dagblog - Comments for "Why Obama Is Wrong and Warren Is Right on Trade Bill Quarrel"

This is of course an issue

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 19 May 2015 21:08:04 +0000

In reply to You're addressing one more of

This is of course an issue for blenders, washers/dryers/dishwashers, mobile phones, lawnmowers, electric razors, etc., etc. I've bought used blenders from 20 years ago that run fine for another 10. Vs. probably most I could buy today new that might make it to 3. Then again, I paid dirt prices for the new ones - but then every time I've bought a slightly expensive cappuccino maker, it works like crap but the cheapest ones I've been quite happy with. My best solution so far is to shop at an online/bricks-and-mortar store with a million products that keeps good track of my purchases so I can at least do returns, since I'm bad about keeping receipts.

You're addressing one more of

ocean-kat — Tue, 19 May 2015 20:51:15 +0000

In reply to This prompts some thoughts

You're addressing one more of the many problems with the out sourcing of goods. The race to the bottom is not just about wages, safety, or environmental standards. It's also about quality. Companies in other countries also compete with each other for contracts. Since wages are already at rock bottom they find ways to save money to offer cheaper goods by lessening the quality of the materials. While one can research when making a large purchase one can't spend the time over every $20 one spends on a tool.

I could come up with numerous examples. I had a short blade long handle pruning shears for 25 years. I used it hard until finally the handle broke. When I couldn't find a replacement handle I replaced it with a Fiskars, a brand that has always had a reputation for quality. In less than a year the blade was badly gouged. Clearly a lower quality steel was used. My 25 year old clippers still has a blade in excellent condition. I'm planning on getting an oak limb and carving a new handle for it.

But I don't think anyone is forgetting about exports. The problem is that with every increase in exports to a country there's an even larger increase in imports leaving us even worse off than before. In the overall picture the increase in exports is essentially meaningless.

This prompts some thoughts

Oxy Mora — Tue, 19 May 2015 16:27:16 +0000

In reply to I'm not talking about "utopia

This prompts some thoughts about consumerism, elastic demand and quality. I just purchased an industrial grade fifty four inch zero turn mower, a John Deere, and paid much more than I would have at Home Depot for as large a mower. My perception (I could be wrong) is that it just looks beefier (I like that) will last longer and there is an actual dealer who has parts, can repair etc., plus it's Americun made. I'm upgrading. I could be wrong, but I think I've made a wise decision money-wise although its a bigger bite now.

Always using myself as the hub of commerce, my point is that the growth factor you're lookng for may come in the form of better and higher priced products for some folks. My experience is that a whole range of products---like appliances, for example, are cheap but not necessarily long lasting. For example the touch screens on two large LG air conditioners crapped out in six months---good thing I kept the remotes, which,knock on wood, still work. In a sense its similar to our lousy infrastructure, tons of cheap products---tools, etc., which are crap, and ripe for replacement as some employed people are feeling better about their circumstances and thinking more long term value.

Obviously, the effect on lower scale workers is indirect, and doesn't substitute for better wage rates.

Somewhat akin to the above, we forget about exports. One of the biggest consumer areas for Asian populations on the upswing is the purchase of electronics and technology, much of it from U.S. companies.

I'm not talking about "utopia

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 19 May 2015 12:49:02 +0000

In reply to There's a lot of speculative

I'm not talking about "utopia"- I'm referring to Norway, a real country, and I'm trying to look at real ways that can either provide jobs in this screwed up environment and/or redistribute income to counter the negative effects of job-loss. "College" vs online training including virtual walkthroughs, realistic hands-on simulation, etc. will continue to be a thornier topic over the next 5-10 years, not the distant future, especially with horrid tuitions and usury rates for student loans. And most people, as you intuit, don't have much use for another 4 years of their life pissed down the toilet reading "great books" or discussing Pliny the Elder.

Everyone wants a piece of America, but America wants a piece of everyone else. It's hard to keep the assymmetrical access we had through much of last century - the Cold War's over and China's become a super-supplier with ability to push its own agenda and the EU's now bargaining as a whole. Plus Europe is no longer a sufficient market to sustain our growth like yesteryear even if we shut out all our imports. Plus a lot of our "imports" are simply petrol as fallout from our Mideast adventures that both caused us to burn a ton more oil and also raised the price of our imports (and did much to kill off the Big 3 as they were).

Anyway, I'm interested in what type of production can be growth sectors in any serious jobs numbers - whether software services or manufacturing or eHealth or alternative energy or something besides cleaning out bedpans and handling a shake machine. Or if those jobs don't appear, how to ameliorate the effect.

There's a lot of speculative

ocean-kat — Tue, 19 May 2015 08:49:28 +0000

In reply to I think there's a very

There're a lot of speculative discussions that some might find interesting. I'm not one of them. Occasionally my mind wanders into imagining utopian societies, usually some form of socialism, but mostly I'm interested in discussing attainable solutions to the immediate problems we face. If robotics take off the way some think it will we'll have to come up with some rather extreme solutions to deal with all the unemployed surplus labor and it probably will have to be some sort of socialism. But until we reach that point it's unattainable.

