This is where your plan fails Tim. It is a pyramid scheme. America is the consumer of the products. As more and more Americans lose jobs or take pay cuts, they are going to consume less.
You have to admit one thing if you have any intellectual honesty. Globalization is not good for America as whole. The countries that stand to gain are the ones that do the outsourcing. As they're standard of living rises, ours HAS to lower. There is no other way because it is a zero sum game. This is not a win-win situation.
This is a thread on outsouorcing and you want a history of the frigging union movement, with consequences to date...which, by the by, no one that I have ever read knew would occur when unions first cranked up.
Forget it.
Charlie Self "I am confident that the Republican Party will pick a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton." Dan Quayle
Trouble is, it was probably 7-8 years ago when I last bought a shirt from WalMart. And the placket opened out like a flower the first time it was washed. Before that, the sleeve of one came almost all the way off. Buttons are non-holders, too, IME. I was paying $12 or so for a shirt and getting to make two 24 mile round trips to the store to get it and then to return it.
Far cheaper to mail order and get a shirt that can be picked up by UPS if it has to be returned, though I never have had an LL Bean shirt that needed returning. Cost, then: about $34. Nearly 3 times as much, but no driving, no hassles and at least 2 that I am still wearing.
Charlie Self "I am confident that the Republican Party will pick a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton." Dan Quayle
I cannot begin to correct the many implict wrong assumptions in these statements. Capitalism is the only system by which everyone can win. When market-based economies are employed, the up-and-coming nations can compete and win while _We_ also benefit. The wrongest assumption you make is that there is a net-sum-zero game going on here ... and there isn't. Our economy continues to grow and has for pretty much all of its history. This growth took place in the face of massive economic turmoil, war, and globalization, and we continue to grow consistently. That's why countries like China and India are moving towards market economies - they work better than anything else.
I am entirely "intellectually honest" (or as best as I am able to be), and globalization is mostly a good thing. The size of the pie the US gets in global markets might be smaller, BUT the pie is much BIGGER. Would you rather have 100% of $10 Trillion economy or 20% of a $100 Trillion dollar economy. Smart corporate leaders are betting on the latter, and I think they're right, at least in the long haul.
If you want to read a good intro to economics that is easy to read and not some politican's agenda, see Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson". He does a better job than I could ever do in explaining why pretty much everything you wrote is wrong ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk snipped-for-privacy@tundraware.com PGP Key:
You don't get it.... It is not about skills.. it is about $$$$$$$$
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at the payscale at the bottom of this article and honestly tell me if you can pay your staff a living wage and compete with those salaries of off shore. If you can, you should write a book, become a millionaire, and retire to your dream shop. ;)
And I admit it. I am Scared. I have 20 years in IT and I survived major layoffs the past 4 years at one of the largest software companies in the world. I have excellent skills. But I don't have a cavalier attitude about the IT industry as I once did.
As soon as SWMBO completes her masters and her teachers certfication and begins working as a teacher I can quit my job and start my own business. SWMBO used to be a Programmer Analyst before kids but decided it wasn't worth it to go back in to the IT Industry.
I'm from Earth, and our corporate executives are paid / bonused on short term goals. Why is a short term solution a problem from the executive suite / Wall Street angle?
Not to mention that many of us pee-ons buy mutual funds that put much of the pressure on the executives to operate with a short term vision.
No, I don't need that history here. I was responding to your statement inferring that unions brought about a change in the general operating mode in the late 19th century. If you think that those events have not had consequences that reach all the way to the present and bear on the outsourcing issue, then you may need to find a more recent history book.
And I think you're right that probably none of the early labor organizers had any clue about longer term consequences. They seem to have been totally focused on the immediate problems of the time - as either of us probably would have been, too.
Between then and now, however, has been ample time to observe, consider, and learn from the actual consequences; and to extrapolate/project where current trends lead.
I've read (and I believe) that the primary difference between a wise man and a fool is that the fool refuses to consider consequences; while the wise man always does.
