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 ...
Sure. You show me an African country that practices free market capitalism today and I'll get a ticket. If you'll get a ticket when you can't show me one.
She sat back and continued relying on an industry that was losing jobs left and right, hoping and praying that her job would be safe.....instead of preparing for the inevitable years ago by acquiring other skills. Exactly why is she surprised?
>>>>Free trade is not free. It comes at a heavy price for those who can least afford it.<<<<
>>Yeah, we need socialism!!!!<<
Are you implying our Founding Fathers, who supported tariffs, were Socialists?
Of course, that would require some be posted here in the first place.
calling tariffs govrenmnet control over the economy.
Tariffs are taxes that absolutely give government more influence over the economy by protecting inefficient businesses, that happen to be well connected or politically powerful, who obtain favors at the expense of consumers. A regulated economy produces masses of corruption because it empowers bureaucrats. No need to look any further than the welfare paid to the American sugar cartel for a prime example of this process in action.
tariffs were used, in the period of 45-70, when productivity gains were far higher than even today
Yeah, the good old days after WWII when we were the only country left with an industrial base. Lack of competition was responsible for the good times we experienced during those years and all of that ended when the rest of the world caught up with us. Many of our industries were fat and inefficient, thanks in part to the unions who controlled the labor our growing economy required. By time we got our act together, we had lost a large portion of our auto and electronics industry. American consumers decided they no longer had to buy crappy construction and outdated technology.
You should probably choose examples that support your assertions. I would also think twice before accusing others of using faulty logic or criticizing their sense of history.
such as US and Europe, and when both side trade fairly
I have yet to see anyone adequately define what fair trade means. Fair to whom? In the name of fairness, different groups advocate different protections for their specific industries and call the comparative advantage of other countries "unfair."What could be more fair than willing buyers and sellers coming together without government interference?
Do you think the EU trades fairly? Do they not aggressively protect their industries and workers? Many of their member states rank fairly low on the index of economic freedom and have the unemployment and moribund GDP growth to prove it. Is this the model you suggest we follow? Hey, at least Germany has a trade surplus! As a matter of fact, the German economy is run almost exactly by the ideal Paleo model.
It is focused on high-value-added manufactured goods, has high tariffs and protectionism, runs a strong trade surplus, has a strong currency, an invasive system of social insurance, low immigration (much lower than the US, UK or France), avoids military interventionism, etc. Pat Buchanan would be proud of this.
China and India, where US workers and intellectual property are at a servere disadvantage, it is insanity, that hurts the US economicaly long term, and paves the way for greater socialism.
Yes, they steal our intellectual property. This has been going on for a long time yet we still lead the world in just about every area of technology. No other country innovates and commercializes technology better than the U.S. Please show us, with facts, how this has hurt us long term and how this has paved the way to greater socialism.
With GW Bush leading a government that spends more and more, there is more and more govrenment control over the economy
I'm not happy about the spending either but he has a plan to control the biggest of the entitlement programs and that's a start. Entitlements are the problem but they have nothing to do with free trade.
How many English perished in the Dickensian gulags?
How fundamentally ignorant of history you are, Toddster ! Anybody in Eastern Europe twixt 1945 and 1989 lived better than the slums of Dickens East End or the company towns of the coal country. The forced eviction of the peasantry caused by enclosure (when the noble lords decided that sheep herding was more profitable than agriculture) was no different from what Stalin did to the Crimean Tatars.
And as for using basic common sense on your part, try this. Once upon a time the auto industry was rich selling plenty of cars with no more than three year loans. Now, a troubled auto industry must sell cars with seven year loans and employee discounts. What does that tell you ?
I read somewhere in a election-related (theirs) piece that Germany's economy has been growing at 0% annually for at least three years. I wonder if there are people at a forum called FreiRepublik.de complaining about a "race to the bottom?" (Geschlect den Boden erreichen?)
