Posted on 09/18/2005 9:19:51 AM PDT by Willie Green
Angel Mills worked at GST AutoLeather in Williamsport, Md., most of her adult life. She cut, inspected, packed and shipped leather upholstery until she was laid off in June 2003 as the company scaled back local operations and shifted production to Mexico.
"It's sad. It's scary. I've been a factory worker all my life, and I didn't know what I wanted to do," said Ms. Mills, a 38-year-old Williamsport resident with a teenage son.
But by March 2004 she was taking a half-year course to become a state-licensed massage therapist. A federal program that helps workers who lose jobs owing to foreign competition paid for her training and offered extended unemployment benefits.
In July, she started working at Venetian Salon and Spa in Hagerstown, Md.
~~~SNIP~~~
Mr. Thomas said that for all trade adjustment program workers passing through the consortium, the average wage was $14.36 an hour before the layoffs, while after retraining it was $11.87 an hour, a decline that is common for factory workers who have to restart their lives.
U.S. Labor Department figures indicate that among the retrained, those that find new jobs end up making only 70 percent to 80 percent of their old wages on average.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
"My problem is free trade does not level the field. It nails some people's feet to the floor."
That's crap, too. EVERYONE was on equal palying field when the textile plant shut down. Over 500 of us former workers signed up with the Trade Act to get job retraining and education.
Less than 100 actually made something of their second chance and less than 10 (myself included in that number) came out with Bachelor's Degrees.
It happened fast, but those of us with the mental framework were able to adapt, change and make it work for us. Those that just wanted to stand around & claim "victim" status, whined and collected unemployment for 1 1/2 years - then went right back to work for someone else paying $7.00 per hr.
It all boils down to the work ethic, ideology & goals of an individual.
Life comes at you fast. Adapt, change & overcome. Period.
I don't feel sorry for anyone who whines and claims "victim-hood" - been there, refused to do it!
That was meant for the hearing impaired. For the rest of us it's "eliminating an import tax does not create an import tax supported subsidy".
"No, we need tariffs like we used to have to level the playing field. "
Yeah, lets' bring back the tariff levels of 1931 so we can be as rich and successful as Albania, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and other great economic powerhouses.
(/sarcasm).
Actually, I agree, and I think you misunderstood me. Government's role in a laissez-faire free market is precisely a.) to prevent coercion through force and b.) to enforce contracts. Preventing coercion through force means that a punk with a gun can't coerce a shop-owner to empty the register and give the cash to him. Enforcing contracts means that when someone signs a contract to pay for the construction of a house, he must then actually pay the builders when the house is built. Here I think we agree completely despite a misunderstanding of defintions.
By American standards the wage is at subsistence. Hand to mouth. America cannot compete with countries that are willing to keep its own citizens pay at poverty level in order to sell cheap to America. In the case of Mexico, this policy only produces more illegal immigration than it reduces.
The wage might be at a subsistence level, but that's not the point. The next-best option for that worker may be starvation wages, which would be why he takes a job at subsistence wages in the first place. His lot has been improved as a result of a demand for his cheap labor.
In America, our labor is generally skilled and educated, which is why it's more productive, and therefore why our labor is paid much, much more. The advantageous position of Americans is not an accident. We are paid more because we produce more and our time is more valuable. As an example, the introduction of mechanization into manufacturing in America has vastly increased the value of labor because it makes each individual laborer more productive and hence more valuable, and the marginal producers are no longer profitable and find other lines of work (as in service, technology, and education). Automation in industry has resulted in the majority of real wage gains in America, not unions. (Unions were most useful as conduits of information, eventually they became a force of coercion against employers and held back real wage gains)
Regarding Mexican immigration. . . I think welfare is the largest contributor to it. In a free labor market, uneducated, unskilled Mexicans would be paid what they are worth (which would be less and less as they saturate the market) and the immigration would stop altogether. I'm personally in favor of immigration walls until the welfare state ends.
Free trade will only work when the rest of the world catches up, economically and socially to the United States. Not before.
I think it's the opposite. Trade will advance the third world far more rapidly than any amount of foreign aid money will.
