Actually so are the Catholic Workers- though both are far less revolutionary these days.
One interesting idea I've seen recently though needs a federal bureaucracy to work: A national shipping tax of $1/mile to encourage local economies to develop (by making mass centralized production less profitable and able to compete).
Also, by distributist, do you mean a supporter of distributism? I had not heard of this economic philosophy before. Seems to be founded by Catholics, not Marx. I find it very compatible with my own thinking on the matter.
Dorthy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement were the Roman Catholic Version of the International Workers of the World. Her interpretation of Marx is, near as I can tell, the most workable because it puts back in the one thing Adam Smith and Karl Marx forgot: Human Relationships. I think that's the first Wiki article I agree with- and it's interesting how they tie the Catholic Worker Movement back to the Papal documents and GK Chesterton without touching the obvious influence of Marx (though, Marx took much of his inspiration from scripture, especially two chapters in Acts, so it could be I'm misreading this).
Modern, more technical forms of this include the small computer industry (which both software and hardware started among hobbyists in garages), the permaculture movement (which seeks to maximize food production in urban settings), and of course, the ambient energy movement (where each house in a community is either grid impact negative or net grid impact zero when it comes to electricity).
Mass production of course goes against all of this- but I think personally maximum distribution of the means of production is a good thing in the long run.
It will just be illegal to sell them. Can you find a new VCR that ignores Macrovision these days?
I don't know- I buy most of my consumer electronics used. I can find plenty of them that do so at the pawn shops...heck, I can still find beta players at Value Village- I even saw a three-eye projection TV set there a few months ago.
Wrong type of Marxist- I'm a distributist Capitalist- read Das Kapital, not the Communist Manifesto.
Having said that- I don't think this guy is a troll. I think there's a slim, very slim, but also very real, possibility that he is a victim of Katrina- and only just now got back into slashdot after spending WEEKS in one of those information-black-out Red Cross Shelters. Never assume somebody's a troll before you have proof.
What the hell are you talking about? CNN.Com is still on Katrina- and word is that *maybe* the dead will hit 2000 once they find them all, certainly NOT the 20,000 many feared. Rita had a death toll in the hundreds. Certainly not the worst natural disaster in history- or even this year, as the Indian Ocean Tsunami took 100,000 lives.
I'm not saying it wasn't bad- and I've got my own wishes for persecution of government officials, both local and federal, for their crimes against the people during this disaster. But it doesn't help very much claiming that it happened today or 20,000 people died.
Broadcast flag coming back, followed quickly by BitTorrent getting venture capital (Mysterious future- if you're not a subscriber you'll see it soon). I guess my question is- what are they going to do with all of those digital tuners the don't pay any attention to the Broadcast Flag?
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Judging by the tone of your comment, it's the "free" in "free trade agreements" that you object to.
Yes- but perhaps not in the way you think. I object to it because it's a lie- NOTHING in these trade agreements encourage freedom for most of the people they affect.
In capitalistic theory, a free market requires perfect knowledge- both the buyer and the seller need to know the average price of recent sells of the item to be able to bargain effectively. Ideally, they should also both know the full costs involved in production, to arrive at a fair price.
But these international trade agreements, seemingly on purpose- hide the origin and therefore the costs from the end consumer. Likewise, it hides the end consumer's willingness to pay from the original creator of the physical good in question. The only winner in this so-called "free trade" system that actually isn't is the middle man- who is able to buy low from the manufacturer and sell high to the end consumer, sometimes making as much as a 100%-300% markup. (A good example is what Wal*Mart forced Ohio Arts to do with etch-a-sketch. They used to hit a $15 price point easily, with a good profit for both Wal*Mart and Ohio Arts, on $9.50/hr factory floor salaries and cheap plastic. Wal*Mart wanted a $8.99 price point- forcing them overseas. Now Ohio Arts pays $.24/hr in China- $.10 less than official chinese minimum wage- so where they used to have about $3 worth of parts, and an hour to put them together, their unit cost went far down- but the consumer is still paying the $8.99).
This is not a free market- it's a hidden costs market.
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And vice versa, I hope? My wife would love to have someone to cook and clean for us, as my H1-B friends from India say that most everyone has back at home.
I doubt it unless we're willing to accept a caste system that regulates some people by birth to such roles.
Plus it would be nice to be able to buy a house and other goods for 1/20th the cost and have higher speed internet.
That's for sure.
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I know what you mean, I've had to learn alot about tolerance, which is good for ya. And dealing with energy vampires- those that are never content until they make you as miserable as they are. They take more than garlic- you need a completely stable center. As difficult as it is, do you think you're a better person for it?
