Posted on 02/01/2003 11:27:51 PM PST by FightingForFreedom
Wages will not equalize between U.S. and foreign countries for a very long time, if ever. The problem is supply differences. The 100 million or so American workers are vastly outnumbered by the potential number of Chinese, Indian, and other developing nation's manufacturing and knowledge workers. The standard of living differential is also too great. The balancing act for U.S. and multi-national businesses that are outsourcing our jobs is to make sure they don't kill the golden goose (the American consumer) before they've generated an even bigger goose to take to slaughter in China, India, and other targeted markets. Remember, producing cheaply means nothing if there's nobody to buy the products. And no one has been as well-trained as the American consumer to buy, buy, buy, no matter how much in debt one becomes! As a software engineer, I've seen this problem coming for at least 5 years now, but it was well masked by the artificial high-tech bubble through March 2000. I'm not sure that there is an answer at this point -- the genie is out of the bag, so to speak. Once one company in an industry has convinced the govt to open a market in one undesirable country or other, all other companies with which it competes are forced to do the same. Bottling up the genie is notoriously difficult.
That's the problem. And we keep spending our American dollars at Wal-Mart and similar outlets using third world country employees because they're cheaper and American factories paying American cost-of-living wages can't compete. And in the mean time, even many lower paying jobs are being taken over by illegals, because our borders are a joke.
Even the other day, I read of a factory closing in Mexico, because the company wanted to move the facility to China where they could pay even less wages and therefore make more profit. I've noticed in the past few years that wages in our country have gone steadily down. I remember about 8 years ago, people who had computer degrees and programming skills could get out of college and make fabulous salaries. Now, many of those same people have been laid off, and people working in that idustry are not making nearly as much as they used to. This all seems to have happened so quickly.
So as you've pointed out, what is going to happen when the average American can no longer afford trips to the mall, and they really have to start watching their pennies? It seems to me that greed has gotten out of hand with the big multi-national companies, and America will never again see the standard of living it once had. Pat Buchanan was so right on that issue. We're all going to be a little poorer from now on. Even those of us with stocks are seeing them rapidly devalue.
It reminds me of the greedy monkey who wanted all the cookies in the cookie jar, so he stuck his whole hand in there to try to take out all the cookies, but as a result his hand got stuck in the jar and he couldn't get it out and so couldn't get any cookies. These companies need to wake up or perhaps I should say wise up.
I just think his is a "population demographics" argument, which, unfortunately, has some merit, some grain of truth.
If the intent of the author is anti-free trade, then I join your critique, but I still don't see any Marxist theme here whatsoever.
I lived in Houston for many years, and saw this happen first hand. Immigrants have taken over many occupations there, and as a result the pay scales have gone way down. This country is becoming more third world everyday, and soon we will have a similar standard of living. There is no doubt it is headed in that direction.
That $10,000/yr engineer costs ALOT more than that to Microsoft once the service bureau gets its cut. And how long will the engineer stay with $10K? Engineers in the Phillipines or India will have their wage rise to meet the wages eningeers in Italy or the US Midewest.
Check out a place like Madrid, Spain. Its an expensive place for housing. The costs of buying a CD or a computer in Spain is alot like the cost of one in the US. A programmer there is not going to get a wage terribly much lower than in the US.
I'm also a software engineer, and I'm not afraid of competition; I welcome it. The free market is not a zero-sum game. The more creative and entrepreneurial people there are everywhere in the world, and the more freedom and trade and production and technological advancements there are everywhere in the world, the better off everyone will be.
Economic illiterates have been singing your song for centuries. Alarmists such as yourself have been predicting gloom and disaster for America decade after decade, raising precisely the same fears as you raise. Yet decade after decade America's wealth and economic advantage over other, more socialistic nations continues to grow, because we have the most open society in the world and we don't try to seal ourselves off from low-wage competitors.
You might just consider the possibility that we are on the right track, and the rest of the world isn't.
Protectionism of any kind has never been a conservative position. Historically conservatism has been free market, free trade, pro-business, and anti-union. The confusion seems to be traced back to the "Regan democrats" and the populist influence of the Buchanan faction of the conservative movement. The term "neo-con" is more applicable to this group than to any other. The common thread that binds is mostly on the "cultural" side of the fiscal/cultural conservative equation. Prior to Reagan, most of those holding PJB's views were staunch Democrats but their strongly held social values forced them into the GOP big tent and they brought their fiscal populism with them. It is an uneasy alliance.
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