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Post by will on Nov 11, 2009 13:01:00 GMT -5
The criminally greedy will always be the criminally greedy. I suspect there was a fair amount of attempted reinflation during the Depression, too. It is now a matter of how it all gets regulated, and if it gets regulated.
It is going to take a number of years of 4+ percent growth to put a serious dent in unemployment after the last couple of years of disaster.
If I remember correctly, the incumbent party does pretty well in an election cycle if the economy is growing by 3.4 or 4.3 percent. I just can't remember the exact number. When it is right at the number, you have an election like 2000. My guess, based on the results in Virginia and New Jersey, the number is 4.3%. If the worst is behind us, we may see the magic number by the time for the 2010 election cycle.
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Post by arozanski on Nov 11, 2009 13:04:07 GMT -5
The criminally greedy will always be the criminally greedy. I suspect there was a fair amount of attempted reinflation during the Depression, too. It is now a matter of how it all gets regulated, and if it gets regulated. It is going to take a number of years of 4+ percent growth to put a serious dent in unemployment after the last couple of years of disaster. If I remember correctly, the incumbent party does pretty well in an election cycle if the economy is growing by 3.4 or 4.3 percent. I just can't remember the exact number. When it is right at the number, you have an election like 2000. My guess, based on the results in Virginia and New Jersey, the number is 4.3%. If the worst is behind us, we may see the magic number by the time for the 2010 election cycle. What are you assuming to be the driving factor for (new) employment? What area(s)?
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Post by will on Nov 11, 2009 19:55:33 GMT -5
The criminally greedy will always be the criminally greedy. I suspect there was a fair amount of attempted reinflation during the Depression, too. It is now a matter of how it all gets regulated, and if it gets regulated. It is going to take a number of years of 4+ percent growth to put a serious dent in unemployment after the last couple of years of disaster. If I remember correctly, the incumbent party does pretty well in an election cycle if the economy is growing by 3.4 or 4.3 percent. I just can't remember the exact number. When it is right at the number, you have an election like 2000. My guess, based on the results in Virginia and New Jersey, the number is 4.3%. If the worst is behind us, we may see the magic number by the time for the 2010 election cycle. What are you assuming to be the driving factor for (new) employment? What area(s)? It was a generic comment. I honestly don't know what will be the driving factor for new employment. I have been in and around construction for so long, I'm a bit limited in knowledge of anything else. That said, I will be willing to be a whole lot of new companies will be born from this recession, and they will begin to hire people as the recession moderates. I wouldn't expect much from larger companies. They are run by CEOs who like the 40,000 foot view. They tend to look down on the tops of clouds and think it is sunny.
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Post by arozanski on Nov 12, 2009 8:05:11 GMT -5
What are you assuming to be the driving factor for (new) employment? What area(s)? It was a generic comment. I honestly don't know what will be the driving factor for new employment. I have been in and around construction for so long, I'm a bit limited in knowledge of anything else. That said, I will be willing to be a whole lot of new companies will be born from this recession, and they will begin to hire people as the recession moderates. I wouldn't expect much from larger companies. They are run by CEOs who like the 40,000 foot view. They tend to look down on the tops of clouds and think it is sunny. I tend to be pessimistic. Unless R&D takes root (to a greater extent), I don't see much in the way of new opportunities (which is why I'd be a lousy entrepreneur). Traditional manufacturing is gone, software/hardware is overseas, auto manufacture is dying, air transport is contracting, etc. I hope it changes course, but the history of money seems to be finding the low point in labor costs and transport, while finding the high point in customer base. We lost the first point, and the second is receding quickly.
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Post by flylooper on Nov 12, 2009 9:44:31 GMT -5
It was a generic comment. I honestly don't know what will be the driving factor for new employment. I have been in and around construction for so long, I'm a bit limited in knowledge of anything else. That said, I will be willing to be a whole lot of new companies will be born from this recession, and they will begin to hire people as the recession moderates. I wouldn't expect much from larger companies. They are run by CEOs who like the 40,000 foot view. They tend to look down on the tops of clouds and think it is sunny. I tend to be pessimistic. Unless R&D takes root (to a greater extent), I don't see much in the way of new opportunities (which is why I'd be a lousy entrepreneur). Traditional manufacturing is gone, software/hardware is overseas, auto manufacture is dying, air transport is contracting, etc. I hope it changes course, but the history of money seems to be finding the low point in labor costs and transport, while finding the high point in customer base. We lost the first point, and the second is receding quickly. Manufacturing must be re-established. Here the Administration is trying to get a green revolution started and we here about wind farms and solar collection farms and ALL the technology (Windmills and solar electric panels) are coming from China and Europe! This is fucking crazy!)
