks to you) that says the economy has not been absorbing jobs lost by offshoring since at LEAST 2001. I’ve cited the anemic wage and job growth that indicates the economy has not been absorbing jobs lost by offshoring, at least since 2001.
What you got to counter that? As you said above of me… nothin’.
My thread is based on the premise that… to use your own words… you got nothin’ when anyone asks you what jobs are actually created by offshoring.
My thread is based on the declaration that offshoring has no net benefits to the economy.
So show the net benefits. Where are the jobs they create?
Maybe we could even license a picture of Judy Garland on the cover. Or, at least, two red shoes. Let’s make it a hologram so when readers move the cover around they appear to click together.
It’s amazing how moderators consistently let people like you get away with “you must be some dude who lost his job to offshoring”.
I’m a business owner. Doing quite well, thank you. Could sell a hell of a lot more auto and home policies if people weren’t suffering a Great Depression that the media is too afraid to define as such.
My point of view is shared by people like Andy Grove. You know who he is, right? He’s the former head of Intel. I guess he lost his job to offshoring too, right? :rolleyes:
Oh let’s see. The U.S. and England, for starters. Need anymore?
Hehe, I like it.
We could photoshop in a great wall of china as the yellow brick road, as well as a bunch of happy, smiling chinese peasants (no height joke intended).
Of course it doesn’t quite work, as I’m not advocating any sort of change. So, by analogy, we’re already on my rainbow, and have been for at least the last couple of centuries. The world economy is growing nicely, even taking into account the recent recession.
Indeed it is the creation of new capacity and markets in the developing world that has countered this recession and made it less severe than it could have been.
Let me ask you a question: Would the US be better off if the entire rest of the world was dirt poor?
Just a guess here, but perhaps the media actually asked someone who knows the difference between a depression and a recession? I know it sounds crazy, but stranger things have happened.
<deleted the rest when I realized that this thread isn’t in The Pit>
Your job! You need offshoring. Without it fewer people could afford cars. More drivers mean more business for you. If you can sell more policies you can afford to hire more agents. Hiring more agents means more cars get bought meaning more policies.
You benefit from it more than anyone. Feel free to be the first lemming off the cliff. I’ll hold back to see if you stick the landing.
Yes, we need more. You can’t just say, “England” without first realizing that it’s a stupid answer. Second, you need to actually show something. Like a graph that links when offshoring started with unemployment going up. You haven’t. What you showed was jobs lost in recessions that were recovered, eventually to be lost again in another recession, and then you guessed it, recovered. There have been lots of jobs created since offshoring began, but those you handwave away.
It’s funny that you call the financial crisis of 2008 a house of cards, but happily point to <4% unemployment during the tech boom as something more stable. It’s also funny that you refer to it as “my cite” as if you never bothered to look up unemployment data for the US. Something a normal person would do before starting a thread about unemployment in the US. If you actually compare the cite I gave you (which by the way you were supposed to provide) if you compare it with the ridiculous chart you provided you’ll see that you shouldn’t have provided that chart and you should now apologize since it has nothing to do with either creative destruction or offshoring, and it’s not even that accurate.
And seriously, you really should look up what the definition of unemployment is as defined by the Department of Labor. Aren’t you the least bit curious?
Oh so that’s why Americans nearly drove GM, with its cheap cars, into the grave while nearly giving GM’s (and Ford’s, and Chrysler’s) head on a stick to Toyota, who are makers of more expensive - and often Made in the USA cars. Only because Toyota made some quality control slip-ups are they in trouble now.
If fewer people could afford cars, then why did the cheap car makers almost go out of business? Or are you willing to argue here that GM didn’t come close to being wiped out and that Toyota, despite having more expensive cars, dominated them in sales?
Bad, bad, bad example. Worst one, ever.
Especially if they were “logical” and bought GM cars which, up to now, have primarily been made in the USA (even moreso than Toyota)… for lower prices than they pay for Toyotas.
Or are you willing to argue that GM cars do cost more than Toyotas?
Jeez. Could you have possibly picked a worse example?
Did you really pick GM? Are you not aware of what drove GM to go under?
I had no idea you were that far behind. Okay, well, you see, the US used to have tariffs on the imported autos, that created gluttony in the auto industry. The unions grew fat while the companies grew lazy.
When tariffs were ended, suddenly foreign auto manufactures flooded into the US with high quality, low cost cars. Companies that had faced competition world wide and were eager to compete. Companies that gave a shit about what people wanted, and produced cars that were in demand.
Meanwhile, US auto-manufactures were left trying to fund three and four generations of employees that cost a fortune.
So when the recession hit, did you happen to notice which auto manufacturers went bankrupt? It wasn’t Toyota, Hyundai, VW. It was Ford, GM, and Chrysler.
Seriously, history? How many times have you used “history” in your posts. And you want to use the auto industry to bolster your case for tariffs. Right here I know for a fact you haven’t taken a single economics course, because the auto industry is the key focus in the tariffs chapter. You’re arguing from position so far behind it’s laughable. And I know you now want to use the world “laughable” in your reply. But really, this has all been worked through about 100 years ago. You haven’t come up with anything new. Tariffs were tried and failed. Do try to keep up.
