Who is at Fault for the Decline of American Labor?

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They are not blind to the short-term future, because profit reports are based on three-month intervals called "Quarters". This is why:

- Drug companies invest millions of dollars and thousands of man hours developing drugs to treat illness and disease and go through a process that takes years to get a drug to market, only to have those very same drugs pulled from the market when the public finds out about the unwanted, or even life-threatening, side-effects that the drug companies ignored in their efforts to get those drugs on the market.

- Mining companies take out 99 year leases and invest millions upon millions of dollars building apparatus to get raw materials out of the ground, then more millions refining it to a saleable product. In the process, they lay waste to thousands of square miles of otherwise productive land that is now too much of an environmental hazard to even be used as landfills.

- American car manufacturers pour millions of dollars into racing teams in order to be thought of as being on the cutting edge of technology, when instead they are about 20 to 25 years behind the curve when it comes to making cars that are environmentally friendly, reliable, and affordable to the average middle-class family.

- Japanese and other asian computer companies spend millions developing the next microchip or the faster graphics card or the better sounding speakers or the crystal clear monitor that's only 2 cm's thick in order to out-sell their American competitors. Then those same American competitors license the technology because it's cheaper than paying an American engineer a competitive wage to develop the same product.

American corporations are blind to the long-term future (anything more than 90 days), but not to short-term profits.

Why is it more efficient? What resources are you measuring? The fact that profitability and effective resource use go hand in hand is almost tautological unless we say that the market is failing or an unnecessary intervention has taken place. The reason that is, is because labor is a resource, fuels are resources, equipment is a resource, and so on. So either local foods are less efficient, there is market failure, there is intervention, or, perhaps even local produce charges more because they know they can get people to pay more for it.

All systems progress based upon the present situation. I do not know of a system with efficient prognosticators. Markets however are bound to *some* concern about the future though as seen by investors, entrepreneurial activity(or intrepreneurial activity based upon the definition used), and profit-seeking.

Did you even watch the movie "The story of stuff". The reason that produce from other places can be sold cheaper is that it is sold in bulk to large chains, the profit is measured by % of profit for each item...more items means you can sell each item for less. However, it doesn't take into account the hidden cost...the cost to the environment in gas for shipping from a distance. Other hidden costs are that local growers cannot make as much profit because they have to sell cheaper to even try to compete and that hurts the economy...poorer people spend less on products and can't re-invest profits into increasing their business and hiring local help at "reasonable wages" so that those individuals can contribute to the local economy. All the statistics that do not account for "hidden costs" are an illusion. Just because you have to look for cost doesn't have a real impact on the community or the environment. Try watching the movie. It explains it much better then I do.

It is because local produce must charge enough to support the local owners of the farms. Large food corporations don’t need to support local farm owners as much because everything is produced in massive bulk amounts. There is much less money per unit spent on personal incomes but much more per unit spent on transportation, irrigation, fertilizer, farm equipment, etc. The only reason it’s more profitable is the fact that so much less is spent on personal incomes that it totally negates the inefficiency in terms of natural resource use.

The problem I see is that there is so much reliance on the cheapness of natural resources. As the natural resources become less available in the future it will become a huge problem. There's only a finite amount of resources available to grow food and the world’s population will likely keep growing and consuming more.



These are all short term things though. I’m talking a time frame of 20+ years. I don’t see that a lot companies are willing to make a risky investments for something that won’t become profitable for another 50 years. People only live 70-80 years. People don’t want to wait that long to see growth. Alternative energy can’t really take off until the fossil fuel availability runs so low that the cost becomes infeasible and alternatives are the only option. But by that time it might be too late so people will suffer.

I just don’t believe that the market will always lead to the best case scenario for society as a whole. There has to be some kind of planning that takes more into account than just near term profitability. Otherwise we will be completely screwed in the next hundred years.

Nope, haven't watched it. Yes, more items can help make things better like that. It is just a matter of scales of efficiency. Externalities are market failures, they are something outside of the calculations that need to be considered. Umm.... selling for less, or making a better product are the ways that one can compete. If they cannot sell for less then they aren't more efficient. I don't see why poorer people hurt the economy at all, the economy adapts. If we have less poor people buying stuff, then we will have more rich people buying stuff, or perhaps those rich investing stuff, either way it helps the economy. All statistics of any form are illusions of some form. I have no interest in watching a movie, reading a book, or anything like that. Most of these things end up being crap anyway.

