If they had constructed a manufacturing base on their own .you might be correct. But our capitalists moved ours there, including all the manufacturing methods and technology we created in America over generations.
Would they or could they have created a genuine competitor for our manufacturing in China? Sure ,but it would have taken a long time. It is not whether they deserve an American lifestyle. It is that we are sending ours there while our lifestyle plummets.
So what?
And I’m not asking that to be snarky, I would actually like to know why you think that is an issue worthy of concern.
You mentioned, “an American lifestyle.” What is that? Why is it a good thing? You said “plummets.” How far? How far is too far? Is it a bad thing for China to go from a “Chinese lifestyle” to an “American lifestyle?”
Which “capitalists” have “moved our manufacturing base” to China and how?
I mean you do realize that the Chinese and other countries don’t need to start from scratch, right? They can buy the latest existing technology where existing American companies have to invest in upgrading technology that may be a decade old.
Good point. Clearly what America needs is a new set of export tariffs that cover “manufacturing methods and technology.” What’s developed in the US, stays in the US.
Of course that wont happen. Other countries actually protect their jobs. We do not, We export them.
When we moved our manufacturing plants, We moved all our accumulated expertise and technology. They did not have to build a better mousetrap.
If you took a computer to China 30 years ago, You would have had to face charges. We were not allowed to take technology to China. Plenty of people paid fines and did jail time for that But when corporations decided to move lock, stock and intellectual property to China it was fine. Yet our military dept, still maps out possible war scenarios with them. There are still a lot of people who think China is a communist country. Can you imagine that?
One thing that made us feel comfortable for many years, was the biggest communistic country in the world was not a real threat because they were so far in back of us technologically. Now they are not. China built the fastest computer in the world recently. As time goes by, we may have to catch up with them.
So what?
And I’m not asking that to be snarky, I would actually like to know why you think that is an issue worthy of concern.
You mentioned, “an American lifestyle.” What is that? Why is it a good thing? You said “plummets.” How far? How far is too far? Is it a bad thing for China to go from a “Chinese lifestyle” to an “American lifestyle?”
Why should we care if China builds a really fast computer? Why should we worry if jobs move over there?
Chicken Little had a legitimate concern that I shared: the sky falling would hurt me. When presented with said facts I joined in the hysteria and ran around like, ah, well like a chicken scared of the sky falling.
What is your concern and how will it hurt me?
ETA “Other countries actually protect their jobs. We do not, We export them.” Are you suggesting that we should protect “our” jobs? If so, how would you propose we do that? How much would it cost? Why should we bother?
I’m going to ask again, what is an “American lifestyle?” You’ve used that expression a number of times now, I think it would help if you let the rest of us know what you’re talking about.
I’m wondering the same thing. The working class is not the be all and end all of America. We were built by entrepreneurs and frontiersmen, not worker bees that can be easily replaced and made obsolete. What could possibly be wrong with an America by and for the innovators and go-getters of the world? I challenge the OP or gonzo max to explain to me how we as a country can’t survive with worker bees. This just doesn’t make any sense… the working class has been trying to get respect since the days of the peasants and it hasn’t worked. You’d think after thousands of years people would learn that the way to get respect is to accomplish things and not be an anonymous cog in the machine. America is the land of opportunity, millions of people flee here to pursue jobs and they get rich, yet our own working class citizens can’t?
Stop being so lazy, people. (I’m talking to those who are unhappy about the job market.) And if you can’t find work here and you desperately want to work in a call center or sweatshop then go overseas or something. Why bring down the country with the most wealth and the greatest living standards in the world just to benefit a negligible handful of workers who can’t hack it? 16 million people is a drop in the bucket. What about the rest of us who have to pay higher prices in order to win jobs back for these unemployed?
Why don’t liberals go out and hire these unemployed people? Or spend time making their communities more self-sufficient? I see a bunch of people streaming out of Best Buy carting away piles of (as you’d call it) “cheap Chinese junk”. I know some of those people have got to be liberals. If you loved America so much you’d spend the extra coin and buy American. Or do without and try donating to charity instead. You’re fueling the offshoring craze as much as I am, except I don’t care.
By the way to the original poster: I interpret that graph as being reflective of enormous STRUCTURAL CHANGES in the economy inflicted by the bursting of the credit bubble. Is this what you’re trying to identify as creative destruction?
What makes you think it’s all developed in the US? Your plan would just encourage developing countries to buy their heavy equipment from places like Japan, Germany and other developed nations.
It’s the freedom to live in homes larger than necessary, drive big environmentally unfriendly vehicles, and eat crappy processed food while watching reality shows.
Well, it’s not quite that simple. Part of the problem is that for the past decade, many of the wealthy got rich by inventing nothing besides new ways to pretend to make money with complex financial instruments.
But what is funny is that people like gonzomax complain that there are no jobs, but then they are so anti-corporate. They favor government policies that make it more expensive and more difficult for small companies to form and hire workers.
Exactly, and where do you think I’ll be living? I thought the idea here was to come up with plans that are good for each of us individually, at the expense of everyone else.
