LLBean sniff* even sold out. Everything is made overseas and has drastically reduced the quality of their ‘once’ quality clothing and sporting apparel. LLBean clothing is so cheap I think they buy it at Wamart and sew their own label in it. I feel awful thinking some poor Indonesian child made my shirt for a dollar a day.
Obama should buy a clue from ‘The Straight Dope’ and invest a few Billion in luring manufacturing back to the states. Give the companies tax breaks to make up for the cheap overseas labor. Tax the companies that import from China. If he really wants to save America from financial ruin this would be the place to start. Hell, even invite foreign companies to manufacture here in the states. Some foreign car companies are doing it.
No, the statement in the OP is “then in 1980 it (personal debt) grew dramatically.” There’s no “around” modifier. That statement is either true or it is false. According to the OP’s own evidence, it’s false; the current rise didn’t begin until the mid-80s.
Are you serious?
It peaked becasuse until the rise to its current state, 1980 was the highest it had ever been. That’s a “peak.” It’s since blown past that number by a crazy margin, but 1980 was the previous high.
Because that way the shoes are cheaper and the shoe companies make more money. Now you can buy really cheap shoes, and despite the complaining, they’re as good as they ever were. Consequently, I have more money to spend on other things, many of which are NOT made in China.
When I buy shoes and clothes for my kid they are, adjusting for inflation, far cheaper than what I wore when I was a kid, and they’re every bit as good if not better. I dunno if you guys are all Richie Rich or something, but in my solidly middle class household the children’s clothes of the 1970s were just as shoddy and temporary as anything sold in Wal Mart today.
The problem is, any new US manufacturing facilities will be as automated as possible to employ as few human beings as necessary. “Productivity” is a measure of value of product produced per hour of wages paid. American workers have such great “productivity” due to how few Americans are required to produce each item.
You can’t blame any individual business owner for this. All their competitors are doing exactly the same thing - outsourcing and/or automating whenever possible. Nobody wants to pay a wage if they can possibly avoid it. Humans are a constantly increasing and ongoing expense while automation is a constantly decreasing one.
I understand the automation part is taking jobs because the machine is doing the work. Some things like sewing clothing have to be done by people but would it be that cost prohibitive to hire Americans to do it? The clothing would cost a little more but it would open up jobs.
I watched a documentary that showed Walmart ordering things from China. The people worked 12 hour shifts in a sweat shop earning a few dollars a day. Then they are shipped over to the states Walmarts. All to save a few bucks.
So this would not be cost effective because our labor or wage is too high to make it profitable.
Yes. You claim a wage of “a few dollars for 12 hours of work” in China. Contrast that with a minimum of $101.50* for the same workday here.
Are US workers 30 times more productive than Chinese workers or are you willing to pay that much more for shirts (and pants and underwear and ad nauseum)?
*That’s based on a 12-hour day. In reality, the US factory would only have a cost of $87 for the same 12 hours because it would 1.5 shifts of 8-hour workers.
How did you get that? From the chart, personal debt was about 60-65% of disposable income and stable at that from 1961-1985. Then it started climbing up until hitting 130% by 2008.
Hence the terminology ‘around 1980’, which is the same era many other things started to change.
For labor intensive goods, but labor is just a small part of manufacturing expense. You have tons of other expenses like overhead, raw materials, transportation, upkeep of the equipment, etc which are the same or higher in China.
So in some industries the labor you describe (the factory floor labor) may only make up 5% of total cost, which means even with dirt cheap labor it may cost $0.97 in China vs. $1 in the US. Its not always a huge savings.
Not only that, but some expenses can go up when you outsource. Inventory costs, management costs & transportation costs can all go up. Plus you have the risk of recalls and consumer ambivalence because of quality control issues.
Its not as simple as labor is 30x more expensive, therefore a T-shirt is 30x more expensive. More like labor is 30x more expensive, but since it can be a very minor part of the total cost of production, and other expenses can go up with outsourcing, a t-shirt may be 5% more expensive.
My experience is different-my last pair of American-made shoes (Bass-made in Maine) were so well made that I had them resoled twice (12 years). The Chinese-made shoes last (maybe) 2 years at most. And of course, we have the added thrill of poisonous foods, melamine added to milk, defective electrical insulation (on appliances), and adulterated drugs.
Yep, quality stuff!
