yeppers

[Thebastidge]

The USA manufactures more today than it ever has in the past. More in terms of absolute dollar values (even adjusted for inflation), more in terms of numbers and types of manufactured items.

We simply don't need as many people to do it because we automate. This is a plus for the entire economy.

Free trade is good for us. It has increased our standard of living. It's not the fault of free trade that we have spent our surpluses achieved by free trade on bread and circuses. Lower costs on consumer goods don't CAUSE people to buy more, they simply make it easier. A little self discipline and our food and other security could have continued to rise right along with our consumption.

Don't put down blue collar jobs. Manufacturing is not the only type of jobs that matter. They are important but so are many "service" jobs. Carpenters, electricians, mechanics. They all have their place. Yes, even the much-maligned and apocryphal janitor and garbage collector.

The Smallest Minority: It Isn't That There's No Jobs,

Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs | Video on TED.com

 

[Gunner3456]

The USA manufactures more today than it ever has in the past. More in terms of absolute dollar values (even adjusted for inflation), more in terms of numbers and types of manufactured items.

We simply don't need as many people to do it because we automate. This is a plus for the entire economy.

Free trade is good for us. It has increased our standard of living. It's not the fault of free trade that we have spent our surpluses achieved by free trade on bread and circuses. Lower costs on consumer goods don't CAUSE people to buy more, they simply make it easier. A little self discipline and our food and other security could have continued to rise right along with our consumption.

Don't put down blue collar jobs. Manufacturing is not the only type of jobs that matter. They are important but so are many "service" jobs. Carpenters, electricians, mechanics. They all have their place. Yes, even the much-maligned and apocryphal janitor and garbage collector.

The Smallest Minority: It Isn't That There's No Jobs,

Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs | Video on TED.com

You don't get it. The saddest of the unemployed are the older folks who due to mild arthritis or lingering pains from earlier injuries simply can't work all day on their hands and knees or run a shovel. Maybe they are in their 50's and their job was moved overseas. Their home equity has disappeared, they no longer have a 401k contribution or medical insurance. They don't know how they are going to provide for their future.

They are well educated and can in fact spell and do math. They can't stand on their feet all day without meds. They wind up with a minimum wage job that doesn't require heavy lifting. Those people have a strong work ethic but they are lost.

You'd better hope that by the time you're 55 you have your future all set.

 

[Thebastidge]

The saddest of the unemployed are the older folks who due to mild arthritis or lingering pains from earlier injuries simply can't work all day on their hands and knees or run a shovel.

For every one of THOSE who is unemployed, I can point to 20 who simply think someone else should be burdened with their problems, wants, and desires.

If they are physically disabled, how would more manufacturing jobs that require working all day with their hands and on their knees actually help them? This is a complete nonsense sentence. People at that point, if they are indeed well-educated as you say, should be able to find work that allows them to use their leadership and maturity as an asset.

In a way you're proving my point that we're better off with automation. I have lots of relatives that worked in sawmills and plywood plants. They're all messed up to some degree. I have some injuries myself that make certain types of physical labour impractical, and I just turned 40. I spent 13 plus years in the military prior to getting a medical discharge, but when I was young I also did a lot of extremely heavy manual labour, starting from about age 11. Had to have a hernia corrected prior to enlisting because of it.

I'm not missing the point. I get it that being well-advanced on a career based on physical labour and losing your job to automation or foreign labour or even disability sucks. But making a protectionist law isn't a good answer either. You sacrifice the good of everyone for the good of a few that way.

As for securing my future, I'm coming up on the end of my 4th year working in combat zones as a contractor to pay for that future. In this job, I have worked 12 hours per day, every day that I'm not actually out of the country on leave, for the last year. I've taken 5 weeks leave in this 13 months. In Iraq, I worked 60 hours a week for nearly 3 years. I'm scheduled to be here until September, gonna try to stay until December, 6000 miles away from my fiancee, 9000 miles away from my family, and 12 hours time difference. I've taken my risks, my discomforts, some fortunately minor injuries (broke my foot once diving into a bunker while mortars cracked down a few meters away, limped for a couple months from that one), and my time away from home and family to do so. TANSTAAFL.

I'd like to think the money I'm paying into social security will come back to me, but I doubt it.

Lots of young people trying to get white collar jobs these days, and the problem I am trying to point to is that a blue collar career still has value and potential in this country. I have a friend who is a certified Ford mechanic- he does pretty darn well for himself with a little financial discipline. I was making good money before I ever got a degree- did a trade school for IT work and studied my *** off in my spare time to get industry certificiations. Did night school online to eventually get a degree, which has opened new possibilities, but never really had to worry about work before then, either.

People get too hung up on manufacturing as if it is the only job sector that matters to the economy, and that's bunk. They try to use it as an excuse for protectionism, which is simply bad policy, and arguably immoral from the standpoint fo coercing people and taking their money (tariffs) to benefit other people (the industries which are lobbying for tariffs.)

 

[Gunner3456]

For every one of THOSE who is unemployed, I can point to 20 who simply think someone else should be burdened with their problems, wants, and desires.

