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Not much different. 35 years ago, as a teen I worked at a large Northeast regional supermarket chain. Unionized..30 hours got you benes. It was just for 2 months before entering college.
Anyway, this chain insured less than 10% of its staff (29 hrs was the norm). The other mall tenants , all national chains, insured at most 1/3, and our local mom and pops insured less than that..except for family, of course.
The difference is 30-35 years ago, people did not work retail long-term, except for 2nd income p/t housewives. The rest were kids, and most of us at the supermarket were college bound, so we were not staying long in retail. I cringe now at the percentage in all the stores I go in age 35-50..prime earning years.Yikes!! And I see the same staff 35-50 year in, year out!
I don't know, I think the typical workforce varies among retailer, and also depends on the local economy. In a relatively small community, I shop at both a Walmart and a Kroger. Usually at least once a week in both of them. I seldom see the same employees from week to week at the Walmart. Those that are working there always seem disgruntled and unhappy. They cover the spectrum of age groups. The Kroger has a steady workforce. Very few teenagers. Some workers have been there for years. They all seem happy. One cashier is about 80 years old, and has been there since 1967. The regional grocery store chains are secure employment. While I doubt that the pay is that great, I think the employees are content with what they make, and don't have the desire to work anywhere else. Contrasted with Walmart, which appears to enjoy scraping the bottom of the workforce pool, and treats it employees with contempt.
Your post reminded me of the gentleman that was now 60, and doing whatever he could to keep working, because he can't retire. The lesson was that if you don't work for one company, which almost nobody does anymore, then that means you'll work til you drop - or you get on disability, like a lot are doing today.
The system is going to break. I can't imagine what retirement is going to look like in the future, if there will be such a thing.
At the wages he's earning, and considering his lengthy work history, his take home pay probably equals what SSDI would be. Or for that matter, in a few years, a regular SS retirement check. This is likely what the future holds when he can no longer perform physical labor.
Perhaps the most sensible posts you have made here. Question is, how is flooding the country with illegals as well as shipping the jobs off to China, both of which you seem to favor strongly, going to help these situations???
I must not have worded the others as well as I might have. Otherwise, no one but the government is flooding the country with illegals. Immigrants themselves come here in response to demands for workers in jobs that they are both willing and able to perform. There is no difference between the ones who are able to pick up a little piece of paper along the way and the ones who are not. The supply of those little pieces of paper is being set at artificially and unrealistically low levels -- levels that come nowhere near meeting the actual demand for them. If a state did the same thing with driver's licenses, big surprise -- that state would have huge numbers of people driving without a license.
Neither are we shipping jobs off to China. Decisions on the location of various types of production are made with regard to dozens of variables, and they always have been. Recall a long history that has seen textile jobs move from New England to the American southeast, to Mexico, to China, to Thailand and Paksitan, and to Bangladesh and Vietnam. Each of these phases took years to accomplish, but in each, the work was being passed down to lower wage, less well educated, less well organized workers because boardroom types thought doing so would be the best thing for corporate profits and stockholders. That's capitalism.
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Originally Posted by andywire
In most cases, manufacturing the stuff that we manufacture here would be more expensive if manufactured in China.
In many cases, it would be impossible to manufacture this stuff in China. As a rule of thumb, if we didn't have the capacity to manufacture it 40 years ago, China doesn't have the capacity to do it today. But 40 years from now will be a different story. That's what we need to think about and plan for.
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Originally Posted by andywire
And you're preaching to the choir when you talk about productivity gains and the killing of jobs.
One man's "killing jobs" is another man's "freeing up workers". The theory of automation and labor-saving devices implies that we are all freed up to do other things, and that these other things need not necessarily be other jobs. Fishing, reading, painting watercolors, spending quality time with the family, all the "leisure" things we enjoy outside of work. More time for all of those was supposed to become available. Instead, we haven't shared this new leisure time equally but instead forced it disproportionately onto people in the form of unemployment. You don't work fewer hours, you work none. And instead of having the same income, you have no income. And wages for the jobs you might have tried to move into have been driven down so you need two of those and have to work nights in order to make ends meet and the next thing you know, you're in divorce court and a PBS documentary. We are simply not doing it right in this country.