I brought up college because that's the solution many politicians are talking about. There're two reasons that's not a real solution. Even if everyone could get a college education there's not enough jobs for all those grads. But as I pointed out above more than half the population doesn't have a degree and imo at least half of the population never will. Some people are just not made for college. That's the reason to keep a sufficient amount of production in this country.

America is the largest richest market and every country wants a piece of it. We shouldn't give it away for free. I'm all for helping other countries raise out of poverty but I don't think impoverishing the mass of American workers is a justifiable cost.

I think there's a very

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 19 May 2015 05:27:29 +0000

In reply to With executive pay going from

I think there's a very interesting discussion to be had about why domestic production should continue, why it's not, where are the new outputs of pride-in-quality that could seemingly be produced locally.

I was briefly involved in a project to produce & sell eco-diapers in China. The margins were very tough to manage & in the end it's likely the Chinese stole the design and started a cheap knock-off. But prior to this effort, the business was still very painful & non-scalable despite being interesting and worthwhile - lot's of word-of-mouth, individual home-working agents, etc. Maybe that's sufficient - maybe I had my expectations too high, but it all felt like pushing a rock uphill.

But I think we're also missing the boat on socialism - Norwegians have a horridly high tax rate - but then that society is funneling its profits back into support for the country as a whole and the individuals who live here. Our system is avoiding paying back into the system that sustains it. This is a basic physics situation of entropy and closed vs. leaky systems. Of course a tire with a leak goes flat and either needs the leak fixed or lots of stops at gas stations. But the basic idea of socialism is that people contribute - not that they all do the same. And in the 21st or better 22nd century, that contribution doesn't have to be the standard Victorian morals of the Dickensian factory or even the Detroit assembly line 1954. A lot of what we did then was simply because we had to. Now we don't have to do a lot of things - agriculture output is huge without too much labor input, soon energy output will be huge without needing to dig out natural resources - we don't have to have all the people "work" but they all need to survive - eat/have housing/etc - and they all need a sense of belonging and purpose - that doesn't have to be a "job" but likely means an "occupation", a role, an activity.

That teacher that gets fired - what will he/she do? we need to think about it. If they can't fit in with a school, where will they fit in?

If "profitable" has low enough overheads say due to subsidized healthcare, lower cost of car insurance, lower cost of groceries - mom-n-pop home businesses can also be sustainable, though not hugely scalable.

Good one - my main point is

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 19 May 2015 05:09:27 +0000

In reply to Peracles, I ask my accountant

Good one - my main point is most of those overheads - expenses & subsequently someone else's job - are inside the US. Even the bank where the overpaid exec stuffs his unearned windfalls is likely a US bank.

With executive pay going from

ocean-kat — Mon, 18 May 2015 23:13:51 +0000

In reply to A 1996 article had Barbie

With executive pay going from 20 or 30 times the average employee pay to 400 times I suspect if we broke down the figures it would turn out the largest reason was executive pay. But the larger issue for me is not Barbie. There once was a vibrant toy manufacturing industry in this country in spite of the fact the Barbie or some few other specific toys were made over seas. That industry is all nearly gone now and all those decently paid jobs.

While I'm certainly gratified

ocean-kat — Mon, 18 May 2015 23:03:47 +0000

In reply to Thank you. You are much more

While I'm certainly gratified that you like my little comments I don't see any cause for you to disparage your own contributions to this site. You make your points effectively and are no less eloquent than any other poster here.

Peracles, I ask my accountant

Oxy Mora — Mon, 18 May 2015 22:21:07 +0000

In reply to A 1996 article had Barbie

Peracles, I ask my accountant, Betty, that question every month, "Betty, where did all the profit go?" She usually brings up things like my Amex card and purchases of new trucks, etc.

Even in a service business like mine, direct wage costs are swamped by overhead costs. Folks forget expenses like employer contributions, distribution costs, advertising (we pay Google), direct sales salaries w/ attendant expenses, R&D, phone and communications, returns, warranties, workers compensation, vehicle insurance, equipment maintenance, legal fees, accounting, benefits including medical, rent, local fees and taxes and of course if one actually makes a profit, out the door with taxes.

If a particular industry still has "channels of distribution"---(I assume this 20th century concept would exclude, e.g., Amazon's in-house creations like the Kindle), each layer has to take a cut.

In a sense, even if a u.s. manufacturer gets lower labor costs overseas, if it is expanding, these overhead and ancillary services and wages grow, usually at a higher wage rate. So, cheap labor overseas might not be the job killer, looked at across an organization, or the country as a whole, that it appears to be at first glance.

Then there is executive compensation. A friend of mine went to a conference of the company's top execs at a Ritz Carlton in Sarasota to try to figure out how to stop the company's gigantic losses. After a week of tarpon fishing, bonding, and grilling steaks they concluded that they would have to cut staff by 20%.