Perhaps because you are guilty of the same thing you accuse me of. Repeatedly.
A handful of rich corporate interests are using campaign contributions and lobbying to hold back the will of the people. This is nothing inaccurate, new or difficult for a moderately observant individual to notice.
Kasich. Ohio; they didn’t enact a tariff but they did outlaw offshoring of state work. I do recall there being tariffs slapped on Chinese tires; although it was a haphazard move and haphazard moves often come with bad consequences, your challenge has been met. Next challenge?
There’s no way out of borrowing heavily, far into the distant future, without sparking a level of unrest that absolutely will bring the economy to its knees; and which may end in a rebellion. No way whatsoever. That ship has sailed well past the neighboring galaxy. Worse yet, if we cut borrowing now, in addition, we will see growth plunge. See: Ireland.
The S&P may not like tariffs but any effective opposition against it will only bring even worse consequences. There’s no way around this. The fate of the world ends in either tariffs against the low wage nations, or a chain reaction of currency collapses that will cost them access to the export markets that they need for economic survival. There is no option C except in fantasyland.
People accusing me of this: 1 (i.e. you). People accusing you of doing the same: half of this board (most of which you have on ignore).
Oh yes, Ohio, where the same governor gave $19M in tax incentives to woo Tata Consulting (one of the worst consulting companies my company works with). The same Tata (or TCS as they like to be known) that has 90% of its labor force in India. Tata added what, 300 workers? Also, in the governor’s order is a large exception for the Department of Development Global Markets Division, which promotes international trade. International Trade?!? Shocking that a small drop in the bucket that is OH’s budget spend compared to the multi-billion dollar outsourcing industry still has to promote international trade. So, still waiting. That dog is all bark and no bite.
Tariffs raise prices, which suppresses demand, which lowers transactions of goods, which lowers tax collections, which means less money for the government. So how is the US supposed to pay its bonds back with a tariff happy economy? :dubious:
Option C) raise taxes, lower spending, forcing a “correction” (for lack of a better word) in the business climate and overall economy. Without doing these simple steps, the increased borrowing will bring the economy to its knees as effectively as creating an economy full of tariffs.
above i saw regulated capitalism. that is the answer. there needs to be some limits on growth. groth is not a bad thing, economies of scale allow cheaper and consistent production, uncontrolled growth (think cancer) leads to lack of accountability, quality, and support. It also relies on the manufacturing of demand to sell product, which creates media saturation. If mcdonalds didnt advertise so much, their infrastructure would be producing more than what was selling, resulting in increased costs and waste.
my suggestion- impose a natural limit on growth by redefining the way we treat corporations. I understand that limiting risk allows a lot of things to happen that what may be otherwise too risky.However, these days, corporations are so big they have become essentially immunue (think BP)
what if corporations were non transferrable, and died with the owner? this would prevent dynasties from forming and would eventually lessen the gap between rich and poor. the supreme court already defined a corporation as a person when it comes to first amendment rights, yet does not address the issue, buying and selling of these corporate entities, “people”
And again you forget or deny the upward pressure tariffs put on wages and hiring. Lemme guess, you forgot that the reason tariffs raise prices is because due to tariffs, work is now being done here and not over there? Domestic job creation is the first consequence of tariffs; prices going up is the second consequence.
Useless. Raise taxes and the rich flee. Lower spending and you risk stifling growth and lowering your GDP and tax revenues, putting you right back at Square one. (See: Greece, Ireland.) You may also risk ruinous levels of unrest. Just you try cutting spending in America on things like Social Security and Medicare - have you seen the hell that’s breaking loose at Town Halls lately? Ah yes, the media is avoiding coverage of that.
More effectively than tariffs. Far more. And globalism will rightfully be blamed. I think you know this, deep down.
One thing free traders fear to face: what happens to China and India when America runs out of jobs to export? Oops.