I've never quite understood the idea of "better" and "worse" people to begin with- must be something in my Asperger's. As far as I'm concerned, people are people and I treat them as such within the limits of my ability. My if-then-else model is a bit more complete now, and I mask my inadequacy better, though. I've got a ton of e-mails from my current contract showing a 98% success rate with customer service. So in that way, I guess I'm a better person.
True, except the fuckers will probably take the money and run and screw everybody.
Well, there is that- the key that I'm working on is building a separate-from-my-standard-contract business on teaching the Internet to the Baby Boomers- who don't currently have a clue but will soon have plenty of time in retirement to get one.
Definitely. It's already happening. Eastern Europe has been in the mix for a while with desperate wage slaves to exploit, Cambodia, etc. The march to pay less will continue until there's no one else for WalMart to squeeze. Just like the British Empire most recently. Already, surprisingly, many poor nations are touting higher costs and better work conditions as a market differentiation. It's gaining steam, and I like to think it's goodwill and an understanding of how the universe works as much as PR appeal, but who knows.
The problem is if you're in a family that was never quite rich to begin with- but assumed that hard work + good education = good life. My son is going to learn the lessons early on that what makes a good life has to come from inside- not out. And that unlike the experience of say, the GI Generation and before- hard work and education mean next to nothing if you don't like yourself first.
ps. A large percentage of things labeled "Made in Italy" are not, because of their very lax labeling laws. Romania especially is making a huge chunk of these products.
As if anybody would notice if they just stamped it "Made in Romania" and sold it for 1/10th the price anybody else could.
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I don't have a direct link, because I found this out myself reading a bunch of raw data from http://www.dol.gov/ and http://www.census.gov/. The 30% is a pull-out-of-my-ass number, the actual decrease was from $35k/year median salary to $26k/year median salary. Since you challenged me- this is a $9000 decrease, which actually makes it 25.714285714285714285714285714286%, so a bit better than I thought. Thank you.
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Correct- and for personal only I use the much more conservative figure of consumer debt vs income, which is $108 for every $100 earned.
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Source? That seems implausibly high. The median income is something like $35k, I find it difficult to believe that the median spending is $50k.I don't- I own a house, I know what my expenditures are like. However, this isn't PERSONAL spending- it's overall personal and CORPORATE spending. And BTW- the median personal income is actually $26k. It's gone down since 2000, rather severely. Median personal spending is $108 for every $100 earned- so median personal spending would be more like $28k. Personal debt is NOTHING in comparison to Corporate Debt, which in turn is rather small in comparison to Government debt- and it's all three together that were reported on Air America Radio for the $150 for every $100 earned figure.
Absolutely false. Think about everything you take for granted today that were completely unknown 30 years ago.
None of which has created a higher standard of living. The average family in 1950 could survive on a single 40-hour-a-week paycheck. The average family today needs two incomes and sometimes six to survive. That's a severe destruction of standard of living; we've got fancier toys but actual survival is much, much harder.
See above. To make this claim you have to define "luxury" to exclude stuff like cable TV and Internet access and other products that weren't available at *any* price for previous generations.
Yes- as technology marches on what was once luxury becomes necessity- that's a given. In 1700 they didn't have showers, so what's your point?
Our standard of living *is* increasing, it's just that many people's expectations are rising even faster.
Technology does not add to standard of living- being able to afford the basics of food, clothing, shelter, clean water & adequate medical care is standard of living. Luxury when talking about standard of living is being able to obtain those items without worrying about paying the basic bills. Sure we have color TVs and internet access- but neither one of those do you any good when that interest-only loan hits the balloon payment and your family is homeless.
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As best I can see, an employment visa for a US citizen is around $90 to India.
That's officially- read the fine print. You can't get that visa unless the company you're working for is ready to put in $3 million investment in India. Which is fine for say, Microsoft or IBM, but for some of the smaller contracting companies that would LOVE to have an American project manager overseeing a sweatshop of Indian Programmers- it's not reachable.
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The cost of living going up is part of the standard of living falling, by definition. Overall, what this means, is that regardless of what dollars or ruppes are worth, in 20-30 years, the average Indian will be able to afford the same luxuries and as the average American.
Heck- they can now. Prices are MUCH higher in the United States. A house in India costs about 1/20th what it does here. Food is going up like crazy, gas has seen a 236% increase in the last 3 years, and in the mean time, personal income is down almost 30% nationwide. I tried to emigrate to India, because I'd have a much better life there- but of course the $3 million for a guest worker visa is out of my reach.
