Or are we seeing the start of a new neoconservative "Baffle 'Em With
Bull" campaign?
Either way, James Glassman, American Enterprise Institute Fellow, came off
as really having "his head up his deficit"
on CNN.
Here's what happened:
Lou
Dobbs Tonight on
CNN has been running a segment called "Exporting America." This
is a growing list of companies offshoring jobs, "sending
American jobs overseas" as Lou Dobbs calls it. Not surprisingly, the list
has grown into the hundreds of companies as more and more (and better and better)
American
jobs
are
sent
to
Mumbai and Shanghai, Jakarta and County Cork.
Glassman
didn't
like this
finger-pointing at the Titans of Industry so he published a short article
on "Exporting
Lou Dobbs and John Kerry." He then accepted Lou Dobbs' invitation
to appear on his show [02/12/2004 interview].
Surprisingly, Glassman seemed confused and mixed-up on trade concepts, so after the interview I
read the article. The interview and article were very similar in content,
although
the article
wasn't any better on clarity, acumen
or even style.
SIDEBAR: If you check out the article and/or interview, note that
the neo-right seems to have started a shell game with terminology.
Where
they used to
talk
about "Free
Trade"
they
now
use the word "trade" alone, since who could be against
trade? And rather than talking about "outsourcing jobs to foreign
countries" or
"offshoring jobs" - the issue
- they carefully use the term "outsourcing" since that is
a long-established and useful business practice. Glassman uses this word-play,
and it was even more evident the following day in a Lou Dobbs interview
with Bruce Bartlett of the National Center For Policy Analysis.
Glassman starts his article with what has become the classic right-wing opening
:
denigrate the opposition and mischaracterize
their position [Is there a neocon course outline for this someplace, perhaps
a PowerPoint presentation?]:
Article comments
1 - Tom
You guys don't get economics do you. You wonder why many foreign countries hate us?
We have the lion's share of the prosperity. When we send jobs overseas like tech support, computer mother board builders, and the like we free up capital for innovation over here which builds more jobs. It also raises the standard of living in countries like India so that the people who now have those jobs over there can afford FOOD and POTABLE water.
Your ecnonomic policies, while preserving entry-level jobs in the short term, will hinder innovation and spending in new technologies.
Instead of building a consumer class overseas to buy our products, they will die for lack of clean food, water, and housing.
And they say I'm the racist.
Sheesh.
2 - bhw
Your ecnonomic policies, while preserving entry-level jobs in the short term, will hinder innovation and spending in new technologies.
It ain't just entry-level jobs, Tom. It's senior level programming, design, engineering, and tech writing jobs that are starting to go now, too.
I also believe that economic progress and job creation in countries like India is a good thing for everyone, not just India.
But speaking as a writer who's married to a programmer, I'm kinda worried about my future. And I think I have reason to be. I'm not sure what types of career choices will be available for us ten years from now, do you?
3 - Tom
You do make valid points. I was in the telecom sector for 3 years before the bubble burst (right after the Microsoft Settlement..hmmm) and I was unemployed. I switched careers, and now have decent stability and job happiness.
It is similar to when steel jobs went overseas or when auto jobs went to japan. But we are in a global economy now. Hondas are made in the Carolinas, BMWs are made in Illinois. Do you think that a lot of Germans with their 9% unemployment would rather have those jobs over there? But that would mean our people wouldn't have jobs here.
4 - Hal Pawluk
I think you'd find it useful to read the material I provided in a link in my post and repeat here: [The
Myth of Job Recovery 1/22/2004]
It's the entry-level jobs that we're getting, and the higher-paying, higher level jobs being exported.
In the California example in the study, information services and manufacturing jobs paying a total of $10,327,000,000 were lost and replaced by much lower-paying education and health services (day care), leisure and hospitality (hotels), and retail trade jobs paying a total of $4,245,000,000. The net loss to exported jobs was 40% higher than the jobs created.
The effect was smaller in some states, and across the country the new jobs pay an average of 21% less than the exported jobs.
5 - Hal Pawluk
Honda and BMW moved their factories here to be closer to their market. In the case of the steel industry, it screwed up US steel users who used that more expensive steel to create goods for US consumers.
Today's "faux trade" creates a situation that's a lot different than your examples, with both labor and capital exported. The jobs being exported create goods which are shipped back to us. As the lower prices gain more market share for the multinationals, the profits are used to expand the foreign factories.
It's a qualitative difference, and history is not a reliable guide.
If you're really interested, check out a few of the links under "Further reading" in the post. I've summarized some of my recent research, with links to more detailed sources. The main reasons for "free trade" being a sham are:
1. Labor and capital need to stay within an exporting country but today they don't.
2. If you don't have tariffs, you can't have subsidies but we have bushels of those.
There's also the issue of "Comparative Advantage" and I've covered that reasonably succinctly (I think) in the linked materials.
Check it out. I'm all for trade, but ... (to paraphrase Michael Kinsley).
6 - JR
Hondas are made in the Carolinas, BMWs are made in Illinois.
Actually, I think that would be Ohio and South Carolina respectively.
Carry on.
7 - bhw
Here's an article posted today about Siemens sending "most" of its programming jobs to India and China.
What will the programmers who lost their jobs do instead?
8 - Tom
Just like the buggy whip makers did, they found new marketable skills. With the increased spending in capital made possible by free trade, they will have even better paying jobs available to them.
9 - Eric Olsen
They can roam the countryside, programming at will.
10 - Hal Pawluk
No, not like the buggy whip makers.
In that case, the workers were put out of work by factories in this country.
With "faux trade", the jobs are created and investments are made in other countries.
There is no domestic historical parallel to what is happening today.
11 - bhw
And we're talking about educated people with high-end skills and many years of experience, people who create "intellectual property" not physical items in a manufacturing plant.
So, I'd appreciate any suggestions as to what new skills this writer should acquire over the next 5-10 years.
12 - Mac Diva
Hal, I got my fill of AEI during the John Lott/Mary Rosh affair. Those people don't care whether the material they crank out makes any sense or not. It is written to fit their ideology, not to consider real world consequences.
I hope Julian Sanchez, quoted above, who used to be on my blogroll, hasn't gone completely over to the far Right. He is 'marketable' with those people as a young, minority, hip libertarian, but as I have told him, he can do just as well financially, elsewhere.
Tom, I am as sympathetic to the Third World as anyone. But, what could be happening now is the creation of an international 'subsistence' class. By that I mean a class of workers in all parts of the world who will be paid just enough to subsist. The profits gained from creating that class will go to the usual suspects, not to building the economies of the Third World.
13 - Mac Diva
I can give low tech and high tech examples from out here in the Pacific Northwest. Our lumber industy has been in decline for more than a decade. Unless we allow it to chop down the remaining old growth trees, it is going to stay that way. Those jobs have not been replaced. We also have silicon forests in Seattle and Portland. With the exception of Microsoft, they went into decline when the high tech bubble burst. Another factor is outsourcing to other countries or whatever term you choose to use. Those jobs are not being replaced either. So, what do people do? If they get another job at all it is in the service industry and probably without benefits. They subsist.
14 - Shark
A number of local hospitals recently 'downsized' their radiology staffs; ie. high salary, high education jobs that won't be replaced.
They're e-mailing x-ray jpgs to radiologists overseas. It's happening across the U.S.
(I'm not making this up.)
It's a national plague and we're not just talking anachronistic manufacturing jobs; engineers, tech writers (oh boy, more instruction manuals written in Chinese and translated to semi-English!), programmers, etc. I personally know at least two computer geniuses who are doing pizza deliveries.
I think we're approaching a point where we'll all be unemployed, but have access to lots of really low-cost imports.
Good news/bad news, eh.
Wait!
I know the answer: reform Welfare again: the Govt. will have to pay us to be consumers!
15 - bhw
They're e-mailing x-ray jpgs to radiologists overseas. It's happening across the U.S.
LOVELY.
16 - Hal Pawluk
Just to point up the reality, our trade in advanced technology reached its high point in 1997, when the US had a positive trade balance of $32 billion.
Since then, advanced technology trade has been on a steep slide and last year we ran a deficit of $27 billion.
Now where, exactly, are we going to find those substitute jobs?
The data indicates that "your kids and grand-kids better learn how to clean motel rooms, wash dishes and bag burgers" as I said in "THE MYTH OF JOB RECOVERY."
Damn.
17 - Hal Pawluk
The bad news keeps rolling in, this time from the Economic Policy Institute:
THE HIGHLY EDUCATED ARE THE LATEST VICTIMS OF THE WEAK RECOVERY
The weak recovery has led to dramatic increases in long-term unemployment - workers searching for jobs who remain unemployed for 27 or more weeks. Increasingly, it is the most highly educated Americans who are victims of the rise in long-term unemployment.
The figure ... shows the percentage increases in long-term unemployment from 2000 to 2003 among people of different education levels. Overall unemployment also increased over the same period, rising from 5.7 million in 2000 to 8.8 million in 2003. The annual level of long-term unemployment was 649,119 in 2000; by 2003, this number had risen to 1.9 million. [Economic Policy Institute Snapshot for February 11, 2004 - note that the link will probably change next week to this, or check their archives page]
18 - Hal Pawluk
Actually, the link changed to this
19 - Tom Chiarello
I am against Offshoring but the only thing that is going to stop Offshoring in the United States will be a complete Economic Collapse
similar to the Great Depression and the Banking Panic that followed in the 1920's. In fact, the socio-economic parallels between now and the 1920's are scary.
1. Herbert Hover filled his cabinet with his Cronnies that were as crooked as the day is long.
George Bush has done the same.
2. Herbert Hover said 'What's good for Big Business is What's Good for America' just before the Stock Market Crash and economic disaster.
George Bush says 'Offshoring is Good for the American Economy'.
3. Back in the 1920's there were no laws established to regulate Mergers, Acquisitions, Labor, Stock Market Trading.
Business Monopies were commonplace and there was virtually no regulation in any inductry at all.
Today, the laws related to Mergers and Acquisitions have been relaxed and are routinely ignored by the FCC.
Mergers and Acquistions have become an industry unto themselves that always result in 'Downsizing'. The economy is contracting at an alarming rate.
Manipulation of the Stock Market through 'Insider Trading' and manipulation of financial statements by CEOs is out-of-control. ENRON is a prefect example.
De-regulation has been legislated in the name of 'Free Trade' in almost every Industry. Regulation as become a dirty word.
4. Back in the 1920's, banks were basically insolvent but no body knew it until the Banking Panic.
Today, banks are basically involvent due to their unprofitable investments and over-extended use of Derivatives.
And the list goes on and on.
CEOs believe 'Greed Is Good' and they practice it every day when the 'Downsize' their companies, 'Offshore' American Jobs, and
give themselves huge bonuses. Corporate executives never re-invest their companies profits. We are witnessing a slow, steady, and
painful downward spiral that will make 'Downward Mobility' commonplace.
Nothing will change in the United States until an Economic Collapse or a Revolution. I'm not sure which will occur first !