Posted on 01/24/2006 9:36:57 AM PST by SirLinksalot
This ain't your father's economy, but whose is it?
January 24, 2006
BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Ford Motor Co. announces that it will eliminate up to 30,000 jobs and close at least at least four U.S. plants, and White House press secretary Scott McClellan responds in part by saying the overall economy "is going strong." By juxtaposing one with the other, you might suspect me of trying to cast McClellan in a bad light. But I'm not.
While I find it bewildering, McClellan may be right. I really don't know.
I don't pretend to understand the economy any more.
I don't understand how our economy can keep churning while all the good, blue-collar jobs keep disappearing, relegating more and more people to lives of earning less.
I don't understand how we can measure the economy in ways that don't seem to reflect the distress in the work force.
At the same time, I don't understand where so many people get the money to buy all these expensive condos in the Loop or to build all those sprawling mcmansions in the distant suburbs.
More basically, I don't understand what we do anymore.
From factories to 'service'
I don't know what we produce. I don't know what it is of value that we provide to the rest of the world.
They tell me: It's a service economy, stupid.
And I certainly feel stupid, because I keep thinking that somebody among us ought to be making something tangible instead of chasing dollars in a circle.
Don't mind me. I'm just a product of the old economy trying to make his way in the new economy, hoping there's still a way for my kids to make a living when it's their turn.
What worries me, I guess, is the nagging sense that we're living in a house of cards, and that the wind is about to blow.
Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if not for some uncertainty in my own profession right now, the newspaper business being a little hazy as to what the future holds.
But I grew up in a railroad family in a community where the breadwinners for most of the other families worked in factories. The railroad moved the raw materials to the factories or the finished products to market. It was an easy economy to understand.
The kids from the blue-collar families could scrape together enough money to afford college if they wanted, although many opted to take the same blue-collar jobs as their parents.
A global competition
But that world has almost disappeared. The railroad is just a shadow of itself. The high school graduates aren't counting on those factory jobs, and their parents are finding it that much more difficult to send them to college.
That's why I feel the pain of Ford's announcement, even if we are breathing a sigh of relief in Chicago because the company's decision does not directly affect its plant here -- for now.
Most of the 30,000 displaced Ford workers will never make as much money as they're making now, joining all the other folks out there who have gone backward as they were gobbled up by the global marketplace.
Workers all over the world are making cars today -- and doing it for less than our workers make. We're not just talking about Japan anymore, but Poland and Hungary and Turkey.
"This is globalization. We're in competition with factories around the world," says Richard Longworth, a former newspaperman who understands the global economy much better than me as the executive director of the Global Chicago Center at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Longworth promotes the concept of Chicago as a global city, one of a small group of elite metropolitan areas around the globe that provide the services that the world's business community requires.
In Chicago's case, Longworth has explained to me previously, it's mainly financial and legal services that the city contributes to the world economy.
Balancing world against workers
But Longworth appreciates the conflicting message of a "strong economy" that puts people out of work.
"America is doing fine. A lot of Americans are not," says Longworth, which he says also applies to Chicago and some Chicagoans.
"Chicago is benefitting terrifically from globalization," he says, but knows that may not be evident to those who supported their families with jobs in industries that lost out to foreign competition.
Longworth calls it "THE big puzzle."
"How can you be fair to the rest of the world and still be fair to our workers? We're into a new era, and we haven't figured it out," he said.
I've driven a Ford for about 20 years, ever since my brother started selling them when the railroad got fouled up.
He's done well. He sent his kid to college. May the Ford plant workers be as fortunate.
That's easy...
Dubya has kept it afloat with over $2 Trillion of deficit spending that we'll never be able to pay back.
Still spewing your hysteric nonsense I see Wille. Go take some Econ classes, Your ignorance on economics is positively embarrassing.
It's called ROBATICS you economic isolationist morons. You do NOT need as many people or facilities to produce cars. The economy is NOT stagnate. It changes every day and companies have to evolve to meet the changing technology. Part of the problem the USA had in the 1970s was it refusal to adopt to a changing economic environment. All this hysteria by the Economic Ignorant shows just how completely OUT OF TOUCH you all are about how the economy works. Jobs come, jobs go. It is the beauty of capitalism.
Robatics?
Mechanized bats run the economy?
No wonder everyone is confused.
Who'd a thunk it?
aside from health/elder care & govt., what are the current "growth" industries.
