Just a quick reply to correct something. .
See "Hypothetical Hocus-Pocus" in post #72
I first heard of hedonics from a transcript of Gordon R. Richards, NAM, testifying before the Subcommittee on the Census Committee on Government Reform U.S. House of Representatives On The quality of GDP data, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/about/test-grr.pdf
"The redefinition of computer output was a crucial factor in driving the manufacturing revival of the late 1990s. . . Without the quality imputations to the real value of computers, this increase in the manufacturing share [of GDP] would not have been measured."
If you have time and find something please let me know anytime. Thanks.
(I have not forgotten your question (challenge?). To wit, "How many jobs are we sending them [China]? And how many jobs are destroyed by our increase in productivity?" I've been meaning to get estimates of those numbers myself, especially the former.)
See "Hypothetical Hocus-Pocus" in post #72
Well, that's a relief. Referencing a Paul Ross data dump is a lot more defensible than referencing a Havoc screech.
If you have time and find something please let me know anytime. Thanks.
Sure will.
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5078&sequence=0
Three reasons
* productivity
* competition from countries where businesses face lower compensation costs.
* increasingly use of contract and temporary labor (in the past would have likely been company W-2 jobs and shown up as manufacturing employment)
Jobs losses are not usually serious in the dynamic U.S. economy (true!) "lasting only through a period of adjustment during which displaced workers obtain other employment (albeit in many cases in less desirable jobs). "
"Less desirable jobs" -- hey! Jobs is jobs! Right, Rush?
At the macro level it's no big deal. At the micro level it can hurt.
I believe that that is the key to all these threads and the acrimony.
Some of us acknowledge that at the micro level it can hurt others retort, stop your whining! Socialist! -- or as someone above pointed out, Reagan put it this way (paraphrasing). "To the neighbor with a job it's a recession, to the neighbor without a job it's a depression."
Mostly for my own benefit I add the rest of this. These damn reports always leave questions begging, pleading, holding their breath until they turn blue.
"The United States has specialized in products requiring a highly skilled labor force even as lesser jobs have shifted to countries where labor is less skilled."
That's a start to answer, how many jobs went (one way or another) over there?
No totals given but it did say the the apparel sector lost 600,000 jobs during the 1990s. All due to technology?
What of competition from lower-labor-cost countries? Who owns the factories over there? Regardless, is it really Ricardo's comparative advantage when domestic businessmen transfer U.S. technology, wealth, and production over there, import, and sell here?
(It's not U.S. technology, it's the businessman's technology? Who serves in the armed forces to protect his ass, for example? Don't forget, one reason for going over there is to escape taxes.)
And what of those great productivity increases? How much is imported productivity as Stephen Roach has described it? How much of that contracted work is done in China, Mexico, etc. to produce end items or components, both of which are imported -- the latter assembled into end items?
Show me the (impartial) numbers, I tell myself! I'll keep looking.