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Old 01-31-2010, 06:56 PM
 
142 posts, read 533,733 times
Reputation: 48

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Quote:
Originally Posted by KC6ZLV View Post
No, we need jobs to fit a larger cross-section of the population. I mentioned manufacturing because Jimbo thinks they are crappy jobs, and it appears to me that what Jimbo thinks is a crappy job isn't worth keeping in this country.

I trained employees at several different computer assembly plants. Yes, the jobs appear boring and pointless to me, and probably to you, Jimbo, and many other people here. However, many of the people working there didn't think so. The type of people doing the work ranged from unmotivated people who are happy to make just enough to pay their rent, college students, people using the job as work experience for better jobs in the future, and many other types of people. We are always going to have the first group of people. They were productive members of society when they were assembling computers. The scale tips to the other side when they end up working at Walmart, can't make enough to pay rent, and go to the emergency room at the expense of the taxpayers because they no longer have the medical benefits they had when they were assembling computers. Trust me. Most of that type of person can't be retrained to do much more.
If the US banned the importation of shoes from China do you think that it would restart the US shoe industry in the US or do you think the jobs would just move over instead to Vietnam, Laos or India? I see those jobs as gone for good, no matter whether China protects its markets or not. If the jobs didn't go to China they would go to some other third world nation. For low skilled manufacturing, that work is gone. The US is just to expensive of a place to do low skilled manufacturing.

Levi Strauss made a heroic effort to keep its US jean manufacturing plants open. It kept them open 10 years longer than any other of its competitors. But Gap Jeans were selling for more money than Levi Jeans, Gap Jeans were made in third world countries. Customers didn't care and were not willing to pay a premium for US made jeans. But because it was investing all of this money paying for higher US wages, it didn't have the money to invest in advertising and building the brand. This was also the period when new challengers like Abercrombie and Fitch, Eddie Bauer and Anchor Blue started selling there own branded jeans instead of Levis. As a result for several generations of consumers Levi's is no longer the iconic brand of blue jeans. Levis lost market share and today is a much diminished company. Not only does it no longer have the manufacturing plants, but it lost the administrative, design and advertising jobs that it can no longer support with its much smaller market share.

Quote:
Originally Posted by KC6ZLV View Post

Then there is the problem of retraining to do what? Jimbo doesn't want to acknowledge that skilled jobs are leaving the country too. Should they go to college and get a teaching credential? There are school districts around the country making an attempt to hire foreigners as teachers. We always here of various positions in the medical field. Guess what? Some of these fields now have too many people looking for jobs because a lot of people ran to get their certificates thinking they were guaranteed a job. And if what I'm seeing at the local hospitals here is any indication of what is going on in the rest of the country, expect hospitals to seek out foreign work visas like the IT industry has. If it is done on a computer, expect a good portion of it to be outsourced. The media is already outsourcing some of their audio and video production overseas.

So, when these jobs are outsourced, and companies bring foreign workers on work visas, where to people find jobs which will allow them to maintain a reasonable standard of living?

And no, I'm not a protectionist, but I do think we need to maintain a balance. Allowing imports from a country which restricts the import of American products, or Americans working in their country isn't benefiting us.
The US doesn't have a monopoly on skilled work. The English and the French built the Concorde back in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Even back to WW2, the Nazi's were way ahead of US in rocket design.

But it does have a huge comparative advantage in skilled work versus the third world. China and India are really poor countries. It costs a lot of money to educate and train someone. They don't have the money build and sustain lots of research universities this is why IIT is such an exception. In the US every state has at least one research university and often multiple research universities. In addition we have we have lots of private research universities.

There is a lot of industries that the third world just can't compete in because they lack enough qualified people to participate in the industry. You are much more likely to find someone sequencing a genome in the US than India or China. In the US we need to be creating a lot more of these types of new industries where third world countries can't compete because they just don't have enough skilled people.

Not everyone working at the genome sequencing facility has an advanced degree. It needs secretaries, billing clerks, custodians. They use office space, so they create jobs for people in construction and leasing. These people buy groceries, visit doctors and eat at restaurants.

