America's Job Losses

No.

Double edge sword. If enough jobs go away, nobody will be able to afford your products.

GA, Bricktop.

2 Cents coming up;

The relatively small number of people who enjoy wealth in Western countries are going to have to share that wealth with the rest of the world. Our own economic systems are driving it that way, and it's going to be a bitter pill to swallow. Average wealth across the world is way lower than what we in the West enjoy. Outsourcing jobs may benefit those at the very top of the pile, but they are ultimately bighting the hand that feeds. This thread could get much too political/serious for a W/E and I don't have any solutions to the general topic. Byeeee.

No unless people in any country Not just America people accept the fact that they cant go on enjoying free lunch for ever

crm

It isn't just about any "free lunches"

Shifting production off shore has a lot of unforseen ramification that do not seem to be taken into consideration by the cost accountants who are driving this trend.

Take warranty service for an example. A domestic manufacturer using relatively skilled assembly people has the option and flexibility to set up a repair facility in house. Domestic shipping costs are still low enough to justify sending a $200 item back factory for repair. This is not an option when the factory is half way around the world from the consumer market. Tracking a $200 item half way round the world is much too expensive, especially when it has to be returned to the customer.

. Chinese production methods and business practice also tend to discourage repair. In the business where I have some knowledge, production is done in batches with a finite quantity. The production line produces so many units per order and ship it. Then they go on to the next batch which may be a slightly different product or totally different, depending on what they produce. this is more relevant for house branded consumer products. Most factories are allowed to source materials locally. In the case of electronic components for instance, the part numbers may not match anything listed in catalogs in North America. So now you have a real headache for any prospective repair facility located in North America. The order for a quantity of finished goods does not include a percentage of "spare parts" for potential repair.

A great many consumers are not happy about a replacement policy of complex products because they reason that any product made to a price may have flaws, so getting a replacement may simply get them a different flaw, but this time only the remaining warranty period applies. I bought a BBQ from Wal-Mart. It had two right hand grilled instead of right and left hand parts. It took a month for Wal-Mart to get me the correct part and I know they had to cannibalize a complete unit to get it. A friend broke a caster wheel on a Wal-Mart product. No replacement part was available for any price. Solution, buy a new $700 appliance. Oh sure!! Industrial suppliers had nothing that was a close match.

Getting into the comparative skill level of American and Chinese factory workers is too lenghty for this post but it also has a direct bearing on overseas manufacturing. Some companies are shifting back to domestic production as a result.

Does not matter really where the jobs go. Eventually the same problems follow.

You can not operate a Linear system on a Finite planet very long.

Linear system meaning to take raw materials add chemicals and other raw material togeather to make a product that only ends up in a Garbage Dump.

You run out of raw materials and you destory your planet not to mention all the lives of people who will die in poverty when you EXTERNALIZE the cost of each process from mining, to manufacturing, packageing, to shipping, and to stocking the item for sale. People pay with the loose of Equity, resources, wages, health, and the enviorment.

It's mostly non-skilled labor jobs that are moving out of the country.

As someone said, it's a double edged sword. Some companies have moved back to the United States because they were getting what they paid for and production decreased drastically enough that it wasn't cost effective in utilizing cheap labor.

Of the non-skilled jobs that move out of the country, more higher skilled jobs are being created in the United States.

Programs are in place to retrain those that have lost their jobs due to their place of employment moving abroad. Those that don't take advantage of these programs are playing the "I'm a victim, pity me" card. Instead of being more proactive with their lives.

Janissaries wrote: Programs are in place to retrain those that have lost their jobs due to their place of employment moving abroad. Those that don't take advantage of these programs are playing the "I'm a victim, pity me" card. Instead of being more proactive with their lives.

BALONEY!! Spoken like a true capitalist. I was at the top of the food chain in manufacturing. I am not playing the poor me card! As far as personal survival goes, I'm all right jack so . . .

But the reality is, my children cannot look forwad to an equivalent life style. If manufacturing goes, what happens to the office staff for administration, the book keeping and the engineering involved with setting up the production lines. They are gone as well. You have just lost a portion of the affluent middle class that make sup much of the buying consumer population. In addition, because we have pretty much destroyed the manufacturing infra structure here, where do you expect to provide a learning place for future machinists, tool makers, and other skilled technical people including software specialists who in the past learned their skills working for a big factory; then set up shop on their own. This spin-off effect will also be killed. My first engineering job was for such a person. He and the chief engineer worked for Philco Radio then later on set up a new company providing contract design services. I and six other people I know of learned our "trade" from them. This was a very common pattern. Today it is becoming increasingly rare.

Who ever marked me as being off topic is acting out of emotion. I"m on topic that mark is inappropriate.

You are in Canada. I don't know how things are run up there in Canada.

In the United States we have EDD, Adult School, Temporary Services temp to hire programs.

I work for a good sized company and we get all kinds here. Of the people that you would consider untrainable, they are sure up do date on all the football statistics, I even know one guy that can tell you all the statistics on the Playboy centerfolds off the top of his head. So the issue there is priorities.

I don't buy your statement. If a person has the desire they can do it.

My statement up above is spot on. You have a personal experience with loosing a job from the company moving and you're being just a bit emotional I think.

They are transitioning people that have been on welfare all their lives into the work force.

Most of the professions you listed above can get work anywhere as bookkeepers and such.

As far as companies not hire older people, that is not what I'm hearing about the trend of hiring older people.

You have people that have been told all their life while growing up that they are stupid by their parents and living a life of disqualifying themselves without even giving it a try. That is what you are supporting in your statement. Is how you want to be? To be validating peoples beliefs that they can't do it.

Those people have to reframe their thinking habits. Don't facilitate the loser mentality.

So people experienced and obstacle in their lives. Practically everyone gets that experience as some point in their lives.

The thing is are you a winner or a loser.

A winner when they fall down get back up brush off their knees and go back at it again.

A loser will give up, go home and have a beer and watch the football game.

I have seen people get laid off and collect unemployment for 10 months just doing the absolute minimum to qualify for the next unemployment check.

Sylvester Stallone knocked on 1000 doors before he got his break into show business. What if he had stopped on 999. He would be sitting around saying that show business is for other people.

Being capitalistic has nothing to do with it. It applies to everything. That includes the Gold Medalists in the Olympics.

Gold Medalists will tell you that there were people training that were better then they were. The only difference is that they stayed with it a bit longer. They practiced their routines a few extra times. They ran a couple extra miles a day.

People are where they are at by the choices they've made with their lives. This is the only issue anyone has with not getting into a better job or improving their lifestyles. Everything else is just an excuse or a cop out to rationalize their existing situation.

You want to graduate high school and do nothing else but drive a hammer and nail during the day and go home and drink a beer and watch football and let your brain go to much, that's your problem. You let it happen.

If you brain has gone to mush already because of that, it is not too late. Pick up a book and start reading instead of watching the football game.

If you don't know how to read, then go to Adult School and learn. It's free so there is no excuse.

I haven't got a clue what you are talking about. I did not rate any answers in this discussion. Nor did I say I felt I had suffered a loss under this system. In fact I said the opposite. I have always created my own job description. In my last corporate job, I was interviewed for maybe 30 minutes then the VP said, what do you see yourself doing for our company and when can you start? When the new owners decided to close down one division that only made $10 million in sales per year I took away a million dollar order from them and have been working for myself doing what I want ever since. I certainly do not feel victimized.

My comments were based on observations of what I se happening to many other people. But I have seen a lot of negative results from the practice of exporting manufacturing jobs oveseas. In the long term this is not going to help America. It only serves to line the purses of a few.

