Nice chart, but why do we care about inflation and interest rates in India?
Posted on 06/07/2005 8:14:42 PM PDT by A. Pole
In May, the Bush economy eked out a paltry 73,000 private sector jobs: 20,000 jobs in construction (primarily for Mexican immigrants), 21,000 jobs in wholesale and retail trade, and 32,500 jobs in health care and social assistance. Local government added 5,000 for a grand total of 78,000.
Not a single one of these jobs produces an exportable good or service. With Americans increasingly divorced from the production of the goods and services that they consume, Americans have no way to pay for their consumption except by handing over to foreigners more of their accumulated stock of wealth. The country continues to eat its seed corn.
Only 10 million Americans are classified as “production workers” in the Bureau of Labor Statistics non-farm payroll tables. Think about that. The United States, with a population approaching 300 million, has only 10 million production workers. That means Americans are consuming the products of other countries’ labor.
In the 21st century, the U.S. economy has been unable to create jobs in export and import-competitive industries. U.S. job growth is confined to nontradable domestic services.
This movement of the American labor force toward Third World occupations in domestic services has dire implications both for U.S. living standards and for America’s status as a superpower.
Economists and policymakers are in denial, while the U.S. economy implodes in front of their noses. The U.S.-China Commission is making a great effort to bring reality to policymakers by holding a series of hearings to explore the depths of American decline.
The commissioners got an earful at the May 19 hearings in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ralph Gomory explained that America’s naive belief that offshore outsourcing and globalism are working for America is based on a 200-year-old trade theory, the premises of which do not reflect the modern world.
Clyde Prestowitz, author of the just published “Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East,” explained that America’s prosperity is an illusion. Americans feel prosperous because they are consuming $700 billion annually more than they are producing. Foreigners, principally Asians, are financing U.S. over-consumption, because we are paying them by handing over our markets, our jobs and our wealth.
My former Business Week colleague Bill Wolman explained the consequences for U.S. workers of suddenly facing direct labor market competition from hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indian workers.
Toward the end of the 20th century, three developments came together that are rapidly moving high productivity, high value-added jobs that pay well away from the United States to Asia: the collapse of world socialism, which vastly increased the supply of labor available to U.S. capital; the rise of the high speed Internet; and the extraordinary international mobility of U.S. capital and technology.
First World capital is rapidly deserting First World labor in favor of Third World labor, which is much cheaper because of its abundance and low cost of living. Formerly, America’s high real incomes were protected from cheap foreign labor, because U.S. labor worked with more capital and better technology, which made it more productive. Today, however, U.S. capital and technology move to cheap labor, or cheap labor moves via the Internet to U.S. employment.
The reason economic development in China and some Indian cities is so rapid is because it is fueled by the offshore location of First World corporations. Prestowitz is correct that the form that globalism has taken is shifting income and wealth from the First World to the Third World. The rise of Asia is coming at the expense of the American worker.
Global competition could have developed differently. U.S. capital and technology could have remained at home, protecting U.S. incomes with high productivity. Asia would have had to raise itself up without the inside track of First World offshore producers.
Asia’s economic development would have been slow and laborious and would have been characterized by a gradual rise of Asian incomes toward U.S. incomes, not by a jarring loss of American jobs and incomes to Asians.
Instead, U.S. corporations, driven by the shortsighted and ultimately destructive focus on quarterly profits, chose to drive earnings and managerial bonuses by substituting cheap Asian labor for American labor.
American businesses’ short-run profit maximization plays directly into the hands of thoughtful Asian governments with long-run strategies. As Prestowitz informed the commissioners, China now has more semiconductor plants than the United States. Short-run goals are reducing U.S. corporations to brand names with sales forces marketing foreign made goods and services.
By substituting foreign for American workers, U.S. corporations are destroying their American markets. As American jobs in the higher-paying manufacturing and professional services are given to Asians, and as American schoolteachers and nurses lose their occupations to foreigners imported under work visa programs, American purchasing power dries up, especially once all the home equity is spent, credit cards are maxed out and the dollar loses value to the Asian currencies.
