Unemployment. Honest debate.

[Minimalist]

How would you compete with nations like India & China & still keep a decent quality of life?

That is not the concern of the upper 1%. They look for a model in which they can pay as little as possible and if someone can't live on that amount they'll hire someone else.

They look with envy on the Robber Baron period of the late 19th century...until Teddy Roosevelt broke up their trusts!

[paintpooper]

Thats why wouldn't our economy be better in some sectors without competition. Like energy distribution/food. All the worlds natural resources are all of ours, not certain peoples to control and profit from. It should be given to all citizens of the world in the most economical fashion available.

Sure you can still have competition with cars/phones/trampolines they are not bare essentials to life. But my thinking is any product should be built to the best possible standards that it can be, but in today's economy it does not work that way, things have to be replaceable as to keep the consumer market going, its cyclical.

Back to the machine talk.
Yes it takes men to operate control transport and maintain those machines. But machines will always be more efficient and precise than man. So a well built machine even after factoring all human facts should still produce x amount more product then it takes 1 man to create. So lets say back to my original scenario, 10 men 1 machine. Make it 1 machine replaces 5 men, to take in account the machine maintenance and other factors. You still have a loss of 5 men, and compounding that you still are producing more product with less manpower.
I think it all just boils down to man having more free time while our technology has allowed us to do other things besides monotonous tasks.

For instance my job, I'm in IT work. I have automated so many of my tasks with machines, I almost just monitor the automation. Do I have to sit here all day and make sure things run ok? Not really. But that is how our world is set up now. Could I do this job from home? Of course I could. But the world is not set up that way. Our technology is surpassing the current world culture of man. No wonder unemployment is a huge problem, we produce more than enough for all the people, without all the people having to work... IMO.

[Anomalocaris]

Like when the quality of Asian cars eventually caught up & surpassed American cars?

Yes.

How would you compete with nations like India & China & still keep a decent quality of life?

If you don't compete with nations like India and China, in the long run you would be even more sure that your quality of life will pitch through the floor as they invest in competitive industries while we invest in subsidizing uncompetitive ones, until and eventually they do everything that create serious value more efficiently and better than we do.

What do you propose to do then, shut the nation up like a giant version of autarchic North Korea to avoid competition from the now comprehensively superior efficiency of those countries?

If you think competing with China and India now will hurt quality of life, try quality of life that would be left to us by, say 2050, when we might only get to eek out living sweep those spots on the floor of Chinese factories that even Chinese robotic factory machines can't be bothered to wipe because they could literally do everything else more efficiently then we can.

---

Competition again. Okay, here's the deal. You cannot compete with someone in anything, ever, if that person is not following the same rulebook.

Let's say you're playing chess, normal rules apply for you, but your opponent's pieces all act as queens. Compete? I think not.

People have no choice but follow the same fundamental economic value rule book, even if they can choose to not follow the same legal rule book. The fundamental economic rule book says efficiency in value creation eventually wins, and given limited resources one ought to invest only in those areas where one has the maximum advantage in value creation compare to one's competitors. We have no advantage over the Chinese in making baubbles, so stop subsidizing baubble makers to baubblogists can make a living wage. We have advantage over Chinese in making airplanes, so let's consider letting recalcitrant baubblogists starve so as to be able to invest in even more efficiency in making airplanes. That way maybe some baubblogists would even change careers. This is the fundamental rule.

The legal rule simply says we want to protect our advantage in making airplanes by not letting Chinese steal the blue prints for our airplane assembly lines. Which is fine. But it doesn't change the fact that we should not be investing in baubbles. Even more importantly, should the Chinese steal our airplane assembly line blue prints, we can't fix that by shifting investment from airplanes to subsidizing baubble makers. We should still starve the baubble makers so as to reinvent an even better airplane assembly line more quickly.[/i]

[The Grand Nudger]

The same fundamental economic rule book (the one you are suggesting) doesn't lead anywhere happy. We've been down that road, and as many posters have already pointed out, it leads to slavery. If "whosoever shall work for the cheapest" is the whole of the law, it's a shitty law. You keep referring to high tech manufacturing as though there isn't somebody in Korea that this has already been outsourced too. There isn't any job anywhere that someone won't do cheaper than you. That minimum wage laws are constantly broken in spite of the penalties associated shows that business is willing to absorb the risk. Your dream of an America without minimum wage laws is already here. Is it working out the way you expected?