One man's "killing jobs" is another man's "freeing up workers". The theory of automation and labor-saving devices implies that we are all freed up to do other things, and that these other things need not necessarily be other jobs. Fishing, reading, painting watercolors, spending quality time with the family, all the "leisure" things we enjoy outside of work. More time for all of those was supposed to become available. Instead, we haven't shared this new leisure time equally but instead forced it disproportionately onto people in the form of unemployment. You don't work fewer hours, you work none. And instead of having the same income, you have no income. And wages for the jobs you might have tried to move into have been driven down so you need two of those and have to work nights in order to make ends meet and the next thing you know, you're in divorce court and a PBS documentary. We are simply not doing it right in this country.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to oaktonite again.
No, they do much mroe than that. You need to read more.
Agreed. I would describe the purpose of FTAs as such: To eliminate tariffs, identify preferences for goods/services traded between countries, and to establish import quotas. Of course, there are plenty of negative side effects for the US from these that have taken place, and here are a couple examples:
As of 2010, U.S. trade deficits with Mexico totaling $97.2 billion had displaced 682,900 U.S. jobs. Of those jobs, 116,400 are likely economy-wide job losses because they were displaced between 2007 and 2010, when the U.S. labor market was severely depressed.
Prominent economists and U.S. government officials predicted that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would lead to growing trade surpluses with Mexico and that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be gained (Hufbauer and Schott 1993; President Clinton 1993). The evidence shows that the predicted surpluses in the wake of NAFTA’s enactment in 1994 did not materialize, for reasons outlined in this briefing paper. However, congressional leaders and administration officials now make nearly identical claims about export growth and job creation under the proposed U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).
Sure, ideally, the USA would have more countries they could sell stuff to. Unfortunately, that doesn't work too well when the USA is the largest consumer market in the world, which means we'll be doing more of the buying. On top of that, local labor is more expensive than 3rd world labor making it hard for US companies to compete in selling to ourselves or other countries.
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Originally Posted by oaktonite
We still do have zillions of tarriffs. You can look them up HERE...
Agreed, but we cut out specific tariffs as part of the agreements. See below for some examples:
The study found that eliminating transatlantic tariffs would boost U.S.-EU trade by more than $120 billion within five years. It would also generate GDP gains of $180 billion — a budget-neutral boost to the U.S. and EU economies.
Allowing outmoded products and processes to continue does not actually benefit anyone. The tariffs you envision merely take money from certain consumers and give it to certain rpoducers. It is simply a tax called by a different name when an actual tax could do the same job much more efficiently while also allowing the production base to modernize itself.
I don't know enough about what you're explaining, but I do know that it redirects the source of the products in which people consume. This is what I'm more interested in.
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Originally Posted by oaktonite
The only things that have kept them from coming were the Great Depression and WWII, in each case because travel in general became so much more difficult to accomplish. While you might imagine that there is, no one is putting any rational thught or intelligince into the matter of where the line dividing legal from illegal immigration ought to fall. Many are called and then many are chosen. Whether the system was adequate to the task of getting all of the the proper pieces of paper passed out to the many does not and will not much enter into it.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Wars and transportation are why more people didn't illegally immigrate before? Here's a snippet that outlines some numbers:
Quote:
Net advances by illegal aliens into the USA have also soared from about 130,000 per year in the 1970s, to 300,000+ per year in the 1980s, to over 500,000 per year in the 1990s, to over 700,000 per year in the 2000s.
It's not unreasonable to think that ease of transportation may have had something to do with it, but I would still imagine people come here for jobs . Take the illegal job arrangements away and there's no reason to come here; the federal government should be dealing with this (or allowing the states to) and they haven't.
Agreed. I would describe the purpose of FTAs as such: To eliminate tariffs, identify preferences for goods/services traded between countries, and to establish import quotas.
The purpose of FTA's is actually to eliminate (or reduce to the maxium extent immediately feasible) tariffs, quotas, and preferences between complementary economies.
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Originally Posted by AJNEOA
Of course, there are plenty of negative side effects for the US from these that have taken place, and here are a couple examples:
Lots of good marriages go thorugh rough patches. Fortunately with the FTA type, emerging new or unanticipated issues can be studied and resolved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AJNEOA
Sure, ideally, the USA would have more countries they could sell stuff to. Unfortunately, that doesn't work too well when the USA is the largest consumer market in the world, which means we'll be doing more of the buying.
Rest of World dwarfs us in terms of consumption with the EU alone being a comparable market. Trade normalization meanwhile offers benefits to everyone. It would be silly not to pursue them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AJNEOA
On top of that, local labor is more expensive than 3rd world labor making it hard for US companies to compete in selling to ourselves or other countries.
