Posted on 11/02/2004 8:38:08 AM PST by Willie Green
I ran into a relative at a wedding this weekend. We hadn't seen each other since the last family wedding, three years ago. I asked how her daughter was doing, and this story came pouring out.
Her daughter's husband was laid off in July from a company where he had worked for 28 years. He will miss out on his pension and faces job-hunting now at age 52. His wife is working 50 hours a week and fears making any missteps at her job because she is now carrying the family's health insurance. He's depressed and is a scatterbrained substitute mom to their two busy teenagers.
This is a sad story, to be sure, but a common one. Three years ago, when I last saw this relative, my husband was out of work. At that time, she asked, "Can't he just take another job? Oh, well, I guess he can't accept just anything."
I didn't go into sad detail with her back then. I don't like to retail my misery -- unless, of course, I can do so in the pages of a newspaper and get paid for it.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
That's nice. Now go read the book and stop gibbering like an ignoramus.
I'm kidding.
But seriously, read the book and stop spreading all that isolationist propoganda. You might actually convince someone that you're right and end up wrecking the economy.
Small businesses, unless a few of them grow into big businesses, are not going to make the products necessary for our common defense and national security. HP may have started in the garage, but it didn't stay there.
The consequence of outsourcing and laying off those with experience is that people tend to not go into technical or mathematically-oriented careers. For one thing, there's simply too much work in preparation when the return is too small. (Academic preparation for these careers doesn't start in college; it starts in middle school, where students begin taking the honors & accelerated courses that get them into position to get out of engineering school in 4 years.)
When we have less people in scientific, technical, and mathematical areas, and when we destroy our manufacturing base through corporate bean-counting and short-term "bottom line" thinking, we ultimately open ourselves to *invasion.* Then it's too late to turn things around.
Ideas have consequences.
Night classes in what? Biotechnology?
"Maybe instead of "Get a job" it should be "Make your own darn job"."
Yep. Like the guy in the Titanic who pulled out the silver plated pistol and said "I make my own luck."
I run a small business. When I need money, guess what I do? I get on the phone and get some, the hard way.
Great post. Someone has studied economic history.
Who said we want to be in the global labor market? Can't win that game without ending up living at the same level as Chinese peasants.
The United States is a free trade zone, with a legislative body - the Congress - set up to make the rules for cross border (State border) commerce (the infamous "Commerce Clause"). In other words, the people of the various states play the game under largely the same set of rules.
Foreign countries are not part of that game, and shouldn't be. They should not have any input into our laws of commerce, any entry to our market that we do not control at our leisure, because we're independent. Heard of that?
Practicing national self interest is not "economic isolationism". It's economic nationalism. Any rational country looks after itself, First.
Thanks!
I would say that we're interdependent.
While we certainly could partly or mostly withdraw from the global market, it would have more complicated consequences than you would have us believe. It's all well and good in a theoretical discussion of how our economy "ought to work", but the reality would be quite different.
Who said we want to be in the global labor market?
If we want to compete in the global trade market, and American workers refuse to work for competitive wages, then we have no other choice. It's simple math, really.
A nation can't simply will itself into a competitive position. And, yes, if we compete directly against countries like China in the same markets, all else being equal, we would be forced to their standard of living. The answer is to be in a different market. We must have something to offer that they don't. A good example is computer microprocessors. Currently, other electronic devices are produced much more economically in China and Taiwan, but microprocessors are not. The reason for this is that they are beyond those countries' technological and/or economic capabilities. American companies hold a competitive advantage in the highest technology areas; the inventing, creating and developing areas. Once a product is designed and developed, it can frequently be produced more economically in another country, where the work requires less education and pays a lower wage.
President Bush hits the nail on the head when he turns debates about jobs and outsourcing to education. A person must offer higher value as an employee to be paid a higher wage. Again, basic economics.
Since other countries are able to make similar or higher quality stuff as the USA, there's nothing left to sustain a higher standard of living for us but education. The alternative is for prices to go up as we close our borders to importation. Prices go up, real income drops. Doesn't sound like a very good deal to me.
That is true, but then the construction workers union kept pushing their wages up, the auto workers pushed their wages up, governmental regulation increased many times over and taxes continued to escalate. Other countries make good cars now, environmentalist whiners have caused the price of wood to skyrocket to the point that steel framing is now competitive(!), and our liberal education system continues to fund fruitless research from overpaid professors who teach nothing. There are many variables at work and fixing only one of them would have little beneficial, and perhaps a net negative effect.
No, the RIGHT to those things is not a problem. However, what is DONE with those rights has its consequences. All these things are economically intertwined. If, for example, the democrat proposition of raising the minimum wage to $15/hr were to happen, what you think would be the consequence? If every near-minimum wage worker at McDonalds had their wages doubled or tripled, it would absolutely have an effect on their prices. If that effect is now applied to all the workers along the whole chain, farm laborers, food processing companies, grocery stores, etc.. You now have a significant increase in food costs for everyone.
The economic choices and activities of different groups have had and will have an effect on us all. Unions and environmental groups have had the effect of raising prices for everyone. Increasing the basic cost of doing business necessarily means increasing prices.
Higher education costs have had their own negative effect, but in a different way. It requires a higher level of commitment to pursue a college education. While this isn't entirely a bad thing, it does have a negative effect on the overall education level of the country. This, despite the fact that many of those increased costs have been largely offset by financial assistance of different types. Taxpayers fund a great deal of that financial assistance, further decreasing our disposable income.
So, in a word, no, the rights and privileges our country provides inherently lead neither to poverty, nor to prosperity. They provide the opportunity for both. The outcome is determined by the immutable laws of economics applied to the actions we choose to take.
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