---

I understand your focus on competition. Believe me I love competition. I was merely trying to give some perspective on our situation with China RE production. We have a set of rules which bind us. They will not follow these rules. That's not competition. Why do we have these rules? Centuries of bargaining from the point of people as property to today. I'd be lying if I said I agreed with all of them, but things like a minimum standard of living are hard to argue against. Minimum wage itself is a compromise between "no wage" and "living wage".

[Anomalocaris]

With only a little exaggeration, you might say the same about the law of gravity.

It may not by your standard lead to happiness, but it will surely make you sadder than you are willing to imagine now if you try to defy it by what amounts to little more than wish-thinking fiat without understanding how it lays behind the every aspect of resource and wealth.

[reverendjeremiah]

With only a little exaggeration, you might say the same about the law of gravity.

It may not by your standard lead to happiness, but it will surely make you sadder than you are willing to imagine now if you try to defy it by what amounts to little more than wish-thinking fiat without understanding how it lays behind the every aspect of resource and wealth.

Why dont you compare economics with economies..not gravity?

Fact #1 - China receives MASSIVE amounts of foreign aid from many countries, especially economically wracked USA. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid...c_of_China)

Fact#2 - Some estimates put Chinas unemployment at 10% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_...nd_welfare)

Fact#3 - China is a welfare/socialist state that guarentees employment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_...nd_welfare)

So..while you wax poetic over comparing apples and oranges and rubbing your greed into everyones faces showing how much of a selfish ass you can be... an actual, SERIOUS discussion on economics is happening on this thread.



I personally think a good start on fixing unemployment would be to stop foreign aid, at least for the moment. We should take the aid money and use it to aid ourselves, thus keeping our dollar on American shores.

[Anomalocaris]

Fact#2 - Some estimates put Chinas unemployment at 10% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_...nd_welfare)

Fact#3 - China is a welfare/socialist state that guarentees employment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_...nd_welfare)

What do you personally think about the fact that one need but to check your assertions, from adjacent lines in the same thread no less, against each other to see how deeply, uhem, you've thought about these things, checked them out, sorted out the contradictions, and evaluated their implications?

[Jaysyn]

What do you propose to do then

Actually, I asked you first Chuck. Should be interesting to see how many words it takes you to say "I don't know".

[Anomalocaris]

What do you propose to do then

Actually, I asked you first Chuck. Should be interesting to see how many words it takes you to say "I don't know".

What I know depends on whether you ask what we should do now,

or what we should do then, when having continued to subsidize losing trades and industries and people who will not redeploy themselves from these, we find the Chinese have become better in just about everything that creates value, and every one of our trades and industry have become losers.

What we should do now is to:

1. Outsource to the Chinese and Indians those fields which could be outsourced in which the Chinese and Indians are already as efficient or more efficient then we are, so we no longer commit extra resource to proping them up when we could obtain all the value they can provide while paying the Chinese less.

2. Throrughly evaluate which field we still hold an advantage for the time being over the Chinese and Indians, but which in the long run is a lost cause because it would be very difficult for us to keep our lead very long no matter what we do. Milk these industries for all they are worth while we have them, try to build some sort of fundation so when we do lose our lead, we are in a position to outsource them in such a way as to get a share of the profit, but wind down any long term domestic investment in them.

3. Indentify which industries which, though concerted action and cooperative outlook, we can conceivably leverage our headstart to maintain an superiority over the Chinese and Indians indefinitely. Redirect as much investment as possible as as appropriate to the relaive value of these industry so as maximize the chance that we will actually maintain out lead indefinitely.

4. Restructure coorporate governance to reward management not for trying to blindly keep jobs in the united states, not for blindly outsourcing whenever there is short term gain to be realized, but for maintaining and investing in the long term only in those industries where our headstart can economically be maintained.

We are no longer a country so rich in resources and capital that we can profligately spend competitioninto oblivion and then reap the rewards later. We must now pick our battles carefully.

What we should do then:

Learn to say "yes sir" in Chinese and master the art of fixing the plumbing in second rate Chinese hotels., and count on the fact that this is not the end of the world, that economic superiority come and go, great powers rise and fall, and in a century or two, the Chinese may also dissipate away their superiority to give us, along with many others, another shot.

[The Grand Nudger]

Jesus christ man. Time to throw in the towel?