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Post by arozanski on Nov 12, 2009 10:09:56 GMT -5
I tend to be pessimistic. Unless R&D takes root (to a greater extent), I don't see much in the way of new opportunities (which is why I'd be a lousy entrepreneur). Traditional manufacturing is gone, software/hardware is overseas, auto manufacture is dying, air transport is contracting, etc. I hope it changes course, but the history of money seems to be finding the low point in labor costs and transport, while finding the high point in customer base. We lost the first point, and the second is receding quickly. Manufacturing must be re-established. Here the Administration is trying to get a green revolution started and we here about wind farms and solar collection farms and ALL the technology (Windmills and solar electric panels) are coming from China and Europe! This is fucking crazy!) This point addresses my R&D comment - the tech needs to originate here, and be available for licensing globally, rather than the other way around.
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Post by bizarro on Nov 12, 2009 11:09:41 GMT -5
US laborers cost too much. That gap in competition has to be bridged somehow.
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Post by kitkat on Nov 12, 2009 12:21:53 GMT -5
Labor cost is an interesting topic, especially when combined with profit margins (reported or real). here's a nugget--makita has had a US production facility in the US for decades...yet from 1999 to 2003 (latest info i could find) their chinese production more than doubled (with continued similar growth forecast) to over 1/3 of their entire production. IOW, the labor costs dropped by a factor of at least ten times (if not more) yet--are their tool prices any less expensive? Of course not. The difference is pocketed in higher profits, much of them hidden in increased expenses--like executive compensation.
So what is "saved" by decreasing labor costs by moving production to slave labor countries like china is not necessarily passed onto the consumer-- but instead is used to further enrich (and expand) the parent corps. The take away from this is not that US produced goods are not (or could not be) profitable, even with our higher labor costs etc, but that the profit margin for the corps is much greater if slave labor is used instead.
Bottom line: offshoring is all about corp greed. Period. By now the corps are used to the obese nets that slave labor enables and taking them off that crack is..well...like taking anyone off crack. Ain't gonna happen without a big fat nasty intervention. Since that won't happen (no political will) we can just get used to downward pressure on wages generally, continued and accelerating offshoring and fatter corp bottomlines accompanied by continued merger mania. No corp is going to make anything in the US --even at minimum wage--when they can make the same stiff in china for less than 75cents an hour (which was the prevailing chinese manufacturing wage, bsed on a mythical 40 hour week--they wish!-- in 2004)
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Post by jeromeoneil on Nov 12, 2009 12:26:35 GMT -5
US laborers cost too much. That gap in competition has to be bridged somehow. That gap will be closed when we return to feudalism.
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Post by arozanski on Nov 12, 2009 12:26:50 GMT -5
Labor cost is an interesting topic, especially when combined with profit margins (reported or real). here's a nugget--makita has had a US production facility in the US for decades...yet from 1999 to 2003 (latest info i could find) their chinese production more than doubled (with continued similar growth forecast) to over 1/3 of their entire production. IOW, the labor costs dropped by a factor of at least ten times (if not more) yet--are their tool prices any less expensive? Of course not. The difference is pocketed in higher profits, much of them hidden in increased expenses--like executive compensation. So what is "saved" by decreasing labor costs by moving production to slave labor countries like china is not necessarily passed onto the consumer-- but instead is used to further enrich (and expand) the parent corps. The take away from this is not that US produced goods are not (or could not be) profitable, even with our higher labor costs etc, but that the profit margin for the corps is much greater if slave labor is used instead. Bottom line: offshoring is all about corp greed. Period. By now the corps are used to the obese nets that slave labor enables and taking them off that crack is..well...like taking anyone off crack. Ain't gonna happen without a big fat nasty intervention. Since that won't happen (no political will) we can just get used to downward pressure on wages generally, continued and accelerating offshoring and fatter corp bottomlines accompanied by continued merger mania. No corp is going to make anything in the US --even at minimum wage--when they can make the same stiff in china for less than 75cents an hour (which was the prevailing chinese manufacturing wage, bsed on a mythical 40 hour week--they wish!-- in 2004) I do not think anyone can argue against this (intelligently, at least). But what to do? Only a couple options, as I see it. 1) Americans need to receive much smaller paychecks, bringing labor costs back inline. Can't happen, though, unless prices fall accordingly, along with government spending (need to reduce tax burdens). 2) The rest of the world needs to raise labor costs to even out the disparities. Probably will happen, but in what time frame? My guess - 50 to 100 years. And will the paychecks increase enough to level out standard-of-living? Doubtful. My limited knowledge of history indicates the globe is heading towards universal serfdom, aided by modern technology.
