The 2008 Presidential Campaign (was Obama Phenomenon 2)

[sauronsfinger]

somehow this ended up being posted twice...
sorry

Voronwë - sorry about the statistics --- I know they tend to pale next to theory, philosophy, idealogy, belief and hyperbole --- but its the best I can do right now. I will try to do better in the future.

and this from the Bureau of Labor Statistics dated 2/14/08


Major Industry Sector Gross Job Gains and Gross Job Losses

Goods-producing. Expanding and opening establishments in the
goods-producing sector accounted for 1,622,000 jobs gained, and
contracting and closing establishments accounted for 1,691,000 jobs
lost. This net loss of 69,000 jobs was the fourth consecutive
quarter of net loss in this sector. (See tables B and 3.)

Construction. In construction, gross job gains fell over the
quarter to 814,000 and gross job losses increased to 855,000,
resulting in a net loss of 41,000 jobs.

Manufacturing. Gross job gains in manufacturing increased to a
level of 522,000 jobs in the second quarter of 2007, and gross job
losses fell to 567,000, resulting in a net loss of 45,000 jobs. This
was the fourth consecutive quarter of net job losses for this
industry.

These three areas tend to be blue collar jobs with good hourly wages and benefits packages.

The same report indicates that the areas of job growth tend to be largest in the service sectors. They tend to be lower paying hourly jobs with few if any benefits.

How many people do we need to say "welcome to Wal Mart"?

[solicitr]

Aha, SF, we're talking apples and oranges. Ethel and I were talking about the rise in manufacturing output, you're talking about the decline in manufacturing employment. In brief, we're making more with fewer people. It's called 'productivity.'

Are you against it? Think carefully......

There is also a hidden statistic in there, although I can't dig up nunmbers: in the old days, everybody who worked under the roof of a GM plant was employed directly by GM, including the janitors and the cafeteria workers. Therefore they were all counted as 'manufacturing' jobs, though of course they weren't. In more recent times firms increasingly contract out custodial, food and other services: voila! 'manufacturing' jobs lost, that never were in the first place.

[solicitr]

..... the service sectors. They tend to be lower paying hourly jobs with few if any benefits.

How many people do we need to say "welcome to Wal Mart"?

I'm sure that makes great rhetoric down at the union hall, but the service sector doesn't just mean Wal-Mart and McDonald's. I'm in a service job. So is Voronwë, and Nel, and Jny, and Ethel--in fact you yourself, SF, have spent your career in a service job. None of us makes anything except paper..... and money.

Go back to the numbers from a couple of days ago- incomes for the middle 3/5ths of Americans (which includes the overwhelming bulk of manufacturing jobs) has *increased* 20% in real terms since 1980. Not decreased. Not remained stagnent. Increased.

Again, note that the segment between 25 and 50k pa has shrunk *not* because people have slipped below 25, but because they've risen above fifty.


Gee, you don't think unions might have an ulterior motive in hyping job losses in heavily-unionized industries, do you?



The numbers are right there for any who care to look at them. Politicians of the John Edwards/ Dick Gephart stripe are not just slippery- they're liars. And far too many peole believe them, just because they see that their TVs are made in Indonesia and their cars (made in Kentucky) carry a Toyota nameplate.

[sauronsfinger]

So let me get this straight.

You do not feel it is important if we are losing millions of manufacturing jobs because the statistics that you care about - manufacturing output - show that manufacturing companies now can make the same goods, even more, with a much smaller workforce? You call this "productivity".
The workers became more productive and their reward was.........
no longer being employed as workers. Ahhh - the 21st century American Dream does indeed live.

So while you do not deny the loss of millions of good paying, good benefit manufacturing jobs, it simply is not a concern of yours as long as manufacturing output is steady or increasing?

Is that correct?

[sauronsfinger]

from Solicitr

the service sector doesn't just mean Wal-Mart and McDonald's. I'm in a service job. So is Voronwë, and Nel, and Jny, and Ethel--in fact you yourself, SF, have spent your career in a service job.