If they are physically disabled, how would more manufacturing jobs that require working all day with their hands and on their knees actually help them? This is a complete nonsense sentence. People at that point, if they are indeed well-educated as you say, should be able to find work that allows them to use their leadership and maturity as an asset.

In a way you're proving my point that we're better off with automation. I have lots of relatives that worked in sawmills and plywood plants. They're all messed up to some degree. I have some injuries myself that make certain types of physical labour impractical, and I just turned 40. I spent 13 plus years in the military prior to getting a medical discharge, but when I was young I also did a lot of extremely heavy manual labour, starting from about age 11. Had to have a hernia corrected prior to enlisting because of it.

I'm not missing the point. I get it that being well-advanced on a career based on physical labour and losing your job to automation or foreign labour or even disability sucks. But making a protectionist law isn't a good answer either. You sacrifice the good of everyone for the good of a few that way.

As for securing my future, I'm coming up on the end of my 4th year working in combat zones as a contractor to pay for that future. In this job, I have worked 12 hours per day, every day that I'm not actually out of the country on leave, for the last year. I've taken 5 weeks leave in this 13 months. In Iraq, I worked 60 hours a week for nearly 3 years. I'm scheduled to be here until September, gonna try to stay until December, 6000 miles away from my fiancee, 9000 miles away from my family, and 12 hours time difference. I've taken my risks, my discomforts, some fortunately minor injuries (broke my foot once diving into a bunker while mortars cracked down a few meters away, limped for a couple months from that one), and my time away from home and family to do so. TANSTAAFL.

I'd like to think the money I'm paying into social security will come back to me, but I doubt it.

Lots of young people trying to get white collar jobs these days, and the problem I am trying to point to is that a blue collar career still has value and potential in this country. I have a friend who is a certified Ford mechanic- he does pretty darn well for himself with a little financial discipline. I was making good money before I ever got a degree- did a trade school for IT work and studied my *** off in my spare time to get industry certificiations. Did night school online to eventually get a degree, which has opened new possibilities, but never really had to worry about work before then, either.

People get too hung up on manufacturing as if it is the only job sector that matters to the economy, and that's bunk. They try to use it as an excuse for protectionism, which is simply bad policy, and arguably immoral from the standpoint fo coercing people and taking their money (tariffs) to benefit other people (the industries which are lobbying for tariffs.)

I think you don't know how new wealth is created or how this country was once wealthy. You CAN'T have an economy by just spreading around the existing wealth, and you can destroy it by exporting the wealth. This year we're going to export nearly a trillion dollars of our wealth to buy oil from other countries, most of whom hate us. If we went after our own oil and gas, we'd be extracting new wealth and creating a massive amount of good jobs while we kept our wealth here, paying it out in the form of jobs.

I could go on and on about why we shouldn't be buying our timber from Canada while the environmentalists tie up our forests and how that exports our wealth and jobs just like oil does. I could rail about buying steel from China while Pittsburgh is in shambles.

You have failed to address that clear fact that our trade isn't fair. Even Obummer just warned the Chinese that they'd best stop taxing and stopping the things we'd like to import into there if they want free access to our markets. He also warned them about manipulating their currency. If even Obummer is starting to get it, then any idiot could get it.

We can't drill off our coasts but China can. We'll financially help Brazil drill off their coast and then buy their oil, but we won't drill where we know we have oil.

Sorry, but I guess you can't see our economy in ruins and our government's "budget" in ruins and preparing to crash. Maybe if we worried more about jobs here and using resources here, we'd have fewer on the dole and more paying taxes, and things might improve.

That's OK though. We'll just keep borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend as "free" trade expands, and we'll keep extending unemployment benefits, food stamps, housing subsidies, medicaid and so on as we kid ourselves into thinking this can last.

 

[locobob]

The USA manufactures more today than it ever has in the past. More in terms of absolute dollar values (even adjusted for inflation), more in terms of numbers and types of manufactured items.

We simply don't need as many people to do it because we automate. This is a plus for the entire economy.

Free trade is good for us. It has increased our standard of living. It's not the fault of free trade that we have spent our surpluses achieved by free trade on bread and circuses. Lower costs on consumer goods don't CAUSE people to buy more, they simply make it easier. A little self discipline and our food and other security could have continued to rise right along with our consumption.

Don't put down blue collar jobs. Manufacturing is not the only type of jobs that matter. They are important but so are many "service" jobs. Carpenters, electricians, mechanics. They all have their place. Yes, even the much-maligned and apocryphal janitor and garbage collector.

The Smallest Minority: It Isn't That There's No Jobs,

Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs | Video on TED.com

The Mike Rowe speech was good, he makes some very valid points.

I don't understand how you can say free trade is good? Surpluses? What surpluses? We have been running a trade deficit from pretty much the get go of this free trade nonsense. Standard of living is up? Well maybe we have more cheap silly gadgets. Real wages have stagnated for years, only a very few have cashed in on free trade.
Bottom line: Free trade is simply and end run around U.S. labor and environmental standards. It is a way to turn labor and pollution costs into externalities.

