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What Is The Future Of Free Trade? 5 Facts About US Trade Policy
Yet another bit of 'conventional wisdom' (i.e. BALONEY) regarding unfair trade with PRC.
Metlzer explains, "a widening U.S. trade deficit has been correlated with rising GDP and lower unemployment—which Meltzer argues is associated with the economic impact of capital inflows into the U.S. These inflows, he says, “reflect confidence in the U.S. economy as foreigners demand U.S. assets such as bonds, equities, and real estate."
REPLY: BALONEY! Sure, the foreing investors have 'confidence' -- confidence that their cheating-trade profits will be safe in the USA (i.e. that the USA will respect their property rights). If foreign investors REALLY had confidence in the Main Street USA economy, they would build plants, hire American workers, and manufacture locally here -- driving trade deficits down.
Solís affirms that the predominant force behind losses in manufacturing employment has been technological change (85 percent), not international trade.
REPLY: BALONEY! If automation was the culprit, then American and foreign companies would install automated factories HERE and again, produce locally. That is not what is happening. All the stuff says 'Made in China'. Does 'automation' somehow not work in the USA? Of course. Its the 3rd-world wages, lack of labor and environmental regulation which has acted like a magnet. There are millions of mftg jobs in China that are done by people (not automated) that used to be here.
In my day-job, I work in the Chemicals industry, in the finance side of the business. My customers are American-HQ'd chemical companies (DuPont, etc.) They have mostly all offshored their finance jobs to India, Philippines , Costa Rica etc. These would be solid lower-middle class jobs. GONE! The jobs are not 'automated' -- they have been offshored.
The article is a bunch of B.S. -- part of the propaganda war being waged against the truth & the American worker by the Establishment. The think-tanks/policy centers that produce this kind of vile lies are not funded by Main Street; they are funded by Establishment money. The think-tanks tailor their theories so they can continue to be highly-paid shills.
I'll add that many of the struggles humans encounter have much to do with securing a living wage. When one is not available, social ills (crime, addiction, government handouts, lack of education, etc) increase.
Exactly, the dirty political fact about Unfair Trade is that both parties' Establishments (aka the American Aristrocracy) support it..
The Repub Aristocracy supports it because it strips income from labor (households) and give it to shareholders and upper management. Said another way: less money for the workers so that management/shareholders get more -- the whole income inequality trend (the topic of another thread here).
The Dem Aristocracy supports offshoring because it indeed creates dependency (gubmint benefits)... more dependency on the state destroys incentives to get a job/improve skills. And the dependency becomes psychological -- feeding a sense of hopelessness.... If things are hopeless, benny recipients will tend to vote Dem -- who will increase bennies.
So (as a generalization): the Repub Aristocracy gets richer; the Dem Aristocracy builds electoral constituencies (the dispossesed).
The French figured out how to deal with their aristocracy a couple hundred years ago.
Huh? What's baloney? Everything he wrote is demonstrably true (evidence-based). More important, what does offshoring have to do with trade, which is what he's writing about? Finance jobs to India is not trade. Your companies are cutting costs. It's horrible. It's the way it works.
Are you advocating that what the French did is a longterm-useful approach ? Some Bernie or Warren version of same? What?
@bee, UBI sure looks more and more attractive, though it ain't going to get traction anytime soon. Instead, more meth, opiates, video games, suicide, and other violence, I bet.
The chart above shows annual measures of US manufacturing output ... and US manufacturing employment ... from 1947 to 2014. In inflation-adjusted constant 2014 dollars, US manufacturing output has increased more than five-fold over the last 67 years, from $410 billion in 1947 to a record-setting level of output last year of $2.09 trillion ...
Other than technological improvements, what explains the divergence of the curves? Or an older, similar path in agriculture?
With fewer than 2% of America’s workers, we produce more agricultural output today in the US than when much greater numbers and much higher shares of the nation’s employees were working on farms. And yet when have you ever heard anybody say that “America just doesn’t grow anything anymore”?
Across the manufacturing belt that hugs China’s southern coastline, thousands of factories like Chen’s are turning to automation in a government-backed, robot-driven industrial revolution the likes of which the world has never seen. Since 2013, China has bought more industrial robots each year than any other country, including high-tech manufacturing giants such as Germany, Japan and South Korea.
As nations develop and wages rise, the trade moves on to the next cheapest location: from China, to Bangladesh and, now that it is opening up, Myanmar. Could that migration be about to end with the development of a robotic sewing machine? ...
The lesson from industrial automation in other sorts of factories, though, shows that robots keep getting better and cheaper. It may be a while coming, but the writing seems to be on the wall for sweatshops.
