Free trade is an economic nuclear bomb.
Posted on 04/05/2015 5:14:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Robopocalypse for workers may be inevitable. In this vision of the future, super-smart machines will best humans in pretty much every task. A few of us will own the machines, a few will work a bit — perhaps providing "Made by Man" artisanal goods — while the rest will live off a government-provided income. Silicon-based superintelligence and robots will dramatically alter labor markets — to name but one example, the most common job in most U.S. states probably will no longer be truck driver.
But what about right now? If you're unemployed or working part-time instead of full-time, or haven't seen a raise in years, should you blame technology?
Yes, says venture capitalist and former Intel executive Bill Davidow. In a provocative piece for Harvard Business Review, "The Internet Has Been a Colossal Economic Disappointment," Davidow makes a strong claim: "For all its economic virtues, the internet has been long on job displacement and short on job creation. As a result, it is playing a central role in wage stagnation and the decline of the middle class."
Just look at how Amazon is disrupting brick-and-mortar retailing. And even though tech firms such as Google and Facebook generate huge revenues, they employ comparatively few people versus industrial giants of the past, such as IBM or General Motors. In the 1970s, General Motors employed more than 600,000 people, 10 times more Google and Facebook combined.
To accept Davidow's broad conclusion, though, one also has to believe workers across many sectors would be a lot better off today if the internet had not been invented. That's an unlikely counterfactual. Just look at how the labor market has been doing. The U.S. economy has generated 3.3 million jobs over the past year, the best 12-month performance since 2000.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
You mean the unemployed factory workers competing with each other?
And all you morons can think of in response is to raise taxes on me.
Hey man, I’ve watched 3 guys quit in the past week. LOL, they must’ve been from down South.
Free trade is an economic nuclear bomb.
Your arguments really don’t make sense.
Do you have any compassion for your fellow citizen?
Do you also support illegal immigration and H1-B visa’s? After all, if you only care about money it makes sense to hire the cheapest labor possible.
The over regulation by FedGov is bad; we all agree. We are all against it. But offshoring is like killing the cancer patient in order to cure him.
Yay! Someone took a photo of a pile of rubble!
Ok, cut the crap. How much more do you think I should pay in the name of “compassion?”
Don't expect that coward to give you a straight answer to your very good question.
I know, right. FReeper CNN makes a broken record sound scratch-free.
How much do you think your going to pay in taxes to take care of millions of people who can’t find work? Hint - a lot more.
When a person can’t find work and has no hope of a better future, well you just created an instant socialist. We doing this by the millions.
Free Trade really has very little to do with “freedom”.
So, I pay higher taxes, and our elected officials continue to expand transfer payments anyway? Where's the "win" for me, here?
Tariffs are not taxes that are mandatory. Don't buy, don't pay. The income tax that progressive globalists like you so prefer is mandatory under penalty of imprisonment.
Have I ever supported illegal immigration, ever? So much for that strawman.
As for H1-B's, I know a couple. They work hard, and pay their taxes. Can't speak for the rest, we may have too many, or we may not.
On the other hand, witness our Southern brethren who are unwilling to come to Detroit and actually get a job.
first step...cut our taxes, cut the endless useless regulations on doing business here at home..
that should begin to repair our economy
Again, stop. If your tariff allows the domestic manufacturer to inflate its price, then you’ve paid the tax. Cut the BS. And cut the BS about me observing the truth about the above somehow, and magically, making me a fan of a progressive income tax. That’s just dumb.
Maybe this will help your mind wrap around it.
If you have policies that impoverish millions of people, those people aren’t going to just disappear.
They will vote for politicians who will take YOUR money to pay for their food, housing, healthcare etc.
It’s better if they have jobs so they can take care of themselves and pay their fair share of taxes.
Much cheaper in the long run.
Ok, how much do I need to pay? Give me a number. And then prove to me that you are not a socialist.
And why not? We "deserve" to have access the cheapest work force available right? Securing our borders is depriving you fellow Americans and the Chamber of Commerce access to cheap labor. What is wrong with you? On the one hand you support Free trade and Chinese Coolie labor but cruelly are against third worlders coming across our border. You are a confused and confusing man.
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