300 out of 90,000 workers so they can get favorable tax status to sell their outsourcing services to the country. You’re not upset by this? Because he trying to “import” jobs? I put quotes around “import” because that’s not what is exactly happening, but it’s phrased to make sense to you. It’s international trade and job creation through trade, in reality, which totally blows apart your whole tariff happy/protective economy wet dream.
Conclusions stated without analysis. The first thing that happens is prices rise. You cannot dispute that fact with anything that even resembles reality. As soon as prices rise, demand drops. As soon as demand drops, economic activity decreases, transactions (i.e. people buying these protected goods) drops. Lower transactions means less revenue which means less money and less profit. This has been explained by many posters across many different threads in two different forums and you continue to hand-wave it away. Do you honestly think that production and prices and training and employee on-boarding can take place overnight? My company employs hundreds of consultants in the insurance division alone (btw, which outsourcing provides consumers with lower insurance premiums) which need a minimum of two weeks for knowledge transfer. This knowledge transfer involves no technology or hardware or machinery of any kind. How much longer is it going to take with semi-complicated, million dollar machinery?
So, all the while higher prices are crushing demand and revenue, what incentive do firms have to increase their capital expenditures and hire more people?
Even if the company/industry had advanced knowledge that tariffs were in the works, where would they get the short term capital to cover all these increased hiring costs and to cover the moving and new production of capital equipment? Do you honestly expect these companies to shoulder the risk that consumption will return to pre-tariff levels?
Btw, you take for granted, though very unreasonably and highly illogically, that these new workers will be paid high enough to make up for the increase in prices. That is not true, and it has the same logical underpinning as simply printing more money. The fact of the matter is that there are more products sold than there are workers who make them. How are the people who didn’t have their jobs outsourced in the first place supposed to deal with increased prices?
France, England, and Canada are doing this right now. Spain and perhaps Portugal are pursuing the same course to a lesser degree. Higher debt levels will impede future growth, 90% of GDP for modern economies, (60% for emerging markets, for sake of comparison), cutting into GDP growth by 1%. So, a combination of tax raises (and I say this as an anti-tax proponent) and spending decreases is needed. Tariffs may be more easy to pass and most people will not be able to see the connection.
Have you not been reading my posts?
I won’t bother correcting you again that jobs are not ‘exported’ like some good or commodity. What happens is that China and India can finally enter the modern world and will have an appetite and the ability to pay for goods and services that America produces.
Which is just capitalism. Capitalism, to work on a national scale, needs rule of law, i.e. regulation being one of them. I’m all for regulation that does not create (or tries to minimize) inefficiencies. That means no impediments to free markets, including subsidies.
Does not follow. You’re going to have to parse this out some more.
What is a natural limit? If it’s natural, why does one need to impose it? Doesn’t it happen naturally?
BP is not immune from risk. I work for one of the largest corporations in the world and we have to hire outside consultants to help us manage risk.
A corporation that was non-transferable wouldn’t be a corporation. You are also looking to nullify the shareholder liability shield, which ends up nullifying corporations. Many, many corporations have millions of owners. When you can clarify this, you can see how many issues you are conflating into one confusing paragraph.
That’s 300 more Americans working than were the day before this law came into effect. I’d like to raise that 300 to 90,000 but it’s unlikely.
There is no job creation in America through offshoring; there is negative job creation, the replacement of a lot of high paying jobs with a few low-paying jobs. That’s the problem with your free trade delusions.
That’s like saying water is wet = conclusion without analysis.
Again, this is offset when hiring begins domestically. Price increases get cancelled out by wage increases.
On the other hand when you send jobs overseas you get people earning NOTHING AT ALL. That means your goods don’t sell at any price.
Again, basic economics. Easily demonstrated. Fire a man out of a Whirlpool job and send his job to Mexico and see what his new zero dollars per hour wages buys. Simple math, except on planet FreeTradia where unemployment means a trip to Spain.
Yes I can, and yes I did, with the power of Terra Firma no less.
Not when wages rise.
Ah yes, like we saw in China when their tariffs went up to 25% against American products.
Oh wait, no, it didn’t happen that way with them. Their middle class exploded in size and now corporations are scrambling to access their market, while they’re abandoning America!
