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Globalization Decimating US I.T. Jobs
mrraven writes, "According to Ronald Reagan's former deputy secretary of the treasury in this
article in Counterpunch, globalization is destroying US I.T. jobs. From the article: 'During the past five years (January 01 – January 06), the information sector of the US economy lost 644,000 jobs, or 17.4 per cent of its work force. Computer systems design and related work lost 105,000 jobs, or 8.5 per cent of its work force. Clearly, jobs offshoring is not creating jobs in computers and information technology.'" Paul Craig Roberts quotes a number of formerly pro-globalization economists who are now seeing the light of the harrowing of the US middle class. It's not limited to I.T. Roberts quotes one recanting economist, Alan Blinder, as saying that 42–56 million American service-sector jobs are susceptible to offshoring.
Of course most folks who are actually working in IT could have told you this. I know a number of folks at companies who experienced several rounds of layoffs. They have survived the layoffs, but they are also currently doing the job of two to three employees now versus prior to the layoffs. Morale is low, pay has not kept up with the cost of living increases, the cost of health care or inflation. Productivity is still there, but burnout is likely in these individuals. Other people I know that did lose their jobs ended up going back to school and getting out of IT entirely which I suspect is not an isolated situation and would lead to skewed unemployment statistics.
The thing that worries me is that this is not an isolated employment sector, and I predict that we are in more trouble than we might know. Historically we have relied on our research and development to keep this country on top technologically, but over the last five years or so, we have been reducing the amount of funding we spend on research and development, particularly in the biosciences. For example, if you were to look at NIH grant paylines, five years ago the payline was around 33%. Next year it is predicted to be anywhere from 10-14% meaning the likelihood that a researcher will obtain funding has been cut by more than half. In fact, research and education spending on the whole is down under the current White House administration. So, if we are supposed to rely on education, technology and research and development to keep our edge as a country, we are already in trouble, especially when one considers that even if we were to turn things around tomorrow, we have likely done enough damage that it will take a decade to recover.
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The IT sector hired far more people than normal as a result of the dot com boom. The IT market adjusted after the boom ended. The period they study includes the dot com crash. These jobs may simply have vanished along with the dot coms, rather than being outsourced.
How about all those Intel, AMD, Dell etc etc in Malaysia, Taiwan and around the world.
Didn't the lower cost of building all the components there help to decrease the prices of computing, encouraging demand. And wasn't the continuosly lowered cost of infrastructure/equipment an integral part of the computing/technological/information/internet revolution. Which incredibly benefited the US economically. Which provided jobs and increased jobs and increased pay scale during the late 90's and early 2000's.
So in other words:
globalization benificial to us: good
globalization detrimental to us: bad
news for ya: globalization works both fucking ways. You think jobs weren't decimated in third world/developing countries when they opened up their markets and have to compete with cheaper US products.
You benefited from it, now its someone else turns.
Or you can ask the US goverment to broke its own agreements and words, and strongarm it way to makes sure the deal is one sided. But don't put your hopes up. God knows it has never done that. And never will. well except maybe for that renmibi thing.. and that textilke subsidy thing..and...
waiting for Flamebait+7 and Troll+7
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
Are we being manipulated? If so by who...
You hit the nail on the head, there, man. The Democrats, and the clearly unthwartable propaganda machine they've built that has won them all their impressive power, have finally swayed Slashdot and CNN away from their traditionally pro-authoritarian views.
Some people will claim that a rise in political stories has something to do with the upcoming elections. Those people have clearly been bribed.
Good luck finding anything with the "Made in the USA" label. I don't remember the last time I saw it. Shoes, clothes, cars, electronics... Been to Walmart lately? When companies can get cheaper labor with little or no labor or environmental restrictions in foreign countries, then who can blame them for moving? Some say the solution is to remove labor and environmental restrictions in America. I believe that would result in the US becoming just another 3rd World nation. I figure we should bring back tarriffs. If a country has shitty labor or environmental laws, slap a tarriff on their products to make them just as expensive as their American counterparts. But I'm not an economist, so maybe I'm missing something important.
