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The people who "lost their good jobs" as you put it have only themselves to blame because the unions (with their neverending demands) and the politicians (who created a business-unfriendly environment through heavy taxation and regulations) made manufacturing goods in the U.S. unfeasible due to astronomical overhead costs. How do you expect businesses to pay union rates when Americans weren't buying their products (opting for cheaper foreign products instead) despite being paid more than they were actually worth in the global labor marketplace? It's not like the American consumer didn't have the disposable income to spend in the half-century following WWII!
Globalization has shown that foreign workers are capable of producing high-quality goods for much less, which left a lot of overpriced American workers out of jobs unless they decided to retrain. Too bad for them. They had it good for too long and now the chickens have come home to roost!
And the same thing will happen in IT. Folks will be talking about those entitled American IT workers who think they are worth more than they really are in the global marketplace. Then it will be the American engineers. Then these foreign companies will start bidding on construction projects in America. They'll stay for a couple months as they build a small bridge. When their done, back to India or China they go. Meanwhile, prosperity will continue to elude more and more Americans as they desperately struggle to compete.
Just wait for the Chinese investment firms to start gobbling up more American assets, and even other firms, banks, etc. They'll do it just to have a piece of this country at a discounted price... Since no one here will have the power or money to compete.
Anything that can be done on a computer is wide open to cheaper foreign labor. That is just the beginning though. What we are seeing today is about as good as it's ever going to be, unless we start protecting or even insulating our market the way Germany or Switzerland does.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by andywire
And the same thing will happen in IT. Folks will be talking about those entitled American IT workers who think they are worth more than they really are in the global marketplace. Then it will be the American engineers. Then these foreign companies will start bidding on construction projects in America. They'll stay for a couple months as they build a small bridge. When their done, back to India or China they go.
Anything that can be done on a computer is wide open to cheaper foreign labor. That is just the beginning though. What we are seeing today is about as good as it's ever going to be, unless we start protecting or even insulating our market the way Germany or Switzerland does.
Yes, and the difference in cost is so great that a U.S. IT worker can afford to pay for a Chinese programmer to do his work and still make a great upper-middle-class living here.
Yes, and the difference in cost is so great that a U.S. IT worker can afford to pay for a Chinese programmer to do his work and still make a great upper-middle-class living here.
Yes, and the difference in cost is so great that a U.S. IT worker can afford to pay for a Chinese programmer to do his work and still make a great upper-middle-class living here.
Hehe, yup. But the foreign worker is gaining experience. They are learning, and they can use this to fish for bigger projects in the future. If they have a better work ethic, they will use their background as leverage to propel themselves up. Maybe they will start an IT business that finds a way to connect directly with the American market. At that point, they can underbid American companies to the ground.
I don't know why everyone whines about the Chinese, and their advantages in the manufacturing sector. I would be more worried if I were an IT worker, since there are no freight or fuel charges involved with sending data across the globe... At it doesn't take 4-6 weeks for that data to reach it's final destination.
Hehe, yup. But the foreign worker is gaining experience. They are learning, and they can use this to fish for bigger projects in the future. If they have a better work ethic, they will use their background as leverage to propel themselves up. Maybe they will start an IT business that finds a way to connect directly with the American market. At that point, they can underbid American companies to the ground.
I don't know why everyone whines about the Chinese, and their advantages in the manufacturing sector. I would be more worried if I were an IT worker, since there are no freight or fuel charges involved with sending data across the globe... At it doesn't take 4-6 weeks for that data to reach it's final destination.
Very true. IT can, up to a point, be done anywhere - security concerns aside - vs. manufacturing. I think the loss of manufacturing is just more obvious since it was the bedrock of this nation for so long, whereas IT has only been a big deal for maybe 2 decades.
Again, free market principles. Why is it "bad" for employees - unionized or otherwise - to try to maximize their profits (take home pay) while it is "good" for corporations to do the same by laying people off, sending jobs overseas, etc?
What you advocate is hypocrisy. You try to justify every cost-cutting and profit raising action taken by big business, no matter the damage caused, while expecting the working class to just "suck it up" with your clear hatred of any organization that resisted. On top of that absurdity, you then seek to blame consumers for buying cheaper products after your corporate heroes gutted their pay because "If we choose to farm our work out to someone willing to work for less, that's a sensible business decision."
I think you've got it backwards. Companies laid off workers and reduced pay after consumers stopped buying their products. Or some companies did. Others continued operating at a loss until they had to be bailed out by the government.
And the same thing will happen in IT. Folks will be talking about those entitled American IT workers who think they are worth more than they really are in the global marketplace. Then it will be the American engineers. Then these foreign companies will start bidding on construction projects in America. They'll stay for a couple months as they build a small bridge. When their done, back to India or China they go.
Anything that can be done on a computer is wide open to cheaper foreign labor. That is just the beginning though. What we are seeing today is about as good as it's ever going to be, unless we start protecting or even insulating our market the way Germany or Switzerland does.
Good luck getting any politician to "insulate" America from the global markets. That would be the death knell for this country. Instead of trying to enact protectionist policies, Americans need to come to terms with the fact that a lot has changed since the 1950s when the U.S. didn't have as much competition. They need to adjust their expectations accordingly.
Yes, and the difference in cost is so great that a U.S. IT worker can afford to pay for a Chinese programmer to do his work and still make a great upper-middle-class living here.
They could, in a theoretical sense. However, most people would rather complain about the effects of globalization than take advantage of such opportunities for geoarbitrage.
I think you've got it backwards. Companies laid off workers and reduced pay after consumers stopped buying their products. Or some companies did. Others continued operating at a loss until they had to be bailed out by the government.
There is no evidence of that. You can look back into history and see that people bought American as long as they could. Even today, you still find plenty of people complaining about "cheap Chinese junk" and so forth, and when people can afford to buy more expensive products that are locally made, they will. If that were not true, every American company that produces anything other than the cheapest imported junk would have gone out of business long ago.
Unfortunately, thanks to corporate outsourcing and wage reductions - which you heavily support since "If we choose to farm our work out to someone willing to work for less, that's a sensible business decision." people can't afford much these days at all... and then you blame them for being "sell-outs" for trying to reduce their own costs, just like big business has already done in the form of their lower wages.
There is no evidence of that. You can look back into history and see that people bought American as long as they could.
Everyone you turn today, you still find people complaining about "cheap Chinese junk" and so forth, and when people can afford to buy more expensive products that are locally made, they will. If that were not true, every American company that produces anything other than the cheapest junk would have gone out of business long ago.
So that's why Wal-Mart was able to become the largest company in the world, right?
It must be all those patriotic Americans buying domestic products, right?
Quote:
Unfortunately, thanks to corporate outsourcing and wage reductions - which you heavily support since "If we choose to farm our work out to someone willing to work for less, that's a sensible business decision." people can't afford much these days at all.
I don't buy that claim. People are still going out and about... and spending a great deal. In spite of political circumstances, the economy is doing fine and so is the American consumer.
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