Real GDP is at all time records. Real per capita GDP is approaching them. Trade in both directions has doubled since 2001. I'm not sure I see where you are coming from.
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Originally Posted by AJNEOA
Agreed, but we cut out specific tariffs as part of the agreements. See below for some examples:
You claimed that the USA used to have tariffs. We still do. Scads of them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AJNEOA
I don't know enough about what you're explaining, but I do know that it redirects the source of the products in which people consume. This is what I'm more interested in.
Tariffs are a protectionist scheme designed to prevent competition from doing its job. They may be defensible tools in helping to ward off or phase in dislocation costs, but using them as long-term nationalistic shields against progress is not such a good idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AJNEOA
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Wars and transportation are why more people didn't illegally immigrate before? It's not unreasonable to think that ease of transportation may have had something to do with it, but I would still imagine people come here for jobs . Take the illegal job arrangements away and there's no reason to come here; the federal government should be dealing with this (or allowing the states to) and they haven't.
What are these illegal jobs? You may have meant perfectly legal jobs that are being done by perfectly capable workers who do not happen to have a particular piece of paper.
In any case, the sort of normal level of the foreign-born population has been about 15% for 150 years or so. That's what it was from 1860 through WW1. But that was followed by the Depression and WWII. Immigration fell to freakishly low levels, although migrant agricutural workers still did stream in from the south each season to pick our fruits and vegetables for us. Partial attempts at normalization of immigration in the 1960's and 1980's left us in the current situation, one in which we are almost back to that 15% historical norm, but also one in which actual laws are of no use or relevance, and one in which silly nativists and other limited resource types think we ought to bulldoze people back over the border. They screamed one attempt at progress down in 2007 and stand ready to kill the next one as well if they can. Don't expect any sort of progress until such extremists are somehow neutralized. Same sort of situation as we have with economic issues vis-a-vis disconnected Tea Party ideologues and whackos.
Clinton, a Democrat, was in office from 1993 to 2000. And now Obama also a Democrat has been in office since 2008.
There is more than just blaming two men, Reagan who is deceased, and Romney who never was President of the United States.
They follow Reaganomics. All of them followed a policy of financial deregulation. Let the bankers run our society. When the poor give their money to the rich ,the rich will make the poor richer....system..
The purpose of FTA's is actually to eliminate (or reduce to the maxium extent immediately feasible) tariffs, quotas, and preferences between complementary economies. Right...except that they establish preferences via import quotas...
Lots of good marriages go thorugh rough patches. Fortunately with the FTA type, emerging new or unanticipated issues can be studied and resolved.
Tell that to the people that had jobs shipped out.
Rest of World dwarfs us in terms of consumption with the EU alone being a comparable market. Trade normalization meanwhile offers benefits to everyone. It would be silly not to pursue them.
Real GDP is at all time records. Real per capita GDP is approaching them. Trade in both directions has doubled since 2001. I'm not sure I see where you are coming from.
I assume you and I will disagree with the calculation of GDP, so I'll leave this alone.
You claimed that the USA used to have tariffs. We still do. Scads of them.
Nice waste of time on this one...
Tariffs are a protectionist scheme designed to prevent competition from doing its job. They may be defensible tools in helping to ward off or phase in dislocation costs, but using them as long-term nationalistic shields against progress is not such a good idea.
Interesting take. I assume you're an advocate of globalism, but that you're not on the business end of its impacts.
What are these illegal jobs? You may have meant perfectly legal jobs that are being done by perfectly capable workers who do not happen to have a particular piece of paper.
By the way, the argument has nothing to do with people being capable or willing to work. It has to do with it being illegal to skip into the country without a visa and take a job. It's bad for the worker (sometimes dangerous jobs, no health insurance, extremely low wages), our social system, and the legal population.
In any case, the sort of normal level of the foreign-born population has been about 15% for 150 years or so. That's what it was from 1860 through WW1. But that was followed by the Depression and WWII. Immigration fell to freakishly low levels, although migrant agricutural workers still did stream in from the south each season to pick our fruits and vegetables for us. Partial attempts at normalization of immigration in the 1960's and 1980's left us in the current situation, one in which we are almost back to that 15% historical norm, but also one in which actual laws are of no use or relevance, and one in which silly nativists and other limited resource types think we ought to bulldoze people back over the border. They screamed one attempt at progress down in 2007 and stand ready to kill the next one as well if they can. Don't expect any sort of progress until such extremists are somehow neutralized. Same sort of situation as we have with economic issues vis-a-vis disconnected Tea Party ideologues and whackos.