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Post by flylooper on Nov 12, 2009 12:38:42 GMT -5
Labor cost is an interesting topic, especially when combined with profit margins (reported or real). here's a nugget--makita has had a US production facility in the US for decades...yet from 1999 to 2003 (latest info i could find) their chinese production more than doubled (with continued similar growth forecast) to over 1/3 of their entire production. IOW, the labor costs dropped by a factor of at least ten times (if not more) yet--are their tool prices any less expensive? Of course not. The difference is pocketed in higher profits, much of them hidden in increased expenses--like executive compensation. So what is "saved" by decreasing labor costs by moving production to slave labor countries like china is not necessarily passed onto the consumer-- but instead is used to further enrich (and expand) the parent corps. The take away from this is not that US produced goods are not (or could not be) profitable, even with our higher labor costs etc, but that the profit margin for the corps is much greater if slave labor is used instead. Bottom line: offshoring is all about corp greed. Period. By now the corps are used to the obese nets that slave labor enables and taking them off that crack is..well...like taking anyone off crack. Ain't gonna happen without a big fat nasty intervention. Since that won't happen (no political will) we can just get used to downward pressure on wages generally, continued and accelerating offshoring and fatter corp bottomlines accompanied by continued merger mania. No corp is going to make anything in the US --even at minimum wage--when they can make the same stiff in china for less than 75cents an hour (which was the prevailing chinese manufacturing wage, bsed on a mythical 40 hour week--they wish!-- in 2004) I agree completely, Kit. It's the final nail in the coffin of organized labor. It was labor which got working stiffs middle class wages. It was "management" which has taken more than 30 years to finally extricate themselves from, i.e. union contracts. The closed shop is a thing of the past. The pendulum has swung so far to the right that we've sown the seeds of our own destruction. If no one consumes with lousy wages, and no one can get credit to consume, the whole thing stops, seems to me. Makita, to use your example, just moves to another country to sell stuff to, I guess. Globalism, like captalism, doesn't work without any kind of oversight.
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Post by jeromeoneil on Nov 12, 2009 12:44:55 GMT -5
Labor cost is an interesting topic, especially when combined with profit margins (reported or real). here's a nugget--makita has had a US production facility in the US for decades...yet from 1999 to 2003 (latest info i could find) their chinese production more than doubled (with continued similar growth forecast) to over 1/3 of their entire production. IOW, the labor costs dropped by a factor of at least ten times (if not more) yet--are their tool prices any less expensive? Of course not. The difference is pocketed in higher profits, much of them hidden in increased expenses--like executive compensation. So what is "saved" by decreasing labor costs by moving production to slave labor countries like china is not necessarily passed onto the consumer-- but instead is used to further enrich (and expand) the parent corps. The take away from this is not that US produced goods are not (or could not be) profitable, even with our higher labor costs etc, but that the profit margin for the corps is much greater if slave labor is used instead. Bottom line: offshoring is all about corp greed. Period. By now the corps are used to the obese nets that slave labor enables and taking them off that crack is..well...like taking anyone off crack. Ain't gonna happen without a big fat nasty intervention. Since that won't happen (no political will) we can just get used to downward pressure on wages generally, continued and accelerating offshoring and fatter corp bottomlines accompanied by continued merger mania. No corp is going to make anything in the US --even at minimum wage--when they can make the same stiff in china for less than 75cents an hour (which was the prevailing chinese manufacturing wage, bsed on a mythical 40 hour week--they wish!-- in 2004) I do not think anyone can argue against this (intelligently, at least). But what to do? Only a couple options, as I see it. 1) Americans need to receive much smaller paychecks, bringing labor costs back inline. Can't happen, though, unless prices fall accordingly, along with government spending (need to reduce tax burdens). 2) The rest of the world needs to raise labor costs to even out the disparities. Probably will happen, but in what time frame? My guess - 50 to 100 years. And will the paychecks increase enough to level out standard-of-living? Doubtful. My limited knowledge of history indicates the globe is heading towards universal serfdom, aided by modern technology. 3) We add a massive import tax to anything coming into the country from another country that does not at least meet our standards when it comes to workplace safety, labor conditions, and civil rights recognition. We can't regress to the rest of the world. We need to bring the rest of the world up to our level.