The gains from doing this are large, but very spread out. The losses are small, but concentrated. As a result, those who lose out have a big incentive to try and stop this from happening - more so than those who would gain from it. They may attempt to have the government regulate the practice. This is known to economists as rent seeking, when one group seeks the uncompensated transfer of wealth from others (people who buy IT) to themselves through government intervention. These Other People have to expend more resources to get the same things done. This is not a spectacularly noble cause, though it often is hailed in the name of "saving jobs".
But then, if our first concern should be about saving jobs, we ought to do away with computers entirely so there is more work to be done for paper-shufflers in offices. We can save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of office secretaries! Indeed, we could get rid of machines entirely and go back to simple hand tools for everything. Except, well, not.
Of course, that doesn't stop it all from happening. Take textiles. The average US family spends $160 more a year on textiles because of import quotas. Each job saved costs $221,000 a year. This is paid for by other people. Yay.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I have no problem with "globalism" PROVIDED that the country getting the jobs has the same level of regulations and protections that we have (or higher).
The problems I have with "globalism" is when companies off-shore because the other country has FEWER worker protections or environmental regulations than we do. Yeah, it's great for your CEO's bonus if you can work 10 year old kids for 12 hours a day at $5 a week making tennis shoes. But this isn't about your CEO's bonus.
We should be bringing everyone else UP to our standards rather than racing to the lowest level out there. But we are racing to the bottom. That is the problem.
Does it really matter if jobs go from LA to Las Vegas or from LA to Toronto or from LA to India? Either way, unless you are willing to follow the job and take the prevailing wage, you are still out of work.
It's a fact of life, almost any job that doesn't require your physical presence is relocateable. If the cost of moving raw materials abroad and the finished product back is low enough, and the difference in the cost of doing business is high enough, then everything else being equal you will see job migration.
If you want security from relocation, be a computer-equipment-installation technician. If you want security from offshoring, find a job that is "outsource-proof" such as certain defense-industry jobs.
The biggest issue in my mind isn't offshoring because overseas engineers work for half of what Americans charge, but offshoring of any type because costs imposed by the "American standard of living" are significantly greater than the equivalent costs in countries with a much lower standard of living. As long as we insist on things like clean air, good police protection, something approaching a "living wage" for our lowest-paid workers, good health care, safe cars, good infrastructure, etc. etc. etc., then we will have higher costs to do business here than in countries whose citizens don't demand these things. In a country or region without such costs, the cost of living will be much lower and wages can be lower while still having employees feel well-compensated.
There are parts of America with a relatively low payroll burden on companies and with relatively low costs-of-living. If your big-city job were suddenly transferred to some rural area 2000 miles away where 2/3 of your salary could let you live in a house twice the size of your existing one, but with the nearest big city 3 hours away, would you take the transfer or would you start sending out your resume? How about if it was transferred 10,000 miles away and the salary was 1/3, but even after paying for a flat the same size as the one you have now, you'd still be able to bank a huge amount each month?
Look on the bright side - the world and it's nearby neighbors are a closed system as far as the job market is concerned - no jobs are going to Alpha Centauri Prime any time soon.
I am not a troll. Just a realist.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
From the perspective of someone who is not American, this is a good thing. It means that unions in rich countries are no longer able to keep the rest of the world poor. Poor people in Romania who have excellent IT skills have the freedom and opportunity to enter the capitalist system and compete on the global market.
The Americans spent 50 years trying to win the cold war so the guy in Romania would have this opportunity. Would you now turn around and say "Sorry, we're going to be implementing some socialist protectionist measures.... we didn't expect American workers to have to compete with you".
Looking at the IT landscape, it seems clear to me that the American IT industry is the most vibrant and resilient in the world. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, HP, Wikipedia, Myspace, Youtube, etc. are organisations which saw the light of day in America. Please don't react in a spastic way when the rest of the world looks at what you're doing and tries to do something similar.
The American president keeps talking about "freedom". For me, freedom includes the freedom to compete with American workers.
Walk the walk....
If good people in other countries can do certain things better than Americans, they ought to get the work. It's up to us to compete with them (and each other) instead of whining about the competition. Globalization is helping everyone in the long run. Competition can always be painted as nasty and brutish, but it's the way we get progress. Everyone benefits from it, even if it causes job changes in the short run.
