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[International Trade & Globalization] 100% Locally Owned & Operated Thread
The Ender
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Registered User regular
You are an ASSEMBLY LINE WORKER for BITPARTZ WHIRL'N'GIGZ LTD, where you build BITPARTZ branded eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ. You have received a PINK SLIP because BITPARTZ is shifting it's manufacturing base to the neighboring country of ARSTOTZKA, because that country allows for the use of SLAVE LABOR which will increase the PROFIT MARGIN per unit for manufacturing companies like BITPARTZ. As of TOMORROW you will be UNEMPLOYED.
You are UNEMPLOYED. You have a skill set, educational background & personality that you believe is a good match for ASSEMBLY LINE WORK, particularly if it involves manufacturing eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ. Unfortunately, your GOVERNMENT prefers to IMPORT it's eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ supply from the TARIAT BUREAU in the neighboring country of ARSTOTZKA and so no eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ manufacturing jobs are available to you. You wish that local eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ manufacturing would become a reality. You are angry that your GOVERNMENT does not create local eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ manufacturing jobs instead of importing eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ from ARSTOTZKA. You remain UNEMPLOYED.
You are UNEMPLOYED. You have a skill set, educational background & personality that you believe is a good match for ASSEMBLY LINE WORK, particularly if it involves manufacturing eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ. Unfortunately, after submitting resumes and consenting to interviews with a variety of local eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ manufacturing firms, you are not granted an EMPLOYMENT OFFER. You observe that many SUSPICIOUS IMMIGRANTS from the neighboring country of ARSTOTZKA were hired by the same manufacturing firms that declined to hire you. You believe that you have a skill set, educational background & personality that is SUPERIOR for ASSEMBLY LINE WORK when it comes to the production of eco-friendly WHIRL'N'GIGZ than any SUSPICIOUS IMMIGRANT from the neighboring country of ARSTOTZKA. You declare the SYSTEM to be RIGGED. You remain UNEMPLOYED.
So, the anti-trade talk is pretty strong this year in North America, with both a Democratic frontrunner (Bernie Sanders) and the Republican favorite to win (Donald Trump) including some extremely strong protectionist language in their elections bids and receiving warm reception as a direct result (including traditionally leftist labor organizations supporting Mr. Trump, and traditionally conservative libertarians supporting Mr. Sanders). I've been personally embroiled in absolutely ferocious labor arguments (mostly negative) about trade deals & globalization all weekend, so to Hell with it: I think it's time to have a dedicated thread for this discussion.
The scenarios at the top of this OP are intended to represent the range of discussion / opinion that I'm used to: almost everyone, including people who argue in favor of trade deals, views the first scenario as a problem in need of some kind of solution / redress, while a much more limited number of people views everything trade / globalization related, right through to the third scenario, as a problem. The meat of the debate then largely orbits the second scenario (and similar territory), since everyone agrees with #1 and few people are willing to go as far as #3.
There are also some basic axioms that almost everyone agrees are true, regardless of their opinion of a given trade deal:
- There was a vibrant manufacturing industry in Canada & the United States around the Great Lakes region, focused largely on automotive production.
- This manufacturing industry has very significantly contracted, if not outright collapsed, in most of the areas where it was a dominant economic influence.
- The collapse of this manufacturing industry has left in it's wake what is known as 'the rust belt'; a number of economically impoverished communities, defunct factory facilities and dry coffer local governments.
- The economic impact of the manufacturing industry's collapse disproportionately impacted low-medium income whites living in the Great Lakes region.
The degree to which these axioms intersect with / can be causally linked to globalization / international trade is often also at the center of a given debate. Pro trade people generally espouse that trade deals had little / nothing to do with the collapse of North American manufacturing / the creation of the rust belt; anti trade people generally espouse that there is not only a direct link between trade deals and the collapse of North American manufacturing, but that the industry would not have contracted significantly (or perhaps not at all) in absence of any trade deals. Pro trade people generally argue that damages done to a given sector via job migration are more than offset by GDP gains due to trade; anti trade people generally argue that it is not reasonable to effectively force such a large economic depression onto one region / profession in exchange for overall national GDP gains.
Your thoughts & opinions on NAFTA, the TPP, CETA, etc, go here, D&D. Make your best case for / against globalization & using China to build all of our stuff at horrifically low wages & in horrifically terrible conditions so we can buy it cheap!
