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Apple's Top Assembler Foxconn Confirms Plans for US Investment, To Create 50,000 Jobs (bloomberg.com)
Foxconn, the biggest assembler of Apple devices, is in preliminary discussions to make an investment that would expand the company's U.S. operations. From a report on Bloomberg: The disclosure came hours after an announcement by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and SoftBank Group's Masayoshi Son to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 jobs. The money will come from SoftBank's $100 billion technology fund, which was announced in October, a person familiar with the matter said. A document that Son held up after the meeting in Trump Tower also included the words "Foxconn," "$7 billion" and "50,000 new jobs" in addition to SoftBank's numbers. "While the scope of the potential investment has not been determined, we will announce the details of any plans following the completion of direct discussions between our leadership and the relevant U.S. officials," Foxconn said in a statement. "Those plans would be made based on mutually-agreed terms."
Only fair.
Of course the jobs will almost all be staffed by employment agencies that hire only H1-B and H2-B workers, but we can still claim we created jobs!
Finally with an entrepeneur taking the reins we may be staring down a new golden age for America... withtout all the BS and fake numbers spewed by the recent federal government regimes. Unemployment at less than 5%? Puh-leeze. I guess maybe if you count crap work and part time jobs with no benefits. Trump is going to take the world by the balls and basically start squeezing and say "stop fucking us over OR ELSE. Now would you like to talk?"
I suppose this doesn't have anything to do with current regulators blocking of Spint's merger with T-Mobile. Softbank president Son owns Sprint, so perhaps he's looking for a little favor when Trump assigns new folks over at the FCC.
God, it's going to be an awfully big sales and marketing department.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
50000 workers, at $25000 is 1.2 billion per year.
These 'factories' are not going to be using employees at $10/hr to assemble PCBs.
I note a story earlier this year "One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post. ".
Most of the putative 50000 jobs are going to be construction work building the factories.
The factories are then going to be - if not totally lights-out - reducing employees to the bare minimum.
If you're building a new factory in the USA, and contemplating employing workers at $10/hr for 5 years (three shifts), that's $500K per station or so (probably more costing all costs of employees.
If you have even 100 employees constantly doing a very similar job, you can easily afford to spend 5 million developing a custom robotic solution, and deploying it for another $5m ($50K/station), and come very considerably out in front.
($10/h*24h*365*5 = 438k. Employers taxes and obligations add to this comfortably exceeding the 500k figure for three shifts)
It's easy to create 50,000 jobs if you don't have to pay them well or hire locally. When those 50,000 seats are all filled by domestic workers making at least market rate, then it is time to call it a good job.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
From China or from India. Doesn't matter as long as they are not native speakers of English.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
That's a million dollars a job. Seems like a lot.
Bullshit. 50,000 jobs? To save shipping costs for small electronic products? Bullshit. This is another Trump lie.
I don't respond to AC's.
Oh - no - they won't.
The easy jobs are generally easy to automate.
If you have 'put into box' type jobs, and are paying 300 people $10/hr - then it doesn't take much time at all to instead spend $5m designing robots and $5m installing them, and they then work 24*7.
The 50000 jobs are a lie - they will perhaps be in constructing the factories.
Them there's the weasel words.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
So shifting jobs to low wage countries has come a full circle.
bickerdyke
So much crying and so little understanding of systems theory.
Sure, americans want more money than chinese children. However, what does it cost to support all the unemployed people and to fight the higher crime and other problems that come with unemployment?
Also, money goes in circles. The american worker paid well will spend a large part of his salary on some other american business (say, the fast food store near work, the gas station on his way to work, etc.) while the chinese child spends his money somewhere in China.
Ford was the first to understand that paying his workers well would actually give him an advantage - if they can afford to buy one of his cars, they will. The same is true of this. Maybe the price of iPhones will rise - or maybe more people will buy them and the price stay the same. Or something inbetween.