When the Japanese auto manufacturers started sending their vehicles to the United States, nobody took them seriously at first. Then American consumers realized that the Japanese were making better cars, so they started buying them in increasing numbers. The U.S. carmakers (and their unions) simply whined about the competition instead of DOING enough about it. If they had actually competed by producing products that were better than the Japanese products (in reliability, styling and a whole range of issues), they could have fought off the competition. Instead, the unions demanded that they keep their arcane work rules that saved useless jobs in the short run, but which lost a LOT more jobs in the long run. The managements remained in denial that they were that much worse than the Japanese. Even when they DID start improving, it was too little, too late. The culture in Detroit couldn't compete with the rate of change (and improvement) given to us by Honda and Toyota. American consumers benefitted from this competition. The stockholders and employees of the U.S. companies COULD have benefitted, too, but they were both too shortsighted to learn and compete.
U.S. IT is in the position that the U.S. auto industry about 30 years ago. It leads the world, so it doesn't see the need to innovate as much as it did even 10 or 20 years ago. They're arrogant and fat and happy, it seems. Now the rest of the world is starting to catch up to us. Foreigners are learning to do the same things we've been doing, but less expensively. So what's the response? The companies and the employees whine about competition. If you can't see the continued pattern (and what to do about it), you're going to have no one to blame but yourselves.
David
So, if we are supposed to rely on education, technology and research and development to keep our edge as a country, we are already in trouble, especially when one considers that even if we were to turn things around tomorrow, we have likely done enough damage that it will take a decade to recover.
Industrial recovery is not possible while we trade with non free China and your government/corporate masters have you screwed out for RD too.
GE, Microsoft and others have already started moving their research offshore. I'm talking about basic industrial research, like turbine design. "First World" Physics, no longer viable, so forget it. Brains are cheaper, and theoretically free, in Russia and India. The situation is worse in China, where people really are not free.
Our trade was supposed to set the Chinese free, but it's working the other way around. It's just business, right?, and China is just another big company. Not quite. Our big dumb companies might have you by the balls, read your email, and sell it all to big brother, but they can't put you in jail yet. That will take another dissaster like NorthWoods so that everyone is really paranoid and ready for rationing and a WW2 style command economy.
The only way out is lots of wealth creation to raise everyone's standard of living, but it's not happening. With all the mergers, wealth will continue to move to the already very rich owners of those companies. The mergers are the ultimate result of government favoritism of large companies. IT was supposed to be the poster child of new competition and robust US Performance. It has not happened because incumbent companies were allowed to crush new comers, so that "just enough" competition would be left. Now, we all sit under the M$ monopoly, two big media companies, two "broadband" companies, one electric company and a merged OPEC/ExxonMobileRoyalDoubleDutchFuck and wonder where the jobs are and why service sucks. If we can't help ourselves, we will never be able to help anyone else.
Eventually, this will get the rich too. A real depression is no fun for anyone, but those happen when wealth concentration reaches a critical level. When power is concentrated enough, the American Empire will go to war with China, kind of like the great Royal Fuck Festival that was the first World War.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You've never actually listened to Democracy Now have you? Amy Goodman has broken a lot of stories with serious investigative journalism like following the deposed president of Haiti Aristide to Jamaica after he was ousted in U.S. backed coup. Or being the first to report on the use of white phosphorus as a chemical weapon against the Iraqi people which was latter admitted by the U.S. government:
5 16227
1 7/1515223
See: http://democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/08/1
followed by: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/
As for Noam Chomsky he has been documenting U.S. war crimes in places from Nicaragua to Vietnam for 40 years now. He is an American hero and if the MSM dared to give him a voice and people were made aware of the level of violence the U.S.government has committed against the world we might see new leadership in the U.S. and live in a much more ethical country. Of course we will never see that because it would threaten the corporate bottom line.
If you were to listen to Democracy Now and read a Chomsky book you might actually learn something. Of course it's much easier to not to read or listen and just smear with a cheap ad hominem attack, right?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
It is a myth that third world workers can live like kings on $10. At least in India, the fact is that for most things that US residents would consider as necessities, the cost of those things is between 10% and 1000% higher. I speak from personal experience. I've lived in the US (as an H1-B engineer) and in India subsequently. I wanted to share some data points to help with the discussion.
Here are some of the costs:
Housing: The cost of a house in Delhi or Bangalore can range from $100K to $2 million.