 

[Gunner3456]

The problem with claiming that we manufacture a lot is that we don't manufacture the industrial things we used to. Sure, we have Silicone Valley and we manufacture a lot of high tech, but GM in Detroit has dropped from 300,000 jobs 20 years ago to just 30,000 jobs today and Detroit is in ruins. GM now manufactures cars in more than 30 countries and is building two new plants in China. (That's after we bailed them out to "save American jobs.")

We don't manufacture a single TV set here any longer. We don't make clothing. We don't make cell phones or ni-cad batteries. We don't make a single LCD or LED screen. Caterpillar has opened plants in China and engine plants in S. Korea. Every John Deere tractor under 50 hp is made in Japan.

The engine in my Ford pickup was made in Brazil. The auto tranny was made in Mexico. Our new Chevy Impala was wholly built in Ontario Canada.

Our corporate taxes are the highest in the world and our regulations from EPA to the Child Leave Act only give our jobs reasons to leave.

With our heavy industrial base in shambles, what would we do if we had to ramp up military production? In WWII we quit building cars for a few years and many, many of the factories were converted to making war equipment. Many of our rifles were made by Singer and by the Smith-Corona typewriter company.

Detroit today. Where did the jobs go and what if we needed the factories? :

Detroit Ruins - at least one picture shows blocks of downtown empty too.

 

[Gunner3456]

Countries like China put no value on human life or on clean air or anything else other than profits. Yet we feel just great going into Wal Mart and buying their chit, knowing it was made by slave labor in dangerous working conditions.

An explosion at a chemical plant in eastern China has killed fourteen workers.​

20 November 2011 Last updated at 05:59 ET

It happened at a melamine production unit in Xintai in Shandong province where a condenser was being maintained and repaired, local officials say.

The cause of the explosion is not yet known.

Industrial accidents are common in China and are often blamed on widespread disregard for basic safety measures.

10 November 2011 Last updated at 04:13 ET

China: Yunnan mine hit by 'deadly gas outburst'
​

Dozens rescued from Chinese mine

Why are China's mines so dangerous?

Nineteen miners have been killed and more are trapped underground after an accident at a colliery in south China.

The incident happened early on Thursday at the Sizhuang mine in Yunnan province's Qujing city.

The mine was hit by a "coal and gas outburst" - the ejection of rock and gas from a coal face, an official said.

28 July 2011 Last updated at 07:48 ET

China struggles to censor train crash coverage

By Zoe Murphy BBC News ​

China's government has been the target of a barrage of public invective since a high-speed rail crash at the weekend claimed at least 39 lives and injured 200 people.

Relatives of the victims and internet users have been angered by the government's apparent unwillingness to answer questions about the fatal collision.

Attempts by the authorities to muzzle the media and censor public reaction have only fuelled this animosity.

Propaganda directives leaked online showed reporters were warned not to run investigative reports or commentary, or to link the incident to the country's high-speed rail development.

 

[Burt Gummer]

Free global trade is good for the US? Wow. Some people are deluded and think the spoiled debt-laden people with their bankrupt government here can compete with .25/hr slaves? Funny if not so sad.

We are going into the Greatest Depression and will have no way to dig ourselves out. All we have left is money printing and useless wars. The USA is nothing more than Bernie Lomax. The financial playmakers are just moving the arms and legs back and forth at this point but the country is a financial corpse. Thousands of warnings beforehand but no one seems to notice, no one seems to care.

35 Facts About The Gutting Of America's Industrial Might That Should Make You Very Angry

This video is A+ at explaining how this is all happening and why no one is doing anything to stop us before we go off the cliff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D71aiYq7jeM&feature=related

 

[mjbskwim]

Yes yes yes and "WE" as citizens are still buying the goods from overseas.

So who is really to blame here?

I mean if "WE" didn't buy these goods,"WE" wouldn't be in this pickle
Can't blame the companies fro "TRYING" to make more profit.That's their job in a FREE economy,capitalism.

"WE" never had to buy the chinese goods.WE never had to buy anything from overseas.

BUT we all wanted new stuff,rather we needed it or not. And we wanted it cheaper,not thinking that by buying it from overseas that it would put someone out of a job (heck that smuck should work for less,who is he to try to make a fair wage?) that MIGHT HELP OUR OWN ECONOMY by buying the goods and service WE provide her at home

Yes we can always blame someone else but it was our mom's and dads,uncles and aunts ,gandmas and grandpas brothers and sisters AND OURSELVES that bought foreign good and let the big corporations continue to take jobs over seas.

Had we just said NO and never bought that first Toyota or that japanese VCR or telly,they would have had to send them back and put only USA manufactured merchandise on the shelves.

But "WE" were only looking out for #1 and not the guy who was buying the stuff WE made
And vice versa

Just the same as WE reelected all those nasty politicians and gave them career jobs so they could bubblegum us because we are just a bunch of stupid citizens looking out for ourselves.

Go ahead and flame away.I mean it's the American way to blame someone else.
But who is really to blame? The corporations who SEE we are only OUT FOR OURSELVES?
The politicians who see we aren't that bright and can easily convince us everything is OK? I mean WE reelected them,why wouldn't they do whatever they want?

All we had to do was not buy imported goods and limit the politicians' careers by voting in new blood when they didn't do what WE wanted.