Still waiting for you to refuse customers that buy foreign autos.
Also noticed you have no problem claiming to make money off of DLTR.
ETA Forgot to ask one last question: How old are you?
The problem with the current evolution of creative destruction (more destructive than creative for workers) is not only structural… it’s an institutional issue.
Interesting articles, neither of which back up the various claims you’ve made in this thread. But I guess random article posting is a step forward.
“The problem isn’t due to the recession. Would that it were. The decade just concluded is the first in which Americans, on average, have seen their incomes decline.”
So wages are going down, know what that will mean, prices will go down too. Wasn’t that a key point you tried to make?
Further to that, why should wages go up? I’m always reminded of when transit unions go on strike. Bus drivers demand pay raises for doing the same job over and over.
If you want a higher wage, work harder/smarter. Getting a raise should never be as easy as waiting until the end of the fiscal year. The simple reality in this institutional change is that there are billions of people now willing to do your job for less. And that includes selling insurance.
The reason that there is no good definition is because it invariably becomes, as in this argument, a complete one made of straw. Without baseline agreement (again look at the thread), you’re attacking point that nobody made.
Even if what you’re saying is true, your views are not common place amongst serious discussion (you know, stuff in journals and academia you so belligerently hand wave away). No one measures job growth versus population growth (for one reason, people 15 and under usually don’t have jobs, birth rate is larger than death rate - because we don’t have a large rate of infant mortalities). Showing the basket of goods pricing and chained dollars gives a more accurate picture. We can now buy more and are more wealthy than at any point in history (data is more pronounced in 10 year chunks).
I’ve got somewhere to be, so with all this hyperbolic arguing, I’m just to respond with “cite.”
Cite. And yes, the analogy works because actual effort and a scientific method is employed in Economics. Would you be saying the same thing about meteorology? Global warming? Your arguments are a popular misunderstanding taken to the nth degree. Which is more rational to believe: arguments with rational relationships to data, or arguments based on…some tenuous relation to history (which is seriously as vague as i wrote it)?
To use your favorite history argument: go to whatever time you think wealth inequality was as bad as it is now, and tell me which era has better living conditions, more freedom to produce wealth, better working conditions, etc. Hint: It’s not in the past.
And, there again is your notion that the economic pie is a static one. Your class warfare mentality you so gleefully admit to also proves it. The fact that you believe this, as is not demonstrated again, shows you no nothing of economics.
I don’t have to do anything. If people were really anti-globalism, anti-offshoring, then people would vote for their pocketbooks rather than make mindless, irrational platitudes in anonymous surveys. I know this has been pointed out to you. If you could read xtisme’s link, you’ll see that the data proves him right.
Cheaper goods, more funds, resources, people to do other things. Which I know brings to your ill-typed…:
Yes, the benefit of off-shoring isn’t to produce more jobs. No one ever said it was. That’s a huge strawman. In the past, it has or led to such things (see farming and the industrial revolution). What you want is, again, something that I pointed out to you before: a crystal ball. No one has that ability. If you claim protectionism, especially tariffs, are so great and wonderful, one has to wonder why we’re not (and most 1st world countries are not) erecting more of them. Are they all these world government bought off in some great global conspiracy? More to the point, however, if you think protectionism, especially tariffs saves jobs, which ones are effected/lost because one industry is protected? No problem, you say, you’re erect more to protect those! Then, you will have an isolated market. That is the fastest way to bring about stagnation and economic short of being bombed back to the stone age.
In other words… you got nothin’. As in nothin’ for the working class. Again, even the Economist admits the benefits have mainly gone to the rich, not the workers.
Yes, let’s look at the GDP numbers (you know the number that measures wealth). The top nations participate in free trade agreements and have lower tariffs and have been lowering tariffs. Even China as is has entered the the WTO. Name one country that has raised tariffs overall and has become more wealthy? You can’t. Worker protections are something other than free trade. Why start with international agreements, when one can erect national policies? Oh, could it be that’s what contributes to high european unemployment?
High European unemployment has always been there. It’s been just as bad in the US, but we just lie about our numbers. We don’t even count those who gave up looking for work.
China had higher tariffs in 2007 and their growth was 14%. They dropped their tariffs and now they’re down to under 10% which is even lower than other points in time during the recession. Here’s one example: some time before 2007 China did raise tariffs and their GDP growth skyrocketed. Soon as they lowered their tariffs… kaboom. They stepped off the yellow brick road and the air came right out of their growth.
Now, as I said, you’ve got nothin’ when it comes to offshoring’s benefits for the American working class. They have ZERO reason whatsoever to support globalism.
Things are looking a little bit different now here in Silicon Valley. Google just announced that they plan to hire thousands of people. More than 6,000, in fact, of which 2,000 will be right here in the Bay Area. These will be pretty good jobs, I’m sure. They are opening large employee centers in Los Angeles and New York, too.