As a practical example the flat I live in on the outskirts of Delhi costs, $120K and its
quality is nowhere near that of the two bedroom flat I use to live in on the outskirts
of Seattle. For example, running water is not available for more than an 45 mins a day.
The absolute quantity I am able to use is about 25 gallons per day. Compare this with my
usage of 120 gallons per day in Seattle. Electricity is only available for about 18
hours a day and typically not available when most needed (5-8 am, and 7-9 pm) BTW the
local electric utility charges me at least 2 times more per kWh.
Car: My car (a Honda) costs about $18,000. I pay an interest rate of 15% on the car loan.
It is also less safe. A better model sold in the US costs a little less. The US
model comes with a more poweful engine and is equipped with airbag. Auto insurance
will rarely cover the cost of hospitalization in the event of a serious accident. Delhi
is amongst the most dangerous cities in the world to drive in.
Internet
Connectivity:
Internet connectivity costs about the same per month as it does in the US ($20 pm for
a DSL connection), but the speeds are between 256 and 512Kbps, significantly
slower than that available in the US for a comparable price.
Several other things that relate to quality of life are poorer. But most people already know that.
My income is lower though, by a factor of about 4 to 5. (I earn about 30K a year, ).
So in sum, I'm simply poorer than I was in the US.
I am also less productive than I was in the US.
It is true that compared to the average Indian, with an income of $450 a year, I am fabulously wealthy, but that is an unfair comparison. A more appropriate comparison would be with folks similarly qualified: I am an engineer, with an undergraduate degree from a good Indian school, masters in CS from a reasonably good,(top 20) US program, and an MBA from an Ivy league school.
Nothing specatacular, but probably above average. My peers with such a background would earn significantly more.
Don't get the idea though, that I'm whining here. Indian IT is a bit like the Wild west. The
potential opportunity, for creating new businesses is enormous, and this was one of the reasons
I returned to the country. There was never better time to be a capitalist in India.
Those who oppose the H1-B program on the grounds that it takes away American jobs, and
lowers the wages for American workers, seem to be overlooking a very significant issue. The
Ah, Slashdot. I find it so ironic that the same people who are for "free software" and "free information" are also against free trade.
The idea of a nation having a comparative advantage (if you're going to talk about globalization, you might as well use the lingo) in certain markets is what this all boils down to.
Let's say you're French. The French enjoy an enormous comparative advantage in producing fine wine. The climate is right, they have the wineries already in place, they are well-known as wine producers and so on. If you own a winery in France, or work at a winery in France, or ship French wines, or even just occasionally mash grapes with your feet, you've got it made it in the shade. Your goods will find plenty of willing buyers in the global marketplace.
But here's the problem. What if you live in France and don't want to have anything to do with the wine making business? You don't know anything about wine, grapes disgust you--whatever. In fact, what if you want to just design and make automobiles? Whoops! You will have a hard time competing against the vast hordes of foreign auto makers. Your French workers will require higher wages and better benefits than their foreign counterparts. Much of the steel you need has to be imported from Germany. Your engine blocks have to come from Japan, but only after they're assembled in Canada. You're really having a hard time keeping your costs down.
Your business is going to fail, and the French government will have little choice but to see your company fall by the wayside, or else pass laws to create subsidies that explicitly favor your goods over their foreign counterparts, which is prohibited by GATT and can only be done under very specific circumstances. The French could still tax foreign goods with tariffs, but even then those are highly regulated by international authorities. No, your auto business will soon be out of business.
Globalization's answer to that French auto maker is "well, you could always make wine" and its answer to the unemployed people who worked for that auto maker is "well that's a shame, go work at a winery." Now that's pretty harsh. How do you respond to something like that? You either go work at a winery or you go riot in the streets. When companies and egghead economists alike are so gung-ho about pushing globalization, the human element seems to get lost in the shuffle.
The best argument for globalization has always been "okay then, suggest a better way." It's impossible because the alternative to the free trade system is pretty horrible: Entire industries that create goods with no useful purpose that cannot be sold overseas; a limited selection of goods for consumers; huge increases in the costs of goods for consumers due to reduced competition, and so on. If the WTO allowed for any more artificial barriers to free trade than tariffs, that is exactly what would happen. And even then, eventually getting rid of tariffs anyway, and removing the last barrier to free trade is the stated goal of WTO/GATT.
