What Amicus and other Conservatives fail to understand about job creation

[LJ_Reloaded]

Lowering taxes do not create jobs. Removing regulations doesn't either; in fact, the latter only results in people getting killed and enormous environmental damage (see: British Petroleum).

You cannot create jobs as long as another country is competing against you with rock bottom wages.

When your minimum wage levels for ditch diggers are 10 times higher than that of another nation's workers... you have no chance of achieving anything better than anemic job creation.

In the universe of free trade there is one, and only one way to create jobs: reduce your country's standard of living so low that your wages are lower than that of other nations.

This is why China's workers are getting raises and China owns the world's debt... and why job growth is and always will be sluggish from this point on, in Western nations... that is... short of raising tariffs against China and India...

 

[xssve]

You'll have to write a book if you want to list the things amicus doesn't know about economics - several of them in fact.

But, you too are wrong, this only applies if your economy is labor intensive and requires a large unskilled labor market - supply and demand works in labor markets too.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

You'll have to write a book if you want to list the things amicus doesn't know about economics - several of them in fact.

But, you too are wrong, this only applies if your economy is labor intensive and requires a large unskilled labor market - supply and demand works in labor markets too.

But skilled labor is not growing either. It's moving to India for the same reasons - rock bottom wages. Tech went to India, and then Biotech, right up to the research level.

As for supply and demand, the demand for all these jobs has not abated. There are still millions of people doing "unskilled" manufacturing and skilled bio/tech jobs. They're just doing it elsewhere because of the cheap labor factor.

It is impossible to beat cheap labor on the free market. Playing the innovation card doesn't work; case in point, biotech. China routinely steals America's innovations and dumps knockoff products on the American market.

Amicus would say this is a case of the horse and cart giving way to the car. It is not. The proverbial horse and cart is still being made, and there is no "car" industry coming.* This means that millions of displaced manufacturing workers will have no jobs to go to. No matter what they train for, there will be more of them seeking jobs than there will ever be jobs waiting for them.

We have hit that point where there will never be another job boom. Ever. Every potential job boom that happens - essentially, some new "super" industry whose birth is not even going to happen in the near to midterm (10-20 years) future - will go overseas almost immediately. Unless we wake up and realize that fair trade is better than "free" trade.

As long as free trade persists, U3/8% unemployment and U6/13% unemployment is where things will ultimately settle, for the long term.

We as Americans are going to have to figure out how we are going to deal with those perpetually jobless people.

We as Americans are going to have to figure out how we are going to cope with an economy where workers have far less buying power, and who buy less things. We will have to accept a declining standard of living, multi-generational households (today we call them "boomerang children"), the mass return of layaway, and a permanent, drastically reduced access to business credit, which will, along with reduced consumer demand, stifle the creation of new small businesses far more than high taxes ever will. We do not have the number of jobs to sustain a healthy recovery, we do not have high enough paying jobs to sustain a healthy recovery; nor will we.

Mark my words; this is how things will be. The math cannot be denied.



*horse and cart being an analogy for today's modern industry. The "car" being analogous to "whatever is coming next".

 

[xssve]

There is no question that manufacturers and producers are engaged in an eternal quest to reduce variable costs, of which labor is traditionally the largest component, I suspect that will never change.

 

[lustatopia]

"Lower taxes don't create jobs"

Yes they do. If you leave an extra 100 bucks in 250 million American pockets that's 25 billion bucks American will spend in the economy in 250 million ways or more. Or Obama can take that money and blow it in 10 seconds on literal nothing. One creates 250 million plus transactions, the other creates 1 transaction. You do the math.

Now leave 1,000 bucks in 250 million American pockets and you are starting to talk real money. Imagine what would happen if you got, you know, all hope and changey and left 10,000 dollars in 250 million fucking pockets. Recession over. Hello mild inflation, higher interest rates, stronger dollar and falling unemployment.

The bottom line is that 250 million Americans can better spend 250 billion or 2.5 trillion dollars far more effectively than a peer reviewed, hand picked panel of political sycophants in Washington.

Is that simply enough for you to grasp? Didn't even mention the unintended consequence for innovation, productive and, yes, INCREASED tax revenue that lower rates would generate.

 

[bronzeage]

How have the Swiss survived all these years?

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

"Lower taxes don't create jobs"

Yes they do. If you leave an extra 100 bucks in 250 million American pockets that's 25 billion bucks American will spend in the economy in 250 million ways or more. Or Obama can take that money and blow it in 10 seconds on literal nothing. One creates 250 million plus transactions, the other creates 1 transaction. You do the math.

Now leave 1,000 bucks in 250 million American pockets and you are starting to talk real money. Imagine what would happen if you got, you know, all hope and changey and left 10,000 dollars in 250 million fucking pockets. Recession over. Hello mild inflation, higher interest rates, stronger dollar and falling unemployment.

The bottom line is that 250 million Americans can better spend 250 billion or 2.5 trillion dollars far more effectively than a peer reviewed, hand picked panel of political sycophants in Washington.

