If auto assembly (or other) jobs flow to Mexico (or wherever), cost pressures are reduced and auto makers can hold the line on prices. So if 25,000 auto workers used to produce 5 million cars, but producing them in Mexico means a gross savings to car buyers of $1,000 per car, do you want to give $5 billion to the auto workers to save 25,000 jobs? My feeling: Markets send messages and the message here is that looking for jobs in the auto industry may not be a good idea. Personally, giving each auto worker a $200,000 shot in the arm doesn't make sense. If they want to keep their jobs, they need to think about tempering their wage and benefit demands.
Troll. The problem and you know it is that the jobs go, but the cost of the goods produced does not. Only corporate profits and the globalists really benefit.
Hopefully your job will not be sacrificed for lower costs to the betterment of the rest who are still employed in good paying jobs. I’m sure someone somewhere would be more than willing to replace you at a cheaper cost. Should that happen, do not go out and carry a sign bemoaning your predicament. We of the still employed care more about ourselves. Got it?
>>Every time I see people waving these signs, I ask myself: Do I want to subsidize these people?
Manufacturing jobs are about more than trade and the bottom line. Manufacturing is a nation’s lifeblood in a war. It is a way to keep people working and off welfare.
Remember how our massive auto industry stepped up in WW2 to make everything from tanks to bombers. Our typewriter and sewing machine manufacturers made guns and bombsights. But a nation that can’t even build an airplane without outsourcing has no way to build a war machine...especially if the other side in the war consists of China and its satellites.
You are subsidizing “those people” already and they don’t contribute a thing. Subsidize them at work and at least they contribute something.
RAISE a tariff of 2000 dollars on cars imported. Keep the jobs and make 5 billion, and foreign countries pay for it.
instead of killing off 25 thousand American jobs.
The only results of free trade agreements is a sharp drop in quality of products, along with a static or increase in the price. Also add in the rampant inflation of domestic goods due to a weakened dollar, all with the cost of welfare on the remaining taxpayers due to the lost jobs, and the average person will not side with the free trade crowd.
You may save on the cost of car. But now your taxes go up to support the people out of work.
“Personally, giving each auto worker a $200,000 shot in the arm doesn’t make sense.”
It would make more sense to just give every affected worker a lump sum payout that could tide them over while they find a new job, than to try to prop up businesses that can’t operate without subsidies.
It isn’t just the union workers. They have moved the engineering and computer technology off shore as well. It is all about quarterly statements with multi national companies. They treat employees like things and not people. So it is not must wage demands that are doing this.
I waiting for Ford to announce sticker price reductions on the Mexican made vehicles. I guess they will when Carrier and Nabisco announce their price reductions. LOL!
PS only an idiot thinks the consumer benefits from off shoring.