Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach
I jumped into a thread about McDonald's restaurant automation ... but somehow I got the crazy idea that the topic wasn't welfare. :roll:
We'd been discussing the two sides of the same coin. But maybe you should complain to the moderator that the topic expanded from the original OP. That never happens on this place..... :roll: and oddly it's very selectively 'enforced.'
I didn't say the role of the government was to modernize the workforce, I said it was to PROMOTE workforce modernization. I don't want the Government anywhere near the actual job of workforce modernization.
I forgot I was debating the "definition of 'is' is" person.... Sorry, I'll be more careful in the future.
It's definitely a trade off. If cell phones and televisions were made in America then American poor wouldn't be able to afford them. It is no coincidence that American poverty was so high during the height of American protectionism, or that quality of American goods was so low.
You're making baseless assertions. The key to quality of American products is competition. You've mentioned cars a couple of times, and it might not surprise you that when the auto industry had dozens of competitors, we led the world in automobile innovation, and as the industry consolidated into the big three, focus went from innovation and competing based on quality to gobbling up competitors and protecting market share through brute force.
And it's an objective question whether the low, low prices of goods at Walmart, and the offshoring of all the plants that make them, are a negative or positive for the bottom 50% or so. I'm not sure how you look at productivity and wage data from the post WWII period - where the incomes from the top to the bottom rose at roughly the same rate as productivity gains - and compare it to the free trade era where nearly ALL the real income gains have gone to the top slivers, and say 'free trade' (and that's a term that shouldn't be used to describe our trade deals - they are heavily managed trade for the benefit of the behemoths) has been good for the bottom half. Real income for the poor has declined.
It's funny - you point out the spending on the poor has increased by some unknown amount but hasn't budged rates of poverty, then you say that the post free trade era has been good for the poor who despite rising spending on their behalf are still losing ground and remaining in poverty. You want it both ways, apparently.
Where did I say they were in a bubble?
You didn't, but we were in a massive bubble. And construction jobs now are at about the same level as 1989 despite the population growth since that time.
Well, for starters, anecdotes aren't data. How many of the hollow shells of towns were because jobs were moved over seas? Would the companies that moved over seas have survived in the market by keeping their manufacturing in that tow? What demands were made of the company by the town? Was the company financially able to meet those demands?
The data is in the jobs and pay and wealth figures. Here's a good article on that:
Inequality: Wages, income, and time for gardening | The Economist
Bottom line is pay peaked in the 1970s, declined through the 80s and early 90s, rose a bit during the tech boom, and 40 years later is only about 5% higher than in 1970 for the bottom 40%, despite productivity gains of 2-3% PER YEAR.
So if productivity and wages grew like they did for most of our history, workers would have over double current wages on average. That might buy a few phones and TVs.
More data is in our trade imbalance. People have talked about how deficits are unsustainable. Well so is the U.S. sending $500 billion net per year overseas to buy goods.
Look at it this way: The focus on the number of companies moving jobs over seas is incredibly myopic when you compare that figure to the number of companies declaring bankruptcy each year. Nearly 35,000 companies declared bankruptcy in the US in 2013, it seems absurd that so many people want to focus on the off-shoring of jobs when the real problem is low profitability doing business in the US.
But value is created by making stuff, growing stuff, or mining stuff and so we can't have a sustainable 'service' economy. Sustainable consumption can't in the long run be more than value created by the economy. And right now we're sending $500 billion per year overseas. That money has to come back and buy something in the U.S. Lots of that money has returned here when foreign governments and companies buy U.S. debt. But what isn't used to buy debt has to buy land or businesses or stocks or something. It's just not sustainable. That's why offshoring gets attention and the normal turnover of businesses doesn't. Besides, you're comparing the net loss of value creating manufacturing jobs to a gross number of one side of business turnover.
But job loss of all kinds tends to be very over stated. I have seen quotes of 8 million manufacturing jobs lost over the last 30 years. While that sounds bad, there wasn't a commensurate increase of 8 million unemployed in that same time. People found other jobs.
Sure, crap service jobs with low pay and benefits, which is reflected in a 40 years of stagnant at best wages.
If you want a labor job that want get sent over seas then work in construction. Nobody has figured out how to off shore those jobs. Granted, low pay illegals are taking a lot of construction work in the US, which is sort of like off-shoring, but we are supposed to be OK with that.
But construction is limited to some fairly fixed share of the economy. It boomed in the bubble, then collapsed, as it had to.
And if you're OK with sending our manufacturing jobs overseas, then I have no idea why you'd object to illegals coming here to work construction. It's the same thing accomplished through different mechanisms. It's funny - conservatives are all for the free movement of capital, so they have no problem with U.S. manufacturers closing down a plant and moving it to Vietnam where they can get workers for 30 cents per hour, but want to start a revolution over free movement of labor. I've never understood that. Certainly, big companies don't see the difference and so support loose immigration laws and offshore their manufacturing work.
To be sure, some liberals have the same problem in reverse - oppose offshoring but support immigration. I don't. I support border control measures and stringent rules on employers against hiring undocumented workers. The only limiting concern is humanitarian - for example NAFTA allows U.S. farmers to sell heavily taxpayer subsidized corn to Mexico, which has killed small farmers in Mexico, and so they come here to work because we've eliminated those jobs in Mexico.