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Generally, what we have had to do is change significantly in every area, and get better in everything we do. We're now growing at 20% a year. One of the key points is that our product has become IMPOSSIBLE to make at our quality level at something like 34c an hour. Another key point is we are now totally custom made. This requires considerable amounts of highly skilled service, that can only be provided locally (as it is next to impossible to do well from a great distance).
Local service is good, it's the only way I've survived the last 4 years since my last layoff. I've gotten a lot better at customer service myself. Too bad I hate people- which is why I went into software to begin with.
Chinese per capita income has increased about five times since 2002 and GDP at about 9% a year if I recall correctly. Like what happens with any country when its people become more affluent, this leads to more job choice with economic growth. Businesses compete for the skilled, already trained workers as they grow and desperately need more labor to fufill increased sales under tight, ruthless deadlines. This is one of the main reasons per capita income is rising, and of course, by extension, costs of production. They also can't shoot the people who make more, as they cannot grow, or even produce, as they go through the considerable expense of training a completely inexperienced work force. ( I don't know if they would if they could;) Keep in mind that China is growing population wise at less than the rest of the world. They have had a one child per family policy since the 50's and have very economically unfavorable demographics coming up in I think about twenty years (as the US does in about five).
Depends which side of the pie you're on- if you're a wage slave working to pay off loans for failed businesses, those look like very economically FAVORABLE demographics. However, I'm sure if China gets too expensive- the corporations will just move elsewhere. Nobody really cares about quality instead of price anymore, even when it raises TCO.
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Even with outsourcing, a mere McDonald's worker in America working 40 hours has a much higher standard of living than the average Indian or Chinese working 80.
For now- yes. But if our debt to income ratio (currently 50%! Nationwide we spend $150 for every $100 we earn!) gets too bad, you'll see that change rather quickly.
Indians by and large don't have Internet-capable computers or fancy TVs or cars or nice clean houses either.
Uh, not according to the nice lady we have for an intern- her family communicates regularly with her over the Internet, and TV sets are about half the price there as here.
You do, yet you're still complaining?
Actually, I don't, not anymore. I don't own a single car newer than 6 years, while I do own 3 TV sets, all three are second hand. And they have faster DSL in Bangalore than I do in my house. As for clean- we've got a rotten mold problem related to leaky pipes that we can't afford to fix right now.
You expect more for less work because of where you were born?
Actually yes- in fact, we have a constitution that requires it, but that part seems to have largely been ignored since corporations got the right of petition.
For a good many decades, Americans have had it much better than people in the third world who work just as hard.
True enough- the promise of the American Dream up through my granparent's time was that each generation would have it better than the one before. That disappeared before I was born, I think (or maybe just after- I think it was the OPEC embargo that started to push us over the edge).
So priviledge through birthright is being eroding, I don't think that's a bad thing, although I'm against things like the aristocracy and monarchy.
And have you noticed that America now has a noble class? I'm not quite sure when they appeared- but it's quite clear that they're here and control a large portion of the economy.
It's no fairer for an American to automatically live better than an Indian who works twice the hours than it is for someone born a Prince to live better than someone born a serf.
True enough- though by the Constitution of the United States of America, in a way we're required to share. But like I say, it's been someplace between 40-120 years since that has actually been law.
I suppose this is an anti-capitalist viewpoint so will be modded down.
I appreaciate anti-capitalist viewpoints- but in a way, America was intended to be anti-capitalist in this way. And back in the 1950s- it was! But America hasn't been that way for a LONG time now, and not all Americans are rich, or have clean houses, or for that matter are any better off than the average Indian. It's high time people in other countries realized that most Americans either live on credit (average is $108 of spending for every $100 earned) or do without. It's only 25% of the population that have any luxury at all.
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It's possible. I do it. I pay my people more than anyone in my industry which began to go offshore thirty years ago. Has it been difficult, with precarious situations and sudden death possibilities for years? Yes. But where there is a will there is a way. We can't blame government ineptitude for everything. Globalism is impossible to stop. You might as well try to stop the spread of the Internet. We are one united planet with nothing but the depths of the oceans uncharted and information being transmitted globally instantaneously. We will be dealing with each other forever now, barring the rise of totalitarian isolationalist superpowers. Keep in mind even the Chinese are having serious problems keeping their costs down now. As they become more wealthy through price undercutting, conversely they have to charge more. And guess what? Their people are rapidly rising in affluence. Which is a good, nay great, thing.
