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In your Opinion, what got the ball rolling for our Industrial manufacturing base and jobs, to leave America.
Who is at fault for the start of the exit?
Overly restrictive and or oppressive federal, sate and local government regulations and taxes, and an emerging third world economy of near slave state nations. The unions have a part to play also, with their ever increasing demands for more pay and more benefits, just look at the steel and auto manufacturing industries.
The lawsuits I'll grant you, but companies like BMW, VW and Porsche still have massive manufacturing plants in Germany - a country with very strong unions and government regulation out the wazoo.
Maybe that's why BMW has a huge plant in South Carolina and VW is looking at North Carolina integrity vw: Made in America (http://www.integrityvw.com/2008/01/made-in-america.html - broken link)
Nope - MOST jobs offshored were NOT union jobs to begin with.
You want to bring offshored jobs back here - simply agree to work for 1/5 of your current salary. Does that sound like something YOU want to do?
Ken
Even non union jobs had their wages increased by default. Those wages had to go up for the non union folk, so they could make a living wage. If the union worker was making minimum wage, do you think non union jobs that had some form of skill would would be as well, of course. And the converse is true also, else the non union shop wouldnt be able to hold any of their employment force at all. The unions created wage competition.
As for your last paragraph there....as things continue along the lines they are now, it something many will be willing to do in the not to far distance. Te whole globalization thing is about leveling the playing field, worldwide, when it comes to wages, and living standards.
And I realize that.
I'm not advocating for our cost of living or quality of life to go down (even though some would argue our quality of living/life has already gone down but...that's another thread.
The U.S. can't depend on the "service sector" jobs. There has to be a middle class to support that kind of sector. We need manufacturing jobs as well as service sector jobs.
It's not just the cost of doing business in the United States. There's also the impetus to expand a business. If you have a great product, you don't want to just sell it to Americans, you want to sell it to everybody. And part of selling it to everybody means making it affordable to people in emerging economies, which means manufacturing the product overseas which makes the product more affordable, and also gets around import barriers.
Once manufacturers started manufacturing overseas, they experienced cost savings that were so dramatic, that the savings outweighed the cost of transporting the goods back to the United States.
So labor costs are key, but globalization is a factor as well.
That's true.
The world is changing dramatically. This is an economic revolution every bit as significant as the Industrial Revolution was - and the line between 1st World and 3rd World is blurring significantly. This is a natural thing - a result of the rest of the world starting to catch up with the unnatural lead the US and Western Europe held for decades. It's all part of the world "homogenizing" and beginning to "level out" as those formerly dirt poor countries begin to strive towards the same "American Dream" standard of living that we've enjoyed.
I believe that in the long run it will be to EVERYONE'S advantage - but right now - as during the Industrial Revolution - there is economic pain for some folks (specifically US) to go through.
Nope - folks on the Right make this argument ALL the time - and it's just plain wrong. As someone who's been involved in offshoring I can tell you right out that NONE of what you mention entered into it AT ALL. It was all about LABOR COSTS (and these were Non-Union jobs to begin with). All that other cr*p you mentioned is just red herring BS. It's quite simply the lower HOURLY WAGE paid overseas that is far and away the deciding factor when companies offshore jobs.
Ken
Common Ken You don't think regulatory cost like those incured by complying with regs from OSHA, EPA, NFPA, Renewable energy mandates etc etc. have an impact on the bottom line? While I agree labor may be the main cost driver the aformentioned do impact cost by a large margin.
Even non union jobs had their wages increased by default. Those wages had to go up for the non union folk, so they could make a living wage. If the union worker was making minimum wage, do you think non union jobs that had some form of skill would would be as well, of course. And the converse is true also, else the non union shop wouldnt be able to hold any of their employment force at all. The unions created wage competition.
As for your last paragraph there....as things continue along the lines they are now, it something many will be willing to do in the not to far distance. Te whole globalization thing is about leveling the playing field, worldwide, when it comes to wages, and living standards.
Yachtcare has spoken.......
Yeah I will agree with that - but I would hardly call any of that the "fault" of Unions. The general increase in the standard of living that came about for EVERYONE was to the "credit" of Unions.
Excessive government regulation, lawsuits and unions all lead to skyrocketing costs of doing business.
Ahhh, I forgot about our litigious society, with all of those slip & fall lawyers destroying one company after another, just look at the way bankrupted Dow Corning over breast implants.
Common Ken You don't think regulatory cost like those incured by complying with regs from OSHA, EPA, NFPA, Renewable energy mandates etc etc. have an impact on the bottom line? While I agree labor may be the main cost driver the aformentioned do impact cost by a large margin.
Sure they do - all those thing CONTRIBUTE - but in the final analysis it's the cost of LABOR - the HOURLY WAGE paid that is BY FAR the most important factor. ALL those other things you mentioned are far less important - and even if they were the same overseas as here it wouldn't stop the offshoring of jobs as long as the hourly wages were so much lower over there.
Ken
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You don't think regulatory cost like those incured by complying with regs from OSHA, EPA, NFPA, Renewable energy mandates etc etc. have an impact on the bottom line? While I agree labor may be the main cost driver the aformentioned do impact cost by a large margin.