I"m sorry. I came back to that and left it for something else and came back to it again. I should have proof read it because after reading it, I get the impression that I'm having conversation with a woman and her random thoughts.

My main point is that people are where they are because of the choices they make. It's not the issue that put them there but what they did about it when they got there.

Janissaries,

Do the vast majority of people in this country have any choice but to work for anybody but one or another employer, i.e., somebody who owns a means of production?

j.

That's where the a lot of jobs are at but the United States is primarily a "Service Oriented" country. Manufacturing isn't the primary anymore.

And what about when no one wants that service, or cannot afford it? then what?

Elnav,

My point was, given an economic system where in the main the only choice the vast majority of people have is to work for those few who own all the means of production, is that any choice at all.

j.

Sometimes people do not have much if any choice . Forces beyond their control take over. In the area where I currently reside, people did not chose to decimate the forests with a plague of beetles. It happened in spite of them. Nor did my parents have much of a choice when confronted by the Wehrnmagt panzer divisions pointing cannons at them. Do you really think millions of people have much choice when a drought strikes or flooding occurs due to earth quakes and typhoons?

Many people of my parents generation are functional illiterates because in those days children were sent out to work as soon as they were able to do any kind of work on farms etc. A friend who is a school principal tells me the general population has 12% illiteracy rate. For a variety of good reasons these people are not reachable, even if you paid to support their families while they attended adult remedial education to become literate. But in a capitalistic society paying to support their families is considered some kind of welfare and is totally unthinkable. A proportion of these people are dysletic and will not be able to learn to read. What choice do they have?

How do you retrain these people to suddenly do a job that not only requires being able to spell, read and write but requires computer literacy?

When you first remove half the jobs and then try to retrain the displaced workers you still end up with twice as many workers competing for the remaining half of the jobs. Somebody is left without choices.

You can not retrain someone who does not choose to be retrained.

Even if there is not much choice, there are always choices. If you desire to go beyond the bonds of your own creation, you must dare to go where you fear to tread.

In spite of all the negativity written here about job losses, it is important to realize that people have been coming to America for hundreds of years so they can realize their dreams. America provided opportunities far beyond what they had in their own country.

That was as true then as it still is today. People are clamoring to get here where the opportunities to build a better life for themselves and their families are only bounded by their imagination and the burning desire to succeed.

It is also noteworthy that immigrants coming to America tend to do a better job at realizing the American Dream than those that are born here. Often we take for granted that which we have laying at our own feet. Sadly, I think this whole topic and the majority of responses reflect that attitude.

Where most people on the inside of America see despair and decay, those coming to our shores see a vast vista of hope.

you wrote: people have been coming to America for hundreds of years so they can realize their dreams.< snip> That was as true then as it still is today.

REPLY

I am an immigrant! However the fact is things have changed drastically in the past decade or two. No I don't want to go back, but certain elements in corporate America has changed the game so much so that your comments about how America was a hundred or two hundred years ago is no longer true. That is the point of Bricktops original question. There are job losses which may never come back. But in order for positive changes to happen, specific trends must be reversed. Playing ostrich or looking backwards to how things were half a century ago is not going to cut it. I said it before. Personally I'm doing okay, but I see a lot of other people suffering and its not their fault.

Anonymous Hero,

So at least you reveal yourself as an employers man if not necessarily an employer yourself, i.e., you profit at the expense of those you denigrate.

It is easy to talk about 90% of GDP. Unfortunately such bare references don't tell that GDP is not matching up to expenses and that the corollary to that is inflation and the fact that currency becomes worthless, i.e., that real wages of even those "people's [Whose] attitude[s] about work, love, play, and life" you approve are now unable to pay for health care and are losing their homes because they cannot any longer pay their mortgages, and I am not here talking about the sub-prime mortgages.

So it would appear that even you are guilty of citing '"The Good Old Days". That quote [Which you assert] is used by every generation and punctuates how our perceptions rule over the realities.'

j.

I am both. I work one job for a company and I have my own company that is now getting started.

I don't profit at other people's expense. That's B.S. It is a win-win situation where I get paid for a service that benefits either my employer or customers of my own business. If my service is not value added then I do not get paid.

Inflation is because the currency is no longer tied to a tangible item, like gold. The government simply prints money and borrows from foreign banks freely and at will.

Generally, wages track at inflation, but some commodities such as oil can unbalance that relationship. However, that is usually a transient change and does not reflect long term trends.

Health care is spiraling out of control because of unchecked law suits and a bloated administrative system in the health care business.

Most of the mortgage failures are due to people buying too much house or taking out equity loans that exceed the property values. There was a rush of bad loans where people were borrowing more than their house was worth. The banks were betting that the property values would go up over time and the 110% loans would become 90% loans. When the housing bubble burst the home values declined instead of increased, which left banks holding less property value than the amount loaned. As investers started pulling their money out the banks collapsed and they were unable to recall their loans.

The point was that people over extended themselves and did not have a financial cushion to weather the storm. Naturally, people blamed the system for their own poor management of their finances. Yes, there are sad stories, but I don't believe that the Government should be responsible to bail out people who live at the edge of their means and then collapse when an economic downturn happens. Just look at the percentage of debt that Americans carry. There used to be a saying that neither a borrower nor lender be. Just like buying SUVs, buying more than you can pay for by the means of "credit" has become fashionable to the point where most people are living paycheck to paycheck.

Many people, when asked what their financial retirement plan is have answered that they plan to win the lottery. That's just stupid and I don't feel too much pity for such loose thinking.

To make that point, look at parents that survived the great depression. Those families saved everything that they could after that event and were hell bent on salting as much as possible away to ward off another depression. Their children and children's children have long forgotten that lesson and now some of them are getting burned for foolish behavior.

Anonymous Hero,

You seem to have many notions but no contiguous system, no science, tying them together outside of the fact that they are all related to economics.

You say the problem is that "the currency is no longer tied to a tangible item, like gold."

But how is it that gold alone has value.

Or, to put it more generally, what is value. Why does gold have value and not steel or carbon, or??? In my book steel certainly is more valuable than gold. Gold is too soft usable mostly for ornamentation. Although there is less of gold, and it takes much more labor to extract, in practical terms it seems that iron and steel are much more valuable. Why can't (If they can't) economies be tied to steel or silk ????

I believe I actually gave you the answer to that question previously but you appear not to have recognized it. Let me repeat "What is value? What constitutes value?" Then perhaps you will see the fault in your many assertions.

j.

Value: dunk your head underwater and hold it there until you are about to pass out. You will soon see the value of air in only a few minutes.

What makes air valuable? A good clue would be the lack of it under water.

While it is true that different things can have different values to different people. In my previous example, air is of the up most value to you and water you have too much of. However, for someone lost in the Sahara, air is of little value with so much of it around, but no water in sight.

There have been some items that share a common value. Gold is one primarily due to its limited supply. If we adopt the leaf as currency we would have the result of inflation because there are so many of them they are essentially worthless.

Since our finances in the US are not tied to anything tangible, the government can and does pretty much print money at whim. The result is a fragile economy.

"You say the problem is that "the currency is no longer tied to a tangible item, like gold."" That's just one problem. There are other factors at play, too.

Anonymous Hero,

This countries economic system, along with that of the rest of the world, is descending into a major depression far worse than that of the 20's and 30's of the last century.

Does that leave a choice for even recent immigrants?

When , by the way, was the last time you checked out living conditions for the many in the last waves of immigration?

j.

janissaries

I fully agree with your argument if one has a dirty habit of surviving then there are 100s of ways to survive its the mind set thats driving people to unemployment,Its my own personal experience i had to start from the scratch thrice in my 40 years of working and it helped.

crm

Retraining! Oh sure! Who is going to do the retraining? A large percentage of people do not have the natural talent or inclination to be teachers. Of those able to teach and possessing the knowledge a sizable percentage is aging and will soon retire or may die of age related disease. The available resource pool rapidly dwindles.

And these so called "re-training" programs are not equally distributed so as to be accessible to all who need it. Nor is the employment located in the same geographic area. Who pays the cost for the wholesale relocation of al these people? not to mention which, how do you intend to provide the necessary housing and infra structuer of this additional population? with a declining working population the tax base is also dwindling.

And that also ignores the fact many adults are not retrainable in skills that are in demand. The pre-requisites for them learning something entirely new and totally outside their past experience may effectively prevent them from benefiting from such "retraining" programs. A factory assembly worker may not necessarily be suited to become an accountant or a data entry clerk. How about a laborer doing grunt work in the field. Think he will fit in nicely in cubby hole town pushing paper at a desk?

Its a nice sop the still employed bureaucrats and upper level management people comfort themselves with, but the reality is much harsher and not at all human friendly.

Nice response elnav,

To add a bit more don't forget that companies are reluctant to hire older employees without hands on experience even after retraining/schooling.

Chazl

Yes, which is why so many older people who do have transferrable skills or the ability retrain now work for themselves in some capacity or other. Unfortunately, such self employment rarely develop large scale employment for other people. I do okay for myself, but find that my consumer spending is now way down from when I was an employee with a large manufacturer. As an employee with a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks, my spending was less critical and more impulsive. Now that I am self employed, my spending is more guarded and conservative. I find that I can do without many of the things I considered essential as a young person. I am less gullible and suceptible to advetising. So are many of my baby boomer contemporaries. What does that do to overall consumer spending? Employees who still work for companies, are also more uncertain as to continued employment and tend to defer discretionary spending on non-essentials. The overall effect is likely to be less consumer spending in total. I doubt this is something the market analysts for the big manufacturers take into serious consideration. I used to work for one company that shifted all their manufacturing to China and now they are seeing a loss of business due to market opposition to this trend. The market is showing a preference for domestic produced products of the same kind.

At risk of being accused of being a communist...

The problem is not one, as the movie proposes, of linearity. The problem really is one of constant expansion in a finite system.

The owner of the means of production creates profit for himself in a number of ways. He takes the profit and seeks to, and does, reinvest it to again make profit and each time, since the reinvestment expands his original production facilities, the profit is greater and the reinvestment is greater. Hence an exponential system of expansion.

At the same time the market for the product grows only at a linear rate. Hence the seven year business cycle and the sixty to seventy year great depression cycle.

It should be, at this late date, obvious that such an expansive system cannot go on forever.

There are other notable features.

Since the producer of goods is involved in competition with other like him there is pressure producing a rush to the bottom.

When you consider money as a commodity, aside from its role as a means of exchange, you can see the cause of the mortgage securities failures. The securitization of mortgages hid the fact that having produced too much product (Money) for the prime mortgage market, they began selling mortgages to sub-prime borrowers and reduced the qualifications for such mortgages.

You all know the results.

j.

He takes the profit and seeks to, and does, reinvest it to again make profit and each time, since the reinvestment expands his original production facilities . . . .

REPLY

If only that was always true. In too many cases, the profit is drained away by share holders and the productive plant is bled dry and then discarded for the next profitable venture. I was once Production Manager for a company that had been bought for $1 and assumption of all outstanding debts amounting to one million dollars. The three senior employees who bought the plant managed to turn it around in about five years . The the crunch of 1983 came and it was back to looking for operating capital. Never mind that I doubled monthly production and the company had a full order book. The bank insisted we had too muhc inventory and it didn't fit their business model. I should point out that much of that so called excess inventory was in the form of a custom chip which had to be ordered in quantity 5000 from a California chip manufacturer. That chip gave us a very competitive edge. The bank didn't see it that way. Eventually the company had to be sold to yet another public traded company that wanted to eliminate their competiton. They killed the company and the product line to maximize their own profit. They eliminated 50 jobs and did not increase their own company employee count. Didn't see much sign of reinvesting profits in those situations. Nor is this the only story I can relate. Suffice it to say that greed is more often a destructive force than a creative and positive force. Shifting production overseas is not about job creation. Its about maximizing profits at the expense of everybody else than the owner or the collective stock holders. My vote goes with Bricktop on this subject.

Elnav,

Brickltop's error, and yours too, is seeing things from the individual, narrow perspective instead of from the historical general perspective.

It's like, say, Ohm's law, or Bernoulli's law. You don't see the phenomena of electricity or fluid mechanics from a momentary single experience but rather from the repetitive, over and over again, phenomena of the general.

So it is with any aspect of the concrete universe, economics and social existence included.

I said, as a rule, profit seeking was the drive, because of competition, causing a rush to the bottom.

Elnave, your example demonstrates that but emotionally you still say you agree with Bricktop.

All I am saying is that the general rules of this economy, no matter our subjective view, are driven by the laws of the profit system.

Is that system necessary when the fact is that every human being, the only creatures on the earth that can do so, is capable of producing in a day's labor far more than is required to come back and do it again tomorrow as well as to reproduce ourselves to the same effect.

If that is true, and if you think carefully about it you will see it is, how is it that a large part of the population of this planet lives in dire poverty and even, periodically, large numbers of us in the developed world, face the same situation?

j.

Jack asked:

Is that system necessary every human being, is capable of producing in a day's labor far more than is required to come back and do it again tomorrow <snip>

If that is true, how is it that a large part of the population of this planet lives in dire poverty

REPLY

If I understand your question correctly as indicated by the edited version above, the answer is that it doesn't make much sense to deprive so many people of ordinary material things like food clothing and shelter. Our present economy seems to focus on producing a million widgets but to restrict sale to about 10% of the total population because that 10% can pay more per piece than the rest combined. The remaining 90% of the people deprived of access to these widgets now view with envy the situation enjoyed by the few. Of such things revolutions and wars are created. A wise teacher once remarked that there is a certain code of ethics which would prevent such terrible results and which would temper our social behaviour. Unfortunately there will always be a small faction within our society that prefers personal aggrandishment and the feeling of power over other people. These people are willing to let many others suffer, simply so that they personally can get their jollies. This wise teacher once taught a lesson about business and profits. There is nothing wrong with making a modest profit, especially if such profit is indeed invested back into the business to grow the business. Growing business is one way to ensure gainful and fruitful employment for all. But a business founded on using slaves or virtual slavery is not a good one. Nor is a business founded on extorting exorbitant profits well beyond what is actually required. I will stop at this point lest this becomes a philosophical essay. I suspec that you and I do not see eye to eye on some things. I was born in Europe in a country famed for is humane and sometimes socialistic treatment of its citizens. I have never been able to convince myself to subscribe to a philodsophy that exploits and puts down fellow human beings and pushes them into poverty and a condition of dire need.

Jack wrote: The owner of the means of production creates profit for himself in a number of ways. He takes the profit and seeks to, and does, reinvest it to again make profit and each time, since the reinvestment expands his original production facilities, the profit is greater and the reinvestment is greater. Hence an exponential system of expansion.

Unfortunately, that model is not the only business model used in America. Remember ENRON? how about ATT back when it was broken up as part of the anti trust proceedings? Ans what about Microsoft who was acused of doing similar things and as a result changed their method of doing business.