Last I looked- the Chinese pay $.34/hr. How do you compete with that? And I don't understand- why would they have to charge more when they can just shoot the people who earn more (after all, there are always more workers in a society of a billion)?
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Well for one, protectionist tariffs mainly only serve to hold up grossly inefficient, dying industries. Take the steel industry, for example. Many of those factories haven't been significantly modernized in decades, and thanks to that type of mismanagement the U.S. steel industry started going under. So what does the U.S. gov't do? Ridiculous tariffs that prevent the steel companies from having to adapt and compete.
Not that they can compete against Chinese $.34/hr slave labor anyway. No industry can.
Another small point. Shouldn't one who is well-educated and supportive of Marx's philosophy be cheering on the forward momentum of capitalism because it will accellerate a revolution?
No, for one, I'm not a revolutionary Marxist- I'm a distrbutist capitalist. More Das Kapital, less Communist Manifesto, and a hell of a lot more Dorthy Day.
I'm pretty sure that's how it actually goes.
Only in the Manifesto. Das Kapital has lessons that could make capitalism actually work for the people.
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It can be debated whether or not the free trade agreements, etc. have promoted the general welfare.
The key word being "general" there- but yes, you're right. They have not promoted the general welfare (if anything, they've promoted the general poverty for specific welfare) and you're completely right that it's promoted, not provided.
But the general welfare is not provided by the federal government, it is provided by the citizens in the form of commercial activity.
Which has been largely prevented by free trade agreements. How can one possibly have any commercial activity if one cannot compete in one's industry?
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Actually, all it is is simple competition. The standard of living of the US is finally falling down to the level that is comparable for similar labor in the rest of the world. US workers aren't smarter, certainly don't work harder, and have no reason to be paid so much more than their counterparts in other parts of the world. All we're seeing is a correction from competition being US only for the past few hundreds years to now we're having to compete against the entire world. There was no stopping this with treaties or tarriffs. It's inevitable. We're just seeing it happen now, and of course, it's stressful for Americans with their grand sense of Entitlement. Face it. You're not worth nearly what you're getting paid now. Be happy with less and you'll, well, be happier. It's that simple. Sell the Mc Mansion and the SUV's and let your kids take the bus to school.
And in the mean time, those of us who never owned the McMansion or the SUVs and who never earned more than $50,000/year in our lives to begin with, get hurt because while the standard of living is falling, the cost of living is going up. The only thing I can see to do about it is drastically revalue the dollar by fiat. If dollars were worth the same as Indian Rupees, then Americans could once again compete.
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I have decent pay and happiness in my job. I pay my bills, and work little, if any overtime. I work for a profitable tech company. I know next week my job will still be here, as long as I keep doing it, and am not subject to to bad management at the moment.
Good for you- but only 7/8 of the above statements are true. You're fooling yourself about the 8th. Guess which one it is?
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RTFA-Even the most enlightened, caring employers are facing conditions that can lead to employee burnout. Bob Kerr, Innotec Stainless operations manager and Welding Wire subscriber, wrote, "I hope that as a follow-up to the replies you receive from burned-out welders, you can remind them that their employer's constant efforts to increase productivity while decreasing costs are also an effort to compete in an increasingly competitive market. If the employer cannot compete successfully utilizing domestic labor, he is either forced to offshore or close shop. Therefore, it is in the best interest of each employee to strive for higher personal productivity. As Americans, we tend to forget that we are indeed competing in an increasingly smaller world."
In other words, between the Clintonista Democrats and the Reganites and Bushies, we've signed too many free trade agreements for employers to actually be able to compete *and* care about their employees. So the second gets left in the dust because the federal government can't be bothered with the duties of the common defense and providing for the general welfare.
What's interesting is how time and again this idea of placing society always before the individual ends with dictatorship. We have our intuitions about how the state can be used to create a utopian society, and these intuitions turn out to be mostly wrong in practice.
That's why I think the real answer is to use the state to put individual needs above the society instead. But what you end up doing that way is each house, neighborhood, city, county, and state being allowed to form their own armies and control local comerce. You might not have to compete- but you do have to provide a useful product if you're going to survive. And becoming rich would be impossible.
I still am able to reach it- but that doesn't mean much. Netcraft sometimes blocks without informing the site owner. I'm sure it will be pulled down soon however.
And in complete contradiction to the flamewar on the lack of computer jobs since GWB took office I started the other day- there's opportunity in this situation someplace. If only I had the money to rent a classroom....
