← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 8683 | Posts: 18 | Started: 2003-08-02
2003-08-02 05:40 | User Profile
**'GIANT SUCKING SOUND' OF LOST JOBS GETS LOUDER
International Politics by Randolph T. Holhut August 1, 2003
"The recession is over."
So says the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of U.S. business cycles. It announced on July 17 that the recession that began March 2001 ended eight months later in November 2001.
The 2001 recession was one of the briefest since World War II, but the bureau also found that it was followed by one of the weakest recoveries. In the months that followed the end of the 2001 recession, the supposedly recovering economy grew at half the rate of previous upturns.
That might explain why there now are 9.3 million Americans that are jobless and why the U.S. unemployment rate is currently at 6.4 percent - the highest it has been in nearly a decade. In the 19 months since the end of the 2001 recession, more than 2 million jobs disappeared.
This year, President Bush has promised that his $330 billion "jobs and growth" tax cut plan will create 1.4 million new jobs by the end of next year.
The U.S. economy would have to generate an average of 300,000 new jobs a month from now until the end of 2004 to create 5.5 million new jobs - that's the promised 1.4 million from the tax cuts and the 4.1 million that White House economists earlier this year predicted would be gained with or without the tax cuts.
Think it's going to happen? Probably not. When Bill Clinton was president, the U.S. economy gained an average of 239,000 jobs per month. Since Bush took office, jobs have disappeared at a rate of 69,000 a month...
It looks like almost a dead certainty that there will not be 5.5 million new jobs by December 2004. If you want some proof, check out the June 9 issue of Fortune. It details a dirty little secret in the American economy - how white collar workers are seeing their jobs outsourced to foreign countries.
The U.S. manufacturing sector has been nearly wiped out by overseas competition. Now, it's the service sector's turn. Tasks such as financial analysis, software design, tax preparation are now being done in India and the Philippines. The quality of the work is good. The price is even better. Where, say, an American accountant's starting pay ranges from $40,000 to $50,000, an accountant in Bangalore gets less than half that.
Forester Research, a Massachusetts-based technology consultant, estimates that 3.3 million service jobs will move to countries such as Russia and China in addition to English-speaking countries such as India and the Philippines over the next 15 years. Information technology and financial services will be the two sectors that should see the most overseas outsourcing.
"The debate of at major financial services companies today is no longer whether to relocate some business functions but rather which ones and where," Andrea Brierce, managing director of the consulting firm A.T. Kearney, told Fortune. "Any function that does not require face-to-face contact is now perceived as a candidate for offshore relocation."
This is a frightening prospect for every person who thinks the U.S. economy can grow its way out of recession. Traditionally, white collar workers have gotten laid off when times are bad and get rehired when things pick up. Now, like their blue collar brethren, they're watching their jobs get shipped overseas and those jobs are likely not coming back.
It's equally frightening for people who still believe that a college degree or senior executive experience is protection against long-term unemployment. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 18.1 percent of the long-term unemployed in 2002 had college degrees and 20 percent were from the executive, professional and managerial category. This compares to 14 percent in 2000 for both segments.
The long-term trend of good, stable and well-paying jobs being replaced by not-so-good, unstable and lousy paying jobs is something that few folks are talking about. But it is a trend that all of the tax cuts in the world won't change.
The code phrase for this trend is "labor market flexibility." When you hear economists and business people say it, they mean a labor environment where - if you are fortunate enough to have a job - you are willing to work longer hours for lower pay and if you aren't, then your job will go someplace else where someone will do it for even less money.
In the rest of the world, they call this "The American Model." Countries that still insist on quaint ideas like socialized medicine, cradle-to-grave social welfare, unfettered access to higher education, protection of domestic industries and jobs that pay a living wage are doomed in a global economy where corporations want cheap labor, low taxes, no unions and no government regulations.
This is how the world's economy now works. Productive workers in the U.S. are discarded as companies search for cheap and compliant overseas labor. The average two wage-earner family in the U.S. is working about 300 hours more a year than 20 years ago, with little or no growth in real wages. And most of the jobs that have been created in the past decade are low-wage service jobs that are insufficient for raising a family.
The unrelenting demands of investors to show an ever-greater profit, the demand for cheap consumer goods and services that Americans feel is their birthright and a global economy that has become reliant on producing more stuff at less cost have all combined to siphon jobs out of the U.S.