It's too easy to just cry that prices will rise. In fact, that's usually a strawman.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Foxconn said it would cost 50-100% more to assemble, not that the total overall cost of the finished product would be 50-100% higher. From some estimates when the info was originally released (too lazy to look) assembly costs were $10-20/unit for the iPhone. Doubling that does not seem too bad, especially given the 30-40% markup Apple enjoys on the product. Also, I would assume that were Trump's tax policies implemented some of that would be made back in the form of lower taxes.
First, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple wasn't involved in this from inception on the grounds that rival companies have been copying Apple within weeks of a new product release if not before. Ergo, Foxconn in China must be the leakiest place on the planet. China is also one of the worst places for intellectual property rights. So, by manufacturing in the U.S., Apple might be able to maintain control over the IP. Maybe.
Second, with regards to people laughing when Trump initially said that Apple would be making product in country, given his deep business experience, he likely knew this was going to happen early on. Good business people know things before everyone else does.
Why should USC be pushed out of work by Mexicans working under the table with little to no employment taxes, no workers comp (just show up at the ER and don't pay)
Stories are leaving out what concessions Trump offered, which made Foxconn decide that this would be an improvement from the status quo.
The "magic" wand might not be magic at all; maybe it's a tax break or the company gets a free "write whatever law you want, and I promise to sign it" or something like that.
Until we know how the trick works, we're going to be speculating all kinds of crazy things (as I did above). This would be a good job for journalists. You know that once people find out the cost, there's going to be another flamefest about whether the payment was a good idea or a bad one.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
US labor laws are better then the ones in China and they have to pay OT as well.
Queue the news story about Trump taking credit for this project that has been in the works for well over a year now.
The Mind Is Speculative and Interpretive. So speculate all you want and interpret this 00101101 01001110!
70 million? 700 million? How many US firms is this displacing, this time? How many US employees is this indirectly putting out of work? Simple answer: More than the gain, because that is part of the definition of inefficiency and is what happens when political policy drives against real economic development.
But who's gonna be making the nets to be used to catch people jumping from the windows?
but are Americans willing to pay 50%-100% more for their electronics
No, but they are willing to increase the deficit and debt by allowing government subsidies to companies employing Americans. I suspect that's what will happen with more and more of these deals.
China is now moving manufacturing jobs to America to exploit the cheap labor force? Congratulations! America's has now secured it's spot as an official third world country, complete with strongman dictator, tribal/racial unrest, poor public education and non-existent public healthcare. I fully expect an outbreak of malaria any day now.
They're in North America so it will be Zika, not malaria.
Give a person a fancy title and they will work for peanuts.
No, build your plant in a county surrounded by other counties that all have no other realistic job options and people will flock to you, even at minimum wage with no benefits working 7 days a week. It's how Toyota & Honda build cheep cars in their southern factories after all.
The easy jobs are generally easy to automate.
The easy (for humans) jobs are the the most difficult to automate. Difficult jobs in very narrow, highly specialized fields have already been automated. My $35 raspberry pi running mathematica does a better job at solving math problems than I do, and I spent decades learning how to do it, yet where's the automation that cooks my dinner and cleans and puts away the dishes?
Right now how much does the government get in taxes from a factory that does not exist?
$0
After the factory is built, let's say the government gets just $1 a year in taxes from the factory. How is that not still better than today? And of course we know the company will be paying more that that...
If tax breaks mean the factory, and the jobs to build it, and the jobs to maintain it, and the jobs created by shipping material in and products out, gets built how is that not inherently better no matter what "tax breaks" are given?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The suicide rate at Foxconn during 2010 remained lower than that of the general Chinese population at the time[6] as well as all 50 states of the United States.[38]
The american worker paid well will spend a large part of his salary on some other american business
You mean like how I spend 90% of my income on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean goods via Amazon?
Much factory work - especially where you have a hundred workers doing the same thing - is very vulnerable to automation.