David, the think tank shills get paid a lot of money to construct biased 'evidence'. Get me a few dozen think-tanks and all their BALONEY evidence can be de-constructed. They constructed a whole dogma to support the offshoring of jobs and the destruction of the middle class. They have an army of well-paid shills. Pravda could cite chapter and verse too and cite any number of studies in supporting the Soviet system. If chattel slavery had never been abolished, I am quite certain the plantation owners would be employing an army of think-tank 'fellows' to show how the institution of slavery helped black folks. When hundreds of billions of $ a year are at stake, shills -- like paid lobbyists -- can be hired by the thousands to do the bidding of the US Chamber of Commerce; by contrast, the economically dispossesed cannot afford hire an opposing army of think-tank fellows.
You throw up your charts and your (Establishment paid) 'experts' and you ask me "Ed, who ya gonna believe, my charts or your lyin eyes?" Yeah, right.
Yes companies move offshore to save costs. Every cost 'saved' by canning a US worker represents income lost at the household level. Costs are not saved, they are moved to someone else -- households and the taxpayer. -- That is the wage-arbitraging dynamic which has driven income inequality in this country. Legislation can undo that trend. Simply put, if a company --ANY company whether domestic or foreign domiciled -- wants access to our markets, it should be conditioned on employing workers in this market -- or paying a penalty. If a company wants to "play" in this market, they must "pay" for admittance. If they don't wish to pay, their competition will.
Is that 'protectionism' (gasp!)? Sure. But the current offshoring & import/export model of globalization is 'protectionist' too --- it protects billionaires and the owners of capital. We are either going to have protectionism of billionaires (the current system) or protectionism of the little guy/gal.
Both Edmond and David have pertinent points here. In some parts of your back and forth, the two of you are actually pretty close.
Humanoid robots are around the corner. Japan has them in limited roles but they can do pretty much anything a human can do Artificial Intelligence has been the game changer in this respect.
Jobs are being off shored to China etc and increasingly those jobs are being automated. The days of 100 thousand FoxConn workers at stations are ending.
When the robots do all the work, what will blue collar workers do for a living?
Edmond, you are quite mistaken in any number of ways, but you are completely persuasive that nothing is going to affect your thinking, from any source.
Most pertinent is that this actually has been studied to death and in great detail and quite sophisticated ways, with new revelations, from think tank types to business economists. All recently, and mostly arising from the difficulty and subtlety of the problems and the important role they all play in national political and economic health, down to the individual level.
But it is wonderful to see (finally!) someone using Marx's terms plainly.
Gosh, capitalism is brutal, but the 'throw Americans out of work' thing is a small part of the story. Coal mining went across the Mississippi, just one example. But technology changes, skills acquisition, comparative advantage, all have been, as I say, studied up the ying-yang.
The sovereign will of the people, expressed in the voting booth can be brutal too. Maybe the Aristocracy will have a few less bonbons. Oh the humanity!
David, capitalism can manifest itself in any number of permutations. Most developed European countries have been labelled "social democracies". Most would still characterize them as both democratic, and capitalistic. Ditto for Canada and Japan. In fact, a capitalist future for this country will be impossible without a strong Middle Class. Simply put, if the Middle Class is impoverished by capitalists (foreign and domestic) they will vote to end capitalism. If anything, this election may just have saved capitalism for America.
Capitalism will exist quite well/profitably without foreign predatory bad actors stealing American jobs. -- China is the principal example. In fact, the notion that elected & appointed public servants should cut trade deals solely with the interest of MNCs, with no consideration of the impact of the little guy/gal, strikes me as a corrupted plutocracy -- a plutocracy which the Aristocrats of both parties embraced -- in return for emoluments from the 1% types.
Comments
Metlzer explains, "a widening U.S. trade deficit has been correlated with rising GDP and lower unemployment—which Meltzer argues is associated with the economic impact of capital inflows into the U.S. These inflows, he says, “reflect confidence in the U.S. economy as foreigners demand U.S. assets such as bonds, equities, and real estate."
REPLY: BALONEY! Sure, the foreing investors have 'confidence' -- confidence that their cheating-trade profits will be safe in the USA (i.e. that the USA will respect their property rights). If foreign investors REALLY had confidence in the Main Street USA economy, they would build plants, hire American workers, and manufacture locally here -- driving trade deficits down.
Solís affirms that the predominant force behind losses in manufacturing employment has been technological change (85 percent), not international trade.
REPLY: BALONEY! If automation was the culprit, then American and foreign companies would install automated factories HERE and again, produce locally. That is not what is happening. All the stuff says 'Made in China'. Does 'automation' somehow not work in the USA? Of course. Its the 3rd-world wages, lack of labor and environmental regulation which has acted like a magnet. There are millions of mftg jobs in China that are done by people (not automated) that used to be here.
In my day-job, I work in the Chemicals industry, in the finance side of the business. My customers are American-HQ'd chemical companies (DuPont, etc.) They have mostly all offshored their finance jobs to India, Philippines , Costa Rica etc. These would be solid lower-middle class jobs. GONE! The jobs are not 'automated' -- they have been offshored.