Those who embrace the trendy new rhetoric that decries our current free trade system either know nothing about it or refuse to acknowledge how much we truly benefit from it. It is far easier, I suppose, to shill the globalization issue to promote another political motive. Don't be used.
Really? Where do you get your definitions from? Because a "depression" or even a recession (a long term recession constitutes a depression) are not caused by anything like that. Oh wait, you're quoting John Maynard Keynes. Riiiight, I see. Is that what they're teaching in school now? That "hoarding" causes recessions? Good heavens.
When power is concentrated enough, the American Empire will go to war with China
Will it now. Just a quick exercise for you - try to calculate how much of the US economy depends on the Chinese economy. Then do the same calculation backwards. Now tell us about this "war". What are the justifications for it again? Why does it happen? When? How exactly? Please do elaborate. Unless you're just jumbling together "hot topic" words to get some karma like you always do...
M$ monopoly
Good old twitter. China is evil, "big dumb companies" are evil, "M$" is evil, Kermit the frog is evil and everything should be free. Same broken record but with impressive-sounding words and lotsa links. Karma every time.
For anyone that has forgotten, you could get an IT job during dot.com if you could just spell cumputer^Wcomputer. For a more realistic point of reference, choose a point before dot.com, say Jan 1999. Do that and you;ll probably notice some growth.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm an american who would really like to go abroad, as it turns out. I have a wide variety of IT and programming skills, but no management experience. I'm very close to quitting IT and teaching english or something else to achieve this goal, but I'm pretty good at all this computer crap. I hate to ditch what I'm good at.
But guess what? Although I speak fluent german, I can't work in Germany or Austria. A company has to advertise for 3 months for an EU resident to fill a slot before they can sponsor a visa for me. And I'm not even picky--I can't find an IT/programming job for an american anywhere outside of the US from Cape Town to Kabul.
Want to bitch about globalization? Bitch about the last trade barrier: Labor. Globalization currently benefits CEO's because the resource they have to start the game, money, is now easily transfered. But labor isn't allowed to be transfered--labor might as well be opium for all the free trade associated with it, but with more positions available. I, for one, can't fucking wait until that shit ends, and I can whore myself out to whomever I please, wherever I please.
The cost of reproduction has risen by a factor of nearly 4 since I was born in 1954, fertilizing the portfolios of landlords, or more properly, land barons, with the decomposing marriages, fetuses and sometimes bodies of the bulk of the baby boom generation, leaving a demographic hole being filled with imported slaves* by those same landlords.
The baronage calls this "progress", even as as the price of homes was removed from the consumer price index while introducing CPI factors like "hedonic value" and "imputed rent" to make it appear "real" earnings have increased over the time period of demographic collapse and loss of ethnic enfranchisement to imported laborers for the baronage.
I call it genocide.
*It is really being too kind to the baronage to call the imported laborers "slaves" since the baronage doesn't have to pay for their human capital upkeep--the rest of us do via social programs. Southern Plantation owners were far more moral than these sorry excuses for human beings.
Figures from my insurance agent sent to me on my birthday:
The two big ticket necessities:
3 bedroom house price increase: 22 times
1954 $ 10,250
2006 $219,375
car price increase: 18 times
1954 $ 1,567
2006 $28,000
Even if we grant that the quality/cost ratio of manufactured goods has gone up so much during the last 52 years that $1,567 for a used car in 2006 is as good as a new car was in 1954, it doesn't bring down the sum of the 2 major debt-service items much:
house+car increase: 19 times
1954 $ 11,817 =$1,567+$10,250
2006 $220942 =$1,567+$219,375
So the debt-service load in a family household has gone up nearly a factor of 20 in the last 52 years.
And don't kid yourself that it didn't hit hardest at the peak child-bearing potential of the mid-to-late boomers who were paying 20% mortgage rates when they were trying to form families in the early 1980s.