I would only request that the following two things not be done that I sometimes see being done:
- Disparaging the quality of work done by [Ethnic Group / Nationality]. No, [Ethnic Group / Nationality] does not always make inferior products / do a sub par job.
- Engaging in a morality play framing of what happened to white workers in the Great Lakes region. Yes, there is a long & storied history of white supremacist attitudes of varying sorts & a general trend of it being good to be the white guy in North American society / bad to be the visible minority guy in North American society; no, that does not somehow make it appropriate to applaud the poverty of unlucky members of the otherwise privileged class as if it's some kind of comeuppance.
With Love and Courage
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Can you eat a rise in the GDP? Unless you are a bullshit artist on Wall Street, no. Plus we must look at what kind of economic growth we're encouraging with free trade. Destroying small/midsize towns and cities in favor of swelling the coffers of multinational corporations and the piggy banks of the rich is insanity. It's a hell of a lot easier to get your tax base from the middle class than from the rich/corporations, and think of the money you'll save on policing (poverty breeds crime) welfare (more middle-class jobs=less on the rolls) and medical care (people with stable jobs aren't as stressed/sick as often as their min-wage counterparts).
Also, patriotism, striking a blow for Labor in class warfare, stopping the rise of our neo-aristocratic class, etc.
This is a lot of disjointed ideas. It's perfectly possible to have cheap trade and have higher taxes on the rich rather than the middle class or poor.
More trade resulting in cheaper goods is a good thing. The bad occurs when the government doesn't have policy or infrastructure in place to help people when their labor is no longer in demand.
I don't really agree with the bolded. Most people benefit in some way from living in a wealthier country (not everyone, and certainly not equally); greater access to services, usually less expensive goods that you can buy without much of a hassle, at least semi-functional infrastructure in most communities, etc.
I'm not currently sure how much I weigh the existence of this overall QoL median floor in NA vs the destruction of a lot of manufacturing labor sectors in NA, but I'd certainly argue that said floor at least exists as a trade-off.
I've always thought this sort of thing was silly in a Silicon Valley pie-in-the-sky kind of way. What, are you going to teach textile employees in their 40s to code apps? Why not make things here? The only reason goods are cheaper overseas is because we pay our workers good wages and there are numerous health and safety regulations our employers must follow. Pablo and Nguyen are paid pennies an hour and enjoy no such protections.
I disagree, I think it'd be better for our economy if we chose a more equitable wealth distribution vs a slightly higher GDP. If the GDP goes up by 50 and we keep our manufacturing sector, I feel that's better than if it goes up by 100 or 200 but the difference goes to the rich and everyone else loses their jobs and has to work in retail. Sure, the GDP's doing great, but rich people and companies hoard wealth like dragons and don't spend it. Money's got to circulate.
Even with good local wages and protections it would still be cheaper to manufacture overseas.
edit- I'll be gone 'till Thursday afternoon, but I'll be happy to pick this back up. I find it a little strange that in a board full of Democrats it's one of the Republicans that's taking the side of Labor in the class struggle. Like, where's your solidarity?
You need to find an old school socialist (the non-democratic kind) for these kind of arguments on the left. Current left wing politics is very identitarian so class struggle is mixed with race and gender. Old school socialists will say that the only way to fix race and gender inequality is to first fix the capitalist system. Once everyone has their fair share they will have the political power to fend for themselves. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with this (I'm not a socialist) but this is what my Marxist "Capitalism is a pox and must end" friends say.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
It was created from the unsustainable bubble that resulted from most of the world's manufacturing powers blowing each other up repeatedly, and the remaining potential competitors tying themselves down to a bad socioeconomic system that would leave them lagging behind for decades. That was a magical time for North American manufacturing that could never sustain itself. It's like owning the only gas station in a town with enough traffic to support four, and longing to repeat those profits when three more open up.
And then came the second non-trade whammy: Automation. The logical end of the Industrial Revolution, and great for manufacturing in the abstract but devastating for the culture of middle-class labor that had developed around said manufacturing.
I'm a staunch believer that the solution isn't to try to subsidize the buggy whips by forcing manufacturing jobs into the economy, but rather better social programs to spread around the benefits of free trade. I'm sympathetic to the argument that the inherent nature of wealth leading to more influence has made it difficult to enact such social programs, but if that's the case, I don't see how fixing it at the "stop free trade" step is any more or less politically viable than fixing it at the "redistribute the wealth" step.
