The (US) economy: What should be done?

Great Debates
301

[QUOTE=unconventional]
It’s not just widget production that is outsourced. Service jobs including high -skilled computer programming, software development, and medical technicians are leaving the country, as well. The middle class is going to feel the pinch, and there doesn’t seem to be a plan to address the problem American workers face.
[/QUOTE]

Do you have a cite to back any of this up? What percentage of skilled labor is being outsourced overseas compared to that still here? What percentage of medical technicians are leaving the country…and how would that be ‘outsourcing’ in any case?

And, again…what is the alternative? Force medical technicians to stay in the US (if this is even a problem…love to see a cite on this)? Force companies to keep skilled jobs in the US only? Force companies to keep manufacturing in the country? Or do you have another workable plan? Lets hear it…because as I’ve said I see no good alternatives to what we have now (well…I think outsourcing IS the good alternative, in the long run, and over all, for the majority of Americans).

[QUOTE=unconventional]
The massive pay gap between U.S. workers and workers abroad will keep jobs flowing off shore, but the widget makers in China and the service workers in India are not living any better than displaced American workers.
[/QUOTE]

Well of course they aren’t. US standards of living are among the highest in the world. That’s part of the problem, ehe? Chinese and Indian workers aren’t going to have a consummate standard of living any time soon…if they DID then there would BE no labor gap. However, Chinese and Indian workers usually have a better standard of living compared to the folks still back on the farm or non-manufacturing/etc jobs.

[QUOTE=unconventional]
Why doesn’t the U.S. fight to improved global labor practices to lift up the working poor and decrease the wage gap?
[/QUOTE]

So…what you want is for the US to force other countries to follow our own labor practices and wage scales? Seems a bit…cynical to me. What you are in effect doing is making those countries less competitive with the goal of making ours more in those job classifications.

Out of curiosity…how do we force them to do this? How do we MAKE China and India adopt our own (or even better) wage scales? How do we MAKE them adopt our labor practices?

[QUOTE=unconventional]
The massive monetary gains from the global free market only profit corporations.
[/QUOTE]

Horseshit™. Have you ever BEEN to India? The influx of jobs and capital have had a very real, noticeable effect on the standard of living in India. Take a step back…have you ever been to America or Europe? Have you noticed that OUR standard of living is quite high? Even the poor in America and Europe have a standard of living quite a bit higher than most 3rd world countries. Why?

[QUOTE=unconventional]
At the very least, there could be a response to displaced workers and declining wages with increased unemployment benefits, universal health care, subsidize housing and child care, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Sure…we could do that. I would much rather see something like that (waste that it will most likely turn out to be) than see some clueless politician type attempt to monkey with the market to ‘fix’ perceived wrongs.

Democrats will most likely control 2 of the 3 branches of the government after this next election cycle. We’ll see how these kinds of things work out. My prediction is: Clusterfuck. Or perhaps Feeding Frenzy would be a better term. But we’ll see.

-XT

302

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Since neither of us has ‘Moderator’ tagged under our name I’ll give you my two cents and then let the mods decide (if you thought it WAS an insult you should have tagged my post for THEM to review).

I said you looked foolish. This is different from me calling you a fool. The second is a personal insult. The first is an observation…and to my mind a quite mild one.

As with your misjudgment that it is a personal insult, you are also off base that I’m conceding anything there. I think it’s a silly argument on your part and you look silly by making it. You claim ‘But we haven’t; now they do mindless work stocking shelves at Wal-Mart.’ Fine. Do you have a cite to back it up? It seems unlikely that the majority of out of work manufacturers go to work for WalMart…or sling fries.

Even if the DO…I have yet to hear what your alternative is. It’s one thing to say ‘Oh, it’s bad that textile manufactures have moved production to China and India or the Pacific Rim! What will happen to the poor textile workers? Think of the children!’ Blah blah blah. It’s another to to DO something about that. Well…what would you have us do about it? I don’t see any palatable alternatives myself…so, how about you?

-XT
[/QUOTE]

I’m also not sure why ‘mindless work stocking shelves at Wal-Mart’ is somehow a worse job than standing on an assembly line. It’s not like all these outsourced manufacturing jobs were UAW union jobs with big pensions and $35/hr salaries. A lot of them were in crappy little factories for low pay. And having worked on an assembly line and as a stockboy, let me tell you, the job satisfaction in the stockboy job was far higher. Sitting on a stool with a pair of gloves on, jamming the same whatsis into the thingamajig 8 hours a day is NOT a fun job to have. By comparison, managing inventory and putting out stock and doing all the other general tasks Wal-Mart employees do is rocket science.

People sure like to bag on Wal-Mart a lot, but it’s actually a pretty good place to work. It keeps getting named as one of the 100 best places to work by Forbes. The pay isn’t bad, they have health benefits, they promote from within, and they provide pretty flexible working hours.

