Posted on 03/20/2005 8:11:01 AM PST by A. Pole
Okay, I just couldn't imagine a lot of IT jobs in rural Iowa.
And yes, outsourcing is about the money. Did anyone say different? I don't mean just on this thread, I mean anyone, anywhere?
Speaking just for myself, if I were me, I'd do what I had to do -- drive a cab, work a warehouse jobs, substitute teach, do the minimum wage thing -- and then update my skill set. Because if the IT jobs are anything like the blue collar jobs, then they ain't coming back. Ever.
Spacecraft design and operations. Something tells me that the spacecraft is going to do for the 2010's what the computer did in the 80's
Once the real estate bubble pops, lookout.
Pray tell how is there 'slavery' in India due to outsourcing?
My statement was that the people who negotiate free trade deals negotiate with countries that allow slave labor. Two of these countries are India and China.
My question was how is it that America can allow trade policy to be changed so that American companies can do business with slave nations? America banned slavery within its borders and the companies doing business with China and India are insured by the US taxpayers through OPIC and are often in public private partnerships with the US government. Companies insure by American citizens and that partner with the US government should by rights, not do business with slave nations on the authority of the 14th amendment.
Show me proof that the factories in the Pearl River Delta put a gun to the heads of the women who work there. Those women would be consigned to a life in the fields or in prostitution if it wern't for those factories. Same thing in India.
Great, but you said:
Pragmatic (not ideological) national policy combining market and well calibrated government intervention usually worked very well.
Surely you can say how well Japan did since 1989. Don't need a PhD to gather the historical data, do you?
You said government intervention usually worked very well. Back that up with some data. If it's not too much trouble. Unless you're gonna admit you were wrong. That intervention doesn't work very well.
I had one of these jokers argue that child labor in these countries is so bad, the kids are better off starving to death.
I dont agree US Tech is dead. Nokia just licensed Microsoft patents for all their cellphones.
Toyota USA
Direct N.A. Employment 36,349
N.A. Dealer and Supplier Employment 200,000
Direct N.A. Investment $15,265,000,000
Cumulative N.A. Production 11,846,096
N.A. Vehicle Sales (2003) 2,072,190
Cumulative N.A. Vehicle Sales 34,452,600
N.A. Purchasing* $22,722,000,000
N.A. Toyota, Scion and Lexus Dealers 1,713
Total U.S. Philanthropy (since 1991) $227,000,000
Honda USA
25,000 US employees, 100,000 dealership employees and 600 US suppliers.
Alpharetta, GA Power Equipment Headquarters, Auto Zone, Finance, Parts Center
Honda Rider Education Center
Anna, OH Engine Plant
Honda's largest engine facility in the world, the Anna plant annually produces more than one million L-4 andV-6 engines.
Ann Arbor, MI Emissions Lab
Cantil, CA Testing
Colton, CA Honda Rider Education Center
Denver, CO Emissions Testing Lab
East Liberty, OH Automobile Plant
Using Honda's flexible manufacturing, this plant produces cars and light trucks on the same assembly line.
Transportation Research Center (Test Track)
Greensboro, NC R & D Center
Lincoln, AL Automobile and Engine Plant
Opened in 2001, this is our newest North American Automobile Plant, producing the Odyssey minivan, the Pilot and V-6 engine.
Marysville, OH Motorcycle Plant
Honda's first U.S. production facility, the Marysville Motorcycle Plant has produced more than 1.8 million motorcycles and ATVs since 1979.
Automobile Plant One of the most integrated and flexible auto plants in North America, it houses stamping, welding, paint, plastic injection molding and assembly under one roof.
Mojave Desert, CA R & D Test Track
Raymond, OH R & D Center
Russells Point, OH Transmission Plant
Santa Clarita, CA Honda Performance Development (Auto Racing)
Swepsonville, NC Power Equipment Plant
This facility has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million multi-purpose power equipment engines.
R & D Center
Irving, TX Honda Rider Education Center
Troy, OH Honda Rider Education Center
Timmonville, SC All-Terrain Vehicle Plant
Personal Watercraft Plant
Honda's primary ATV plant in North America also handles engine assembly under the same roof and, in 2002, opened a second plant for personal watercraft production.
Torrance, CA U.S. Sales & Marketing Headquarters
R & D Center
And travelling to Mars.
OK, let me help you then. Japan before 1989 was doing spectaculary well. After 1989 it slowed down but still is doing OK. Let us compare the unemployment and trade deficit with USA:
USA trade deficit in 2004: $665.9 billion
Japan trade surplus in 2004: 18.59 trillion yen ($180 billion)
USA unemployment in 2004: 5.5%
Japan unemployment in 2004: 4.5%
That's chump change. Remember, all the profits are being expatriated. /sarc
"Why? Because your companies want to make money there. Your companies and politicians do not care about slave labor. They do not care about the execution of the innocent. They do not care about human rights. They care about copyrights and national security. But what they have done is to help turn China into an economic and military giant. But it is still a Communist giant which crushes human beings."