Slashdot Mirror
Actually so are the Catholic Workers- though both are far less revolutionary these days.
One interesting idea I've seen recently though needs a federal bureaucracy to work: A national shipping tax of $1/mile to encourage local economies to develop (by making mass centralized production less profitable and able to compete).
Also, by distributist, do you mean a supporter of distributism? I had not heard of this economic philosophy before. Seems to be founded by Catholics, not Marx. I find it very compatible with my own thinking on the matter.
Dorthy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement were the Roman Catholic Version of the International Workers of the World. Her interpretation of Marx is, near as I can tell, the most workable because it puts back in the one thing Adam Smith and Karl Marx forgot: Human Relationships. I think that's the first Wiki article I agree with- and it's interesting how they tie the Catholic Worker Movement back to the Papal documents and GK Chesterton without touching the obvious influence of Marx (though, Marx took much of his inspiration from scripture, especially two chapters in Acts, so it could be I'm misreading this).
Modern, more technical forms of this include the small computer industry (which both software and hardware started among hobbyists in garages), the permaculture movement (which seeks to maximize food production in urban settings), and of course, the ambient energy movement (where each house in a community is either grid impact negative or net grid impact zero when it comes to electricity).
Mass production of course goes against all of this- but I think personally maximum distribution of the means of production is a good thing in the long run.
It will just be illegal to sell them. Can you find a new VCR that ignores Macrovision these days?
I don't know- I buy most of my consumer electronics used. I can find plenty of them that do so at the pawn shops...heck, I can still find beta players at Value Village- I even saw a three-eye projection TV set there a few months ago.
Wrong type of Marxist- I'm a distributist Capitalist- read Das Kapital, not the Communist Manifesto.
Having said that- I don't think this guy is a troll. I think there's a slim, very slim, but also very real, possibility that he is a victim of Katrina- and only just now got back into slashdot after spending WEEKS in one of those information-black-out Red Cross Shelters. Never assume somebody's a troll before you have proof.
What the hell are you talking about? CNN.Com is still on Katrina- and word is that *maybe* the dead will hit 2000 once they find them all, certainly NOT the 20,000 many feared. Rita had a death toll in the hundreds. Certainly not the worst natural disaster in history- or even this year, as the Indian Ocean Tsunami took 100,000 lives.
I'm not saying it wasn't bad- and I've got my own wishes for persecution of government officials, both local and federal, for their crimes against the people during this disaster. But it doesn't help very much claiming that it happened today or 20,000 people died.
Broadcast flag coming back, followed quickly by BitTorrent getting venture capital (Mysterious future- if you're not a subscriber you'll see it soon). I guess my question is- what are they going to do with all of those digital tuners the don't pay any attention to the Broadcast Flag?
Judging by the tone of your comment, it's the "free" in "free trade agreements" that you object to.
Yes- but perhaps not in the way you think. I object to it because it's a lie- NOTHING in these trade agreements encourage freedom for most of the people they affect.
In capitalistic theory, a free market requires perfect knowledge- both the buyer and the seller need to know the average price of recent sells of the item to be able to bargain effectively. Ideally, they should also both know the full costs involved in production, to arrive at a fair price.
But these international trade agreements, seemingly on purpose- hide the origin and therefore the costs from the end consumer. Likewise, it hides the end consumer's willingness to pay from the original creator of the physical good in question. The only winner in this so-called "free trade" system that actually isn't is the middle man- who is able to buy low from the manufacturer and sell high to the end consumer, sometimes making as much as a 100%-300% markup. (A good example is what Wal*Mart forced Ohio Arts to do with etch-a-sketch. They used to hit a $15 price point easily, with a good profit for both Wal*Mart and Ohio Arts, on $9.50/hr factory floor salaries and cheap plastic. Wal*Mart wanted a $8.99 price point- forcing them overseas. Now Ohio Arts pays $.24/hr in China- $.10 less than official chinese minimum wage- so where they used to have about $3 worth of parts, and an hour to put them together, their unit cost went far down- but the consumer is still paying the $8.99).
This is not a free market- it's a hidden costs market.
And vice versa, I hope? My wife would love to have someone to cook and clean for us, as my H1-B friends from India say that most everyone has back at home.
I doubt it unless we're willing to accept a caste system that regulates some people by birth to such roles.
Plus it would be nice to be able to buy a house and other goods for 1/20th the cost and have higher speed internet.
That's for sure.