But WE became too complacent.
We had all the money we needed for a long time.
All the toys that the Jones' were buying.
All the big houses.
All the trips to tropical islands

Now it's time to pay the piper and WE don't have the money so we want to blame someone else.

This country was founded by people that didn't have that much to loose and wanted a better life for all who would fight for it.But now it's about MYSELF and "who cares about the rest?"

Don't be mad at me,just an observation of only the last 53 years on this planet.

That's all I got for now

 

[Gunner3456]

When WE bought our first Toyota, the US alternatives were garbage. Chevy Vega, Ford Pinto or AMC Gremlin. It took Detroit decades to catch up on quality. I would have been stupid to buy a Vega rather than a Corolla. However, wages and benefits were and are high in Japan, so the cars and the labor to build them weren't cheaper. In fact this is true to the extent that many Japanese cars are now built in the US. Head to head, built in the US, the Ford F150 still outsells Toyota's pickup.

It wasn't until we got "free" trade which should be called "unfair" trade that our industrial base began to collapse. There's a big difference between a rival importing things here, and our companies shuttering their plants and moving to China, leaving the US to no longer make a competing product.

 

[Hook686]

As long as I have food, clothing, shelter, a source of energy and a tribe I belong to I do not think the end has arrived. Life continues. Maybe I have to change my behavior/habits, but life goes on.

 

[Thebastidge]

I think you don't know how new wealth is created or how this country was once wealthy. You CAN'T have an economy by just spreading around the existing wealth, and you can destroy it by exporting the wealth. This year we're going to export nearly a trillion dollars of our wealth to buy oil from other countries, most of whom hate us. If we went after our own oil and gas, we'd be extracting new wealth and creating a massive amount of good jobs while we kept our wealth here, paying it out in the form of jobs.

I could go on and on about why we shouldn't be buying our timber from Canada while the environmentalists tie up our forests and how that exports our wealth and jobs just like oil does. I could rail about buying steel from China while Pittsburgh is in shambles.

You have failed to address that clear fact that our trade isn't fair. Even Obummer just warned the Chinese that they'd best stop taxing and stopping the things we'd like to import into there if they want free access to our markets. He also warned them about manipulating their currency. If even Obummer is starting to get it, then any idiot could get it.

We can't drill off our coasts but China can. We'll financially help Brazil drill off their coast and then buy their oil, but we won't drill where we know we have oil.

Sorry, but I guess you can't see our economy in ruins and our government's "budget" in ruins and preparing to crash. Maybe if we worried more about jobs here and using resources here, we'd have fewer on the dole and more paying taxes, and things might improve.

That's OK though. We'll just keep borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend as "free" trade expands, and we'll keep extending unemployment benefits, food stamps, housing subsidies, medicaid and so on as we kid ourselves into thinking this can last.

So from this I'm not sure you understand how VALUE is created. Not gonna call you names or trying to be snarky or anything, but think about it. Supposed you have 10 widgets and I have 10 gadgets. Without building a single more of either, we both gain value from trading 5 of mine for 5 of yours. Or even 5 of mine for 3 of yours. Whatever we freely agree upon. If your dad comes in and tells us that if you want to buy 5 gadgets, you have to give him one, you can only afford 4 now. You dad doesn't need the gadget, he's simply trying to discourage you from buying it. How does that make anyone better off? This is a trade tariff. It adds zero value to the economy. It adds zer o value to your widget-making business. All it does is pull some value OUT of the market, and typically squanders that value.

So yes- you're correct that wealth can be created AND destroyed.

We're also talking about how many units and how many dollars worth of manufactured goods are created. I'm contending that the manufacturing industry is not anywhere near dead in this country. I take your point about the types of things manufactured. I also understand the concern about jobs in that sector. What I'm saying is that is not the total or even the most important measurement we can take. It is important, but not the only important thing.

As for international trade- you're missing a key point. When we trade our wealth to say, terrorist-producing Arab nations, we're not simply giving away OR destroying our wealth. We're trading it for something we consider to be of equal value. We get the oil. Simple as that, there's no imbalance. Now, is it wise to do that when they use it to fund radical madrassas? Perhaps not. But it's not giving away trillions of dollars. It's trading trillions of monetary units for units of oil.

I am with you on developing our own sources of energy, 100%. However, that doesn't occur in a vacuum either. If we keep all of the oil dollars at home, people will spend them on other things- luxury items, staple goods, whatever. They'll still be buying goods from overseas. There's no remedy for that, nor do we need one. International trade is good for us. It makes many more types of goods available to us. I'm with you on managing our own forests and products thereof. I'm with you on trying to get other countries to open their markets and drop trade restrictions. Where we part companyis the tit for tat trade restrictions. IT is still better for us to have access to low cost goods, even if it's a unilateral one-way decision.

You've also got to acknowledge the role that unions have played in dirving up labour costs- that's the whole point of a union, after all. To exclude labour, making it scarcer, and thus driving up wages. It's gone too far, and between the regulatory costs of doing business, labour costs of doing business, costs of raw materials, it's simply become moreexpensive to do business here. Trade barriers don't solve the underlying structural problems of that, so there's no way they can actually make us "more competitive" on the world market.