Ok, personal incomes are reduced. There we go, more efficiency right there.


Right and production methods can change to adapt to these things. Now, we can argue that these things will not change perfectly, but worst comes to worst, the iron law of wages comes back, and people live on subsistence wages and little else.


Right, and nobody is ever really interested in the LONG long term.

And nobody really plans for the future anyway.

True. Despite all this high minded talk of the future of "humanity" what it really comes down to is that people want to enjoy thier own lives, the toys they collect, and the act of producing more offspring.

Well, yes it has fueled growth in Asia and India - they're benefitting from the greed of American corporations looking to scrape up every last dollar. Problem is, these same corporations STILL expect Americans to buy their products and/or utilize their services at the SAME high rate of cost. And prices are escalating because of the cost of oil, the lifeblood of capitalist society. The American cash cow has now been bled dry. If corp's don't contribute to the American economy by providing jobs here, then they have no right to expect us to pay exhorbitantly high prices for their crap. As far as I'm concerned, if an American corporation moves their production outside the U.S., they should be taxed as a foreign entity and have to pay tarriffs, since they're now importing their products.



This is true and it's the main fatal flaw of capitalism. The stpid thing is that corporations are so money-hungry that they don't even realize that while they're earning a larger cash flow by moving production outside the U.S., they still trade in U.S. dollars - the same U.S. dollar they are systematically devaluing. They're ultimately killing themselves.



A closed market stagnates, but a Restricted market still allows for slow growth while preserving whatever jobs are left. The American market is highly sought-after. NAFTA and other trade agreements need to be rewritten to close some of the loopholes that companies are using to screw the American worker AND the American buyer.



Well, it will change when they finally suck the last dollar out of this country and everyone's on Welfare. Big government will abound. We'll be a Socialist society then, and we'll be like Russia. China will the new America, except without freedom.

Well, ok? So? Corporations don't have a right to have us buy from them in the first place. The fact of the matter is that the entire idea of the system is that we pay them for goods/services, and they provide them, if we do not seek the good/service, then so be it. I really do not see why we should take a strongly nationalist view of this system anyway, the entire purpose is for us to get goods, we end up having to pay for those goods anyway.


So? They can also switch currencies too if they needed to. Not only that, but devaluing the US dollar is relatively meaningless. The US dollar is an international trade issue, and if the dollar is becoming devalued, that is a trade balance issue more so than a corporate one.


A restricted market is not needed or desired either. Jobs don't disappear forever anyway, the money just gets shifted around. The American economy as an entity in and of itself would have to shut down to cause unemployment to become a ton higher permanently. Trade agreements if anything should be loosened.


The last dollar will not leave. Dollars are useless unless we export crap anyway, as the entire purpose of currency is as a medium of exchange.

My .02 on this subject:

The main issue is the lack of usable education available in America. For the past thirty years, Schools have cut certain necessary basic courses out of curriculum and have actively isolated the skilled trades. And with the lack of individual initiative in mine and successive generations, the result is we have too many bussiness types and not enough doctors, engineers and skilled tradesman.

The answer, of course, is all of the above.

It is highly obvious you have a major beef with the unions.

I have to ask why a skilled craftsperson should not be paid for their services any differently than say your therapist or hair cutter?

I have an issue with unions - especially the ones that I used to belong to - because they dictate that all craftpersons should be paid the same as a degreed professional regardless of the quality of their work, that anyone who bases their spending habits on quality of the goods or service rather than 'The Union Label' is a low-life, and because they teach their members that they are entitled to employment whether or not the employer actually needs them.

So Unions are a small step below Communism?

Just because the union leaders dictate that its members should work "each according to their skill" and give to "each according to their need" while all being rewarded equally under an economy of entitlements?

Golly, how could anyone even think that unions have anything at all to do with Communism, Sociallism, or simple Collectivism?

I know nothing about Unions. That is what you made it sound like.