Is that simply enough for you to grasp? Didn't even mention the unintended consequence for innovation, productive and, yes, INCREASED tax revenue that lower rates would generate.

Fatal Flaw #1 in your logic, sir: a stronger dollar will send even MORE jobs to China because of the increasing CHEAPNESS of Chinese labor. All that money you think will come of lowering taxes will go right to Chinese workers.

Fatal flaw #2 in your logic: tax breaks for employers won't, and historically has not, resulted in more jobs. They pocket any savings they get from reduced taxes.

Fatal flaw #3 in your logic: the poor already pay no income tax. Yet they still aren't spending as much as they used to.

Fatal flaw #4 in your logic: when you lower taxes you must cut Government services. Cutting Government services means those who enjoy the tax cuts must pay a higher cost of living because what they don't pay in taxes they will now pay in increased private service fees. Classic example: toll roads. And if you think the Post Office is bad wait until you try to send a letter by any of the private services.

 

[lustatopia]

"Removing regulations doesn't either; in fact, the latter only results in people getting killed and enormous environmental damage (see: British Petroleum)"

Bad anecdote, dude. It wasn't for lack of regulation. The regulations were in place to avoid the gulf disaster. The web of bureaucracy became so complex and corrupt the regulations at some point just became noise.... We live in the most regulated society in the history of humanity and every year we become more regulated.

Obviously, many regulations are necessary evils. Annual car safety inspection are good because they keep irresponsible motorists from driving unsafe vehicles. (In theory, at least.) But some percentage of regulation is unnecessary and a major drag on the economical vitality of the nation, as such, over-regulation destroy jobs and lowers productivity.

The real problem is that every time any legislative body in America convenes they add a few more regulations on the pile to appease who ever is screaming the loudest that month. No regulations are ever taken off the books. (I take that back, Austin, Tx took a 1894 five cent fine for not cleaning up your horse's poo from in front of the Capitol building in 2001)

So, regulations accrue like barnacles on the hull of our good ship Economy until compliance begins to rival the primary activity of the business in question. We are all dumber and poorer for it. Ultimately, small businesses are driven out of over-regulated markets, giving way to multi-national corp. consolidation that can rationalize the paperwork and employ legal depts... Jobs lost, competition down, productivity down. consumer prices up. Decaying inner cities bereft of small shops. What's that? You say we need a Welfare State? Duh. I wonder why? That's been our history, dude. Wake up and smell the macroeconomic coffee, cause Obama is pedal-to-the-metal accelerating regulation across the board...the opposite of hope or change.

Again, that's the simple lay version for high school freshman. There are also massively more complex issues around the social effects of useless regulations to increase societal corruption while concentrating power in opaque bureaucracies answerable to no one. Ultimately, the democratic process itself is eroded. It's gotten so out of control it's the emerging social justice issue of our age.

In Cleveland it takes a small legal team up to a year to incorporate a new business. In Houston, Tx it takes some one with $250 bucks who can read about 45 minutes. Anyone want to guess which economy is doing better????

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

"Removing regulations doesn't either; in fact, the latter only results in people getting killed and enormous environmental damage (see: British Petroleum)"

Bad anecdote, dude. It wasn't for lack of regulation. The regulations were in place to avoid the gulf disaster. The web of bureaucracy became so complex and corrupt the regulations at some point just became noise.... We live in the most regulated society in the history of humanity and every year we become more regulated.

That's not why the BP disaster happened. It happened because existing regulations were not enforced. That is another, albeit different way of saying a lack of regulation, via lack of enforcement.

Obviously, many regulations are necessary evils. Annual car safety inspection are good because they keep irresponsible motorists from driving unsafe vehicles. (In theory, at least.) But some percentage of regulation is unnecessary and a major drag on the economical vitality of the nation, as such, over-regulation destroy jobs and lowers productivity.

It's nice to take the middle of the road and say that there is a such thing as over-regulation; and certainly at some point you would be right. However, I am particularly interested in exactly which regulations you would like to see scrapped.

So, regulations accrue like barnacles on the haul of our good ship Economy until compliance begins to rival the primary activity of the business in question. We are all dumber and poorer for it. Ultimately, small businesses are driven out of over-regulated markets, giving way to multi-national corp. consolidation that can rationalize the paperwork and employ legal depts...

Granted, over regulation can create what is called a high barrier to entry for new businesses. It is true that some regulations like SOX can be too tough for a small business to handle if it wants to go public; but the alternative is the kind of lack of transparency that put us in the Enron mess. I mention SOX because tons of guys like you whine about SOX; but without it, fraud runs amuck. You pay for that, too, in the form of lost jobs.

I am sure, though, that you have some specific regulations that you'd like to pick on.

Jobs lost, competition down, productivity down. consumer prices up. Decaying inner cities bereft of small shops. What that? You say we need a Welfare State? Duh. I wonder why? That's been our history, dude. Wake up and smell the macroeconomic coffee, cause Obama is pedal-to-the-metal accelerating regulation across the board...the opposite of hope or change.

