Posted on 03/27/2002 10:58:37 AM PST by gubamyster
Paul Craig Roberts
March 27, 2002
White males are suffering from long-term deterioration in lifetime income growth and job security, according to a study, "Divergent Paths," just released by the Russell Sage Foundation.
The study by four academic sociologists and statisticians compares the wage growth and job security of young white males who entered the labor market in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the experience of a previous generation of young white males who entered the labor market in the mid-1960s. The study finds that 90 percent of young white male workers can expect to have lower lifetime wage growth than the previous generation.
The study concludes that "upward mobility has deteriorated for young white men who entered the labor market in the 1980s." The change is significant and permanent, comprising "a massive downshift in earning standards" that has hollowed out the middle class and left large numbers of white males stuck in low-wage service jobs that have no future.
The trend is especially adverse for the 66 percent of the work force that never attains a four-year college degree. However, even college graduates are experiencing difficulties. Although better off relative to other young white males, 65 percent of college graduates who began working in 1980 have experienced less income growth than college graduates who began their careers in the mid-1960s.
The researchers have no satisfactory explanation for their worrisome findings. They point fingers at deregulation, corporate downsizing, decline of unionization and a stagnant minimum wage, and wander off into left-wing drivel about "the imbalance of power that is inherent in a capitalist system."
A better explanation of the study's conclusion that the majority of white males "can no longer expect stable careers that lead to a solid, family-sustaining wage" is found in race and gender quotas and massive unskilled immigration, and in the way the United States practices "free trade."
The study shows that women "experienced real wage growth during this period," when "earnings for male workers stagnated and even declined." In order to protect against U.S. Department of Justice (sic) lawsuits, every U.S. corporation has had to institutionalize race and gender quotas that discriminate against "over-represented" white males. These quotas have adversely impacted the upward mobility of white males.
Massive unskilled immigration from Third World countries greatly increases the labor supply and undercuts the wages of unskilled and low-skilled white males.
Formerly, the United States practiced traditional trade. We imported what others produced best and exported what we produced best. Some traditional trade still takes place, but the United States also practices a new kind of trade.
U.S. companies export unfinished and semi-finished materials to their factories in Mexico and China, where Mexican and Chinese workers add value. The goods are then exported back to the United States for sale to the American consumer. In this type of trade, America will always run a deficit because what we "export" has lower value than what we "import."
When goods cross borders, they are measured as international trade -- but such movements are really intra-firm trade that allows cheaper Mexican and Chinese labor to be substituted for U.S. labor. U.S. companies produce for the American consumer with foreign labor.
The result is a decline in higher-paying jobs in the United States as companies move higher value-added operations abroad to take advantage of cheaper labor.
A recent Cornell University study, "The Impact of U.S.-China Trade Relations on Workers, Wages and Employment," concludes that U.S. companies shift their production to China in order to produce for the U.S. market with cheap Chinese labor. The study estimates that a minimum of 760,000 U.S. jobs have been lost to China since 1992.
"An increasing percentage of the jobs leaving the U.S. are in higher-paying industries producing goods such as bicycles, furniture, motors, compressors, generators, fiberoptics, clocks, injection molding and computer components." The shift in production is so extensive that the United States has run a trade deficit with China in advanced technology goods since 1995.
China requires U.S. firms that want access to China's low-cost labor to relocate Research & Development operations to China along with factories, thus replacing American designers, engineers and scientists with Chinese ones.
White American males face deteriorating career prospects because U.S. companies substitute foreign labor for U.S. labor, civil-rights policy requires discrimination against white males in employment and promotion, and massive immigration drives down wages in construction, services and other employment.
The end result of the job transfers will be a U.S. population too poor to purchase the products produced by cheap Chinese and Mexican labor.
Contact Paul Craig Roberts
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Umm, because the jobs being shifted would pay higher here? Just a guess as to the motivation for "shifting" the jobs in the first place.
If the high paying jobs were going overseas, that would mean that our people need a new work ethic.
Or that they learn to live on $1 per hour wages, like Third World workers. Sounds good to me---I hear that poor people are more virtuous...
As to the quotas - yes, those cause trouble.
Yeah, well, that's life, hunh? And the point of the article. But complain about injustice when you're the wrong color and it only rates as "whining," doesn't it?
But as Thomas Sowell has so recently pointed out, whites would have had their job pool increasingly taken by blacks and women regardless of quotas. All quotas did was mess up the timetable - probably in favor of the whites. Once blacks had access to education they were going to be competing for the same jobs as whites and some whites were going to lose the competition. Ditto women.
Thomas Sowell pooh-poohing the ill effects of quotas? Maybe there're two Thomas Sowell's out there...
At any rate, you evidently can't or won't understand the article's point. Not that blacks or women that are willing and able to take jobs should be denied them, but that white men should not be denied employment because of quotas, which by definition have more to do with race and sex than education.
"Shalom"? Chas v'cholileh...
???? I've seen that sentiment before but I don't entirely understand it. Why is it that any concerns voiced by white males, regardless of their position in the earnings bracket, are consistantly dismissed as the whimpering of a privelaged class?