This is a much, much more constrained problem (or often can be designed to be so) than a general cooking robot.
The suicide rate at Foxconn during 2010 remained lower than that of the general Chinese population at the time[6] as well as all 50 states of the United States.[38]
Because it disrupts the competitive market
How doe s factory " disrupt the competitive market" in a market where most factories are winding down or closing? Where much factory and construction labor sits idle?
increasing costs for every other party
Are you writing this out of a fifty year old textbook or something? Give a concrete example of people who's costs increase when an Apple assembly factory is built in the U.S. Are you saying you are worried iPhone or Mac purchasers are going to have to pay a bit more?
It disrupts the revenue of better managed companies that are not reliant on tax breaks
SLAP. Back to reality, this is a FACTORY. It's not building anything that "better managed companies" are selling because there is no U.S. competition for Apple at this point... are you worried abut the "better managed company" Samsung???
An Apple factory would mean no less in taxes being paid by other companies and would mean more government revenue from Apple, along with many, many more jobs (some permanent). You have to be eight shades of crazy to look at that and not be pleased.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except here it will be robots jumping out of the windows.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Car makers have been doing this for years. Manufacturers like Honda and BMW have plants to build cars for the domestic market. It make good business and political sense.....
love is just extroverted narcissism
Bill, we know you wanted to be the "first lady", but you'll just have to enjoy your retirement now. Oh, btw, how's that foundation doing now that you don't have political leverage?...time will tell.
Just another day in Paradise
"Stories are leaving out what concessions I imaged Trump offered"
FTFY...otherwise citation required.
Just another day in Paradise
Very pleased TFA does NOT tell us who to give credit for on this.
I think Mr. average reader will figure it out.
Bothered me a lot when I went to news.yahoo.com during a major stock dip and the headline was "This isn't Obama's fault." So I only learned what the news was after reading past the editorial headline. I'm kind of pleased to see these opinion pushers disguised as news companies sink and fail.
Will the $50 billion include suicide nets, or will the taxpayers be on the hook for those?
I agree with a systemic look. Which is why I'm against state-aided companies just to keep people employed. It's economically inefficient.
Despite what people think, moving production to a cheaper location (like China) isn't just beneficial to the Chinese. If you follow economic theory, free-trade isn't just good for exports, it's good on the import side as well. Because you get cheaper goods for the same quality.
You don't want to get rid of that. You don't want to slow down the economy by making goods more expensive. What you *want* is to allow companies to make tons of profit, *tax* that profit and use that money to pay people who were unemployed due to jobs moving away.
In that scenario, you grow the overall net amount of wealth and use tax and UBI policy to distribute the wealth.
In the scenario of using tax money to incentivize where manufacturing goes, you shrink the overall net wealth (because manufacturers are being less efficient in terms of money spent per goods produced) just to distribute wealth to those who would've been unemployed.
Systemically, it's less efficient to go the later route than the former. Economically speaking.
In this case, it's Saudi Arabia taking on the debt. This has little to do with Trump and more to do with the Saudi's being desperate and needing to diversify from their single source of income (oil, which is bringing them less and less money). They see this as a 100B$ investment in the US that they can reap returns from. It's a good thing but again, less to do with Trump (though he's taking credit for it).
The U.S. economy has been on an upward tick for a few years now and Trump is going to have the easiest job of any President before him. He just has to not fuck it up.
That's right, our factory output is currently almost identical to 2008 levels (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS), yet our factory employment is still way down.
Our factory jobs have been given over to automation and increased productivity within our own country.
Where does he actually say he opposes the asianification of Silicon Valley? He doesn't say that there. Bannon and Trump are discussing foreign students studying in America. Trump says they come here to study, get degrees, and then we lose them, to which Bannon replies with that line you quoted about Silicon Valley CEO's being from Asia. He does not say whether he thinks it's good or bad. He does not say that he opposes it. It sounds more like he's refuting Trump's claim about losing them. So do you have anything else, or was that it?