Poor example. What Obama is primarily trying to regulate is the financial industry, which has fought against regulations and as a result has nearly collapsed. Do note that the companies that DID collapse were not burdened with Community Reinvestment Act loans. CRA loans did remarkably well up to and going into the downturn; it's the non CRA loans that did worse, particularly the non-CRA subprimes. Basically, the much-demonized CRA had little to do with this crisis; what caused this crisis was the unregulated subprime loans and shifty accounting practices that brought us, among other things, Bernie Madoff.

Fighting Obama over these regulations basically means you want to see more malfeasance in the financial industry, less transparency, and more fraudulent activity resulting in massive, catastrophic multi-billion dollar collapses.

Again, that's the simple lay version for high school freshman. There are also massively more complex issues around the social effects of useless regulations to increase societal corruption while concentrating power in opaque bureaucracies answerable to no one. Ultimately, the democratic process itself is eroded. It's gotten so out of control it's the emerging social justice issue of our age.

In Cleveland it takes a small legal team up to a year to incorporate a new business. In Houston, Tx it takes some one with $250 bucks who can read about 45 minutes. Anyone want to guess which economy is doing better????

Invalid comparison. Texas's economy is primarily oil-driven.

As soon as America switches to alternative fuels Texas is almost completely done for.

But then thanks to our unregulated system of corporate investment and also our recently unregulated campaign finance system, the Arabs are buying stakes in US media and directing them to pound America with intentionally misleading propaganda aimed at convincing America that alternative fuels are not feasible...

 

[lustatopia]

"You cannot create jobs as long as another country is competing against you with rock bottom wages."

You're paradigm is about 100 years past the use-by date. America is not in the business of competing with Mexico or China for manufacturing jobs. We are long past having an industrial based economy. So when that underwear manufacturing plant in Jersey closes and moves to China. Well, that's called an economic dialectic of history. Those laid off workers will have to retrain for some other line of employment. We don't need no stinkin' widget factories. Unless, of course, those widgets can't be produced anywhere else in the world more efficiently.

The driving engine of the US economy since at least the 1970's has NOT been manufacturing widgets, but ideation, creation, innovation, designing and bringing to market better widgets. That's we we do better than anyone else in the world. That's what's made America wealthy.

We then hire chinese business to manufacture. Because that's what they do better than anyone else in the world. Got that? We are NOT in competition with China in a wage war. We are in a global alliance with them, a mutual interdependency. They're our friends. (At least for now.)

The engine of US ideation and innovation drives the whole rest of the economy, just like during the Industrial Age making things out of heavy gauge steel once drove every other section of the US economy. We are the first truly informational based economy on the planet. There is no going back to making widgets and playing zero-sum games with wages, union bosses, strikes, tariffs and trade wars. Might as well order yourself up a couple of battleships and the US cavalry to go open up trade with Macao.

It's full steam ahead into the future and that's the way it has always been.

 

[lustatopia]

"When your minimum wage levels for ditch diggers are 10 times higher than that of another nation's workers... you have no chance of achieving anything better than anemic job creation."

---

Bullshit. I doesn't matter how much it costs to dig a hole in China, if you want that hole dug in Manhattan, moron.

You are stuck again in with a 19th century paradigm. You believe the economy is a zero-sum game. That is if I win, then you must lose. Obviously, you got a bad case of what I call trickle down class warfare mentality. 'Cause I'm willing to bet you haven't read much original source economics, much less Carl Marx.

The modern economy is not a zero-sum game. We all get richer together, some of us faster than others and we all get poorer together. It's all a matter of getting your macro-economic policy right. Obama has twisted the knob way to the left, that's the getting poorer setting. And that's the reason why we have "anemic job creation."

The price of a hole in China has nothing to do with anything.

 

[lustatopia]

"In the universe of free trade there is one, and only one way to create jobs: reduce your country's standard of living so low that your wages are lower than that of other nations."

----

No, the way to create jobs in a world of global free trade is to focus what you can do better than anyone else. For instance, in Silicon Valley they design computer stuff and software, they do that better than anyone in the world. Wage pressure come from taxes, regulation and local competition, not China.

People in the valley that want to start up a commercial orange grove can't because an acre of land cost a million frigging dollars. Oh, the social injustice of it all.

Meanwhile the people of, say, Merida, Mexico can't compete with Silicon Valley in computer design but maybe they can sell them oranges. There is NO direct wage competition between nations at different levels of economic development. Yes, Detriot competes with Munich. That's total fair. China competes with Mexico, fair enough too. London competes as a financial center with NYC. It's all good.

By your lights, Mexico should subsidize computer designers to undercut silicon valley and silicon valley ought to grow bananas. Ridiculous.

There are many different levels of economic development. Competition is good, it forces productivity efficiency and drives people to creative innovation. If you find your niche where you are competitive most of the wage pressure comes from onerous taxation and over-regulation. I think we cover that in an earlier lesson.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

From where I sit it looks like everyone is full of shit.

