Ah yes. What will we ever do without those high-paying jobs making alarm clocks, cheap watches, sewing jeans together and making tennis shoes?
ardethen,
i am surprised that you bought into all that liberal nonsense (or were you joking?). perhaps you will like these examples better. we have also shipped computer production to asia, medical research to israel, and software development to india and ireland.
lots of folks find job satisfaction and, much more importantly, make a living in production. i agree that many of the jobs lost in the past were low paying. that does not make them unimportant. just as real estate is the back bone of our banking system, so is production the back bone of our economy.
the current round of job losses are even more frightening. the massive layoffs being announced by lu, jdsu, txn, mot, nt, sebl, orcl, etc, etc, are the cream. many of these jobs are going to be lost forever to ireland, england, india, china, mexico, etc. i believe that some CEOs see this current slowdown as a way to move many jobs without dealing with unions and upsetting the rank and file. if the economy becomes stronger, they can simply hire new folks overseas. in a booming economy, they would never get away with a 10,000 man lay-off accompanied by a 10,000 man hire in a foreign country.
some of the same countries that initially took our low paying production jobs are now coming back to skim the cream.
i read recently that one fed governor is surprised that the service sector seems to be incapable of continuing to expand to fill the void created by these production job losses. that is frightening too. to think that he believes that janitorial, carpet laying, insurance, mcdonalds and burger king jobs can increase and sustain the economy as we ship our production jobs overseas is nuts.
visit any small town two years after the local factory shuts down to see what happens to service jobs when no production jobs are available.
the big question is how many of this current round of production job layoffs will be lost forever to other countries and how many service jobs will be lost as a result. imo this current round of massive layoffs is what is scaring AG into taking desperate measures to lower the cost of doing business and increase money supply in an attempt to retain what we have. he is old enough to remember the 1930s soup line stories that his parents used to talk about. those lines formed after massive production job layoffs and factory closings.
so far he is losing the war.
our trade deficit with china and several other countries has been growing exponentially and completely out of control for the simple reason that they have expanded their production base as we have lost ours. lower interest rates are a partial and only a partial solution. we cannot rely on governmental money manipulation to solve the economic problem and recreate lost jobs. an example is the japanese.
their prime rate is currently zero; their economy is screwed up, and their stock market is at 15 year lows.
production jobs are the meat and potatoes of our economy. service is the fluff created to bleed off production profits, a way for production folks to spend their money. as we close factories, watch what happens to the service jobs in those towns.
the premise of that first post was that we cannot continue to reduce our personal purchases of American made goods, expand our personal purchases of foreign made goods and expect to retain our production or service jobs.
the little banty rooster from texas had it right after all.
this is very serious stuff...ask someone who has been laid off from a good job how the search for an equivalent job is going.
uw |
