376,000 jobs were added in may 2005 if you look at official government page: http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm so yes there is enough demand from nuerosurgery and finance and other service sector jobs to make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs.
take a look at the characteristics of the unemployed. there is no way the unemployment rate would double if you added in discouraged workers: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat35.tx t it might go up a percentage point.
money is not always made by producing stuff. people make money off of ideas. see steve jobs. he isn't rich because of the computers he personally assembled by hand. he's rich because he had an idea. good riddance to 'production' jobs. those are the dirty sweaty and dangerous jobs. i don't want them.
the unemployment rate has gone down pretty steadily since net bubble burst. this has been a good year for job growth. the trends are pretty clear. be honest and don't just cherry pick stats.
you still haven't addressed my first point so i'll try to be more clear about what i'm getting at: why is outsourcing jobs overseas any different from outsourcing jobs out of state or out of town and why don't you just do subsistance farming so that you never outsource anything to anyone? why is division of labor good on a personal level but bad at the national level?
anyone in tech will tell you the job market is pretty good right now. low level software jobs were outsourced because they were trivial jobs to perform. lots of software development can be done after only a few weeks training. in fact some of it is so easy that in the 90s my company hired english majors to do it after only 3 weeks of training and no computer background. i don't count those jobs as high skill. so yeah the english majors are being purged from the industry big freaking deal. what did you expect, infinite growth in software jobs? at some point students figure out there is money to made there and supply meets demand.
macro trends may show jobs going overseas but macro trends are also showing job creation here. wealth per capita is going up. consumption is high and going higher. more americans have more money than ever. they are making that money somehow. i just don't see the troubled economy you are describing.
Globalization is an equalling out of wealth. Rich nations will get poorer, poor nations will become richer.
I disagree. Globalization is a leveling of the playing field not an equalling out of wealth. There is not a finite supply of wealth. Rich nations will get richer and poor nations will too.
If Bob specializes in making chairs and Jayne specializes in making door knobs and they trade, Bob comes away richer because he gets a quality door knob that he didn't have time or knowledge to produce and Jayne similarly profits. In the same way, broadening division of labor via outsourcing lets different people do what they do best and everyone is better off because of it.
Its true for all individual cases. Show me a case where its not true.
Not only that but your doomsday scenario is already here. Manufacturing is one of the smallest sectors of the economy. The service sector is 80% of the US economy. And yet we continue to be a wealthy nation with a healthy economy and low unemployment. Don't make the mistake of thinking all service sector jobs are at McDonald's. Service sector jobs include omputer programmers, engineers, nuerosurgeons, bankers, and accountants. Americans have these high paying, high skill jobs. They run corporations and come up with new ideas for new products while low skill jobs like working in noisy, dusty, and possibly dangerous factories have been relegated to China.
When Steve jobs created the macintosh in his garage, he didn't become rich from the fact he had a big lump of copper and plastic and metal, he became rich because he had a new idea. He created wealth from an idea. Its not about a physical product and how much you can lift or how many screws you can turn. People in America have high skill jobs where they make money from ideas.
there are lots of jobs in nursing, radiology, get your realtor's liscence, appraisales, etc, etc, etc. unemployment is 5% right now. jobs are pretty easy to find. just maybe not your dream job. i went to a private school and lots of those people don't have jobs because they majored in the psychology of feminist buddhist basket art. you have to choose a field where people actually want you. lots of people go to community college and got good jobs.
You made a ton of different new points and didn't bother responding to my main point: If outsourcing is bad for America, then isn't outsourcing bad for your state, your hometown and for your family? Whats the difference? Wouldn't we all be much wealthier as subsistance farmers?
things i suspect aren't true: - the US built its industry based on high tariffs and high labor costs. - jobs being created in the US are overwhelmingly in low-paying service industries
When you see the part where Wal-Mart literally tells a mid-western hosiery company to shut down its US plants and move to China, ask yourself: Is that really good for America? Yes, we get cheaper socks. But hundreds of Americans get thrown out of good paying jobs and are tossed into the unemployment line.