What matters is the amount of goods and services available in the market and their value to consumers. Generally speaking, when government hires people it creates more hogs at the feeding trough without adding squat to the fund of good and services that feeds everyone. Socialism's fatal flaw is it creates no surplus for the market that anyone wants, and rarely meets its goals.

At this time in our history government and industry make two fatal errors: Government forgets that full employment greatly increases tax revenues, and industry wants everything for free. If they worked together to serve their respective best interests we'd have full employment with increased productivity. But as it is they conspire, and the result is increased unemployment, greater public debt, with fat profits for industry and politicians.

 

[lustatopia]

"In the universe of free trade there is one, and only one way to create jobs: reduce your country's standard of living so low that your wages are lower than that of other nations. This is why China's workers are getting raises and China owns the world's debt... and why (US) job growth is and always will be sluggish from this point on, in Western nations... that is... short of raising tariffs against China and India..."


Wow, man. The buck stopped with Harry Truman as far as your economic literacy goes. What are your thoughts on returning the a Gold Reserve Standard? See earlier posts.

Just to sum up. The information age US economy is not in direct competition with China or India (yet), so tariffs against them would raise the cost of living, while possibly creating insular markets for various widgets which we could produce inefficiently, with no innovation in unionized workplaces with jobs handed out according to patronage. Talk about going back to the good old days of class warfare.

You would have us all be serfs to whatever hereditary Czar ran our section of the economy. Most of the Czars are already from a single academic family, so to speak. Moreover you would reduce us to competing with China and India at what they are best at rather than continue our own radical technological evolution towards future innovation. That's the only way forward, dude. Into the great unknown.

US job growth will be sluggish only if we increase taxation, regulation, start a trade world war while failing to educate ourselves about 21st century economic science.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

"You cannot create jobs as long as another country is competing against you with rock bottom wages."

You're paradigm is about 100 years past the use-by date. America is not in the business of competing with Mexico or China for manufacturing jobs. We are long past having an industrial based economy. So when that underwear manufacturing plant in Jersey closes and moves to China. Well, that's called an economic dialectic of history. Those laid off workers will have to retrain for some other line of employment. We don't need no stinkin' widget factories. Unless, of course, those widgets can't be produced anywhere else in the world more efficiently.

The driving engine of the US economy since at least the 1970's has NOT been manufacturing widgets, but ideation, creation, innovation, designing and bringing to market better widgets. That's we we do better than anyone else in the world. That's what's made America wealthy.

We then hire chinese business to manufacture. Because that's what they do better than anyone else in the world. Got that? We are NOT in competition with China in a wage war. We are in a global alliance with them, a mutual interdependency. They're our friends. (At least for now.)

The engine of US ideation and innovation drives the whole rest of the economy, just like during the Industrial Age making things out of heavy gauge steel once drove every other section of the US economy. We are the first truly informational based economy on the planet. There is no going back to making widgets and playing zero-sum games with wages, union bosses, strikes, tariffs and trade wars. Might as well order yourself up a couple of battleships and the US cavalry to go open up trade with Macao.

It's full steam ahead into the future and that's the way it has always been.

You, sir, are living in a dream world.

There is nothing for those laid off manufacturing workers to train to. Your innovation jobs that you talk about, are already moving overseas.

The scenario you are pushing here, is not happening. There is no new job boom happening. There are no flood of jobs coming for those who are long term unemployed.

Innovation jobs are moving overseas. You, sir, are clueless. Got that? Good.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

"In the universe of free trade there is one, and only one way to create jobs: reduce your country's standard of living so low that your wages are lower than that of other nations."

----

No, the way to create jobs in a world of global free trade is to focus what you can do better than anyone else. For instance, in Silicon Valley they design computer stuff and software, they do that better than anyone in the world. Wage pressure come from taxes, regulation and local competition, not China.

Incorrect again, sir.

Silicon Valley has lost its jobs to competition from India.

We do computer engineering research in Singapore and other third world nations.

Innovation jobs are leaving the country because innovation labor is cheaper elsewhere.

People in the valley that want to start up a commercial orange grove can't because an acre of land cost a million frigging dollars. Oh, the social injustice of it all.

An acre of land costs a million dollars because of market forces, not the Government.

Meanwhile the people of, say, Merida, Mexico

How about Singapore and Taiwan instead?

can't compete with Silicon Valley in computer design but maybe they can sell them oranges. There is NO direct wage competition between nations at different levels of economic development. Yes, Detriot competes with Munich. That's total fair. China competes with Mexico, fair enough too. London competes as a financial center with NYC. It's all good.

God, you know nothing about economics.

Absolutely nothing.

Please, stop discussing this and crack a newspaper and get up with current events. Stop bothering me with your puerile Von Mises Institute regurgitations. Your garbage is hardly even original thought. I'd not be surprised if this was cut and pasted from somewhere else.

