Posted on 12/18/2003 3:32:00 PM PST by sly671
Jobs come and go Walter E. Williams
In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss.
What should Congress have done to save those jobs? Congress could have taken a page from India's history. In 1924, Mahatma Gandhi attacked machinery, saying it "helps a few to ride on the backs of millions" and warned, "The machine should not make atrophies the limbs of man." With that kind of support, Indian textile workers were able to politically block the introduction of labor-saving textile machines. As a result, in 1970 India's textile industry had the level of productivity of ours in the 1920s.
Michael Cox, chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and author Richard Alms tell the rest of the telecommunications story in their Nov. 17 New York Times article, "The Great Job Machine." Spectacular technological advances made it possible for the telecommunications industry to cut its manpower needs down to 78,000 to handle not the annual 9.8 billion long distance calls in 1970, but today's over 98 billion calls.
One forgotten beneficiary in today's job loss demagoguery is the consumer. Long distance calls are a tiny fraction of their cost in 1970. Just since 1984, long distance costs have fallen by 60 percent. Using 1970s technology, to make today's 98 billion calls would require 4.2 million operators. That's 3 percent of our labor force. Moreover, a long distance call would cost 40 times more than it does today.
Finding cheaper ways to produce goods and services frees up labor to produce other things. If productivity gains aren't made, where in the world would we find workers to produce all those goods that weren't even around in the 1970s?
It's my guess that the average anti-free-trade person wouldn't protest, much less argue that Congress should have done something about the job loss in the telecommunications industry. He'd reveal himself an idiot. But there's no significant economic difference between an industry using technology to reduce production costs and using cheaper labor to do the same. In either case, there's no question that the worker who finds himself out of a job because of the use of technology or cheaper labor might encounter hardships. The political difference is that it's easier to organize resentment against India and China than against technology.
Both Republican and Democratic interventionist like to focus on job losses as they call for trade restrictions, but let us look at what was happening in the 1990s. Cox and Alm report that recent Bureau of Labor Statistics show an annual job loss from a low of 27 million in 1993 to a high of 35.4 million in 2001. In 2000, when unemployment reached its lowest level, 33 million jobs were lost. That's the loss side. However, annual jobs created ranged from 29.6 million in 1993 to a high of 35.6 million in 1999.
These are signs of a healthy economy, where businesses start up, fail, downsize and upsize, and workers are fired and workers are hired all in the process of adapting to changing technological, economic and global conditions. Societies become richer when this process is allowed to occur. Indeed, because our nation has a history of allowing this process to occur goes a long way toward explaining why we are richer than the rest of the world.
Those Americans calling for government restrictions that would deny companies and ultimately consumers to benefit from cheaper methods of production are asking us to accept lower wealth in order to protect special interests. Of course, they don't cloak their agenda that way. It's always "national security," "level playing fields" and "protecting jobs". Don't fall for it -- we'll all become losers.
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
"If you have no income and have no savings, you are living in poverty..."
So if you own your mud hut in Sri Lanka, and make eight cents a day, saving three cents a day, you are not in poverty?
Unless they drastically reduce and water down the nursing requirements (god forbid) there is no way a large percentage of them could pass the basic sciences courses required (biology, chemistry, anatomy & physiology, etc.) to make it into the health care fields.
As Rush points out, we must always keep a couple of Marxists around, in cages, just so we never forget.
Willie is our official designated Marxist. Observe and learn.
So are you.
If you own your mud hut outright? And you make 8c but only need 5c a day? So can save almost half your income? And the 3c a day you save becomes $1.50 in one month but you still only need 5c a day? Yes --- maybe you would not be in much poverty. You'd be living well within your means --- unlike many Americans who require vast amount of Socialism to meet their needs.
Would the poeple who gave you life be happy with your attitude?
I ask myself this every day. I hope that I would live up to them. They went through worse than anything I will ever experience.
Would your ancestors be proud of you? Or would they be pi$$ed that you would blame chinese? Or any group.
So those folks in Sri Lanka are not in poverty.
"If you own your mud hut outright? And you make 8c but only need 5c a day? So can save almost half your income? And the 3c a day you save becomes $1.50 in one month but you still only need 5c a day? Yes --- maybe you would not be in much poverty.
Same here. The man's a legend.
Not if they are saving up money. So are the welfare folks living in prosperity and wealth?
By world standards, yes. Incredibly wealthy, actually.
Should poverty levels be by country, or by the world? The mud hut Sri Lanka person would give up thier profit in a second, to live the life of the Inner city welfare queen. They would be rich. Again, why not a UN standard on poverty? Dollars per person? Color TV's per family? Shoes per kid?
And you accuse others of being Marxists? It sounds like you believe in "wealth redistribution".
I believe the self-reliant type in Sri Lanka who is earning enough money and managing to save even 3c a day like you gave as an example is in less poverty than the family living off the wealth of others.
We American dreamers love individual fredom, and all we ask is to be left alone. Individual Freedom is what we want. We want to make our own decisions, free from the student council, and other morons that want to control us.
We believe that individuals, free to do what they want, invent. We knowthat there are people who want to control us, and regulate us.
Ronald Reagan knew this, and he was right. Individual freedom is a God-given right.
If we wanted to acquire wealth, we would take it by force, like all socialists do. Control freaks hate independent thought.
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