Can we afford to pay a high wage to US workers?

[Obi1]

I don't know enough about trade or economics to fully answer this one myself.

I just can't imagine that if you bring all sorts of jobs back home and pay U.S. wages for them that the corporations doing so will stay competitive. Penalizing them for not doing so would just make it lose lose. I guess the next question is whether it matters if we stay competitive globally. If we bring a bunch of jobs back home and then say a car company can't make enough money to reinvest into research and development then long term they will suffer.

I just can't see how bringing jobs back home is in the best interest of remaining a global power. I feel like it would weaken us.

Am I missing something?

[LuckyR]

I don't know enough about trade or economics to fully answer this one myself.

I just can't imagine that if you bring all sorts of jobs back home and pay U.S. wages for them that the corporations doing so will stay competitive. Penalizing them for not doing so would just make it lose lose. I guess the next question is whether it matters if we stay competitive globally. If we bring a bunch of jobs back home and then say a car company can't make enough money to reinvest into research and development then long term they will suffer.

I just can't see how bringing jobs back home is in the best interest of remaining a global power. I feel like it would weaken us.

Am I missing something?

It depends what you mean by "jobs". You seem (like many recent presidential voters) to mean old style manufacturing jobs. They were numerous, relatively high paying and did not require a particular skill to get. Those jobs are gone forever and are not coming back. Partially because of the global competition that you cite and more importantly because future factories won't have unskilled workers in them, regardless of their location.

The US is not a manufacturing economy, it is a service economy. That is a good thing since service jobs are not usually able to be taken off shore, they are bad at the current time in that they are not paid very well. This is an error on the part of the CEOs of the service corporations. Since these companies are often extremely profitable, the country and those corporations would be better served by paying their workers more (and thus cut short term profits a little), so that consumers (which is what workers are) would have more discretionary income to spend on stuff and thus drive up profits in the long haul.

[Eduk]

I just can't see how bringing jobs back home is in the best interest of remaining a global power. I feel like it would weaken us.

I recommend reading the grapes of wrath. There is a good description of how to make people work for less money than it costs to buy food for their family.
If you are in a weak position then you are open to being exploited. All it takes is one person willing to exploit others.

[Steve3007]

I think the easiest way to judge what a western country can afford to pay its workers is to look around the world at the general standard of living of the human race. Clearly our level of material wealth is considerably higher than average. That level of material wealth can only be sustained by:

1. Everybody in the world coming up to the same level.
2. Permanent and effective barriers to free trade so that we don't have to compete on a level playing field. We can dictate the rules to ensure that we stay rich.
3. Competing on a level playing field and winning by moving up the food chain.

Recent standard wisdom in Western governments, at least until very recently, has been option 3. That requires our workers to be fundamentally different, in some way, to poorer workers in other countries so that a global market can exist, but we can still be the richest players in that market. We're supposed to ensure that we're better educated, have more efficient systems of government, more streamlined work practices, and so on. But even if we do that it will only be temporary. In a globalised world, sooner or later they'll get their act together and be chasing us up the food chain.

The new fashion, exemplified by the new US government, seems to be to switch back to option 2. The long term effect of that will be to make everybody poorer. If we really do value material wealth and continued economic growth (and that is an "if") then we have to recognise that it comes about as a result of trade between larger and larger numbers of people, with consequent larger and larger economies of scale and more and more efficient development and sharing of technologies. The global economy has now reached the stage where entire countries are like different departments of Earth plc. China is the manufacturing department.

And the problem with option 1 is that, with existing technologies, it is physically and environmentally unsustainable. 7 billion+ people simply cannot live in the way that we have become accustomed to living in "The West" on this planet.

The only truly sustainable long term solution: In my view it is a coordinated, global, cooperative effort to find ways to both limit future human population growth and develop sustainable sources of energy. Every word of that goal is the polar opposite of what the current US government believes in. The slightest hint of coordination and cooperation on such things as sustainable energy or the environment is characterised by them as a sinister attempt by "Big Government" to impose socialism. And population control is treated with similar contempt. The commandment "Go forth and multiply" is to be applied in a world of 7 billion people despite the fact that it was first coined in a world with 4% of that number - more or less empty.

So I think the chances of adopting any kind of sustainable long term solution are negligible. We will descend into ever more deadly resource wars until the population has died back a bit, and then start again. Boom and bust.

That's my two penn'orth.

[Eduk]

So I think the chances of adopting any kind of sustainable long term solution are negligible. We will descend into ever more deadly resource wars until the population has died back a bit, and then start again. Boom and bust.

A good summation in my opinion.
Population control is basically a necessity but it needs to be world wide and personally I don't trust humans to run a system of population control which wouldn't turn out to be worse than just ignoring the problem as we are doing.

[Alias]

I just can't imagine that if you bring all sorts of jobs back home and pay U.S. wages for them that the corporations doing so will stay competitive.

What is it corporations are competing for? Against whom are they competing?