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Post by arozanski on Nov 12, 2009 12:48:03 GMT -5
I do not think anyone can argue against this (intelligently, at least). But what to do? Only a couple options, as I see it. 1) Americans need to receive much smaller paychecks, bringing labor costs back inline. Can't happen, though, unless prices fall accordingly, along with government spending (need to reduce tax burdens). 2) The rest of the world needs to raise labor costs to even out the disparities. Probably will happen, but in what time frame? My guess - 50 to 100 years. And will the paychecks increase enough to level out standard-of-living? Doubtful. My limited knowledge of history indicates the globe is heading towards universal serfdom, aided by modern technology. 3) We add a massive import tax to anything coming into the country from another country that does not at least meet our standards when it comes to workplace safety, labor conditions, and civil rights recognition. We can't regress to the rest of the world. We need to bring the rest of the world up to our level. That may or may not lead to #2 in my original post, but also - what about retaliation? Or do we not export enough now for it to matter?
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Post by flylooper on Nov 12, 2009 12:48:26 GMT -5
Labor cost is an interesting topic, especially when combined with profit margins (reported or real). here's a nugget--makita has had a US production facility in the US for decades...yet from 1999 to 2003 (latest info i could find) their chinese production more than doubled (with continued similar growth forecast) to over 1/3 of their entire production. IOW, the labor costs dropped by a factor of at least ten times (if not more) yet--are their tool prices any less expensive? Of course not. The difference is pocketed in higher profits, much of them hidden in increased expenses--like executive compensation. So what is "saved" by decreasing labor costs by moving production to slave labor countries like china is not necessarily passed onto the consumer-- but instead is used to further enrich (and expand) the parent corps. The take away from this is not that US produced goods are not (or could not be) profitable, even with our higher labor costs etc, but that the profit margin for the corps is much greater if slave labor is used instead. Bottom line: offshoring is all about corp greed. Period. By now the corps are used to the obese nets that slave labor enables and taking them off that crack is..well...like taking anyone off crack. Ain't gonna happen without a big fat nasty intervention. Since that won't happen (no political will) we can just get used to downward pressure on wages generally, continued and accelerating offshoring and fatter corp bottomlines accompanied by continued merger mania. No corp is going to make anything in the US --even at minimum wage--when they can make the same stiff in china for less than 75cents an hour (which was the prevailing chinese manufacturing wage, bsed on a mythical 40 hour week--they wish!-- in 2004) I do not think anyone can argue against this (intelligently, at least). But what to do? Only a couple options, as I see it. 1) Americans need to receive much smaller paychecks, bringing labor costs back inline. Can't happen, though, unless prices fall accordingly, along with government spending (need to reduce tax burdens). 2) The rest of the world needs to raise labor costs to even out the disparities. Probably will happen, but in what time frame? My guess - 50 to 100 years. And will the paychecks increase enough to level out standard-of-living? Doubtful. My limited knowledge of history indicates the globe is heading towards universal serfdom, aided by modern technology. The globalist argument was that as the standard of living for low wage countries rose, so would wages. It hasn't happened, obviously. As long as the supply of labor is greater than the need for it, wages will continue to be depressed. China will ALWAYS have too much manpower! The only way to mitigate that is through collective bargaining. And that isn't going to happen in a dictatorship like China. When I was importing fruit and vegetables from Mexico and Central America, the minimum wage in Mexico was 4 dollars a day! Even with cheap illegal labor in the States, growers in the US couldn't compete. So they got out of the business. Worse, acreage which was put to crops for export led to shortfalls in primary crops in Mexico, like corn (for tortillas)- which led to importing corn by the Mexicans, bought from traders like Archer Daniels Midland or Cargill. Now that we're making ethanol from corn, the price of corn has gone through the ceiling. (We're making fuel from food crops! WHAT?) This will be a strain on the Mexican economy for quite I while, I would think. IOW....things are really fucked up.
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Post by jeromeoneil on Nov 12, 2009 12:51:45 GMT -5
That may or may not lead to #2 in my original post, but also - what about retaliation? Or do we not export enough now for it to matter? Well, the good news is that everyone still wants to do business in America, so we have some pull there, so I don't worry about retaliation. Leveling out the trade balance is what has to happen. Right now we import damn near everything, and export next to nothing, because we don't make anything to export.
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