Middle Class Job Losses Batter Economy

Associated Press | January 2 2006 | Associated Press and Vicki Smith

[expat_panama]

Manufacturing’s multiplier effect is greater than any other sector and far greater than that of the service sector...

I'd agree that your numbers are the best available.  My problem is with coming up with output figures for service work.  Manufacturing is easy it figure.  Take shoes, the BEA has data for all sorts of different kinds of shoes.  For restaurants they lump Starbucks in with Four Seasons.   Quality is just one problem for the bean counters; darn near everything is a headache in figuring output for services.   

A shoe factory makes shoes and you can count them.   Someone could say that output from a trucking company equals freight tons X miles.  They'd be screwing up because we might hire some computer geek to reroute our trucks to make all deliveries with less driving.  The bean counter will say my output (freight ton miles) is falling while my banker will say that I'm getting rich.  For me, the most consistent way of measuring output in the service sector is by looking at profits, which is why I say the transition from manufacturing to services is good for America.

[Iscool]

If your work isn't worth any more than the pay the Chinese worker gets, upon what basis should I and others pay you more?

Because you are already paying it...The shirt you are wearing was made by labor that gets less than 50 cents per hour, depending on whether it was made in china or indonesia...But by the time it gets to JC Penny's, the cost to is 30 bucks...A 25 cent shirt for 30 bucks...

Most of that money goes to the Multi-Nationals that then re-invest in the 3rd world countries...It's been claimed that a city (of people) the size of Philadelphia is CREATED in China every six months to accomodate new industry...

By supporting this disaster you are not only not saving any money, you are destroying American families, destroying the tax base and a host of other things that go along with it...

[Huck]

Reagan was a good shephard. LOL.

[lewislynn]

Back is 1968 I bought a Mustang for $3000. Just last year I priced that very same car. It now costs $28,000! I ran some numbers through an inflation calculator and had the cost of my mustang just increased with inflation is should cost $17,000, an $11,000 difference! Why? Another fact checked that the over inflation increase was the additional "over inflation" increase in UAW wages! What a surprise! These "nut on bolt people" are actually stealing from the rest of us.

Now try your inflation calculator with a non-union Toyota.

[jec41]

The average IQ is 100, half the population is below that. Are you suggesting they move to China to find work in unskilled jobs? Maybe they can muck out your stables.

Us mean IQ has declined to 97. Here is a sample The highest average IQs are found among the Oriental nations of North East Asia (IQ = 104), followed in descending order by the European nations of Europe (IQ = 98), the nations of North America and Australasia (IQ = 98), the nations of South and Southwest Asia from the Middle East through Turkey to India and Malaysia (IQ = 87), the nations of South East Asia and the Pacific Islands (IQ = 86), the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean (IQ = 85), and finally by the nations of Africa (IQ = 70).

The Congo is only 65. Hong Cong is 105.

[bronxboy]

You will find that no American's work is considered worth more than slave labor in China...no job is safe between the greedy politicians and ceo types who created Nafta etc. Americans opened their markets to all, but the foreign countries did not. They sell their products cheap in the US , but charge much more in their own countries... we can not sell in their markets-totally unfair. Steel prices have gone up tremendously in the last few years because our foreign masters always raise the prices after they destroy the competition.

[Havoc]

Reagan was practical and knew the strength of the US people. And he relied upon it. He was smart enough to know that when push comes to shove, if the public gets peaved enough, they'll revolt. That was a factor in his getting elected and brought about the term "Reagan Democrats". The dems turned on their own party to elect him. So much for sheep. We shot guys in red jackets for a while who thought we should act like sheep as well, that was something called a revolution - might look it up. We also fought a civil war and are likely to host another one. Sheep don't tend to do that.. When a ram walks into the crowd, they'll just up and take off after the ram without a thought.. The thing that mucks it up for people assuming Americans are sheep is that Americans know what abuse is and do think about it. When they get fed up enough, they protest, scream, bite, kick and fire weapons. It's in our blood. We're also an armed society - which is why a lot of folks have thought twice about invading us and which is likely why the dems want us disarmed and the rinos would prefer to help them. An armed public can be an unknown quantity and tough to plan for if one intends to do things that might incite them to revolt..

[Paul Ross]

Opposing trade with China because of their reliance on slave labor while invoking the Founders is high art....

Sounds like you are radically opposed to our Founders...perhaps... like the communists in Bejing...who grasp at any rhetorical pretext for their dubious argument.

Virtually all the northern founders were anti-slavery. And many of the Southern founders were at best ambivalent. George Mason, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, for example. The 'peculiar institution' was acknowledged to be inconsistent with our principles from the beginning. Hence, the Constitution set an specific date of 1808 for Congress to pass an end to slave trade importation. Slavery was temporarily accommodated with the general idea that it would be ended in the forseeable future...a future that was constantly delayed, but finally reached in the Presidential election of 1860...and the rest is history.

[lewislynn]

Wages are typically 15% of a company's expenses -- taxes in the US on the other hand are over double that.

Pure bull$hit.

[SwankyC]

Many of the country's manufacturing workers are caught in a worldwide economic shift

Along with the steel mills, since when is "manufacturing" supposed to be middle class? I always had the impression that was blue collar lower class stuff.

[daviddennis]

I'm thinking of moving to the Philippines because my cost of living is so much lower there, and my quailty of life is higher(*). I can hire workers for $8 a day and it sends them straight into the good life. I can live well for $2,000 a month, in hedonistic luxury for $4,000 (that means a lifestyle that would cost $250k+ a year in the US).

