Thread: Is it even possible to support "locally produced" these days?

Originally Posted by gugi

I don't think it's that simple. Who do you think wields more economic power - the 30,000 employees of Goldman-Sachs, or the 100,000 employees of General Motors? Blue collar jobs are fine, but given the opportunity I bet the most blue collar workers would rather have a white collar job instead. I tend to be pretty cynical, but I'd say the only 'blue collar' jobs that are important for economic health are the military (I know they're not thought of that way, but on socioeconomic scale they seem to fit that category better).

So what you're saying is that it's OK if the entire blue collar workforce transitions from a taxpaying to a taxreceiving group by becoming military? I hope I misunderstood you. It's a little like a communist scenario: Either you get all the perks because you're a higher level party-member, or you'll take shit from some government commander.

I think there should be a healthy blue collar group in some form of production as well as farming and in a bigger scale a healthy form of both import and export. The blue collar group of course contributes to the latter.

The total picture is not very black & white, but more many shades of grey.

Originally Posted by Sailor

Not that i had reason to complain of goods made in India, China or Pakistan. I think they have skills and technology to produce stuff of high quality as well but why should they bother? They produce low quality junk products as long as we are willing to buy it.

No, they produce the quality that's requested. Going back to my toaster: I can pick up something that costs only a few dollars and comes from China, but its quality will be much lower than the Kitchenaid one I picked up earlier this week, which comes from China as well, but is nicely built.

I am actually pleasantly surprised that many Nokia phones are built in Finland, which of course is not a cheap country for labour.







Bruce, I don't care so much about buying local for the sake of buying local. In your neck of the woods, there's nothing but snow cones in the white and yellow variants these days, so of course you'll get food brought in from all over the place. But I would prefer supporting a local source (and not just neighbourhood, even supporting a MI car plant from CA is more local to me than buying something produced in Asia) over something far away.

Originally Posted by Hillie

So what you're saying is that it's OK if the entire blue collar workforce transitions from a taxpaying to a taxreceiving group by becoming military? I hope I misunderstood you.

No, I'm saying that an economy in which the vast majority of the workforce is white collar and the blue collar jobs are outsourced seems pretty viable too. As long as you keep the nationalistic envy in check with an army (analogous to police enforcing the laws within national borders).

A couple of centuries ago the way to improvement was outsourcing the supply of raw materials and trading up for an industrial job. May be the analogue in our time is outsourcing the industry.

My great grandparents worked their land that was it. My grandparents had low skill jobs that paid money (my grandfather was a mason, my grandmother paved roads). My parents and their friends had jobs in industry. My and my friends' jobs are almost entirely removed from production of anything material. A lot of changes over about 100 years.

The thing is that hoeing the land once used to be a good job. Then assembling cars used to be a good job. Nowadays being an engineer is a good job. These things just don't stay static, so supporting today something that is based on a model that worked 30 years ago may not be the best.

In any case this is just an attempt to look at it rationally. I am perfectly aware that in reality irrational factors very often trump rational ones, but it's not a bad idea to understand the driving forces.

gugi,
I'm not entirely sure this rational works, it's a far cry from reality to say or even assume that jobs within the US or US workers have been trading up to attain to some abstract job that doesn't involve production.

I'm not sure if you ever lived elsewhere in the US where manufacturing has been a way of life. I once live for a short stint in Kalamazoo Michigan, and I can tell you there are plenty of people who are machinists, production based folks who do count on jobs being here in the US.

I am not one of those folks by far, I'm beyond abstracted from the production at this point in my life, but I did once work in a factory for over 4 years, managing a group of immigrant doing electronic testing, whilst an undergrad.

I work in insurance at this point, but I love to fix cars, and build things. I think keeping production here is key, do we truly want a society full of managers and people unable to have good specialized machining skills?

Also too, not every gets to grow up and be an Astronaut so to speak, meaning some of these lesser or production based jobs are meant for this milieu.

I try to buy American, but I rationalize by this past experience; I once used to read a magazine and eventually I stopped enjoying the magazine and decided I didn't want to support their views and material so I decided to read another similar magazine, and so I did. I honestly believed I was making a choice only later to find out both magazines were owned by the same media corporation.

Cheers
David

Originally Posted by gugi

The thing is that hoeing the land once used to be a good job. Then assembling cars used to be a good job. Nowadays being an engineer is a good job. These things just don't stay static, so supporting today something that is based on a model that worked 30 years ago may not be the best.