[snip free market fantasies]
They’ll go out of business and be replaced with domestic companies that have adapted to the new reality.
Okay, this got me laughing. You obviously believe the purple kool aid cult fable about tariffs not bringing jobs back, so you obviously won’t see the upward pressure effects that this will have on wages across the board. It’s complex stuff, way beyond the grade level of the stuff you’re selling.
So they chose the path of guzzling arsenic rather than a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. Smaaaaart. It’ll just take those economies longer to die.
And again: what’s to stop the rich from fleeing? And doesn’t your rote memorized economic theory also say that raising taxes cuts growth?
That is not you correcting anyone. That is you making a seriously deluded argument.
I shouldn’t bother to correct you on this, but I will anyway, for kicks: America doesn’t produce anything anymore. China and India do. That is why we have such a massive trade deficit with them.
As China and India’s appetite for goods and services grows, they and “American” corporations will hire their own workers to produce it for them.
Look, dude, your “theories” about economics isn’t flying. Every day the news keeps spitting out more indicators of how offshoring jobs is dragging America down. Our unemployment and underemployment situation is at historically tragic levels. Offshoring has put 40 million people on Government assistance.
And history is about to nail your coffin shut when the US dollar takes a nosedive and China’s export-based economy crashes and burns. You don’t want tariffs - we get that. So don’t cry when, instead, we get global economic collapse. It’s coming. Buckle up, you asked for it.
Tariffs against China will hurt the USA more than China
*However, protective tariffs against Chinese goods today would have little benefit as there are so few industries left to protect. If tariffs caused the price of Chinese goods to rise substantially, there are few American made substitutes available to fill the low cost void. The real winners would be other foreign manufacturers that would gain competitive advantages over China.
The only loud cries for tariffs are coming from organized labor, in theory to gain protection from lower paid Chinese workers. However, **significantly higher prices at Wal-Mart will be experienced viscerally by lower and middle income Americans (ironically including most rank and file union members), who will then be inclined to vote with their pocket books. **Therefore, the political risks in supporting tariffs guarantee that that they will not be imposed.
**In reality, rather than protecting American jobs, tariffs on Chinese goods would help destroy them even faster. **Significant increases in the price of Chinese goods would increase the cost of consumption, causing Americans to either consume less or go even deeper into debt to avoid doing so. While in the long run less consumption would be a positive development, tariffs are not the best way to bring it about. In the short run however, the result would be higher consumer prices, increased unemployment and recession. *
And the biggest joke of all: US auto-manufacterers are now dependent on exports to China. GM to export US$900m in auto parts to China.
*…car exports to China are rising at an astonishing rate, with sales quadrupling in a single year. The jump lifts China above Germany as the 3rd-largest American automobile buyer this year (up from 10th in 2005 and 48th in 2000), the U.S.’ largest trade-surplus country for vehicles (though still much more a supplier than buyer of auto parts) – and also lifts China above Japan and Germany as Michigan’s third-ranking export market. * http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=108&subid=900003&contentid=255193
Le Jacquelope has been repeating this same lie for a year now, and I still giggle every time he says it. The perpetual motion machine that just keeps going faster and faster.
Actually, it’s more like Ohio created a market distortion to lure one company at the expense of a more natural fit in another state, risking the deprivation of a tax base, and sacrificing the tax base and multiplier effect of the state that would have been the alternative choice. The true extent of the market distortion can’t be measured easily, and is often overlooked because the company was going to open somewhere in America. Ohio seems like an unlikely state given its lack of technological prowess, compared to California, Washington, North Carolina, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts to name a few states off the top of my head. I would think that they would sooner relocate to Tennessee or Texas before Ohio. But, this would be a spectacularly bad move if they were 1) going to Ohio anyway; or, 2) the tax incentives are more than the economic activity generated by the move (either in OH, or in another state). So, as you can see, job creation isn’t the be all and end all.
Cite? much job loss is there do to automation? More or less than due to off-shoring? In reality, what we are most likely seeing is that no one can fill these jobs, see engineering shortage. This is likely due to lack of experience, and secondarily to lack of education.
Not immediately (if at all), care to refute it, you know, with some cite or analysis, instead of simply saying it does, i.e. a conclusion with no analysis.
People don’t find other jobs? People don’t save? Why would a company want to be less efficient and incur more costs? When people are in these dire straits, and I’m not denying that people cannot or cannot easily transition, the benefit of lower prices helps them, too.
What is the new wage then? How is any company supposed to know where to set wages? If you knew anything about manufacturing you would realize that the labor cost component is not linear, and not the same in both directions? IOW, the more you pay employees the less return on output you get on your labor, especially in an inflated labor market (the exact same thing you desire). Cutting wages is sticky, too, meaning that lowering wages is harder and can lead to a greater productivity loss (people not willing to work for less, less willing to work hard for less). Of course, this is more intermediate economic knowledge which is difficult for you to present since you have yet to even demonstrate rudimentary economic knowledge, e.g. demand and supply curves.
What if it’s a tariff causing the prices to increase? The domestic manufacturer doesn’t do anything, his goods are now cheaper than his competitors. How much more business can he count on now that alternatives are higher? Not all consumers will go to the domestic manufacturer as consumers who didn’t choose his product in the first place, likely did so on price consideration. Without a cheaper alternative, that consumer is out of the market. Additionally, there are those people who hate that manufacturer and will never be a consumer for that manufacturer at any price.
Again, there’s that recession thing.
Also, look at Emacknight’s post as to what tariffs are (not) “helping” US firms.
Also, is the US as 3rd world poor as China?
Yeah, that doesn’t answer the question. Where is the capital coming from, especially for the immediate short term need? Even if all companies had perfect knowledge that this was happening, they would all drive up the cost of borrowing as they seek capital dollars. This would pressure consumers to save as interest rates are rising, as well as prices (remember you want higher prices), both of these things affect demand. Again, don’t you see the risk? How are companies going to know demand for their products stay consistent at higher prices? They don’t know.
Why you find your lack of understanding anything economics related as humorous is not part of this debate. Instead of saying it’s “complex stuff” (which it is), why don’t you actually explain it instead of dismissing it off hand like every other argument you can’t address? (Serious question, though I may have already answered my own question).
Raising taxes impedes growth, but is a better alternative to sustained increased prices or price floors which is what tariffs create. And, since you are not refuting these actions, you believe that your economic advice is better than those departments full of people working for sovereign nations? And, you’re calling me delusional?
This is patently false and you know it. Why even bother to make arguments in this forum when you are blatantly hyperbolizing? Don’t you wonder why no one takes you or your arguments seriously? Or, do you really not know what a service economy is? Or, do you not realize that the US is still the most efficient and world leader in manufacturing?
US Manufacturing growth strongest in six years Notice, it’s better than pre-recession times. US Manufacturing has been kicking all sorts of ass. It’s long has been the wolrd #1 in out put, it employs way less people than China (thus making it more efficient, in fact that most efficient), and comprises 20% of the world manufacturing output. These are all easily googled if you don’t believe me (my apologies, but i have to run).
It is if you’re out of a job. And that’s where your argument gets completely out of touch.
I don’t need any damned cite to show there’s no job creation by offshoring.
You need to show where offshoring creates more jobs than there were before, and that they are higher paying. This is, after all, the entire promise of offshoring.
And if your plan is not creating more and better jobs then your plan is fucked.
Half-truth. The problem is a lack of experienced engineers. You’re not ever going to get one single “new” experienced engineer out of an economy that offshores engineering jobs. You’ll have older engineers who were around before jobs went overseas, but you can kiss new talent goodbye.
I’ll get right to that, right after I cite for you the analysis that water is wet.
Save what? Do you realize what America’s savings rates are like now? Wages haven’t been keeping up with inflation for over a decade. People are getting overwhelmed by the cost of living. Good paying jobs are leaving the country.