Look at these foreclosure rates peaking within the first 10 years of boomer's trying to form families:
Year $ value of mortgage loans foreclosed (in millions)
1965 944
1966 1,034
1967 957
1968 865
1969 364
1970 321
1971 438
1972 478
1973 577
1974 715
1975 1,086
1976 1,129
1977 868
1978 723
1979 683
1980 917
1981 1,563
1982 3,282
1983 4,240
1984 6,163
1985 8,675
1986 13,942
1987 18,373
1988 18,859
1989 18,189
1990 22,862
1991 17,105
1992 12,408
1993 6,852
1994 3,422
1995 2,506
1996 2,138
1997 1,805
1998 1,470
1999 1,022
2000 900
Has household income kept up? Hardly...
average household income increase: 13 times
1954 $ 4,137 (one wage earner)
2006 $54,000 (two wage earners)
So household income has gone up only about 70% as much as the essential household debt service in the last 52 years.
Oh, but wait--that "household" in 1954 was one income and the income was relatively stable--the woman stayed at home and raised the kids.
How can we factor not only that both parents must work in 2006 and not only are each of their jobs less secure, but the effective income of the household, adjusting for risk of not being able to meet debt payments for a substantial period of time?
Here's a realistic option: We can reasonably say that the odds of both parents being out of work at any given point of time in 2006 is comparable to the odds of the father being out of work in 1954. Hence the reliable household income--the income stream that can service debt without foreclosure--is approximately 1/2 of the household income. Certainly we can say that there w
Seastead this.
I hear job growth in the military is huge.
Hey, you're the first to mention the concept for which I was looking, so you get the reply:
This is correct, in my opinion. The big myth - which was not cited in the article - is that you can actually maintain an economy with high standard of living based on "high value" services alone. The key to an economy is really its ability to produce wealth - hard, physical, tangible goods that, as you said, actually raise the standard of living of that society's citizens. All the dentists and doctors in the world cannot help you if you don't have good tools, good infrastructure, or even good food.
I remember from one of my early economics classes that the only wealth-producing endeavours known are agriculture and manufacturing - the rest of economic activity just shuffles that wealth around.
If the economy of a country switches to being service-based, it is then a slave to the actual wealth-producing nations, because if the nations that have the wealth no longer need or want the services, with what is the service-based economy left? The reason the US economy used to be so robust is it had a good balance between service and wealth production. The shift away from producing wealth locally (I don't mean by ownership, I mean physically) is probably a greater risk than most are able to recognize.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Well, doesn't it? Hoarding causes that money not to participate in the economy. At the same time, the money is still there, so the value of the money that does circulate stays the same. So, in effect, less value is participating in the economy. Isn't that a recession? I'm just asking; I'm not an economist.
:)
If someone hoards a huge amount of money and keeps it out of circulation, then the market adjusts and starts to behave as if the money no longer exists, causing deflation, which is an increase in an individual dollar's purchasing power. Now, inflation and deflation are the opposite of each other, and both have their pros and cons.
Inflation is good at fighting unemployment, as the continual decrease in purchasing power is an effective way of circumventing minimum wage laws. E.g. if the minimum wage is 5 dollars per hour, and there was an inflation of 5% during the following year, then the real wage, i.e. the purchasing power of the 5 dollars have decreased by 5%. Thus employers are now effectively paying 5% less to their employees, even though the amount of dollars paid is the same, and this means that it now becomes profitable to employ people for less productive work, resulting in an decrease of unemployment.
The downside of inflation is the reduction in PP, and the higher demands on ROI. If inflation is 5% a particular year, and a company's profits grow only 3% that year, then the real profit of the company has decreased. This also works on a individual level, i.e. I have 5000$ today, wait a year, and then I have lost 5% of my wealth, even though the amount of dollars I have is unchanged. What this results in is that any investment that has a ROI that is less than inflation, is actually making you poorer. No need to wonder why stockholders/owners/investors demand ever-increasing profits from corporations, inflation is the culprit.
Deflation is pretty much the exact opposite. If there's a deflation of 5%, then even investments with a negative ROI are profitable as long as deflation is higher. This makes having money lying on a bank account a good investment, as you'll be able to buy more stuff with that money after a year.
Of course this also increases unemployment, at least unless the minimum wages are decreased at the same rate as deflation.
Another bad/good side of inflation/deflation (depending on if you have debt or have borrowed money to others) is that as the PP of a dollar increases, the real size of a debt also increases, which is bad for those who have debt. Again the opposite is true.
IANA(K)E, which could be seen as a good thing, depending on which school you follow.