Illegal immigrants are NOT = Legal immigrants
I have no problem with legal immigration.
Do you believe that the USA is economically healthy?
Capitalism over the past 100 years or so has helped indoctrinate multiple generations into a far more insideous belief system (almost a religion, if you will) of "consumerism". This is the pervasive belief by most in society that they need to be able to acquire things far beyond what is required for their basic survival and well being in order to achieve happiness, by way of status. It has crept into our collective subconscious and infected the populace almost enough to bring this country down to it's knees, as is now happening. It's gotten worse with each succeeding generation, too, except now the resources (educated human capital, production economies, and resources) have been strained to the point where it's simply unsustainable, and has been for some time. People want more. They want to keep up with the Joneses. However, they have been let down partially by social breakdown, partially by greed, and partially by simple economics.
It's going to take some time to reach a happy medium. Likely many decades of fits and starts wherein a new bubble (internet bubble, finance/real estate, energy?) allows for temporary collective euphoria and prosperity followed by a thunderous crash as we are all brought back down to reality...
Eventually, assuming our collective societal memory allows for it, there will come a point when the global population can no longer be sustained at a certain expected standard of living. There will have to come an acceptance of a "new normal" (that popular recent term among the economic "gurus"). That new normal will have to occur if there is any hope of a sustainable human society. That new normal will be achieved with the acceptance of a lower standard of living as the sacrifice for worldwide safety, on the basis that everything else we have tried has not worked. That would imply that humanity is capable of progressing to such a high level of moral consciousness, which is a stretch (as history would indicate).
The alternative future is much more bleak. That's the one where as too many nations attempt to achieve "First World" status and go through their growing pains, there leaves little choice but for those nations with the might and means to do so to either exploit economically or take by force the few remaining bastions of cheap labor and resources. This would come at great environmental and human peril - at a much larger scale than ever before in history, if only for the fact that there has never been this level of technology, this amount of people to be fed and appeased, and so few natural resources available in world history. There may be a few nations left standing when it's all said and done, but there would be so few resources left by that time that whomever is the "victor" will achieve a very short lived prosperity anyway.
As resources are exhausted for building civilizations, civilization would again revert to a more primitive and localized version of itself once again. Of course, this could be 100, 200, or 300 years into the future. I wouldn't expect it to take much longer than that given how much society has changed even in the past 100 years, and how the rate of technological change nad environmental strain has been increasing almost exponentially with each passing generation.
In this discussion, nobody has mentioned the concept of Peak Oil. BananaShampoo's post is the only one that brings up the importance of dwindling resources. Oil is one of those resources. What happens when the easy-to-access oil is gone (many say this is happening now) and all that is left are supplies that are difficult to reach and therefore expensive or simply forever unavailable? The techno-miracle cannot last forever. The jobs that are disappearing because oil is disappearing won't return. This will cause a path to middle, or even working, class to vanish as well.
I don't know, I think the typical workforce varies among retailer, and also depends on the local economy. In a relatively small community, I shop at both a Walmart and a Kroger. Usually at least once a week in both of them. I seldom see the same employees from week to week at the Walmart. Those that are working there always seem disgruntled and unhappy. They cover the spectrum of age groups. The Kroger has a steady workforce. Very few teenagers. Some workers have been there for years. They all seem happy. One cashier is about 80 years old, and has been there since 1967. The regional grocery store chains are secure employment. While I doubt that the pay is that great, I think the employees are content with what they make, and don't have the desire to work anywhere else. Contrasted with Walmart, which appears to enjoy scraping the bottom of the workforce pool, and treats it employees with contempt.
I'm not sure about that. I shop at Walmart regularly, and find it depends on the individual as to whether they are happy in their job or not. Just a couple days ago, my checkout clerk was telling how much she loved her job. It was entertaining. She told me about a man that had changed all the prices of his merchandise, she caught it, and he was forced to pay full price. She got a big kick out of that.
If you keep telling people they've got a lousy job, I suppose they start believing it. If it weren't for Walmart, this town would have a lot more people unemployed, and I'm glad they're here.
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