Outsourcing: Good or Bad in the long term?

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Eh, forget it.

 

If you're really arguing that the great majority of the masses who are currently out of work will suddenly just become trained for other jobs and become efficient workers again by themselves, you're delusional. And if you think their kids will actually be able to afford a post-secondary education in order to fill these jobs on the next wave (or cutting edge) when their deadbeat fathers and mothers are unemployed and poor, you're double-delusional.

 

Anyway.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

As the election heats up, we're going to hear a lot about labor and environmental standards and how we need to level the playing field in trade. China remains a very poor country. It cannot afford the luxury of our standards of today any more than America could have afforded them 100 years ago when the average work week was 67 hours (down to 34 today) and the work place was a much more dangerous place.

 

67 to 34 hours a week?

We make more money in real terms?

 

Yeah, this economy sucks!

We're sooo worried about outsourcing. Other countries have it too.

Think China, with a per capita income of 960 dollars a year in real terms for this fiscal year, (US=36000), they're not as productive, not as efficient...THEY should be more afraid of outsourcing than we are.

 

Oh wait...that's right. They come here to get educated, immigrate, and we get the "best and brighest"

 

 

Sheesh people...

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

As the election heats up, we're going to hear a lot about labor and environmental standards and how we need to level the playing field in trade. China remains a very poor country. It cannot afford the luxury of our standards of today any more than America could have afforded them 100 years ago when the average work week was 67 hours (down to 34 today) and the work place was a much more dangerous place.

 

67 to 34 hours a week?

We make more money in real terms?

 

Yeah, this economy sucks!

We're sooo worried about outsourcing. Other countries have it too.

Think China, with a per capita income of 960 dollars a year in real terms for this fiscal year, (US=36000), they're not as productive, not as efficient...THEY should be more afraid of outsourcing than we are.

 

Oh wait...that's right. They come here to get educated, immigrate, and we get the "best and brighest"

 

 

Sheesh people...

....

 

This is worse than arguing with Mike.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Eh, forget it.

 

If you're really arguing that the great majority of the masses who are currently out of work will suddenly just become trained for other jobs and become efficient workers again by themselves, you're delusional. And if you think their kids will actually be able to afford a post-secondary education in order to fill these jobs on the next wave (or cutting edge) when their deadbeat fathers and mothers are unemployed and poor, you're double-delusional.

 

Anyway.

I can list historical example after historical example to back up my side of the story.

Where's the families that are mired in poverty with sons and daughters with no access to education, supposedly masses because layoffs and outsourcing have occured for this whole century?

 

Nope...Not there.

 

Sure Tyler, we should help those who need it. But really, we cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot sustain growth thats off its natural rate for our country for a prolonged period of time.

 

Eventually we must adjust.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

I'll take your frustration as a compliment

 

I'll debate fairly, but I'm bringing up theory, then finding data, and checking the two. I've brought the stat ab up, the census data, and it all pretty much sums up what I'm saying

 

I've brought facts Tyler. Cold hard facts.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Where's the families that are mired in poverty with sons and daughters with no access to education, supposedly masses because layoffs and outsourcing have occured for this whole century?

 

*sigh*

 

They're on unemployment and/or working at McDonalds/retail/etc.

 

Seriously, you've proceeded to make about ten arguments against statements that I wasn't even making.

 

I have an understanding of economics. I know that outsourcing is an inevitable part of the economic cycle. I'm well aware that above-normal growth is unsusatainable. I also know something that I've been repeating like, over and fucking over.

 

Unemployment. Equals. Economic inefficiency.

 

In order. To work towards. A better economy. We must. Eliminate. Inefficiency.

 

Having skilled workers serving Big Macs is not efficiency.

 

Thus.

 

Job training.

 

Swear to god, this is the last time I'm repeating myself.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

I'll take your frustration as a compliment

 

I'll debate fairly, but I'm bringing up theory, then finding data, and checking the two. I've brought the stat ab up, the census data, and it all pretty much sums up what I'm saying

 

I've brought facts Tyler. Cold hard facts.

I'm frustrated because your boundless theories and formulas are addressing problems I'm not even bringing up.

 

I'm frustrated because you've ignored my central point and sniped at things that I'm not arguing.

 

I'm frustrated because I've been repeating myself over and fucking over and you're sitting there thinking "YES I'M WINNING" only because you have an elementary grasp of reading comprehension.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

No I addressed your point.

 

You're saying outsourcing is putting people out of jobs with no definable replacement and that this in essence is going to put people at a disadvantage and lower their economic status and future economic status of themselves and their kids. We need to train them and put programs in place to ensure these people are not left structurally unemployed.

 

EDIT: What you said is that this current market we're in is not efficient. That was on pg5

 

I said that odds are, the unemployment rate in the 1990s was an abberation off the trend of the NAIRU, and that it had to rise at some point. I do not see this, over the long haul, helping to create a feedback cycle of a permanent underclass, which I believe IF i have your argument right is a necessary condition it would create.