There is a vast difference between simpering over a weakening stock option and the very justified concern about making a living in an environment where a misplaced word will put you on the street, a false accusation from a female or minority will get you fired without recourse and that innocent looking checkbox on the job application (the one asking about your race ) brings a knot to your throat because you know from experiance that race really does matter when they are making the final selection.
It may be amusing to marginalize the concerns voiced by white men, but I can assure you that the concerns are not unfounded. They are indicative of some very real problems that will not subside with more witty mockery.
Damn.
Well, I'm fresh out of solutions, then.
Sounds like the same disease that causes them to still listen to loosers like James E. Carter, The Rev. Al Sharpton, The Rev. Jesse Jackson, and William B.J. Clinton.
Shalom.
Gee, so kind of you to say.
admittedly, a flash of humor does hit the spot :)
No they won't. The companies can't afford to overpay American workers. American workers have two options. Agree to work at the (global) market price, or find work that can't be done better and/or cheaper elsewhere. Protectionism will only guarantee that we produce goods nobody else will buy.
Or that they learn to live on $1 per hour wages, like Third World workers. Sounds good to me---I hear that poor people are more virtuous...
Poverty doesn't cause virtue, but it can lead to it. But that isn't my point. The only reason I would lose my job to someone overseas is if that someone provided more value. I either have to get my butt in gear and provide value, or find some work where there isn't greater value overseas yet. Easy? No. But them's the rules and they seem to work best for everyone - excep the whiners.
Yeah, well, that's life, hunh? And the point of the article. But complain about injustice when you're the wrong color and it only rates as "whining," doesn't it?
My point was that the trouble was coming anyway. Unless you believed in segregation, the blacks and women were going to be entering the workforce. Quotas only changed the timetable, not the result. And I still say there would have been more blacks and women in higher paying jobs faster if the quotas were never created.
Thomas Sowell pooh-poohing the ill effects of quotas? Maybe there're two Thomas Sowell's out there...
I only know one and he has never liked quotas.
At any rate, you evidently can't or won't understand the article's point. Not that blacks or women that are willing and able to take jobs should be denied them, but that white men should not be denied employment because of quotas, which by definition have more to do with race and sex than education.
I understood that point. My counter-point was that many whites simply rolled up their sleeves and won under the new rules. Whiners, on the other hand...
Shalom.
What do you do?
No need to apologize.
Work ethic has little to do when comparing a $50K year engineer in Seattle to a $12K year PLA engineer in China.
So cross-train and learn to do something they can't do cheaper in China. I know that's easier said than done, but when the going gets tough...
Boeing, among others, are following the Jack Welch ideal of "Globalizing Intelect". This is an economic issue now, it will be a military issue very soon.
If we leave it as an economic issue, we will win far faster and easier than if we let it become a military issue.
Unless we've become a nature of whiners.
Shalom.
When Manufacturing, Design, and Development are being outsourced overseas the only skills left to cross train are is Accounting, Marketing, or Law. Lawyers, Salesman and Accountants cannot defend a nation
See, the problem is, Engineers are this country's first line of defense. Our military is overwhelming, not by the pure grit of our warriors, but by that grit fused with superior technology.
When intellect is sent overseas, specifically to countries who have openly threatened us with thermonuclear war, we have a problem. We are surrendering our advantage. Manufacturing textiles overseas makes sense. Assembling car mirrors in Mexico is good also fine. Loosing the ability to design defense systems is suicide
The invisible hand will fix this, but it cares little for our sovereignty.
Very well said!
Actually, it is. The article talks about "white male" losses in a false attempt - the classic liberal "big lie" strategy - to falsly frame a "gender" issue as a race issue. White and black males have fallen behind in most health and mortality categories and many employment categories, particularly management. Most recently, there was a second attempt by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services to frame the epidemic level of teen suicide as strictly a black issue, and by doing so completely ignored that suicide is steadily up among all teen boys - and practically a statistical zero among black girls.
"Sex baiting?" The title of the article puts it into that category every bit as much as race baiting. Crap like this put out by liberal think tanks makes some conservatives all warm and fuzzy inside as they point to the damage being done by liberalism. But the real aim is to pit the republican political base against the democrat political base while the liberals of both parties enjoy the spoils of the battle.
It is not just manufacturing & blue collar jobs that are going overseas. As a CPA I have encountered more & more companies that are sending white collar, professional jobs overseas. Several companies I have called in the last year have an 800 number that rings in India. Accounts payable and other accounting jobs are heading overseas. In fact, my company will be sending about 100 accounting jobs to Singapore. Why? A comparison of cost per transaction resulted in Singapore’s labor cost to be ½ of the cost in the LA, CA office.
The parts of this statement are true are only partially true. When level of experience, WORK PERFORMANCE, and degree of education are taken into account, the gaps reduce significantly.
Sure there are less female and black CEOs than their representation of the population, but this is a holdover from an era when blacks and women did not have the educational opportunities and the ability to get into positions of power back in the 60's. If Old White Guy has been a manager for forty years and Young Black Woman has been a manager for 3, who are you gonna pick to head your Fortune 500 company, all other things being equal?
You've got to make sure to compare apples to apples before you start spouting off nonsense. The wage gap, normalized for job-affecting factors, is lower than it has ever been and continues to shrink.
That was in 1992. Got better.
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