The dollar is receiving a short-term respite as a result of the rejection of the European Union by France and Holland. The fate of the Euro, which rose so rapidly in value against the dollar in recent years, is uncertain, thus possibly cutting off one avenue of escape from the over-produced U.S. dollar.
However, nothing is in the works to halt America’s decline and to put the economy on a path of true prosperity. In January 2004, I told a televised conference of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., that the United States would be a Third World economy in 20 years. I was projecting the economic outcome of the U.S. labor force being denied First World employment and forced into the low productivity occupations of domestic services.
Considering the vast excess supplies of labor in India and China, Asian wages are unlikely to rapidly approach existing U.S. levels. Therefore, the substitution of Asian for U.S. labor in tradable goods and services is likely to continue.
As U.S. students seek employments immune from outsourcing, engineering enrollments are declining. The exit of so much manufacturing is destroying the supply chains that make manufacturing possible. The Asians will not give us back our economy once we have lost it. They will not play the “free trade” game and let their labor force be displaced by cheap American labor.
Offshore outsourcing is dismantling the ladders of America’s fabled upward mobility. The U.S. labor force already has one foot in the Third World. By 2024, the United States will be a has-been country.
Interesting. But in order to make expenses comparable to Chinese or Indian, the American worker would have either to move to China or India or to live on less than workers in these countries as housing/food/transportation/medical care is more expensive in USA.
Do you think it is possible?
Nice chart, but why do we care about inflation and interest rates in India?
You can find inflation figures pretty easily. So why are you interested in the inflation numbers?
Wrong? What is wrong? I wrote that the United States is not a Third World country or even close to being one. (Do you disagree?) And I pointed out that we are not without "experience and tech," which you admit is true.
My x-roommate who worked in development for Intel is a good example. His whole research department is now in Nizhni Novograd, he barely found a support job in Portland with Intel. Sybus moved their entire IT department to India and competitor Oracle hasn't been to far behind.
Well, your anecdotal evidence clinches it for me—American is doomed, because your roommate is working in tech support instead of research & development. Where can I find the nearest tall bridge?
Seriously, if you really are worried about high-tech jobs going overseas, I suggest you ask yourself why that is happening. Let me give you a hint: the purpose of a business is to make money for its owners.
Well at least his anecdote is better than his math.
Would that be compounded growth?
Yes.
All I could find about the effects of rapid import growth were the 20,000,000 jobs created since NAFTA and this chart.
Possible? Absolutely. According to one recent survey by Mercer Consulting (www.citymayors.com/features/cost_survey.html), Beijing is already slightly more expensive than New York, and Shanghai is only slightly less so.
Of course, such surveys are fraught with difficulties. (For one thing, the rankings depends greatly on the currency exchange rates.) Still, if a low cost of living alone made an area attractive to foreign business, we should soon see a stampede out of China to places like Asuncion, Paraguay.
But I don't think the article is using it in that sense. They've simply taken the gdp value between the start and end of ten years and thrown at us the figure of 108%.
Well, you're off by almost 24 hours, but that's passable error for a protectionist.
- remove all government workers, because I'm only interested in how private sector workers are doing. government workers do not add to the tax base, and they have contracts with built in wage increases, their salaries never go down. I could also make the case that people who work in health care are also "part time" government workers, since so much of the $$$s spent on health care (and on their salaries) come from government (medicaid, medicare).
- I would also remove all workers making over $250K a year, I don't want to see their wage increases in those figures. The reason is that if you include them, you include the concentration effects of what is happening in industry with offshoring. When oracle sends 1000 $75K engineers from the US to India, their US executives get big bonuses, while their now unemployed US workers are likely taking lower wages. When the executives at a US furniture company send their manufacturing jobs to China, they also increase their compensation as a result, their laid off workers are working at Home Depot now. The stats mean nothing if those concentration effects are not excluded.
Show me what is happening to the stats with those two filters applied - I guarantee you that middle class private sector wages have fallen over the last 5 years.
For the private sector, various figures with constant dollars are doable, but it's hard for me to eliminate the highly compensated with the available information sources that I am familiar with.
But leaving the highly compensated included, here in 1982 dollars are average hourly earnings for the total private sector from 1977 up through this year. (Source: BLS Statistics Gateway [just enter "CES0500000049" for your series id to retrieve this particular table.])
Series Id: CES0500000049 |
|||||||||||||
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | 8.61 | 8.60 | 8.61 | 8.62 | 8.62 | 8.62 | 8.62 | 8.63 | 8.63 | 8.69 | 8.68 | 8.67 | |
| 1978 | 8.69 | 8.70 | 8.69 | 8.72 | 8.68 | 8.69 | 8.67 | 8.67 | 8.66 | 8.65 | 8.64 | 8.64 | |
| 1979 | 8.63 | 8.59 | 8.57 | 8.46 | 8.45 | 8.41 | 8.37 | 8.34 | 8.32 | 8.27 | 8.24 | 8.22 | |
| 1980 | 8.10 | 8.08 | 8.04 | 7.99 | 7.96 | 7.95 | 7.98 | 7.99 | 7.97 | 7.97 | 7.96 | 7.93 | |
| 1981 | 7.93 | 7.90 | 7.92 | 7.91 | 7.91 | 7.90 | 7.85 | 7.86 | 7.83 | 7.83 | 7.85 | 7.83 | |
| 1982 | 7.88 | 7.87 | 7.91 | 7.89 | 7.88 | 7.81 | 7.81 | 7.84 | 7.84 | 7.82 | 7.85 | 7.92 | |
| 1983 | 7.95 | 7.99 | 7.96 | 7.94 | 7.95 | 7.95 | 7.97 | 7.90 | 7.94 | 7.97 | 7.96 | 7.96 | |
| 1984 | 7.96 | 7.94 | 7.98 | 8.00 | 7.97 | 7.99 | 7.99 | 7.92 | 7.92 | 7.90 | 7.92 | 7.94 | |
| 1985 | 7.92 | 7.91 | 7.91 | 7.91 | 7.90 | 7.91 | 7.91 | 7.93 | 7.94 | 7.90 | 7.89 | 7.90 | |
| 1986 | 7.85 | 7.90 | 7.96 | 7.99 | 7.99 | 7.96 | 7.97 | 7.98 | 7.95 | 7.96 | 7.98 | 7.96 | |
| 1987 | 7.92 | 7.92 | 7.90 | 7.87 | 7.88 | 7.84 | 7.83 | 7.85 | 7.83 | 7.83 | 7.85 | 7.85 | |
| 1988 | 7.84 | 7.82 | 7.82 | 7.82 | 7.84 | 7.82 | 7.80 | 7.78 | 7.79 | 7.80 | 7.80 | 7.79 | |
| 1989 | 7.79 | 7.79 | 7.76 | 7.74 | 7.69 | 7.70 | 7.72 | 7.73 | 7.74 | 7.76 | 7.73 | 7.73 | |
| 1990 | 7.69 | 7.70 | 7.70 | 7.70 | 7.71 | 7.70 | 7.68 | 7.63 | 7.60 | 7.57 | 7.56 | 7.56 | |
| 1991 | 7.56 | 7.57 | 7.57 | 7.59 | 7.58 | 7.59 | 7.60 | 7.59 | 7.59 | 7.58 | 7.57 | 7.57 | |
| 1992 | 7.56 | 7.57 | 7.57 | 7.56 | 7.56 | 7.55 | 7.54 | 7.55 | 7.53 | 7.53 | 7.53 | 7.52 | |
| 1993 | 7.53 | 7.52 | 7.55 | 7.53 | 7.53 | 7.52 | 7.53 | 7.53 | 7.54 | 7.52 | 7.53 | 7.53 | |
| 1994 | 7.54 | 7.56 | 7.54 | 7.55 | 7.55 | 7.53 | 7.52 | 7.50 | 7.50 | 7.53 | 7.52 | 7.52 | |
| 1995 | 7.51 | 7.52 | 7.52 | 7.51 | 7.50 | 7.52 | 7.54 | 7.54 | 7.55 | 7.55 | 7.56 | 7.55 | |
| 1996 | 7.55 | 7.54 | 7.53 | 7.54 | 7.54 | 7.56 | 7.56 | 7.58 | 7.58 | 7.57 | 7.58 | 7.58 | |
| 1997 | 7.59 | 7.60 | 7.63 | 7.64 | 7.67 | 7.67 | 7.68 | 7.71 | 7.70 | 7.74 | 7.76 | 7.78 | |
| 1998 | 7.79 | 7.83 | 7.86 | 7.88 | 7.88 | 7.88 | 7.88 | 7.92 | 7.93 | 7.93 | 7.94 | 7.94 | |
| 1999 | 7.95 | 7.98 | 8.00 | 7.98 | 8.00 | 8.02 | 8.01 | 8.01 | 8.00 | 8.00 | 8.00 | 8.00 | |
| 2000 | 8.02 | 8.01 | 7.98 | 8.03 | 8.03 | 8.01 | 8.02 | 8.04 | 8.03 | 8.05 | 8.07 | 8.07 | |
| 2001 | 8.03 | 8.06 | 8.09 | 8.08 | 8.06 | 8.07 | 8.10 | 8.13 | 8.11 | 8.16 | 8.20 | 8.23 | |
| 2002 | 8.22 | 8.23 | 8.21 | 8.18 | 8.21 | 8.23 | 8.24 | 8.23 | 8.25 | 8.26 | 8.26 | 8.29 | |
| 2003 | 8.26 | 8.25 | 8.21 | 8.23 | 8.28 | 8.29 | 8.31 | 8.28 | 8.25 | 8.27 | 8.31 | 8.29 | |
| 2004 | 8.27 | 8.25 | 8.23 | 8.24 | 8.21 | 8.20 | 8.23 | 8.25 | 8.25 | 8.22 | 8.21 | 8.23 | |
| 2005 | 8.24 | 8.22 | 8.19 | 8.16(p) | |||||||||
| p : preliminary |
|||||||||||||
And here is the employment cost index for wages and salaries over roughly the same time period. The constant dollars are based on 1989=100, and are deflated by the CPI. (Source: Table 6 from the current Employment Cost Index report from the BLS.)
TABLE 6. EMPLOYMENT COST INDEX (WAGES AND SALARIES ONLY), PRIVATE INDUSTRY WORKERS(1)
(Constant dollars, not seasonally adjusted)
Indexes (June 1989=100) Percent Changes for
Series and year 3 months ended-- 12 months ended--
Mar. Jun. Sep. Dec.
Mar. Jun. Sep. Dec. Mar. Jun. Sep. Dec.
Private industry workers(1):
1975................................. - - 102.3 102.6 - - - 0.3 - - - -
1976................................. 103.7 103.8 103.8 104.9 1.0 0.1 0.1 1.0 - - 1.5 2.2
1977................................. 104.1 103.9 104.5 105.1 -.8 -.2 .6 .6 0.4 0.1 .6 .2
1978................................. 104.9 104.1 104.1 103.8 -.2 -.8 .0 -.4 .8 .2 -.3 -1.3
1979................................. 102.6 101.1 100.0 99.5 -1.1 -1.4 -1.1 -.5 -2.2 -2.9 -4.0 -4.1
1980................................. 97.6 96.5 97.2 96.5 -1.9 -1.1 .7 -.7 -4.9 -4.6 -2.8 -3.0
1981................................. 96.6 96.3 95.5 96.4 .1 -.3 -.9 .9 -1.0 -.2 -1.8 -.1
1982................................. 97.8 96.3 97.2 98.7 1.5 -1.5 .9 1.5 1.3 .0 1.8 2.4
1983................................. 99.5 99.0 99.2 99.7 .8 -.5 .2 .5 1.7 2.8 2.0 1.1
1984................................. 99.7 99.4 99.0 99.9 -.1 -.2 -.4 .9 .2 .4 -.2 .2
1985................................. 100.1 100.0 100.6 100.3 .1 -.1 .6 -.4 .4 .6 1.6 .3
1986................................. 101.7 101.9 102.0 102.3 1.5 .1 .1 .3 1.7 1.9 1.4 2.1
1987................................. 101.8 101.2 100.9 101.2 -.5 -.6 -.3 .3 .1 -.6 -1.1 -1.1
1988................................. 101.2 101.1 100.5 100.9 .0 -.1 -.6 .4 -.6 -.2 -.4 -.3
1989................................. 100.5 100.0 100.5 100.4 -.5 -.5 .5 -.1 -.7 -1.1 .0 -.5
1990................................. 99.5 99.8 98.6 98.4 -.9 .3 -1.3 -.2 -.9 -.2 -1.9 -2.0
1991................................. 98.6 98.9 98.9 99.0 .2 .3 -.1 .1 -.9 -.9 .3 .6
1992................................. 98.8 98.8 98.5 98.7 -.2 .0 -.2 .2 .2 -.1 -.3 -.3
1993................................. 98.4 98.5 99.0 99.1 -.3 .1 .5 .1 -.4 -.3 .4 .3
1994................................. 98.8 99.0 98.9 99.2 -.3 .2 -.1 .3 .4 .5 .0 .2
1995................................. 98.9 98.9 99.2 99.5 -.4 .0 .3 .4 .0 -.2 .2 .3
1996................................. 99.2 99.5 99.5 99.6 -.4 .3 .0 .1 .3 .6 .3 .1
1997................................. 99.7 100.4 100.9 101.8 .1 .7 .4 .9 .6 .9 1.4 2.2
1998................................. 102.3 102.7 103.6 104.0 .5 .4 .9 .4 2.6 2.3 2.7 2.2
1999................................. 103.9 104.3 104.2 104.9 -.2 .4 -.1 .6 1.5 1.6 .6 .8
