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A perfect economy would have NO jobs. Machines would do everything and nobody would have to work. But that's techno-socialism, not capitalism.
Thanks to the idea (in America) that socialism = evil, we will eventually have an automated economy that works only for the nation's richest person.
The reality is that the United States will drift towards a more European Social Democracy model as global competition and automation diminish the value of repetitive task labor. The people with the capital who fund all that automation will continue to become wealthier. Only the top-30% or so of the population is ever going to be born smart enough and be educated enough to command the higher wage jobs.
When it's less expensive to process food raised in the USA offshore, then something's out of whack with the costs of labor and regulatory compliance.
For example, China is now doing a substantial amount of poultry processing for the USA on birds that were raised and slaughtered domestically. The semi-frozen carcasses are shipped to China for processing, then returned to the USA as frozen food items. Given the transportation costs and it's still more profitable to do the processing offshore where they don't have the processing regulations burden and the employee benefits package to contend with, it's a very unbalanced situation for the USA food supply. And a significant loss of domestic labor jobs.
You've got the big picture reversed. It's not that compliance makes the US too expensive, it is that the lack of compliance in China means they are cutting corners on their work and American business leaders are willing to look the other way in order to get the on-paper cost savings. The total cost is still being paid, but by the Chinese workers who are essentially subsidizing that lower cost by accepting lower pay and poor safety, and by having the locals live with any pollution that happens as a result of cutting corners.
Labor and regulatory compliance are things that a well-run operation would have already done on its own. Government regulations are the minimum standard and it would just be preaching to the choir when it comes to good companies with good organization. It's the less well run places that can't make the cut. The reasoning is simple: A proper job of anything doesn't end when the product is done, good discipline includes line clearance and all of the cleanup associated with it. The same concept expands beyond the production line to the company as a whole when it comes to waste disposal, worker safety and public health.
Therefore, the price of processing food in the USA is closer to the cost of doing the job right. Labor and cleanup are not things that you can just cut out for cost savings in the same way of when people think about diluting food products or leaving out ingredients to save on production costs.
Anyone suggesting that corner-cutting is the right way of doing things would be asking that Americans aim for lower standards in a race toward the bottom. This is the same attitude that gave American made products (like cars) such a bad reputation for quality during the cost-cutting era of the 80s. The Europeans took the opposite approach and deliberately took on higher costs when they improved quality and they ended up with premium products that command higher profit margins as well as higher demand.
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Anyone suggesting that corner-cutting is the right way of doing things would be asking that Americans aim for lower standards in a race toward the bottom. This is the same attitude that gave American made products (like cars) such a bad reputation for quality during the cost-cutting era of the 80s. The Europeans took the opposite approach and deliberately took on higher costs when they improved quality and they ended up with premium products that command higher profit margins as well as higher demand.
Unfortunately we are already seriously lagging in quality. We used to think of Asia as the place to buy cheap, but poorly made items. That has changed. This week end I bought heavy duty storage shelves and some plastic kitchen storage containers. The shelves were of excellent quality. The packing was something to marvel at. Not a bit of wasted space and everything well protected and organized. Made in China. I started to laugh when I opened the box of storage containers. The box was hugely oversize and the containers looked like they had been thrown in by a grade school kid. Rubbermaid, made in the USA.
Plenty of homeless are getting foodstamps only. $150/mo isn't a lot. But most of them do survive.
For a developed country the US is the worst place to be poor.
So long as you and many others are under the delusion that our economic woes are caused by "too much welfare" we'll never be able to correct what's really wrong.
You are profiting over other countries and you just don't know. You have greater air quality, cheap goods, less pollution, all because of globalization. They are working for you and you are a beneficiary
So long as you refuse to confront entitled mind sets and blindly blame whomever you perceive to be the problem, nothing will change.
Look. The poor here will get welfare, and probably more welfare in the future. The Democratic Party will win most elections in the future. The model is we will have the well to do and the intelligent, and then they will subsidize the poor who lack wealth and opportunity.
It's not so much that there isn't welfare, as there is. It's that there won't be any particularly more opportunities for a lot of people, unless you are in some hot fields.
Taxing the Rich, minimum wage, all these things, you can probably make it happen to some extent. But not opportunities.
The reality is that the United States will drift towards a more European Social Democracy model
No. That isn't supported by trends or reason.
That model is egalitarian and democratic. Both of these will continue to decline in the US.
Rather we will have rich oligarchy, a declining % of useful workers, and a poor and growing majority of unemployable that subsist on welfare. Laws and human rights of all kinds will vary greatly depending on your status.
Unless a miracle happens that forces a different outcome.
This isn't just about jobs. This is about how the whole economy works. Planned Obsolescence creates jobs. But our brilliant economists ignore the depreciation of all of the garbage that is produced for consumers.
Consumerism with planned obsolescence is just a high technology form of slavery.
Accounting should have been mandatory for everyone since 1960. How many people would need jobs? Or we could have a 3-day work week.
psik
Gee, not sure what accounting has to do with this.
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