I know what you mean, I've had to learn alot about tolerance, which is good for ya. And dealing with energy vampires- those that are never content until they make you as miserable as they are. They take more than garlic- you need a completely stable center. As difficult as it is, do you think you're a better person for it?
I've never quite understood the idea of "better" and "worse" people to begin with- must be something in my Asperger's. As far as I'm concerned, people are people and I treat them as such within the limits of my ability. My if-then-else model is a bit more complete now, and I mask my inadequacy better, though. I've got a ton of e-mails from my current contract showing a 98% success rate with customer service. So in that way, I guess I'm a better person.
True, except the fuckers will probably take the money and run and screw everybody.
Well, there is that- the key that I'm working on is building a separate-from-my-standard-contract business on teaching the Internet to the Baby Boomers- who don't currently have a clue but will soon have plenty of time in retirement to get one.
Definitely. It's already happening. Eastern Europe has been in the mix for a while with desperate wage slaves to exploit, Cambodia, etc. The march to pay less will continue until there's no one else for WalMart to squeeze. Just like the British Empire most recently. Already, surprisingly, many poor nations are touting higher costs and better work conditions as a market differentiation. It's gaining steam, and I like to think it's goodwill and an understanding of how the universe works as much as PR appeal, but who knows.
The problem is if you're in a family that was never quite rich to begin with- but assumed that hard work + good education = good life. My son is going to learn the lessons early on that what makes a good life has to come from inside- not out. And that unlike the experience of say, the GI Generation and before- hard work and education mean next to nothing if you don't like yourself first.
ps. A large percentage of things labeled "Made in Italy" are not, because of their very lax labeling laws. Romania especially is making a huge chunk of these products.
As if anybody would notice if they just stamped it "Made in Romania" and sold it for 1/10th the price anybody else could.
I don't have a direct link, because I found this out myself reading a bunch of raw data from http://www.dol.gov/ and http://www.census.gov/. The 30% is a pull-out-of-my-ass number, the actual decrease was from $35k/year median salary to $26k/year median salary. Since you challenged me- this is a $9000 decrease, which actually makes it 25.714285714285714285714285714286%, so a bit better than I thought. Thank you.
Correct- and for personal only I use the much more conservative figure of consumer debt vs income, which is $108 for every $100 earned.
Source? That seems implausibly high. The median income is something like $35k, I find it difficult to believe that the median spending is $50k.I don't- I own a house, I know what my expenditures are like. However, this isn't PERSONAL spending- it's overall personal and CORPORATE spending. And BTW- the median personal income is actually $26k. It's gone down since 2000, rather severely. Median personal spending is $108 for every $100 earned- so median personal spending would be more like $28k. Personal debt is NOTHING in comparison to Corporate Debt, which in turn is rather small in comparison to Government debt- and it's all three together that were reported on Air America Radio for the $150 for every $100 earned figure.
Absolutely false. Think about everything you take for granted today that were completely unknown 30 years ago.
None of which has created a higher standard of living. The average family in 1950 could survive on a single 40-hour-a-week paycheck. The average family today needs two incomes and sometimes six to survive. That's a severe destruction of standard of living; we've got fancier toys but actual survival is much, much harder.
See above. To make this claim you have to define "luxury" to exclude stuff like cable TV and Internet access and other products that weren't available at *any* price for previous generations.
Yes- as technology marches on what was once luxury becomes necessity- that's a given. In 1700 they didn't have showers, so what's your point?
Our standard of living *is* increasing, it's just that many people's expectations are rising even faster.
Technology does not add to standard of living- being able to afford the basics of food, clothing, shelter, clean water & adequate medical care is standard of living. Luxury when talking about standard of living is being able to obtain those items without worrying about paying the basic bills. Sure we have color TVs and internet access- but neither one of those do you any good when that interest-only loan hits the balloon payment and your family is homeless.
As best I can see, an employment visa for a US citizen is around $90 to India.
That's officially- read the fine print. You can't get that visa unless the company you're working for is ready to put in $3 million investment in India. Which is fine for say, Microsoft or IBM, but for some of the smaller contracting companies that would LOVE to have an American project manager overseeing a sweatshop of Indian Programmers- it's not reachable.
The cost of living going up is part of the standard of living falling, by definition. Overall, what this means, is that regardless of what dollars or ruppes are worth, in 20-30 years, the average Indian will be able to afford the same luxuries and as the average American.
Heck- they can now. Prices are MUCH higher in the United States. A house in India costs about 1/20th what it does here. Food is going up like crazy, gas has seen a 236% increase in the last 3 years, and in the mean time, personal income is down almost 30% nationwide. I tried to emigrate to India, because I'd have a much better life there- but of course the $3 million for a guest worker visa is out of my reach.
