My bitching on our current global economic policy

[Skatetopunk]

I am bored and tired and in the mood for a rant..

The way i see it our current economic policies are all fucked up. The constant demand by consumers for cheaper goods has forced everyone form retailers to manufactuers and even tech jobs to outsource the labor to countries where we don’t have to pay the workers as much as we would American workers. This short sighted practice is leading to all sorts of bad things... people don’t realize that when Target and all these other companies use Chinese labor it helps china's economy... because Chinas economy continues to boom more and more Chinese factory workers are buying cars... this is the cause of the soaring gas prices... the stupid American public is fine outsourcing thousands of jobs off seas into countries where the inhumane labor laws allow us to get away paying them les then Americans doing the same job, this translates to say a saving of 3 dollars on a shirt you buy at Wal-Mart... but in saving those 3 dollars you bolster the economy of a nation which means their demand for oil rises and thusly it costs you an extra say 6 dollars to fill up that gas guzzling SUV shit hole... the solution is simple, keep the jobs here where they belong and pay those extra 3 dollars and in doing so provide thousands more jobs for our own economy and decrease the global demand for oil.....that or just invade the middle east and take all the oil for ourselves... damn that was a long rant

let me know what you think...

[aminorthreat55]

I didn't bother reading it all but yeah, I'm fed up with it as well. And fed up with writing multiple papers about it every semester.

[Skatetopunk]

I didn't bother reading it all but yeah, I'm fed up with it as well. And fed up with writing multiple papers about it every semester.
i didnt bother reading all of you :P

[dangets]

the thing about job outsourcing has to do with productivity. in most job areas, American workers are far more productive than their foreign counterparts (like europeans, with a 35 hour work week that's shady at best), and therefore jobs in those areas stay in America to be done by American workers. in other areas though, like making shoes i guess, some foreign workers are more productive than American workers, and therefore the jobs go there.

another thing is, in some places, the cost of living is not as high as it is in the US, so workers in foreign countries can have just as good a "quality of life" type rating as people in the US and still be making less money. although, for little indian girls stitching soccer balls for dirty old men their fathers sold them to for a goat and access to the clean well, "inhumane" still comes into play.

the globalization of our economy is not something that is just going to stop. it's going to happen, and either we can adapt and adjust and work the system, or waste all of our resources appeasing those people who belive Detroit should make all the cars, and Pittsburgh should make all the steel, etc. if we didn't want globalized trade, we shouldn't have invented the internet, the airplane or communication satellites. globalized trade is the end product of decades and decades of events, and merely forcing companies to keep jobs in america is not the answer to dealing with it.

but the job market does suck a cock lately...

[splitsecond]

I am bored and tired and in the mood for a rant..

The way i see it our current economic policies are all fucked up. The constant demand by consumers for cheaper goods has forced everyone form retailers to manufactuers and even tech jobs to outsource the labor to countries where we don’t have to pay the workers as much as we would American workers. This short sighted practice is leading to all sorts of bad things... people don’t realize that when Target and all these other companies use Chinese labor it helps china's economy... because Chinas economy continues to boom more and more Chinese factory workers are buying cars... this is the cause of the soaring gas prices... the stupid American public is fine outsourcing thousands of jobs off seas into countries where the inhumane labor laws allow us to get away paying them les then Americans doing the same job, this translates to say a saving of 3 dollars on a shirt you buy at Wal-Mart... but in saving those 3 dollars you bolster the economy of a nation which means their demand for oil rises and thusly it costs you an extra say 6 dollars to fill up that gas guzzling SUV shit hole... the solution is simple, keep the jobs here where they belong and pay those extra 3 dollars and in doing so provide thousands more jobs for our own economy and decrease the global demand for oil.....that or just invade the middle east and take all the oil for ourselves... damn that was a long rant

let me know what you think...

Pretty accurate. It is actually all pretty rooted in our desire to have "things" and have a high standard of living. Consumerism, in a lot of ways, is rooted in selfishness and greed. What I find funny is that every day laborers demand more money to achieve this standard (which I am not saying is bad, it just is what it is) and then turn around and search for the best deals on everything.

But is there really a way to change this? I am not sure. I mean, I am broke and in school, so in order to just get basic needs met I go to Target and Walmart. I try to buy American when I can, but sometimes its just not possible.

However, lets not forget how China got so free to do business with us. It was Clinton who gave them "most favored nation" status....

the thing about job outsourcing has to do with productivity. in most job areas, American workers are far more productive than their foreign counterparts (like europeans, with a 35 hour work week that's shady at best), and therefore jobs in those areas stay in America to be done by American workers. in other areas though, like making shoes i guess, some foreign workers are more productive than American workers, and therefore the jobs go there.

another thing is, in some places, the cost of living is not as high as it is in the US, therefore workers in foreign countries can have just as good a "quality of life" type rating as people in the US and still be making less money. although, for little indian girls stitching soccer balls for dirty old men their fathers sold them to for a goat and access to the clean well, "inhumane" still comes into play.

the globalization of our economy is not something that is just going to stop. it's going to happen, and either we can adapt and adjust and work the system, or waste all of our resources appeasing those people who belive Detroit should make all the cars, and Pittsburgh should make all the steel, etc. if we didn't want globalized trade, we shouldn't have invented the internet, the airplane or communication satellites. globalized trade is the end product of decades and decades of events, and merely forcing companies to keep jobs in america is not the answer to dealing with it.

but the job market does suck a cock lately...

That is also pretty accurate. As much as some people think it sucks, we are going to turn into a service economy. We have the ability to innovate and educate like no other country, so we need to focus on those to aspects. We arent ever going to compete with some places as far as production of goods, except in very limited areas.

[Ryan Mills]

This is basically an ill-conceived argument which is based more on lack of knowledge about certain economic systems than actual fact. In fact I even wrote a research paper about outsourcing for a class last semester, but either way this argument, while attractive, simply isn't how things work. The problem here is not for American workers in general but for unskilled workers. The demand for unskilled labor in the US is steadily declining while demand for skilled laborers is increasing faster than the rate of decline for unskilled. Our economy has been in a steady transition from manufacturing to service for a while now, and the simply fact is that manufacturing is not what the US specializes in. China and other countries commonly used for outsourcing have the comparitive advantage for this type of manufacturing work, and so the natural tendency is to move the work there, which would result in gains for both the US and the outsourcing country based on different economic models. The trouble with all this comes in with US government policies which tighten the hold on the process by issuing various sorts of trade restrictions, which actually cuts gains for both countries, but is done because of the lobbying power of certain manufacturing sectors.

Either way, the decline in unskilled, manufacturing jobs will--and should--continue while skilled labor demand increases as the composition moves more toward skilled labor (engineering, management, etc.) which should give aggregate gains to the US society while negatively effecting the unskilled workers whose jobs are outsourced. If labor was highly mobile this wouldn't be such an issue, but it's not, so there are issues with the transition. Even so, the move isn't as negative as the media portrays it to be (I would hardly listen to any teleivision media when it comes to economics, they are almost always terribly ill-conceived in their arguments if not complelety wrong, as with the decline of the dollar). It's certainly not easy for those losing jobs, but it's not a bad thing for the economy, and should really be seen as natural and desirable.

[TJ Wells]

Well put, Ryan. I have determined you are a genius :).