Making clothes is almost completely automated already, a process that has been happening since the invention of the loom, then the sewing machine. The last substantial innovation (and job eliminator) was automated pattern cutting. At the moment it’s only economic for the most expensive materials, but it’s going to get cheaper. Human beings are necessary to bring pieces of material together and guide them through the sewing machine.
The only reason people are employed is that we lack robot hands with the same level of dexterity as human hands, and robotic vision that can distinguish a single piece of cut fabric from a bin and reliably pick it up and place it under a needle.
The trend has been this: technology gets cheaper, human labor gets more expensive.
It is impossible for people to work cheaply enough that they will be price competitive with automation in the long run, even where special exemptions have been made to allow employers to pay less than minimum wage. For instance, fruit picking. It’s awful, backbreaking labor. And fruit growers are spending millions to develop machinery to replace fruit pickers. I can’t say I blame them, as the strawberry grower said: "We require 140 staff each season to harvest 1,000 tons of strawberries. Labor costs account for 56 percent of our total production costs.”
If you can cut your costs by more than half and increase quality, you’d be a fool not to. And your competitor isn’t a fool either, so even if you want to employ people, you have to eliminate jobs to remain competitive. And this is happening in nearly every area.
Not true. Off the top of my head (and a web search appears to confirm this) Red Wing and Allen Edmonds both still manufature shoes in the U.S., and there are probably others.
This is really going to hurt. An 80% reduction in the workforce! I pick my own blueberries in old abandoned blueberry fields that were once a fairly large operation. Picking blueberries is also back breaking work even with a rake. I can pick a years worth to freeze if I spend 6 hours picking. I like small bush berries and these are the sweetest so it is worth it.
Once everything is automated what will we do with our pickers? Obama keeps talking about creating jobs but what jobs? The health care, computer, and engineering jobs are only open to college graduates?
The same thing we did with almost all farmers, telephone switchboard operators, chimney sweeps, typing pool workers, buggy whip manufacturers, railroad conductors, whale oil refinery workers, lamplighters, milkmen, and the people who used to pick horse shit off the roads; the added wealth realized by making a sector of the economy will be used to buy other things, which will require more people to fill those jobs in those industries.
If technology and automation eliminated jobs from the economy without replacing them, the unemployment rate would be above a hundred percent.
In every case, older technologies have been replaced by newer technologies that have required less labor.
My point, which you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge, is that every new industry, every new product that arises, will be designed to employ as few people as possible.
As this report from the National Bureau of Economic Research starts:
Productivity growth in the United States has rebounded sharply over the past decade, after the disappointingly sluggish growth in the prior two decades. But stronger productivity growth has coincided with sharply declining manufacturing employment, leading some analysts to suggest that the rise in U.S. productivity growth may have destroyed jobs, as companies need fewer workers to produce the same amount of output.
They dance around the truth in the same way you do, and try to backpedal later in the digest. But a rise in “productivity” means the same amount of product is manufactured with fewer man-hours.
The difference from your lame “Econ 101” examples is that automation is now eliminating jobs in every single area, not just manufacturing and farming. As every new industry and service arises, every single one of them will employ as few human beings as possible. Do you claim otherwise? If you were starting a business, would you not design your business in that way?
A small team can design and build a piece of equipment that will eliminate thousands of jobs. It always has. As a consumer, I like this. It means cheaper food, and probably better quality food as well. But I don’t think even RickJay would suggest that an equal number of jobs will appear in robotics to replace all those jobs that have been eliminated. And yes, it will employ engineers and factory workers where ever it is cheapest.
Hmmm, with all the emphasis on productivity, profits and resource allocation, it looks like the next step for greater productivity would be to eliminate some inefficiences in the system.
Namely, human beings.
I smell more wars coming up…
Since a lot of the ones that steer this ship, are at the top in politics, lets see what some of them say:
A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” Ted Turner, in an interview with Audubon magazine.
“In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”
J. Cousteau, 1991 explorer and UNESCO courier
“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government.”
Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Dr. Henry Kissinger New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973
Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries”.
Dr. Henry Kissinger
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” and “The elderly are useless eaters”
Dr. Henry Kissinger
“World population needs to be decreased by 50%”
Dr. Henry Kissinger
“The present vast overpopulation, now far beyond the world carrying capacity, cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization and abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction of numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary.”
Initiative for the United Nations ECO-92 EARTH CHARTER