For the whole bring jobs back idea, honestly, it doesn't sound like a bad thing... of all the alternatives, this one sounds the most sensible I guess.
Trump would never be able to force Apple (and other electronics companies) to bring all the manufacturing currently done in places like Shenzhen to the US... that would not only require absurd ammounts of taxation plus building up from scratch entire cities worth of infrastructure, you'd also need to close deals with a whole bunch of third party manufacturers to make it happen at absurd costs.
An iPhone - as well as several other smartphones, tablets, laptops and whatnot - is nothing more than a huge assembly of parts from different brands on the hardware side. It works in China and has to happen there because manufacturing of all these third party parts happen closeby.
The best case scenario I can see for companies like Apple bringing back a few jobs to the US would be by closing some sort of deal for them to build assembly centers in the US. Parts would still have to be shipped from China, and this will still come with a huge overhead in production costs, but for a company the size of Apple it could probably still be done.
It isn't a great move in a general sense though. It'll make Apple products more expensive, lots of overhead costs with no advantages (other than the job openings), costumers will definitely pay for this, and it doesn't make any sense from a business standpoint. And the whole thing will make less sense for tech companies that don't operate like Apple - don't have a cult following, charges closer to manufacturing costs, etc.
You see, Brazil has similar type operations. We have importation taxes here that can get up to 120% the original product costs. It's dumb protectionism. What the brazilian government did over the years was closing deals with electronics companies to bring some assembly factories into the country. It didn't really work. Electronics "made in Brazil" got shit reputation because it has always been outdated and more shoddily made than chinese counterparts. Tons of brazilian brands went bankrupt and lives in the margin being equated with generic no name chinese brands. They end up being as expensive as foreign products because of overhead costs to import all parts necessary, keep wages at the national minimum, among other stuff.
It's just how the economy of electronics works these days. Specially for devices like smartphones and tablets, your assembly line needs to be close to where components are being made. This allows for a quick revision and upgrade turnaround. If you take assembly factories to the other side of the world, the upgrade cycle of several lines of products will have to change.
Like I said though, this is probably the most sensible choice among several others to bring some of the jobs back to the US. Foxconn will just open a token symbolic factory in the US while keeping most of it's manufacturing still in China, Apple will deal with the extra costs, and the end consumer will pay the price. Apple also already handles well not having the latest and greatest specs since it controls hardware and software by itself, and their price point is flexible enough already.
Here, mod this down, too. I need to take away your modpoints before you use them to hurt someone who won't get another shitload of upmods plenty soon enough.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When a country runs a trade deficit, it receives foreign currency, which is useless in another country. To be of value, these foreign reserves must be invested back into the country running a trade deficit.
The first suicide nets on a building in the U.S. Will the nets be for Humans or the Robots? Enjoy your new Iphone either way.
It sounds like you're saying that I'm not just speculating on what exactly Trump offered (and I totally admitted that tax breaks, influence in our government, etc were just example ideas, but hey, those are both pretty common ones so they're at least plausible), but that I'm imagining that he offered anything at all.
Is that right? We're not arguing about the details are, but rather, we're arguing that details even exist? I think I'm probably misunderstanding you.
My whole complaint was that the article was vague, saying things like
and
and so everyone is going to wonder what Foxconn's terms/details are. But if you needed a citation that there will be terms -- that TANSTAAFL is still a thing in our world -- then I guess the above quotations are the evidence. I cite TFA.
I'm not getting it, am I? What am I not understanding?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
and it was negotiated BY OBAMA, not Trump, is something needing to be mentioned.
Yes, let's deport the Orange one back to Germany.
You don't want to get rid of that. You don't want to slow down the economy by making goods more expensive. What you *want* is to allow companies to make tons of profit, *tax* that profit and use that money to pay people who were unemployed due to jobs moving away.
Have you thought that through?