Indeed, and what to do in my situation? I’m a software developer who lives and works in California, but the company I work for is based in Europe. Most of the work I do is immediately sent to one of the European offices.
But it made them money, and they found customers. In layman’s terms there were millions (my estimate) of homeowners who engaged in liar loans, accepted subprime loans, and generally engaged in the very things that helped bring the system down. Those “complex financial instruments” included mortgage backed securities which suffered fatal wounds from these soured loans. The people of the United States participated in this; they fed the wealthy who got rich off these complex financial instruments. Yes, we had corporations who scheistered America… but America walked into that trap. When you are given a contract for an alt-A or subprime loan you should sit down and really look at it and think it over. That’s your responsibility. A lot of Americans failed that basic responsibility. That’s what got them in this mess.
Think about my logic this way. If a drug dealer gives you a free sample of cocaine (and we assume this is legal), you can look it up on the web and see what this white powder could do to you. You can look up how drug dealers operate: they give you a free sample and when you get hooked they charge you for it. If you sniff this crap and fail to do your homework to find out what you’re getting into, whose fault is that? If you do your homework and realize this cocaine is unwise to sniff up your nose and you flush it, what happens to the drug dealer? His business withers and dies, and maybe he starves and dies and that’s one less evil bastard in the world.
See my point? This is natural selection in action. Smart people can avoid the cocaine being peddled by either drug dealers or the financial crack cocaine being peddled by the “evil” rich. If Americans were smart they would starve the evil capitalist boogeyman. Instead they get easily bamboozled by subprime loans, cheap Made in China crap, free iPod spam ads, and of course those million dollar inheritances from Nigeria. Then when things go wrong because they took the bait they look to the Government to bail them out. Ugh.
Big business, small business, it’s all the same thing in that if it’s not your business, you’re doing something wrong. The OP, from what I have read, is the only liberal who gets it in that regard. S/he owns their own business. Rare is the liberal I ever know who owns a business. A business owner is almost synonymous with conservative.
The OP was right - this crash was creative destruction. It was a huge structural change. What s/he doesn’t get is that being a worker is overrated. The era of the worker is on its way to a close in America. Workers are disposable, interchangeable, easily replaced. They are a commodity to be used and disposed of at the entrepreneur’s whim. This is not flamebait… this is cold, hard reality. It’s not about big business, it’s not about small business… it’s about outgrowing the outdated idea of being a worker and maturing into becoming your own boss.
I wouldn’t have guessed that the most cold and callous guy on here who pisses on the working class as if they were his toilet would get exactly what I’m saying.
You get it. As repulsive as your comments are about workers, you have a better understanding of the big picture than any of the other pro-offshoring guys on here. Unbelievable.
I am pretty sure no one here doubts there are structural changes happening to the economy.
What seems to be the case is that you object to them and wish to fight them back and keep them from happening, which is akin to stopping the wind from blowing or the earth from traveling in its orbit around the sun.
There is no snapshot of time in which the economy is perfectly structured and in which we must keep it ever thus. What you advocate is nostalgia, but especially in America, our history has been to always move forward, not stand still, and to move faster and more effectively than others.
Oh I am sure while we did and do that, there have always been naysayers. But structural changes in the economy are always inevitably on the horizon, and always will be. That’s called life my friend.
Please tone down the rhetoric, Le Jacquelope.
All this arguing about what kind of economy we have is pointless. Creative destruction, offshoring, automation, structural changes, and so on… pointless.
What you are looking at is the slow evolution toward a point where we will not need as many, if any, worker bees. Workers are losing control of the means of production. That is what liberals are fighting back against, and technology will ensure that they lose.
The era of the worker bee is drawing to a close. Slowly or rapidly, its coffin is being nailed shut.
And to occasionally drop 16 million workers into the unemployment line and tell them that this is called efficient allocation of what the fuck ever.
Seriously, you are frighteningly uninformed. Frighteningly so. But fortunately most Americans no longer share your point of view. Eventually we the people are going to get tired of sending jobs overseas and clamp down. HARD.
I wish that politicians would be this honest on television.
If American workers could see someone actually say “So what?” to 16 million unemployed Americans we might actually see offshoring for what it really is: a giant “fuck off” to America’s working class.
It’s a bad thing when we have to give up our jobs for them to have a better lifestyle.
Because it puts millions of Americans out of work and we wind up having to support them with welfare, and we suffer budget crises and deficits as a result… but I guess your answer to all that is “so what?”
And that’s why my answer to China is: SO WHAT? We want our jobs back. And hopefully the voters will force the issue with tariffs. If China suffers, SO WHAT?
As has been pointed out to you numerous times, if we are giving up our jobs, the we won’t be able to afford that lifestyle.
Im still not clear how you think the US can exist in an economic vacuum. If we tariff these nations, 2 things for sure will happen immediately: 1) prices will rise, and rise greatly; and, 2) those goods and services already at an optimal price level will cease to exist. Next, there will be resoundin unemployment, driving down further the price of unskilled labor, making the poor even poorer. Longer term, we will be economically and progressively behind those nations who trade freely. Lastly, a black market will open incrasing the opportunity for corruption and graft.
What makes you think they are “your jobs”, whatever that means?