White-collar jobs may not be back soon

Dallas Morning News via Boston Globe ^ | August 3, 2003 | Angela Shah

[sarcasm]

But those very same forces are now serving to prolong workers' misery. More college-educated executives and managers have been cut from payrolls this last recession, compared with previous ones. And it's taking them longer to find new work.

More worrisome to them, however, is that the jobs may never come back.

[MatthewViti]

"Totalitarianism is when people believe they can punish their way to perfection."

-- House Speaker Newt Gingrich, at a President's Day Republican fundraiser, May 1998

[RaceBannon]

Mary Kay Ash? Where have you been. She made her mark in the late 1950s. Ray Kroc? Since when were there protective tariffs on hamburgers? Man you are out to lunch (no pun intended).

Boy, are you out to lunch!!

Mary Kay products became a world wide conglomerate because she started here, and the goods made by her company had to be approved because of govt regulations that foreign companies cannot provide enough quality control on to pass the standards...until the last 2 decades, and then unless Mary Kay moved her manufacuring plants overseas, they would be starting from scratch to compete.

Now, what makes you think that Mary Kay DOESN'T buy the chemicals to make cosmetics overseas?? How do you KNOW she hasnt already sold out the chemical manufacturers like this to a company that DID comply with the FDA at a fraction of an American company's cost?

And Ray Croc?? At what point in reality will you recognize that hamburgers dont come from china in a cost effective manner and pass FDA regulations?

Two very bad examples of equivilance.

[RaceBannon]

Flush out your head gear, here is Marx in his own words!

"But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade." ~ Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade, January 9, 1848
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm#marx


"Communists and socialists feel sure that setting up international “free” trade systems which impose regulations chuck full of intrigues, redistribution plans, arbitrary law, and interdependence schemes, will win out against the conservative interests of every free nation. What could be better than to use “free” trade to reverse the advantage of the relatively free, moral, prosperous, and strong nations of the Earth, so that the tyrannical, amoral, poor, and weak nations of the socialist bloc might get the upper hand? What could be a more cunning approach than to market the idea that those who oppose “free” trade are enemies of freedom?"
http://www.newsmax.com/commentarchive.shtml?a=2000/6/27/105655

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/957315/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/957315/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/956435/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/956924/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/956820/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/955929/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/956686/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/956628/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/956517/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/955929/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/954156/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/956435/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/956461/posts

[oceanview]

actually, totalitarianism will be what we have here in the US when hordes of displaced middle class workers whose jobs have been offshored, elect Hillary President of the United States with a Democratic Congress.

none of these "cutes quotes" mean anything with regards to solutions or intelligent comments on this topic. If your opinion is that nothing should be done, that the "free market" and "free trade" ought to be allowed to hollow out the American middle class, then just say that. Don't make excuses, don't give us any predictions about how all the offshoring projects will fail, or how the next new wave of entrenprenuers will employ everyone, or how someone who loses a $70K white collar job can do just as well on a $35K service jobs. Don't waste our time with that junk. Just say "I would do nothing, and let it happen", and leave it at that, and whatever political consequences come of it, be prepared to accept them.

[Lessismore]

Right. But his points are quite valid: competitiveness is not product A competing against product B, but cluster A competing against cluster B. And as he shows, these clusters are not easily formed, and certainly not easily dismantled (the Italian tile "cluster" has basically been around for a hundred years).

Actually, the clusters are quite easy to dismantle. All it takes is a certain number of CEOs with a follow-the-herd mentality to move them from the US to India or China.

[oceanview]

that is why Bush could stop this flow in one week if he wanted to. He wouldn't have to actually do much, knock out the H1B and L1 visa with EOs, and then give one speech where he warns of measures coming to encourage US employment while at the same time discouraging offshoring. Let industry see that the stick is coming, and a carrot might be available, so that start thinking twice about this practice.

Bush still has plenty of time to save himself, I had always thought he was safe for 2004. But if month after month, the numbers show 50,000 fewer jobs again and again, I am not so sure.

[searchandrecovery]

Um, I'd watch that if I were you.

That's what I said - I'd pay to see it. I'd watch that spectacle, and I am me. Why don't you go in the kitchen and make us some cookies?

