I'm not sure if everybody in the US was making T shirts and toys for a dollar a day would be good for the economy. And if they paid them $20/hr who (other than the pentagon) would buy a thousand dollar ball point pen?
I mean, That's the first thing I started doing. I open up the account and see all these big profits and start taking them. And if I checked it yesterday I would have taken even smaller profits. Who knew everything could go so high? It never happens in real life. I never let things go that far.
Let's be realistic. Our labour costs are high, but not at a level that is not competitive. I don't think it would cost that much to make a ball point pen in the US. As well, there is efficiency gain and technological advancement when we produce something in-house.
High crude may make US manufacturing more competitive, but the only way out of this mess is to increase exports, so high crude comes back and bites you.
Increase exports helps, but if the product is produced abroad, is it really exporting? Does it help with unemployment? At the end, if no new job is created in the US, then we are going to be in this "long-term recession" for a long long time.
Everybody seems to identify uneployment as the big problem, and many point to the thing which will reduce unemployment, but I have never heard a step by step plan to get there. So lets say domestic manufacturing will improve the problem. How then do we increase manufacturing? The only thing I can come up with is zero taxes if you manufacture in the US. After all, the only thing the government can do is tax and spend, unless you want to start outlawing things like importing and manufacturing abroad, in which case I think many would soon find new jobs in the black market.
The lack of engineers has fucked us. There are so few people out there with actual talent that can perform complex R&D it's also not even funny (engineers). Subsidize engineering.
yes, I heard on tv that Germany (which produces many engineers) puts the responsibility of education on the student. Of course Germany is for the most part a mono culture that all speaks the same language. We on the other hand alow a million immigarants per year into the country so we have other challenges. But getting back to Germany, If you want to learn, you are expected to learn. It hasn't been that way here for a long time. Now it is someones job to make sure you get educated and get a job, and if you don't it's their faullt.
That is a good question. The government will need to do some research on the implication of tariff and tax credits to businesses that has a manufacturing division in the country.