Unemployed people also tend to burn through their savings trying to get another job. That happens a hell of a lot in a downturn of this magnitude.
Why is it that everyone out there knows this except you?
Someone who is unemployed isn’t earning any money. They cannot take any advantage of lower prices. Do I need to cite this for you or will basic mathematics suffice?
Oh, I forgot. In the fantasy land that is the Straight Dope Message Board, being unemployed means a trip to Spain. (No, I will never stop making fun of that argument. By God. It shows just how completely out of touch the pro-offshoring argument is with reality.)
Once again, for the thousandth time, you show how out of touch you are with reality.
Getting less of a return on output for labor is not the end of the world for a company. This shows how little YOU know about economics. You fail to grasp even the simple fact that when wages go up, demand for stuff also goes up. This is absolutely positively true and proven by history no matter how many times you deny it - and I will continue to remind you of this until you get it.
Tariffs do not take consumers completely out of the market - if they did, China would not be skyrocketing up the economic ranks so fast. This obvious fact makes your subsequent arguments absurd on their face.
Tariffs do not harm the economy. Not even your Smoot-Hawley boogeyman did that. Tariffs are better than the impending alternative - the collapse of our dollar, that alternative consequence you seem to ignore, probably because you know so little about economics.
Actually I look forward to that, because that means Americans will have jobs producing goods for China, they’ll be the ones with jobs. And guys like you will be scratching your heads wondering how you’ll ever get American jobs sent back overseas, which will probably never happen because it’ll also mean the end of the Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Yes, you do, that’s what we’ve been telling you for nearly a year now.
No, you need to show that’s the “entire promise of offshoring.” Otherwise all you have is yet another strawman.
No it’s not. The plan is creating lower cost products. So those in the business of selling said products can make more per sale, or increase sale volume.
Bullshit. That is a lie and you know it. The US continues to produce about 70,000 engineers each year, which isn’t enough to fill the jobs available, hence the need to hire immigrants.
At this point I doubt eve you could provide such a simple cite.
The saving rate is up, did you know that? Did you bother to check that before you wrote such a stupid statement? Odd though that you’d mention inflation after you bitched so much about it.
Yes, we do need a cite, that’s sort of the point of great debates, which is what separates it from a personal blog. People who are unemployed may still be earning money, they might be working temp jobs, they might be working part time, they might be contracting, or they might be working cash jobs under the table. They may also have a spouse earning income. If you have a cite to the contrary feel free to provide it. Until then, consider actually looking up the definition of “unemployed” as defined by the Department of Labor.
That trip was awesome by the way. Had my wife been laid off this year we were going to Brazil, kind of disappointed, now we have to wait until next year.
It might be if their competition is betting more of a return on output. That’s sort of how it works.
Well, duh, but you know what also happens, inflation causes all the prices to go up.
And even after a year of this you have yet to show how wages are going to magically go up. I assume there is a chant, or a wand you wave.
Which history is that?
China started with extremely high tariffs and has been lowering them since the 90’s. You know this, which means that one again you’re lying. The Chinese economy has gone from abject dirt poor poverty, to slightly less dirt poor poverty. A 1000 fold increase from barely nothing is still pretty much nothing. A wage increase from $1 a day to $2 a day is a 100% increase for a Chinese worker. But for a US employ to lose $1 per day is a 0.625% decrease.
Yes they do. They distort the market and reduce efficiencies. That is their basic purpose. Some times the good slightly outweighs the horrible, so tariffs get used to protect industries a country wants to keep. The US did this for about a century before backing then off.
China is still a fledgeling economy that needs tariffs to protect domestic production. Think of it like how a child needs training wheels and Pull-ups. But once you’re a big boy you get a big boy bike and big boy pants. It also means you need to grow the fuck up and stop pissing your pants and running to your mommy everything something scares you.
The dollar losing values has more to do with deficit spending than anything trade related. I’m surprised you didn’t know that with your advanced degrees in economics.
Horray, I can’t wait to work for $2 per day cranking out crappy plastic toys for Chinese kids. That’s the future I want for my family. How soon can you get those great jobs back to the US?
