Forum Post: How do we create more jobs?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 13, 2011, 8:37 a.m. EST by FuManchu
(619)
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The manufacturing jobs that went offshore arent going to come back anytime soon. How do we create jobs? Doing things like taxing companies that move jobs overseas will not work. Why? If we do that, the companies cannot compete in a global market and will go down. It will only lead to more job losses. So does this mean we are stuck with higher unemployment? We need new industries that can only be run with local people. Not by law but by the nature of the industry. I dont know what they will be.
You can always move to China, take less pay, live more frugally, develop a skillset that has higher demand, etc.
Sorry Alice Cooper, I don't have time to watch a full length movie on YouTube.
In my opinion the principle concern needs to be doing away with supply side economics. Increase means on the demand side of the curve and you will drive the market through the needs of the consumer as opposed to the needs of the corporations. If demand increases than supply must increase along with it, increasing corporate need for private sector workers. In the meantime our government can put money in our pockets by creating more public sector jobs by investing in education, infrastructure, and energy infrastructure projects. Education and Infrastructure are obvious investments that every liberal politician touts and then gives up when they are politically threatened, but energy infrastructure is one that I don't think we hear enough of. I'm talking about direct government research and construction to reduce our dependence on oil and fossil fuels. Build windmills to produce electricity, research alternative fuels, and expand mass transit systems that do not depend on oil and fossil fuels, then sell what we can off to the highest bidder to be used and maintained for private profit and creation of additional private sector jobs.
To those that are concerned, yes, our deficits are already high, but in a dragging economy you need to drive up deficits sometimes. Fair taxation of capital gains and increased taxes on the 1% can help make up for those deficits. We need to create jobs, and it's clear that investing in the so-called "job creators" isn't doing enough. Our government can take on the job creation role directly and in such a way that allows the private sector to grow simultaneously. Supply-side economics have gotten our economy into the miserable shape it's in, I think it's time to reverse the trend and create from the bottom up.
Short term government spenging will definitely help. The deficit can be reduced in the long term. What about the laid off manufacturing workers? They will have to get retrained or do something else. Like a small business. We have to admit the fact that the jobs landscape has changed in a major way and plan for th future.
The next untapped industry will be robotics. But they have to be made here and kept here, sold abroard. Robotics is an industry that is still very underdeveloped and has a great future in automated communication and delivery.
We need our people to be more innovative, with mom and pop factories popping out products with good licensing and patent laws, preventing overseas copying and sales in this country. We need to own what we make.
Wont China make those robots cheaper? We may end up making the mechanical parts in China and outsource the programming to India. If we solve this problem employment will go up again.
Yes, the robots are cheaper, and a lot of programming does occur in India.
We can't stop outsourcing because our minimum wage is too high.
If we reduce the minimum wage and bring those jobs back, unemployment will go down, but because those workers will be paid so low that poverty will still exist.
If you're working for 5c an hour, buying a bottle of milk for $2 is going to take you a month, let alone rent and bills and education and medical costs.
We could reduce the cost of living. But this requires a grand effort on behalf of the global economy. Big businesses are constantly trying to maximize their profits, not decrease them.
Another thing is that even if you stop outsourcing, there is still going to be people without jobs due to the robots.
They are cheaper and more efficient than human labor. This is actually a good thing but we need to look after the people.
Suggestions:
20% of the country's wealth has been destroyed and not a single person has been convicted, much less indicted.
REVIEW ALL COMMISSION AND INCOME DATA FOR 2000 to 2008 ON WALL STREET. RECAPTURE/CLAWBACK ALL COMMISSION INCOME.
Wall Street has iron control over the country’s economic policies and that both parties are wholly owned subsidiaries.
ELIMINATE THIS.
24 million people cannot find a full time job, that 50 million cannot afford to see a doctor when they are sick, that 47 million need the government’s help to feed themselves.
IMMEDIATE FEDERAL INFRASTRUCTURE REPAIR JOBS PROGRAM. HEALTH CARE, NOT HEALTH INSURANCE, FOR ALL.
15 million families owe more on their home than it is worth.
ELIMINATE - CANCEL ALL PREDATORY LOANS. WRITE NEW NONPREDATORY LOANS.
MOVE MONEY FROM BANKS TO CREDIT UNIONS.
If you read Tom Friedman's latest book, of which I'm just beginning, by winning the cold war, we unleashed several billion people hungering for the american scream, er dream, and are more than willing to break their asses to get what we have.
However, I guess the only way out, in a free market, demand oriented world economy, is to drop out, smoke some grass, set up communes, take it easy, while the rest of the world rises up, gets ulcers, heart attacks and outprices itself, then we can go back to work
This is an easy question to answer. We follow Micks Economic Theory and simply share out the work hours. Zero unemployment will make the workers more powerfull than the employers and capialism will collapse. The new global economy will determine what is manufactured and where.
We need to educate/train and reskill Americans for the careers of tomorrow and make what we offer in talent and innovation the best of the best. Statistics show that our education system today is training for professions that will be obsolete in 20 years. We need to wake up and shake up our archaic edu. system.
you could always take less pay, move to China, develop a better skillset, live more frugally, etc.