Generally, what we have had to do is change significantly in every area, and get better in everything we do. We're now growing at 20% a year. One of the key points is that our product has become IMPOSSIBLE to make at our quality level at something like 34c an hour. Another key point is we are now totally custom made. This requires considerable amounts of highly skilled service, that can only be provided locally (as it is next to impossible to do well from a great distance).
;) Keep in mind that China is growing population wise at less than the rest of the world. They have had a one child per family policy since the 50's and have very economically unfavorable demographics coming up in I think about twenty years (as the US does in about five).
Local service is good, it's the only way I've survived the last 4 years since my last layoff. I've gotten a lot better at customer service myself. Too bad I hate people- which is why I went into software to begin with.
Chinese per capita income has increased about five times since 2002 and GDP at about 9% a year if I recall correctly. Like what happens with any country when its people become more affluent, this leads to more job choice with economic growth. Businesses compete for the skilled, already trained workers as they grow and desperately need more labor to fufill increased sales under tight, ruthless deadlines. This is one of the main reasons per capita income is rising, and of course, by extension, costs of production. They also can't shoot the people who make more, as they cannot grow, or even produce, as they go through the considerable expense of training a completely inexperienced work force. ( I don't know if they would if they could
Depends which side of the pie you're on- if you're a wage slave working to pay off loans for failed businesses, those look like very economically FAVORABLE demographics. However, I'm sure if China gets too expensive- the corporations will just move elsewhere. Nobody really cares about quality instead of price anymore, even when it raises TCO.
Even with outsourcing, a mere McDonald's worker in America working 40 hours has a much higher standard of living than the average Indian or Chinese working 80.
For now- yes. But if our debt to income ratio (currently 50%! Nationwide we spend $150 for every $100 we earn!) gets too bad, you'll see that change rather quickly.
Indians by and large don't have Internet-capable computers or fancy TVs or cars or nice clean houses either.
Uh, not according to the nice lady we have for an intern- her family communicates regularly with her over the Internet, and TV sets are about half the price there as here.
You do, yet you're still complaining?
Actually, I don't, not anymore. I don't own a single car newer than 6 years, while I do own 3 TV sets, all three are second hand. And they have faster DSL in Bangalore than I do in my house. As for clean- we've got a rotten mold problem related to leaky pipes that we can't afford to fix right now.
You expect more for less work because of where you were born?
Actually yes- in fact, we have a constitution that requires it, but that part seems to have largely been ignored since corporations got the right of petition.
For a good many decades, Americans have had it much better than people in the third world who work just as hard.
True enough- the promise of the American Dream up through my granparent's time was that each generation would have it better than the one before. That disappeared before I was born, I think (or maybe just after- I think it was the OPEC embargo that started to push us over the edge).
So priviledge through birthright is being eroding, I don't think that's a bad thing, although I'm against things like the aristocracy and monarchy.
And have you noticed that America now has a noble class? I'm not quite sure when they appeared- but it's quite clear that they're here and control a large portion of the economy.
It's no fairer for an American to automatically live better than an Indian who works twice the hours than it is for someone born a Prince to live better than someone born a serf.
True enough- though by the Constitution of the United States of America, in a way we're required to share. But like I say, it's been someplace between 40-120 years since that has actually been law.
I suppose this is an anti-capitalist viewpoint so will be modded down.
I appreaciate anti-capitalist viewpoints- but in a way, America was intended to be anti-capitalist in this way. And back in the 1950s- it was! But America hasn't been that way for a LONG time now, and not all Americans are rich, or have clean houses, or for that matter are any better off than the average Indian. It's high time people in other countries realized that most Americans either live on credit (average is $108 of spending for every $100 earned) or do without. It's only 25% of the population that have any luxury at all.
It's possible. I do it. I pay my people more than anyone in my industry which began to go offshore thirty years ago. Has it been difficult, with precarious situations and sudden death possibilities for years? Yes. But where there is a will there is a way. We can't blame government ineptitude for everything. Globalism is impossible to stop. You might as well try to stop the spread of the Internet. We are one united planet with nothing but the depths of the oceans uncharted and information being transmitted globally instantaneously. We will be dealing with each other forever now, barring the rise of totalitarian isolationalist superpowers. Keep in mind even the Chinese are having serious problems keeping their costs down now. As they become more wealthy through price undercutting, conversely they have to charge more. And guess what? Their people are rapidly rising in affluence. Which is a good, nay great, thing.
