Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (53077)	3/11/2008 10:02:40 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542258

Sure they have decreased manufacturing employment less, because on the average a greater percentage of their economy is manufacturing. What's your point? My claim is that countries which have significant net exports, will have more robust manufacturing employment than countries like the USA which have significant net imports. I claim this because: 1) Foreign trade is largely in manufactured goods, much less so in services. 2) If a country has a large trade imbalance, and the trade is largely in manufactured goods, than it will impact manufacturing employment according to the sign of the imbalance. I thought you were the one claiming that our large trade imbalance didn't affect our manufacturing employment. But per your above observation, I'd say you think it does positively affect Japan's and Germany's manufacturing employment. So why would you try to claim it does not negatively impact our manufacturing employment? The decline in manufacturing employment is mostly due to the increase in manufacturing productivity. The decline in manufacturing employment averaged for the entire globe is 100% related to productivity improvment (unless there were falling demand, which there is not). I'm not arguing that. But I'm 100% certain that that is not true for regional manufacturing employment. If the USA shifts from manufacturing 100% of its own goods, to manufacturing 2/3's while China shifts from manufacturing 100% of its own goods to manufacturing 150%, (made up numbers!) that should have an attributable effect on manufacturing employment in the respective countries. You seem to think otherwise. Why? Yes its real. If your problem is that it shouldn't include agricultural managers, well then the total is even lower. The same goes if you want to toss out ranchers. Farmers probably represent the majority of that number, but if tossing out the other two categories makes it 1.4, or 1.5, or 1.55 million, it just (very slightly) strengthens my point because it means that farmers are and even lower percentage of Americans. LOL! I'm not wanting to toss out any of them. I'd rather include ag workers in that list to get something meaningful. I look around my local community, and I'd guess there are at least 5 ag workers average for each farmer, and this is an area of small farms.