2000................................. 104.3 104.7 104.9 105.3 -.5 .3 .2 .4 .4 .3 .6 .5
2001................................. 105.2 105.2 105.9 107.7 -.1 .0 .6 1.7 .9 .5 .9 2.2
2002................................. 107.4 107.8 107.6 108.0 -.3 .4 -.2 .4 2.0 2.5 1.7 .4
2003................................. 107.3 108.4 108.4 109.3 -.7 1.0 .0 .9 .0 .5 .7 1.1
2004................................. 108.2 107.6 108.4 108.4 -1.0 -.5 .7 .0 .8 -.7 .1 -.8
2005................................. 107.5 - - - -.8 - - - -.7 - - -
I should have added that we use the income from the tariffs to reduce the amount of revenue that we take from income taxes. Doing so shifts some of the tax burden from income taxes to tariffs. Then, those who pay the higher prices on imported goods will be paying for the costs of subsidizing construction of factories in other countries. Everyone else will recover some of the original cost of those subsidies by paying lower income taxes.
In a true "market" situation, the consumers of imported goods should be paying higher prices to offset the costs that were incurred in building the infrastructure to put factories overseas. By shifting some of the tax burden from income taxes that everyone pays to tariffs that are eventually paid by those who are buying imported goods, then we come closer to having prices reflect what the true market forces should have given us. As it is, we aren't under true market forces because in many cases, the American taxpayer paid much of the up front money that was needed to build foreign factories.
Bill
get past the semantics - client/subcontractor, whatever.
a nurse who works for a nursing home that is 100% funded by medicaid/medicare. is she a government worker? essentially, yes. not direclty, but indirectly her wages come from a government expenditure. cancel medicaid payments, she's on unemployment.
It's not a matter of how the article uses it. If they grew 108% over 10 years that's the same as 7.6% every year for 10 years, not 10.8% like you stated.
Why?
Thanks for the info. I don't know what he'll find to complain about now.
That'd work.
those 25000 GM workers who lose their auto jobs, they are going to be able to find other jobs at the same pay level. right? how about half their current pay level? or are they going to end up at walmart. and all those north carolina furniture workers going out, they are too, right? or are they going to end up at home depot.
the US used to be a place where even a high school graduate could get a job, skilled or semi-skilled, and afford the basics of a middle class life - including a wife who did not have to work, and children.
today, we have college graduates living with their parents into their 30s. and its not anecdotal, its becoming endemic.
believe what you want from the BLS, I know what I see.
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