There are countless examples where the "owner"; usually a corporate entity rather than an actual person puts profit above all else and does not reinvest the excess profits to better the business for everyone's benefit. To some people exponential growth is not enough. They demand astronomical growth and expect all the profits to line their own pockets. To them, the loss of lives is merely the cost of doing business.

America revolted back in 1776 because of exploitative taxation by a greedy organization that took but did not reciprocate with any sort of benefits. Now look who is being exploited! American workers have asked for a wage consistent with the cost of living and being able to support the hopes, ambitions and the lifestyle promoted by the advertising of American business. But American business now say the cost of paying american workes the money needed to support that lifestyle promoted by american business is too much. so they destroy american jobs and go to places where they can find very cheap labor. The workers in those places do not earn enough to buy such expensive products. Who then will buy the goods at such expensive rates?

Elnav,

I wonder if you and Jannisaries, or all for that matter, understand I was not addressing single, subjective individuals, but rather that I was laying out the apparent laws of how the economic system works.

When I wrote about how the owner of a factory took his profit and reinvested it, etc., I was not talking about any one owner, rather about the general rule for owners in mass, albeit one or another might not follow the general rule.

This business of approaching economic system problems by talking about one or another working person and what such individual might do does not suffice to understand the system or the problems as a whole.

You would not approach the material reality of electrics or fluids, or any other similar that way, and you should not approach economics and the social manifestations of it accept as material phenomena because that is what they are. That means like any good physicist, or chemist, or electrical engineer, approaching these issues from the data, not the subjective outlook of individuals.

The historical data of the system, just like the historical data of falling objects or compressed gases, says that certain phenomena are the result of certain characteristics of the system as a whole and that like the above examples are repetitive over and over and over the entire historical course of the system and therefore appear to be the natural laws of the economic system.

We could go back to earlier systems, i.e., the economics of feudalism, or the economics of communal societies, the form of humankind's first social and economic form of existence, and find that certain phenomena of those systems occur over and over thus demonstrating the existence of natural laws pertaining to those systems.

Without that kind of scientific approach based on historical data we are reduced to arguing over individual subjective opinions and thus unable to understand how to solve the problems.

j.

Chazi

I suppose i have the permission of this forum to share one of the reasons for Americans job loss thats achieve bottom lines by achieving savings using techniques like Six sigma,SAP etc this is my own experience with an American company i dontknow how many jobs was lost like me (In fact i gained by loosing my placement with this American Company because i found much better job with an Indian Company with all the knowledge i gained while working with this American company) i found during the six sigma and SAP implementation time lots of Americans and other nationalities were laid of from all departments because they could not get qualified as six sigma black belts and has found jobs else ware in another words It was forced brain drain from America to all other parts of world may be this is one of the reasons for American companies to out source

CRM

CRM,

I understand what you are saying, even though your lack of punctuation made it difficult to read your post, and that is how most people advance and increase salaries by leveraging knowledge gained from previous employment. I believe you missed the point by myself and elnav. The point was retraining into a whole different field, with no previous experience. If the employee was going into the same field there would be no need to retrain.

Chazl

Chazi

Thanks for correcting me,retraining should be on going process for example when i was serving on board ships and submarines we were undergoing training in other fields other than our own field of specialisation thats how being a mechanical engineer i had sufficient exposure to electrical engineering,metallurgy etc.But it costs retraining which the companies should be ready to accept.

crm

for some reason i can't access that website and view the video.

For the video go to pinkyshow.org. It will play from there.

j.

Look , I can see all the logic of the above. But let's take a look from the personal level, and the snowball effect.

I have an educated neighbor that just got laid off from a good paying job in the manufacturing sector. His work has gone overseas. He was planning a trip this winter to visit his daughter in Arizona. Those plans were the first to go. So now there's 2 airplane seats empty, and a hotel room empty, and a rental car sitting on the lot, etc, etc, etc.

That's the way it goes in a global economy. But my gripe is that foreign manufacturers don't have to play by the same rules that we have here. No EPA, (guess what, the wind blows and the water flows), No OSHA, not a single care for the worker, child labor, etc, etc.

One look at any outside event at the Olympics show how polluted China is. In a couple days, the prevailing winds will have spread that pollution over the rest of the world.

How other countries treat their workers, is probably none of our business, however, their damage to the global environment is.

I dont know whats wrong i cant play this vedio

crm

We can all agree that the solution, on the individual level, is education. Everyone's goal should be to remain viable in the job market.

However, no one has addressed my second point, I shall repeat it here:

That's the way it goes in a global economy. But my gripe is that foreign manufacturers don't have to play by the same rules that we have here. No EPA, (guess what, the wind blows and the water flows), No OSHA, not a single care for the worker, child labor, etc, etc.

One look at any outside event at the Olympics show how polluted China is. In a couple days, the prevailing winds will have spread that pollution over the rest of the world.

How other countries treat their workers, is probably none of our business, however, their damage to the global environment is.

Competing in a world market like this is quite difficult. Countries that we do business with should be required to follow the same environmental regulations that we do, (never gonna happen).

Do we not have a moral responsibility to limit pollution created by the products we buy?

__________________

Well, stop buying their products.

Nobody will make what they can't sell.

Well, I don't buy their products. But their irresponsible and immoral business practices, forcing domestic manufacturers out of business, often times leave few choices.

I had read an article about the pollution in China a few years ago. It was about the price of oil going up because of the demand China made on the oil in the middle-east. China ranks second in oil consumption behind the Untied States. The article mentioned how China's pollution was far worse then the pollution in the United States.

I made mention of this in one of the threads here in the CR4 and someone rebuttled me stating that China is working on putting controls on the pollution in their country.

The reason why companies move abroad is not just because of the cheaper labor. It is because it is the only way to manufacture the products we use and keep the prices down enough so that the average consumer can still afford it.

Much of it has to do with the increasing prices causing workers to demand higher wages, which causes everything else to go up in price even more.

It's expensive to move a whole company abroad and companies wouldn't do it if they didn't have too.

It's expensive to move a whole company abroad and companies wouldn't do it if they didn't have too.

REPLY

Which probably explains why all the companies I have personal experience with have simply dismissed all their North Americn aemployees and contracted out the work to Chinese staffed production facilites. By comparison it looked real cheap. I have been told that this is in fact the way most of the manufacturing jobs have been lost. The work goes off-shore but the domestic workers don't. They are simply left unemployed. And that even includes most of the management. We have also seen enough examples of toxic substances included with so called safe products and food stuffs to bring into question if these offshore companies are even willing to practice any level of work place safety.

Do we not have a moral responsibility to limit pollution created by the products we buy?

YES!! And speaking of work place safety. Many of the of shore workes have no idea of the toxicity of the substances they are required to handle in doing the work they do for. A company I did some work for shifted their boat building to china. The cost of providing worker protection in the form of protective cloathing breathing masks, welding hoods and special handling gear for styrene, xyelene, and toxic resins was close to $1000 per employee. In china they get $50 per month pay and nothing in the way of protective clothing or gear. No wonder they die young.

That's a good question.

How can we as the United States be in the position to tell another country they need to place pollution controls on their factories, when our own President when he was Governor of Texas relaxed the pollution controls on factories in Texas making them some of the worse polluters in the United States? Our President.

We spend too much time looking at what everyone else is doing and not enough time is spent looking at what needs to be fixed at home.

That is just one of the reasons why other countries dislike the United States. It's because of our own hypocracy.

It's so simple. Why does everybody look to Big Government to "Save me!"?

If you don't like it, don't buy it. It is amazing what power the consumer possesses on the free market.

If you feel strongly about it, then take a stand and educate people on your belief. You don't need government backing to crusade for what you believe in. If the cause is just, then nothing is more noble than fighting to change it.

