N2EY wrote:
In article k.net, "Bill
Sohl" writes:


There's no sign that any sufficient number of folks in
the USA are going to boycott non-USA made products
or spend N dollars more to get a product "made in the USA'
as opposed to buying a cheaper imported product.


That can change, though.

In the long run, those currently
cheap off shore labor markets will self adjust upwards.

Maybe. And if so, might they not find themselves in the same boat?

Like I said, global economy.


As long as we're not on a sinking ship..

In the short
run, US labor has their head in the sand if they think there's something
either party (Dems or Reps) can really do to stem the shift of
manufacturing jobs overseas. The same thing is going on in Europe.

OTOH, unemployed workers can't buy the goods anyway. So what good are
lower prices?


In the long run, employees must be constantly reevaluating their
job skills and looking at the prospect of how vulnerable their job
may be as to their job being farmed out to off shore labor.


That's true up to a point. But how often is it reasonable to expect a
person to retrain? And what happens to "the wealth of nations" in the
meantime?

You retrain whenever it becomes necessary. There's nothing
mystical about it. If your job skill goes wanting, you'd
better find another skill set.


How often is reasonable and practical? A lot of things cannot be learned
overnight. Inexperience and the lack of judgement that can result pose major
threats.

Let's assume that the average worker is expected to job shift 4 times
over their career. You get your Bach in say Computer programming. Work
in tech support for 4 years. maybe you're working on your Masters. Your
job disappears so you either go back and finish you Masters (is this a
good move, considering the field is apparently moving to India) or start
over again in another field. Said other field might just go to some
other country also. So you have to do this 5 times over your working
life, and each degree costs an average of 50K. Keep in mind that the
first degree will cost more, and successive ones relatively less if
inflation doesn't increase the price. Of course the education price
depends on your school. Really good schools cost a good bit more. So
what you are going to do is spend maybe a quarter to a half million
dollars for education over your career, and at these education points,
you are going to have to find a way to support yourself and maybe a
family. What this all sounds like is a great way to go into personal
bankruptcy.

Sorry, it just won't work and I don't care what model yer usin'. If
you are doing a job that requires a couple months of training, you can
get away with job shifting from time to time. If your job training takes
years to do, then it simply isn't going to work.


And who pays for the retraining?

Trickle down? 8^)


I don't know of any country that grew prosperous on a service economy
alone.

We still manufacture and produce in the USA, it is just
done with more and more automation resulting in less
and less need for skilled labor.


We manufacture and produce some things, but much of the production - automated
and all - is moving to places like China.

In our area, a whole glass production plant has been disassembled and
moved to China, where they are putting it back together. A lot of good
paying skilled jobs lost.

Another capacitor making plant has just shut down to move out also.
these jobs weren't as good paying, but they were still jobs. All this in
just one year.


Perhaps they should eat cake?


- mike KB3EIA -