So these millions of people who were gainfully employed in blue collar manufacturing jobs making good wages with good benefits are now free to join the services sector of the economy and use their legal degrees and become attorneys practicing law, dust of their Ph. D's and become college professors, and find those unused teacher credentials and get jobs in education?

[yovargas]

I don't know much about this topic so I can't comment much but it does generally remind that technology has made a lot of jobs obsolete and while the job losses are hard on those who've become unemployed, it is generally a good thing for society. You don't bemoan the car makers because it cost horse-and-buggy makers their jobs. I have no idea if that's actually what has happened but as I understand it, that is generally what sol is claiming has happened.

[Túrin Turambar]

So let me get this straight.

You do not feel it is important if we are losing millions of manufacturing jobs because the statistics that you care about - manufacturing output - show that manufacturing companies now can make the same goods, even more, with a much smaller workforce? You call this "productivity".
The workers became more productive and their reward was.........
no longer being employed as workers. Ahhh - the 21st century American Dream does indeed live.

So while you do not deny the loss of millions of good paying, good benefit manufacturing jobs, it simply is not a concern of yours as long as manufacturing output is steady or increasing?

Is that correct?

Regardless of how good or bad the flight of manufacturing jobs from the developed world is, there’s nothing we can do about it. Unless we’re willing to pay people a few dollars a day so that we can compete with India, Indonesia and China, we just need to accept it and adapt.

Unless you have another solution?

[sauronsfinger]

from yovargas

You don't bemoan the car makers because it cost horse-and-buggy makers their jobs. I have no idea if that's actually what has happened but as I understand it, that is generally what sol is claiming has happened.

For as long as there have been manufacturers there are some that go out of business because their product becomes outdated and they fail to modernize or change product lines. That was true 150 years ago. It was true 100 years ago. It was true 50 years ago and it is true today. Nothing has changed in that regard.

What has changed is a willingness of corporations to want to do business in the USA but outsource their manufacturing to countries where labor is cheaper, regulation is much less stringent, pollution standards are non existent or weaker, and they have a much wider power in dealing with all phases of their operation.

The companies relocating to cheaper labor markets around the world are NOT the buggy whip companies of the early 1900's whose product fell out of favor. These are companies making the products overseas that they made here. Same stuff. Not out of date buggy whip stuff.

That is a significant factor in what is costing good paying manufacturing jobs in this country.

Corporations want to sell their products in America.
Corporations want the money from American consumers.
But some corporations do not want to employ Americans to make those products.

But some here and elsewhere constantly tell us that we must adjust to the labor standards of India and China and Mexico. "We have to face that reality." So goes that admonition from the Right.

QUESTION: why is this cheap labor standard the only thing we are being whipsawed against? What about the other componenets of business other than the simple hourly wage component?

Why can't we use our marketplace and our customers and the lure of their dollars to whipsaw other nations into making products that comply with our labor standards, our regulatory standards, our safety standards, our product liability standards, our legal standards, and other basic requirements that American companies making goods in America have to meet to sell goods on the American market?

If products from other countries want to be sold in America to Americans, why don't we impose the same standards upon those products as we do on any American made product which is sold here? That would include all aspects of the product and its making.

That would go quite far in levelling the playing field.

[solicitr]

Are you seriously suggesting that we can force Taiwan and Mexico and South Korea to pay UAW wages and benefits??????

[Faramond]

Here is what the candidates say about foreign trade:

Fight for Fair Trade: Obama will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. He will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. Obama will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.

Amend the North American Free Trade Agreement: Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.

Improve Transition Assistance: To help all workers adapt to a rapidly changing economy, Obama would update the existing system of Trade Adjustment Assistance by extending it to service industries, creating flexible education accounts to help workers retrain, and providing retraining assistance for workers in sectors of the economy vulnerable to dislocation before they lose their jobs.