If enough people see it the same way, the tide will turn. However, I hate to hear people opining to the government to protect them from themselves. That's just stupid.

The only thing worse is opining to the government to fix the problem and still buying (enabling) the product you are complaining about. That's ridiculous!

I just read an article on some of the biggest scams on America.

It was about some guy going around with a petition about manufacturing companies putting Dihydrogen peroxide into our environment.

He got a huge response which also included some polititions supporting his cause.

The substance he was pushing was regular water.

He did it just to show the American public just how gulible they are.

Some of us don't Anonymous employer.

We recognize that the problem is the rush to the bottom of competition and have an answer to it which I have no doubt you and others like you hate.

j.

Elnav,

Nothing we didn't do in the past and still don't do here.

In the 50's I worked for Triad Transformer in the L.A. area. I was dumb, stupid, and young and in desperate need of the money.

Those folks had me washing transformers in perchlorethylene without any protective gear.

Here in Atlanta where we have many Mexican immigrants there are occasionally ditch cave-in where some poor bastard who desperately needs the money was therefore forced to work.

All too often those workers were digging ditches, or setting pipe in them, without protective trenching hardware.

As far as such conditions overseas is not the U.S. buyer of products he used to manufacture here the cause, because of competitions rush to the bottom, of those conditions?

j.

Bricktop,

Perhaps the question underlying is that of competition where I would assert the race is always, of necessity to those competing, to the bottom even if for a time it appears to be otherwise.

j.

....back in the mid seventies, there was a company located in Mexico that bought up a lot of the old die sets for stamping chevrolet and gmc truck body parts; i.e. door skins, fenders, hoods, etc. The quality was very good and because the stamping dies were OEM, the parts fit perfect. At a fraction of the cost. General Motors went on this huge advertising campaign...."Buy genuine GM parts".....and continued this campaign until the Mexico market was defeated; but then, GM bought out the defeated "foe" and now produces those same parts and now all of a sudden, they are quality parts.

I am in the electrical market as a buyer / purchasing agent and I have seen all of the motor manufacturers going out of the country; not because they do not have good resources in the USA, but because they will put more bottom line in their pockets. Americans are disgusted with manufacturers who claim that a product is only good if it is in their packaging. Many times, and I mean many times, I have opened boxes from large well known bearing companies to find the bearing inside tagged "made in china".

Do not get me wrong, I am not opposed to global economy or marketplace; however, we must insist that the American consumer and American employee not be treated as just another commodity. American manufacturing philosophy as ALWAYS been that in a production run, we will accept "x" amount of inferior product as part of the manufacturing process. And it is attitudes like this that lend themselves to easily going to cheap labor out of this country. It is not to say that non-US labor markets are always inferior, many are good and becoming better; however it is a travisty that the top teir of American manufacturing has forgotton or does not care how they got where they are at.

I remember years ago, in a management meeting I was asked how I felt about union labor; since I had worked both sides of the coin in my career, here is what I told my plant manager...........if you are going to treat your employees decent and with respect (not baby them), then you do not need a union; however, if you are not, then they need a union to protect them from you.

I could go on and on, but I guess, I had better not.....

Millec1,

And you didn't get fired? Amazing.

But let's look at what you say.

"Do not get me wrong, I am not opposed to global economy or marketplace; however, we must insist that the American consumer and American employee not be treated as just another commodity."

The problem is that you are in fact wrong. Labor is exactly that, a commodity. Consider!

The owner of a means of production, i.e., a factory, needs one essential additional attribute for his machines to run and produce commodities. That commodity, in addition to its mechanical aspects, has one other central and necessary aspect, the ability to think and make the essential decisions to guide those machines without which the machines are just so much junk.

Workers, who have those essentials, long ago deprived, as serfs or free peasants, of their own means of producing for their needs, with the enclosure laws and the ending of serfdom deprived of access to the land, are forced to sell themselves on the labor market as commodities.

Labor is a commodity although a very special one. The employer, as always looking to make a profit on all the commodities he buys and converts through the production, manufacturing, process, and in competition with all others like himself, is always looking to obtain the necessary ingredients for production at the lowest cost.

That is the nature of the beast and so the worker is a commodity.

I wonder if you can figure out what else is peculiar to the worker/commodity?

j.

Jack,

I understand what you are saying; however, even though when we calculate the "total cost" of manufacturing, these things have to be considered and classified like inanimate objects, in order to come up with the required numbers. Machines, processes, raw materials do not purchase our goods and products, people do; and yes, by the way, I have always been a kind of vocal person.

Labor in and of itself is a commodity, but the person performing this action is not. I totally agree that this "overhead" has to be calculated and controlled; but you must consider that we are human beings, and our culture or country is irrelevant. You are correct that it is the nature of the beast................

While sweatshops are a thing of the past, the attitude is still very much with us; I have spent almost thirty years in and around industry and manufacturing; both as employee and management, on the shop floor and in the board room. This is still very much with us, especially in Georgia and South Carolina (both of these are "right to work" states) Many people are taught to belive that this simply means that if a company labor force is union and you are offered a job, you have the right to join or not join and still be employeed by the company. In other words, you cannot be refused your job simply because you wish not to join the union. But, the law has so much more tagged onto it, in these right to work states, an employer can fire you for any reason he or she deems fit, as long as they do not violate any federal civil rights laws. It is not a matter of money, it is a matter of control.

I have been in situations where I or another manager were instructed to "create the situation" that would cause the employee to do something wrong or become frustrated and quit. This is more of the norm, than the exception; at least in the Southeastern US. That is one of the reasons that I am glad that a lot of these people are retiring and getting out of the picture.

I guess maybe, this conversation has veered somewhat, but I am very much a "people and workforce" person. It does not matter to me who or what culture, it is attitude and work ethic; skills can be learned.

Just for the record, I spent 17 years in manufacturing in Georgia and the last 12 in South Carolina, where I now live. Sure we must move towards the global market and economy to survive and prosper, but we as managers and business owners cannot forget who and what got us to where we are.

I remember once, when I was maintenance manager for a major player in the plastics industry; during a staff meeting I was told by the HR manager that I had two employees that were "not good employees" and that I needed to figure out a way to eliminate them from our infrastructure. HR's reasoning was that these two employee's had told her that they did not have a desire to take some upcoming robotics training later that year. So, since they were not willing to do this, then they had not value added to the company.

I responded that even though they did not want to participate in the training, that alone did not make them bad employees; both were my most senior maintenance employees, and I was using them to train those employees that would be here when they retired (about 18 months later). I had people who were well versed on the robots......but these people did not possess the wealth of knowledge that you only gain for working the floor; and thus I refused to terminate them, for you do not become a qualified tech in anything in only 18 months; any way to make a long story short, I stayed with the company about two more years and resigned.

Bottom line is that upper level management will always do the things necessary to increase their in house perks and bonuses not for the good of the company, but for their personal gain. I have been high enough in management to witness this on a regular basis; I have been in production meetings when the VP or Plant Manager would tell all the managers..........do what you have to do to get record production and everyone in the rooms gets a 20% bonus. Now where is the "concern" for the good of the company in that. It doesn't matter the nationality of the workforce, only how controllable they are and how much we can get out of them.

A company is is business to make money. Profit is not a dirty word. Every company will do whatever they legally can to increase profit. Some of the things they do are not nice and employees should be protected by law from those things.

When the manufacturing goes offshore the profit margin can go up because of cheaper labor costs. Cheaper labor often reduces the quality of the product and its repairability to a point that is ridiculous. Consumers are then unhappy with the product and look for one which may cost more, but is made better. China makes cheap crap, but the prices are good. People buy low prices.