The problem with looking at manufacturing centers as an employment base is the way you boost wages in manufacturing is by increasing the productivity of the employee by increasing the amount of work done per employee over time. But that creates this problem, while the share of the economy devoted to manufacturing is staying about the same, the share employed in manufacturing keeps falling.

http://image.kiplinger.com/kipimages...mage090710.jpg

Manufacturing companies don't really invest much in there workforce. They invest in making the machines better not the employees better. When labor costs get too high they move. Part of the problems that cities in the midwest had is when GM would leave the city, the employees didn't know how to do anything else. There was no career ladder into something better. What could a 25 year member of the UAW do better than a 2 year member of the UAW?

With other types of employers, the employers will help to train the workers. Hospitals pay Lvn's to go get there RN's. With further training a nurse can become a nurse practicioner. Other employers pay for there employees to get further training or continuing education.

Even with crafts and trades there is a process of increasing skills. Electricians start out as apprentices and move up over time to journeyman and master electrician.
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Old 01-31-2010, 08:02 PM
 
Location: Sacramento, Placerville
2,511 posts, read 6,281,907 times
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Jimbo

I'm not just talking about manufucturing, but of jobs in general, so please get off the "KC6ZLV thinks ALL imports should be banned and everything should be made in the US" mindset. Someone mentioned some reader may have thought that was what I meant, so I tried to clarify it and you are still on that bandwagon.

Nor did I say or make a claim that is should be a manufacturing base, but I do think it is very important to have some level of manufacturing.

I never said anything about banning imports. I made an issue of countries which restrict imports into their economies using other countries as a dumping ground, and that is what is going on with China.

Now, here is how I feel about international trade. It is important and has the potential of providing a variety of quality products. However, I'm not seeing a level of trade beneficial to American workers in general. I do see other countries backing up their citizens in the global marketplace. India's government is making every effort possible to improve their situation through a variety of programs. Education is one of them. They spend what they can on education. We spend as little as we can. They educate people how to be productive. We are stuck on trying to teach people about some theory about why you should love your neighbor.

At any rate, having products to sell is ultimately what makes a country successful in the global economy. If you want to call an idea (innovation) a product, I guess you could. The problem with relying on the theory of success by selling ideas is that if the final product ends up overseas, it really doesn't do much for the average American worker.
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Old 01-31-2010, 09:11 PM
 
142 posts, read 533,733 times
Reputation: 48
Quote:
Originally Posted by KC6ZLV View Post
Jimbo

I'm not just talking about manufucturing, but of jobs in general, so please get off the "KC6ZLV thinks ALL imports should be banned and everything should be made in the US" mindset. Someone mentioned some reader may have thought that was what I meant, so I tried to clarify it and you are still on that bandwagon.

Nor did I say or make a claim that is should be a manufacturing base, but I do think it is very important to have some level of manufacturing.

I never said anything about banning imports. I made an issue of countries which restrict imports into their economies using other countries as a dumping ground, and that is what is going on with China.
Those are valid and useful distinctions that I respect. I really do appreciate you clarifying your position here.

But China is a member of the WTO. In those situations where it may be trying to dump goods there is a remedy.

I am not totally opposed to all manufacturing jobs, but I think they will only occur when its driven by innovation. The low end bike market has been ceded to the third world. But the higher end of the market where people are building custom bikes, that is an industry that we have taken from the Europeans. That is the type of manufacturing that I think we will have here.


Quote:
Originally Posted by KC6ZLV View Post
Now, here is how I feel about international trade. It is important and has the potential of providing a variety of quality products. However, I'm not seeing a level of trade beneficial to American workers in general. I do see other countries backing up their citizens in the global marketplace. India's government is making every effort possible to improve their situation through a variety of programs. Education is one of them. They spend what they can on education. We spend as little as we can. They educate people how to be productive. We are stuck on trying to teach people about some theory about why you should love your neighbor.

At any rate, having products to sell is ultimately what makes a country successful in the global economy. If you want to call an idea (innovation) a product, I guess you could. The problem with relying on the theory of success by selling ideas is that if the final product ends up overseas, it really doesn't do much for the average American worker.
I think the US probably should be educating more engineers and just increasing the overall level of numeracy. Often its not enough to merely express a thought, but its also important to be able to quantify and measure it as well. So I acknowledge your point here.