Manufacturing employment has decreased both absolutely and as a share of total employment but the manufacturing industry has not collapsed. It has become less labor intense.
Scary foreigners, either in the US or still in their homeland, make a lot easier scapegoat than technology. While some of the loss of manufacturing jobs on relocations, movement to the Southern US has as much to do with it as actual factory outsourcing. The New England mill town had been the first centers of industry in the US but industrial employment in NE was in decline as early as WWI as the textile industry moved south, especially to the Piedmont region. My hometown was one of the biggest manufacturers of shoes.
NAFTA makes a good scapegoat, but manufacturing as a percent of the labor force has been in decline a long time
and not just in the US
It'd be awesome if there was a bad guy. There isn't. They're just progress and insufficient (absolutely or in the attitude of those who feel aggrieved) alleviating programs. Boston and Pittsburgh transitioned from Industrial cities to knowledge centers. Cleveland and Detroit haven't yet.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Excellent points. My only disagreement is on free trade. I'm a total free trader in theory, but I think the USA tends to make a lot of concessions in order to get other countries to trade freely. This may be the best deal possible under the circumstances but I'm not sure. Part of being a human is having what David Graeber call "a context". You exist in an intersection of relationships (call it "culture") which is greater than the sum of its parts and which economists find difficult to measure. If that intersection survives, money isn't quite as important, but if it dies, things can go south pretty fast. Look at this article on Japan in Politico. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/globalization-japan-terror-insularity-213807. Japan has had negative or near negative GDP growth for ages but the society isn't falling apart. Compare to rust belt America.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Japan is basically a ticking population bomb, thanks to a growing elderly population and a declining birthrate. Much of that is due to women choosing careers over family. In addition, there are numbers of ghost towns over the countryside, because the inhabitants have relocated.
I'd seriously argue with your statement that Japanese society isn't failing - it's just failing in a different way.
Should have helped the Luddites break all of the frames while we had the chance...
I'd take old people and robots where everyone has a job over tent cities of unemployed homeless people. Japan may be unsustainable and maybe they would be better in the long run pulling the band-aid off in one quick tug, but look around the world and look at world history. Decline is usually a lot worse. That said, not sure there is much to learn since Japan is such a unique place and very different from US etc.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Meh
Presenting the 1950s manufacturing situation as "normal" is just a comforting lie. It was an temporary situation that allowed for relatively high wages for relatively low skill labor. In order to manufacture something you need someone willing to buy it at the cost it takes for you to make it.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I don't at all disagree - but the axiom nevertheless remains true that there was a large manufacturing industry in the Great Lakes region that employed a lot of people, and this industry contracted / collapsed, leaving many people flapping in the wind.
That "some reason" is called "economics."
Well, yes. Non-ridiculous economists have long recognized the danger of laissez faire (or alternatively, captured regulations) economics policies, precisely because it's nothing more than the law of the jungle with paperwork obscuring it. Market systems are a useful when used properly, but unregulated capitalism is terrible.
Also, re: PantsB point, he's right, but OTOH, globalization + decreasing total jobs per $ produced due to automation makes the problem exponential for American workers, rather than linear. Going from 200 jobs to 100 jobs eliminates 50% of the jobs. Going from 200 jobs to 100 jobs, 90 of which are in China eliminates 95% of the jobs in the same timeframe.
It's not just free trade, but as I like to point out, American workers haven't seen any of the progress of the last half century. It's nearly all been stolen by rich Americans, and rich foreigners. Even foreign workers aren't really the primary beneficiaries, as the entire point of relocating is to pay poverty wages to desperate people elsewhere, rather than allow people to build careers and live an enjoyable, dignified life.
"American workers haven't seen any progress in half a century" is another way of saying "why can't it go back to the way it was when we had an unfettered monopoly on world manufacturing *and* the only way to manufacture was to employ tons of labor."
The choice isn't ultra-high taxes on rich people who'll just send their wealth to Swiss bank accounts vs broadening the middle-class tax. And frankly lowering taxes on the rich hasn't resulted in them keeping money in America anyway.
The solution is to raise wages, decrease required hours, increase public services, have a guaranteed income, etc. There's zero reason to maintain the same labor practices from decades ago beyond the fact that we always have.