 

[Thebastidge]

The Mike Rowe speech was good, he makes some very valid points.

I don't understand how you can say free trade is good? Surpluses? What surpluses? We have been running a trade deficit from pretty much the get go of this free trade nonsense. Standard of living is up? Well maybe we have more cheap silly gadgets. Real wages have stagnated for years, only a very few have cashed in on free trade.
Bottom line: Free trade is simply and end run around U.S. labor and environmental standards. It is a way to turn labor and pollution costs into externalities.

True, it turns some of those costs into externalities, but it also points up that perhaps we've gone too far in our labour and environmental standards. We don't value our environment because government told us to, we value it because we have achieved a level of wealth which allows us to make the choice between pollution and further wealth. Some other societies have not achieved that level yet. The long term solution is not to throw up a trade barrier that keeps them poor, but to help them get to a level of wealth where they can begin to choose the environmentally sound option for themselves. Not necessarily at our expense, but cooperatively.

But when you get right down to it, free trade is the only ethically supportable route, whether it's between you and your next door neighbour, or between you and some guy in China. I have no right to tell you what to do with your money, or to take any of it if you don't do what I want you to do. The only ethically supportable tax is one which benefits the person being taxed and the greater society around them- taxation for specific purposes of providing those services which our Conasitution authorizes and requires, not taxation for the purposes of social engineering and shaping private behaviour.

 

[Thebastidge]

As for trade deficits. I really don't care if we import nearly everything from a balance of trade perspective. I would like to make sure we maintain our capabilities in the face of natural disaster, international economic collapse, space aliens, and zombies. But I don't care about trade balances. As long as we keep creating wealth in the States, we can trade the surpluses for thigs from other countries, because we are still far and away in front as the most productive economy in the world. We're creating our wealth, it's not zero-sum. Precisely how much we "shoud" trade away is entirely a matter of opinion.

What I care about, is the US Government selling bonds to other nations until the government itself is debt-financing everything we do. We've relied on our status as the world's reserve currency too completely, and we're vulnerable to widespread economic collapse because of it. We've ignored the rumblings about oil trading in Euro, or Renminbi for too long. I'm worried about the average American citizen and corporation, and even government entity being too highly leveraged with debt. I worry about the US credit rating being down-graded (and let's admit it- we deserved it, and deserve another downgrade). I worry about the progressive taxation schemes that have the government balancing a pyramid on its point rather than its broad base. I worry about the stupid hippies with the Occupy Wallstreet movement or the government going too far and ur cities burning in widespread civil unrest or civil war. I worry about a lot of things, but not free trade.

 

[Gunner3456]

You make a lot of good points but I disagree on the principle. When we trade $1 trillion for oil, the oil is consumed and the money is forever gone. If we produced and refined our own oil, the jobs and the profits would be here. We'd have new wealth, new good jobs for the middle class, and a lot of payroll taxes rolling into our government. Yes, some of the money would be spent and some would be saved, but it would be our new money - our new wealth.

Also, if we don't send out as much to trade as we buy (our balance of trade) we get poorer while they get richer. How else is China able to lend us money? Our balance of trade has been upside down for a long time now and that is exporting wealth.

It is inconceivable to me how it isn't widely understood that if 50,000 manufacturing companies move their factories from the US to a foreign country and permanently lay off their US workers, that we don't get hurt. The people not only lose their jobs, but we lose the tax revenue from the company and from the workers. The workers then go on unemployment, food stamps etc. Now instead of collecting money, the government starts paying it out.

Now we borrow 40 cents of every dollar we spend and our former great manufacturing and wealth creating cities are in ruins.

I could agree with you if we had "fair" trade but we don't. We aren't allowed to freely import into China. They are protectionist. But we'll take anything they send us. So, if we want something from them we pretty much have to send them our dollars. If we could trade goods which we manufacture and use to create jobs and wealth, then we wouldn't be borrowing from them.

 

[Jamie6.5]

So, despite the fact that we no longer build the durable goods produced by heavy industry that we once did, and we no longer produce finished goods like steel and lumber from our own raw materials here, you are saying that our workers still produce more than we ever did.

But how many of the plants that our workers work in, are owned by Americans and/or American companies?
Just because our workers are producing goods in a plant owned by Subaru, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai etc., doesn't mean the bulk of the revenue isn't going elsewhere, or that the materials and/or components that they assemble in the "building" of these finished products didn't come from somewhere else.

The free trade act was supposed to open markets for American made goods. But the reality is that the people that live in those "new markets" don't have the income/standard of living that Americans do, and can't afford our goods.
Therefore it has done little but contribute to trade deficits and imbalances, shipping American cash overseas by the truckload.

Of course if the current admin gets their way, our standard of living will be on par with the 3rd world countries we are trading with, and then things will "balance" out.
Gee what a solution!!

 

[Thebastidge]

When we trade $1 trillion for oil, the oil is consumed and the money is forever gone.