Angry because a simple part in your computer's printer cannot be replaced with a new part, you search for one not made in China or offshore. They do not exist! Free Trade has eliminated the tariffs which could level the playing field. The problem was that tariffs were used to prevent international competition and protected our industry into backwardness and complacency, when they should have kept foreign goods prices within a small percentage of domestic goods. They could do that by reinstating tariffs.

Elnav and Jack Jersawitz seem to see this as something that is a failure of capitalism when it is actually a personal and political failure by some business owners, employees and politicians.

The value of money is not tied to gold and doing that would not help. It is the ongoing bargaining between labor and employer and the suppliers of goods and services which should determine the value of money. Money is just a handy way to balance the accounts.

Wash dishes for 8 hours and the restaurant gives the dishwasher coupons for 4 meals. The dishwasher wants to pay for his room with 1 meal coupon, but the landlord wants more and the dishwasher says 2 coupons are too much. Substitute money for coupons and it makes everything easier. A meal sells for $12 so the dishwasher is working for $6 an hour. The government prints money backed by nothing so that each dollar loses 3-4 cents in value per year or simply increases everyone's wages by 35%. Then everyone has more dollars, but the dishwasher still works all day to earn 4 meals. The value of the labor has not changed.

Do we expect too much return for our labor? We expect a baked potato with Salisbury steak and gravy with a couple of cups of coffee. The Chinese expect a cup of rice, a small piece of fish and a dab of Bok Choy with green tea. How can we compete with rice eaters?

Taganan,

"How can we compete with rice eaters?"

We would all be better off medically if we became rice eaters. That is an expression of Western chauvinism.

But, to get to the meat of the thing, you say profit is not a dirty word. That would depend on where the profit comes from.

What if the profit were the product of theft and slavery as summed up in the equation "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work." Or go back and see why French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his 1840 book What is Property said that.

Think about that equation and the history of the economic system that spawns it. Can you not see how it is theft and slavery?

As to all the other stuff you write; are not those problems the product of competition and seeking in competition to extract a profit. It has been said, and if you look at the system historically it is true, that competition leads to "a rush to the bottom."

Stop competing with the Chinese so they can charge more for their products, and perhaps they will produce better products, although as it was fifty or sixty years ago with the Japanese, some of their products, computers for instance, are excellent. I doubt there is anything on this machine that was not produced in China or perhaps Korea.

As a matter of fact, even as I write this, I picked up an ISA video card from the table. On the back it says, what, ISA is at least ten years back, "Made in China."

Shortly, I suspect, we will be seeing here automobiles, as fine or finer than anything the Japanese have ever made, made in China. Those Japanese, while here in the States we worked to thousandths of an inch, were working in engine building to ten thousandths.

You complain about the Chinese, but not the Koreans, because you have been recruited by the scoundrels that rely on patriotism and nationalism who see the Chinese as the Communist enemy and not the South Koreans whose government exists because the scoundrels in the U.S. government reneged on their agreements at the Teheran-Yalta talks to allow the Koreans to hold an election for a government representing all of Korea and in fact instigated the South Korean attack on the North that started the Korean War.

Invariably, of course, these issues as to economics involve politics.

If you carefully examine that phrase about "day's work" and "day's pay," against its historical background, you will discover that the profit you speak of is the product of slavery and theft (Or theft and slavery depending which way you turn the history) and poor commodities the result of destroying the only basis for the producers of commodities to have pride in them and therefore an interest in excellence, i.e., ownership of what they produce.

How about the fact that in the case of Japan, China, and Korea, it was and is, huge investments of U.S. based capital that gave rise to those industries so that the people you rail about are your own.

Indeed, the markings on this ISA video card clearly show it was produced in China under U.S. (FCC) license and control.

"A company is is business to make money. Profit is not a dirty word. Every company will do whatever they legally can to increase profit. Some of the things they do are not nice and employees should be protected by law from those things."

As recent events show some of the things they do, aided by folks like the Bushs and the Cheneys (Think big oil) are highly illegal and covered up by the same folks you would like to see protect employees.

What you write in general is so dense in error and contradiction that there is no way to take it all up in this format.

Nonetheless, if you take up and think about some of the questions I posed, you might begin to unravel the truth about these matters. Because you have been told something all of your life does not necessarily make it so, any more than eating all that meat, instead of rice and other grains, makes us healthy.

Give it a try.

j.

"Stop competing with the Chinese so they can charge more for their products, and perhaps they will produce better products..."

What? That's just insane.

1. Competition is good for the consumer and improving the product/service and its cost.

2. Competition and free trade keep us from exterminating each other. Just look at France and England. They may despise each other, but working, trading, and competing with each other makes each a much better nation than they would if they went back to the 100 Year War.

Anonymous Hero,

Why!!!

'"Stop competing with the Chinese so they can charge more for their products, and perhaps they will produce better products..."

'What? That's just insane.'

Again...WHY!!!

Are you not aware that for most of humankind's existence the necessity for survival was cooperation?

If we were not, until at least the last few thousand years, cooperative herd animals, would we be here today where the latest round of competition (Georgia and the newly returned to capitalist competition Russia) came close to nuclear weapons flying and exterminating every living beast, including thee and me, on the planet.

After all those beasts in the White House who in the interest of competition for oil have virtually their entire military tied down getting their asses kicked in Iraq and Afghanistan and whose only tools left are pre-targeted ICBMs with nuclear war-heads requiring only the button push of a madman, must at least have thought of that, may still be thinking of that even as their Russian competitors, Medvedev and Putin laugh in their faces.

Just who or what is insane?

j.

Sorry, I don't know what your first "Why!!!" refers to. Simply asking "why" is just wasting my time. If you have a specific question, then ask it, but I will not waste time trying to figure out what you want.

Bringing the current state of affairs about the US military has no relevance (that I can see) to the subject at hand. I have no idea if you have a cognitive thread of an argument. To me it looks like you are just an angry man venting. If I have it wrong, please excuse me, but nothing you write is clear to me.

You said not competing with the Chinese was insane.

That statement to me was unsupported so I asked you "why" given the potential results and our history why you thought the proposal was insane.

Among technical people I expect statements to be supported with data. Indeed, I repeatedly assert that science requires data and that people who are engineers should understand that and support their statements with data.

So, perhaps now, given my argument, you will tell us why asserting that perhaps we ought not to compete with the Chinese is insane.

j.

Okay. From my post #65 in response to your post #63:

1. Competition is good for the consumer and improving the product/service and its cost.

2. Competition and free trade keep us from exterminating each other. Just look at France and England. They may despise each other, but working, trading, and competing with each other makes each a much better nation than they would if they went back to the 100 Year War.

To which, you repeated the same question, "Why?"

So, what specifically do you have a question about?

I thought this was pretty clear.

"You said not competing with the Chinese was insane.

"That statement to me was unsupported so I asked you "why" given the potential results and our history why you thought the proposal was insane."

Which one of us does not speak English?

Are your 1&2 supposed to be an answer?

They look to me like unsupported declarations.

When, as an engineer you make a proposal you support it with great technical detail.

Can you prove that "1" is true?

As to "2" it seems to me that just the other day, Russia, led by old Stalinists intent on converting to capitalism and competition, and in response to an assault led by the U.S. capitalist employed Georgian whore Sashkavilli, came very close to war with the U.S., possibly even ICBMs.

That contradicts your assertion if it was meant as an answer to my "Why."

Perhaps I am in error and those were your answer to my query but I saw them as to be so weak and not in keeping with the moving landscape that I never even construed them as meaning to be an answer to my question.