The only winners in this race to the bottom are the corporations profiting from this global exploitation of workers.
When workers don't earn enough to buy the products they make and corporations hopscotch the globe searching for ever-cheaper labor, you have a recipe for an economic disaster. But neither the Republicans nor the Democrats want to talk about this.
Any serious discussion of the economy has to address the hemorrhage of U.S. jobs to other nations and the steady erosion of the standard of living of U.S. workers that has resulted. If not even white collar jobs are safe from overseas outsourcing, what does this mean for the American economy?
[url=http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1164]http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=Ne...rticle&sid=1164[/url]**
The NewsHour Looks at Unemployment Breathe. Count to ten. [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=9853]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...?showtopic=9853[/url]
Careers Now:U.S.Soil:Jobs Made Here That Stay Here jobs safe from overseas outsourcing [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=9883]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...?showtopic=9883[/url]
US Economy Roaring Outsourcing to India Boosts America [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=9827]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...?showtopic=9827[/url]
2003-08-02 06:10 | User Profile
Fwee Twade! Fwee Twade!
2003-08-02 06:33 | User Profile
*Originally posted by FadeTheButcher@Aug 2 2003, 00:10 * ** Fwee Twade! Fwee Twade! **
Remember:
"The people who take these jobs (supposedly) have high IQs, which makes it all right."
OR:
"They are only doing jobs that Americans don't want to do."
:rolleyes:
2003-08-02 06:34 | User Profile
Those people weren't just current with their skill set. If only they spent any time reading books about new technologies :lol:
2003-08-02 07:14 | User Profile
>>>They are only doing jobs that Americans don't want to do.
LOL they should tell that to an American worker everytime they hand out a pink slip because of outsourcing.
***>>>Those people weren't just current with their skill set. If only they spent any time reading books about new technologies ***
LOL yes, that is exactly what they were saying several years ago. Get hip. Get with the "new economy." Go to university and go thousands of dollars in debt studying IT. Now they are sending all those jobs to India too. Want real job security in America? Consider becoming a prison guard. So long as there are n** in America you do not have a thing to worry about.
2003-08-05 22:07 | User Profile
Oh, but look at all the jobs... McDonalds is hiring. So is Burger King. And if you're a professional shelf stocker, I'm sure a grocery store or two might have a place for you!
These are going to be the only jobs left before too long... and being the one White burger flipper in a kitchen full of negroes is not going to be a pleasant way to spend your day.
2003-08-05 22:30 | User Profile
Originally posted by rban@Aug 5 2003, 07:10 * Whine and btch, btch and whine. Blame the system, moan & groan. Or, riot in the streets like Roy Batty suugests all the time. yeah, that'll solve the problem . Fer sure, ... look how well it's worked for blacks!!*
Well, it beats defecating in the streets like they do in India. Or begging for toenail clippings, like they do in India. Or drinking gallons of bacteria cultures from the Ganges like they do India. Or burning brides like they do in India. Or selling children into prostitution like they do in India. Or ... well, you get the picture :D !
Who said anything about rioting like blacks? Now, if there's a collapse, and people are forced to take sides, the non-Whites will eventually find themselves squaring off against their former benefactors, with muds finding success lacking, it goes without saying :P . When the US takes a bit of a tumble, there won't be anyone to buy the sh*t being manufactured "off-shore", heheehe. Where are the markets going to be? China? India? Vietnam? Senegal? Liberia? Israel? The US can collapse and reconstitute itself without relying on outside help, something that only it (and Europe) seem to be capable of. Why is that? Oh yeah, White people.
At this point, I'm all for things deteriorating at an even more rapid rate. We can get the collapse and clean up over with sooner, instead of much later.
Rban. What a shmuel. :y
2003-08-07 00:20 | User Profile
*Originally posted by rban@Aug 6 2003, 09:09 * ** Sure Roy...keep on bleating on outdated urban myths about what they 'supposedly' do on India ( this from a guy who couldn't locate it on a world map ). Only problem is...those Indian bride burners are taking away your job. And they wil continue to do so. Because their IQ is double yours.
