Jobs are Gone and They're Not Coming Back

[Rohirrim]

We are the richest country in resources in the world. What are we doing with it? We are shipping out raw materials while we import finished products. In other words, committing societal suicide.

While the rest of the world competes to develop and, yes, to protect its manufacturing base, we let ours go. Instead, we bet the entire economy on fantasy finance -- on a financial sector that was to become the great profit and job creator of the future. We were told we could build a prosperous society by moving money around instead of making things and providing tangible services. We were scammed.

Instead of an economy that worked for all of us, we ended up with a very prosperous society for the very, very few at the top. We lead the world in billionaires. We lead the world by having the largest gap between CEO and average worker pay. We lead all developed nations by having the most extreme distribution of income and wealth. And we lead the world in having created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

We also lead the world in bailouts: We have dumped more that $14 trillion of taxpayer support into Wall Street to prop up the failing financial sector. And now we are on our way to leading the developed world in unemployment: There are more than 29 million of us who are unemployed or underemployed. The BLS U6 jobless rate for September hit 17 percent.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-le..._b_313721.html

[Rohirrim]

Meanwhile, the biggest export nations -- Germany, Japan and China are doing all they can to protect their key industries in a variety of subtle and not so subtle ways (currency manipulation, direct subsidies, dumping, rigged bids, targeted R&D investments, etc.) They are not about to give away key manufacturing jobs. That's because there is an intimate connection between manufacturing and the higher tech jobs that always grow around it. That's a major engine of middle-class job growth and we let ours rust out a long time ago.

It's time for our policy makers to wake-up to the real world rather that the flat one imagined by cheerleaders like Thomas Friedman. In the real world, you have to find ways to protect the new industries needed to produce jobs for your people. In the real world you build renewable energy technologies by investing large sums of public money in it, and by making sure that its core products are produced on your soil.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-le..._b_313721.html

[Tombstone RJ]

No argument here.

[Tombstone RJ]

Fact is, China and India are going to take all our white collar jobs too. Just wait. You'll see.

When we can outsource things like software engineering and accounting to an oversees nation, then Corporate America will do that.

Sad but true.

[Tombstone RJ]

This is also why I don't NECESSARILY have a problem with the green movement. We're talking jobs. Industry. Maximizing resources. Minimizing pollution. Utilizing technology. Creating engineers, scientists, manufacturers, etc.

This is all good for America.

[Tombstone RJ]

Also, exporting energy would be a HUGE benefit for the US. IF WASHINGTON can get it's crap together.

This is where corporate tax breaks do come into play. The energy companies will play ball IF they get a financial incentive to do so.

Again, the green movement can be a life saver for America, if it's utilized correctly and if, the morons in Washington can ever pull their heads out.

[Smiling Assassin27]

Most people understand this and would agree that an industrial base is crucial to sustaining growth. The Devil's in the details, however.

[Tombstone RJ]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

Most people understand this and would agree that an industrial base is crucial to sustaining growth. The Devil's in the details, however.

The "details" being the red tape. The red tape being Washington DC.

[Smiling Assassin27]

Originally Posted by Tombstone RJ

This is also why I don't NECESSARILY have a problem with the green movement. We're talking jobs. Industry. Maximizing resources. Minimizing pollution. Utilizing technology. Creating engineers, scientists, manufacturers, etc.

This is all good for America.

Is it? If Europe's focus on alternative energy sources has shown anything, it's that pouring mass amounts of public money into alternative energy has resulted in virtually a one for one tradeoff in another sector. That is, for every job created in green tech, one is lost in another sector precisely because the money that government used to invest in alternative energy was derived from increased costs to other sectors of the economy--like oil, gas, and coal.

To be successful in any industry, you have to have a tangible commodity that is useful to the marketplace. Alternative energy lacks this, right now. Oil, gas, and coal are commodities and those associated technologies enable industrial jobs hand over fist, when prospering.

Europe is realizing that funding alternative energy to the detriment of existing energy technology is problematic. Germany, for example, still funds alternative energy but is now also building 26 new coal firing plants because they forecast a drastic energy shortage and significant amounts of job losses if they continue their current plan. Spain is another example that we really should pay attention to, since the Administration has cited them as passing us by. There they are seeing 2.2 jobs lost for every green job created--OUCH.

Sure, we can subsidize a green sector, but what will it cost to create each job? Last I saw, it would take an investment by government of $100 Billion to create 2 million green jobs. That's $50,000 per job.

I guess the point is that to say we will be better off with a green sector economy, we first need to quantify what we stand to lose in putting our eggs in that basket. No politics. No partisanship. No bull****. Just numbers.

[SPfloppy]

Dere tak'n our Jabs

[SPfloppy]

Happy 600th post to me

[Tombstone RJ]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

Is it? If Europe's focus on alternative energy sources has shown anything, it's that pouring mass amounts of public money into alternative energy has resulted in virtually a one for one tradeoff in another sector. That is, for every job created in green tech, one is lost in another sector precisely because the money that government used to invest in alternative energy was derived from increased costs to other sectors of the economy--like oil, gas, and coal.

To be successful in any industry, you have to have a tangible commodity that is useful to the marketplace. Alternative energy lacks this, right now. Oil, gas, and coal are commodities and those associated technologies enable industrial jobs hand over fist, when prospering.

Europe is realizing that funding alternative energy to the detriment of existing energy technology is problematic. Germany, for example, still funds alternative energy but is now also building 26 new coal firing plants because they forecast a drastic energy shortage and significant amounts of job losses if they continue their current plan. Spain is another example that we really should pay attention to, since the Administration has cited them as passing us by. There they are seeing 2.2 jobs lost for every green job created--OUCH.

Sure, we can subsidize a green sector, but what will it cost to create each job? Last I saw, it would take an investment by government of $100 Billion to create 2 million green jobs. That's $50,000 per job.

I guess the point is that to say we will be better off with a green sector economy, we first need to quantify what we stand to lose in putting our eggs in that basket. No politics. No partisanship. No bull****. Just numbers.

I agree. That is why I say using tax breaks for the big energy companies that are truly researching and developing alternatve energies is key.

Its not about dumping what currently works. Its about developing what can and will work. Yes, you have to bridge the two.

I'm all for the FREE MARKET to determine viable new energy sources. If a small company in small town America comes up with a viable alternative energy, then I don't have a problem with giving that company a serious tax break in order to promote R & D. I'm not talking about funding their research, I'm talking about untying their hands in order for the private sector to actively research alternative energy technology.

Free enterprise is what it's all about. Not giving tax money to companies, but yes giving them tax breaks.

[El Minion]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Meanwhile, the biggest export nations -- Germany, Japan and China are doing all they can to protect their key industries in a variety of subtle and not so subtle ways (currency manipulation, direct subsidies, dumping, rigged bids, targeted R&D investments, etc.) They are not about to give away key manufacturing jobs. That's because there is an intimate connection between manufacturing and the higher tech jobs that always grow around it. That's a major engine of middle-class job growth and we let ours rust out a long time ago.

It's time for our policy makers to wake-up to the real world rather that the flat one imagined by cheerleaders like Thomas Friedman. In the real world, you have to find ways to protect the new industries needed to produce jobs for your people. In the real world you build renewable energy technologies by investing large sums of public money in it, and by making sure that its core products are produced on your soil.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-le..._b_313721.html

Well it's good for our exports and foreign investment into our country. Hopefully become less consumer and more producer for the foreseeable future.


––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Obama's Secret Jobs Plan

The dollar plunges! How scared should we be? Economist Simon Johnson says not as much as you think—it’s part of Obama's plan to restart the manufacturing sector and win the midterm elections.

