But of course, many of the folks who recognize that American companies must go where the labor is the most competitive are the same ones who think that cutting off illegal immigration will not push American companies offshore.
Cutting off illegal immigration is a start, but it’s only pushing the problems off. Too few people (even FReepers) face that fact.
I also can't buy the idea that having illegal aliens taking jobs in this country while the government pays Americans to sit home and collect unemployment is a real bad idea.
There was NO MENTION, ANYWHERE on the list of ironies of illegals. Hijacker!
I came out of a steel producing region. When I was in high school, the Austrians came up with an efficient method of making steel. Of course, labor rates in the US were higher than in Austria and our productivity was not as high. Consequently, steel produced in the US cost more.
The obvious answer was that if the US increased productivity it didn't matter what their labor rate was. The cost per ton of steel would be lower even with a higher US labor rate. Recall that one wants the working person to be able to partake in the necessities and luxuries which they produce. (Recall again that Henery Ford raised his worker's pay to $1/hour, so they could buy the cars which they produced.) The answer is PRODUCTIVITY.
WHY DIDN'T USS IMPROVE PRODUCTIVITY? Because they would have had to invest a lot of money which would not show up on the bottom line of the quarterly earnings sheet. The view was that if it was good enough is WWII, it is good enough today. Consequently, you had a steel industry which operated with equipment 10/30 years old competing with foreign companies operating entirely new facilities ( because the old ones were smashed flat by bombers in WWII). The irony is/was that US dollars from our aid programs helped them build the new factories.
Now jump to the auto industry (or electronics). Foreign manufactures have adopted the latest manufacturing methods (think robotics). Automatic machines do much of the work. While in the US, for whatever reasons (some good some bad) we as a nation did not embrace the robot revolution. Consequently, their productivity is/was higher. Note also that automatic equipment requires a skilled workforce (trained by our school system) to maintain them. Since many US students think “technical” courses are too hard, we in general have a less educated employees. This really galls me because I know from personal experience that Americans can't be beat when they roll up their sleeves and get to work.
There is another aspect to our industrial decline. That is Federal, State and Local TAXES. What drove United States Steel (USS) out of Allegheny County, PA was taxes. The local politicians killed the goose which laid the golden egg. In short GREED and STUPIDITY cut USS off at the knees.
The politicians also choked industrial development with regulations primarily environmental regulations. The environmental anarchists are in ascendancy. When we are sitting in the dark in the cold (Mr Sun HAS decreased his output.), perhaps we once again will follow a rational industrial development path.
There in a nutshell, you have it. Take this for action.