People who rail against outsourcing are exactly like nggers, and they advocate ngger like solutions as well. The US cannot survive even one day without importing essential goods from foreign conutries...like a lot of little parts that you don't see that go into cars and guns. Both of which you need to help you with your Negroid like 'collapse', don't you Roy-boy? Guess you will be reduced to pitchforks and torches. Just like your ancestors in the Dark Ages of Europe...you know, just before we gave you technology and mathematics to civilize you and bring you slightly higher than apes in the evolutionary scale?
Boy, understand one thing: we made you semi-humanoid, but we can take it away and knock you back down to your monkey origins just like the n*ggers if we wanted. Your ancestors were jumping around in trees not too long ago. To me you people are still a barbaric horde.
(Ha....and I bet you thought I actually considered you an equal didn't you?) **
Rban is right.
The Asians and Indians who are being hired are smart and hard working. Whites who whine about lost jobs are sore losers, and I laugh at them.
It is easy to want meritocracy when you come out on top, and to laugh at blacks and Mexicans. But Asians are eating your lunch now, Roy Batty.
You see - the Roy Batty types are not Newtons. Otherwise they would not be losing jobs to the Indians and Chinese. So the talk about "creativity" is really quite beside the point. Creative whites will still have jobs. But they will not care for their uncreative, less mathematically adept "racial brothers".
Instead, they will fire them and replace them with Asians and Indians, who can do the same job for less money.
Roy Batty types are scared for their job, scared of the competition. Keep making fun of India's beggars and China's relative poverty. The beggars are not going to be the ones taking your job, Roy Batty. :D
2003-08-07 02:18 | User Profile
rban/sun tzu
Roy Batty types are scared for their job, scared of the competition. Keep making fun of India's beggars and China's relative poverty. The beggars are not going to be the ones taking your job, Roy Batty.
:) Apparently it won't be any Asians either, since there don't seem to be any capable of doing it. :D It would have been gone already ... :lol:
Rban, your constant use of n*gger doesn't show much tolerance. Been one of your trademarks since SF.
Oh, one can be smart in some ways - one can learn, one can understand ... but take that knowledge to the next level ... create, innovate, make the leaps in logic necessary for advancements ... oh, that's right, that's a domain dominated by those hated Whites. Take ... IT for instance. Then again, maybe the jews and Khosla and Red Chinese can all get together and try and fork over more money to alter the patent system further. You know, try and make it even easier to steal ...
:lol:
Did you get to Noah's Bagels first thing this morning when it opened? When the over priced concrete donuts were "fresh?" Freshly dusted of rat hairs and tracks? :D :
2003-08-08 23:11 | User Profile
Faust,
If you place your articles in the new post section instead of the quote section it is eye friendlier to read. I only bring it up because you always do it this way. :blink:
2003-08-09 04:07 | User Profile
*Originally posted by rban@Aug 7 2003, 05:18 * ** It's another standard bleat and a white ploy : when someone is beating you, cry 'but they're cheating!!'. When whites are winning they are always doing it fair and square because they are so pure and virginal, but when Asians beat whites they are 'cheating' because we of course are wicked and evil.
Sure Roy, we'll buy that one along with the swamp land in Florida. **
Cheating? It isn't Whites fault that they are hard wired for creativity and problem recognition :D . Disingenuousness knows no bounds for some ... :rolleyes:
2003-08-10 17:44 | User Profile
No one but no one can beat an Indian for decit, lying and duplicity.
2003-08-12 19:29 | User Profile
*Originally posted by rban@Aug 10 2003, 07:08 * ** Ohhh,..... I though whites are only hard-wired for stealing native lands and whipping Negroes on cotton plantations.
They are in other words hard wired for theft and cruelty and barbarism. This is the best I can say of them....they make good robbers and thugs. **
Then why do you serve them? :D :D :D :P
Yes Aiwaz93, they are developing quite a :dung: reputation in CA. When Indians try to buy property for instance, the realtors/developers make sure they in constant contact with their vendors ( as Indians will try to contact the vendors and tell lies that make it appear as if the developer/property owner is paying for additional items and freebies for Apu and his brood ) and they also make sure they take extensive photos of the property, as the Indians (and a lot of Middle Easterners I should say) will damage the property, claim it was that way when they bought it, and try to sue for "damages" and additional work. The muds are so transparent it's pitiful. But then, look at their native lands :lol:. Do that, and all your questions are answered.