Of course the key word is local, it is cheaper to manufacture overseas because those countries are poorer. Creating an artificial border to make that not true is not going to work. The money comes back anyway, and the US is simply moving towards a service economy.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's Workers of the world, unite!, not Workers of the world, divide and turtle up!
Well as someone who is often pretty imperialist about econ w.r.t. other disciplines, I'd say that sociology is probably where you ought to look for an explanation as to why in a modern society with a capacity for better wealth distribution and reductions in standard working hours, instead 'society' in general still seems to be opting for forty hour workweeks and higher unemployment.
Edit: and its attendant high, ridiculous consumption by those with jobs and bugger all consumption by those without.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
Globalisation was bad for rust belt USA, but how much has freer trade benefited countries like India, China, and Malaysia? Would China's massive rise in incomes have been possible had the US kept its market closed to the extent it was for much of its history?
Also, the narrative that "the USA tends to make a lot of concessions in order to get other countries to trade freely" is a common view in every country regarding every trade agreement across the world. From where I was at the time, for example, it certainly didn't look like the USA gave up an awful lot for the Australia-USA FTA. But it's largely a question of what the local media focuses on. Trade agreements involve compromise, but given the massive market and hence negotiating power of the USA, I think it's difficult to make the case to people in other countries that the USA gives up 'too much' in its trade deals. At the moment, for example, the USA seems to be pretty successfully ramming its various questionable copyright and intellectual property regimes into other countries via the TPP, which is likely to have nasty effects on things like drug affordability in many of its partner countries.
http://newnations.bandcamp.com
That's the stance of someone whose job is in no danger of outsourcing, but hey, I'll bite. Free trade has been good for countries with hordes of people living in sheet-metal shacks like Southeast Asia, India, and China. The populace of second-world countries like Mexico have gotten screwed. One of the reasons why we're seeing so many illegal immigrants in the U.S. is because our agricultural exports gutted their farming industry to the tune of two million jobs.
You mean "enforcing the existing border", there. Corporations should not be allowed to treat labor in Vietnam the same as labor in Ohio or Georgia and move factories accordingly. And why wouldn't enforcing the border work, exactly? If you slam a 33% tariff on imported Fords, Ford will open up its abandoned Michigan factories in a hurry. And if you ban all outsourcing, we'd see a hell of a lot more programming jobs available, not to mention the new spine it'd give unions and the white-collar workers. Hard for your boss to dick you over or break a union when you can't just move the job or the plant to India/Mexico anymore.
Hah. The money comes back, yes, but it comes back to the tycoons and the shareholders, not to the workers.
The primary beneficiaries are the rich, even in third world nations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/world/asia/bangladeshi-factory-owners-charged-in-fatal-fire.html?_r=0
While better on the whole than subsistence farming, otusourcing relies on the principle that at the very least the time and dignity, if not the very lives of workers in the developing world are expendable to fill the coffers of rich capitalists. Those factory workers, who were nothing less than murdered, included minors. Sure, goat herding is a shit job with shit prospects, but burning children alive to make profits while simultaneously destroying the souls of American workers who have had their future stolen from them has a downside generally not properly considered in talks about the economic advantages of outsourcing to anyone but a tiny minority of fat cats.
"Protectionism" in the form of pushing American worker protections outwards on imports, would save American jobs, and foreign lives.
But those aren't bad things really. Lower population growth is long term good! And yes that means for caring for a larger percentage of non-productive workers which does mean lower gdp/capita. But those things also even out over time and lower growth necessarily means higher capital/person which is a better measure of wealth/welloffness
If you slam a 33% tariff on imported fords then sure you might see some factories reopen but that could spark a trade war as other countries can put export tariffs on things you buy
The money never comes back to the workers in capitalism
That is pointlessly dismissive. My career was lost to structural unemployment. It's been a huge pain for me personally. I still think structural unemployment is good for society.
For example, I remember Marketplace on NPR doing a piece on what an iPhone would cost if it was made in the US. It was something like over three times what Apple pays to make it in China, and a lot of it has nothing to do with worker's pay, but rather that in China they have an entire district built from the ground up to make iPhones and the like in the most efficient way possible -something that both does not exist in the US (unless maybe you count the auto industry before the Rust Belt was the Rust belt) and would be prohibitively expensive to build.
...and in the wonders of a global economy, even if Trump became President and imposed a 200%+ tariff on Chinese-made iPhones... Apple would probably keep making them in China, because most iPhone sales these days are outside of the US. All it would accomplish is making iPhones in the US stupidly more expensive than the rest of the world.