The article is a bunch of B.S. -- part of the propaganda war being waged against the truth & the American worker by the Establishment. The think-tanks/policy centers that produce this kind of vile lies are not funded by Main Street; they are funded by Establishment money. The think-tanks tailor their theories so they can continue to be highly-paid shills.
I'll add that many of the struggles humans encounter have much to do with securing a living wage. When one is not available, social ills (crime, addiction, government handouts, lack of education, etc) increase.
The Repub Aristocracy supports it because it strips income from labor (households) and give it to shareholders and upper management. Said another way: less money for the workers so that management/shareholders get more -- the whole income inequality trend (the topic of another thread here).
The Dem Aristocracy supports offshoring because it indeed creates dependency (gubmint benefits)... more dependency on the state destroys incentives to get a job/improve skills. And the dependency becomes psychological -- feeding a sense of hopelessness.... If things are hopeless, benny recipients will tend to vote Dem -- who will increase bennies.
So (as a generalization): the Repub Aristocracy gets richer; the Dem Aristocracy builds electoral constituencies (the dispossesed).
The French figured out how to deal with their aristocracy a couple hundred years ago.
Thanks for your candid views.
Huh? What's baloney? Everything he wrote is demonstrably true (evidence-based).
More important, what does offshoring have to do with trade, which is what he's writing about? Finance jobs to India is not trade. Your companies are cutting costs. It's horrible. It's the way it works.
Are you advocating that what the French did is a longterm-useful approach ? Some Bernie or Warren version of same? What?
@bee, UBI sure looks more and more attractive, though it ain't going to get traction anytime soon. Instead, more meth, opiates, video games, suicide, and other violence, I bet.
AEI, America’s world-class manufacturing sector and factory workers
https://www.aei.org/publication/october-2-is-manufacturing-day-so-lets-recognize-americas-world-class-manufacturing-sector-and-factory-workers/ Other than technological improvements, what explains the divergence of the curves? Or an older, similar path in agriculture?
The competition is with machines, less and less with foreign labor. Worldwide, machines are cheaper.
Financial Times, China's Robot Revolution
https://www.ft.com/content/1dbd8c60-0cc6-11e6-ad80-67655613c2d6
Here's an interesting article about why it's difficult to automate clothing manufacturing, but that's changing too.
The Economist, Made to Measure
http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21651925-robotic-sewing-machine-could-throw-garment-workers-low-cost-countries-out
You throw up your charts and your (Establishment paid) 'experts' and you ask me "Ed, who ya gonna believe, my charts or your lyin eyes?" Yeah, right.
Yes companies move offshore to save costs. Every cost 'saved' by canning a US worker represents income lost at the household level. Costs are not saved, they are moved to someone else -- households and the taxpayer. -- That is the wage-arbitraging dynamic which has driven income inequality in this country. Legislation can undo that trend. Simply put, if a company --ANY company whether domestic or foreign domiciled -- wants access to our markets, it should be conditioned on employing workers in this market -- or paying a penalty. If a company wants to "play" in this market, they must "pay" for admittance. If they don't wish to pay, their competition will.
Is that 'protectionism' (gasp!)? Sure. But the current offshoring & import/export model of globalization is 'protectionist' too --- it protects billionaires and the owners of capital. We are either going to have protectionism of billionaires (the current system) or protectionism of the little guy/gal.
Humanoid robots are around the corner. Japan has them in limited roles but they can do pretty much anything a human can do Artificial Intelligence has been the game changer in this respect.
Jobs are being off shored to China etc and increasingly those jobs are being automated. The days of 100 thousand FoxConn workers at stations are ending.
When the robots do all the work, what will blue collar workers do for a living?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=blVVFzRrgBg
Most pertinent is that this actually has been studied to death and in great detail and quite sophisticated ways, with new revelations, from think tank types to business economists. All recently, and mostly arising from the difficulty and subtlety of the problems and the important role they all play in national political and economic health, down to the individual level.
But it is wonderful to see (finally!) someone using Marx's terms plainly.
I never fail to be amazed a the number of Establishment shills willing to throw Americans out of work and move their jobs to the Chi-coms.
David, capitalism can manifest itself in any number of permutations. Most developed European countries have been labelled "social democracies". Most would still characterize them as both democratic, and capitalistic. Ditto for Canada and Japan. In fact, a capitalist future for this country will be impossible without a strong Middle Class. Simply put, if the Middle Class is impoverished by capitalists (foreign and domestic) they will vote to end capitalism. If anything, this election may just have saved capitalism for America.
Capitalism will exist quite well/profitably without foreign predatory bad actors stealing American jobs. -- China is the principal example. In fact, the notion that elected & appointed public servants should cut trade deals solely with the interest of MNCs, with no consideration of the impact of the little guy/gal, strikes me as a corrupted plutocracy -- a plutocracy which the Aristocrats of both parties embraced -- in return for emoluments from the 1% types.