Last I looked- the Chinese pay $.34/hr. How do you compete with that? And I don't understand- why would they have to charge more when they can just shoot the people who earn more (after all, there are always more workers in a society of a billion)?
Well for one, protectionist tariffs mainly only serve to hold up grossly inefficient, dying industries. Take the steel industry, for example. Many of those factories haven't been significantly modernized in decades, and thanks to that type of mismanagement the U.S. steel industry started going under. So what does the U.S. gov't do? Ridiculous tariffs that prevent the steel companies from having to adapt and compete.
Not that they can compete against Chinese $.34/hr slave labor anyway. No industry can.
Another small point. Shouldn't one who is well-educated and supportive of Marx's philosophy be cheering on the forward momentum of capitalism because it will accellerate a revolution?
No, for one, I'm not a revolutionary Marxist- I'm a distrbutist capitalist. More Das Kapital, less Communist Manifesto, and a hell of a lot more Dorthy Day.
I'm pretty sure that's how it actually goes.
Only in the Manifesto. Das Kapital has lessons that could make capitalism actually work for the people.
It can be debated whether or not the free trade agreements, etc. have promoted the general welfare.
The key word being "general" there- but yes, you're right. They have not promoted the general welfare (if anything, they've promoted the general poverty for specific welfare) and you're completely right that it's promoted, not provided.
But the general welfare is not provided by the federal government, it is provided by the citizens in the form of commercial activity.
Which has been largely prevented by free trade agreements. How can one possibly have any commercial activity if one cannot compete in one's industry?
Actually, all it is is simple competition. The standard of living of the US is finally falling down to the level that is comparable for similar labor in the rest of the world. US workers aren't smarter, certainly don't work harder, and have no reason to be paid so much more than their counterparts in other parts of the world. All we're seeing is a correction from competition being US only for the past few hundreds years to now we're having to compete against the entire world. There was no stopping this with treaties or tarriffs. It's inevitable. We're just seeing it happen now, and of course, it's stressful for Americans with their grand sense of Entitlement. Face it. You're not worth nearly what you're getting paid now. Be happy with less and you'll, well, be happier. It's that simple. Sell the Mc Mansion and the SUV's and let your kids take the bus to school.
And in the mean time, those of us who never owned the McMansion or the SUVs and who never earned more than $50,000/year in our lives to begin with, get hurt because while the standard of living is falling, the cost of living is going up. The only thing I can see to do about it is drastically revalue the dollar by fiat. If dollars were worth the same as Indian Rupees, then Americans could once again compete.
I have decent pay and happiness in my job. I pay my bills, and work little, if any overtime. I work for a profitable tech company. I know next week my job will still be here, as long as I keep doing it, and am not subject to to bad management at the moment.
Good for you- but only 7/8 of the above statements are true. You're fooling yourself about the 8th. Guess which one it is?
RTFA-Even the most enlightened, caring employers are facing conditions that can lead to employee burnout. Bob Kerr, Innotec Stainless operations manager and Welding Wire subscriber, wrote, "I hope that as a follow-up to the replies you receive from burned-out welders, you can remind them that their employer's constant efforts to increase productivity while decreasing costs are also an effort to compete in an increasingly competitive market. If the employer cannot compete successfully utilizing domestic labor, he is either forced to offshore or close shop. Therefore, it is in the best interest of each employee to strive for higher personal productivity. As Americans, we tend to forget that we are indeed competing in an increasingly smaller world."
In other words, between the Clintonista Democrats and the Reganites and Bushies, we've signed too many free trade agreements for employers to actually be able to compete *and* care about their employees. So the second gets left in the dust because the federal government can't be bothered with the duties of the common defense and providing for the general welfare.
What's interesting is how time and again this idea of placing society always before the individual ends with dictatorship. We have our intuitions about how the state can be used to create a utopian society, and these intuitions turn out to be mostly wrong in practice.
That's why I think the real answer is to use the state to put individual needs above the society instead. But what you end up doing that way is each house, neighborhood, city, county, and state being allowed to form their own armies and control local comerce. You might not have to compete- but you do have to provide a useful product if you're going to survive. And becoming rich would be impossible.
I still am able to reach it- but that doesn't mean much. Netcraft sometimes blocks without informing the site owner. I'm sure it will be pulled down soon however.
And in complete contradiction to the flamewar on the lack of computer jobs since GWB took office I started the other day- there's opportunity in this situation someplace. If only I had the money to rent a classroom....