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

Um...that's a really ridiculous argument. It was the protective tariffs that built our nation's middle-class and strong economy, not slavery. And, as I brought to your attention, the Republican Party platform excerpts were all from after the Civil War, not before.
The North imposed tariffs on the South when there was slavery. It was one of the economic forces that brought that evil tradition to an end. Walter Williams explains it here:
"Shortly after Lincoln's election, Congress passed the highly protectionist Morrill tariffs.
That's when the South seceded, setting up a new government. Their constitution was nearly identical to the U.S. Constitution except that it outlawed protectionist tariffs, business handouts and mandated a two-thirds majority vote for all spending measures."
Slave owners don't like tariffs, just like today's Corporate Execs, who are making greater profits from the near slave wages of Red China.
Thanks for furthering the argument for protective tariffs.

A more modern argument was made by Lou Dobbs recently:
"We can no longer sustain a free-trade policy that does not insist on reciprocal, mutual benefits to both our economy and those of our trading partners. Globalization at any price is proving to be too high a price for this nation to pay."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/104100p-94205c.html

[harpseal]

And call me when you plan to end the threats. I see you still haven't backed off them. Care to reconsider?

Calling for people who are advcocating the destruction of the United Staes of America to be tried convicted and executed is merely adhereing to The Constitution of the USA. You bring on your own future punishments by your actions today. I advoicate the rule of law and for the the USA to protect itself in what Chinese leaders have called an economic war against the USA.

[harpseal]

So the south was wrong to oppose tariffs? I want to make sure I understand you: the support for tariffs and liberty go together, right?

The anti-tariff stancve prior to the Civil War was closely linked to the pro-slavery politicians and if you had bothered to ever learn some American history it was actually the tariffs that were cited by the pro-salvery people as one of the primary reasons for secesion.

Learn some damn history before you try to discuss it. If I am to teach you elementry history then I expect to be paid.

(BTW, the tariff was our only source of income other than land sales. Didn't make it right.)

Once more you fail to show an even basic knowledge of the US Constitution or American History. There were several taxes that were sources of income for the USA until teh Income Tax was enacted (first in the Civil War then after it was declared Unconstitutional after ratification of the sixteenth ammendment to the US Constitution.) If you would take the tyime to learn history we might be able to have a conversation but your Marxist Socialist Internationalism will probably preclude any civility. You are the one who first brought personal abuse into the conversation. i advocted the jailing of WJC for his crimes which were felonies and the possible execution if he were found guilty of treason I can do no less for you.

[samuel_adams_us]

Hello All:
There is a quote in the Sunday Denver Post by the president of an outsourcing company called Technology Crafters:

“There’s a lot of interest,” said Robert Welch, the company’s president. “American software teams are awesome for innovation, but in terms of being able to crank things out in a productive manner, they’re no the best on the planet.”


I find this quotation completely laughable! What a joke! If the Indian software companies were held to the same high standards that the software companies in the United States are held to, their prices for labor and product would be the same. A good example would be that a customer product takes 10,000 lines of “C” code in order to provide the customer with the amount of functionality they need. The Indian programmer writes the code and the documentation in order to install and use this piece of software. The Indian’s American counterpart writes the 10,000 lines of code, the documentation to support the installation and use of the software and he/she will also write the ISO9001 documentation required to go along with the software product which includes the project planning document, the software design document, the software testing documentation, the architecture review board documentation, etc. As you can see it’s obvious who takes more time to produce their product and who does a more careful and a better job. So just how many Indian software companies are ISO9001 certified? I wonder! American IT management would like their customers to think the quality is the same but underneath it all, we all really know the truth.
Let me relay an actual customer event that took place recently, a large Swiss Bank found an operating system defect on their system while trying to write an application to produce custom graphics for their bank statement printing. The function they found the bug in was wcstombs which converts wide character set strings to multibyte character set strings. Anyway this customer was/is paying for 24 X 7 development support and called into the 1-800 number and talked with a support engineer here in the United States. The customer was told that the engineers where looking at it and that they would be updated every morning until the fix was shipped. The software these days is written in India, it was Friday morning here in the United States, the Indian programmers don’t work weekends or overtime and are not required to be called out even if there is a customer emergency. The support representative from the United States called the customer on Saturday morning, Sunday Morning, Monday morning, always telling the customer that the engineers were working on the fix even though they weren’t. The customer finally received their fix the following Thursday afternoon, thus making the delivery of their bank statements late and costing them a lot of extra money for shipping, etc. Previous to this instance that same software had been written here in the United States, the customer would call in on Friday morning and a real software engineers was working on it within the hour, a test fix was usually supplied before the weekend was out and the customer would have shipped their statements on time. Now if you were that customer, would you be happy with your 24 X 7 development support?
I have one last comment, I find it interesting that a Japanese company named Toyota can produce a superior car with American workers and the CEO only earns 1.5 million dollars a year and an American company named GM pays their CEO 30 million dollars a year, uses foreign labor and produces cars with twice the number of defects per thousand cars shipped. I personally believe that the real problem in this country is the inept management running our companies, they cost more, create more headaches and redtape and then pass the blame down to the engineers and those doing the real work.
When will it stop? Enron continues to go on and on and on, this time the management is pushing the blame on the engineers and replacing them with foreign workers when the real responsibility and problem lies with them, they are the ones who agreed to all the extra work for the products, not the engineers and yet they take no responsibility for their own actions.

