Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Job-Killing Labor Costs and the Manufacturing Sector
Mises Institute ^ | January 20, 2011 | Christopher Westley

Posted on 01/20/2011 7:59:37 PM PST by sickoflibs

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041 next last
The Peter Schiff/Austrian Economics ping. (Washington Bankrupting our Nation by Spending your past, present and future money!)

If you realize both parties in Washington think that our money is theirs and you trust them to do the wrong thing, this list is for you.

If you think there is a Santa Claus who is going to get elected in Washington and cut your taxes, spend a few trillion and that will jump-start the economy, this list is not for you.

You can read past posts by clicking on : schifflist , I try to tag all relevant threads with the keyword : schifflist.

Ping list pinged by sickoflibs.

To join the ping list: FReepmail sickoflibs with the subject line add Schifflist.

(Stop getting pings by sending the subject line drop Schifflist.)

The Austrian School’s Commandments plus :From : link

1) You cannot spend your way out of a recession
2) You cannot regulate the economy into oblivion and expect it to function
3) You cannot tax people and businesses to the point of near slavery and expect them to keep producing
4) You cannot create an abundance of money out of thin air without making all that paper worthless
5) The government cannot make up for rising unemployment by just hiring all the out of work people to be bureaucrats or send them unemployment checks forever
6) You cannot live beyond your means indefinitely
7) The economy must actually produce something others are willing to buy
8) Every government bureaucrat should keep the following motto in mind when attempting to influence the economy: “First, do no harm!”
9) Central bank-supported fractional reserve banking is an economically distorting, ethically questionable activity. In particular, no government should ever do anything to save any bank from the full consequences of a bank run, no matter what the short-term consequences.
10) Gold is God’s money.

Add mine:

1) Businesses don't hire workers just because of demand for products or services, they hire because it makes them money. Sorry to have to state the obvious.
2) Government spending without taxing is still redistribution
3) Taking one man's money and giving it to another is not a job.
4) Paul Krugman and Bernake have been wrong about everything, as well as the other best and brightest Keynesian's who have been fixing our economy for over a decade.
5) Republicans in the minority (esp out of the White House) act like Republicans, in the majority they act like Democrats .

1 posted on 01/20/2011 7:59:38 PM PST by sickoflibs
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Harrius Magnus; mojitojoe; Pelham; mom2twinsn2; LongLiveTheRepublic; ConservativeOrBust; ...
The Peter Schiff/Austrian Economics ping. (Washington Bankrupting our Nation by Spending your past, present and future money!)

Think about this. Liberals claim that raising the minimum wage and mandating forced benefits on employers making labor more expensive will stimulate the economy by putting money in workers pockets so they spend it, Then they claim that devaluing the dollar making us cost less (paying us less by devalued currency) will make us more competitive and create more jobs.

2 posted on 01/20/2011 8:21:45 PM PST by sickoflibs ("It's not the taxes, the redistribution is the federal spending=tax delayed")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

Did you know that Americans can’t build or register ships in the U.S.? Been going on for years. Too many regulations. Notice that most cruise ships are Liberian registry. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/06/11/304620/index.htm

Way to go, Libtards! You’ve regulated America out of an entire industry.


3 posted on 01/20/2011 9:28:08 PM PST by TruthHound ("He who does not punish evil commands it to be done." --Leonardo da Vinci)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

This piece is a near-complete load of twaddle.

Want to know why manufacturing employment has been going down?

It isn’t because wages are too high in the US.

It is because the US has been exporting manufacturing to China. And why do they keep going to China?

No. It has to do with currency pegs and absurdly low wages for the Chinese labor force.

How low?

$0.95/hour for urban manufacturing workers, $0.41/hour for rural manufacturing workers, as of 2002.

The BLS estimates Chinese labor costs are 3% of what US manufacturing labor costs are.

OK, so you say that US workers are overpaid. That’s nice. Now, how do you think Mexican workers, or Brazilian workers are paid? Too much?

Well, the total labor costs for Mexico or Brazil are about four times what they are in China. Are manufacturing employees in Mexico making out like bandits?

Didn’t think so.

The free trade advocates who think that the US can compete with China based on nothing but cutting regulations, unions and comp packages are simply full of crap. None of that will address the effective subsidy that China gives their manufacturing sector with a currency peg, and there is no way that manufacturing wages in the US will ever come close to those in the PRC.

http://www.bls.gov/fls/chinareport.pdf


4 posted on 01/20/2011 11:31:15 PM PST by NVDave
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

This piece is a near-complete load of twaddle.

Want to know why manufacturing employment has been going down?

It isn’t because wages are too high in the US.

It is because the US has been exporting manufacturing to China. And why do they keep going to China?