The dollar’s value plunged Tuesday, while gold simultaneously hit a record high ($1,045 per ounce). You might think this would worry the administration and send the Treasury secretary to the microphones in an attempt to head off further collapse in the currency. Do the darkest days of the Carter administration loom again, with inflation and unemployment both rising, apparently without limit?

Far from it—the last few weeks of dollar depreciation is an amazing stroke of luck for the Obama administration, admittedly facilitated by their adroit maneuvering in the corridors of high international finance. If it lasts—and they need some more luck—this could save the midterm elections for the Democrats.

The near-term causes of the latest round of dollar decline are obvious. Australia’s central bank raised interest rates slightly on Tuesday. By itself, this would not be an exciting development, but it comes fast on the heels of the G-20 Pittsburgh summit in which all participants (including Australia) seemed to imply that “tightening monetary policy” (i.e., raising rates) was some way off.

So if Australia begins to tighten—an implication that its economy is picking up—market participants reckon that more commodity producers and other parts of the Pacific Rim will soon feel the need to do likewise. At the same time, the U.S. has signaled—most recently on Monday, in the powerful form of William Dudley, president of the New York Fed—that interest rates here will remain low for the foreseeable future.

If you can borrow in dollars and buy Australian (or Korean or Chinese, etc) government debt, you are in what is known as a positive “carry trade”—because of low interest rates here, you pay close to zero to borrow the dollars (e.g., if you are Goldman Sachs and have unfettered access to the Fed’s discount window) and you can invest in Australia at more than 3 percent interest (or you can plunge into speculative Chinese automotive stocks, as Goldman is now doing).

And if you think interest rates will rise in the rest of the world before they do in the United States, because the dollar is on its way down, then this carry trade becomes a one-way bet: You make money on the carry, you hold foreign currency while the dollar falls, and then you pay back your loan in depreciated dollars.

If the U.S. were concerned about the dollar weakening—say, because of its impact on inflation—it could counteract all of this by making warning noises about potential intervention in the currency market: If you borrow heavily in dollars to lend in Chinese renminbi, you can be easily rattled by the prospect that G-7 industrialized nations will intervene in a coordinated manner to strengthen the dollar (as they have in the past).

But the G-7 met this weekend and made no statement about the dollar—despite what must have been considerable pressure from Japan, France, Germany, and Italy, all of which are always worried about a rapid weakening of the dollar because they are so dependent on exports. The U.S. officials, at the highest stakes poker table in the world, faced them down.

The key reason why the U.S. can do this is simple: We’re not currently afraid of inflation. In fact, the administration and the Fed are rather more worried about deflation (falling prices), so it doesn’t matter to them if a weaker dollar pushes up prices to some degree.

This may, of course, turn out to be a miscalculation, but think what a weaker dollar does for the industrial heartland, where so many congressional seats will be in play and where today it’s easier to export or compete against imports because the same dollar costs convert into fewer euros, yen, or renminbi (this is what a “weaker” dollar means—foreigners can more easily afford our goods and their stuff is more expensive to us). If the dollar stays weak or declines further, our car companies, machinery makers, and turbine blade manufacturers will soon be rehiring and we’ll finally get some job growth as part of our sputtering economic recovery.

A weak dollar traditionally bothers our financial sector and they have enough political clout to bring on exchange-rate intervention. But the remaining big Wall Street firms have made out like bandits over the past 12 months—and they are perfectly positioned to make another ton of money from the carry trade. In fact, they’ll happily drive the dollar down further.

Sure, inflation may come back sooner than the administration would like—and here the increase in the price of gold is flashing a potential orange warning sign. But, the official thinking likely goes: We’ll deal with that after the midterms.

Simon Johnson is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

[Bronx33]

Originally Posted by Tombstone RJ

No argument here.

Ditto..

[Bronx33]

Originally Posted by Tombstone RJ

The "details" being the red tape. The red tape being Washington DC/special interests.

Fixed......

[rastaman]

Originally Posted by Tombstone RJ

The "details" being the red tape. The red tape being Washington DC.