But the things produced with the oil are not. Oil is consumed in internal combustion engines mainly in the transportation sector. The majority of non-transportation energy is provided by coal, with a smaller but healthy chunk provided by nuclear (which IMNSHO should be inverted, with nuclear providing the vast majority of our power, and spent fuel reprocessing being an urgent priority.) Most oil is consumed as feed stocks in the manufacturing industry. The money is not "gone" any more than any other service that is consumed. Producing our own oil is good because it is slightly cheaper than buying it from overseas, it doesn't fund our enemies like buying from Islamic countries, but it's not any more or less enduring wealth than buying from overseas.

If we produced and refined our own oil, the jobs and the profits would be here. We'd have new wealth, new good jobs for the middle class, and a lot of payroll taxes rolling into our government. Yes, some of the money would be spent and some would be saved, but it would be our new money - our new wealth.

I agree. I think you're overstating the benefit a little bit without acknowledging the downsides, but essentially, you're correct here. At the same time, as you and others pointed out, there are other environmental impacts to that course of action.

Also, if we don't send out as much to trade as we buy (our balance of trade) we get poorer while they get richer. How else is China able to lend us money? Our balance of trade has been upside down for a long time now and that is exporting wealth.

Here's a quibble: If we don't send out as much as we import, it does not necessarily follow that we are getting poorer. "They" are definitely getting richer, but that's because they started out so low. The gap may diminsh, but it doesn't HAVE to be because we're getting poorer, or even because our rate of getting richer is slowing down. It could just be because their rate of expansion speeds up. In economics there's something called comparative advantage, and the production possibilities frontier. This is an exercise in determining where and under what circumstances it is most efficient to produce a prticular good. It's worth studying up on. Basically for the purposes of our discussion, if country A can produce widgets and gadgets, and Country B can produce widgets and gadgets, it's likely that one country will have an advantage in producing relatively more of either widgets or gadgets, but not necessarily both. The PPF describes a curve where the optimal amount of Widgets and Gadgets are produced in each country. If one country (like ours) has a tremendous technological advantage, it's quite likely they will have an advantage in both, but it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to produce any Widgets or Gadgets at all in the other country. It just means the optimal number of Widgets and Gadgets respectively, will include some imports from the other country. It's simply better sense to import some of them to make them all.

It is inconceivable to me how it isn't widely understood that if 50,000 manufacturing companies move their factories from the US to a foreign country and permanently lay off their US workers, that we don't get hurt. The people not only lose their jobs, but we lose the tax revenue from the company and from the workers. The workers then go on unemployment, food stamps etc. Now instead of collecting money, the government starts paying it out.

Two separate points. Second point first: nothing says we have to pay people from tax revenue to be unproductive. That's a choice we have made when deciding from a position of the greatest surplus in the history of mankind. First point: Yes, of course people and our economy hurts in the short run. There is no perfectly frictionless change in the economy. In fact, there's a great deal of inefficiency and friction in the market place. The problem is that deliberate intervention makes the friction and inefficiency WORSE, not better. Protectionist policies PROLONG the problem. not make it better. It MAY help some individuals in the short term in the affected industries, but only at the cost of making things a little bit worse for literally everybody else. The problem is not the fact that some people are being saved from catastrophe at the minor and diffused expense, inconvenience and risk to everyone else, the real problem is that it gives government the power to pick winners and losers once and FOREVER again after that. Which in turn gets ratcheted up by EVERY successive Congress and Administration, regardless of political party, resulting in not only greater inefficiency in the now more tightly controlled makrket, but also in greatly diminished liberty and personal opportunity for everyone.

A far better use of our time and energy in developing policy would be to reduce the friction in the labour pool: making it easier for a worker to move between one job and another, rather than prolonging the inefficient company or industry's need to adjust to economic reality. To a certain extent, we have already been fairly successful at that. It's so common as to deserver no more comment than a "good for him/her" when we see a middle-aged person going back to school for a bachelor's, master's, or even a trade school of some kind. I assure you, this is not the case in most nations. In the UK, if a person loses their factory job and there is no other factory job in their home town, they are almost certainly going to be on the dole for the rest of their lives, and their children may be as well. More ossified regulations will not improve the situation, but only make it worse.

One really potent tool for making the job market more fluid would be to remove the tax exemption for employer-provided healthcare benefits. One major reason why people stick with a given job is because they receive their health insurance from the job, and they are afraid to be without it or get caught with "pre-existing conditions" that are not covered by a new insurer. With individually-purchased plans that are not dependent upon employer-provided group plans nor invalidated when the employee leaves a company, this pre-existing question would go away, as long as the individual pays their premiums, no matter where they work.

To be clear, this current situation is an entirely unnatural one that results from government price controls on wages during WWII. A tariff on employment, to use a not entirely correct metaphor. Employers were not allowed to increase wage compensation to compete for employees, so they naturally turned to other means of competition for labour (and competition for labour is a far more natural state of affairs than competition for "jobs".) Employers started providing health care coverage, and making it dependent upon continued employment to increase the "transaction cost" of switching to a new job, which resulted in employment being much "stickier" than it had been. This warped institution grew into the situation we have today, where "health insurance" is nothing like real insurance, but rather a subsidy unnaturally warped into keeping a person locked into the wage slavery liberals deplore so much, and all of it entirely supported by government incentives and labour unions as well.