I think that the saddest part of this was that in addition to being a good job, hoeing the land, working at a plant, or assembling cars was a job that previous generations were proud to do. Work ethic and pride, along with civic responsibility and a good portion of respect for what you have accomplished at the end of the day is no longer a quality that courses through many workers. My job is entirely embedded in production, and the people around me aspire to have a job that will land them in an office. Not that there is anything wrong with that. And not that what I am saying has anything to do with the current topic. I just find it very disheartening to see the lack of backbone exhibited by people when given the chance to do work they should be proud to do. And grateful for the opportunity to do it. Give me a chance to farm the land as my Great Grandfather did? Don't threaten me with a good time.

Well I haven't really 'lived' in many places, just traveled a bit around US and very often I've been wondering what do people here do for a living. I mean you can't have the only businesses a gas station, a store, a car repair shop...

In any case, of course, I understand the argument of difficult transition, we all have read about the luddites' protests. That's a perfectly good argument, but as blockhead pointed out most people who work with their hands would rather have an office job.

I don't know if I'd like a society of managers, bankers, insurers, lawyers, artists, doctors, designers, salesmen, etc. What I am saying is that that may be the future whether we like it or not. It is all nice and dandy to want manufacturing jobs to stay in US, but it is really hard when given the chance people would prefer that it is somebody else who trades their office job for a manufacturing one.

Unfortunately the income distribution makes it more expensive to produce the same quality of product with US labor than with chinese labor.

So, the question what society we want to have is actually being answered by whether we are willing to accept lower standard of living by paying more for identical products only so that somebody else in our society can benefit more.

Despite economic propaganda there are still a lot of zero sums in the economy. From my observations the number of altruistic people is very small, so my bet is on less manufacturing jobs in US, not on more. And that has nothing to do with what I like, just on what I think is going to happen.

Since the standard of living in US is generally higher than in the rest of the world you have to ask yourself, what justifies that. And since in my opinion globalization is here to stay and increase, you then have to ask yourself, what kind of jobs give the americans economic advantage due to the differences between them and the rest of the world. And these are the jobs you want.
Anything else, as the time goes the people who have these jobs will get a standard of living closer to their peers in other places who have the same jobs.

And yes, not everybody can be an astronaut, but I think everybody's future will be more dependent on their abilities and life choices, than on where they were born. I think this is one of the most important 'american' values, I'd actually rate it higher in importance to american society than the nationalism.

Originally Posted by gugi

Well I haven't really 'lived' in many places, just traveled a bit around US and very often I've been wondering what do people here do for a living. I mean you can't have the only businesses a gas station, a store, a car repair shop...

In any case, of course, I understand the argument of difficult transition, we all have read about the luddites' protests. That's a perfectly good argument, but as blockhead pointed out most people who work with their hands would rather have an office job.

I don't know if I'd like a society of managers, bankers, insurers, lawyers, artists, doctors, designers, salesmen, etc. What I am saying is that that may be the future whether we like it or not. It is all nice and dandy to want manufacturing jobs to stay in US, but it is really hard when given the chance people would prefer that it is somebody else who trades their office job for a manufacturing one.

Unfortunately the income distribution makes it more expensive to produce the same quality of product with US labor than with chinese labor.

So, the question what society we want to have is actually being answered by whether we are willing to accept lower standard of living by paying more for identical products only so that somebody else in our society can benefit more.

Despite economic propaganda there are still a lot of zero sums in the economy. From my observations the number of altruistic people is very small, so my bet is on less manufacturing jobs in US, not on more. And that has nothing to do with what I like, just on what I think is going to happen.

Since the standard of living in US is generally higher than in the rest of the world you have to ask yourself, what justifies that. And since in my opinion globalization is here to stay and increase, you then have to ask yourself, what kind of jobs give the americans economic advantage due to the differences between them and the rest of the world. And these are the jobs you want.
Anything else, as the time goes the people who have these jobs will get a standard of living closer to their peers in other places who have the same jobs.

And yes, not everybody can be an astronaut, but I think everybody's future will be more dependent on their abilities and life choices, than on where they were born. I think this is one of the most important 'american' values, I'd actually rate it higher in importance to american society than the nationalism.

"I don't know if I'd like a society of managers, bankers, insurers, lawyers, artists, doctors, designers, salesmen, etc"

I wouldn't either. Without the "blue collar" worker and a country that produces tangible goods, who will the managers manage, the bankers loan money to, the insurers insure, the lawyers represent, where will the artists come from, who will the doctors administer to...? Yah, sure, we could change gears as a country and provide virtual services, data, programming, etc. I think we're out of luck on that front as well.

I know the Council on Foreign Relations (you know, that group of inept powerless dullards with no means to influence change?) in the recent issue of Foreign Affairs features an essay which gives some very convincing arguments that in 2-4 decades, the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will reverse roles with the U.S. and the EU and the BRIC nations will become the new middle class. Entire nations that would be composed largely with......blue collar workers.