As far as socially. . . I'll grant that trading with a hypothetical nation that uses slave labor is immoral as it would exploit the slave workers to own advantage. I don't think that's at issue though. Communist China is more capitalist every day, and at worst they use state coercion to exploit their workers.
"Let's get rid of all our unwanted "regulations and bureaucracies".
"You got it.. But just one more thing. If we got rid of all
the unwanted regulations and bureaucracies then no country would sign a free trade agreement with us because we would kick there buts in any production."
Have no fear that we'll be that effective at removing regulations.
You gotta understand ... most Governments are socialistic. A Free Trade agreement is like an alcoholic testifying at an AA meeting. You're lucky just to keep 'em off the wagon.
I was born in 1945 and started working part time when I was 15 and in high school. My experience is typical of the other 430 that graduated with me and those in the south and probably the nation.
We had those evil tariffs and unions that encouraged the Corporations to invest their money in their homeland and protected not only American workers but those American companies who thought it was good business to invest in the homeland.
Believe it or not but these giant corporations made good money and high profits back then also.
Then you had some who decided they could increase those profits make a lot more money if they could get to the cheap overseas labor market but only if they could sell their products back here to those well paid American workers.
They also needed to convince the American public that them investing American dollars in foreign countries and making them strong was really not unpatriotic, but a good thing or else the public might not go along with their plan and that would hurt business.
So they lobbied [bought]the politicians they could and got all those evil tariffs that leveled the playing field for American businesses and workers eliminated forcing not only the American worker but those American businesses to compete against them with their cheap labor and with their almost zero overhead, taxes and regulations and other incentives heaped on them by foreign governments.
People from my father's generation, although he didn't have a high school education, could provide for his family a home food, clothing, medical care and transportation with out the help of government.
Those from mine could do the same only at a higher standard of living.
I and those that graduated with me that didn't have go to collage still had plenty of good paying jobs available.
. Like me their wives didn't have to work but hey had a nice three or four bedroom homes, two cars, boat,maybe RVs,clothing, education for their good health insurance, retirement investments and packages able to take vacations etc you name it all provided by good job opportunities and some hard work.
The federal government wasn't needed or wanted to provide any of these things. All we wanted was for them to stay out of our lives. We thought it much too big back then.
Now it requires $2,000,000,000,000 a year and is growing in leaps and we think we are in contol and a free people?
Then came the Federal Government at the urging of a few of it's Big Business donors. Typical of the government it decided to fix what wasn't broken.
So they done away with the tariffs that had been in place and used to finance the government before income tax and used to protect American business and workers from foreign slave labor and foreign governments who subsidized these businesses.
So those businesses that believed in America first and investing dollars in her future to make her strong where forced to follow the lead dictated by those few "anything goes for a dollar corporations" and their political lackeys.
Now you have young couples with college degrees both trying to work sometimes two jobs for grocery store wages, with no benefits ,living in a house trailer signing up for government health care because they can't afford their own.
It wasn't just blue collar jobs lost when those factories left but all kinds of managerial, engineering and research jobs.
We haven't reach bottom yet. It wasn't enough to encourage the companies to leave with the good paying jobs and invest in the future of our enemies, but to keep the wages down for their patrons, the government opens our borders and floods the job market that is left with cheap labor so they can lower and keep wages down of the jobs and workers. Then those workers a lot of whom don't want citizenship haul those future dollars out of the country also.
You couldn't devise a better plan to lower the standard of living or increase the dependency of a people on their government if you tried.
. I know some of the products we buy are a lot cheaper but not the important ones you need to live like a home ,food, utilities,education and health care.
I know those who are doing well won't believe me but that's okay just give it a little more time it hasn't gotten to you yet. But it will.You are in competition with the third world whether you know it or not.
If you are making a good living and have good benefits as an employee or have a small business and you are making a decent profit there is somebody who is in another part of the world who is willing to do what you do or provide what you provide at a much cheaper price than you are.
The only way you will be able to compete is to lower your standard of livng and be willing to accept those standards he is willing to accept.