If you find your niche where you are competitive most of the wage pressure comes from onerous taxation and over-regulation. I think we cover that in an earlier lesson.

You were wrong when you said that the first time, and saying it again doesn't make you any less wrong.

Innovation jobs are going overseas. That is one of many fatal flaws in your boringly flimsy arguments.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Just to sum up. The information age US economy is not in direct competition with China or India (yet),

You must be a shut-in. Perhaps this explains why you know and see so little of reality.

The information age US economy has nearly been GUTTED by India. We've lost millions of low, medium and high level (read: research) jobs to India.

India is a direct competitor for high level jobs. You, sir, are frighteningly clueless.

 

[lustatopia]

]Fatal Flaw #1 in your logic, sir: a stronger dollar will send even MORE jobs to China because of the increasing CHEAPNESS of Chinese labor. All that money you think will come of lowering taxes will go right to Chinese workers.

We're NOT in the business of trying to compete with China on wages. If someone can do your job in China cheaper than you can in the states. You're already fucked. Retrain, get a life. America is in the business of doing what we do best. A strong currency is always a double edge sword. Normally those left of center politically prefer a stronger dollar because it increases the wealth of ordinary people, while the widget factory share holders lose export sales volume. Be sure to get your PC dogma in consilience.

Son, you got to get past this zero sum paradigm. Trade can be a win/win. Chinese and the American economies have been growing together. There are imbalances, duh. But lifting chinese workers out of poverty while our economy grows 2 to 4 percent a year for the last 30 years has been good for everyone. Well, I suppose US factory worker wouldn't agree, but hey, did you really think we were going to live in Einsenhower's America forever, Sarah? The reason the Chinese economy is growing faster than ours is because they were much smaller and still are very underdeveloped. A frigging washing machine in China is still every housewife's dream machine. So while they're making like 500 million of them to meet growing local demand, they can supply us with the 1 million replacement washers we'll need next year more efficiently than we can make them in union controlled NJ. Fair enough. Meanwhile we should be developing whatever is going to replace the current generation of washer machines, instead of building redundant ones.

Fatal flaw #2 in your logic: tax breaks for employers won't, and historically has not, resulted in more jobs. They pocket any savings they get from reduced taxes.

Sure. That's why the mattress industry booms when business taxes go down. It all goes straight under the bed. Lower business taxes always lead to job expansions all other things being equal. Look at the flow of businesses towards the southwest from California and the Eastern seaboard. Fool.

Fatal flaw #3 in your logic: the poor already pay no income tax. Yet they still aren't spending as much as they used to.

Strawman alert. The poor should pay no taxes. No one making less than 30,000 (maybe 35,000) should pay income taxes. The recession would end overnight if congress implement massive tax relief. No one is spending as much as they use to because we are living in fear of what the moron in the white house and the idiots in congress are going to fuck up next. mattress sales have gone up though

Fatal flaw #4 in your logic: when you lower taxes you must cut Government services. Cutting Government services means those who enjoy the tax cuts must pay a higher cost of living because what they don't pay in taxes they will now pay in increased private service fees. Classic example: toll roads. And if you think the Post Office is bad wait until you try to send a letter by any of the private services.

That is so stupid I choked on my coffee. Yeah, as if Fed Ex, et al are worse than the US post office. You're gonna love socialized medicine, dude. Essential government services would benefit greatly if all the nonessential fat was cut out. You could make redundant every second federal employee and we wouldn't notice a thing.

 

[lustatopia]

"The information age US economy has nearly been GUTTED by India. We've lost millions of low, medium and high level (read: research) jobs to India."[/I]

You still don't get it, do you? If Indians can compile code or whatever cheaper than Americans can in silicon valley or Austin, TX at Motorola, then those job sectors have become commodified, the skill set made redundant. Hasta la Vista. But it ain't a simply zero sum game. Do you really think a lot of medium and high level tech researcher workers are unemployable? If they were doing jobs that could be done more efficiently in India, they were certainly wasting resources that have now been more productively allocated.

This is where the 20th century industrial class warfare model breaks down. I know lots of high tech workers, only the youngest guys straight out of school make less than 100 grand a year. They all live knowing their skill sets has to keep pace with technological evolution and few expect to be in the same job even 5 years down the road. These aren't exploited workers, they own equity portfolios.

It's not about stasis, job security for life at the Intel plant. It's about the economy as a complex nonlinear system forever in dialectic evolution toward the next higher level, always moving further from equilibrium. Moore's Law applied to innovation as a whole. Technological innovation is accelerating and America has the leading edge.

The fact that India is enter the bottom end of the Information age is great news. If their economy was to stagnate at a third world agrarian level then billions of people continue to live in abject poverty. Their only hope is economic development. Meanwhile, our only hope is to stay ahead of the gap through creative innovation. You can see this in every day widgets like the iMac. Oh, wait, that's so dated already. Apple must be really suffering. No, they innovated their ass to the next gen widget, the iPod, oh wait, shit any factory can make MP3 players now. Apple moves along to the next thing, the iPhone. Then the next and so on. Gosh, all those iMac designers must be unemployed now, right???