My argument is that an economy with fewer distortions is more efficient and better for society overall than one full of distortions. This is evidenced, in short, by increases in GDP, overall wealth, and prosperity.
That’s how arguments work. If you make/offer conclusions, you must show analysis or evidence, which in your history is either a) none, b) doesn’t say what you purport it to say (especially when reading past the headline), or c) poor, biased quality that amounts to little more than a rant and carries little to no weight. In other words, the “evidence” you provide does not hold up to scrutiny. Additionally, you do nothing to counter the mountains of evidence put before you other than hand-wave it away or outright ignore it.
The promise of off-shoring/outsourcing is increased efficiency and lowering of costs, among other things. You are making straw. Or, what emacknight said.
When Ford mass produced cars, he didn’t give a shit about buggy whip makers or the coach industry. When AT&T automated phone switches, they put a bunch of operators on the street. When John Deere made bigger and badder farm equipment or when Monsanto industrialized the farm, they didn’t give a shit about the small farmer. Yet, here we are today, more prosperous than ever before.
So, you don’t have an answer. That’s what I thought.
Again, prior to the recession, you couldn’t have made this statement. Acknowledge that the recession has caused this and be done with it. Don’t make a bunch of strawmen arguments that you knew, an unprovable assertion, that the economy was false as there is no such thing except in your imagination.
Yes, and lower costs and an efficient market helps them get through this period.
Yes, hyperbole adds so much to an argument. On average people will have money saved, or have credit to use or both. As with introductions of new tariffs, wages don’t rise automatically just as people are not dead broke as soon as the layoff occurs. With your continued use of hyperbole in this fashion, I will assume you have no rational argument.
So, again, you have no answer to the reality of the situation. Why do you even bother responding? If you want to continue making mindless, inane rants, I suggest you go to MPSIMS as you already have a topic wasting bandwidth in the Pit. Look at my last post again, how is the new wage set?
And, that history is…? What happens when a tariff makes competitor products more expensive? What incentive does the firm have to raise wages? How does a firm know that they can capture all the business from its competitors? If you can’t answer these questions, posed yet again, don’t bother replying.
This is hilarious, you make it sound like China is some sort of economic utopia. The Chinese government practically hand picks the winners and losers in its economy. Is that what you want, a nanny-protectionist state? Well, China’s government is responsible for:
150M people living on less than $1/day
Over half of the population lives in rural areas, and not like South Carolina rural, we’re talking dirt roads rural, no plumbing, hard to find electricity and potable water
Over half of the population has less than 12% of the wealth
Or perhaps, you think the “urban dwellers” (another less trust-worthy classification from the Chinese government), you know the one “stealing” all the American jobs are wealthier, but they aren’t:
Look how awesome life is over there! It took them nearly 20 years to get a majority of Chinese from making $1/day to $2/day (I’ll even be generous and say $20/day, but that’s really a fantasy of the average Chinese), according to, I believe, National Geographic.
You know, this doesn’t even make any sense on so many levels, except that I would know exactly why crappy, low-value manufacturing jobs came back to the US. Why you would want to return to that is beyond me, though I suppose Ned Ludd might have an idea why.
Interesting, we both fear the same thing. I think the situation you describe is EXACTLY where unregulated capitalism will drive us … workers’ wages in the US will slowly sink down until they are on par with worker’s wages in the Third World. Third World wages will rise, but US workers will do a LOT more sinking than Third World wages will rise. Meanwhile there will be a general trend toward oligarchy by the wealthy elite, as there is in other Third World countries. The US middle class will slowly wither away and become a poor class, as in Third World countries. Rich and poor and not much in between.
I do not think this will be a good thing, apparently you do not too. I just don’t understand why you think unregulated capitalism will get us out of the hole it has been so resolutely digging for us over the last few decades.
First, I’ve never been for unregulated capitalism, nor do I think it will get us out of this hole. The point I’m trying to drive home is that tariffs are NOT the regulation that will help.