I've seen it. Walmart is definately good for America. Its bad for the few hundred americans who lose their job, but its good for the hundreds of millions of american consumers who buy socks. It might not seem like it will make a big difference in the lives of sock consumers, but walmart has lowered prices on all kinds of goods including food. That means poor Americans can afford more food. Should we really let a few hundred people keep down everyone else's standard of living?
With unfettered "free" trade, we're in a race to the bottom. American workers are literally forced to compete against the poorest workers in the world, workers who, in China's and many others' case, have no labor rights and work under appalling conditions.
Hey if you don't want to compete and you want to do it under those conditions and someone else does, thats your loss. Its true that the few hundred steel workers still here may lose their jobs, but whats the price of them keeping their jobs? It means higher prices on goods that use steel. It means poor americans can't afford cars to get to work. It means hundreds of millions of Americans have their standard of living depressed because a few hundred steel workers want to live off our tax dollars via government subsidy instead of going back to school and getting trained to do something american companies actually need them for.
And I can legitimately argue that there is no middle ground and that outsourcing at the country level is the same thing as outsourcing at any other level.
In fact I can legitimately argue nuclear war is good for sunflowers.
This is rediculous. If countries shouldn't outsource, then states shouldn't outsource. And if states shouldn't outsource, then towns shouldn't outsource. And if towns shouldn't outsource then families shouldn't outsource. People who are against outsourcing end arguing against division of labor. In the end your argument boils down to: everyone should be subsistance farmers and build our own houses because we wouldn't want to outsource any labor to anyone else. Talk about economic suicide.
Division of labor (ie outsourcing) has been happening since the time of cave men, and will continue to happen as long as there are people. This is one thing that will definately go on forever.
If you were right the USSR would have beaten us in the arms race. The USSR took your position that the research should be done by the government. They didn't beat us because our private companies (like lockheed) outperformed their lame attempts at development and production. The only reason they managed to produce anything at all is because they turned millions of people in their country into slaves who stopped producing wheat and starved death producing weapons.
Government money does fund guns and planes, but thats hardly "fundamental research". The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers -- no one is better at that than the market.
And for every government funded research success that you mention, billions of dollars were wasted supporting untold numbers of spectacularly failed projects. See NASA and the nationalized space industry. Woopee, we got velcro. Thats worth the trillions of dollars we have spent on gold toilet seats and taking dogs into space. Thats a great investment. Markets would not have wasted that volume of money.
I'd agree that we need to get rid of tenured professors. Why should professors get this rediculous level of job security when no one else in the market does? Its the teachers union buying off congress at the expense of taxpayers and students.
But the real problem with university expenses is that the cost of going to college is enormously subsidized by the government. When the government is giving loans and grants out to the tune of 10 or 20,000 dollars, the universities can charge that much more. Basically we are gradually nationalizing higher education. That means lower quality for a higher price. It also means the poor can go to school via government subsidy and the rich can go to school because they are rich, but the middle class gets screwed because they can't afford college and they get to pay for the poor people's tuition. why bother working? might as well be poor and let someone else take care of me.
if you don't want to "labor for someone else's profits and grand visions" then start your own company.
and if you don't want to work then go sit on the couch and be poor and hungry. i'm not going to work for you.
what could be more noble than working? what could be more noble than producing something of value? if you aren't sustaining yourself, then you either mooching off others or taking your wealth by force. an honest person is one who doesn't consume more than they have produced.
you are trying to say that companies should be more democratic (publicly traded ones are democratic but nevermind that). i was thinking that governments should be more tyrannical. clearly a dictator is bad when the dictator is bad. but i think a good dictator is better than a good democracy any day. when the dictator knows what he is doing and has good solutions and good advisors and listens and isn't abusive and doesn't beat anyone (who doesn't deserve a beating), etc.
problems with democracy: - is that it always a huge nasty beaurocracy. everyone has to vote on everything all the time. decision making is slow, clumsy, complex, and retarded (for example: the tax code is like 10,000,000 pages). - uneducated irresponsible greedy bad overweight perverted wife beating donkey loving criminals with mental problems who are high on cocaine get to vote. experts aren't making the decisions. - oppression of the minority (for example the very very rich are oppressed in this country because this group of the smallest top best producers have to pay way more into the government than anyone else does and they get way less back in the form of benefits).