If that is the case I apologise. Nonetheless, I think a better answer should be forthcoming, if indeed you think you can assay such.

If not perhaps now understanding that those were your answers I will come back and in some detail set out their faults, why they are not good answers although as to "2" I have already made a good partial case although one founded in solid history could be assayed.

I assume, that rather than "working, trading, and competing with each other makes each a much better nation" Germany and Japan and the U.S. and the principal European countries, all competitors, made war on each other during the First and Second World Wars.

I dare say that rather than your formula for peaceful competition the U.S., with two bombs, killed far more than were done in, in the 100 Year War.

j.

Well, I have no interest in going head to head with you in such detail. I think the problem resolves down to capitalism versus Marxism or socialism (I don't know which of the latter two you seem prefer as an alternative to capitalism (if, indeed that is the direction of your argument)).

Be that as it may, I feel capitalism, with all its faults, is a better means for social good than socialism/Marxism. However, you may not feel that way and attempting to argue with you on the merits and detriments of each system is much wider in scope than I have time to apply (although it would be a fun exercise). Maybe over a couple of beers when I am retired?

The long and short of it is, yes I would love to bring a solid argument to you with supporting facts, but I regret to say I just don't have the free time.

Anonymous Hero - I don't know if JJ is Marxist or Anarchist or even capable of understanding what we are talking about. His definitions of profit, property, slavery and theft do not match normal definitions, so it seems he is unable to speak in a way we can understand and he doesn't understand what we say in the way we mean it. That he hates capitalism, America and Bush is obvious. He seems to love China, perhaps he should go live there. Probably best to ignore him, as I will.

This statement in not directly aimed at you Anonymous Hero this just seemed like a good spot to throw this in.

I just am trying to understand how the USA can compete with the Chinese when there are too many variables that are different... the biggest variable I can see is the American standard of living. In order to compete we would have to lower our standard of living to the same standard as is in China. Of course the manufactures would love to see that happen...as long as they do not have to lower their individual standard themselves.

The problem is that the price of necessities; food, living, education,... is not lowering. I recall the automotive industry getting employees to take a wage concession saying it was so they could be able to compete with oversea countries. The price of automobiles did not go down, all that happened was the manufacturers had a bigger market/profit.

I know that it will take time for an equilibrium point to be achieved but as of now it all reminds me of a saying, "Steal from Peter to pay Paul".

That's right. And guess who the suck... er Peter is.

j.

"In order to compete we would have to lower our standard of living to the same standard as is in China."

Or raise China's.

This is already happening now. Look at a whole generation of Chinese that aspire to reach for the things we take for granted in the US; cars, appliances, electronics, mobility, internet, Western goods, and freedom.

The seeds have been cast.

It has been said that "The best laid plans of mice and men oft' go awry."

Indeed! "The seeds have been cast" but perhaps not as might be thought.

The problem Mr. Hero is that as always with capitalist economics those who are reaching are the new capitalists and the few in position to be new capitalists, i.e., members of the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party.

The vast numbers of the Chinese population, even those moving to the cities and working in now developing industry, are not experiencing the standard of the new bourgeoisie but rather that which that class of society experienced by the new working class wherever capitalism developed.

Those differences inevitably create a revolutionary tide. That was the case in Czarist Russia where the relatively few workers in the massive imported industries in places like Petrograd became the bulwark of the Bolshevik Party which then sought to serve not only their own class, but of necessity the massive poor peasantry.

Not only does it create that tide in a new working class and their poor peasant families left behind in the villages of China, but also in a section of the bureaucracy's children who are disturbed by the difference between their situation and the population in general because after all, being the children of a "Marxist" CCP, they perhaps believed all should benefit equally.

That was the case at Tienanmen. Without a Bolshevik Party to lead them they were premature, had not recruited the countryside (Read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution to understand how it is supposed to unfold), and hence were crushed after a frantic search throughout the country by the bureaucracy for a regiment ignorant enough to move against "The People" whose army they were supposed to be.

The base of the issue is that capitalism of necessity always produces its opposite, a relatively disenfranchised population of workers who when seriously effected by the natural ups and downs of capitalist economics, such as our own current times here in the West, become a revolutionary force.

We can play here with words and notions but any study of the historical system, that study in fact being the mass of Marx' work, clearly demonstrates that truth.

As the standard of living of the new class of capitalists in China rises, and as the old CCP bureaucracy become emboldened and abandon their previously quiet and concealed disproportionate life style, as that contradiction becomes more obvious, the more a revolutionary situation is on the order of the day in China.

Not because Jersawitz says it but because the science of social existence says it.

We all here ascribe to the application of science in the areas of technology, of industry. The question these economic issues raises is whether or not the social issues emanating from economics can be addressed in a scientific manner working from the data of hundreds of years, if we limit ourselves to this economic system, or thousands of years if we consider all that we know of humankind's emergence in Africa as a distinct species, our ancestors, that then more and more consciously carves out its own specific economic systems and therefore ever evolving social systems.

j.

It appears that you are self educated way beyond your intelligence......

Millec,

"It appears that you are self educated way beyond your intelligence......"

What is it you are saying; that one can be educated beyond one's own intelligence?

Huh!

Are you saying that although everything I have used in my analysis is taught, leastwise the last time I attended university, in those same universities, that I am stupid?

Or are you saying that on a web site given over to engineering, which of necessity is based on the physical sciences, that as far as other things material and therefore subject to scientific method, you reject such an approach to economics and social existence which after all are material issues just as certainly as physics, or chemistry.

Or are you saying that you regret getting into this discussion, have not the tools to take up issues and analysis presented, and want to back away but don't know how to do so gracefully without insulting who apparently, because you don't address the issues raised, raises issues beyond your ken, although when I raised those issues I thought they were well within the ability of everybody here to comprehend if not always to agree?

j.

It is not a matter of issues; it is the fact that many in manufactruing management tend to delegate the workforce to that of an inanimate object, or piece of the process that achieves the end of their process. I am merely saying that when manufacturing (management) takes the human element out of their process, it is a bad thing; at first before the days of the blossoming global marketplace, attitudes were different because you were selling your products to your neighbor; now you sell them around the world and could care less about your neighbor........what happens when the "new customer base" dries up or goes away.

As surely as engineer's deal in tangibles, you cannot make a tangible become an intangible; it does't matter what you call your labor factor......it is still human and still characterized accordingly. You may call them, labor burden, commodity or whatever you like.............you simply cannot dehumanize the people side of business. Suppose robotics evolved to the point that an engineer was no longer needed for your services; after all a good database can hold more "facts" than you or I will ever know.what then.

To me, it is amazing how many good, well qualified engineer's believe no one without an engineering degree can possibly be as valuable to the process as they are. Any engineering field is a wonderful aspiration. Look at the old construction company out of Texas (Brown & Root), years ago they were getting such poor quality engineers in the field that they started paying college tuition for 2nd and 3rd year students to work for them during the summer and off time. When these guys and girls would sign on at the job, they did not spend their time in the office, but were assigned to work crews out in the field...........this way they learned and understood first hand what they did on the engineering boards related to. That is the jist of what I am trying to say; nor do I say that you or anyone that is reading this thread is stupid; I am merely saying that there is more than one way to view something and it still be right.

Scientific study by it's nature is like driving pylons down into a swamp, science will keep driving (experimenting) until they get enough of a base to support the theorim that they surmmize to be correct; and then will stand back and call that truth or scientific fact.

Millec,

It is not a matter of "tend[ing] to delegate the workforce to that of an inanimate object."

