Cheap Products vs. High Wages... Americans Want BOTH!
- Thread starter gnome
- Start date
It's simply because the education itself is pretty much worthless unless one spends it to become highly paid technician in high demand (e.g pharmacy, physical therapy, nurse-anesthetist, etc.)
For the purposes of white collar career the school itself (the brand, the connections build with alumni, etc. is what makes it worth 200K)
Ford and GM pay 250K per year their plant managers. They never higher A or B students, only C-average, worked through school, nice people skills - sorority etc.
The same thought process works anywhere in corporate US. The feeling of similarity (and bias towards familiarity often confused with security) always outweigh academic and career achievements.
When you compare the manufacturing/ white collar paper processing back office (e.g. insurance, banking, etc) to the 1800's cotton plantations - things become strangely familiar.
Trade decline and the U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
Main article: Smoot-Hawley Tariff
Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international trade after 1930 helped to worsen the depression, especially for countries significantly dependent on foreign trade. Most historians and economists partly blame the American Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (enacted June 17, 1930) for worsening the depression by seriously reducing international trade and causing retaliatory tariffs (i.e. a tax increase) in other countries. Foreign trade was a small part of overall economic activity in the United States and was concentrated in a few businesses like farming; it was a much larger factor in many other countries.[9] The average ad valorem rate of duties on dutiable imports for 1921â1925 was 25.9% but under the new tariff it jumped to 50% in 1931â1935.
In dollar terms, American exports declined from about $5.2 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1933; but prices also fell, so the physical volume of exports only fell by half. Hardest hit were farm commodities such as wheat, cotton, tobacco, and lumber. According to this theory, the collapse of farm exports caused many American farmers to default on their loans, leading to the bank runs on small rural banks that characterized the early years of the Great Depression.
What competitive advantages Korea or Japan could possibly have.
The cast based social system (if you ever been to Korea or Japan longer than a week and had a chance to familiarize yourself with how they think or work with them closely) prevents any possibility of entrepreneurship or innovation. They come to US to start businesses.
Both countries will continue to supply US with well educated technical workforce and relatively inexpensive technology products - but that's about it
Never.
This magnificent country of ours is perfect place for a capital to grow and multiply unhindered by political or cultural considerations and restraints, just like the yeast grows in the presence of warmth and sugar.
Take the same capital and place it anywhere in the world - it will say f*ck u
, I want go back where it's warm and cuddly - the US.Whether America is no longer, or is headed to future where it will not be, a superpower.
Hydroblunt, you are correct. Globalism is not a haven for fair trade when US factories with millions of living-wage jobs are expected to compete against foreign factories with wages of pennies-on-the-dollar compared to the US, governmental interference minimized and enviromental considerations dismissed. No secret why those living wage jobs suitable for anyone with a high-school diploma and strong work ethic to work a lifetime, are now gone for good.
It is easy to see why media-feeders believe the US should be the one to lower its standard of living on behalf of other countries. The problem is, those other countries do not wind up benefitting from our sacrifice. Cite Mexico, China and other cheap-labor nations.
However, you are likely to run into a wall of ignorance on this issue. I don't know a single other trader who has read the NAFTA treaty with side agreements in whole. Not one.
Unless America can rebuilt its manufacturing base, it is history in short order. Hussein is going in the opposite direction to this. McCain is clueless about it.
The article fails to account for the thousands of factories now relocated overseas, leaving those workers without equal compensation for their skills. Or did those factories just simply never exist in the 40s-70s? Or perhaps those middle-class workers simply never worked in those non-existent factories?
Watcha gonna do, retrain a metallurgy PhD to work in sales? Forget it, Slick Willy and Carla Hills tried to sell that 'retraining' crap and it didn't sell even then. You cannot retrain people to make less money and expect to keep the same economy. That only works in socialism.
You can cite any publication you like, you're not changing the mind of the person who knows more about NAFTA than anybody on ET, who lived through those years of the healthy-paying factory job. I read NAFTA in 1992.
Look, I'm not being elitest here, just because I do well in trading doesn't mean my neighbors aren't touched by globalogne. It's a game on the masses.