If you slam a 33% tariff on all imported Fords, prices will rise significantly, wages might go up a little bit, and implementation of automated car assembly would expand significantly. Making Fords far more difficult overall for any working class person to afford. And the extremely rich remain so because nothing here actually addresses the power they currently wield. Having to possibly pay people more won't make at will employment disappear or unions the norm once more.
Cheap trade is not the source of the working class's problems. Little to no protection for workers, shrinking welfare, and archaic expectations of what work should consist of are.
Why? I'm sorry you lost your job, but why carry water for the assholes who fired you?
Not for Apple. Not for the company that holds a fifth of a trillion dollars in cash.
I disagree. Worker protection is nice, but I feel that we (as in Labor) have got to restrict the pool of available workers, be it ending the practice of equating workers in Vietnam and Ohio by getting rid of free trade/outsourcing to removing illegal immigrants from the workforce. If there's an unlimited labor supply workers have no bargaining power as they can be replaced whenever the boss wants. If the boss is restricted to only within American borders, sure, you'd see some factories move from state to state, but I feel that's a better outcome than watching all of the factories flee overseas. Ideally we'd also pass legislation to stop race-to-the-bottom within our borders, but it's a heck of a lot better than watching it happen internationally with our workers getting nothing.
And welfare and "archaic expectations" are a dead end. This isn't the Federation and won't be for over half a millennium at least. Throwing up our hands, giving up the fight against the nobility, and going "welp, welfare's the door prize" is a tad premature.
You admit already that your tariff wouldn't actually fix anything, just possibly make things less worse. I personally don't consider less awful to be an acceptable goal. Nor do I consider artificial scarcity of labor so that we can create work for work's sake worthwhile either.
It's not nineteen-dickety-two. There's literally no need for people to work forty hour weeks and our society and lives reflect that. But far too many people want to punish the "lazy" and make up reasons to employ people at or below poverty level wages rather than accept we could just raise taxes, cut back work hours, and enjoy the better world we've created. It will take continued efforts in education, political arenas, and social circles to hopefully achieve that one day. But a tariff won't do a thing to get us there.
Because "fuck you, got mine" has never been my philosophy. Nobody was an asshole. I didn't lose my job, I lost my *career*. Few people need what I am trained and experienced in doing because technology shifted and made it obsolete.
That is a good thing for society even though it sucks for me. I benefitted from centuries of the same thing to people who died before I was even born. I could go to college and major in what I did because I wasn't needed at the family farm or in the local mill or to go drag ice down from the mountain, and it sucked when those stopped being needed for those people just like it sucks now for me.
And in the next generation, some kid is going to be able to do something different and productive for society because he isn't going to be tied down doing what I did, which benefits both him and society.
What?! Work for work's sake? Is making computers "work for work's sake"? Is programming? Is picking fruit? Is making air conditioners? Would you look those poor bastards at Carrier in the eye and tell them that, no, it's okay that their jobs were sent to Mexico because they were just working for work's sake.
"Make up" reasons for employment? Raising taxes and cutting working hours? Who's going to be paying those taxes when everyone's working 8 hours a week? The rich?
Ending free trade is an actual, achievable goal within the next five years with real, positive results for American workers. Implementing Utopia is not feasible within the next twenty years by any stretch of the imagination.
Don't try to sell free trade as helping the poor. I'm sure unemployed factory workers are real happy they can get a 20lb bag of tainted Chinese dog food for five dollars. That totally makes up for losing their job and being forced to work retail for minimum wage and no benefits. Cheap goods are only useful when the populace can afford them.
...because the pool of jobs is getting smaller and smaller? Forgetting automation entirely, corporations are sending every job overseas they can and bringing in H1B immigrants to replace us in the jobs they can't. Sure, welfare's great, but unless you want to watch more and more Americans stay on welfare forever while the rich become ultra-rich and turn into a permanent nobility, we need to bring those jobs back. Will automation get rid of some jobs? Sure. But in the meantime let's claw every one back from overseas.
Again, very surprised at this, but I guess it's understandable as the Democratic party has changed from being leftist to socially-liberal and economically conservative.
Idk about the broader economy but the move to virtualization has absolutely reduced the pool of sysadmins by large numbers. Similar things are happening across the IT sector as we move to a SaaS model as the standard.