But I wouldn't oversell foreign systems. The US system has a lot of strengths. In Germany they do a lot of academic tracking. If you are are doing poor in school in 6th grade the direct you to a trade education and out of the college tract. More importantly its kind of tough to jump out of that tract when you are older. So a big part of your life was determined by what kind of student you were when you were 12.

In the US its easy to screw up, but its also pretty easy to pick yourself up again. Even if you don't graduate from high school, a community college will still admit you. You just have to be 18. If you want to be an auto mechanic, it will train you how to do it, but it will also provide the training to go back to a four year college if you have the motivation to do that as well.

So if you did poor in 6th grade because you were upset that your parents were getting a divorce you aren't screwed up for the rest of your life.

We also offer schools for just about every level of ability. While India is really proud of the Indian Institute of Technology is comparable in quality to MIT, it really doesn't have many schools like CSUS or UOP. Here we aren't limited to MIT or nothing. Here if you can't get into MIT, you go to Berkeley, if you can go there maybe you go to Davis, Cal Poly or CSUS. We have this entire gradation in quality. So while not everyone who wants to attend MIT can get in, if you want to go to school, you can probably find some school that will accept you. Here its a lot more likely you are going to reach your full potential if you want to.

Lastly nepotism isn't that big of a factor. In a lot of places, your ability to get into school is as much of factor of who you know as what you know. While Fabian Nunez was the Speaker in the State Assembly his son applied to go to collge, but that wasn't enough to get his son into the University of California. His son went to SDSU instead. In other countries that wouldn't have happened to someone with that much power.
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Old 01-31-2010, 10:54 PM
 
Location: Beautiful Downtown Rancho Cordova, CA
491 posts, read 1,258,841 times
Reputation: 402
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo15 View Post
If the US banned the importation of shoes from China do you think that it would restart the US shoe industry in the US or do you think the jobs would just move over instead to Vietnam, Laos or India?

That's not how tariffs work. You don't just "ban" shoes from one country, rather tariffs would apply to all countries which are importing shoes into the U.S.

So, if there are tariffs on shoes coming into the U.S. from all countries, then yes, shoe manufacturing would start back up in the U.S. This is why it is possible to get our manufacturing base regenerated in this country regardless of who else in the world makes shoes and at what price they make them. I often use China as an example, because they import so much to this country, but the same rules would apply to all foreign countries.

While on the subject of China, there are other reasons to restart manufacturing in this country besides keeping our people employed and having a stable middle class.

You cannot ignore the fact that China has a completely different political structure from the U.S. If they had a regime in place that one day decided to "stick it" to the U.S., we could be faced with extreme shortages of goods because we have come to rely on their manufacturing.

This situation is rarely discussed, because I think that our leadership doesn't have a clue how to guard against it.
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Old 01-31-2010, 11:17 PM
 
Location: Beautiful Downtown Rancho Cordova, CA
491 posts, read 1,258,841 times
Reputation: 402
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Minor View Post
This country just doesn't have a good track record with protectionism/industrial policy. In 1987, industry and the government got together to form Sematech in order reverse the decline of the US memory chip industry which was shifting from the US to Japan. The feds subsidized the memory chip industry from 87 to 96. They pulled the plug when despite all of the money flowing into "saving" the industry, the new memory chip jobs instead of being shipped back from Japan to the US went instead to S. Korea and Taiwan instead.

Once federal funding was pulled from Sematech, Sematech let in other industry players from abroad and became the lobbying arm of the semiconductor industry in the US. But the policy of saving the industry a complete failure. The reason we have a semiconductor industry in this country at all was that Intel figured out that rapid innovation of new lines of processing chips was the way to stay ahead of foreign competition.

After the Korean War, in order to ensure that the US would always have a supply of US flagged boats in time of war, the US reserved the right to ship goods between US ports to US flagged ships. The primary consequence of this regulation was the demise of the tramp ships as the cargo got shifted to truck and trains instead of the protected US flagged ships.

The US spends billions of dollars on price supports for the ag industry in theory to protect family farms, but in practice the primary beneficiaries are ADM and Cargil and the large corporate farms like JG Boswell.

