Amortized over a decade or more of work, $1 trillion doesn't seem so bad. Especially considering $100bn/year is a fraction of what we spend on our military.
You have to look at production capacity as well. Out of the 2.0 million cars Toyota sold in North America in 2003, 1.3 million were made in North America. Out of its 6.0 million card production capacity, 22% of it is in North America. For Honda, 80% of its North American sales are made in North America.
In any case, I wasn't trying to make some sort of point about Toyota keeping jobs in the US. My point was that Toyota and other foreign car manufacturers are beat our car industry, even though they're not taking advantage of cheap labor to do it. Take a look at Their production numbers. 88% of those are in high-cost regions like the North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Thus, they can't be taking advantage of cheap third-world labor to out-compete us. Instead, they simply seem to be better at building cars then we are. My point is that we've got a lot more problems than outsourcing. If outsourcing destroys the American middle class, it'll be because there is nothing else that the American middle class is good at.
I'm a pragmatist. Social policies are a trade-off between maximum possible production, and social well-being. Modern economics basically requires at least some level of social policy. On the other hand, obstructions to free trade are just a kick in the nuts for most everyone involved. Ergo, I'm against it. Its cheaper to just let them live off welfare then to keep jobs around that we don't need.
As for Europe --- yes, the people are making noise about free trade. But the governments seem to be holding out against that nonsense, and pushing ahead. That's one of the nice things about representative Republics --- you aren't always at the whim of the drolling masses.
If we keep believing those same old arguments for laissez-faire capitalism we're going to end up like Brazil, Mexico, or one of the banana republics, in which a tiny percentage of the population owns everything in the country. Do we really want that here? The problem with our system is not laissez-faire capitalism, because we don't have it. We have way too many asnine regulations on the economy (along with some not-asnine ones). For example:
1) Farm subsidies 2) Subsidies to car manufacturers (just let Ford/GM/etc die already) 3) Tarrifs on steel 4) etc.
The other part of the problem is that there is a narrowing number of things that we are good at. We haven't been good at making cars in decades. Airbus is catching up to us on the airplane front. The Japanese are stronger in the consumer electronics front. We still own the computer industry, but that's why the.com bust hurt us so bad. Do you think all those countries are better than us at these markets because they're exploiting cheap foreign labor? Yeah, because German labor is so cheap. Toyota's factories are in Oklahoma for god's sake! So what is it?
It seemed as though you were suggesting that we do hold on to "freedom" as an ideal even at the expense of our well-being. Evidently that's not what you meant. My point is that we have a principle of freedom where you can do pretty much whatever you want, as long as you don't trample on other peoples' rights. Hence, I can justify things like anti-trust laws, because monopolies take away something I consider a right: a free economy. However, hiring practices don't trample on anyone else's rights. I don't believe that anyone has a right to a job. Ergo, I think this is an example of something where it is immoral for the majority to impose its will on the minority.
Of course it does. It harms those who've lost their jobs, and who spent years developing skills that aren't needed anymore. Okay, agreed.
That's what freedom gets you. People don't do what's best for themselves AND the whole; See, that's the thing. This whole country was founded on the idea that people doing what's best for themselves will result in the best for the whole. If that idea is not sustainable, then our democracy is a failure.
(By the way, I'm not a socialist: I despise socialism, because people who don't help themselves deserve nothing. It depends on what you define as socialist. In European-style socialism, the social saftey net is there because a free market economy naturally has a lot of churn. It makes no sense to decry socialism, then call for protectionist laws, because protectionism is the worst form of socialism. You're asking people not just to foot the bill for keeping you living decently, but to foot the bill for keeping you in a job they don't need, just so you can keep your dignity. Because that's precisely what protectionist laws have repeatedly shown to do. It costs way more to keep that job around then it would to just drop the protectionist laws and pay these people directly.
Actually, modern economists acknowledge there is a negative effect to large income disparities like those in the United States. Further, they also acknowledge that some things (namely public goods like defense, transporation, environmental protection) are not made at efficient levels in a free market, and thus require governmental intervention with tax money.
Huh? I don't know about you, but the last 10 years have been one hell of a boom. Around where I live, we still have unemployment down near 2%. Statistics would seem to back up the idea that its not just our area either.
Re-read my post. I'm saying exactly what you're saying. I'm willing to put up with a few years of pain while we adjust to outsourcing so after that time, my children, as well as myself, can reap the benefits. Because it *does* always balance out at the end.