Those millions who were killed by the Russians and the Chinese (amongst a host of other commies) were killed for POLITICAL reasons, not ECONOMIC. Hence, not comparable.
But what we are comparing are standards of living. In that realm, communists are not that far behind the industrialists of the 19th century, with the exception of North Korea. In some cases, communism could even be preferable to the squalor and misery of life in 19th century industrial Europe. Just ask the Irish.
Has the free-er market of China helped raise the standard of living? Yes, to a certian extent...but not for everyone in China, probably not even for a majority. But it's difficult to determine given that the Chinese aren't exactly forth-coming with all sorts of untainted economic data. However, China is still a long, long, long way from having anything resembling free markets as you define them.
As for the superiority of communism to capitalism, I don't see ANYONE on these threads singing the praises of Communism, not even A.Pole. What is being said is that unrestrained free markets aren't the bag 'o gold that many here on these threads think they are. Labor unions didn't come about in free-market economies because they had nothing better to do....it was a direct result of the oppression they felt--and felt in a painful fashion--from the nice free-market capitalists in charge of their sweat-shops. There's a reason Marxism was born out of 19th century free-market Europe...
I am now, and have always been a Christian capitalist, never a Marxist nor very sympathetic towards Marxist ideology.
The reason I say Christian capitalist and not just "capitalist" is that capitalism, in order to work, must have the highest moral and ethical principles, and I haven't found any higher outside the realm of Christianity. Mix a moral, benevolent people with free markets and for the most part things will work, as they have in the West up to the 19th century. When Christianity began it's long, slow march towards marginalization after the Reformation, the ethical and moral limits on economic power started to decline as well...not that they were ever all that strong to begin with.
Absent strong ethics, morals or government control, a truly free-market, industrail based economy will exploit it's workers, no if's and's or but's. History is filled with examples. China is no better. And those on the short-end of the stick are the poor, working class who lack the MBA's and political connections to get out of the trap they are in. (I know, they should just go to college...like everyone else...)
Why do you think it was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who was so much in favor of anti-trust regulation? Was it just that he got tired of creating national parks and needed a new hobby? Or maybe it was because he was responding to a national outrage as to the way the rich were consolidating their power, ala' Marx's prediction?
That they are facing falling demand? Incidentally, how are the Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda plants in the U.S. doing? Are they offering employee discounts? Don't think so. They're probably running flat-out producing Corollas, Tundras, and Civics.
LOL!
If so, they'd have something genuine to complain about - unlike so many here. I've read that along with no GDP growth, their real unemployment rate is more than 12%. Himmel herr gott!
At least they have that trade surplus.
So, no actual stats on 7 year loans? I just went to the Honda USA website, 60 month max terms. Toyota USA, 72 months. Mercedes, 60 month. VW, 60 month. Maybe the only way Ford and GM can compete is to offer 7 year loans to marginal buyers. I guess these poor credit risks would be better off if they walked to work? Or took the bus?
. . . uh, if you say so. That is a whole can of worms in itself and I'm not going to comment further than saying I disagree.
Look, in very simple terms, I object to protective, selective taxes on any particular products that I may want to import. If I'm an aerospace manufacturer, it personally hurts me to have a 30% steel tariff. I do not want to support a domestic steel industry that is so outrageously inefficient that even the gargantuan American advantage in capital and technology cannot allow it to be competitive. The tariff arbitrarily increases my steel material costs by 30% than what I could otherwise get. All of the tax money raised is non-productive and most of it is wasted on illegitimate government programs.
An industry that requires a tariff is pathetic indeed. It's like a marathon runner asking for a headstart against a paraplegic. I don't care how cheap Mexicans work. Technology amplifies the productive potential of a skilled worker thousands of times. In order words, you can have a thousand or a million slave labor packing coal on their backs from place to place, but I couldn't care less, because I have a damn railroad, with an engineer, conductor, and mechanics. The skilled workers who aren't necessary to meet the profitable demand of a product are gainfully employed in the production of other, often new products.