It goes much deeper than just targeting the Red tape coming from Coprorate America and the Congress in Washington DC.

May I suggest reading "Unequal Protection" by Thomm Hartman. The book has several essay's on why jobs and our industrial base has left America and what can be done to return those jobs and industry's back to America.

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/bibli...781579549558-0

Hartman further elaborates about the disappearance of America's middle class jobs and why the United States should pull out of the WTO and other multilateral treaties that give corporations the power to enforce their will on our government and on our workers.

This wouild allow the U.S. to impose leveling tariffs on work done overseas. Offshore labor can then be set in price - by adding tariffs to it - to equal a living wage in the United States.

EXAMPLE: If a company wants to hire people to answer the phone in India for two dollars an hour, fine. Let them do it - and pay a $10/hour tariff on top of the $2/hour wage. Most will simply return to the United States for their labor, and those that don't will enhance government coffers with funds that can be used for national healthcare and education of our workforce.

Here's another point made by Thomm Hartman's in his book "Unequal Protection" We can recall the Bush Admin. walking away from the ABM and Kyoto accords, well George W. Bush taught Americans that we really do have the power to simply ignore or disavow international treaties we've already committed to once we deem these treaties as unfair and couter productive to America's best interest.

So It's time to apply that experience to GATT/WTO/NAFTA and return to our Founders' ideal of a nation where the rules of trade and business are, as Jefferson said, "very much guided" by the interests of We the People, rather than a handful of multinational corporations.

Modern conservatives suggest that if the rich win first, benefits will "trickle down" on the rest of us. Protecting workers, they say, will produce dislocations and abnormalities from the "free market." For example, they suggest that when minimum wages are fixed by government, and labor can lawfully bargain to increase wages by increasing scarcity of labor through union actions, that results in an increase in prices, ultimately hurting "the working person."

But Ricardo disagreed that rising wages first increased prices. He noted, "On the contrary, a rise of wages, from the circumstance of the labourer being more liberally rewarded, or from a difficulty of procuring the necessaries on which wages are expended, does not, except in some instances, produce the effect of raising price, but has a great effect in lowering profits."

And when wages go down, profits go up. American wages have been going down steadily since Reagan first reintroduced conservative economics in 1980, and American corporations just reported two of their most profitable quarters in decades. In part, this is because wages are not only going down within the US, but because US-level wages are being replaced by India- and China-level wages through outsourcing and offshoring.

"But offshoring isn't the problem for American workers!" conservatives shout. "It's the increase in productivity. American businesses need fewer workers because automation and hard work have made our workers more productive."

This is a tragic lie, and it's been bought hook, line, and sinker by most American politicians and even many economists.

Productivity is, very simply, the measurement of how many products or services can be produced for how many dollars of labor expended. But offshoring distorts productivity figures in two ways.

First, foreign labor is cheaper, but produces nearly identical amounts of product or service. The result is "increased productivity."

Second, many corporations don't put offshore labor onto their balance sheets as a labor expense. Because they hire offshore companies as subcontractors to do work previously done by their own employees, they get to reduce the number and cost of their employees while having an only slightly increased line-item on their P&L for the subcontractor. The result is that it looks like their remaining employees are getting more done, because the offshore employees are no longer counted in the productivity figures.

But the Indians and Chinese know something you won't hear on conservative "business" programs. While China and India eagerly let multinational corporations move work from America to their nations, they fiercely protect their own domestic industries primarily through the use of tariffs - taxes on imported goods - and the strict regulation of imported labor.

We should do the same. To return balance to the international game of business, America can again use tariffs to balance trade relationships. This is not a new idea, by the way - it's how America has protected its economy from the founding of this nation right up until Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

We are the richest country in resources in the world. What are we doing with it? We are shipping out raw materials while we import finished products. In other words, committing societal suicide.

That was Bush's economic "policy" in a nutshell: create huge windfalls for his globalist/corporatist donors, enrich the top 1%, and turn almost everyone else into serfs.