You don't seem to understand this. It is well established in our principles of freedom that we can outlaw things that harm society as a whole. Eg: we outlaw murder. That's the justification for outlawing monopolies --- economic theory says that a free market cannot naturally handle monopolies. Similar justifications exist for taxes to fund things like defense and environmental protection. Taxes are justified as well, because there comes a point where the income disparity between classes becomes more harmful than the economic inefficiency introduced by taxation. Contrary to what you might thing, modern capitalism is not a free-for-all. It does welcome certain controls to protect the good of the whole.
However, outsourcing doesn't harm anything. You can arrive at that conclusion from a logical analysis of the situation. Ergo, it goes against our principles of freedom, because we aren't prohibiting a behavior for the greater good.
Mod this up. Its true. Similar studies of the textiles industry have shown that for 75,000 jobs saved under a particular act, the economy lost $15 billion a year. Those people aren't getting paid $200,000 a year. It would have been cheaper for us to all just chip in and pay their salaries instead.
That's as stupid as a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. You are basically saying we should doom our economy to a populist hell-hole, when people like Alexander Hamilton worked so hard to make it a free one.
Here's an idea. Why don't some game developers find someplace cheap (there are locations in every state) and relocate there. Then start a gaming company while employing people that have vastly lower costs of living. The costs won't be as low as hiring Russian coders, but much of that'll be offset by the fact that you don't have any communications/management overhead of the foreign team.
Hell, i would have been ok with outsourcing if i had just been given some warning. How about phasing in this outsourcing over five years? Actually, that's not a half-bad idea. I'm sure the right would disagree with me on this, but being a democrat means being reasonable. Certainly, we have enough of a head start where we can afford to fall back a little bit to ease the transition internally.
What'd really help ease the pain of transition is two things:
1) Public healthcare. People should not have to worry about their kids having healthcare while they're out of work.
2) Decent welfare and retraining. I know someone who was out of work in Canada. He was an EE with a masters degree. Lived decently off welfare while he retrained, and now is again in a productive job.
3) National higher education. Its harder to stomach the fact that your chosen profession has become obsolete when you have tens of thousands of dollars of school debt.
These things are precisely the reasons why Europe has managed to strongly embrace free trade without their citizens calling for revolution.
A lot of free-market purists say the market rights itself but if so then why are we still subsidizing farmers? Because we have too many damn farmers, so they vote for protectionist policies. The market can't do anything to correct itself when you put barriers in place to stop it. France is in the same boat, being the Iowa of Europe. Other European countries, which never had that many fermers to begin with, had the sense to ship the totally unprofitable business of food production to places where it would be profitable.
Then move the hell out of San Francisco. You don't have to move across the world to get the benefits of a low cost of living. I was shocked to see that you could buy a house here in Georgia for $50,000 that would cost $300,000 where I live (Northern VA).
Its interesting to note that "Socialist Democracies" like Europe have also been quick to embrace free economies. Indeed, the history of Europe has been characterized by the breaking down of trade barriers in the economy.
Being socialist (providing for the people through taxes) does not mean you cannot be capitalist (trying to maximize overall value of the economy). You have to make some compromises here and there, but overall, you can make out pretty well. Check out the list of the 10 freest economies in the world. Note how many of those countries have strong social policies. Hell, Denmark has a 60% top tax rate! Also compare the top-10 freest economies (nice places to live) with the bottom-10 freest economies (like Iran, etc).
Fuck the rich fatcat bastards. This is my country too. We live in a country where the rule of the drolling masses does *not* trump the first principles of our republic. You might not like the fatcat bastards, but its immoral of you to try to legislate away their freedom to choose who they hire. If that happens, I'll have one more reason to move to a country that actually believes in freedom.
You don't have to be a Republican to believe in free trade. You just have to have a decent grasp of economics and/or history. I am personally a yellow-dog democrat. I believe in a social saftey net, as well as universal health care and universal higher education. I simply cannot conscience protectionist moves that harm far more people than they help.
Stopping employers from hiring who they want compromises our fundemental ideas of freedom. If those ideas of freedom mean that we cannot maintain a viable economy in a global world, then we might as well just throw in the towel and declare our "Great Experiment" a complete and total failure.
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Amortized over a decade or more of work, $1 trillion doesn't seem so bad. Especially considering $100bn/year is a fraction of what we spend on our military.
You have to look at production capacity as well. Out of the 2.0 million cars Toyota sold in North America in 2003, 1.3 million were made in North America. Out of its 6.0 million card production capacity, 22% of it is in North America. For Honda, 80% of its North American sales are made in North America.