 

EDIT: I agree, the market wasn't efficient, if efficiency is defined as being at equilibrium. You see it as a change from equilibrium to disequilibirum, and I see it as moving back toward equilibirum

 

 

We have differing views, as I mainly view these changes as positive and a good thing while you do not.

 

That is a philosophical difference neither of us are likely to change.

 

Did I get that right?

Edited March 31, 2004 by Stephen Joseph

[Ripper 0]

Where's the families that are mired in poverty with sons and daughters with no access to education, supposedly masses because layoffs and outsourcing have occured for this whole century?

 

Are you suggesting that the social class of the parents in no way affect that of their children?

 

Higher education takes money...mostly expendeble income that can be saved for the childs education. Families living from paycheck to paycheck has no expendable income. Therefore their children aquire jobs accessable to those without a higher education. These are the jobs that are eleminated through outsourcing. Come on man, its not that hard to put it togehter here.

 

Unless these new great jobs that are created are gonig to be the type that can be assessed with a high school education(and we KNOW thats not the case) then, how are the children of the underpriviledged supposed to compete? How are this generation of underprivilideged supposed to compete.

 

I'm all for more job training to make people more competitive in the workforce. All for it. But ITS NOT HAPPENING. The doing away with large numbers of jobs is happening. I have no problem with getting rid of shit jobs to upgrade...but thats not happening. People are downgrading.

 

The companies are not trying to be competitive. Thats like saying Nike and its sweatshops are trying to be competitive when they have a astronomical markup on the cost of production and their profits. Not only are the cutomers getting screwed out of their goods(I call a customer service line and the person to help me can't speak much English..that is a UPGRADE of service?) but they are screwing the people out of jobs that have been the NECESSITY of the lower to middle class americans for decades. The lower and middle class americans have not been eliminated, so why are the jobs?

 

I know that there is a answer for this in a total analiytical, textbook way. I am more venting than actually asking the question, but you do have to at least see where I am coming from a little here.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

I see where you're coming from

 

I'm just pointing out that the stat abstract and all historical trends tell me to not be worreid about if I have a long-run perspective

 

Sure, substitution towards "lesser jobs" occurs, but this is a short-term effect. I'm speaking in long run terms, more than a few years, give things a chance to sort out

 

It's like the dentist, or at least for me

 

Hurts like a bitch for 30 minutes, but then your mouth feels fresh and clean for months

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Here's your first problem: you're assuming my position is based around "OMG BLEEDING HEART LIBERALISM!!!"

 

It's not. It's based around market inefficiency. Regardless of whether we have a perfectly efficient market or not, we should still be working towards a more efficient market. We're not doing that by letting these skilled workers wallow in unemployment.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I see where you're coming from

 

I'm just pointing out that the stat abstract and all historical trends tell me to not be worreid about if I have a long-run perspective

 

Sure, substitution towards "lesser jobs" occurs, but this is a short-term effect. I'm speaking in long run terms, more than a few years, give things a chance to sort out

 

It's like the dentist, or at least for me

 

Hurts like a bitch for 30 minutes, but then your mouth feels fresh and clean for months

Yeah, but I think what you're missing it that they're telling you not to be worried. You have (or are on your way to, I forget) grad education in economics and a government job - you're not going anywhere for a while.

 

What Ripper seems to be concerned with is that, sure, this will self-correct in a few years, but hey, in the meantime, the potential for upward mobility among economic classes is almost nil - moreso than it usually is. Right now it's preserving an impoverished class. I'm not too stupid to believe that there will never be an impoverished class, but now more than ever (and I'm talking modern era, modern conceptions and allowances for work, please don't come back with the "100 years ago" stuff) it seems that the people on the poverty line are stuck there with very little chance of moving forward.

 

Also, Tyler, you poor boy. I'm guessing you're bald from the hair-tearing at this point.

[Firestarter 0]

I'm not too stupid to believe that there will never be an impoverished class, but now more than ever... it seems that the people on the poverty line are stuck there with very little chance of moving forward

Of course, it doesn't help that your perception is utterly demolished by the facts. According to the Department of the Treasury and this research paper by the Heritage Foundation, people in the lowest income brackets are now and always have been moving upwards at historically unprecedented rates.

Our economy works, plain and simple, and all the carping in the world won't change that.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Thanks Marney.

 

For other research, if you look at the fastest growing countries, they're always a subset of the poorest.

 

It is a natural phenomenon for the poor to rise up, its called convergence. Mostly in the world we see conditional convergence. That's where poor countries with low savings rates over time catch up to rich countries with low savings rate, and those poor with high savings rates catch up to high savings rates.

 

It's perfectly applicable to apply that to this here.