So in the end, you will make everything abroad, only companies earn money, and everyone lives from the taxes? I don't think that is a sustainable economic model.
What you want is a balance between a strong local economy and beneficial trade. You want to import cars from Germany because they just make the best cars, and movies from Hollywood because they make the best movies (bear with me, it's only an example) and iPhones from China because they make the best electronics. But you want to grow your food locally because shipping it halway around the world doesn't improve its quality, and everything where it doesn't matter where it is made you want to make locally because global shipping is a major contributor to climate change and it's just crazy.
You do not want people permanently on unemployment benefits. There is no imaginable scenario where that is beneficial to anyone. You want unemployment to be a transition phase, for people between jobs.
There is more to the system then just who makes profits. There is also the psychological damage of unemployment, there is the fact that you become dependent on your suppliers, there is the fact that you don't want to lose the capability of manufacturing, even if outsourcing somewhere else would be cheaper, there is the whole insanity of global trade which would be prohibitively expensive in its current form if most of the cost (especially the environmental one) wouldn't be externalized.
There are reasons beyond profit that should guide an economy. The pure quarterly-profit perspective is the main damage the financial industry has done to the world. We now all think the way that stock brokers do, without realizing how narrow and limited their perspective is.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Really? Your house is chinese, your gasoline japanese and your food korean? I mean, not by taste but manufactured there? That's amazing.
You might spend 90% of your disposable income on some electronics from Asia, but for the average household, that is about 20% or so of the total income. The rest goes for rent (or mortgage), food, taxes, insurances and other stuff that is part of the local economy.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
. It also makes him a huge liability if they run into financial difficulty
History proves you wrong. Fords model worked, your bullshit is just that.
Considering that i device sales have flatlined or in some cases decreased,
And Apple is still insanely profitable, so your point is what, exactly?
Not many people gives a shit where it's made - they just want it cheap.
That is my point. Because it's been drilled into our heads that profit aka "buy cheap" is the only margin of success, the only thing important. My mother still bought her meat and vegetables at farms whenever she could, because knowing where it comes from and being able to trust its quality was another important value. Having an actual business relation used to be important, now we just use some price comparison website to save ten cents. But when you buy the same stuff from the same guy all the time, things become possible that Amazon won't do for you. That has value.
There are a few areas left where more than profit thinking is alive. Many people go to the same restaurants again and again, even if they're not the cheapest, but they're the best (in food quality, taste, atmosphere, whatever is important to you). I've had restaurants where I can sit down, say hi to the owner and order "the usual", and I don't care if there's another restaurant nearby where the food is ten cents cheaper.
Yes, not many people care. But maybe they should. Maybe we should pay the real price of global trade. Just putting a price on the ecological damage of these container ships (have you seen them? What comes out of your cars exhaust pipe is refreshing clean air compared to theirs) would instantly make local manufacturing economically interesting again.
People don't yet make the connection between the social systems downfall and the increase in global trade. Or that them buying cheap shit on Amazon is the reason their uncle is out of a job. Or that there is an inherent contradiction in the shouts of politicians who a) want you to earn less money and b) want you to spend more on consumption.
If you put people out of a job because you outsourced the factory to a low-income country, there are less people left to buy whatever your factory makes. It really is that simple.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Except here it will be robots jumping out of the windows.
Incorrect! Everyone knows that robots use suicide booths (with the quarter tied to a string so they can yank it back). Bite my shiny metal...
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
We'll see about all that in a year. We'll also see how blue states are likely getting these 50,000 jobs.
All of these jobs are related to venture capital. So it is very likely all of them will be in blue, metropolitan areas (sorry Rust Belt, no soup for you.)
So in the end, you will make everything abroad, only companies earn money, and everyone lives from the taxes?