Apple is the bleeding edge of consumer appliance design so it's an obvious example, but all through the American economy are little Apples doing nanotech, biotech, batteries, soft, net, marketing solutions that are less high profile. Shit you couldn't even imagine. This is the wave of innovation that is driving the wealth creation in all the other sectors of our economy. BTW, most US jobs are like that hole you wanted dug in Manhattan but had your panties all in a bunch 'cause the Chinese could dig it 10 times cheaper -- in Shanghai! Most jobs can't go overseas. Ever.

You're a bit like a creationist, because all you see is a crumbling stasis and nostalgia... Where really economics is fluid dynamics. Where you see a brick wall, I see a place to install a window. You see a job gone to India as a job lost to America. I see it like Rahm Emanuel correctly sees a crisis -- as an opportunity to do bigger and better things than we would have otherwise have had the man-hours to work on.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

]Fatal Flaw #1 in your logic, sir: a stronger dollar will send even MORE jobs to China because of the increasing CHEAPNESS of Chinese labor. All that money you think will come of lowering taxes will go right to Chinese workers.

We're NOT in the business of trying to compete with China on wages. If someone can do your job in China cheaper than you can in the states. You're already fucked. Retrain, get a life.

Retrain to what? You can't answer that because your Von Mises Cliff Notes doesn't address that question. You can't answer that simple, basic question, and neither can the 6 million long term jobless Americans out there who are trying to find work right now.

We ARE in the business of competing against China on wages. And innovation. China is beating the crap out of us on wages and they're stealing our innovations. This is a painfully known fact. Why are you so ignorant of this?

America is in the business of doing what we do best. A strong currency is always a double edge sword. Normally those left of center politically prefer a stronger dollar because it increases the wealth of ordinary people, while the widget factory share holders lose export sales volume. Be sure to get your PC dogma in consilience.

I, unlike you, am an independent thinker. A strong dollar sends every known species of job that you cannot nail down, overseas. Blue collar jobs. White collar jobs. Manufacturing. RESEARCH. Just in case your Von Mises Glossary doesn't cover this, research = innovation.

I don't care what those left of center have to say. I think for myself. You, sir, should try that for a while. Trust me, it won't hurt as much as you think.

Son, you got to get past this zero sum paradigm.

This economy has proven over the last two years that you, sir, are a fool for continuing to cling to your "plus sum" theory.

Surely I warn you now that when the global Ponzi scheme that is the entire fractional reserve system collapses, and it will within the next 20 years, you will learn the hard way that this is indeed a zero sum game. It only appears to be a plus sum game because of all the opaque shell games that are being played with national debts.

Trade can be a win/win. Chinese and the American economies have been growing together. There are imbalances, duh. But lifting chinese workers out of poverty while our economy grows 2 to 4 percent a year for the last 30 years has been good for everyone. Well, I suppose US factory worker wouldn't agree, but hey, did you really think we were going to live in Einsenhower's America forever, Sarah?

6 million Americans have lost their jobs in order to lift China out of poverty. That in itself stands as a solid factual refutation of your delusional fantasies.

Chinese workers lifting out of poverty will never, ever, ever purchase American goods. We will never benefit from their improvements.

Another fatal flaw in your misguided logic is the fact that China now owns our currency and debt. And in the next 5-10 years, when their sterilization accounts and domestic market come into full swing, they will be able to sell off those assets with impunity. You know what will happen then? A depression for us. By then, they won't need Americans to buy their stuff and prop up their market. We'll just be fucked. Mark my words, China will sell us off.

The reason the Chinese economy is growing faster than ours is because they were much smaller and still are very underdeveloped. A frigging washing machine in China is still every housewife's dream machine. So while they're making like 500 million of them to meet growing local demand, they can supply us with the 1 million replacement washers we'll need next year more efficiently than we can make them in union controlled NJ. Fair enough. Meanwhile we should be developing whatever is going to replace the current generation of washer machines, instead of building redundant ones.

Okay, bright boy, and in your fantasy world, do you have any blueprints for this? Another fatal flaw in your argument - you do not have such blueprints.

And then there's the other fatal flaw - as soon as Americans come up with this make believe next generation of washer machines, they will move production of those machines to China, and China will flood our market with cheaper versions.

Fatal flaw #2 in your logic: tax breaks for employers won't, and historically has not, resulted in more jobs. They pocket any savings they get from reduced taxes.

Sure. That's why the mattress industry booms when business taxes go down. It all goes straight under the bed. Lower business taxes always lead to job expansions all other things being equal.

Cite one example. You can't. Fatal flaw #1.

Fatal flaw #2: Lower taxes only help create more billionaires while working class wages remain stagnant. Lower taxes contribute to the fact that the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay has increased almost twenty fold just since Reagan came along. If that sentence is a little too complex for you, I'll be glad to draw it out for you in crayon.

