Has Globalization Undermined America's Working Class?

[GodisanAtheist]

Local trade and economies require local governance, global trade and economies require global governance.

Humans have gone from Tribes to Cities to Kingdoms to Nations as technology has made the world smaller and smaller and its getting smaller still. The rise of the global citizen will end the nation-state, its just evolution baby.

The questions we're really faced with at this point (external factors such as climate change notwithstanding) are whether or not we arrive at this place through a natural cooperative growth to existing trade/regulatory pacts or though hostile/violent action, and whether or not this global government will be more "western liberal" in nature or more "CCP" in nature.

We're at a cross roads here and the west really has to play its cards right to own the future.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I can't see how that applies in the US, which has a vast amount of land available. It might be true in more crowded countries, but the US has 1/8 of the population density of Western Europe, for example. If there's a shortage of homes, it's partly a political choice.

Actually - If my memory serves correctly, we actually have WAY more homes. The problem is... many of them are simply empty.

Quick google says there are about 1.5m empty houses... this was in 2018 however. Not sure what it is today.

Plus, of course, it's hard to quantify this when you're talking about tight urban areas... vs. rural or small town areas.

Another more thorough article: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/07/vacancy-americas-other-housing-crisis/565901/

 

[Ajay]

Well, relative stagnation of middle class wages is 40+ year problem. What is really psychotic is that the tight job market that emerged post 2008 recession didn’t not result in the typical rebound of wages. This isn’t an issue of globalization or automation. It’s a decision by US corporations and business owners, to maximize profits and their unwillingness to pass any additional costs on to customers. The result is that workers have been squeezed out of the equation. An obvious example, expressed through public policy, is the suppression of minimum wage increases with plenty of fear mongering and hand wringing.

Minimum wage increases mainly affect the domestic economy. We’ve all had a front seat to the charade - it's time for a change. The best way to ‘redistribute' wealth is for businesses to treat their employees at first class citizens and stop treating them as subservient to wealthy and powerful Wall Street investors. A good start would be passing comprehensive reform of the minimum wage law to up the set value and factor in long term increases. The second step, kill all the corporate lobbyists (j/k, obviously).

 

[zzyzxroad]

No, the issue is that people are losing their jobs over it, regardless of who owns it and what country it is in. In the US, we have automated our factories, replacing workers. A far smaller number have lost jobs due to factories being set up overseas for cheaper labor. Whether you replace your relatively expensive workers with machines or cheaper humans probably depends on the nature of the manufacturing and the relative cost-benefit comparison between the two. It's notable that in most cases they have gone the machine route. Those decisions were based on present and past technology.

However, in the long run, machines get cheaper and more sophisticated and they become more efficient in a higher percentage of scenarios. Not that far down the road, you won't be able to find a human in any country willing to work cheap enough to be cheaper than a machine, at which point globalization will be moot. This will be especially true with the development of cheaper energy, such as more efficient solar panels or, farther down the line, fusion.

Eventually - in this century, not the next - manufacturing will be done virtually all by machines. It won't matter who owns them or where they are except for the critical issue of which government the owners are paying taxes to. But the end result will be the same everywhere: very inexpensive manufactured goods, and no jobs for humans making any of it.

I'd add that it isn't just manufacturing that has or will be automated. If I had to guess, by 2100 AI will be cable of doing a better job than a doctor at diagnosing and treating illness.

 

[pmv]

I'd add that it isn't just manufacturing that has or will be automated. If I had to guess, by 2100 AI will be cable of doing a better job than a doctor at diagnosing and treating illness.

Just wait till AI can do the jobs of newspaper opinion columnists or economists [edit] or talk-radio hosts! That's when you'll see the discourse change!

 

[pmv]

Actually - If my memory serves correctly, we actually have WAY more homes. The problem is... many of them are simply empty.

Quick google says there are about 1.5m empty houses... this was in 2018 however. Not sure what it is today.

Plus, of course, it's hard to quantify this when you're talking about tight urban areas... vs. rural or small town areas.

Another more thorough article: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/07/vacancy-americas-other-housing-crisis/565901/

So where there are jobs there are no homes, and where there are homes there are no jobs?

 

[DrMrLordX]

No, the issue is that people are losing their jobs over it, regardless of who owns it and what country it is in.

But when you own a piece of the robot, you still have a financial stake even when you lose your job. Why do you think the CEO of your company wanted you replaced by a robot in the first place? He owns a piece of the robot (or the shareholders that pay his salary do), so if the robot can do your job 24/7 without complaint, then he makes money off the robot. If you own it instead, you make money off the robot. Own enough robots (or pieces thereof) and you don't even need a job anymore. The robots should be owned by the people who once did those jobs (or would do those jobs, if far enough in the future).

If you increase GDP through globalization, you can redistribute some of the gains to those negatively impacted by it and still be better off.

On whose authority? Who is increasing GDP, and how? The United States has a property model based on private ownership. Simple confiscation of property is fundamentally against the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Taxatioon, while now Constitutional, has not (to date) done anything to address income inequality. There are ways the Feds can control how people do business and with whom, giving them some ability to steer profits or encourage/discourage certain ways of organizing equity. And, as I articulated in a previous post, the Feds can raise tariffs if someone thinks that foreign trade is somehow undermining the livelihood of everyday American people.

I'd add that it isn't just manufacturing that has or will be automated. If I had to guess, by 2100 AI will be cable of doing a better job than a doctor at diagnosing and treating illness.

Interesting you should mention that:

AI equal with human experts in medical diagnosis, study finds

Research suggests AI able to interpret medical images using deep learning algorithm

www.theguardian.com

 

[Jhhnn]

On whose authority? Who is increasing GDP, and how? The United States has a property model based on private ownership. Simple confiscation of property is fundamentally against the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Taxatioon, while now Constitutional, has not (to date) done anything to address income inequality.

Taxation & redistribution can readily be used to address unhealthy levels of income inequality while leaving private ownership intact. When some of the people at the top get too rich, they think they can own the govt. They've set out to do that by buying the GOP.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I'm posting late in this tepid cesspit of a thread. OP, you do realize that without globalization, the US would not have been a superpower, let alone one of the most dominant ones, right? It was literally globalization that built this country, and then it was globalization that enabled the massive financial growth that the US achieved post WWII, and it was that growth that gave the American middle class its gilded age. Greedy assholes is what has undermined the American workers.

I wanted to address this separately: No, the United States isn't necessarily wealthy just because of globalization. The United States had enormous natural resources ripe for exploitation, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit backed by improbable levels of technical innovation. Between 1783 and 1914, the United States grew into a world power under the following conditions that would make people feint from shock today:

No modern medicine
No Social Security
No Medicare
No unemployment benefits
High tariffs on all foreign goods
Little to no income tax/wealth tax
etc.

Not that it was all beer & skittles. Still I can't think of how the modern trend of globalization made any of that possible. You will notice that things went badly once American businesses figured out how to improve their bottom line by killing domestic production in favor of foreign production in countries that often couldn't create domestic competition for our manufacturing. If we were going to automate, fine, let us automate from a position where American workers still had a decent standard of living and had a shot at buying up some of the automated processes that would soon end their jobs. But no, that's not how it happened.

If you had stepped in front of the Founding Fathers at the signing of the Constitution and told them all, "The future of our country is in exporting expertise while making sure wages for the bottom 80% of income-earners are as low as possible", they probably would have shot you on the spot.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Taxation & redistribution can readily be used to address unhealthy levels of income inequality while leaving private ownership intact. When some of the people at the top get too rich, they think they can own the govt. They've set out to do that by buying the GOP.

1). To date, that has never worked in the United States
2). Taxation systems "leak". For every dollar the Federal Treasury takes in through taxation, only a percentage makes it way back to the communities that need it. The grifters that figure out how to siphon off that tax money guarantee that taxation + redistribution models remain woefully inefficient.
3). If the only method by which you can sustain a cadre of your population is to tax entrenched plutocrats, then your entire society eventually becomes dependent on the survival of plutocrats. Do the words "too big to fail" mean anything to you?