This is why capitalism raises all boats and why the working poor of America live better than the nobility of Europe did 500 years. Capitalism allows, nay, demands the efficient and profitable deployment of technology and innovation. When people are economically free to trade and are protected by the Rule of Law, this we call capitalism and population numbers multiply until people just don't even care to have any more kids. When a select and powerful group of men have a monopoly on force and use it to control the economic liberty of people, this we call socialism, and populations shrink from famine and mass murder.
It is outright absurd that I am defending free markets on Free Republic! Back to your regularly scheduled program of tariffs illegitimately protecting favored workers.
America, through her history as a free and prosperous nation, has gained the lead, by an unbelievable margin, in capital accumulation and technological know-how. This know-how means the skill, education, and innovation to maximize the production of the individual American worker.
We have here an illiterate, uneducated, and unskilled foreigner who does not even speak English, and who works in a factory in a foreign country with a sub-standard infrastructure and legal system. If he is able to outproduce an American manufacturer, than that slothful manufacturer does not deserve to stay in business because he is not competitive -- wasteful and inefficient and worse, unproductive -- and he sure has hell does not deserve a subsidy in the form of a tax on my trade with his better competition. Hell no!
I for one recognize the gigantic advantage I gain simply by living in America and having access to enormous capital, knowledge, and the world's finest legal system. This is available to every single penniless American with nothing going for him but a sound mind and good health. If you're born into privilege of any sort you have that much more of a headstart. If you're so pathetic that you cannot use this to make something of yourself in America of all places than you merit no more or less than to be replaced by the foreigner who is productive despite his inferior circumstances. I view idleness as a sin and stupidity as a worse sin. I will strive with all of my might to succeed and the worst failure which is possible for me is to wind up with merely providing adequately for me and mine. You only impede my success by obstacles to free trade, and prolong your own failure.
As Americans, our rightful place is at the forefront of production, but only because we have earned it by being first and being most successful. As the rest of the world catches on, we continue improving. It's a race to the top, and we have a 200-year headstart that has made some folks complacent.
Gentlemen, this is the important point I want you to take away from all this: 50 and 100 years ago, American factory workers sure as hell did not have the opportunity for massage therapy. Today they do, because they are individually more productive. The marginal ones lobby for tariffs. The real wages of productive individuals (not a stagnant industry refusing to change) rise in proportion to their productivity. This is eminently obvious when you think of labor as a commodity in a market. They rise because each individual's labor is more valuable as he becomes more productive. The marginal workers, the ones who aren't as productive, are laid off and they persue other productive employment.
Angel Mills decided to persue massage therapy. Good on her. Shame on you for suggesting that instead the price of leather should increase 30% and the leather industry should stagnate until it's incompetent even at a 30% advantage.
But, but, what about national security? [chuckle]
So when you said the following....
Either you're being oppressed by the political class, or being oppressed by the robber-barrons. When you're on the short-end of the stick, it doesn't matter how you label the system.
....you were wrong?
In that realm, communists are not that far behind the industrialists of the 19th century, with the exception of North Korea.
But I thought we were talking about the 21st century.
In some cases, communism could even be preferable to the squalor and misery of life in 19th century industrial Europe. Just ask the Irish.
How many millions in the Gulag were allowed to leave Eastern Europe in the 1950s as compared to Irish who were allowed to leave in the 1850s?
What is being said is that unrestrained free markets aren't the bag 'o gold that many here on these threads think they are.
Are you saying we've been within light years of unrestrained free markets in the US in the last 100 years? Are you saying we're too free now and could use more regulations now instead of fewer?
Yes, that must be why those countries are all at the very bottom of the ranking in economic freedom, in an annual report whose name escapes me.
Even you must accept the ridiculousness of your statement.
Pure, extreme, unfettered capitalism is anarcho-capitalism. Zero government control of the economy. The capital of violence is owned by individuals. In a free market supported by the Rule of Law, the government has a de jure monopoly on violence and by extension, the courts, police, and military.