No. It has to do with currency pegs and absurdly low wages for the Chinese labor force.

How low?

$0.95/hour for urban manufacturing workers, $0.41/hour for rural manufacturing workers, as of 2002.

The BLS estimates Chinese labor costs are 3% of what US manufacturing labor costs are.

OK, so you say that US workers are overpaid. That’s nice. Now, how do you think Mexican workers, or Brazilian workers are paid? Too much?

Well, the total labor costs for Mexico or Brazil are about four times what they are in China. Are manufacturing employees in Mexico making out like bandits?

Didn’t think so.

The free trade advocates who think that the US can compete with China based on nothing but cutting regulations, unions and comp packages are simply full of crap. None of that will address the effective subsidy that China gives their manufacturing sector with a currency peg, and there is no way that manufacturing wages in the US will ever come close to those in the PRC.

http://www.bls.gov/fls/chinareport.pdf


5 posted on 01/20/2011 11:33:46 PM PST by NVDave
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

Government regulations? What government regulations? All levels of government are about to default and drop most of their regulatory enforcement employees. The problem with that for free traitorous favored constituents is that their politically correct anti-domestic-competition and family busting regulatory enforcement will go right out the window, too. Globalist big shots, meet the groups of new, small businessmen in all American locales. Coming to a county or neighborhood near you (without local governments and HOAs—de facto governments—further empowered by ill-gotten revenues).


6 posted on 01/21/2011 12:45:05 AM PST by familyop (cbt. engr. (cbt), NG, '89-' 96, Duncan Hunter or no-vote.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

Whatever the US is still manufacturing in force, I’d like to see a list of it. (Farming doesn’t count.) It sure doesn’t seem to show up in households where most of the doodads are now “made in China.”


7 posted on 01/21/2011 12:49:25 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HiTech RedNeck

Made in China actually means Assembled in China. I believe someone examined an iphone and discovered hardware and software were manufactured all over the world (including USA) for final assembly in China. Made in anywhere does not really mean anything anymore in the global market. One of the biggest costs to hiring manufacturing workers in the country is the FICA taxes. Since the Democrats will never support SS privitization the best way to level the playing field is to junk the payroll tax and just have a national sales tax which would in effect act as an import tax on non-US products.


8 posted on 01/21/2011 1:15:30 AM PST by DHerion
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: NVDave

“It is because the US has been exporting manufacturing to China.”

If that were true, then we would expect to see a corresponding decline in US manufacturing output. Unfortunately for your argument, US manufacturing output has more than doubled since 1975.

See data here:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/gvp.htm

The increase in US worker productivity in manufacturing has led to a corresponding decline in the number of manufacturing jobs.

See data here:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/gvp.htm

US manufacturing is simply going through the same progression that US farming went through.

See data here:
http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm

In the 1700s, farm jobs accounted for over 90% of all jobs; today — thanks to better technology leading to far higher productivity per farmer — farm jobs account for less than 3% — that’s a lot of lost farm jobs. However, the US didn’t “export its farm jobs” abroad; it developed tractors and chemical fertilizers and other productivity-enhancing technologies, so that it doesn’t need 90% of its jobs to be in farming — it can produce more than those original 90% of all jobs with a mere 3% of all jobs. We are all better off because of increased farmer productivity, just as we are all better off with increased manufacturer productivity.


9 posted on 01/21/2011 1:39:04 AM PST by GoodDay (Palin for POTUS 2012)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs
Keynesian's(sic) who have been fixing our economy for over a decade.

They have been "fixing" the economy since FDR. They just get more influential and effective as the government gets more and more powerful and makes for itself more and more leverage on economic interaction. Swapping them for "monetarists" is no improvement, either. Monetarists tend to call for less statist outcomes but their methods are just as statist as those of the Keynesians. They ARE Keynesians in their perception of what makes an economy work. Monetarists like to think they promote the free market but they still believe the "free market" can/should only work if there are experts at the controls behind the scenes, manipulating and tweaking so that outcomes will look like the Free Market."

10 posted on 01/21/2011 2:53:06 AM PST by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

Keynesians.


11 posted on 01/21/2011 2:53:26 AM PST by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Toddsterpatriot; SAJ; 1rudeboy; Mase
"...the US manufacturing sector, which still leads the world in manufacturing output. ...manufacturing output in the United States has increased for 17 consecutive months."

We already know this but still it's so nice to hear it again.   The focus of the piece is jobs though, and Westley does a better job than most in bringing us to the fact that factory jobs aren't being stolen by cheap foreigners, they're being stolen by cheap capital.