So if I have a service job, like a call center, why should I pay someone $8 an hour when I could pay someone just as good $8 a day? Remember, that person's suffering too without a job. She doesn't have a 40" color TV. She's lucky if she can put food on the table.

People forget that the folks who are competing with us are real people, just like we are. They're not robots from the planet Zong. They're human too. Would I be better off hiring someone who would be really thankful for a job, any job, than a spoiled ungrateful American?

I worked as a programmer in California. My cheap, entry-level house in a good but not spectacular part of town cost me $2,750 a month. It was a great house for me but it was just 1000 square feet on a 5250 square foot lot. My pay was $100k a year and I made a nice living. But about half of that went to the house.

Why should employers pay for houses that expensive, when they could go to India and pay $10,000 a year and give people the same identical standard of living to what I had?

Again, they're still people, still human and you're still helping them out, big time.

What's so great about hiring people in America when costs here are so out of whack?

I have a business idea. It requires that I live cheap for a year or two, and hire people cheap. If I can't hire people cheap, the numbers don't pencil out. So should I move offshore and hire offshore people, or abandon my idea?

You tell me.

D

(*) Oceanfront house in California: $3,000 a month. Oceanfront house in the Philippines: $300 a month. Number of pretty girls who would want to date me in California: 0. Number of pretty girls who would want to date me there: Thousands.

[Havoc]

That's why I think this is all part of the globalist plan. The people up there running trade are too smart to be as stupid as they'd have to be to do all this by accident and blindly. And that's a good part of what makes it treason in my mind. They're hangin together and beating on us in the assurity that they won't hang seperately.. Methinks they've counted their chickens too quickly. And rope is cheap.. a lot cheaper than letting the corporatist Nero fiddle while American jobs burn.

[Iscool]

Another fact checked that the over inflation increase was the additional "over inflation" increase in UAW wages! What a surprise! These "nut on bolt people" are actually stealing from the rest of us.

Care to explain why non-union made Toyotas cost more than Fords, or Chevy's??? Car to explain why and how a Kia made in Korea for a couple thouand bucks costs you 16,000 after it makes the boat ride across the pond???

[dakine]

I was responsible for fixing computer problems that caused hundreds to millions of dollars in downtime per minute.

A couple of hours of work, and you were set for life! Good deal!

[Paul Ross]

The fact is we DO have to go along for the ride, unless you want to nationalize industries that are outsourcing in order to decouple costs and profits.

No, we need merely balance the playing field against those who have artificially lower labor costs. Usually by virtue of totalitarian government controls. Rather than drain the dollar of value, which seems to be the path preferred by our politicians, we should simply cut the chain.

Importing should be punished, production rewarded.

A general revenue tariff of 25% would do the trick, combined with elimination of the U.S. income, capital gains taxes...to be replaced by national sales taxes limited to 15% This would differentially reward U.S. based production, and punish foreign importing, and reward savings and investment.

And I agree that tort reform would be a good idea too.

The whole idea is to change the relative cost dynamics of foreign versus U.S. manufacturing. This is key to restoring American 'foundational' productive capacities that have been negligently lost...and have not been properly appreciated...and probably won't be until we are at war with the country that now has them.

And that might be too late.

[muir_redwoods]

That's just tough luck for the overpriced worker. The criminal conspiracies known as labor unions now have exactly what they've been working for for the past 70 years at least.

My sympathy for the innocent victims but 3/4 of a century of coddling corrupt union officials and make-work subsidies that resulted in over-priced and poor-quality cars has produced this situation. The blame lies not with the customer who makes a rational value decision, the fault lies in the corrupt officials and labor leeches who created the situation. I am not blind to the harm this causes, I am simply well-sighted enough to see who caused it and it wasn't the customer.

[Iscool]

And can anyone explain why these barely educated people are worth more than teachers, EMT workers and most white collar managers?

Sure...Because the money is there...The car companies know you will pay 25,000 to 40,000 for a new car/truck...So the unions got some of it for the people that actually make the vehicles...

But you don't whine when you know the Japanese car makers are makeing the same profit which they don't share with the employees...What's up with that???

[Havoc]

People forget that the folks who are competing with us are real people, just like we are.

No, we just don't allow it to be a whining self serving attempt at an excuse. Will you now argue that treason isn't treason if you're helping a poor person with the money gotten from betraying your country.. Poor folks are real people too, afterall. Or should we consider that it isn't the job of US citizens to be expected during peace time to give up their jobs so that it can be given at discount rates to some foreign national - much less in wartime.. Really, you guys have no shame.

[Paul Ross]

If I understand it correctly, the Japanese car plants are mostly just assembly...The parts mostly come from Japan...As well as replacement parts...

That is correct.

[USS Alaska]

"I'm not a democrat; but, I take issue with the concept of 200,000 new jobs. It isn't about the numbers of jobs, it's about the quality of them."

It's not a concept, it's a fact. 200,000 new jobs per month. Some are high paying, some in the middle and some entry level. If you have a high school education, don't apply for the CEO position. If you have a masters degree in engineering there is a high paying position available {you may have to move}. My father worked two jobs for over 40 years to support his family. He had 9 years of formal schooling. He didn't bitch and moan, he went to work, twice a day, every day. I never once heard him say a bad word about this country, he loved America and the freedon it gave him. He owned his home and was very proud of that. Not big time, but he was an honest, hard working American.

More work, less whining.