what is the best way for America to create more jobs?

[theevilsharpie]

The US and Europe economy was great in the second half of the 20th century without cheap labor.

The second half of the 20th century saw most of the industrialized world either bombed to shit or behind the veil of communism and unavailable for global trade. After WWII, the US was the only 1st world large-scale industrial power that still had its infrastructure intact.

The reason the US was so successful in the second half of the 20th century is because we had a monopoly on practically all forms of heavy industry. The only reason Western Europe recovered so quickly was because of massive US investments in rebuilding their defense and infrastructure (using US-built products, of course).

Short of another world war, those days are over.

 

[her209]

Consumer consumption as a basic for the economy is short-sighted and unsustainable. As technology and automation renders jobs obsolete and as resources become more scarce, people will need to learn to make do with less, so basing your economy on over-consumption is failure waiting to happen. The end game is a nearly fully service based economy, might as well get used to it.

Its not short sighted at all. Why would someone start or invest in a business (even one that primarily uses automation) without customers? And if people, aka consumers, have to make do with less, then that means businesses will have to make do with less profit too. And the thing about service jobs, is that they are easier to outsource than manufacturing jobs. Need a legal document looked at? Pay a lawyer here to look at it or e-mail it to some Indian lawyer who can do just a good a job but charges much less per hour. The only service jobs that can't be outsourced is one that requires physical presence to complete.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

remove the minimum wage
remove a lot of regulations
lower the tax rates on corps

To compete in the global economy we need to bring manufacturing and other unskilled jobs back to the US.

we need the "the next big thing" to create a lot of jobs and I just don't know what the next big thing will be - last 10+yrs has been incredibly hard on the average US worker.

The Great Stagnation - Tyler Cowen

 

[theevilsharpie]

You're not going to get cheap labor in the US unless we go back to 19th century standard of living.

The US is still a very wealthy country, but the vast majority of that wealth is concentrated in the coastal areas. There are many parts of the country where the only thing preventing the populace from slipping back to a 19th century standard of living is government assistance.

 

[ch33kym0use]

Invest in private sector industry that requires people in the USA to work I assume.

 

[Hacp]

Its not short sighted at all. Why would someone start or invest in a business (even one that primarily uses automation) without customers? And if people, aka consumers, have to make do with less, then that means businesses will have to make do with less profit too. And the thing about service jobs, is that they are easier to outsource than manufacturing jobs. Need a legal document looked at? Pay a lawyer here to look at it or e-mail it to some Indian lawyer who can do just a good a job but charges much less per hour. The only service jobs that can't be outsourced is one that requires physical presence to complete.

There are customers. The world is bigger than the US. People will buy things if the price is cheap enough. If prices of 32 inch LCD tvs were 100 dollars right now, they would all be sold out.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I'm not so sure about that... China's economy is government run, and they're kicking our ass right now.

China's rapid growth is in many ways a replay of the Soviet Union's growth during the Great Depression. China looks like they're kicking our ass right now because they are creating economic activity by modernizing their infrastructure and industry, but they will eventually reach a point where they are "finished." If the history of communism is any indication, China will start facing some major social and economic upheaval once their growth slows.

 

[Infohawk]

The second half of the 20th century saw most of the industrialized world either bombed to shit or behind the veil of communism and unavailable for global trade. After WWII, the US was the only 1st world large-scale industrial power that still had its infrastructure intact.

The reason the US was so successful in the second half of the 20th century is because we had a monopoly on practically all forms of heavy industry. The only reason Western Europe recovered so quickly was because of massive US investments in rebuilding their defense and infrastructure (using US-built products, of course).

Short of another world war, those days are over.

You're talking the first 5 to 10 years after the war. I'm talking about a lot bigger period. The bottom line is that wages were not at third-world levels and still the economies were better than ever.

 

[shira]

Let's cut $10 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years, right into the teeth of what may well be another recession. At $50,000 a job per year, that's a loss of only 2 million jobs from the U.S. economy.

Yeah, that's how you create jobs: cut 2 million of them while teetering on the precipice of another recession. Tea Party Republicans tell me that this makes perfect sense.

 

[theevilsharpie]

You're talking the first 5 to 10 years after the war.

Do you seriously believe the world recovered from WWII after only 10 years?

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA :awe::awe::awe:

 

[Jaskalas]

Thats an interesting view. I suspect that there may be quite a bit of truth to it. Its time for a shakeup of the current business establishment.

2008 was supposed to do that. Our government devalued the dollar in an effort to save the business establishment.

 

[Jhhnn]

Provide businesses a stable environment in which to invest their money.

What could be more unstable than the whim of a politician? Get their hands off, stop them from turning nobs, changing the rules, and outright creating a cluster !@#$. You must shrink government power / money / influence so as to restore free market influence.

A government run economy is inherently unstable and bad for jobs. Remove all their money and all their stimulus and let the cards finally fall into place like they are supposed to. Stop picking winners and losers with printed money and the economy can begin to heal.

Yeh, bring back 1928! That'll work!

Free market Libertopians have no sense of history. Your shit was stomped flat in the crash of '29 & the aftermath, but you somehow managed to bring it back from the dead to create the crash of 2008!

Anybody who wasn't among the perps, the Wall St bamboozlers, & advocates their position is a brain dead twit, by definition.

 

[RbSX]

2008 was supposed to do that. Our government devalued the dollar in an effort to save the business establishment.

2008 didn't do shit, just watch 'Inside Job', it just moved the same fucking pieces around into different places, it didn't change the establishment at all.

 

[BoberFett]

Yeh, bring back 1928! That'll work!

Free market Libertopians have no sense of history. Your shit was stomped flat in the crash of '29 & the aftermath, but you somehow managed to bring it back from the dead to create the crash of 2008!