 

Look. There's no reason to intervene. By the time the government got off their ass to do something, even if they decided a YEAR ago, the bureaucracy would mean it would be a slow process.

 

Economists who argued against Keynes showed that if you try to battle unemployment, the unintended consequences to other economic variables over time increase in their magnitude of change, necesitating larger intervention and then a larger magnitude of change.

 

Go Marney!

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

Here's your first problem: you're assuming my position is based around "OMG BLEEDING HEART LIBERALISM!!!"

 

It's not. It's based around market inefficiency. Regardless of whether we have a perfectly efficient market or not, we should still be working towards a more efficient market. We're not doing that by letting these skilled workers wallow in unemployment.

The problem, Tyler, is that SJ's arguments consist of tested theories and proven facts... you know, hard evidence... whereas yours are, "blahblahblahblah MARKET INEFFICIENCY~! blahblahblahblah".

[Jobber of the Week 0]

facts

 

the Heritage Foundation

Never do that again. (holds head while looking for Tylenol)

[Guest Cerebus]

Oh come on. What in there was so outrageous? I think its a shame that people dismiss things just b/c they come from one source or another. It's not like this is some unknown group of whackos, its a respected conservative think tank. Which means it will espouse a CONSERVATIVE viewpoint (wow look at that). Mayhaps if you read the article and rebut it, instead of OMGHERITAGEFOUNDATIONLOL2004 you would have more of a case.

[Vyce 0]

Let's all feel sorry for poor, poor, SJ.

 

Who's only, you know, using PROVEN FACTS to support his arguments, as opposed to Tyler, who is just talking out of his ass.

[Firestarter 0]

And the Heritage Foundation isn't very conservative in the first place.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Let's all feel sorry for poor, poor, SJ.

 

Who's only, you know, using PROVEN FACTS to support his arguments, as opposed to Tyler, who is just talking out of his ass.

...

 

Okay, seriously, this is retarded.

 

He's spouting shit out from an economics textbook...

 

BUT SO AM I!

 

As he said, PAGE FUCKING FIVE!

 

Market inefficiencies are caused by underallocation of resources. Having people unemployed is an underallocation of resources. You want your market to be as efficient as possible. Thus, you DO IN FACT WANT TO REALLOCATE YOUR RESOURCES BY TRAINING THESE UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE SO THEY CAN BE PRODUCTIVE IN OTHER FACETS OF THE MARKET!

 

But instead, the administration and Popick and everyone else is simply repeating "Outsourcing is good. Don't worry" instead of working towards getting more efficiency in the market.

 

So how in the fuck is this NOT a proven fact?

[Guest MikeSC]

Come on kids.

 

Calm down.

 

No need to make this personal.

 

Sorry, I don't often get the chance to be the voice of reason.

-=Mike

...Ah, screw it. Carry on

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Come on kids.

 

Calm down.

 

No need to make this personal.

 

Sorry, I don't often get the chance to be the voice of reason.

-=Mike

...Ah, screw it. Carry on

...

 

You're right. When you're the voice of reason, I need to step back

[Guest MikeSC]

Come on kids.

 

Calm down.

 

No need to make this personal.

 

Sorry, I don't often get the chance to be the voice of reason.

    -=Mike

...Ah, screw it. Carry on

...

 

You're right. When you're the voice of reason, I need to step back

Glad to be of service.

 

MikeSC: The roadside barrier on the bridge of this forum since 2002.

-=Mike

[Jobber of the Week 0]

And the Heritage Foundation isn't very conservative in the first place.

Maybe? But they outwardly try to be conservate-oriented, so I don't know how saying "well, they're not as conservative as the could/should be" is somehow making their statements more reliable.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

And the Heritage Foundation isn't very conservative in the first place.

Only if you live in Bizzaro World...

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Tyler,

 

I've been trying to explain that we've had lower than natural unemployment, and that having an unemployment rate below the natural rate is unsustainable in the long run. That's one way (using NAIRU data) of saying that people losing their jobs...they have to...the market was out of equilibrium and now it contracted back. There's always a contraction after an expansion.

 

Look, I'm not disagreeing with you that there should be ways to help people with transitions. We don't want hysterisis (which by the way would have been a good point for you to make...its what youre talking about).

 

But, for minor bumps and corrections, a Keynesian, interventionistic, short-term solution approach would not do anything to help.

 

So right now anything we do wont have the effect we want

If you wanted to talk long-term, I think thats appropriate.

 

So far though T, America has gone through at least 6 distinctive stages marked by this structural unemployment...and so far, we're still fine n dandy

 

EDIT: Btw, I agree with Mike. I'll temper my heatedness in arguing, but we really shouldnt make this personal. So what if we both disagree? I don't like Clinton, but he'd make a hell of a fishing buddy

Edited April 1, 2004 by Stephen Joseph