That situation came up time and again across America over the last two centuries.. The movies had the old west growing up one gun fight after another. Newspapers, diaries, and personal accounts from the time told a different story. Real life was a few town meetings and one new business after another. The people that made the most money were the ones that did the work that others were willing to pay for.
No wonder we are no longer one of the "super powers" left on this planet.
We are the only one left. Go figure....
Well, it is something for nothing. Sort of. The "secret" is that the difference is a result of either technology (advances like the cotton gin and the printing press) that is more efficient or productive, or a result of more intelligent organization (like Wal-Mart having a superior logistics chain). Instead of paying $2.00, and half of it is wasted on non-productive activity, you pay $1.00 for the same thing because it's done better. The difference is used to pay for what would otherwise have been an opportunity cost. It's a net gain.
Everyone who has saved a buck by buying a cheaper leather chair will spend that buck on something else. On the average, a few more cars would be bought, and the laid off worker would be hired at the car factory to meet the demand.
This is the reason the private sector and capitalism is vastly more efficient than government bureaucracy.
To preempt (once again) the argument that Mexico will now have the benefits of productive employment at the factory: yes, but that is only feasible as long as we Americans have our own cost-efficient exports to trade. The end result is that everyone and everything is automatically allocated to where it can meet its best use. In other words, a free market.
I think I've essentially repeated myself four times and it's frustrating.
Well, I sure can't argue with that. Can you bob?
"The point of my previous post was that through
cheaper goods, Americans wind up with surplus money to spend satisfying other demands"
Does the net reduction in the cost of cheaper goods really
offset the net reduction in income?
-----
YES! It's not just surplus money from the cheaper goods, its the opportunity for deploying capital and labor more effectively. That person went from a $14/hr job that was probably 'worth' no more than a fraction of it, to a $12/hr more valuable to the economy.
For all this gnashing of teeth about outsourcing, America still has managed to keep unemployment around 5%, half of what you see in socialistic Europe, with faster increases in incomes.
The secret to prosperity is doing everything more efficiently. You cannot achieve prosperity by preventing efforts at better efficiency.
For more on this, see Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations'. 200 years later, the world still hasn't learned.
Do we need the government to work hard to abolish trade barries in order to benefit the employers and to hurt workers and taxpayers?
Socialism might come as an answer. Is it what you want Mr. Dobbs?
That's a rediculous comparison to make. In the first place, the Trade Act was specifically put into place to deal with the issue of displaced workers. It did exactly what it was supposed to do - it gave me the start that I needed. It didn't get me all the way - I had to finish on my own.
In the second place, if you are collecting a paycheck from your "company" - and collecting / paying your payroll taxes properly, there is no reason why a business owner wouldn't qualify for unemployment. You'd be capped on the earnings, but IF you have been paying unemployment taxes on your wages from payroll earnings (like you are required to do by both the state and federal govts), then there is no issue there.
But, of course, if you are the small business owner that files on a Schedule C, while pocketing all the profits for yourself instead of running a payroll - no, you don't qualify for state unemployment benefits.
So sorry for you - although I would take a good paycheck anyday over unemployment benefits.
This is a bit hard to follow, I need to block this out.
| cut import taxes ==> | hurts tax payers ==> | answer is Socialism |
Did I miss anything?
Quote: "I really don't believe American made products are that much more."
Let me add..when made in the US vs china.
Quote: That's crap, too. EVERYONE was on equal palying field when the textile plant shut down. Over 500 of us former workers signed up with the Trade Act to get job retraining and education. Less than 100 actually made something of their second chance and less than 10 (myself included in that number) came out with Bachelor's Degrees.
Your statement proves my point. You see I'm a realist. Most people that lose their higher paying job will not try to get the higher education. Most people are not ambitious. You need higher paying jobs for these people or else they will be on the gov't dole and on crytal meth. I remember kids I went to HS whose dad's had the decent paying fcatory jobs. Now I see the kids of those same people I went to school with and their names are in the paper for burglary, drug use etc.
Cystal meth is the poor uneducated white mans drug. Notice how it has been exploding in use among poorer whites?
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