John McCain Will Lower Barriers To Trade. Ninety-five percent of the world's customers lie outside our borders and we need to be at the table when the rules for access to those markets are written. To do so, the U.S. should engage in multilateral, regional and bilateral efforts to reduce barriers to trade, level the global playing field and build effective enforcement of global trading rules. These steps would also strengthen the U.S. dollar and help to control the rising cost of living that hurts our families.

John McCain Will Act To Make American Workers More Competitive. We must prepare the next generation of workers by making American education worthy of the promise we make to our children and ourselves. We must be a nation committed to competitiveness and opportunity. We must fight for the ability of all students to have access to any school of demonstrated excellence. We must place parents and children at the center of the education process, empowering parents by greatly expanding the ability of parents to choose among schools for their children.

[sauronsfinger]

I am not advocating that we force any other nation to do anything.

If companies want to sell goods that are not made in America, then we should take appropriate action to insure the safety, health and welfare of the American people.

This power is found in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

[Túrin Turambar]

If companies want to sell goods that are not made in America, then we should take appropriate action to insure the safety, health and welfare of the American people.

I assume that the American authorities already impose standards on imported goods? Either way, the quality of the goods themselves is tangential to what we're actually discussing - the fact that they're made overseas far more cheaply than they could be in the United States.

[Ethel]

Without covering all your points, Ethel, as fully as they deserve:

I'll respond to your manufacturing post in more detail later, if I ever get a chance to catch my breath. (Things are crazy at work.) The US still has the largest economy in the world, and a significant share of it--I do not disagree with this--is still manufacturing. But it's not that simple. I'm not just imagining that Japan and Korea have taken market share away from Detroit in car manufacturing, and I know you know this. And that's only one example. The issue is manufacturing growth we have ceded to other countries. Take another look at that chart you posted. Most years show a growth in US manufacturing output (though honestly, and I checked this, in most years less than GDP)--but an even larger growth in manufactured imports. Note the scale. The Y axis (manufacturing output percentage growth) increments by 2 points; the X axis (manufacturing import percentage growth) increments by 4.

But I really can't concur with you, Ethel, in this:

if anything besides manufacturing creates wealth, I don't know what it is.

I would instead have to agree with Don Boudreaux:

I have never believed that making things is inherently better -- inherently more likely to produce widespread prosperity, inherently more noble, inherently more meaningful -- than is the supplying of services. And until I notice a widespread pattern of parents hoping that their children grow up to become factory workers rather than to become doctors, lawyers, and bank presidents, I'll continue to believe that.

It's a question of adding value. Manufacturing takes something cheap--say silicon--and turns it into something valuable, like computer chips. There is nothing wrong with providing a service to your society. It's a fine thing to do. But in the global marketplace, there are relatively few services that make a nation more competitive. That really add value. There are some. Design engineering and software development come to mind. Wall Street seems to think that investment advice is one of them. That's not looking too brilliant at the moment, but they have their ups and downs.

-------------

This is a global economy, and we aspire to leadership. Do we want to have the currency that oil is traded in? Do we want to have the currency that everyone in the world wants to invest in? Of course we do.

Of course we do? You're making appeals to ego. I don't mean this in anything but the friendliest way, but are you sure you haven't been caught up by a sort of virility-view of economics? A big, tough dollar coming from big, tough people in big, tough factories? My father thought that way, and it took me a long time to learn that he was mistaken.

You misunderstand me, and perhaps that is my fault. I do believe that currencies should "float", and I think the USD is about where it deserves to be at the moment. My point was that, if we want to continue to be a superpower, we need to be an economic one as well as a military one. We can't continue to spend more on the military than every other country in the world combined--as we do currently--if our economy is in the tank. Do we want to be a superpower, or don't we? You tell me. Personally, I could live without it. But the USD is not going to continue to be the world's "reserve" currency if we're paying 2% on government securities while the Europeans are paying 4%. Should we care? Again, you tell me.

It's not that I think we should take governmental actions to shore up the value of the dollar. (What would those be, anyway? Buying dollars on the currency markets? With money lent by the Chinese?) No, I think more fundamental changes are needed.