I don't think I advocated for *everything* abroad. Simply things that *can* be done abroad more efficiently (generally equates to lower cost). You can think of it as a nationless scenario, where things are produced in the places they're most efficient and best at being produced. Just like within the U.S. you want your almonds to be grown in CA, your silicon design in various hubs and your auto manufacturing in SC and (more so again) Detroit, you'd want to take that model globally. The equivalent of "stop outsourcing" would be like Wyoming blocking imports of almonds from CA just because it wants its own local almond farmers to have business.
What you want is a balance between a strong local economy and beneficial trade.
I'm arguing that free trade finds that balance. The U.S. will invariably be able to do certain things better than anywhere else in the world. The world will naturally import that from the U.S. China will invariably do other things better, so the rest of the world buys that from China. Same with Germany. The point is, let free trade and supply/demand make the decisions of which nation produces what, not tariffs or governments.
But you want to grow your food locally because shipping it halway around the world doesn't improve its quality
If there's truly no loss of quality or cost of growing overseas vs locally then the local farmer will always win. The truth is that for many foods, other nations *can* do produce it more efficiently. Economically, it's better to let them do it and ship it. If your concerns are environmental (and I share those concerns) then impose carbon (and other pollutant) taxes such that the price of externalities like environmental damage are included in the calculation of cost. Once you setup the right framework, you let the market decide. Instead of a web of trade rules that don't get updated often setting "who should produce what".
You do not want people permanently on unemployment benefits.
People *are* permanently unemployed. Not a large percentage of the population but unemployment has never been 0. Ever. I'd say what well-intentioned tariffs we've passed to try to keep unemployment down aren't working very well. And with the upcoming onslaught of automation...I don't see how you *can* keep people from being unemployed for long periods of time.
Rather than cling onto the idea that everyone needs to be employed (when reality obviously isn't letting that happen), perhaps it's time to revisit how we make sure every citizen is taken care of in a post-industrial society and this idea that "everyone needs to work".
There is more to the system then just who makes profits.
Of course there is. I'm talking about wealth, not corporate profit. Not money -- that's only supposed to loosely represent wealth. Trade and technology are the 2 pillars that create wealth: it invents new things (that either generates new resources for people to consume or stretches current resources to further utility) and efficiently allocates resources to where they have the most impact.
Globalization generates wealth. It doesn't address how that's distributed. That's where government *should* step in, the part about distribution. But you don't wanna kill the golden goose in order to divide the eggs up more evenly....
The equivalent of "stop outsourcing" would be like Wyoming blocking imports of almonds from CA just because it wants its own local almond farmers to have business.
I agree that the question isn't borders. If you are in Texas, northern Mexico is more "local" than NYC. But in either case, China is not local.
People *are* permanently unemployed. Not a large percentage of the population but unemployment has never been 0. Ever. I'd say what well-intentioned tariffs we've passed to try to keep unemployment down aren't working very well. And with the upcoming onslaught of automation...I don't see how you *can* keep people from being unemployed for long periods of time.
The part that's never zero is called "structural unemployment", and was mentioned in the part that you cut. People between jobs, people who are moving, etc.
But unemployment-because-you-cant-find-a-job is not god-given, and in fact in various countries around the world there have been periods when this unemploymend was zero.
"the upcoming onslaught of automation" - the 60s called. They want their argument back.
Rather than cling onto the idea that everyone needs to be employed (when reality obviously isn't letting that happen), perhaps it's time to revisit how we make sure every citizen is taken care of in a post-industrial society and this idea that "everyone needs to work".
Oh, I agree on that. I've had periods in my life without a formal job (self-employed, my own small company, not working very much) that were wonderful except for the not-much-money part. If that were somehow covered, I'd immediately go back to working 20 hours a week, or 80 hours a week on stuff that I love.
Trade and technology are the 2 pillars that create wealth
How we are all caught in the Silicon Valley mantra and the Venture Capitalist religion. Most of the really large and powerful companies in the world are not called Google and Facebook. They are energy companies, food companies, and a dozen others. Trade and technology matter, but you buy an iPhone every year while you buy food every day.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I agree that the question isn't borders. If you are in Texas, northern Mexico is more "local" than NYC. But in either case, China is not local.