2003-08-12 20:18 | User Profile
A true story related to me by an elderly gentleman who served in the British colonial Indian army. Apparently, an Indian milkman does not deliver bottles of milk to your door, oh no, he comes along with a cow on a long lead and knocks on your door offering milk.If the customer wants milk, the milkman then and there gets out a milking stool and milks his animal to the customers requirements. There is a good reason for this.Indians cannot trust each other enough not to buy milk from a container in case it has been watered down. I cite this amusing little example to just to illustrate the point that dealing with Indians you are dealing with a race of coingenital cheats and liars, a race that has honed it down to a fine art over thousands of years. This is a general warning to anyone who does business with an Indian.Personally I would put more trust in a cobra (held sacred by the Indians).
Aiwaz.
2003-08-12 20:31 | User Profile
Don't forget that they all seem to be natural braggarts. Always exaggerating their accomplishments, extolling the virtues of they, the Master Race, one and all.
But they'll still try to rip off an 8 year old when he goes to buy a Slurpee and Snickers, never mind the droves of Indians nailed for more involved financial shenanigans in CA.
Deepak Chopra probably has a good belly laugh every night before retiring.
2003-08-13 00:23 | User Profile
In a global capitalist economy, the supply of labor is much greater than the demand for labor. With 6+ billion people on the planet, there is simply more people than there is a demand for jobs.
Globalization has exposed America (and to a lesser extent) Western Europe to a huge and seemingly non-ending supply of labor. And according to the laws of supply and demand, when there is an almost unlimited supply the associated price will go down. In the case of global capitalism the "price" is the cost of labor. The net result is that wages and the associated standard of living are reduced.
What is good for business is not necessarily good for America. Businesses strive to increase productivity and eliminate as much labor as possible. When it is not possible to eliminate the labor from the business, the next goal is to find the cheapest labor possible. While that allows a business to lower costs and become more competitive, it also has the effect of people losing their livelihoods.
When this occurs throughout the economy, eventually only people with very specific skills are able to find a job. And when competing against 6+ billion people in the labor pool, these jobs tend to be very low paying.
Eventually, global capitalism will lead to the formation of only two classes - the very rich and the very poor. Those fortunate to have protected jobs (such as government jobs) or highly skilled jobs (such as famous entertainers, senior business executives, etc) will benefit from lower prices. However, the vast majority of people of people will be very poor.
This is the condition of most Third World countries. Most Third World countries have a small percentage of very wealthy people protected behind fences while the majority of the people face dire poverty and the potential for starvation. Such a disparity of wealth invariable leads to a state controlled totalitarian system.
America cannot remain free and prosperous if the majority of jobs disappear. If the trend is to continue, the middle class will disappear and the United States will look like a Third World country.
Laws need to be enacted to protect our borders and protect our industries. While "protectionism" will prevent the flow of cheap goods into this country, it will help maintain our industrial base. And maintaining the industrial base is key for the middle class to survive.
If all the manufacturing jobs and all the white-collar jobs are gone, what will people do? And the business economics dictates that it is cheaper to build factories and send white-collar jobs overseas than to pay American workers. That will only leave jobs that are impossible to send overseas (such as teachers, doctors and lawyers). Of course, with an unlimited flow of immigration even the jobs that remain will have a flood of labor competing for those positions. This will further reduce American wages and the standard of living.
National capitalism is good. Such capitalism allows businesses to innovate and poorly manage businesses go bankrupt. But Global Capitalism will destroy the high standard of living in developed nations.
2003-08-14 07:58 | User Profile
Yes, A very spiritual people Worship rats, monkeys, not to mention cows.Perform human sacrifice (to this very day). Prominently display huge effigies of the penis and vagina in their temples. Deliberately maim children so that they earn more money as beggars.Etc etc.
2003-08-14 19:59 | User Profile
Nobody denies the past culture of the Indo-Aryans, rban. But that culture now exists mostly in memory and reenactment; India is no longer an Aryan nation, and would not be even if you threw out all the Muslims. We must work to assure that the same fate doesn't befall the remaining Aryan-derived peoples, without whom there wouldn't even be the memory of ancient India. Join us!