In any case, I wasn't trying to make some sort of point about Toyota keeping jobs in the US. My point was that Toyota and other foreign car manufacturers are beat our car industry, even though they're not taking advantage of cheap labor to do it. Take a look at Their production numbers. 88% of those are in high-cost regions like the North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Thus, they can't be taking advantage of cheap third-world labor to out-compete us. Instead, they simply seem to be better at building cars then we are. My point is that we've got a lot more problems than outsourcing. If outsourcing destroys the American middle class, it'll be because there is nothing else that the American middle class is good at.
Oh yes, because economics and politics are so popular among the dorito/dew/everquest crowd...
I'm a pragmatist. Social policies are a trade-off between maximum possible production, and social well-being. Modern economics basically requires at least some level of social policy. On the other hand, obstructions to free trade are just a kick in the nuts for most everyone involved. Ergo, I'm against it. Its cheaper to just let them live off welfare then to keep jobs around that we don't need.
As for Europe --- yes, the people are making noise about free trade. But the governments seem to be holding out against that nonsense, and pushing ahead. That's one of the nice things about representative Republics --- you aren't always at the whim of the drolling masses.
If we keep believing those same old arguments for laissez-faire capitalism we're going to end up like Brazil, Mexico, or one of the banana republics, in which a tiny percentage of the population owns everything in the country. Do we really want that here?
.com bust hurt us so bad. Do you think all those countries are better than us at these markets because they're exploiting cheap foreign labor? Yeah, because German labor is so cheap. Toyota's factories are in Oklahoma for god's sake! So what is it?
The problem with our system is not laissez-faire capitalism, because we don't have it. We have way too many asnine regulations on the economy (along with some not-asnine ones). For example:
1) Farm subsidies
2) Subsidies to car manufacturers (just let Ford/GM/etc die already)
3) Tarrifs on steel
4) etc.
The other part of the problem is that there is a narrowing number of things that we are good at. We haven't been good at making cars in decades. Airbus is catching up to us on the airplane front. The Japanese are stronger in the consumer electronics front. We still own the computer industry, but that's why the
It seemed as though you were suggesting that we do hold on to "freedom" as an ideal even at the expense of our well-being. Evidently that's not what you meant.
My point is that we have a principle of freedom where you can do pretty much whatever you want, as long as you don't trample on other peoples' rights. Hence, I can justify things like anti-trust laws, because monopolies take away something I consider a right: a free economy. However, hiring practices don't trample on anyone else's rights. I don't believe that anyone has a right to a job. Ergo, I think this is an example of something where it is immoral for the majority to impose its will on the minority.
Of course it does. It harms those who've lost their jobs, and who spent years developing skills that aren't needed anymore.
Okay, agreed.
That's what freedom gets you. People don't do what's best for themselves AND the whole;
See, that's the thing. This whole country was founded on the idea that people doing what's best for themselves will result in the best for the whole. If that idea is not sustainable, then our democracy is a failure.
(By the way, I'm not a socialist: I despise socialism, because people who don't help themselves deserve nothing.
It depends on what you define as socialist. In European-style socialism, the social saftey net is there because a free market economy naturally has a lot of churn. It makes no sense to decry socialism, then call for protectionist laws, because protectionism is the worst form of socialism. You're asking people not just to foot the bill for keeping you living decently, but to foot the bill for keeping you in a job they don't need, just so you can keep your dignity. Because that's precisely what protectionist laws have repeatedly shown to do. It costs way more to keep that job around then it would to just drop the protectionist laws and pay these people directly.
Actually, modern economists acknowledge there is a negative effect to large income disparities like those in the United States. Further, they also acknowledge that some things (namely public goods like defense, transporation, environmental protection) are not made at efficient levels in a free market, and thus require governmental intervention with tax money.
Huh? I don't know about you, but the last 10 years have been one hell of a boom. Around where I live, we still have unemployment down near 2%. Statistics would seem to back up the idea that its not just our area either.
Re-read my post. I'm saying exactly what you're saying. I'm willing to put up with a few years of pain while we adjust to outsourcing so after that time, my children, as well as myself, can reap the benefits. Because it *does* always balance out at the end.
You don't seem to understand this. It is well established in our principles of freedom that we can outlaw things that harm society as a whole. Eg: we outlaw murder. That's the justification for outlawing monopolies --- economic theory says that a free market cannot naturally handle monopolies. Similar justifications exist for taxes to fund things like defense and environmental protection. Taxes are justified as well, because there comes a point where the income disparity between classes becomes more harmful than the economic inefficiency introduced by taxation. Contrary to what you might thing, modern capitalism is not a free-for-all. It does welcome certain controls to protect the good of the whole.