good things about a well run tyranny: - no beaurocracy. very efficient. easy to get things done. - only knowledgeable people are making decisions -- by definition since this is a well run tyranny. (this is the big problem of course with a tyranny as i will get to in a second.) - note that a tyranny/company will not necessarily suppress minority viewpoints under the following conditions: (a.) you can leave a tyranny/company and go join another tyranny/company, (b.) you can go start your own tyranny/company
the nice thing about lots of different companies/tyrannies is that you can always choose a different tyranny/company if you don't like the one where you are at currently. or you could start your own tyranny/company and run it how you want.
now the problem is picking good dictators/ceos who will make the right decisions and not beat you (unless you deserve to be beaten). in the case of corporations, the market picks the most talented ones. so the ceos/dictators who survive are by definition those who are making decisions which are good for their organization and the people they represent. in the case of nations there is no such nice easy well behaved mechanism for finding good dictators. thus we have to retreat the inferior system of democracy.
uh.. so the Democrats would have given us a smaller, less intrusive government, protecting state's rights to self-government and real tough security measures, to protect us from terrorists?
republicans suck. but dems would have sucked more. what can you do.
clinton balanced the budget because the economy grew so much, the government collected a lot more taxes, and he was stymied by the Gingrich Congress which actually had some fiscal conservatives in it (unlike the current one) and which prevented clinton from implementing the enormously expensive goverment health care takeover he wanted. clinton's proposed health care plan was way more expensive -- and worse than that would have driven prices way way up while decreasing the quality of care -- than any thing bush has proposed. and i would bet thats true even if you count the war in iraq and the fact we will be there for another 10 years of guerilla warfare.
lindon johnson spent quite a lot more on the new deal than bush ever spent.
i like the cato institute and i agree with the analysis (though i didn't read the whole thing) and i think its terrible and i agree with all your criticisms of the bush administration in this post.
but i think its small potatoes compared to hillary clinton's health care proposals. democrats would like to see the $700+ trillion prescription drug program expanded to a zillion dollar nationalized health care system. democrats would like to see HSA and TSA spending increased. Halliburton is just an every day unavoidable side affect of an inefficiency and/or corruption of big government -- it happens all the time.
the fact is, i've never heard a democrat on npr say we are spending too much. democrats always say we are spending too little. gore would have gone nuts with social and environmental spending/taxing. kerry would have repealed bush tax cuts. dems love to talk about nationalized health care. its just one example of the dems problematic stance on the issue of free trade. and there is their pro union problem. these are all extremely expensive entitlements that will make the economy less competitive.
the only thing i am ambivilant about is the war in iraq. that was pretty expensive. i'm not sure if it was worth the price or not. but i didn't know about the war when bush first went into office, and we were already in there by the time the 2nd election came about. so i really don't feel like i had much say about it.
aside from the war, i think its pretty difficult to say that democrats would have spent less. frankly i think your arguments are bizzare. i have never heard a democrat say they want less government spending.
i'd say bush has spent too much and i am unhappy about the deficit. i'd also say that democrats would have spent even more. unemployment is low and bush managed to make some small tax cuts. the only reason that the economy isn't taking off is oil prices. i'd say it could have been worse. we might have gotten gore or kerry.
The higher a person's taxes, the less freedom that person has. Slaves have 100% of their income confiscated. If government is taking 50% of your income you are only half free. Its a significant reduction in choice and personal freedom. Its a much more significant limitation than the government knowing which library books you are reading.
Democrats want to tell me what to do with my money. A lack of economic freedom always means less efficient markets which means poorer citizens.
I don't support getting rid of all taxes as I am not an anarchist. But I believe they are too high.