Eliminating this situation would take some kind of phased approach, to be sure. It would also result in a new compensation equilibrium being reached, which would cost the employer slightly more (no tax breaks for the dollars they've been spending on healthcare) but the employee would have more dollars in their pocket (rather than going directly from employer to insurer), which on the other hand would require the employee to do some work to discover and purchase their own health insurance, most likely through some sort of subscription service or group plan much like we now get our home and car insurance. It would simplify accounting for tax purposes (which is vastly over-complicated, as anyone who has ever made too much to use the 1040EZ will attest) and casue people to seek better rates on medical care, bringing the consumer into the rationing process at the point of consumption rather than uninterested bureacrats or accountants with an incentive to cut costs no matter the impact to the individual. Right now, many people don't even realize you can bargain on exactly what services and how much you want to pay for from the medical community, nor that you can get cash discounts on a lot of medical, dental, and vision services simply because processing insurance claims costs the medical establishment so much time and money.

For perfect examples of this, look to the cosmetic surgery and lasik price curves over the last 30 years- the only portion of the medical industry where the prices have consistently come down, because individuals electing surgery will bargain and shop around because it isn't covered by insurance. To be fair, we would probably see somewhat less dramatic results in cost-cutting from non-elective medical procedures, because people can't simply put them off, but the benefits of free market competition in this area are hard to deny.

Now we borrow 40 cents of every dollar we spend and our former great manufacturing and wealth creating cities are in ruins.

You're confusing balance of trade with deficit spending. You need to see that if a widget costs us X to produce, and 60% of X to import, and our other economic activities that we substitute for making widgets earn us 70% of X, we need to import widgets rather than making them. Too many people don't get the compexity of the market is not one for one, but many for many. It's incredibly complex and effectively, no human or group of humans is smart enough to plan these things centrally, which includes tariff policies.

I could agree with you if we had "fair" trade but we don't. We aren't allowed to freely import into China. They are protectionist. But we'll take anything they send us. So, if we want something from them we pretty much have to send them our dollars. If we could trade goods which we manufacture and use to create jobs and wealth, then we wouldn't be borrowing from them.

Once again, unilaterally dropping our barriers makes things cheaper for us. That's a good thing. I think we can agree on that, even if you still think there are other things that are more important than that. Such as the risk of people not being able to move into new jobs if the old one goes away. The loss of the capability matters from a risk perspective, because if the Chinese capability goes away for whatever reason we need to be able to find or create other sources. But in evaluating risk you have 3 factors:

1. Impact of the risk
2. Likelihood of the risk
3. mitigation of the risk, including acceptance of the risk

China is extremely unlikely to stop exporting to us, as their largest trading partner, their economy would collapse overnight. The impact would be mitigated by the fact that there are MANY sources of goods, even though they are mostly more expensive than China. We can mitigate the risk by making it easy to export to us from any country, by making it easier to start or resume manufacturing in our own country, and we can accept the residual risk.

We aren't borrowing money from the Chinese to finance importing. We're borrowing money from the Chinese to finance our GOVERNMENT SPENDING. We do this buy selling them dollars that we have simply printed, not by importing their stuff. We're selling them bonds, on which we have to pay interest. That's why our government debt is so high. Balance of trade and Government spending deficit are entirely separate issues. If Americans started restricting their personal borrowing to durable goods and capital to finance investment and business rather than to finance a lifestyle, we'd be much better off, and this has NOTHING to do with balance of trasde or government deficits. If our government stopped spending more than they collect in tax revenue, we'd be better off and this has NOTHING to do with balance of trade. If we dropped our protectionist tariffs, some business would be forced to either reform and improve, or go under, and this has an impact on our economy, but in the long run, either one of these outcomes improves the efficiency of our economy, and as you said, wealth can be destroyed. One of the things that destroys wealth is precisely that inefficiency and friction.

The idea behind protectionist tariffs are wrong for pretty similar reasons that this program won't work very well:

http://mises.org/daily/5804/Can-a-Jobs-Campaign-Create-Real-Jobs

 

[kenno]

From 10-22-11:And a Tip-O-The Hat To A.I.P.
"What I find troubling is that in the past, TPTB would simply blow off predictions of DOOM (Y2K) while they were spending Billions (Over 5 billion spent)to rewrite code world wide, the PPL that promoted the DOOM were called Cranks or Profitters.
Now we have a situation where things HAVE GONE PEAR SHAPED $4.49 gasoline when crude is below $90, in the past the price was $1.25 or LESS, so there is a Crisis right there, and NO ONE SAYS A WORD.
The Middle East is being over run by Islamo-Facists, a genocide has started in Egypt and is spreading. Again No One Says A Word.

European Govts Have lent BILLIONS and are now looting the pensions of thier citizens to keep PIIGS
afloat and are NOW discussing how to Monotize PIIGS debt which they KNOW MUST LEAD TO HYPERINFLATION and the ruin of thier nations, yet they are going to do it. They Promise "This Is The Magic Bullet." EVERYONE KNOWS IT"S A LIE and they are saying so. Why? To keep Turkey out of the Balkans and Greece, to keep land links open to ME trade that will offset the gap in GDP over oil imports.
The stock market jumps and dives on every rumor and as the eruoes pour into Wall Street "Havens". Gold and silver follows as it is sold to pay debt and bought to save wealth, these PPL know what's comming but they want to believe there is a PLAN that will save them, but there is no other plan, after hyperinflation, THERE IS NO PLAN EXCEPT REVOLUTION!