This outsourcing is not a random, isolated event. It is part of a chain of events and decisions. I don't think that the story of John's company is really unusual. I'm pleased to be able to say that I've heard a lot of similar stories describing similar-sized enterprises - but relatively few such stories about Fortune 500 size companies. I've also heard relatively few stories about firms the size of John's outsourcing jobs to the Pacific rim or Indian subcontinent - while reports of outsourcing by the larger firms abound.
What factors do you think are at play to cause that effect to be size-selective? Or do you think I'm misinformed and that outsourcing activity is taking place without regard for company size?
it is taking place, you just don't hear about it because the news media can get bigger headlines with 20,000 layoffs rather than 50. i would bet that if you asked the local chamber of commerce's of some reasonably sized city, they could cite plenty of examples. i know i saw some figures from my local area that indicate losses of 200-300 jobs at a time are going overseas.
That's assuming they have jobs so they can buy those goods/services. What if they're not "remaining employees"?
You say "competition is global" as if that were a given. It doesn't have to be. We can bar the doors and only participate in global trade for those things we can't produce (imports) and things other countries can't produce (exports).
That may or may not be a good way to go, but it IS possible.
Great. Now what level of unemployment/underemployment do you find acceptable? 10%? 25%? 75%? Everybody but you? There is a point where we're no longer a market that anyone cares about, just another bunch of starving peasants.
Maybe, but more jobs are MOVING to rural America than ever. From the May 10, 2004 "Forbes" column, "Digital Rules":
One-third of the American jobs created between 2001 and 2004 went to 16 million people. That's a tiny number in a country of nearly 300 million. It's equal to the populations of Florida or greater Los Angeles.
So who are these lucky ones, this 5% of the total population behind 33% of the new jobs? Redheads, perhaps? Hockey fans? (No, that's way too many hockey fans.) Asian immigrants? (Good guess, but wrong.) Correct answer: the residents of 397 rural U.S. counties averaging 40,000 in population.
Read the whole column, it is excellent. (Membership required, but it is free):
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whole outsourcing business is way exaggerated. IIRC, about 250,000 jobs have been outsourced while in the same period of time almost twice that number of jobs have been created. It is much ado about nothing so that guys like Lou Dobbs (who failed to run his own business successfully) can appear to be wise and leaderlike ...
OK Tim, you're a staunch defender of pure capitalism. Let's look at another example.
I'm old enough to remember when someone with below median intelligence (and that's half of us by definition) could get a job that supported his family at a reasonable level. Lots of blue-collar families with one wage earner bought their own house, owned two cars, etc. etc..
There are still a few of those jobs around. But in most cases, those jobs have been killed by automation and cheap imports. Now many couples both work, sometimes at multiple jobs, and still live at a subsistence level. What used to be referred to as the "lower middle class" is rapidly joining the poor. While the gap between workers and executives continues to grow.
Do you have a solution for this other than "Let them eat cake"? And don't say education, remember I'm talking about the "strong back and a weak mind" part of our citizenry.
I was a computer consultant for many years and some of stuff my fellow consultants passed off as work and got very well paid for made me shudder. I suspect the percentage of bullshit artists is about the same across all human groupings - except televangelists where it's 100% :-).
This has NEVER happened on any scale in this country. While indivdual people have financial difficulties, the aggregate of the nation has been a fairly consistent level of employment, notwithstanding economic strains and layoffs.
Not unless you want to destroy the entire US economy. If we lock the trade doors into the country, then foreign competitors will trade with each other at a noticeable advantage to our cost stucture.
Moreover, global trade IS a given. We cannot possibly maintain our current standard of living (never mind grow it) without imports. Our energy needs alone mandate this.
Failing to participate openly in a global market would essential destory generations of US economic growth, so, no, its not an option.