"Human dignity means nothing to your greedy politicians and corporate leaders. They see China as a great place to make money. And it does make good business sense. No unions. No strikes. Slave labor. The state maintains order for you. "
--Harry Wu
Free and Endless Supply of Workers
China¡¯s booming economy continues to increase through its use of slave labor or Laogai camps. Laogai means ¡°reform through labor.¡± It¡¯s a system of prison factories and detention centers set up by former Chinese leader Mao Zedong during the 1950¡¯s as a means to re-educate through labor and increase economic gain for the People¡¯s Republic of China. As of 1979, there were apparently only several thousand people being forced to work in the Laogai system. Today it has become an enormous source of free labor and financial profit for the Chinese government. According to estimates from the Laogai Research Foundation, there are 6.8 million people incarcerated in China¡¯s 1,100 labor institutions.
For those incarcerated in these facilities, the reality they face is long hours of brutal treatment with little sleep or food to sustain themselves. Reports of 20-hour work days and violent oppression force some detainees to choose suicide instead of being beaten, starved, or worked to death according to a paper by Stephen D. Marshall, ¡°Chinese Laogai: a hidden role in ¡®Developing Tibet.¡± Others mutilate or injure themselves in an effort to avoid the work. Inmates who fall behind or refuse to work are shocked with electric batons, beaten, sexually assaulted, or thrown into solitary confinement. Among those that make up the population in these labor camps are criminals, political prisoners, and practitioners of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, who reportedly now make up to half of those detained in the Laogai labor system.
Who Uses Slave Labor?
Forced labor has become both a form a torture and a source of great profit for China. With the enormous amount of free labor that comes from Laogai, China has lured many overseas businesses into its profit-through-slave-labor system. With ridiculously cheap wholesale labor costs many cannot resist the bait and unknowingly come to support this illegal practice.
Common everyday products ranging from artificial Christmas trees, Christmas tree lights, bracelets, tools and foodstuffs, et cetera are among some of the products manufactured and exported from these facilities. According to a 1998 House Committee on International Relations report, companies who reportedly have or had products made in China¡¯s Laogai are Midas, Staples, Chrysler, and Nestle¡ä. A recent report from one detainee in the Changji Labor Camp in Xinjiang states the Tianshan Wooltex Stock Corporation Ltd., a contractor to Changji Labor Camp, makes products for overseas companies such as Banana Republic, Neiman Marcus, Bon Genie, Holt Renfrew, French Connection and others. Orders from Banana Republic number between 200,000 and 280,000 pieces a year.
The products made in these facilities are produced by people who are forced to work in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Detainees in Laogai have said that because of malnutrition, sleep deprivation and stress they often contract lice, scabies, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and other ailments. Sick detainees are still forced to work. Many are not allowed to take showers for long periods of time, allowing all manner of bodily substances to come into contact with the items they manufacture. These products are then shipped all over the world.
Stopping Laogai Products
Laws on the books that outlaw slave labor products have not been able to stop the tide of illegally and inhumanely manufactured merchandise from being shipped and traded worldwide. For example, since 1983 it has been illegal to import goods into the United States made through using slave labor. According to the Laogai Research Foundation China¡¯s government publicly guaranteed to stop the export of slave labor products in October 1991.
In 1992, China and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in an effort to enable the US access to information it needed to control its import ban on prison labor products. According to this MOU the Chinese government had committed itself to investigating all claims of slave labor.
The agreement proved to be worth little in real results, given the profits China stood to lose from its free source of labor the Laogai system provides. Brushing aside requests from the US for answers on the issue, China provides ¡°sanitized¡± camps for inspectors. Other tactics used to ensure production continues include false holding companies, changing addresses, and mixing labor camp output and non-prison businesses together.
¡°Thus, the commercial exploitation of slaves in China¡¯s labor camps is effectively an open secret in the world of commerce,¡± says Harry Wu, founder of the Laogai Research Foundation.
The High Cost of China's Laogai
(By Riordan Galluccio, The Epoch Times, 3/24/2004)
The graph shows that year-ended growth in Japanese real GDP has cycled around an average of 1.6 per cent since 1990, with peaks occurring in 1990, 1996 and 2000.
See, the best thing about a planned economy like Japan's is that growth is nice and steady. Not too fast, not too slow, just an ever larger economy, quarter by quarter, year over year.
Much higher growth than America's unplanned economy, as you can see.
Well, the money Nissan sends us every month is spent in CA.
So now trade surplus or deficit is the indicator of a successful or failed economy?
How about the Japanese federal deficit?
Budget:
revenues: $1.327 trillion
expenditures: $1.646 trillion,
Public debt: 154.6% of GDP (2003)
Compared to ours.
Budget:
revenues: $1.782 trillion
expenditures: $2.156 trillion,
Public debt: 62.4% of GDP (2003)
Boy, that pragmatic (not ideological) national policy combining market and well calibrated government intervention sure is expensive. And all it got you since 1990 was 1.6% growth? Maybe they should try something new?
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