We need to stop spending beyond our means, both at the national level and as individuals. We need to increase our rate of savings. We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. In short, we need to put our financial house in order. We also need to put Social Security and Medicare on a sound footing. (They're not going away, however much you or I might wish it. That is politically impossible.) We need, among other things--and I suspect you'll disagree here--to stop spending half a trillion dollars every year on elective wars. We need to balance our budgets. To invest in our aging infrastucture, and in education. Those are investments in the future.

[Ethel]

I am not advocating that we force any other nation to do anything.

If companies want to sell goods that are not made in America, then we should take appropriate action to insure the safety, health and welfare of the American people.

This power is found in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

I agree with you, SF. One reason a falling dollar, though it helps a bit with exports, does not change the trade imbalance significantly, is because China and Japan deliberately keep their currencies low compared to the dollar--no matter how far it falls.

We call this "free trade"--but is it? Isn't there a point at which we need to consider tariffs, if for no other reason than to equalize the currency games our trading partners are playing?

Then again, we really can't afford to do anything to annoy the Chinese, can we? Talk about mutually assured destruction. They could kill our economy just by switching their monetary reserves from dollars to Euros. It would hurt them too, of course, and that's why they haven't done it. So far.

[solicitr]

Ethel, I absolutely agree with you on the economic underpinnings of military power. After all, we quickly converted the former to the latter at an unbelievable rate 1940-45, going from nowhere to superpower in an eyeblink. I certainly doesn't work the other way around.

And you are absolutely right about the debt burden: which is why Obama fills me with despondency. Barack is no Bill! As I think I said here not long ago, Bill was a DLC moderate, six of whose years were facing the deficit-Hawk Gingrich Congress. Obama is another sort altogether: never once has the phrase 'balanced budget' passed his lips, nor has he once in the Senate voted against a nondefense appropriation. And on the campaign! Promises, promises, peomises, without any suggestion at all how it's going to be paid for.

The parallels between this election and 1976 are terrifying- in both cases a hated two-term Republican president, saddled with an unpopular war and an oil crisis, set up the election of a naive liberal posing as a moderate and promising 'change.' Well, not all change is for the better.


Discretionary wars: More like 150-200B/ year, not "half a trillion" (the entire Pentagon budget). At any rate, Iraq is winding down.

I've posted previously and at length about Bush' idiocy in this area- but calling them 'discretionary wars' is not quite on. Where we are fighting lay within our election- but we didn't start this war.

[sauronsfinger]

I just watched the Bush press conference. I compare that with Sleepy McCain and his rapid fire, quick witted delivery when he makes political statements.

Is not 8 years with the village idiot enough?

[Ellienor]

The man is incredibly inarticulate. I just listened to it on NPR. He extolled "market forces" for reducing demand side. "I'm not going to make choices for the American people, they can make their own adjustments, that's the beauty of the consumer driven economy." But when our own government tells us global warming does not exist and does not seem to see the dangers of so much reliance on foreign oil, the behavior of consumers will follow suit. Which it has, and which has ended up in a lot of pain for a number of people.

but we didn't start this war.

I missed something here. Saddam did not associate with AQ and had nothing to do with the towers falling down. Right? Don't most people know that by now?

[solicitr]

Ellienor, do you not understand that Al-Qaeda is not the sum total of the enemy? In many ways, bin-Laden is just the magician's left hand, drawing your attention away from what his right hand is up to.

As I've posted many times before, Bush was a fool to stay in Iraq one day beyond Saddam's capture. And it may have been a strategic misjudgment to go after the 'easy' target, Iraq, rather than Iran. But if you really think that bin-Laden's franchise represents the entire Jihad, your view is very blinkered.

BTW, Bush is the village idiot. No argument here.

[Padme]

I had to turn it off when he began spewing forth his 'well if we had done something 7 years ago' bit. I was befuddled by his double speak and I honestly could not listen to the whole thing, I was almost in tears and just could not listen any more.

[halplm]

heh I thought the same thing listening to Obama talk to the NAACP.

Saying the government could do everythin for us, but we still need personal responsability... mixed message anyone?