im sure youll bounce back and find some new clients. But nothings perfect there are good things about free trade and very bad things. Look at the auto industry, American cars have improved so much over the last 20 yrs thanks to pressure from imports to improve their own product. I wouldnt drive a chrysler or ford built in the 80s due to poor quality, but now I have no problem buying a domestic vehicle built in the last 10 yrs. Too bad this hasnt changed the UAW much, because of there power the cost to build a domestic vehicle will always be more than a import. When that happens things are cut to make up for the difference, Ford could build a much nicer car for the $ if they didnt have UAW workers making 200K a year sleeping in a closet like josh mentioned.
Everyone has made some good points in this thread which sort of prooves
that there is not just one reason for the HUGE imbalance.
I don’t think we should stop trade but the field needs to be more level.
My shop is not union BUT unions have made this country what it is by demanding
many things from corporations.
I am not saying all of the demands were bad but other countries do not have to meet these demands which makes them MUCH more competitive.
Unions have put pressure on many, many things not just hourly wages and retirement.
There are literally hundreds of specific reasons for the imbalance.
I have mentioned before that there needs to be a cultural change in this country if we desire trade with countries like China.
We cannot live like kings and expect the other countries to build our products and live like they do.
Maybe we would be better off paying a month’s wages for TVs again.
Do we really need to help China by buying cheap TVs?
China has already made statements about winning the war against the US.
They are doing it financially.
When I was a kid the USA would let the Russian car LADA to be sold here, maybe we shouldn’t let china sell products here if they consider this war.(?)
I don’t have a simple answer because it is very complex problem.
The US is headed from a industrial economy to a service economy, its progression
Riefler closed doors because onieda concrete owes them over a million dollars. They even had the Erie County sherrifs all set up to sieze a million dollars worth of oniedas equipment but someone tip them off and the equipment was gone when the sherrifs got their.
lets not forget coporate mentality.
They have to make money or investors tend to get angry.
not everyone in the corporate world takes time to consider all aspects of operations.
they just want to improve the bottom line.
through decreased workforce and/or less expensive materials.
There is a huge problem with the way economists analyze free trade. They look at things in the aggregate and don’t seem to pay much attention to the social consequences of their conclusions. There is no question that free trade and the developement of a global economy has made a number of people very wealthy. Most of my investments are in international companies and have done quite well over the last fifteen years. But most people don’t have large amounts of money invested in international corporations. The people whose wages are dropping or are simply out of work due to globalization/free trade are SOL. They will never be able to accumulate large amounts of capital. Their living standards are going to fall, they will lose hope. The result will be a country that looks more and more like the third world with the attendant social problems of crime and political instability. What do you think is going to happen when the tax base no longer exists to fund the entitlement programs that are the currency used by politicians to buy votes since the 1950’s?
As I said before, to an economist it makes no difference if one person has a million dollars and nine have nothing compared to all ten each having $100K. After all, the average is the same. Give the rich guy two million and keep the other nine with nothing and the economist will be ecstatic - the wealth has doubled.
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm
Specifically thanks to the unions, but more thanks to the natural way of global capitalism, manufacturing is going to head elsewhere. Our quality of life has gotten too high to make manufacturing in the US profitable. Capitalism will take manufacturing to where the people can do it the most cheaply. China and India will form unions and eventually their quality of life will come up equal to ours and we can come back into the game again in the long term.
The middle class isn’t going away, it’s just getting smarter. To afford a house, 2 cars, plenty of food, and some spending money (things that most of the world only dreams of) you’re going to need a 4 year degree. It used to be that a high school degree could get you middle class. Not anymore. The rest of the world caught up and can do our uneducated jobs. We just need to maintain our ability to do things that they can’t.
What would those things be? Sorry, it isn’t going to work that way for most people. They have univeristies in India and China, in case no one noticed. Living standards for most will fall if we continue down the same path, all the while aggregate wealth will be increasing. A different paradigm than in the past and a recipe for social disaster, unfortunately.
^But the universities there aren’t what’s causing us to lose high volumes of manufacturing jobs. It’s their high volume of uneducated workers willing to accept low pay relative to our own uneducated workers. Uneducated workers will become the American poor in the coming decades, which is why the American masses will need college education to maintain middle class status where they used to be able to achieve middle class with just a high school education.
Maybe I didn’t make my point clearly. Their educated workers will also accept a (much) lower wage than our educated workers. While the US standard of living decreases, theirs will improve.
Hmm… Well I guess I’ll just stick with my current job designing PSA oxygen systems. The chinese have tried to reverse engineer our machines and can’t get past ~50% purity. 
It’s a tough situation. Like that book I posted is about, the world playing field has pretty well leveled (hence the world is “flat”). It’s going to be tough, bordering on impossible for the US to remain an economic world leader in the future. It’s going to be interesting to watch the world grow over the next 50 years, or however long I live. We’re going to have to learn to work with globalization and use it to our benefit. I dunno, I’ve never studied economics so I’m going to stop here because I’ve pretty well reached the limit of my knowledge/understanding.
If you really have a set of skills that is difficult to acquire and in demand, you may be one of the lucky ones to do very well. I am worried about this not for myself, as no one has yet figured out a way to outsource what I do. My income may not increase much, or even decrease a bit. But I can always switch to buying cheap stuff from China. The effect on many people will be much worse, and devastating to a large number.
Since all of the major parties are very beholden to those who stand to benefit from the export of US wealth to the developing world, it is likely to continue unitl it is “too late”.
Am I reading this right, you think the playing field is level?
If so, I could not think of a more incorrect statement.
Like I said before there are hundreds of reasons the field is NOT level.
Let me give one HUGE reason…
Mold makers in China make 80 cents per hour, here they make $25 per hour.
(A mold maker is a highly skilled machinist)
This means mold makers in the US have to work 30 TIMES FASTER!
Could it be any more off balance?!?
I have to agree…Chinese gov’t heavily subsidizes everything in the country…An apartment that could cost a worker here (in buffalo) $800/mo costs a Chinese worker $5…you’d be able to pay for an entire years living in 2 weeks! The chinese gov’t is loaning out money to companies with NO EXPECTATION OF REPAYMENT.
Bump for reassessment, two years later.
Sad, but oh so true.
You know this is just going to result in 10+ posts by people who don’t bother looking at the original post dates right? We’ve got one already. Should have PM’d him and asked him to create a new thread.
First thing I noticed was the date.
I’m just reinstating that it’s true, that it’s our own fault that shit like this is happening yet we all complain about it and continue to do it.
says teh VW owner…
:mamoru: