More downward pressure on global wages could backfire...

[CADsortaGUY]

Uh, no in Germany, by law, unions get 50% Board of Director representation at mid to large size companies (33% at small ones). They have capital controls. And very high taxes (not only do they have a 45% tax rate, it's a very broad based rate and on top of that, they have VAT). They also have mandated 6 weeks of vacation. Also, their manufacturing workers make like $16 more an hour in wages and benefits than ours do.

Germany is the anti-thesis of idiotic rightwing policy.

And one of the reasons many their exports are almost always late or promised delivery dates are 2-3months behind everyone elses. But... it's utopia... no? I'm sure they'd welcome you, right?

 

[Acanthus]

That's a strange thing to say considering Germany consistently ranks well among among the most open economies in the world, as are most European nations.

In fact: recent story

"After years of battling each other on trade issues, US and European officials are contemplating a dramatic change in direction: joining together in what could be the world's largest free-trade pact in an attempt to boost their struggling economies.

Discussions are in the most preliminary of stages and there would be significant obstacles to overcome, including sharp differences on agriculture, food safety and climate change legislation. Still, top European Union and US officials have said they want to see it happen. And America's main labor federation, often the biggest opponent to US trade pacts, says it wouldn't stand in the way."

Umm, free trade with 1st world nations is not a problem for anyone involved.

They are not opening up free trade with China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Jordan, South Africa, etc.

 

[Jhhnn]

The persistence of failed ideas is truly amazing, a tribute to the effectiveness of propaganda.

The whole pack is barking up the "manufacturing jobs" tree when there's not much there, rather than the "redistribution" tree, which is full of raccoons.

As I offered earlier, it's all about the way we view ownership & obligation, about how we accept hoarding & control as real scarcity.

The way people think about tariffs vs taxes at the top is a prime example. Tariffs forced capitalists to hire Americans to make money. That cut into their profits in no small way, but contributed to the well being of American workers. It was a form of forced redistribution of resources. Capitalists would have preferred to use cheaper foreign labor all along.

When tariffs were removed, Capital surged out of the country & cheaper foreign goods entered, but it never was enough to offset the effects on workers' earnings, so other compensations were made, chiefly in the form of more credit. Capital's share of national income soared from offshoring & soared again collecting fees & interest, too.

Obviously, illusory extension of more credit in lieu of wages will only carry us just so far, which is where we are today.

If tariffs served as a redistribution method pre-Free Trade, then we need to provide a different mechanism to achieve the same effect, and taxes are all there is, along with Capital controls.

Instead of cutting taxes at the top, which is what we've done, we should have been raising them. Instead of trying to compete with cheap foreign labor, basically impossible, we should have demanded greater compensation for allowing our Capitalists to use it. We need to realize that, in a Democracy, Ownership can be exerted at a higher level & obligations placed on it in different ways to achieve the same effect as previously.

That would require a paradigm shift in our collective thinking, thinking currently dominated by adherence to concepts that have failed the middle class, concepts that have benefited the financial elite enormously.

Heresy, I know.

 

[Incorruptible]

HEY!!! Someone got it right. What I have been sayong all along and coincides right with the start of our massive trade deficits.



I think it really is this simple, quit buying foreign crap. Keep the money here in the US. Our massive trade deficits are the equivalent of trying to pour water into a bucket at 1 gallon per minute while the bucket has a hole in the bottom that leaks 1.2 gallons per minute.

This is what we need to do in order to address this problem but its not going to happen since there are far too many morons in this country who dont care.

 

[werepossum]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-insourcing-boom/309166/3/?single_page=true

Just an article about some tentative return of manufacturing to the US,now how many jobs will that bring is another matter...

Fantastic article, thanks. What stands out to me is:

“What we had wrong was the idea that anybody can screw together a dishwasher,” says Lenzi. “We thought, ‘We’ll do the engineering, we’ll do the marketing, and the manufacturing becomes a black box.’ But there is an inherent understanding that moves out when you move the manufacturing out. And you never get it back.”

It happens slowly. When you first send the toaster or the water heater to an overseas factory, you know how it’s made. You were just making it—yesterday, last month, last quarter. But as products change, as technologies evolve, as years pass, as you change factories to chase lower labor costs, the gap between the people imagining the products and the people making them becomes as wide as the Pacific.

What is only now dawning on the smart American companies, says Lenzi, is that when you outsource the making of the products, “your whole business goes with the outsourcing.”

This is so true, and it inevitably means that when your manufacturer begins to offer his own products he not only has a cost advantage, but also an even bigger design advantage.

Major appliances were one of the last things lost, so they're among the easiest to bring back as we still have people (engineers and manufacturing workers) who understand them. This also forms part of our commons; people designing major appliances can much more easily begin designing small appliances - or copiers, or heat pumps - than can people coming into design cold. Same for industrial engineers, welders, assemblers, and so forth. Companies that manufacture parts for major appliances can much more easily begin supplying parts for other manufacturing fields. The more one industry in a nation loses, the more all industries in that nation lose, and the more one gains the more they all gain.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

The persistence of failed ideas is truly amazing, a tribute to the effectiveness of propaganda.

The whole pack is barking up the "manufacturing jobs" tree when there's not much there, rather than the "redistribution" tree, which is full of raccoons.

As I offered earlier, it's all about the way we view ownership & obligation, about how we accept hoarding & control as real scarcity.

The way people think about tariffs vs taxes at the top is a prime example. Tariffs forced capitalists to hire Americans to make money. That cut into their profits in no small way, but contributed to the well being of American workers. It was a form of forced redistribution of resources. Capitalists would have preferred to use cheaper foreign labor all along.

When tariffs were removed, Capital surged out of the country & cheaper foreign goods entered, but it never was enough to offset the effects on workers' earnings, so other compensations were made, chiefly in the form of more credit. Capital's share of national income soared from offshoring & soared again collecting fees & interest, too.

Obviously, illusory extension of more credit in lieu of wages will only carry us just so far, which is where we are today.

If tariffs served as a redistribution method pre-Free Trade, then we need to provide a different mechanism to achieve the same effect, and taxes are all there is, along with Capital controls.

Instead of cutting taxes at the top, which is what we've done, we should have been raising them. Instead of trying to compete with cheap foreign labor, basically impossible, we should have demanded greater compensation for allowing our Capitalists to use it. We need to realize that, in a Democracy, Ownership can be exerted at a higher level & obligations placed on it in different ways to achieve the same effect as previously.

That would require a paradigm shift in our collective thinking, thinking currently dominated by adherence to concepts that have failed the middle class, concepts that have benefited the financial elite enormously.

Heresy, I know.

Just wanted to quote this in case some of you missed or tried to ignore this. These are the facts. No amount of partisan lobbying will change it.