Anybody who wasn't among the perps, the Wall St bamboozlers, & advocates their position is a brain dead twit, by definition.

So what you're saying is that we need another world war to kick the economy back into gear?

 

[BarneyFife]

Tax corporations. Tell them if you want to sell a product in the US, then you have to pay taxes or you can't sell it here. None of this bullshit headquarters with a PO box in some island country.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Tax corporations. Tell them if you want to sell a product in the US, then you have to pay taxes or you can't sell it here.

A tax for selling a product? What a novel idea

We can call it a "sales tax." :awe:

 

[sandorski]

Infrastructure spending. California is building new Bay Bridge in China because the federal government is not putting up enough money to make building it in the US worthwhile.

This.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

educate me on what is the best course. Please try not to spin this in to a politcal debate.

The problem is not that the U.S. economy cannot create jobs.

The problem is that it's creating jobs overseas or the jobs are being filled domestically by foreigners.

Since we exposed ourselves to an economic phenomenon that few people (including many "no-think" economists) understand called Global Labor Arbitrage, businesses (and the wealthy) have been making higher profits (taking more of a worker's contribution to the act of wealth production) at the expense of the lower classes.

By merging our labor market with those of the third world, the supply of labor increased dramatically, which means that the price point--wages--must decrease. So, businesses stopped using American labor to service the American economy and instead moved manufacturing facilities and even many college-education-requiring knowledge-based jobs overseas (foreign outsourcing or offshoring) or hired foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas or immigrants at lower wages.

This resulted in increased unemployment for Americans, decreased tax revenue (because unemployed and poor people don't pay much in taxes), and a greater need for government welfare programs (unemployment, food stamps, etc.).

So, that's our problem. To fix it we need to engage in economic nationalism and trade protectionism. That means we need tariffs on imports and policies to encourage domestic manufacturing for domestic consumption. We also need to end the H-1B and L-1 visa programs ASAP and we need to end mass immigration--both legal and illegal. We need to deport the illegals who are here now and end all legal immigration for several years.

Of course, it's not going to happen because the current status quo benefits the rich. That's why our politicians can agonize over the debt ceiling while completely ignoring the issue of jobs and unemployment. They know what needs to be done to fix the U.S. economy, but their masters won't let them do it.

 

[BoberFett]

Its not short sighted at all. Why would someone start or invest in a business (even one that primarily uses automation) without customers? And if people, aka consumers, have to make do with less, then that means businesses will have to make do with less profit too. And the thing about service jobs, is that they are easier to outsource than manufacturing jobs. Need a legal document looked at? Pay a lawyer here to look at it or e-mail it to some Indian lawyer who can do just a good a job but charges much less per hour. The only service jobs that can't be outsourced is one that requires physical presence to complete.

So you think it's sustainable for us to keep making more and more and more stuff?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

So you would send all those foreign manufacturing plants here in the United States packing back home? They are outsourcing, are they not?

Those "foreign manufacturing plants" are not manufacturing for foreign production but domestic production. Also, many of them used to be owned by Americans until they were sold. See:

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20060405/

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_04072004/

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_04062004/

 

[WhipperSnapper]

You might want to research Smoot–Hawley before you call for tariffs.

Ask yourself this: Are there tariffs between/among the 50 States of the Union?

Well, no, we don't have tariffs amongst the states. But then again all of those states pretty much have the same general federally-mandated economic policies, labor laws, environmental laws, federal taxation, etc.

Why don't you come out and explain how Global Labor Arbitrage is good for the U.S. economy and how it will result in increased prosperity for Americans and more jobs. Can you explain how a dramatic increase in the supply of labor (billions of impoverished people in the third world, many of whom are obtaining college educations) will NOT necessarily result in a decreased standard of living for Americans (higher unemployment, lower wages)? If you could do that, our politicians and economists would literally shout it out on street corners and from rooftops.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I'm not so sure about that... China's economy is government run, and they're kicking our ass right now.

Amazing, isn't it? Germany also has a greater government influence in the economy and is doing much better than we are.

Trying to explain that to the free market dogmatists is like the evil socialists' reaction to John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged. "We don't have to believe it!"

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Oh and people need to stop going to University and saddling themselves with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and go into vocational training, which there usually is a serious shortage of.

I agree. We need to reduce the number of people going to college so that the production of college graduates more closely matches the real-world actual need for college graduates. These articles may be of interest:

Why Did 17 Million People Go to College?

That's right, 17 Million Americans have college degrees and work (presumably menial and low-paying) jobs that don't require a college education because we have such a huge oversupply of college-educated Americans.

From Wall Street to Walmart: Why College Graduates Are Not Getting Good Jobs

The Real Science Gap (OMG, unemployed and underemployed PhD scientists!--that's supposed to be impossible!)

 

[soccerballtux]

educate me on what is the best course. Please try not to spin this in to a politcal debate.

just stop taxing the new ones.
Simplify the tax code so that smaller businesses can afford to do business. We don't want to end up like the UK where no new companies have entered the market in 20 years.

 

[Jhhnn]

Consumer consumption as a basic for the economy is short-sighted and unsustainable. As technology and automation renders jobs obsolete and as resources become more scarce, people will need to learn to make do with less, so basing your economy on over-consumption is failure waiting to happen. The end game is a nearly fully service based economy, might as well get used to it.

A service based economy doesn't necessarily have to pay workers less, to have high unemployment, or a totally lopsided distribution of wealth & income.

So what you're saying is that we need another world war to kick the economy back into gear?

Don't play the fool, OK? I said nothing of the kind. I referenced the cause of collapse, then & now, a credit bubble, created by those free market capitalist forces Jaskalas luvs so much. Boom & Bust are basic characteristics of poorly regulated capitalism, particularly of raw unregulated capitalism.