12 posted on 01/21/2011 3:02:20 AM PST by expat_panama
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NVDave

Low wages in China are not low when output per dollar of input is considered. Productiveness of those low wage workers would be less than that of American high paid workers if the tax and regulation burden were equal. Remove all the excess regulatory and tax costs and American workers are more productive- produce more gain for their employers- in the US than in China or anywhere else. Tax and regulatory costs are not amenable to employers’ attempts to reduce costs per unit of output. Employee costs are. In order to remain competitive when tax costs are high and rising and unavoidable and regulatory costs are high and rising and unavoidable, then labor costs must be reduced. Automation is one response and offshoring is another. Our tax and regulation regime is what makes offshore labor relatively more productive than domestic. The prospect of the tremendous new costs that are coming-some already arrived- is a huge new incentive to send manufacturing offshore.

Offshoring does not occur because offshore labor cost is less per hour than American labor cost or because it is less per unit of product(it is not). It is because labor cost PLUS regulatory and tax costs is higher per unit of output in the US than it is offshore.


13 posted on 01/21/2011 3:09:02 AM PST by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs
5) Republicans in the minority (esp out of the White House) act like Republicans, in the majority they act like Democrats .

And yet you're on FR shilling for who-knows-which RINO Free Traitor, and against the only conservative, pro-American, real Free Enterprize, potential candidate on the horizon (that would be Sarah Palin).

14 posted on 01/21/2011 3:18:29 AM PST by meadsjn (Sarah 2012, or sooner)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GoodDay

The Market does, in fact, work. The freer it is the better it works. Really, the only restrictions to that are a Judeo-Christian framework and stable and uniform laws(arguably most likely in a JC framework). There is no other basic framework for society wherein if two make an agreement to perform certain acts for their mutual benefit there is a reasonable expectation that those acts will be carried out. All other systems are less conducive to such mutual trust with the least conducive being Islam. Chinese business historically could become huge corporations but there were certain limits on them that still pertain to some extent. They were all family businesses and still are except that the government/army have substituted for family to a large extent. In countries with significant Christian presence, Korea being the prime example, there are economic “miracles” when the corruption and inefficiency of autocracy are successfully replaced with rule of law and stable government.


15 posted on 01/21/2011 3:27:07 AM PST by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: GoodDay

Small detail: Making frozen pizza for home cooking is considered’manufacturing’ now.


16 posted on 01/21/2011 3:44:24 AM PST by investigateworld (Buy Ammo!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: sickoflibs

The article mentioned the elevator operators.... the only place I have seen them lately, in DC, where our royalty ruling class live - I assume our goobermint offishuls aren’t smart enough to operate elevators, they can’t figure out how to get to their floor! LOL


17 posted on 01/21/2011 4:23:32 AM PST by buffyt (Abortion is the ultimate CHILD ABUSE!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: meadsjn; calcowgirl; pissant
RE :”And yet you're on FR shilling for who-knows-which RINO Free Traitor, and against the only conservative, pro-American, real Free Enterprize, potential candidate on the horizon (that would be Sarah Palin).

AHHH, you missed the heated argument I got into with pissant the other day when he made a critical comment of Palin over Abortion and the US constitution and I told him Palin was right (she agreed with me anyway) and he was wrong.

To: shibumi; calcowgirl by pissant critical of Palin on abortion/constitution#13

Response to: pissant; calcowgirl by sickoflibs on US constituion and Palin #36

Response to pissant by sickoflibs on US constitution and Palin #40

The problem you have with me is I don't drink the Koolaid, if you claim something you better have proof, same with any potential candidate.

You made a claim the other day that Palin didnt need to do real interviews (to be elected president) because she had written on every possible issue in detail and you were an expert at her writings. When I called you out ON some specific examples you were shocked that I would call your bluff. I wouldnt tolerate such nonsense over any blindly worshipped icon no matter who it was.

18 posted on 01/21/2011 5:02:08 AM PST by sickoflibs ("It's not the taxes, the redistribution is the federal spending=tax delayed")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: arthurus
BINGO! ‘Off shoring does not occur because offshore labor cost is less per hour than American labor cost or because it is less per unit of product(it is not). It is because labor cost PLUS regulatory and tax costs is higher per unit of output in the US than it is offshore’.
IMO, initially off shoring was mostly a response to large labor content mfg, shoes, garments etc....but currently US Mfg has been forced to offshore for several reasons the most significant being the cost added by government, taxes, regulatory, litigation, etc. Bad government is a problem and even more so if bad government becomes increasingly predatory like what we've had for several decades.
19 posted on 01/21/2011 5:59:37 AM PST by iopscusa (El Vaquero. (SC Lowcountry Cowboy))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: investigateworld
Small detail: Making frozen pizza for home cooking is considered’manufacturing’ now.

So is brewing beer. Do you think we drill for it?

20 posted on 01/21/2011 7:08:07 AM PST by 1rudeboy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson