That's right. It's great on the top. Offshoring has created the huge wealth disparity we've seen in the past 40 years (rich getting richer, poor getting poorer). Americas middle class has been hollowed out. Destroyed by offshoring. Check any metric. This is a very bad thing. THe key to a prosperous, healthy, strong Democracy is a large, broad middle class. Banana Republics are characterized by a small wealthy elite and a huge, down-trodden underclass. That is what America is becoming. It's economic warfare.
'Unpatriotic' Ford Agrees Union Deal To Offshore American Jobs And Hire Low-Paid Workers
- Thread starter Banjo
- Start date
All true...The "benefits" are short term and transitory...You get a few decades of the perfect combination of corporate margins and consumer demand, but the trend slowly erodes those benefits and you wind up going third world South American...no middle class, just the wealthy and the impoverished...the U.S. still has those public sector unions, which are essentially the new middle class...full defined benefit pensions, exorbitant salaries and lots of disposable income...I still believe their spending has masked all of the damage in the private sector over the past decade or so.
Since when is US car manufacturing your industrial base?
My point was that the American automotive industry hasn't been a global leader for decades now. This is about cars and not semiconductors or cell phones (which is also not part US industrial core) or heavy equipment. How convenient it is to forget that Nissan, Toyota, Honda, BMW and others have opened multiple research facilities and factories in US but apparently that's inconvenient for people suffering from blind patriotism.
Its thinking like that that would take us back 60 years in the past.
1955 was a pretty good year. Detroit was humming. Thanks to post WWII Germany and Japan being obliterated. Then a funny thing happened called competition. But Detroit was still living in the past. Oh about 1995 Detroit started realizing what was going on and now they hold their own. And we Americans get to choose (a Democracy AND a free marketplace remember) the best products at the best price.
As far as Fed figures on manufacturing employment. Have you heard of a thing called automation.
No, making every consumer in America pay more money for lesser quality products is NOT going to make us a stronger country. That is upside down economic lunacy.
All that does is redistribute money from all consumers to a few manufacturing jobs. And I'm one person who is sick and tired of somebody's grand scheme to help America, being nothing more than grabbing money out of my pocket and giving it to someone else. By gov't mandate.
Paying unskilled labor 75 bucks an hour in wages and benefits to work on an assembly line is described so often as a "good job" that is being exported. NO SHIT! To stand on an assembly line and bolt a fender to a car and get payed 75 bucks and hour is a good job, alright. It's good for the guy with that job! How that's good for anyone else, I don't know. Like the guy buying the car? Is that good for him?
We live in a new world. Daytraders can't play mkt maker and make 500 grand a yr holding trades for a few minutes anymore, like they could before hft and decimals. Things change. And you can't make 75 grand a yr in wages and bennies anymore by standing on an assembly line. And I resent the hell out of govt telling me I have to pay more money for a product so someone else can have one of those "good jobs".
We'd be a stronger country if we put a few million people to work at high wages to stand on an assembly line and assemble iphones? And every other trinket we get from China?
I don't think so.
One other thing to consider. If we want our dollar to be the largest reserve currency, then we have to run large trade deficits. If we stop running large trade deficits, then we cannot be the world's foremost reserve currency any longer. It would go to whoever was running the largest trade deficits. It's an economic law.
All that does is redistribute money from all consumers to a few manufacturing jobs. And I'm one person who is sick and tired of somebody's grand scheme to help America, being nothing more than grabbing money out of my pocket and giving it to someone else. By gov't mandate.
Paying unskilled labor 75 bucks an hour in wages and benefits to work on an assembly line is described so often as a "good job" that is being exported. NO SHIT! To stand on an assembly line and bolt a fender to a car and get payed 75 bucks and hour is a good job, alright. It's good for the guy with that job! How that's good for anyone else, I don't know. Like the guy buying the car? Is that good for him?
We live in a new world. Daytraders can't play mkt maker and make 500 grand a yr holding trades for a few minutes anymore, like they could before hft and decimals. Things change. And you can't make 75 grand a yr in wages and bennies anymore by standing on an assembly line. And I resent the hell out of govt telling me I have to pay more money for a product so someone else can have one of those "good jobs".
We'd be a stronger country if we put a few million people to work at high wages to stand on an assembly line and assemble iphones? And every other trinket we get from China?
I don't think so.
One other thing to consider. If we want our dollar to be the largest reserve currency, then we have to run large trade deficits. If we stop running large trade deficits, then we cannot be the world's foremost reserve currency any longer. It would go to whoever was running the largest trade deficits. It's an economic law.
Are you suggesting US bombs Germany and Japan to ruins again. Then yes, the US auto industry would truly shine as there would be no competition. Yeah, we can all pick out data points that fit our arguments.
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