There is currently an open Communist REVOLUTION in Greece. World Wide, there are over 100 cities "Occupied" OWS just released it's Manifesto, it is the Maxist Manifesto, as Marx would have written it today, this is the beginning of a world wide marxist revolution, endorsed by Obama and his masters. The Nazies and CAIR have joined with OWS in the US and soon all socialists, Islamists, and the dissatisfied masses will combine to destroy the WEST and impose a genocide to kill billions of people world wide.
TPTB are saying 3 things; "This new 1/2 Trillion dollar jobs bill will solve all problems. OH BTW Prepare for a Zombie Outbreak. Move along, there is nothing to see behind the curtain."
Yeah, no Collapse "

SEE BELOW

 

[kenno]

Expect A Global Recession No Matters What Happens In The Euro Zone
By EconMatters

After MF Global went bust, most people believe it was an extreme "spectacular recklessness" under Jon Corzine, and that the U.S. banks should have only "moderate" European Exposure. However, banking stocks have been under pressure with increasing investors worries.

Jefferies Group, for example, eventually disclosed detail position it held on European debt earlier this month after its shares plunged more than 20%. But other banks have not followed suit as Bloomberg notes that since it is not required by the U.S. regulation,
"Firms including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan don't provide a full picture of potential losses and gains in the event of a European default, giving only net numbers or excluding some derivatives altogether."
U.S. stocks took a beating after Fitch Ratings said on Wed. Nov. 16 that Europe's debt crisis may pose a "serious risk" to U.S. banks, driving investors to safer bets such as U.S. Treasurys. Fitch also notes that although U.S. banks have been reducing their direct exposure for well over a year, but they haven't clearly disclosed the extent of their holdings of European sovereign debt or their trading positions with European counterparties.

There are clues to somewhat quantify the potential exposure on a global basis and of the U.S. banks.

Reuters cited a report by the IIF that European banks hold some $3.5 trillion of euro-zone sovereign bonds and U.S. banks have significant direct exposure to their European peers. U.S. banks had about $180.9 billion of debt from GIIPS on their books at the end of June. Guarantees and credit derivatives added another $586.6 billion, bringing the total to $767.5 billion based on Bank for International Settlements data. But the exposure does not stop there,
" There is a secondary level of exposure that is potentially more worrying -- through international banks lending to each other. Here the greatest risk stems from Italy and France. International bank claims on Italy total $939 billion, and French banks account for well over one-third of that, BIS data show... If Italian debt slumps even further, causing deeper losses for French banks, international banks could stop lending to France. The losses would ripple through the whole global financial system."
Chart Source: NYT, Oct. 23, 2011, (full report here, interactive charts here)
These figures and the fallout from MF Global are enough to put the U.S. regulators and APEC finance ministers on Euro Zone DEFCON 3 alert as Reuters reported
"While the Treasury has been at pains to say that direct U.S. bank exposure to European countries now receiving bailout aid -- Greece, Ireland and Portugal -- is moderate, once the debt of Italy and Spain, plus credit default swaps, and U.S. bank indirect exposure through European banks are added, the potential sum could exceed $4 trillion."
"APEC finance ministers agreed to shore up their economies to protect against any damage and underpin growth."
These accounts suggest that the hit that U.S. banks could take from the European sovereign default could be somewhere from $800 billion up to $4 trillion. However, the greater risk is with some smaller iBanks, similar to MF Global, that have not thoroughly gone through and learned the lessons from the 2008 financial crisis, rather than with the top players like Goldman or JPM.

The post mortem examination by FT Alphaville described "an overnight repo black swan" of MF Global's complex "repo-to-maturity" laddered trades with a doomed steroid-charged 40-to-1 leverage. One reckless speculation could easily lead to a total system meltdown as Bear Stern, Lehman Brothers, et al have taught us.

Meanwhile, this Euro sovereign debt crisis, even if contained and/or resolved in an orderly and timely manner, would most likely bring widespread austerity programs to almost all developed economies, including the U.S. either by the Super Committee or by the automatic spending cut, which would almost guarantee a global economic slowdown, if not an outright recession.

This is probably part of the reason that the Federal Reserve is going to conduct a fourth round of stress tests in coming weeks to determine if U.S. banks can withstand a recession. So unfortunately, it looks like even if the U.S. and emerging economies could manage to keep the world from a recession, the European sovereign debt crisis and the aftermath would most likely finish the job.

Further Reading - Another U.S. Sovereign Downgrade Likely By 2011 Year End, Says Merrill

 

[Thebastidge]

Textiles and apparel: <broken link removed>

Electronics: <broken link removed>

Auto Manufacturing: <broken link removed>

Machinery: <broken link removed>

Steel: <broken link removed>

I agree that there's a huge problem with our EPA regulation and our corporate taxation. I say eliminate the corporate income tax altogether, and foreign companies will flood in to hire people. Our companies will come back.