If most of the job growth for the past decade(s?) is from government, then doesn't that mean that government has to grow to keep taking up the slack for the absent jobs? Doesn't that mean - we HAVE to keep growing the government??!!
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/Sur...ol=latest_numbers&series_id=CIS1010000000000Q Yeah, no. Total compensation has never had a negative 3 month period since 2001, so I don't buy that. Case in point, I consider having to put my wife in the hospital for DKA two years ago for just a week at $40,000 part of my pay. Sorry. I'd have to disagree, and you'll probably disagree with me, despite me taking the time to prove you wrong. Unemployment, not disputing that is worse, but for the fittest, those who have kept a job, I think their total compensation is much greater. Unemployment is not the same as income. Employment may lead to income, but once you're employed it always goes up. Outsourcing is not the problem. I don't know anybody who wants to take phone calls all day. Those are about the only jobs in my field I've heard going to India.
No, I don't disagree with you on that point. I wrote that without checking the numbers. But there's also plenty of graphs going back to the 1980s showing real incomes are flat, and that's what I had in mind. Outsourcing might work if those people bought american goods. You know, free trade. That's one way that the Middle East situation was fixed, yes we send our money to them for oil, but they then invest in the stock market. The chinese don't do that. You send your money to them, and it stays there, permanently. Even if they buy goods from multi-nationals, those firms never repatriate those funds and reinvest them in China to avoid taxes. So money leaves the US and never comes back. It's a one way system. Guess why the chinese have disposable income and the Americans have none.
Real incomes should be flat over the long term, otherwise inflation is wacky. The average person shouldn't make more or less over time. Also, you should check some of your numbers. A huge chunk of our outsourced jobs are service sector. According to the latest data, we bring in more money for services than we pay for services. Some 20-30% more. That is, our service sector runs a pretty good size trade surplus.
By 2012 the effects of peak oil will hit and it will be a very different world. Many transnationals will go bankrupt. Jobs will come back home because shipping goods globally will be prohibitively expensive. The government will be the largest purchaser of oil, and the military and agriculture will be the first in line for it. Capitalism on a grand scale will be dead. However, family owned businesses that serve their local communities will thrive once again. Businesses such as Walmart will be on their last legs. We will look fondly back at 2006 and explain to incredulous children that many of us used to fly halfway around the world to exotic lands.
Well real incomes went up during the 70s, and before. I guess I'll have to pull the charts to make the point, aw man Thing is, that real incomes should go up because productivity goes up. Corporate profits have certainly gone up more than inflation. I think you forget the millions of manufactured jobs that were outsourced. Everything that you find in the Wal Mart story basically. It's true we run a trade surplus in services, and a much bigger trade deficit overall. There you go, it seems the charts go back to 1947 : http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/uploads/productivity_compensationtrend192ndgraph2_002.jpg Says the data is even from the BLS and BEA. http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/wealthhappens.shtml
That is a good argument. The chart shows a definite break immediately after we ditched the gold standard. If I were to offer a comment right now it would be me just thinking aloud, and subsequently pretty disjointed. As to your other statement, I haven't forgotten the outsourced manufacturing jobs. Rather, the data shows that more high paying jobs are created as a result from having outsourced the low level manufacturing jobs.
Well IC fabrication and broadband development has been and apparently you're wrong because these people agree it's a problem. http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/POSITIONS/offshoring.html Also their definition: Offshoring - the transfer of high wage U.S. jobs to lower cost overseas locations.
That's possible, I haven't seen the data. A lot of high paying jobs were created in finance though.. how's that one going. I guess the argument is something like, with low paying jobs out the country, you must move up the value chain and add greater value and productivity to a product. As you add that greater value (say you design the product instead of manufacturing it), your salary also goes up. The problem with that is that China won't make shoes forever. Already the solar industry in China is the best in the world, and they are ALSO moving up the value chain. More and more industries will innovate out of China, not the US, as the US does not control the whole value chain anymore. And cost is still a major issue. At first it was cheaper furniture and shoes, but now it's cheaper solar panels. There was a tremendous technology transfer to China over the past 20 years, as IP laws were weak and companies were forced to share everything and establish joint partnerships etc with chinese companies. Or take a look for example in India too how many tech companies they are building, including some international ones. Once the genie's out of the bottle, that's it. Of course all that is anecdotal, but there might be enough of those anecdotes around us today to see the US hasn't exactly benefited from globalization.
Well, in regards to whether the US has benefited from globalization, I think the answer is pretty obvious given the average lifestyle here. Also, the is somewhat of a consensus that the Hawley-Smoot tariff act sent us into the Great Depression, as the government tried to stop outsourcing back then. That is still a point of debate, but most of the data points to that conclusion. It could be argued that there is a larger divide between the rich and the poor because of globalization. I would tend to agree with that argument, but I wouldn't venture to say that it should be different. It is pretty much fact at this point that globalization makes the poor richer. They do however get poorer relative to the wealthy who seem to gain at a much faster pace. So the question then is what strategy to take. 1) Stop globalization and everyone is poorer as a result. 2) Foster globalization and create a free market where everyone gets more wealthy, but the wealth gap continues to get larger. 3) Foster globalization and then take active measures to redistribute the "excessive" wealth gain of the rich that results from the globalization.