But you're arguing for placing pre-emptive barriers on what you think are "the right level of local". I'm saying, if you have open trade borders and price in the cost of externalities (like a carbon tax), then the market will work itself out in terms of where the "right level of local source" is.
The part that's never zero is called "structural unemployment", and was mentioned in the part that you cut. People between jobs, people who are moving, etc.
But unemployment-because-you-cant-find-a-job is not god-given, and in fact in various countries around the world there have been periods when this unemploymend was zero.
"the upcoming onslaught of automation" - the 60s called. They want their argument back.
I don't know if I buy that. Employment participation rates vary from decade to decade. They vary because people give up on finding a job, not because they don't want one. You may be right that those *with no choice but to have a job* (breadwinner for the family) parts of the population who are systemically unemployed can reach 0, but that's not full employment. Moreover, it's not consistent. You're always going to have periods lasting as long as a decade where some giant shift (such as globalization, or automation) will wipe out entire job sectors. So even if your argument is "those jobs will eventually be replaced", you need *some* solution to the decade-long vacuum those things created. And I don't think impeding progress Luddite-style is the answer. Nor do I think impeding progress "anti-trade" style is the answer either. It's more economically efficient during those times to do something like UBI.
How we are all caught in the Silicon Valley mantra and the Venture Capitalist religion. Most of the really large and powerful companies in the world are not called Google and Facebook. They are energy companies, food companies, and a dozen others. Trade and technology matter, but you buy an iPhone every year while you buy food every day.
This isn't a Silicon Valley idea. Notice I didn't just say tech, I said tech and trade. This is well established amongst economist. All those energy, food, etc. companies are the "trade" part; they find ways to distribute resources more efficiently. Do this simple mental experiment: what if every city was to produce their own crops of every type instead of importing/exporting from other areas? Would that be more or less efficient? Expand that idea to a global scale and you have your answer to why shipping from China or Brazil for certain things can be better.
But you're arguing for placing pre-emptive barriers on what you think are "the right level of local". I'm saying, if you have open trade borders and price in the cost of externalities (like a carbon tax), then the market will work itself out in terms of where the "right level of local source" is.
That's exactly what I'm saying. That distance and cost of transportation should matter more. The only reason we have global trade at this scale is that a log of the costs are outsourced and externalised. The economic impact of global trade is incredible, easily dwarves private cars, for example.
I don't know if I buy that. Employment participation rates vary from decade to decade.
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. When my father finished schools, company representatives were waiting in front of the schools to catch young men (mostly, at that time) immediately and offer them contracts. We were literally importing foreign workers because we didn't have enough people to fill all the available jobs.
but that's not full employment.
That's semantics. Nobody cares how many people have a job or not. What matters is if those who are looking for a job can find one or not. Employment as a percentage of population makes no sense at all (children, pensioners, etc.).
And I don't think impeding progress Luddite-style is the answer. Nor do I think impeding progress "anti-trade" style is the answer either.
We know that globalisation isn't the answer, either.
But here's the thing: The more self-sufficient you are, as a country or continent or just ill-defined local region, the less you will be dragged down when some men in suits made a bad gamble at the casino called stock exchange, which by all rights should have zero effect on the real economy.
what if every city was to produce their own crops of every type instead of importing/exporting from other areas? Would that be more or less efficient?
Once you price in long-distance trade at something resembling the real cost to the planet, local crops are suddenly a lot more efficient. Ignore money and prices for the moment, argue just with natural resources, working time, etc. - things that are real. Now explain me how eating meat from cows bred in South America on wheat brought in from Russia can by any means you choose be more efficient than meat from local cows fed local wheat.
Expand that idea to a global scale and you have your answer to why shipping from China or Brazil for certain things can be better.
For certain things, sure.
For everything? Not without a distortion factor, which is the monetary system.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org