Slashdot Mirror
that was a good laugh.
and your facts are all messed up:
x t
x t
376,000 jobs were added in may 2005 if you look at official government page:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm
so yes there is enough demand from nuerosurgery and finance and other service sector jobs to make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs.
median wages rose between 2003 and 2004 so its not just fast food jobs being added to the economy:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat37.t
take a look at the characteristics of the unemployed. there is no way the unemployment rate would double if you added in discouraged workers:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat35.t
it might go up a percentage point.
money is not always made by producing stuff. people make money off of ideas. see steve jobs. he isn't rich because of the computers he personally assembled by hand. he's rich because he had an idea. good riddance to 'production' jobs. those are the dirty sweaty and dangerous jobs. i don't want them.
the unemployment rate has gone down pretty steadily since net bubble burst. this has been a good year for job growth. the trends are pretty clear. be honest and don't just cherry pick stats.
you still haven't addressed my first point so i'll try to be more clear about what i'm getting at: why is outsourcing jobs overseas any different from outsourcing jobs out of state or out of town and why don't you just do subsistance farming so that you never outsource anything to anyone? why is division of labor good on a personal level but bad at the national level?
anyone in tech will tell you the job market is pretty good right now. low level software jobs were outsourced because they were trivial jobs to perform. lots of software development can be done after only a few weeks training. in fact some of it is so easy that in the 90s my company hired english majors to do it after only 3 weeks of training and no computer background. i don't count those jobs as high skill. so yeah the english majors are being purged from the industry big freaking deal. what did you expect, infinite growth in software jobs? at some point students figure out there is money to made there and supply meets demand.
macro trends may show jobs going overseas but macro trends are also showing job creation here. wealth per capita is going up. consumption is high and going higher. more americans have more money than ever. they are making that money somehow. i just don't see the troubled economy you are describing.
just a small nitpick:
Globalization is an equalling out of wealth. Rich nations will get poorer, poor nations will become richer.
I disagree. Globalization is a leveling of the playing field not an equalling out of wealth. There is not a finite supply of wealth. Rich nations will get richer and poor nations will too.
If Bob specializes in making chairs and Jayne specializes in making door knobs and they trade, Bob comes away richer because he gets a quality door knob that he didn't have time or knowledge to produce and Jayne similarly profits. In the same way, broadening division of labor via outsourcing lets different people do what they do best and everyone is better off because of it.
Its true for all individual cases. Show me a case where its not true.
Not only that but your doomsday scenario is already here. Manufacturing is one of the smallest sectors of the economy. The service sector is 80% of the US economy. And yet we continue to be a wealthy nation with a healthy economy and low unemployment. Don't make the mistake of thinking all service sector jobs are at McDonald's. Service sector jobs include omputer programmers, engineers, nuerosurgeons, bankers, and accountants. Americans have these high paying, high skill jobs. They run corporations and come up with new ideas for new products while low skill jobs like working in noisy, dusty, and possibly dangerous factories have been relegated to China.
When Steve jobs created the macintosh in his garage, he didn't become rich from the fact he had a big lump of copper and plastic and metal, he became rich because he had a new idea. He created wealth from an idea. Its not about a physical product and how much you can lift or how many screws you can turn. People in America have high skill jobs where they make money from ideas.
Thats a good thing.
there are lots of jobs in nursing, radiology, get your realtor's liscence, appraisales, etc, etc, etc. unemployment is 5% right now. jobs are pretty easy to find. just maybe not your dream job. i went to a private school and lots of those people don't have jobs because they majored in the psychology of feminist buddhist basket art. you have to choose a field where people actually want you. lots of people go to community college and got good jobs.
You made a ton of different new points and didn't bother responding to my main point: If outsourcing is bad for America, then isn't outsourcing bad for your state, your hometown and for your family? Whats the difference? Wouldn't we all be much wealthier as subsistance farmers?
things i suspect aren't true:
- the US built its industry based on high tariffs and high labor costs.
- jobs being created in the US are overwhelmingly in low-paying service industries
When you see the part where Wal-Mart literally tells a mid-western hosiery company to shut down its US plants and move to China, ask yourself: Is that really good for America? Yes, we get cheaper socks. But hundreds of Americans get thrown out of good paying jobs and are tossed into the unemployment line.
I've seen it. Walmart is definately good for America. Its bad for the few hundred americans who lose their job, but its good for the hundreds of millions of american consumers who buy socks. It might not seem like it will make a big difference in the lives of sock consumers, but walmart has lowered prices on all kinds of goods including food. That means poor Americans can afford more food. Should we really let a few hundred people keep down everyone else's standard of living?