We just outlaw outsourcing. Or tax them. Companies like Apple can easily afford to pay people in the US to make their products. They just want MORE money. They can compete in a global market, it would be easier if the whole world banned outsourcing. PLUS china's economy would tank.
If there was a law in which outsourcing was illegal, we would have more than enough jobs.
That will increase the selling price of the products, leading to lower sales, leading to lower profits and finally the collapse of the company. Competition from other countries is here to stay. We have to deal with it and compete in the global market. Unless the whole world changes. Not practical.
No, that will only lead to higher prices if they are greedy. They know if they raise the prices the run the risk of failing.
This is because, even though they save millions by outsourcing, they do not lower the prices. They give all the extra money to their CEOs. Their CEOs will have to take a paycut, but at least the company will stay open so they can continue to make money.
The only way to create jobs is through having demand.
Some people suggest deregulating the markets further. This will result in minimum wage dropping.
This might reduce outsourcing, but nobody on 5c an hour is going to be able to afford to survive with the current cost of living.
And technological automation has made labor even more superfluous. Workers are just not needed for the necessary level of production.
Capitalism doesn't serve human needs, only business interests.
The reality is we have to compete with other countries. Just saying capitalism doesnt work is not constructive. The rest of the world doesnt care what we call our system. Price will still be an important factor fo us to compete.
Why can't we cooperate with other countries instead of compete with them?
It might sound negative and not constructive, but I can explain why capitalism is failing to provide us our needs.
Capitalism means that all land and means of production are privately owned and operated.
This means that in order to survive, the people without land must sell their labor in order to survive.
In capitalism, you sell goods for money. Then use that money to acquire both goods and more means of production and labor power in order to acquire more money.
Those who begin with land and means of production end up needing to acquire more in order to expand their business.
Capitalism cannot maintain boundaries or equilibrium, because businesses require expansion.
Another flaw of capitalism is that Scarcity is far more profitable than abundance, so it will be pursued or even created artificially.
If I have 10 apples, I might sell them for a dollar. If I have a million apples, I might only be able to sell them for a cent, because they are everywhere and easy to obtain.
In the real world, Oil is becoming very expensive because it is running low on supply. It is very profitable. In contrast, renewable energy is not profitable, because it is freely obtainable and abundant.
I have more to learn on these issues, but so far I am yet to be convinced that capitalism can solve our problems. Perhaps a resource based economy, but we can't have a society where capital influences politics like it does now.
The issue is not about increasing jobs. Why just make more work for people? The issue is more about distributing all the abundance we already produce, like with a basic income (yes probably with taxes and redistribution), a gift economy (like on the internet with Wikipedia and bloggers), better tools for local subsistence (3D printers like RepRap), and better participatory government planning when needed.
That is not productive. People need to work. Relying on redistribution by taxes is not fair to those that work.
Can you explain why you think that? What is not productive?
On motivation and fairness, see this vide that explains the best results come when peopel do them for their own sake (not for external rewards): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc "This lively RSAnimate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace."
If most income and wealth is going to the top 1% (or 5% or whatever), why do you think that is justified in any case? Do these people work so much harder than everyoen else? Even if they do, who pays the costs for the dysfunctional familes this overwork creates?
And what about this issue: http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html "I disagree. It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free activities. To abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being done. AT present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand -- and I think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure -- we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that wouldn't make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other. I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes."
Or this one: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html "The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
The issue of "work" is much more complex than it appears at first...
http://occupywallst.org/forum/currency-re-valuation/
have people invest in america with an true american doller
Stop overpaying the manufacturing workers here... Sorry union guys, you are overpaid some of you. But being paid $26/hour to screw a bolt on a truck frame all day, a bit high. When your training can be done in a few minutes, you don't deserve $26/hr.
Even then we may be more expensive. This could be a major change. Thes jobs may be gone forever. We have to adapt instead of calling for the good old days. I dont know how.
Well, not so much. GM just proved that we can still do it in the USA. The plant they are building the new Sonic in. It's hard to build a little economical car in the US because of high wages and have it actually compete price wise. But by having the unions make some labor adjustments, they are able to hire people at a lower rate to make the Sonic. And now, it's the first subcompact car being built in the USA.
Unions are actually making it hard to create jobs here?
In a way. The plant I worked in (I'm non-union) they make ridiculous requests. Air conditioning in the whole plant and other goofy unrealistic things. They are getting much better, but you can blame GM's overconfidence and the UAW for the downfall of the company in 2007. They have gotten MUCH better since then. The union makes it hard for GM to be profitable while manufacturing in the USA though. Not only that, China is the biggest car market, and to sell in China, you have to build in China. Obviously GM wants to sell there, so...
These are the real problems. No point in just blaming the companies for moving the jobs then. That only helps the politicians. People need to understand why jobs move.
Oh yeah, no one really does, but everyone thinks they do... They just like to cry outsourcing without knowing what is really going on. And part of it is outsourcing, but that's not it...
http://blog.richardkentgates.com/ pass this poll around