It's not always a lack of productivity that causes a worker to be laid-off...sometimes it's just that they are in the wrong place, at the wrong time. No matter how productive they were, they now have nothing. The smart ones, energetic ones get into new jobs and careers, but at what cost? Looking at it in net terms, the worker with a new carrer will have to work a very, very long time... probably years, maybe a decade or two, before the recoop the cost of all that was lost during retraining, plus come back to a place where their wages equalled the amount they were being paid when they were laid-off. In terms of intangibles, like health care, those will probably never be as good for the worker. But in the meantime, inflation increases, prices increase, and the real buying power of our heroic worker DECREASES. Even if they can get back to their previous level of wages within five years, it's very likely prices have increased 10 to 15% in that time, still making for a net loss in purchasing power. Overall, decreasing wages are very, very unhealthy from an economic standpoint. We are seeing wages fall or stagnate all over the United States these past five years, which means that eventually the steam in our economic engine will be spent, and the economy will head south faster than Jesse Jackson to a television camera.
Angel Mills decided to persue massage therapy. Good on her. Shame on you for suggesting that instead the price of leather should increase 30% and the leather industry should stagnate until it's incompetent even at a 30% advantage.
I'm sorry, I did not suggest the price of leather should be increased, and it's not always a matter of the prices of goods or materials that's a factor, but rather the price of LABOR.
Labor prices are, for various reasons that I won't go into, very, very rigid. They go up easily, but not down. So when costs go up, or earnings go down, people are let go, rather than wages reduced. Right now we are in a situation as a nation where cheap labor is in vast supply overseas, and it's cheaper to do just about anything anywhere else than it is in the USA, with some exceptions. So companies are tripping over themselves moving production, engineering, information technology, and just about anything else not nailed down to overseas locations.
So, explain to me, if you could, how does this create a net benefit to the United States of America? Unless you own a company involved in import/export, where does one go to make a decent buck?
Other than healthcare, what field should I tell my children to get into so that they can enjoy at least a middle-class existance? What industry or career field is growing, looking for more people to fill it's ranks? Massage therapy?
The Heritage's Foundation (garlic to our collectivist vampires) Index of Economic Freedom show a clear correlation between economic freedom, political liberty, and per capita income. The higher one is, the higher the others.
Engineering, for starters (if your kids are willing to work for their undergraduate degree). As for "healthcare," if you mean medicine or dentistry, you are well behind the times. The Feds have already sunk their claws into those two fields so deeply that they're simply not worth the time, money, and effort.
This is where things get interesting.
Let me just say that we're too free with trade, much too free, and it will end up hurting us rather badly in the long run. No if's and's or but's about it.
And the reason it hurts us is because of another point you mentioned: governement regulation. I remember a GM exec stating that the cost of abiding the various government regulation adds about $2500 to a car. But of course this is the case for foreign car manufacturers as well, if they want to sell cars in the USA. So if someone want to make cars for the US market, the CAR must meet all of our governement regulations. Hence, we have a farily level playing field for the automotive industry, but one in which Ford and GM still can't compete. (Mainly due to poor quality products)
But what about something else, say a toy? Even toys have to meet certain regulations and standards in the USA. But if the toy can be made for less money overseas than it can be here...then why make it here? So toy production goes overseas. The TOY itself has to meet USA government regulations, but the factory it's made in, and the way it treats it workers are beyond the reach of the regulators.
So it's just not the toy that comes under government regulations, but the factory, the workers, and everything else. So if a company can avoid all those costs by locating production overseas, then why make something here?
Of course it's not just a problem of manufacturing anymore. Not only can products be made more cheaply overseas, they can also be designed and engineered more cheaply overseas. And the information processing necessary to oversee everything can be done more efficeintly overseas. Pretty soon, you just have an owner, a lawyer, an accountant, and someone who drives the forklift at the warhouse on the American side, as everything else can be done more cheaply overseas.