In years past they were easy to identify e.g. aerospace, computers, etc.
Not so clear today.
"Mechanized bats run the economy?"
I've always thought stealth bombers look like headless, mechanized bats. Does this count?
I don't pretend to understand the economy any more.
And I don’t pretend to understand Lithuanian opera.
The difference is, I don’t try to write an article about Lithuanian opera.
"How can you be fair to the rest of the world and still be fair to our workers?"
Oh, so globalization is all about "fairness," huh? Just another wealth redistribution scheme, with us as the primary donors, as always?
When did it become written in stone that we *must* chase the absolute bottom dollar labor cost? The greatest prosperity the world has ever seen occurred in the United States over the past century or so. To listen to the most ardent globalists, you'd think this would be impossible, because there were protectionist trade restrictions in varying degrees throughout the period.
You stoopid 'tard. You misspelled "moroon".
Maybe nobody knew about the bats because they are stealth robats. I sure didn't know about them.
That might explain why economists seem more confused than New England weathermen.
"Maybe nobody knew about the bats because they are stealth robats. I sure didn't know about them."
Well, since Greenspan's retiring, maybe we should start a new cargo cult, centered upon the mechanized stealth bats that run our economy?
I don't know.
I sorta like the idea of keeping it a secret.
It's fun to think that we know all about the Stealth Robats that run the economy and nobody else does.
I was never in a secret economics club before.
I don't pretend to understand the economy any more.
At least he gets his first statement right. He never did understand it, and now at least he's admitting that he can't pretend anymore.
I don't understand how our economy can keep churning while all the good, blue-collar jobs keep disappearing, relegating more and more people to lives of earning less.
If these were all such "good" jobs, then why don't people in journalism (which represents one of the lowest-paid careers in the country today) ever give up their jobs and go to work in a factory?
I don't understand how we can measure the economy in ways that don't seem to reflect the distress in the work force.
That's because total employment is one of the least accurate indicators of a nation's economic strength. China, which is supposedly taking all of these "good jobs" from us, is currently ranked around #120 in the world in per-capita GDP, which puts it right around such economic titans as the Dominican Republic and Gabon.
Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if not for some uncertainty in my own profession right now, the newspaper business being a little hazy as to what the future holds.
The fact that anyone even has the time to read the kind of crap that passes for "journalism" these days is the most telling indication that we are prosperous beyond belief.
But that world has almost disappeared. The railroad is just a shadow of itself.
Utter and complete bullsh!t, spoken with the intelligence of someone who believes that the railroad must not exist anymore because it no longer stops in his town. The railroad industry in the United States has set all-time records for car loadings just about every month for the last three years, and the biggest problem the industry now faces is that demand for freight railroad transportation in the U.S. is starting to exceed the industry's ability to move trains.
Workers all over the world are making cars today -- and doing it for less than our workers make. We're not just talking about Japan anymore, but Poland and Hungary and Turkey.
And Kentucky (Toyota), Ohio (Honda), South Carolina (BMW), Tennessee (Nissan), Alabama (Hyundai), etc. Maybe this moron should be asking himself why Ford is laying of 30,000 workers while all of these other auto producers are opening plants in the U.S. at a record pace.
Part of the problem are false statements like this one.
Ford still has tens of thousands of employees who don't do work. They're on the payroll because the union had this included in the contract. These aren't jobs.
Also the median wage is rising, not falling. It fell during the '90's when we had a blithering idiot for President but this wasn't news at the time.
Food. Nowhere on the earth has a shortage of lawyers so that has to be it.
" I don't pretend to understand the economy any more.
And I don’t pretend to understand Lithuanian opera.
The difference is, I don’t try to write an article about Lithuanian opera."
Amen bro. The standard of living in the USA today is the best that it's ever been in the recorded history of man. Industries change and we adapt. The underlining reason that American's are the most successful is based on the Constitution and free market capitlism. Capitalism, by definition, means that the strong survive and the weak die. This means that some industries will pass from America, we don't make tvs, dvds, etc. We have other ways of revenue generation.
The doom and gloom crowd has always been {and will always be} with us. European countries are growing at 1.1% per year, and we are growing at 3 times that rate yet the msm calls this a bad economy.
Truth hurts. He are afloat in a sea of debt. People stop using credit and home equity to live beyond their means the economy will go into recession in a fortnight. You can not borrow forever.
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