With unfettered "free" trade, we're in a race to the bottom. American workers are literally forced to compete against the poorest workers in the world, workers who, in China's and many others' case, have no labor rights and work under appalling conditions.
Hey if you don't want to compete and you want to do it under those conditions and someone else does, thats your loss. Its true that the few hundred steel workers still here may lose their jobs, but whats the price of them keeping their jobs? It means higher prices on goods that use steel. It means poor americans can't afford cars to get to work. It means hundreds of millions of Americans have their standard of living depressed because a few hundred steel workers want to live off our tax dollars via government subsidy instead of going back to school and getting trained to do something american companies actually need them for.
And I can legitimately argue that there is no middle ground and that outsourcing at the country level is the same thing as outsourcing at any other level.
In fact I can legitimately argue nuclear war is good for sunflowers.
This is rediculous. If countries shouldn't outsource, then states shouldn't outsource. And if states shouldn't outsource, then towns shouldn't outsource. And if towns shouldn't outsource then families shouldn't outsource. People who are against outsourcing end arguing against division of labor. In the end your argument boils down to: everyone should be subsistance farmers and build our own houses because we wouldn't want to outsource any labor to anyone else. Talk about economic suicide.
Division of labor (ie outsourcing) has been happening since the time of cave men, and will continue to happen as long as there are people. This is one thing that will definately go on forever.
I don't see the prisoners' dilemma coming into play here, because everyone gets what they want.
i think you misunderstood the parent. its not that you would get to pay less taxes. its that you could choose where to put your tax money.
there will be a tragedy of the commons regardless because taxes fund a public good.
If you were right the USSR would have beaten us in the arms race. The USSR took your position that the research should be done by the government. They didn't beat us because our private companies (like lockheed) outperformed their lame attempts at development and production. The only reason they managed to produce anything at all is because they turned millions of people in their country into slaves who stopped producing wheat and starved death producing weapons.
Government money does fund guns and planes, but thats hardly "fundamental research". The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers -- no one is better at that than the market.
And for every government funded research success that you mention, billions of dollars were wasted supporting untold numbers of spectacularly failed projects. See NASA and the nationalized space industry. Woopee, we got velcro. Thats worth the trillions of dollars we have spent on gold toilet seats and taking dogs into space. Thats a great investment. Markets would not have wasted that volume of money.
I'd agree that we need to get rid of tenured professors. Why should professors get this rediculous level of job security when no one else in the market does? Its the teachers union buying off congress at the expense of taxpayers and students.
But the real problem with university expenses is that the cost of going to college is enormously subsidized by the government. When the government is giving loans and grants out to the tune of 10 or 20,000 dollars, the universities can charge that much more. Basically we are gradually nationalizing higher education. That means lower quality for a higher price. It also means the poor can go to school via government subsidy and the rich can go to school because they are rich, but the middle class gets screwed because they can't afford college and they get to pay for the poor people's tuition. why bother working? might as well be poor and let someone else take care of me.
Incentives matter.
if you don't want to "labor for someone else's profits and grand visions" then start your own company.
and if you don't want to work then go sit on the couch and be poor and hungry. i'm not going to work for you.
what could be more noble than working? what could be more noble than producing something of value? if you aren't sustaining yourself, then you either mooching off others or taking your wealth by force. an honest person is one who doesn't consume more than they have produced.
you are trying to say that companies should be more democratic (publicly traded ones are democratic but nevermind that). i was thinking that governments should be more tyrannical. clearly a dictator is bad when the dictator is bad. but i think a good dictator is better than a good democracy any day. when the dictator knows what he is doing and has good solutions and good advisors and listens and isn't abusive and doesn't beat anyone (who doesn't deserve a beating), etc.
problems with democracy:
- is that it always a huge nasty beaurocracy. everyone has to vote on everything all the time. decision making is slow, clumsy, complex, and retarded (for example: the tax code is like 10,000,000 pages).
- uneducated irresponsible greedy bad overweight perverted wife beating donkey loving criminals with mental problems who are high on cocaine get to vote. experts aren't making the decisions.
- oppression of the minority (for example the very very rich are oppressed in this country because this group of the smallest top best producers have to pay way more into the government than anyone else does and they get way less back in the form of benefits).
good things about a well run tyranny:
- no beaurocracy. very efficient. easy to get things done.