Fatal flaw #3: Not only do employers pocket the profits from lower taxes, but they invest that money in China, and also into tax havens like the Cayman Islands, which recently went BANKRUPT and now have to beg for a bailout and charge higher taxes. Now stop and re-read that part slowly: nations that lower taxes to the levels you wish, GO BANKRUPT and require BAILOUTS.

Look at the flow of businesses towards the southwest from California and the Eastern seaboard. Fool.

You're such a simpleton. More jobs left California to India and China than went to the Eastern seaboard. Because of their lower wages.

Fatal flaw #3 in your logic: the poor already pay no income tax. Yet they still aren't spending as much as they used to.

Strawman alert.

The term strawman does not mean what you think it does.

The poor should pay no taxes. No one making less than 30,000 (maybe 35,000) should pay income taxes. The recession would end overnight if congress implement massive tax relief. No one is spending as much as they use to because we are living in fear of what the moron in the white house and the idiots in congress are going to fuck up next. mattress sales have gone up though

Your argument was that lowering taxes will increase discretionary spending. I cited an example where you are clearly wrong: an example of a population that pays ZERO taxes, but is now spending less than before.

The recession would not end overnight. Cutting taxes to the level that you wish would create new problems. I already cited for you the example of two big tax havens - the Cayman Islands and Dubai - that went bankrupt trying your system. There is also a third tax haven that recently went bankrupt, but I cannot find that link right now.

Fatal flaw #4 in your logic: when you lower taxes you must cut Government services. Cutting Government services means those who enjoy the tax cuts must pay a higher cost of living because what they don't pay in taxes they will now pay in increased private service fees. Classic example: toll roads. And if you think the Post Office is bad wait until you try to send a letter by any of the private services.

That is so stupid I choked on my coffee. Yeah, as if Fed Ex, et al are worse than the US post office.

If it is so stupid then why are you unable to formulate a rational counter argument? Even if Fedex or UPS could send you a letter, they would not do so at the Post Office's prices.

You're gonna love socialized medicine, dude.

Every other country that has socialized medicine loves it. So much that Canada, England, and every other nation that has socialized medicine, absolutely refuses to touch our private system with a 39 and a half foot pole. Does it ever occur to you to ask why it is that the citizens of every nation with socialized medicine would rather RIOT than switch to our system? Because our system SUCKS. It is the PARIAH of the civilized world.

We have AMERICANS leaving the country to seek organ transplants and medical treatments in other nations. Read the documentation I've provided - Americans are going to FRANCE, a socialist country, for cheaper medical care. Does any of this even compute with you?

If America's system is so superior then why does the entire civilized world despise it, and why are Americans leaving here to go elsewhere for medical care?

Essential government services would benefit greatly if all the nonessential fat was cut out. You could make redundant every second federal employee and we wouldn't notice a thing.

You, sir, are delusional. You have no facts to back up what you are claiming.

You have posted a long list of unproven, irrational and logically flawed arguments for which you have brought absolutely no documentation. You have no factual basis for what you say. You are living in a fantasy world.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

"The information age US economy has nearly been GUTTED by India. We've lost millions of low, medium and high level (read: research) jobs to India."[/I]

You still don't get it, do you? If Indians can compile code or whatever cheaper than Americans can in silicon valley or Austin, TX at Motorola, then those job sectors have become commodified, the skill set made redundant. Hasta la Vista. But it ain't a simply zero sum game. Do you really think a lot of medium and high level tech researcher workers are unemployable?

They are unemployed. Long term. You have failed to answer this before but I will ask you again: what is there for them to train for now?

What jobs will ever be available for the 6 million long term unemployed Americans out there now? You seem not to be able to answer this.

If they were doing jobs that could be done more efficiently in India, they were certainly wasting resources that have now been more productively allocated.

Too bad for those 6 million long term unemployed, eh?

Good move. So when they riot or starve because there are no jobs, then what?

This is where the 20th century industrial class warfare model breaks down. I know lots of high tech workers, only the youngest guys straight out of school make less than 100 grand a year. They all live knowing their skill sets has to keep pace with technological evolution and few expect to be in the same job even 5 years down the road. These aren't exploited workers, they own equity portfolios.

And how many people are they? Not many. If you train for this field now you will not get a job.

It's not about stasis, job security for life at the Intel plant. It's about the economy as a complex nonlinear system forever in dialectic evolution toward the next higher level, always moving further from equilibrium. Moore's Law applied to innovation as a whole. Technological innovation is accelerating and America has the leading edge.

But this means nothing for the 6 million people out there who have no jobs and no hope of a job. You still have failed to show us what skills these 6 million people can learn that will get them a job.

Are you honestly dumb enough to think that the job market will support 6 million more "innovators"? Balderdash, sir. The vast majority of them will wash out and still be jobless. What percentage of inventors do you think make a good living off of innovating?

It is a zero sum game. Worse than that, it is a negative sum game. And it is also a game of musical chairs. There always has to be a winner and a loser. Win-win is nothing more than an economic fantasy.