James G. Boswell II dies at 86; cotton magnate built family farm into agribusiness giant - Los Angeles Times

The reason I don't favor protectionism is that I see no evidence of it actually ever working here. Even abroad industrial policy has a really bad record. In Japan the Mininistry of Trade and Ministry of Finance both tried to prevent Honda from selling cars in the US. They thought there was no way that Honda could ever succeed in selling cars in the US.

In order to stimulate the creation of domestic computer industry, the Brazilian government banned the importation of foreign made computers. The protected Brazilian computer industry was making a fortune in Brazil but poorly made Brazilian computers found no market abroad so Brazilian computer makers retreated to the domestic market where they were still quite profitable. Because the domestic computer industry was using a software standard no in use anywhere else in the world, that held back the development of a Brazilian software industry. Because the hardware and software was so behind in Brazil, Brazilian multinationals started moving information processing to offices outside of Brazil. To stop the loss of those jobs, the Brazilian government finally let in the importation of international hardware and software brands which rapidly destroyed the remains of the Brazilian hardware and software industry.

Now compare that with the experience of Ireland. In the past 25 years, its difficult to find a country that has raised incomes faster than Ireland. Because it had no domestic computer industry to protect, Ireland set itself up as the place for US firms to set up operations in Europe. Even though wages were and are much higher than in Brazil the industry relocated to Ireland and not Brazil because Ireland didn't try to protect a domestic industry and because Ireland did a much better job on educating it students.
Reasonable protectionism worked fine in this country prior to about 30 years ago. It was the foundation for a successful middle-class and made the U.S. the envy of the world.

With the advent of the removal of tariffs and the decline of U.S. manufacturing has come the decline of the U.S. itself. If free trade is such a great thing, why is the U.S. in such a serious decline? Why is our standard of living and real wages declining every year?

I think that if you are not old enough to remember how good we used to have it in this country, then you may be tempted to blame our problems on our inability to compete, when in fact we used to have a stable middle-class and increasing real wages when manufacturing was a big part of GDP.

No matter how educated we become, if an engineer in another country will do the work for 1/3 of the cost and is allowed to do the work due to no U.S. protectionism, he or she will get the work, not an American. It still all comes down to what goods or talent costs, not how educated you are.
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Old 02-01-2010, 12:52 AM
 
109 posts, read 376,777 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ElectroPlumber View Post
Reasonable protectionism worked fine in this country prior to about 30 years ago. It was the foundation for a successful middle-class and made the U.S. the envy of the world.

With the advent of the removal of tariffs and the decline of U.S. manufacturing has come the decline of the U.S. itself. If free trade is such a great thing, why is the U.S. in such a serious decline? Why is our standard of living and real wages declining every year?

I think that if you are not old enough to remember how good we used to have it in this country, then you may be tempted to blame our problems on our inability to compete, when in fact we used to have a stable middle-class and increasing real wages when manufacturing was a big part of GDP.

No matter how educated we become, if an engineer in another country will do the work for 1/3 of the cost and is allowed to do the work due to no U.S. protectionism, he or she will get the work, not an American. It still all comes down to what goods or talent costs, not how educated you are.
Real income isn't falling. Between 1967 and 2005 real median family incomes increased from 35,379 to 46,326. (See figure 1 pg 4 here).

http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf

If you wanted to argue that family incomes are down during the Bush presidency, you would have a point. Real family incomes fell between 2000 and 2005. But again that is more a failure of anyone to actually control health care spending. Your pay raise during this period was captured by your HMO. If you want to argue we need to do something to reform health care in this country, again you are preaching to the choir.

Now look at another graph, this one showing the share of world incomes by different regions of the planet. Right after WW2, in 1950 when all of our major industrial competitors were bombed out, we accounted for about 25% of all of the World's GDP. You would expect that the US would lose share as Western Europe and Japan play catch up.

Then compare the period between 1970 and 2000. As expected China's and India's share of the world GDP goes up. But what is more remarkable is that during this period, so too does the US. We increase our share from 21% to about 22% of world GDP. Note how Western Europe and Japan, Latin America and all other countries are losing share during this period.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-world-gdp-1500.jpg (broken link)
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Old 02-01-2010, 11:58 AM
 
Location: CO
1,603 posts, read 3,536,628 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ElectroPlumber View Post
Reasonable protectionism worked fine in this country prior to about 30 years ago. It was the foundation for a successful middle-class and made the U.S. the envy of the world.