A viable "white collar" nation? IMO, impossible.

Chris L

Thanks for the interesting contributions! To get back to the old handwork skills: I noticed that the masons and carpenters do actually make a good living. At least, in Holland and as far as I could tell, the same in Sweden. Since so many people moved out of anything remotely related to manual labour (including yours truly for that matter), the skilled guys are in demand and get a decent price for their skills and expertise. And that's good I think.

For factory workers I think that the way to compete for the expensive American and European worker is by their relative level of education, compared to large numbers of their Asian counterparts. This scares the union oldtimers of course, because it means that the work will be done by less people, due to ongoing automation and what not, but it keeps 'local' production viable. Of course the total picture is quite complex.

From my observations the number of altruistic people is very small, so my bet is on less manufacturing jobs in US, not on more. And that has nothing to do with what I like, just on what I think is going to happen.

I think you missed the meaning of my use of that statement, it was meant to say not everyone is going to be a lawyer, doctor, etc.. and that has nothing to do with life choices or desires, but pure intellectual ability. Not everyone is created equal as the political correctness police would have everyone believe, sure tabula rasa exists but it doesn't mean the potential is the same for all. Having put myself through law school I can attest to many people not making it, even those who made it to law school, but just didn't fair well.

So my point was to say, there are always going to be those in this country who can be good skilled larborers and if you look at the education system in this country, it isn't exactly producing the best of the best on the public level, 75% of those attending Ivy League schools tend to go to private education academy's.

I don't want this to sound like a machinist isn't an extremely bright man, some of the smartest people I've known have been machinists, old German and Polish guys I knew years back doing some electron beam welding I used to do.

From my observations the number of altruistic people is very small, so my bet is on less manufacturing jobs in US, not on more. And that has nothing to do with what I like, just on what I think is going to happen.

I tend to agree with this observation but mostly because we tend to sell and manufacture our home grown inventions over seas before we even think of selling them here. I think a lack of quality, honor and pride in what we do here has been lost to the corporate mentality.

I think the only true thing to come out American businesses in many years is the development of corporations, and corporate ideology.

In the end this is all nonsensical talk, we're not going to change something so large, and in a country so diverse and in a country this large. So it's all a Bakuninian folly.

David

Of course this is just an intellectual exercise, but it's fun to ponder these things. To me it's not at all a matter of changing anybody's opinion, it's just a logical construct how our society is evolving. It's a pretty rough model, but I think I'm capturing enough of the most important factors.

Chris, the white collar nation will either provide services to other white collar people, or manage blue collars in other nations. If you want a more contiguous representation you can think of it as a matter of proportion. The statistics about US say that the percentage of industrial jobs has decreased from 35% in the 60's/70s to 20% nowadays. So, what if it goes to 10%, or 5% or 1%, or 0.001%, what is the optimum of the society you would like to live in? The difference over the last 50 years is pretty big, if you ask me.

And as far as, these jobs being just fine for certain people, I haven't argued with that. I just pointed out that globalization means that their socioeconomic status will be decreasing, unless their compatriots are willing to subsidize them for no other reason than keeping a certain level of these jobs inside the country.
But yes, this is very important factor and it may be indeed a cause for a scenario where there are X% of people in blue collar jobs, but their standard of living is comparable, or perhaps below the standard of living of their counterparts in India or China.

Hillie, we had a member who is a carpenter in northwest europe, I believe he was called ChristopherBowding or something like that. He did not think that is a very good trade to be in - look up his old posts.
I mean even in our hobby, we can look at Tim Zowada who seems quite successful. It's just nowhere near where he'd been a 100 years ago.
Of course some things may not be outsourceable, in the traditional way, but I don't see why the building or repair jobs can't be done by temporary imported workers.

I should point out that there are in fact countries that are largely lacking national labor. Like Qatar for example. They actually import not only blue collar but also white collar labor. Seems to be working well for as long as they can afford to pay for it with their natural resources.

Originally Posted by Hillie

Thanks for the interesting contributions! To get back to the old handwork skills: I noticed that the masons and carpenters do actually make a good living. At least, in Holland and as far as I could tell, the same in Sweden. Since so many people moved out of anything remotely related to manual labour (including yours truly for that matter), the skilled guys are in demand and get a decent price for their skills and expertise. And that's good I think.

That is very true nowadays. People with handworking skills make a relative good money, but one reason for this is that they are getting rare. Luckily this problem got noticed about 5-6 years ago and today there are schools (known as professional schools here) that arrange education in hand working professions.
For the last few years we used to have lot of cheap workers imported from Russia & eastern European countries, but the laws luckily changed: now if some company wants to bring workers here, they will get the same benefits and security as local workers so it is no more so profitable to bring cheap Albanian workforce here.