Absent some huge singularity like war on our soil, a nuclear holocaust, or a totalitarian regime' in power, you will never get this level of unemployment, at least not for very long. Market, left to their own devices, correct *as**they**go*. The individual corrections can be painful, but they are bearable. Contrast this with what happens when government meddles in economic matters. The markets still correct, they just do it *all at once* which is usually NOT bearable.
Take the Depression for example. The markets were correcting for way too much outstanding leverage (loans) in the financial markets. There is considerable evidence that this would have been over sooner had that raging socialist FDR stayed out of the discussion. Instead, he moved the country into becoming a welfare-state, slowed down the recovery that was already underway, and forever doomed us to a more inefficient economy than we could have.
Large scale unemployment and economic ruin are the hallmarks of economies managed by fraud and/or force, almost always at the hands of government. Prosperity and growth are the hallmarks of private sector voluntary cooperation with a strong profit motive.
Not to mention - back closer to topic - tax laws which encourage landowners to remove all timber to 6" MBH to get a tax break rather than pay for trees to grow.
I pay 5 times what commercial forest does, 10 times what state or national forest does. Oh well, my youngest is already cruising for the timber he'll harvest at middle age.
OK, I'll put the tax assessment into the firebox where it belongs instead of the "to pay."
Your facts are (sort of) right, but your analysis is wrong:
Yes. And they lived in homes far inferior in size and construction to what their modern counterparts own. Their cars were inferior in most ways to the ones driven by Joe Sixpack today. They had fewer opportunities for upward mobility. They paid more (inflation adjusted) for key goods like gasoline. They lived shorter lives, partly because of the drain of physical labor, and partly because the Big Evil Corporations had not yet commoditized medical treatment and new pharma. They worked more hours (and has less free time) than their modern counterparts. They worked in far more dangerous conditions than the modern worker.
The list is endless but the point is the same. The Good Old Days were not all that "good" when compared to life today. For an excellent discussion of this, see "Hoodwinking The Nation" by Julian Simon or even just read this:
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Right - because MORE PEOPLE ARE MOVING UP on the economic ladder. The US Census data from 1980-1990 is instructive here. During this time the rich did get richer ... but so did the POOR. The percentage of Americans that are actually poor (per capita) is *declining*. Moreover, what constitutes "poor" is very different than it was even
50 years ago. "Poor" today includes the use of heat, running water, a color TV, and a microwave. i.e. Almost no one is living at "subsistence" levels.
It is not "subsistence" when you choose to work to own a house, a couple of cars, and have children at-will, no matter how meager those means may be.
Since when is it a requirement of any economy that people get a house, car, and comfort on one (or even multiple) incomes? Who says everyone is entitled to this? There are lots of smarter people than me, and most make way more money than I do. How am I disadvanged by this? When Bill Gates creates wealth, it doesn't hurt me, it makes my life better - I can affort more computer for less money. In fact, I can even share in his upward mobility, even if I'm a complete ignoramous - I can buy his stock and trust he will make it go up.
No one has a right to the lifestyle they *want*. They have a right to
*try* for it unimpeded by their nosy neighbors and/or stuffy intrusive goverment. The fact that everyone does not have an equality of outcome is hardly and indictement of capitalism or our economic approach.
I just talked to the people in the Iowa Economic Development office and got bounced around until I ended up talking to a helpful gal at the Labor Market Info desk.
Iowa can only track offshoring via unemployment claims; and then only when there are claims from a minimum of 20 people from the same company during a 30-day period. There is a new program (started up in January) that will specifically track offshored jobs.
Exact numbers aren't yet available but are expected to be in about a week and a half; and these will be maid available at
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pushed a bit for guesstimates and as best I could understand the (unofficial, off-the-cuff) response, the state total YTD offshored jobs total in the hundreds for firms with over 400 employees, with a very much smaller total for firms with fewer than 400 employees.
Interestingly, it /does/ appear that in this part of the country the outsourcing/offshoring activity is related to business size.
On the other hand, Iowa has a population of only about three million - so we're probably neither typical nor statistically significant...
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