With the advent of the removal of tariffs and the decline of U.S. manufacturing has come the decline of the U.S. itself. If free trade is such a great thing, why is the U.S. in such a serious decline? Why is our standard of living and real wages declining every year?

I think that if you are not old enough to remember how good we used to have it in this country, then you may be tempted to blame our problems on our inability to compete, when in fact we used to have a stable middle-class and increasing real wages when manufacturing was a big part of GDP.

No matter how educated we become, if an engineer in another country will do the work for 1/3 of the cost and is allowed to do the work due to no U.S. protectionism, he or she will get the work, not an American. It still all comes down to what goods or talent costs, not how educated you are.
I think there were a lot of factors prior to 30 years ago that helped the U.S. form a stable middle class, part of which was the fact that most of the stronger nations today were rebuilding after WWII while we were not affected. Sure, we had a good manufacturing base, but that phase also resulted in increased wages, which then resulted in higher cost of goods as time went on.

I just can't believe that we can go back to manufacturing and be a global leader again. Our cost of living has become too high. Any products we sell to other countries will continue to be much more expensive than if they just produced them on their own. That's why I think we need to do some things to keep the cost living in check here at home (health care costs, education, etc). It just doesn't seem sustainable to try and create jobs that can pay for the continued living cost increases on all families, especially the middle class. And I don't see us ever going back to having tons of manufacturing jobs that offer benefits and retirement like before.

We need to face the fact that we need to be able to adapt to new economies and be flexible. The days of working for a factory for 25 years are gone. People have no choice but to adapt, even if we do go back to tariffs to make trade more fair.
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Old 02-01-2010, 01:14 PM
 
Location: Beautiful Downtown Rancho Cordova, CA
491 posts, read 1,258,841 times
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The U.S. will never be able to get by on just designing products that are ultimately manufactured elsewhere. There are not enough jobs that will ever be generated to support any kind of standard of living for the masses.

If the goal is to have one small, elite, wealthy upper class and a huge working poor under-class, then we can all sit back and congratulate our leadership on their choice of "free trade." Mission accomplished.
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Old 02-01-2010, 05:21 PM
 
Location: CO
1,603 posts, read 3,536,628 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ElectroPlumber View Post
The U.S. will never be able to get by on just designing products that are ultimately manufactured elsewhere. There are not enough jobs that will ever be generated to support any kind of standard of living for the masses.

If the goal is to have one small, elite, wealthy upper class and a huge working poor under-class, then we can all sit back and congratulate our leadership on their choice of "free trade." Mission accomplished.
I just don't see how low-skilled factory jobs could be seen as a viable option for a "good" standard of living for the masses anymore. We can't overpay people to do these jobs just so they can live better lives while our competitors are paying pennies. If people want to live a higher standard, it seems to me they need to focus more on education for skills that will result in a decent standard of living. Yes, skilled trades are being sent overseas too, but that's why you have to be versatile in your education.

The article I linked to talks about the idea of mini-manufacturing, where U.S. companies are not just developing the ideas and designing the product, but building them here. Of course, it's not to the scale of mass manufacturing, but there are also more companies. That's the type of innovation I've been talking about in this thread. I think education, innovation, and flexibility of the people is what will save us - that and a little more help with tariffs to help encourage our competitors to allow us equal opportunities in their markets.

I think I'm saying the same thing over and over now though, as are others. Maybe we will just have to agree to disagree. I feel I've made some very good points, but the replies I'm seeing tell me that people are either ignoring them or just don't want to consider a different perspective from their own.
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Old 02-01-2010, 05:31 PM
 
Location: CO
1,603 posts, read 3,536,628 times
Reputation: 504
To get back on topic here, I think Sacramento, like most areas will need to work on reinventing itself. It has relied upon housing development a bit too much and it's obvious now that with too many eggs in one basket, it needs to focus on more industries. And I think any area that relies too much on one industry leaves itself open to a major crash. I hope to see the region level out and start ramping up a little in a few years. I'm not sure what it might look like, but I'm fairly optimistic that Sacramento will be resilient like the state it represents.
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