[LS]

I give you one more chance, then it's off to the admin moderator for you!

[LS]

Clever little boy. You might see something you didn't expect.

[LS]

Not sure you realized what you just published. Marx just said that he liked free trade because it is liberating, namely (in his wrong view) it "hastens the revolution." Except it did just the opposite. In Eng. after free trade, the middle class grew. In America, after most tariffs were gone, the middle class grew.

Marx liked capitalism because, he wrongly thought, it brought the world closer to a communist revolution. he spends 2/3s of Das Kapital praising capitalism. Does that make him a capitalist? No, it makes him WRONG about what he thought would happen.

[LS]

I never said that government did not exact costs, especially regulations. Straw dog. It is nonsense to think that property would be "valued at some third world" marketplace, because to a large degree products have always been valued by other countries' demand.

American demand has NOT set the value for American goods exclusively in the last 200 years, if ever. Indeed, Britian was a major purchaser of our iron before iron tariffs, and U.S. cotton exports were almost always valuled by overseas customers.

The value of all/any products has always been and will always be determined by the market, period. That means whoever and whatever uses it. That should make you happy, because Ameriacn goods, despite the premiums built in by enviro laws, etc., are still the best in the world and will command an appropriate price.

[LS]

Race, instead of reading want ads for others, why don't you start your own damn business! If you are as smart as you think you are, that should be no problem. You've already explained away every single entrepreneurial example I could possibly give you (and if you are really serious, I'll give you a dozen from the 1990s).

I keep telling you, your value lies in YOU and what you can bring to the table. So if you have "retrained" yourself as much as you say---and I believe you---then do what two or three of my older STUDENTS have done, and that is, start your own business. I've got ghetto kids whose parents have started successful busineses, I've got older divorcees who have started businesses. If they can make it, so can you, and without freaking government help. That, sir, is socialism and you can't get away from it.

[EagleMamaMT]

RE: "X-rays being read overseas".

One factor I've never seen addressed is this: These guys are not American board certified in radiology. That means they are probably not up to American standards of proficiency and have had no type of testing to determine their proficiency. I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm sick enough to require a CT, MRI or x-ray, I want the person reading it to be highly qualified and well trained. I don't want him to be a graduate of some third-world, poorly-equipped medical school.

[hedgetrimmer]

Well you seem to be happy that American wages are now valued relative to a third world marketplace, and they are "racing to the bottom" as we speak.

In time, real estate values will do the same, because at third world wages, no Americans will be able to invest in real estate. Or, investors from foreign countries will come in and snap up all the real estate, when America no longer produces Americans who can afford to do so.

Regulations are not "straw dog". They are the cost of doing business here. They make us less competitive with the third world. They are the big government interfereing with the marketplace. Why don't you call to remove all government regulation on business since it is in conflict with your premise that individuals can creat their own value (without the help of government)

[harpseal]

I am accused of threatening for stating that this Marxist LS should be tried convicted and executed for treason. The last I checked it was not threatening violence to state that about someone. further when you review this thread not his personal abuse.