In any event, if you look at the kinds of jobs being outsourced (garment manufacture, for example), and the kinds of jobs Americans are doing, it’s certainly not clear to me that we’d all be better off in factories. I’m not sure why so many other people take it as an article of faith that it’s a bad thing for other people to build your stuff for you. It’s not like there are hordes of unemployed wandering around looking for factory jobs. Unemployment is extremely low.

303

Because Sam, in order to have 'workers and peasant’s you HAVE to have factories. They go together like milk and cookies. Gots to have’em!

I agree with you that I’d rather work at WalMart than in a factory. In my mis-spent youth I worked at a boat building factory…and it was not the most pleasant job I ever had. It was either cold or hot (depending on the weather…the main production area wasn’t climate controlled) it was dirty and dangerous. And it was hard physical labor 8 hours a day.

I just dont think that it’s even a high percentage of jobs in the US that fall into the category of ‘fry boy’ or ‘WalMart stock slave’. I would be surprised if those type jobs (and low end jobs like them) make up more than 20% of the work force. So, as I asked Fear earlier…what do the REST do?

-XT

304

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Unemployment is extremely low.
[/QUOTE]

Officially, maybe. Are you aware that the government’s method of counting the unemployed involves only counting those who are currently receiving Unemployment Compensation, and not counting those who have expired their UC benefits and still haven’t found work?

305

What is your estimate for the ‘true’ total then? Do you have an estimate?

-XT

306

[QUOTE=xtisme]
What is your estimate for the ‘true’ total then? Do you have an estimate?

-XT
[/QUOTE]

No. I don’t. Because the people who do the counting are using manipulative formulae that don’t have any actual or demonstrable relationship to the real numbers. If I say to you that we’re going to count the number of known prime numbers, but only the even ones, wouldn’t you say that’s a flawed premise, even if we therefore can’t know the actual number of primes?

307

[QUOTE=jayjay]
Because the people who do the counting are using manipulative formulae that don’t have any actual or demonstrable relationship to the real numbers.
[/QUOTE]

This borders on a CT. Are you saying that no one has even an estimate? I don’t believe that the entire government AND all of the independent institutions that measure this kind of stuff are in on it.

[QUOTE=jayjay]
If I say to you that we’re going to count the number of known prime numbers, but only the even ones, wouldn’t you say that’s a flawed premise, even if we therefore can’t know the actual number of primes?
[/QUOTE]

Is this a strawman or is this what they are doing? What if I say that UHC can never work and the proof is that the proponents of UHC are hiding the numbers. But when you ask me for proof I say ‘well, I can’t tell you because the people coming up with those figures are manipulating the formula to demonstrate what they want to…and hiding the rest’? I could use this same argument for any number of things in fact…and prove nearly anything this way. Global Warming for instance could be proved or disproved using this method.

But in the end, it really doesn’t PROVE anything…ehe?

-XT

308

Did some research on the whole unemployment rate thingy. Leaving aside the sites claiming the unemployment rate is 22% or equally unlikely things like that I found this cite from The Heritage Foundation (I have no idea how reliable they are, but the article SEEMS well

[QUOTE]
written and in line with my own understand of this issue):

There are some good charts and such on the page to. Is this correct? No idea, though again it’s pretty much in line with my own understanding of how unemployment is calculated. If you think you have a counter cite for this issue feel free to put it in.

Even if we take the Posts 7% unemployed calculation however it’s not exactly dire (several European nations would kill for such a low unemployment number…some would be happy with double that).

-XT

309

All of this “The sky is falling” economic doomsaying is nonsense, perpetrated by the Democrats to scare people into voting for them, because if they came out and admitted that things were humming along just fine then people might just vote for a Republican, and we can’t have that, can we? (Note: This is NOT strictly a Democrat thing, if there were a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans would be scare mongering just as fast as O’Reilly and Coulter could shovel the shit).

310

[QUOTE=jayjay]
Officially, maybe. Are you aware that the government’s method of counting the unemployed involves only counting those who are currently receiving Unemployment Compensation, and not counting those who have expired their UC benefits and still haven’t found work?
[/QUOTE]

Actually you are incorrect. It’s based on a survey of households.

It only includes people who are actually looking for a job, not people who left the work force.

311

[QUOTE=Weirddave]
All of this “The sky is falling” economic doomsaying is nonsense, perpetrated by the Democrats to scare people into voting for them, because if they came out and admitted that things were humming along just fine then people might just vote for a Republican, and we can’t have that, can we?
[/QUOTE]

Today the US GDP number for Q4 was released. That magic number is 0.6%.

How does this square with “things are humming along just fine”"

Thanks.

312

[QUOTE=Maeglin]
Today the US GDP number for Q4 was released. That magic number is 0.6%.