- only knowledgeable people are making decisions -- by definition since this is a well run tyranny.
(this is the big problem of course with a tyranny as i will get to in a second.)
- note that a tyranny/company will not necessarily suppress minority viewpoints under the following conditions: (a.) you can leave a tyranny/company and go join another tyranny/company, (b.) you can go start your own tyranny/company
the nice thing about lots of different companies/tyrannies is that you can always choose a different tyranny/company if you don't like the one where you are at currently. or you could start your own tyranny/company and run it how you want.
now the problem is picking good dictators/ceos who will make the right decisions and not beat you (unless you deserve to be beaten). in the case of corporations, the market picks the most talented ones. so the ceos/dictators who survive are by definition those who are making decisions which are good for their organization and the people they represent. in the case of nations there is no such nice easy well behaved mechanism for finding good dictators. thus we have to retreat the inferior system of democracy.
but we should wish for a benevolent dictatorship.
i agree. and finger printing aside -- i pay my taxes, why the hell do i need permission and 7 forms of id to check my email at the public library?
thats why we have a free market. so when one company screws up, we switch to another that we like better. yeah competition.
uh.. so the Democrats would have given us a smaller, less intrusive government, protecting state's rights to self-government and real tough security measures, to protect us from terrorists?
republicans suck. but dems would have sucked more. what can you do.
clinton balanced the budget because the economy grew so much, the government collected a lot more taxes, and he was stymied by the Gingrich Congress which actually had some fiscal conservatives in it (unlike the current one) and which prevented clinton from implementing the enormously expensive goverment health care takeover he wanted. clinton's proposed health care plan was way more expensive -- and worse than that would have driven prices way way up while decreasing the quality of care -- than any thing bush has proposed. and i would bet thats true even if you count the war in iraq and the fact we will be there for another 10 years of guerilla warfare.
lindon johnson spent quite a lot more on the new deal than bush ever spent.
you liberal media moonbat, you.
i like the cato institute and i agree with the analysis (though i didn't read the whole thing) and i think its terrible and i agree with all your criticisms of the bush administration in this post.
but i think its small potatoes compared to hillary clinton's health care proposals. democrats would like to see the $700+ trillion prescription drug program expanded to a zillion dollar nationalized health care system. democrats would like to see HSA and TSA spending increased. Halliburton is just an every day unavoidable side affect of an inefficiency and/or corruption of big government -- it happens all the time.
the fact is, i've never heard a democrat on npr say we are spending too much. democrats always say we are spending too little. gore would have gone nuts with social and environmental spending/taxing. kerry would have repealed bush tax cuts. dems love to talk about nationalized health care. its just one example of the dems problematic stance on the issue of free trade. and there is their pro union problem. these are all extremely expensive entitlements that will make the economy less competitive.
the only thing i am ambivilant about is the war in iraq. that was pretty expensive. i'm not sure if it was worth the price or not. but i didn't know about the war when bush first went into office, and we were already in there by the time the 2nd election came about. so i really don't feel like i had much say about it.
aside from the war, i think its pretty difficult to say that democrats would have spent less. frankly i think your arguments are bizzare. i have never heard a democrat say they want less government spending.
the first 2 are firefox bugs not google cache bugs. i get those occasionally i haven't yet tried that google accelerator thing
are you saying if democrats were in power and gore or kerry president, they would have spent less than bush?
i'd say bush has spent too much and i am unhappy about the deficit. i'd also say that democrats would have spent even more. unemployment is low and bush managed to make some small tax cuts. the only reason that the economy isn't taking off is oil prices. i'd say it could have been worse. we might have gotten gore or kerry.
The higher a person's taxes, the less freedom that person has. Slaves have 100% of their income confiscated. If government is taking 50% of your income you are only half free. Its a significant reduction in choice and personal freedom. Its a much more significant limitation than the government knowing which library books you are reading.
Democrats want to tell me what to do with my money. A lack of economic freedom always means less efficient markets which means poorer citizens.
I don't support getting rid of all taxes as I am not an anarchist. But I believe they are too high.