 

[theeedude]

1). To date, that has never worked in the United States
2). Taxation systems "leak". For every dollar the Federal Treasury takes in through taxation, only a percentage makes it way back to the communities that need it. The grifters that figure out how to siphon off that tax money guarantee that taxation + redistribution models remain woefully inefficient.
3). If the only method by which you can sustain a cadre of your population is to tax entrenched plutocrats, then your entire society eventually becomes dependent on the survival of plutocrats. Do the words "too big to fail" mean anything to you?

Just keep waiting for trickle down then. Another 40 years should do the trick.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Just keep waiting for trickle down then. Another 40 years should do the trick.

Read previous posts. Taxation isn't the only answer.

 

[theeedude]

Read previous posts. Taxation isn't the only answer.

Fine by me. I am doing fine with globalization.

 

[zzyzxroad]

If you had stepped in front of the Founding Fathers at the signing of the Constitution and told them all, "The future of our country is in exporting expertise while making sure wages for the bottom 80% of income-earners are as low as possible", they probably would have shot you on the spot.

Was there a strong middle class when our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution?

 

[ivwshane]

I wanted to address this separately: No, the United States isn't necessarily wealthy just because of globalization. The United States had enormous natural resources ripe for exploitation, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit backed by improbable levels of technical innovation. Between 1783 and 1914, the United States grew into a world power under the following conditions that would make people feint from shock today:

No modern medicine
No Social Security
No Medicare
No unemployment benefits
High tariffs on all foreign goods
Little to no income tax/wealth tax
etc.

Not that it was all beer & skittles. Still I can't think of how the modern trend of globalization made any of that possible. You will notice that things went badly once American businesses figured out how to improve their bottom line by killing domestic production in favor of foreign production in countries that often couldn't create domestic competition for our manufacturing. If we were going to automate, fine, let us automate from a position where American workers still had a decent standard of living and had a shot at buying up some of the automated processes that would soon end their jobs. But no, that's not how it happened.

If you had stepped in front of the Founding Fathers at the signing of the Constitution and told them all, "The future of our country is in exporting expertise while making sure wages for the bottom 80% of income-earners are as low as possible", they probably would have shot you on the spot.

I think what you are forgetting is that during that time, we were the cheap labor, we were where foreigners were investing (ideas, money, and putting down roots). The difference between then and now and any other developing country is that back then the money stayed in the US and was reinvested. Now companies invest in foreign lands and for the most part they take their money and run. Imagine how quickly those countries would developer a middle class of the money stayed in their country.

 

[zzyzxroad]

But when you own a piece of the robot, you still have a financial stake even when you lose your job. Why do you think the CEO of your company wanted you replaced by a robot in the first place? He owns a piece of the robot (or the shareholders that pay his salary do), so if the robot can do your job 24/7 without complaint, then he makes money off the robot. If you own it instead, you make money off the robot. Own enough robots (or pieces thereof) and you don't even need a job anymore. The robots should be owned by the people who once did those jobs (or would do those jobs, if far enough in the future).

Corporations don't really work this way. The CEO doesn't own a price of the company they is an employee like anyone else. They may or not own a stake in the company buy usually not a controlling one. As for the people, you have to have money to own a price of those robots.

 

[ivwshane]

1). To date, that has never worked in the United States
2). Taxation systems "leak". For every dollar the Federal Treasury takes in through taxation, only a percentage makes it way back to the communities that need it. The grifters that figure out how to siphon off that tax money guarantee that taxation + redistribution models remain woefully inefficient.
3). If the only method by which you can sustain a cadre of your population is to tax entrenched plutocrats, then your entire society eventually becomes dependent on the survival of plutocrats. Do the words "too big to fail" mean anything to you?

I don't think the data backs that up. Tax policy can have an impact on how money flows. Higher corporate taxes, higher taxes on capital gains and a stock buyback policy prior to Regan and his deregulation, can all make investment in the worker, the business, and the community more likely to happen than any other policy.

 

[Jhhnn]

1). To date, that has never worked in the United States
2). Taxation systems "leak". For every dollar the Federal Treasury takes in through taxation, only a percentage makes it way back to the communities that need it. The grifters that figure out how to siphon off that tax money guarantee that taxation + redistribution models remain woefully inefficient.
3). If the only method by which you can sustain a cadre of your population is to tax entrenched plutocrats, then your entire society eventually becomes dependent on the survival of plutocrats. Do the words "too big to fail" mean anything to you?

Of course it's worked. During the New Deal & aftermath of WW2 high taxes on the rich built the interstate highway system, huge water projects, schools, universities & you name it. They financed the Great Society & the misbegotten war in Vietnam.

We already know what happens when we let the rich keep too much money after 40 years of the lies of trickle down Reaganomics. Which is not to suggest that there be no inequality but rather that it's completely out of hand & getting worse when people who make $60+M/yr pay nearly the same tax rate as peole making $85K/yr-

In other words, a person in the top 0.001 percent income bracket -- who would have an adjusted gross income of at least $62,000,000 -- pays the nearly same effective tax rate as somebody in the top 20 percent bracket who makes $85,000 in adjusted gross income.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/04/as-the-rich-become-super-rich-they-pay-lower-taxes-for-real/?noredirect=on

That was prior to the most recent GOP tax cut for the Rich.

We can obviously tax huge estates at a much higher effective rate than at present w/ impoverishing heirs, either. Otherwise inheritance works like the divine right of nobility.

 

[Jaskalas]

All this talk of "tax the rich".

They have tremendous wealth, don't get me wrong, but if we are going to help _everyone_, then that fund falls short. Sanders is correct when he boldly states that YOU, and I are going to pay more in taxes as well. The difference between that and today, we'd actually get something out of it. Quite big actually, if we were to just aim high enough.

A 25% tax funds UBI and eventually eliminates rent / mortgages for a great many people across the nation. The return on that investment is off the charts, and I cannot stress enough how transformative and positive such a change would be.

 

[theeedude]

UBI is simply an answer to the question of "how do you keep economy from collapsing as more and more jobs are automated and more and more people don't get paid from a job?"
It might not be the only answer, but if GOP doesn't come up with one in the next 10 years or so, it's going to have one hell of a "dog ate my homework" moment.

 

[Jhhnn]

All this talk of "tax the rich".

They have tremendous wealth, don't get me wrong, but if we are going to help _everyone_, then that fund falls short. Sanders is correct when he boldly states that YOU, and I are going to pay more in taxes as well. The difference between that and today, we'd actually get something out of it. Quite big actually, if we were to just aim high enough.

A 25% tax funds UBI and eventually eliminates rent / mortgages for a great many people across the nation. The return on that investment is off the charts, and I cannot stress enough how transformative and positive such a change would be.

It's perfectly obvious that the voters will not support tax increases on themselves until it is shown that the Rich pay considerably higher rates than they do. We have to fix that first.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

If you increase GDP through globalization, you can redistribute some of the gains to those negatively impacted by it and still be better off. Failure to do so is a problem with domestic politics, not globalization.

We are not the only players. If we use increased GDP to fund those negatively impacted (which we should but will never happen), we will lose market control to those who plug all of their increased GDP into raising their GDP (see China). It's the same fallacy as the grocery store. The idea that we must have everything all the time while quality (read quality of life) falls. Money doesn't "create" anything, especially success, people do. Globalization is a losing game because you eventually run out of people to exploit. But hey, we got ours and we'll be dead by the time that happens so why should we care, amirite?

 

[Ajay]

Fine by me. I am doing fine with globalization.

I’m assuming this FYGM is sarcasm.

 

[Ajay]

It's perfectly obvious that the voters will not support tax increases on themselves until it is shown that the Rich pay considerably higher rates than they do. We have to fix that first.

Absolutely! It’s a farce to do otherwise.

Also, even though I’ve used the word, I’m becoming tired of the use of ‘redistribution'. Those who have disproportionately benefited the most from our system of government and economics should rightly contribute disproportionately more to the health of those systems. That not redistribution - it’s simply justice. It’s not like we want the wealthy to become poor, they will still have very high incomes and assets.

 

[theeedude]

I’m assuming this FYGM is sarcasm.

It's not FYGM on my part, it's FMGY on the part of working class conservatives. They voted to cut taxes for outsourcing corporations, not me. It's not on me to convince them to tax me more for their own benefit.