How does this square with “things are humming along just fine”"

Thanks.
[/QUOTE]

Squares just ducky with it from where I’m sitting. Maybe you out to go back and reread my first post in this thread, to summarize for you: We’re likely headed for a recession, recessions are a normal part of the business cycle, the Fed should just leave well enough alone and let it happen, historically recessions last less than a year, but the longer you try to stave them off by gaming this system the worse they are when they inevitably do occur. One quarter’s growth numbers(and it was still .6%, not -.6%) being the lowest in 5 years doesn’t mean anything about the overall strength of the U.S. economy.

313

[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Squares just ducky with it from where I’m sitting. Maybe you out to go back and reread my first post in this thread, to summarize for you: We’re likely headed for a recession, recessions are a normal part of the business cycle, the Fed should just leave well enough alone and let it happen, historically recessions last less than a year, but the longer you try to stave them off by gaming this system the worse they are when they inevitably do occur. One quarter’s growth numbers(and it was still .6%, not -.6%) being the lowest in 5 years doesn’t mean anything about the overall strength of the U.S. economy.
[/QUOTE]

Where can I donate to make this position the official one of the Republican party? Are you against extending unemployment benefits also?

314

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Where can I donate to make this position the official one of the Republican party? Are you against extending unemployment benefits also?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t understand what you are saying here. If it’s snark, it’s too subtle for an idiot like me, if it’s not then I don’t get what point you are making and whether you agree/disagree with what I said.

315

I think I see where some of the confusion is on the recession thingy.

[QUOTE=Maeglin]
Today the US GDP number for Q4 was released. That magic number is 0.6%.
[/QUOTE]

The definition of a recession is 2 consecutive quarters or NEGATIVE growth of the GDP. One quarter of positive if not very exciting growth does not a recession make.

-XT

316

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I think I see where some of the confusion is on the recession thingy.

The definition of a recession is 2 consecutive quarters or NEGATIVE growth of the GDP. One quarter of positive if not very exciting growth does not a recession make.

-XT
[/QUOTE]

If I say this once, I say this a thousand times. Yes, we all know the owl of Minerva flies at night and that it takes two quarters of contraction before the most reality-denying among us admit that we are in a recession. We also know that it is impssible to know for certain that a patient has Alzheimer’s Disease until his brain is examined after his death.

Yet this does not stop us from concluding that a particular person does, in fact, have Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s diagnosed all the time.

This is not simply one quarter of “not very exciting growth”. What kind of massive cognitive dissonance does it take to believe that? Don’t just look at GDP: look at nonfarm payrolls, core inflation, behavior of global capital markets, real disposable income, durable goods inventories, and one of a host of other critical econometric variables. Most of these are released every month.

I am paid to crunch these numbers. You are welcome to give it a try at home if you like. Just go to www.economicindicators.gov. You will be amazed at the data you can get for free.

317

I think the Fed is really screwing the pooch with their reduction of the Fed Funds rate from 4.25 to 3.00% within a week. The inflation rate is currently near 3%. That means the cost of money is basically zero.

In 12 months or so, when the effects of that completely filter through the economy, we’re going to have some nasty inflation. Welcome back to the late 70s and early 80s, folks; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

318

[QUOTE=Weirddave]
I don’t understand what you are saying here. If it’s snark, it’s too subtle for an idiot like me, if it’s not then I don’t get what point you are making and whether you agree/disagree with what I said.
[/QUOTE]

Just saying that a position of “the economy is fine, fuck you newly unemployed or at-risk people” should do just fine for the GOP’s chances in November. That recessions are inevitable doesn’t mean you can’t try to ease their impact on those who will get hurt by them.
You’re saying the economy is humming along, using a definition of humming along that involves reduced growth and increased unemployment. We won’t know if we’re technically in a recession fpr some time, but even Mr. Bush gets that we’re not humming along just fine.

319

Oh, I see. you’re referencing back to my post where I said that unemployment benefits should be cut, government assistance for job training was a waste of money and that anyone who loses a job deserves to die of starvation. I seem to have lost the link to that post, could you post it? Thanks.
IOW, your post contains more strawmen than Kansas.

320

[QUOTE=Maeglin]
This is not simply one quarter of “not very exciting growth”. What kind of massive cognitive dissonance does it take to believe that? Don’t just look at GDP: look at nonfarm payrolls, core inflation, behavior of global capital markets, real disposable income, durable goods inventories, and one of a host of other critical econometric variables. Most of these are released every month.
[/QUOTE]

Well hell…why didn’t you just say that you were smarter than the economic experts who are divided on this issue that to someone of your massive mental abilities AND experience thinks is so cut and dried? Would have cleared all this right up! Next time just put as your tag line 'I know more than the experts…you must be an idiot for taking their word that the signals are mixed and that there is no consensus. Trust ME…‘cause I know best!’.

Thanks…I’ll just shuffle my cognantly dissonant self on out of here since the final word has been given by THE expert who knows all…and tells all in such a charming way.

For those of us who are still listening to those OTHER silly so called ‘experts’ I found an article on the NY Times talking about this recession/no recession question. They seem split…but they obviously haven’t consulted you yet so I figure any day they will see the light.

-XT