Some lost jobs never come back

[ringmastery]

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, when the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States peaked at just shy of 20 million, General Motors Corp. provided 454,000 of them, more than any other company in America. It took that much labor for GM assembly lines to turn out about 5 million cars and trucks a year.

Today GM makes roughly the same number of cars and trucks, but employs just 118,000 people as a result of a drive to become more efficient and cut costs to survive against ferocious global competition. In the past five years alone, GM has cut the amount of labor required to assemble a vehicle by 30 percent, to just 24.44 hours, according to the Harbour Report, which tracks such data for the industry.
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But economists agree that most of the decline in manufacturing employment was the unavoidable result of companies' need to become ever more efficient -- with all the pressures on them intensified in recent years by a weak U.S. economy. And the jobs lost to productivity gains will not come back, regardless of what policymakers do in Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19996-2003Nov28.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Supply-side suicide

(WARNING: Long-winded, abstract-assed meta-rant follows.)

I lost a good job as a programmer to a shop in India. Now, the Indians will immediately jump on me for hating India, but I don't. I hate the corporados who are selling our birthrights (so-called) for a mess of pottage.

It would be fine if, right after I lost that job, I got a better one, but the corporate world doesn't work that way anymore. They seem to have the idea that the Best of All Possible Worlds would be one where they could increase their operational efficiency -- and profits -- exponentially without having any employees at all. There would only be Executives and Shareholders.

Which, again, would be nice, except a scant fraction of the public holds any securities at all.

So they're hard at work turning the world back into a feudal system, consisting of a small number of Lords, a King or two, and a huge number of Serfs who live close to the edge of economic survival, obey their "betters" without complaint, and are kept happy by an ignorant yet fanatical devotion to magical and mysterious religions. And these days, entertainment and medications.

What the hell is so good about such a world? It takes people to create wealth; hyper-efficient system simply exend what's already been created until it's reaches its limit of replicability. That's even what the Indian outsource programmers do -- they innovate very little code, when Indian programmers overall are incredibly talented and versatile.

The next step, I suppose, is for the Disposessed to become highly entrepreneurial. This, for me, is where the rubber meets the road, and where Socialism meets Capitalism. The Corporate world is Babylon, and the rest of us are the neo-Israelites.

--bkl

[Melsky]

2. Who the hell is going to buy their products

once we are all out of work or flipping burgers? Henry Ford paid his workers enough so they could afford to buy one of his cars, this seems like a sound economic model to me.

[MojoKrunch]

4. You know, I keep asking that same question.

And I think the answer is that the oligarchs *want* a slave-wage labor class just so we can export cheap American goods to the newly wealthy Chinese.

Mojo

[Donna Zen]

3. Start today to create the jobs of the future

Unless all of us are willing to live at or below the poverty line for the same work we do today, we are going to have to think our way out of this. Our government can play a role by pushing new technologies, and directing the R & D towards the research that benefits our citizens instead of blowing up the planet. Bush will not do this for us__EVER!

One of Gore's selling points for me--it sure wasn't he healthcare program--was his understanding that environmental progress also would keep this country's economy rooted in the future, and cutting edge.

The jobs that we are bleeding to low wage markets cannot be returned through protectionist's policies, even if we had someone in Washington would gave two shits. Are you willing to work for $2.50 an hour? Without benefits?

IT jobs will increase, and on these shores, as new technologies are developed and new applications within our borders are instituted.

They're your tax dollars...start spending them on your needs. Giving them in the form of tax cuts to the very people who are outsourcing, not just our jobs, but our grandchildren's futures, is the effort of fools. Fortunately for America, we know this, now somehow we must convince our neighbors.
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Who will buy the products? Look to the rise in Asian consummer markets. Read Krugman's Friday piece. The market will be larger than ours, and unless they want to buy bombs, we will have little to sell them. Unless, we use this moment to begin to out pace them.