But step back for second and consider why this problem is only happening to the US? Canada has had a trade deficit with the US until very recently; my entire life I grew up thinking that was normal. We’ve always imported crap from China, and more often than not we were importing crap from China through US distributors. Why is it that only the US is sinking so fast and on the verge of eminent destruction?
A friend made a comment the other day about how fast technology has been improving, and now continues to accelerate. It took thousands of years to come up with flight, now 100 years later it’s entirely common. 50 years ago computers were the size of a small house, now an iPod nano can run circles around the original computers. It only makes sense that jobs are going to change just as fast.
What took 100 guys an entire summer to accomplish is now done by one guy in about 18min with 100% increased yield.
Consider for a second that the iPad 2 is waaaaaay better than the iPad 1, but costs the same. After two years they made another that was faster, lighter, and with more power, but the cost stayed the same.
The last thing I’ll say, that is considerably less popular, is that Americans were way over paid for way too long. It made sense when the US was the only country with intact factories.
On a personal note, my wife came home pissed a few months ago because this guy she works with was going to be “working from home.” For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why she was so pissed off until she explained that “home” was in El Salvador, where he was needed to look after his ailing father. He was going to keep his current salary, but now his cost of living was reduced to that of a guy living with his dad in El Salvador. The guy was about to become the richest man in El Salvador.
Perhaps because of the one thing that you have consistently failed to comprehend and which completely cripples your entire argument: for millions of Americans, it’s either those “low value” jobs or permanent unemployment and Government dependency. I have pointed this out to you many, many times, and you have neither offered a counter argument nor any response at all.
Look at Europe - ever notice they have a whole class of people who are long-term (chronically) unemployed? That is America’s future, and we’re getting there without the alleged “labor rigidity” that Europe is accused of. Actually, technically, we’ve been as bad off as Europe, but the number crunchers here have been good at hiding the numbers by, for instance, not including people who have been discouraged from looking for work, a group which the BLS doesn’t even count as unemployed, but rather “marginally attached to the labor force”.
We are not producing enough “new industry” jobs to match the growth of our population, nor will we ever produce that many of these jobs. It is in the very nature of knowledge-industry jobs that a handful of workers can produce enough goods and services for the entire population. America’s job creation right now is mostly low-paying temp and service jobs.
We need manufacturing jobs to come back because for millions, it is either that or unemployment, and for millions of others it means low paying temp and service jobs.
I know I am butting in, however, I think we should grow from capitalism into unit of people that labor totally for the benefit of others — never for one’s own benefit. By so doing, we would raise a nation that would be given, by other nations, everything needed to serve all of humanity — then all could capitalize from the wealth of every other country. This venture would require all of our known knowledges melded together so all nations would be able to grow in their abilities to serve others with their particular and exemplary products or desired model.
I could call this “The Way To Reality” — It would be modeled on or would be aiming for a state in which every desirable part of the existence of man comes to a whole.
The beauty of capitalism is that it’s never for one’s own benefit. If I make something and sell it to you, I get cash in exchange for an item you enjoy. I can use that cash to buy something I enjoy from someone else. There are always two players, each getting equal benefit.
Yes, I understand that selling bombs to other countries are for the benefit of ours and their enemies. I understand that selling dope and tobacco and harmful drugs and making a profit from them are for the benefit of others. I understand that chemicals used for warfare are for the benefit of others. I understand that all of these examples and many more products, e.g., books and movies that promote sex with kids and robing banks and alien peoples who come to destroy our planet are always good for the masses.
I understand these things and that is why I posted on this thread.
I will try to sell the URL of your post so others might benefit…
I’m not so sure you understand. Would you like to take another swing at it?
When Og first traded Ug a sharp stick for a sharp rock each benefited. That there will be negative externalities are unavoidable. Og took his new rock and cracked open some shellfish, Ug used his sharp stick to kill a Safari Doedicurus. Would you like us to stop doing stuff? Or would you like to try and contribute to the discussion?
Have you not been reading my posts?