Before you go off half cocked at me again, little boy, I've got 6 million examples why this is, at best, a zero sum game. What you do not have is any idea how those people will ever get jobs - and that is why your argument is a steaming pile of delusional bullshit.

The fact that India is enter the bottom end of the Information age is great news. If their economy was to stagnate at a third world agrarian level then billions of people continue to live in abject poverty. Their only hope is economic development. Meanwhile, our only hope is to stay ahead of the gap through creative innovation. You can see this in every day widgets like the iMac. Oh, wait, that's so dated already. Apple must be really suffering. No, they innovated their ass to the next gen widget, the iPod, oh wait, shit any factory can make MP3 players now. Apple moves along to the next thing, the iPhone. Then the next and so on. Gosh, all those iMac designers must be unemployed now, right???

Sigh. Your ignorance is so great it has its own gravitational field. And like a black hole your ignorance distorts knowledge into a singularity of sheer inanity from which it cannot escape.

Even if iMac designers became iPod designers and then iPhone designers, the jobs to MAKE those devices left to China.

Now how many people do you think will ever get a job as a product designer. We have 6 million long term unemployed Americans out there. Do you think there are even 60,000 product design jobs for them? Do you think that if 60,000 of them became hard core innovators, that they can make a living off of that?

No. Absolutely not. And you have absolutely no facts to back up any of your deluded wild eyed claims that you might make to the contrary.

Apple is the bleeding edge of consumer appliance design so it's an obvious example, but all through the American economy are little Apples doing nanotech, biotech, batteries, soft, net, marketing solutions that are less high profile. Shit you couldn't even imagine.

And all those jobs are going overseas. ESPECIALLY biotech research.

A tiny handful of innovators - a pathetically slim percentage of everyone trying to innovate - are making money, and everyone else is being left out in the cold.

This is the wave of innovation that is driving the wealth creation in all the other sectors of our economy. BTW, most US jobs are like that hole you wanted dug in Manhattan but had your panties all in a bunch 'cause the Chinese could dig it 10 times cheaper -- in Shanghai! Most jobs can't go overseas. Ever.

And if your delusional reasoning was true, then why do we have 6 million long term unemployed, who can't get into these jobs that can't go overseas?

You're a bit like a creationist, because all you see is a crumbling stasis and nostalgia... Where really economics is fluid dynamics. Where you see a brick wall, I see a place to install a window. You see a job gone to India as a job lost to America. I see it like Rahm Emanuel correctly sees a crisis -- as an opportunity to do bigger and better things than we would have otherwise have had the man-hours to work on.

Allow me to explain to you why a job gone to India is a job lost to America. That job gone to India is not being replaced by anything new. We have six million permanently unemployable Americans out there because there is no new industry coming. None. Zero. ZILCH. NADA!!!

If YOU want to be an idiot and claim that something new is coming that will bring us jobs, then spit it out. I'm tired of calling you out on this and watching you duck and dodge. Be a man, and tell us what that is.

You can't. We have reached the end of the road for new job booms. The new waves of jobs will come SPARSELY, and will be gone almost overnight. We will NOT go below an 8% hard core U3 JOBLESS rate or a 13% U6 jobless rate as long as we continue to listen to head-in-the-sand ostriches like you.

And when those 6 million people get tired of listening to the bullshit that you right wing laissez-faire morons keep selling, they're going to set off an avalanche. Which means the REST of us will jettison your free market fantasy and start slapping TARIFFS on India and China.

And then we will start putting Americans back to work.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Yes, this is a long read, and lustatopia probably is not literate enough to comprehend it... but still.

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp226/

"The Offshoring of Innovation"

It totally dashes to pieces lustatopia's beliefs that our future lies in innovation. Innovation is moving overseas.

American companies are complaining that we don't put out enough of a high tech workforce and yet high tech workers - engineers, no less - are unemployed.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Neither the chinks nor the wogs have invented anything new since about 700 AD. Theyre peasants and thugs and paper shufflers.

What corporations hate about America are the taxes on everything, the red-tape, regulations out the ass, affirmative-action asshats, and entitlement addicted slackers.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Neither the chinks nor the wogs have invented anything new since about 700 AD. Theyre peasants and thugs and paper shufflers.

What corporations hate about America are the taxes on everything, the red-tape, regulations out the ass, affirmative-action asshats, and entitlement addicted slackers.

That's funny, considering that Corporations create a TON of red tape. They push for half of these regulations, ESPECIALLY the ones people consider to be excessive, to keep competitors away. As for affirmative action... well, whites won't be in control of America after 2050. You might want that law in place to protect you. Slackers? What else is there to do when there are no jobs? People don't slack when they can find work.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LJ

Yep. The corporations wanna limit competition regardless of where they do business. Its consistent of them to make stuff in China and regulate competitors from the arena in America.

Whites will always run America for the same reason blacks will always dominate the NBA. Its in the blood.

Americans were born to wool-gather, feather their nests, and gild bricks.