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To: Sam the Sham
"Non college educated workers saw what globalization did to the good factory jobs their fathers had had and now white collar workers are in the same boat. Perot and Buchanan were prophets before their time."

Nonsense. Factory jobs, regardless of globalization, are simply following the same path as Agricultural jobs.

At one point in time agricultural jobs employed 98% of all working Americans. Today, such jobs employ less than 2%, yet we grow more food today than at any point in our past.

What has happened is that *technology* has improved the productivity of our farmers. We need fewer farmers to produce our food.

Ditto for what is happening in manufacturing. Ten years ago GM made almost 5 million cars per year with over 500,000 employees. Today, GM makes more than 5 million cars per year with some 188,000 employees...and their quality is better, too. Again, what is happening is that technology (e.g. robots) is making fewer workers more productive than the larger groups of earlier employees.

This same technological trend can be seen in software with teams of programmers being replaced by simple HTML design packages, and teams of system administrators being replaced by network management software. Fewer people are now able to do even more IT work with even higher levels of quality.

And these things would have happened with or without NAFTA. Enact all the trade protections that you want, the newspaperboy on the street corner is still going to be replaced by the newspaper vending machine...only he won't have words like "free trade" to blame for his loss of his job under such a scenario.

219 posted on 04/10/2004 2:39:26 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
Ten years ago GM made almost 5 million cars per year with over 500,000 employees. Today, GM makes more than 5 million cars per year with some 188,000 employees...and their quality is better, too.

The missing 312,000+ employees are now employed by GM suppliers in other countries. Just becuase they are no longer on GM reported payrolls does not mean that the jobs have miraculously been automated. We have simply fired American workers and replaced them with subsidized foreign labor.
221 posted on 04/10/2004 3:58:03 PM PDT by ARCADIA (Abuse of power comes as no surprise)
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To: Southack
What has happened is that *technology* has improved the productivity of our farmers. We need fewer farmers to produce our food.

Ditto for what is happening in manufacturing.


Oh please. Having a state run economy in China offering workers at 50 cents an hour has no impact on "productivity"?

Why innovate when there's an aboundance of labor out there?
466 posted on 04/12/2004 9:44:55 AM PDT by lelio
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