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 : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (504089)	8/25/2012 12:35:20 PM
From: Sr K	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794366

It's a complex issue. Apple outsources almost all of its manufacturing, to China and Brazil. Some companies have closed Chinese plants and moved operations to Vietnam. It's about labor rates, proximity to suppliers for JIT inventory management, tax policy, free trade policies (as H. Ross Perot famously warned us about), proximity to customers to reduce shipping costs, the aging of the U.S. population and demographics, and more. But, surprisingly for this thread, the consequences of a free trade policy were a Democratic Party issue, while Republicans in the early 1990s knew (or at least argued) that it was inevitable and best for a stronger global economy. We will get through this "giant sucking sound" and workers will retrain for what they are better at than the jobs that were lost in companies that didn't keep up or that machines could do better. In that view, it's not much different than other periods of automation or industrialization. Except it was accelerated and compressed into a very swift downturn from 9/2008 because of financial matters including fraud. Some people think of it as the downturn that started in 2007.