Rather it is one of abstracting from the whole historic, ongoing economic process (Defined at base as the means by which we obtain our existence), the laws of that process so as to be able to see what needs to be done consistent with what reality makes possible to do, in order to improve the condition of our species.

Without that, all the rest, becomes just so much blather, just as most of the work of the alchemists, except for the few very observant ones who also kept records, was just so much garbage.

For instance you say 'what happens when the "new customer base" dries up or goes away.'

If you check the record 'the "new customer base" dries up and goes away' every seven years (The seven year business cycle) and every sixty to seventy years (The period we are descending into now) there is a catastrophic depression.

My father, all his life thereafter, went around bemoaning the fact, as though it was his fault, that all that property was floating around in the twenties and thirties that could be had for a song and he didn't acquire any. Of course he couldn't, like every government employee he could barely exist.

Again, if you check the record, you find that the newly open to capitalism Chinese have already gone through at least one business cycle with entire enterprises going bankrupt.

Is it too much to hope that application of science might get folks to understand that expansion of productivity in this system ensues at exponential rates until it comes up against the fact that at best market only expands at linear rates.

Further, again applying science (The environmentalists let alone economists), is it too hard to understand that a constantly evolving and expanding economy and inherent production thereto, is a materially impossible proposition that historically ends in depressions and wars?

Is it too hard to understand what should be obvious, we live on a finite planet, with finite resources, and we are on the verge of totally over-running the resources and the planet and in regard to underlying competitive interests just a few days ago were probably just a short way from lobbing ICBM's at Russia and they at us all over a little prostitute government in Georgia.

And no, good science does not start with "get[ing] enough of a base to support the theorim that they surmmize to be correct; and then will stand back and call that truth or scientific fact."

That is rank impressionism. Good science starts with data and when the data suggests, a hypothesis, i.e., just the other way around from what you assert.

But I do recognize that you consider the folks that do the work human and important. Any argument we have has to do with impressionism rather than science which recognizes and generalizes the nature of humanity into a general and scientific understanding of the economic systems by which we humans have and do create our existence.

j.

Jack-

"Chauvinism (pronounced /ˈʃoʊvɨnɪzəm/) is extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of a group to which one belongs, especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred towards a rival group." My comment, "How can we compete with rice eaters?" was to make a humorous contrast between the diet and standard of living we have and that of many Chinese. There is no malice or hatred and certainly no extreme or unreasoning partisanship in that. I love Chinese food myself. Yet to suggest that all American workers should eat like the Chinese to be healthier could be taken by some as an insult and an elitist statement.

You try to make the meaning of profit dependent on how it is made, then say it is actually theft and slavery, based on what some French anarchist said. Profit is simply a return on investment, affected by the risk of losing the investment. "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work." Who defines what is fair? It is an ongoing negotiation between the employees and the employers. The employee never thinks he is paid enough and the employer usually thinks he is paying too much. Generally they find that if they demand to be paid too much, they can't find work or on the other side, if they offer too little pay they cannot get people to do good work. Capitalism is not theft or slavery and those who think it is, need to think again.

Competition does not lead to "a rush to the bottom." Competition leads to making your product better and cheaper than the other guy, to being able to sell more and make more money doing it. It is when human greed gets into it that you have problems with both employees and employers doing things they should not. Many of those problems are regulated by law, but not all of them. We have not reached perfection.

Fifty years and more ago the Japanese standard of living was much lower, on the whole they were also shorter due to lack of nutrition. Now they eat better and have a higher standard of living and are seeing their manufacturing jobs go to countries that are where they were over 50 years ago. They got there by competing with us. The suggestion that we "Stop competing with the Chinese so they can charge more for their products, and perhaps they will produce better products." is ridiculous. Without competition there would be no improvement in the Chinese products and they will stay as trashy as they are. We and the Chinese are responsible for the situation. They have low quality control and make no replacement parts to speak of, therefore when their products break they cannot be fixed. You toss and buy another or cannibalize a new or used one. Some products are under strong quality control by the branded company and some are not. Electronics are generally an item that works when tested and continues to work as long as it is used properly, but even there some problems have occurred.

"You complain about the Chinese, but not the Koreans, because you have been recruited by the scoundrels that rely on patriotism and nationalism who see the Chinese as the Communist enemy and not the South Koreans whose government exists because the scoundrels in the U.S. government reneged on their agreements at the Teheran-Yalta talks to allow the Koreans to hold an election for a government representing all of Korea and in fact instigated the South Korean attack on the North that started the Korean War." Spoken as a true America-hating American Marxist [or Anarchist?]

I complain about all countries that use cheap labor and dictatorship to produce poor quality goods and that our venal politicians continue to allow to cut the throats of our working people by making it profitable to send our jobs overseas. I cannot blame any businessman for wanting to reduce his costs so he can sell at a competitive price. I do blame those who refuse to use tariffs, not to overprotect, but just to even out the playing field.

"If you carefully examine that phrase about "day's work" and "day's pay," against its historical background, you will discover that the profit you speak of is the product of slavery and theft (Or theft and slavery depending which way you turn the history) and poor commodities the result of destroying the only basis for the producers of commodities to have pride in them and therefore an interest in excellence, i.e., ownership of what they produce." Do you really think the autoworkers should own the plant and the cars produced? The workers do not build the plant and the company, because until there is a plant they have no money. Your definitions of "theft" and "slavery" do not match those of the majority of people. There was little American investment in many of these countries, most of them have done it on their own after our initial start.

"As recent events show some of the things they do, aided by folks like the Bushs and the Cheneys (Think big oil) are highly illegal and covered up by the same folks you would like to see protect employees." [sic] Another rabid-dog Bush-hater [Cheney too} is revealed by his own words, as if the Democrats are innocent. Both parties are made up of people and people are weak and imperfect. Both sides have failed to do what is right to protect the employees and the employers too many times.

"What you write in general is so dense in error and contradiction that there is no way to take it all up in this format." Well, right back at you.

I think it is so obvious that we disagree, even on the definitions of words, that it is useless for either of us to waste our time in arguing politics and economics. You have your views and I have mine and never the twain shall meet. I am willing to refrain from further acrimony, if you are.

Taganan,

There was no acrimony on my part. Just a recitation of the facts and conclusions from the history of economics.

For instance you say 'The workers do not build the plant and the company, because until there is a plant they have no money. Your definitions of "theft" and "slavery" do not match those of the majority of people. There was little American investment in many of these countries, most of them have done it on their own after our initial start.'

No scientist would make such a statement and just throw away the last thought "initial start" which falsifies all before it in much the same way that John Locke's voluntary entry into "civil society" falsified the brutality of England's "initial start."

Would you, for instance, deny that the primitive capital accumulation in this country was based in slavery and hence the theft of the value produced by their labor?

That is the central difference between your impressionism, i.e., whatever seems rational and logical to your mind without carefully examining the history and process of that "initial start."

That is only for this country.

How about the "initial start" of capitalist economics in its originating country, England, where the "initial start" is fueled by the enclosure laws so that previously common property is turned to private interests or the expulsion from the feudal lands of the serfs so they lose their ancient right to use of land for their own subsistence and are forced into the cities to work in nascent industry, and how about the brutality toward children who at five and six, boys and girls are forced to work in the mines and mills.

I have a theory about why there is an argument about the issue of evolution in this country. I think it is because once biological evolution is accepted, evolution as a process of all things, including social things, becomes obvious.

Then perhaps we would look at the "initial start" of this economic system and see that it was indeed sourced in theft and slavery.

After all, if all of the planet was once available to all, or alternatively owned collectively by all, then how could there be private property except by means of theft, no matter the theft concealed by one or another stratagem.

j.