However, outsourcing doesn't harm anything. You can arrive at that conclusion from a logical analysis of the situation. Ergo, it goes against our principles of freedom, because we aren't prohibiting a behavior for the greater good.
The sad thing is that nobody can hear you over the deafening sounds of hipocrisy.
Mod this up. Its true. Similar studies of the textiles industry have shown that for 75,000 jobs saved under a particular act, the economy lost $15 billion a year. Those people aren't getting paid $200,000 a year. It would have been cheaper for us to all just chip in and pay their salaries instead.
So we're going to write inequality into the Constitution? Have different rules for consumers and producers? They're all just people in the end!
That's as stupid as a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. You are basically saying we should doom our economy to a populist hell-hole, when people like Alexander Hamilton worked so hard to make it a free one.
Here's an idea. Why don't some game developers find someplace cheap (there are locations in every state) and relocate there. Then start a gaming company while employing people that have vastly lower costs of living. The costs won't be as low as hiring Russian coders, but much of that'll be offset by the fact that you don't have any communications/management overhead of the foreign team.
Hell, i would have been ok with outsourcing if i had just been given some warning. How about phasing in this outsourcing over five years?
Actually, that's not a half-bad idea. I'm sure the right would disagree with me on this, but being a democrat means being reasonable. Certainly, we have enough of a head start where we can afford to fall back a little bit to ease the transition internally.
What'd really help ease the pain of transition is two things:
1) Public healthcare. People should not have to worry about their kids having healthcare while they're out of work.
2) Decent welfare and retraining. I know someone who was out of work in Canada. He was an EE with a masters degree. Lived decently off welfare while he retrained, and now is again in a productive job.
3) National higher education. Its harder to stomach the fact that your chosen profession has become obsolete when you have tens of thousands of dollars of school debt.
These things are precisely the reasons why Europe has managed to strongly embrace free trade without their citizens calling for revolution.
A lot of free-market purists say the market rights itself but if so then why are we still subsidizing farmers?
Because we have too many damn farmers, so they vote for protectionist policies. The market can't do anything to correct itself when you put barriers in place to stop it. France is in the same boat, being the Iowa of Europe. Other European countries, which never had that many fermers to begin with, had the sense to ship the totally unprofitable business of food production to places where it would be profitable.
Oh please. I commuted longer then that to *school* as a kid. I had teachers that commuted twice that long, each way!
Then move the hell out of San Francisco. You don't have to move across the world to get the benefits of a low cost of living. I was shocked to see that you could buy a house here in Georgia for $50,000 that would cost $300,000 where I live (Northern VA).
Its interesting to note that "Socialist Democracies" like Europe have also been quick to embrace free economies. Indeed, the history of Europe has been characterized by the breaking down of trade barriers in the economy.
Being socialist (providing for the people through taxes) does not mean you cannot be capitalist (trying to maximize overall value of the economy). You have to make some compromises here and there, but overall, you can make out pretty well. Check out the list of the 10 freest economies in the world. Note how many of those countries have strong social policies. Hell, Denmark has a 60% top tax rate! Also compare the top-10 freest economies (nice places to live) with the bottom-10 freest economies (like Iran, etc).
Fuck the rich fatcat bastards. This is my country too.
We live in a country where the rule of the drolling masses does *not* trump the first principles of our republic. You might not like the fatcat bastards, but its immoral of you to try to legislate away their freedom to choose who they hire. If that happens, I'll have one more reason to move to a country that actually believes in freedom.
You don't have to be a Republican to believe in free trade. You just have to have a decent grasp of economics and/or history. I am personally a yellow-dog democrat. I believe in a social saftey net, as well as universal health care and universal higher education. I simply cannot conscience protectionist moves that harm far more people than they help.
But shareholders *own* a piece of the company. Who says that they shouldn't get priority? As for your priorities:
1) History has continually shown that capitalism is the best way we know how to increase the living conditions of mankind as a whole.
2) What the hell kind of lame-ass requirement is that? Keeping employees who aren't needed contridicts #1!
Stopping employers from hiring who they want compromises our fundemental ideas of freedom. If those ideas of freedom mean that we cannot maintain a viable economy in a global world, then we might as well just throw in the towel and declare our "Great Experiment" a complete and total failure.
Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!