[Rohirrim]

Funny to look back on it now, but Clinton was not only a Republican, but a very good Republican. Back in Eisenhower's day, he would have fit right in.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Funny to look back on it now, but Clinton was not only a Republican, but a very good Republican. Back in Eisenhower's day, he would have fit right in.

Red Ink Ron and the enormous propaganda apparatus the right built in order to combat (on behalf of the plutocrats and the top 1%) gains made in the 60s pushed the country so far to the right that moving to center-right was the only way a Democrat could get elected.

[loborugger]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

We are the richest country in resources in the world. What are we doing with it? We are shipping out raw materials while we import finished products. In other words, committing societal suicide.

While the rest of the world competes to develop and, yes, to protect its manufacturing base, we let ours go. Instead, we bet the entire economy on fantasy finance -- on a financial sector that was to become the great profit and job creator of the future. We were told we could build a prosperous society by moving money around instead of making things and providing tangible services. We were scammed.

Instead of an economy that worked for all of us, we ended up with a very prosperous society for the very, very few at the top. We lead the world in billionaires. We lead the world by having the largest gap between CEO and average worker pay. We lead all developed nations by having the most extreme distribution of income and wealth. And we lead the world in having created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

We also lead the world in bailouts: We have dumped more that $14 trillion of taxpayer support into Wall Street to prop up the failing financial sector. And now we are on our way to leading the developed world in unemployment: There are more than 29 million of us who are unemployed or underemployed. The BLS U6 jobless rate for September hit 17 percent.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-le..._b_313721.html

Sadly, our exports/imports look like a colony in a 19th Cent Imperialistic picture. We export wood, chicken, and coal, and import finished goods.

Oddly enough, I saw Pat Buchanan rail on this same thing 2/3 years ago.

The only thing going for us is that the dollar is artificially inflated as the de facto official reserve currency of the planet. It allows us to run an absurd trade deficit and still enjoy one of the highest standards of living on the planet.

[Odysseus]

We are faced with a global economic shift of politics and business process. We are going to be faced some very unreal and mean choices.

[c_lazy_r]

Originally Posted by quiettiger

We are faced with a global economic shift of politics and business process. We are going to be faced some very unreal and mean choices.

What type of choices are you referring to?

[Odysseus]

Originally Posted by c_lazy_r

What type of choices are you referring to?

How do you stimulate an economy based on consumerism when there is no money, no credit, and a jobless rate that continues to increase. You have an immediate problem but no possible immediate solutions that will fix anything.

How do you stop two wars that are used to a blank checks to resolve real security issues? You need to defend National Security but your military is tired and the public is seems to know nothing about the real issues or care.

How do you change anything in this country with a dysfunctional congress, a retarded general public, and a biased media who are only interested in their own agenda?

I could continue but the point remains that the public is largely interested in their own personal point of view and care little for the real national questions. We don't have the stomach for honest discussion. We have become this gutless mass of stupidity more interested in large type and chest thumping.

[Odysseus]

Originally Posted by loborugger

Sadly, our exports/imports look like a colony in a 19th Cent Imperialistic picture. We export wood, chicken, and coal, and import finished goods.

Oddly enough, I saw Pat Buchanan rail on this same thing 2/3 years ago.

The only thing going for us is that the dollar is artificially inflated as the de facto official reserve currency of the planet. It allows us to run an absurd trade deficit and still enjoy one of the highest standards of living on the planet.

The minute the world figures out how to dump dollars because consumerism does not work anymore is the minute we are no longer in a position to make demands.

[Odysseus]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Red Ink Ron and the enormous propaganda apparatus the right built in order to combat (on behalf of the plutocrats and the top 1%) gains made in the 60s pushed the country so far to the right that moving to center-right was the only way a Democrat could get elected.

It has not changed. Some of the progressives (the real liberals) think that it has but they are wrong.