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What really led to the decrease in working class wages ?


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2020 Mar 7, 11:18am   1,444 views  8 comments

by marcus   ➕follow (6)   💰tip   ignore  

I would rank the factors as follows.

1) Technology

2) Women joining the workforce en masse

3) Globalization (in large part not just what we make for our own consumption - but what we manufacture a sell to the rest of the world - i.e. how we compete in the globalmarket place which is not going away) )

4) The loss of unions for manufacturing

Blaming globalization alone is a political argument more than a logical one. The jobs that "went to China" is sort of a misnomer, because much of the human labor involved in making some things cheaper in china or Vietnam, or wherever, is very low paying types of labor. Meanwhile much of the decrease in decent paying domestic manufacturing jobs is more attributable to technology than it is to "China" making the products cheaper over there.

Because the 4 factors above all exist, the overly simplistic argument that we are trading off of cheap goods for American consumers as we lose good paying jobs in the U.S.is mostly a lie.

It is true though, that when competing with Asian countries to sell many types of products, that is selling to the rest of the world, we don't compete as well as we used to. Isolating ourselves would not address our competitiveness in global markets at all.

We should have bipartisan universally agreed on ways that we are trying to improve our competitiveness. Technology and education would be a place to invest. As for money games, trade wars ? These are strange and complex times. It's wise to not obsess about the wrong causes to justify having Trump as our leader.








The manufacturing jobs graph looks like its down 50% it actually down about 20% from it's highs. Sure, some of this can be attributed to China out competing us as they sell so much to the rest of the world. We need to figure out how to do better competing with them, and stopping them when they cheat. But the global marketplace is there. If we isolated ourselves, what kind of economic powerhouse would asia become then ? Would not most of the rest of the world still be "globalized" ?

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1   HeadSet   2020 Mar 7, 12:40pm  

The part of "Globalization" people object to is not trade itself, it is when the comparative advantage is slave labor and lax pollution laws. The US and European markets should be shut off to manufacturers with such low standards on workers and environment.

It's wise to not obsess about the wrong causes to justify having Trump as our leader.

It is also wise not to downgrade Trumps efforts and successes just because you do not like Trump as a leader.
2   marcus   2020 Mar 7, 12:58pm  

HeadSet says
It is also wise not to downgrade Trumps efforts and successes just because you do not like Trump as a leader.


I'm not of the opinion that tarriffs generally work. The consensus in the economics world is that they generally don't work. They simply lead to counter measures for China and others. Tarriffs seem to be simply another political move by Trump, to gain power. He likes doing stuff, so all of his cucks can say what a real mover and shaker he is.

Economics, data analysis, mathematical modeling, and science all have their potential downsides when misused. But I've never been one to think that having the "I feel it in my gut" overly simplified common sense approach taken by an emotionally challenged populist leader to be preferable to the more analytical wonky approach. But that's just me.
3   HeadSet   2020 Mar 7, 1:48pm  

I'm not of the opinion that tarriffs generally work.

That is way too broad a brush. That is like saying regulations do not work. True, an unfettered free market with no restrictions by tariff or regulation would produce more wealth, but that wealth would be concentrated in the hands of a few Rockefeller types, and the commons (like air and water) would be over polluted. Just like we need regulation of the free market to protect workers and environment, we need to tariff high polluting, slave labor type producer nations to protect our workers and the world environment.

Take Apple for example. Their products are already priced at what the market will bear, and for products like the iPhone, that price is well above production cost. If Apple were to build the iPhone in the US, instead of $400 per phone profit, Apple would only get $200 per phone. (Seriously, Apple makes that much per phone or more,according to many business and trade publishers). Since the price is already at market top, Apple would get less profit, so a few extremely rich people would be a little less rich because they are no longer using slave labor.
4   Onvacation   2020 Mar 7, 5:23pm  

marcus says

I'm not of the opinion that tarriffs generally work. The consensus in the economics world is that they generally don't work. They simply lead to counter measures for China and others.

Tariffs are the US's answer to China's (as well as the politicians and "businesspeople" who sold US out) bad behavior.
5   AD   2022 Oct 22, 11:41pm  

HeadSet says

nstead of $400 per phone profit, Apple would only get $200 per phone.


https://www.alphr.com/features/388273/how-much-does-an-iphone-cost-to-make/

The cost to manufacture an IPad 16 GB was $274 versus $499 retail.

The Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max cost $490.50 to make and was at least $699 retail.

.
6   clambo   2022 Oct 23, 7:52am  

5. Foreign workers depress wages.
Except for Starbucks, In-n-Out Burger and other places, workers are increasingly foreigners, including many illegal aliens.
The law of supply and demand applies to labor.
Re: competing with China for manufacturing; are people aware that China has factories located in prisons? They make a huge variety of products for export.
It's impossible for any country to compete with slave labor.
7   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2022 Oct 23, 7:58am  

dude everything went to China. look at our oligarch faggots scrambling to build chips in usa now that Taiwan is now on borrowed time. Billions in handouts to the rich to bring back some jobs to US. and thats just one industry. plenty of it is almost all overseas. would it kill apple to make phones in US? they are assembled in Mexico now, but not US.

lets be honest, america is communist. central planning runs america, and thats where we are. we still have small businesses, but they are practically irrelevant
8   AD   2022 Oct 24, 10:54pm  

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says

build chips in usa now


Its good that we at least have some capability here as far as semiconductors and electronics.

Just like I would not want to be fully dependent on China for home construction materials, bullets, food, energy and medicine.

.

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