Of course the problem with this is that we can't all be in the import/export business, nor can we all work for the government. So where does everyone else get a job? Restaurants? Wal-Mart? A trucking company or a railroad? Wall Street? Just how many massage therapists can an economy support?
This wouldn't be so bad if there were something other than manufacturing, engineering, information technology, etc., to sustain the middle-class. But such is not the case. Jobs for the middle-class are disappearing quickly, and there's nothing else out there taking up the slack.
So just how long can this scenario go on for? How long can the middle class take a hit before the economy as a whole goes into the tank?
If history is any guide, we don't have very long at all. As wages are stagnant or declining for a majority of Americans as prices continue to increase...even at a low rate of inflation....consumption of goods will decrease, no matter where they are made or how cheap they are.
That's the situation we are in now. Free trade is only making it worse.
Hmmm....then why are you taking the side of A. Pole who seems to think we need more government regulation instead of taking the side of someone who wants less regulation, like me?
Jobs for the middle-class are disappearing quickly, and there's nothing else out there taking up the slack.
Anything other than your word that this is happening?
As wages are stagnant or declining for a majority of Americans
Anything other than your word that this is happening?
That's called supply and demand? There isn't an infinite demand for shoes specifically. That's why the market will only bear so many shoe-makers before the rest have to find other demands to meet.
price of LABOR
Cheap labor is unproductive labor. If a person's labor is productive it is worth more. If I owned a farm, I would pay more for one skilled tractor and machine operator than a hundred unskilled laborers. As the owner of this farm, I would be utterly unconcerned with how cheaply foreigners hired labor because my American workers are more productive, by virtue of their greater skill and capital invested in their tools.
His individual labor is more productive, it earns me more money, so I pay more for him (because the market reality is likely that other farm owners also want the services of my skilled tractor operator). The PRICE of labor is set by supply and demand, and demand is influenced in a very large part in how productive the labor is.
Labor prices are, for various reasons that I won't go into, very, very rigid.
They're rigid because the market isn't allowed to operate freely to set the price of labor. If it's otherwise, then please enlighten me (I am ignorant).
So, explain to me, if you could, how does this create a net benefit to the United States of America?
I explained more than once how unfettered trade results in net gain due to efficiency in my first several posts in this thread. There is a chapter of Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt devoted to that very subject. The entire .pdf for the book is linked to in my about page.
Other than healthcare, what field should I tell my children to get into so that they can enjoy at least a middle-class existance? What industry or career field is growing, looking for more people to fill it's ranks? Massage therapy?
I would advise them to suck you dry for every bit of education you can afford. =) In addition, to gain practical experience and real world work experience at every single opportunity they can get it, even trading higher pay for the experience, in every useful field they can get their hand in. It is *really* nice to have the security and support of your family while you learn and gain all this useful experience. Not everyone has or had that. Then they should persue their specific field of interest. Some fields can be entered in just with higher education and common sense, while others you might have to persue on the side and support yourself with the best you can get. Once they're doing the work they love they should expand and innovate in their field. That's the American way.
I definitely would NOT advise getting a rudimentary technical education and doing the same set of mechanical motions for the next 40 years, hoping their pensions aren't allowed to lapse like has recently happened, and praying a glut of equally unskilled foreigners doesn't displace them and their high wages. That's no better than being a human robot in a factory. Why not be the one in charge of building or maintaining various robotic systems instead?
I'll give you a hint, we're not going back to the days where nailery workers cut nails by hand anytime soon, no matter how cheap Mexicans are willing to work. Specializing in a 6th grade education and a set of repetitive motions to work in the same textile mill for 40 years is just plain stupid. It shouldn't be protected by tariffs and the union bosses won't make it less stupid by pouting.
Personally, I find aerospace engineering and the future of private space exploration completely fascinating and very exciting. I will be steering my higher education in that direction while in the meantime I work, gain experience, and improve my life.
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.