If we bring a bunch of jobs back home and then say a car company can't make enough money to reinvest into research and development then long term they will suffer.

And if Americans can't afford cars, what's there to research and develop?
If corporations suffer, who, precisely is in pain? If workers suffer, who, precisely, is in pain?

Am I missing something?

We all are. But you can think it through, from the pov of a structure. What holds up what what?

[Ranvier]

Am I missing something?

"We all are. But you can think it through, from the pov of a structure. What holds up what what?"

Well said...Alias

The better question is can we and how do we pay the US workers? We are a service industry, at least in theory. We rely on the wisdom of those in power, where the average Joe is too dumb to understand the Economy. But let this "Joe" give it a shot...

An average citizen can offer one of two things: physical labor or intellect to generate income.
The physical labor can also be subdivided to: production (making a physical object) or service (cleaning a toilet)
In our service industry we no longer produce anything but can only offer the physical labor as service... clean said toilet, which can easily be delegated to illegal emigrants or high school dropouts.

So, we are left with selling our intellect. However, it's not as if we are born geniuses and the rest of the world is born with a limited intellect. Some of the creative intellectual jobs (computer coding) or service intellectual jobs (reading an X-Ray by a physician) can also be delegated to...say India or Hong Kong to lower the cost.

Essentially, we are useless. We create jobs out of thin air just to service one another...We sue someone for any reason just so that the judge, lawyers, court clerks etc., all can have a job. The only reason our economy still functions is because:
- A large population of people is in prison
- about 40% of the population are retired elderly or children in schools

We are left with around 180 to 192 million people that can work
- Around 30% of population works for the Federal or State government, creating mindless stupidity. Ex: in California there is an increasing demand for science teachers but due to excessive time and money consuming licensing requirements many qualified teachers drive for UBER.
- depending on the validity of the data, anywhere from 4%-11% of population is unemployed
- close to 40% has a college or higher degree to perform intellectual work, where close to 50% works in finance or for the corporate business
- the rest sells physical labor in service (ex. UBER or never ending construction) or sells intellect in service (news reporter or "teacher" for a daycare). Otherwise, people have to come up with some new brilliant ways of utilizing their intellect to stay afloat. We're at the point where a prospective restaurant employer is asking to fill our 11page job application, include references, and competitive college education for a waitress's job, not withstanding "food handling", "OSHA", or "CPR" certifications. Hilarious!

The reason that this entire shebang still works, is the fact that the US dollar is the reserve currency of the global market and we can print as much as we need to keep things rolling. In essence, if the world was to decide that it don't need us or our dollar, the world would survive but we would be in big trouble.

-- Updated March 16th, 2017, 6:35 pm to add the following --

*doesn't...let the money on education be well spent.

[Steve3007]

Eduk:

Population control is basically a necessity but it needs to be world wide and personally I don't trust humans to run a system of population control which wouldn't turn out to be worse than just ignoring the problem as we are doing.

No, neither do I. We have only to look at China's recently abandoned one-child policy to see that. I think the best hope for global population control is the promotion of a global respect for the rights of women to be educated and to control their own fertility. Again, a pretty tall order. It's certainly not going to happen any time soon.

[Eduk]

Are you by any chance a fan of Hitch?

-- Updated March 17th, 2017, 10:29 am to add the following --

whoops meant to put The Hitch

[Steve3007]

Christopher Hitchens? I wouldn't say I'm a fan. I read Hitch 22 a while ago. Why? Is advocating education and fertility rights for women one of his big things? I can't remember. He wrote that book criticising Mother Theresa didn't he. So I guess maybe it is.

-- Updated Fri Mar 17, 2017 3:39 pm to add the following --

Yes, that "The" is important in order to distinguish him from a mediocre Will Smith film!

[Eduk]

Basically yeah he argues quite a bit for education and fertility rights. I'm sure he's not the only one, he's just the most famous and most recent person I've heard And not a fan of MT no.

[-1-]

if the world was to decide that it don't need us or our dollar, the world would survive but we would be in big trouble.

I agree, with a little alteration...

In my opinion the USA and its peoples could survive very well even after that, but first it would need to introduce social changes, secondly, it would need to change its culture with regards to expectations of what makes a man (woman). In particular, the expectations to work and to earn money with honest work needs to be changed to accept that it's okay to be lazy and allow automatons and robots do jobs, and work only a three-hour work week and collect a forty-hour paycheque while spending the extra free time all of a sudden gained, with going fishing, surfing, building your own sailboat, roving the streets in gangs and terrorizing ladies, their daughters and men, theorizing about theism, and also about the "ism", painting pictures, selling drugs, writing books and jutting down notes.

[Ranvier]

Hmm -1-

Interesting thoughts, although perhaps the days of "being a man (woman)" are a thing of the past. No one builds their own home using hand tools and lives off of the fruit of their own labor anymore. Majority of people work for someone else in a service economy, driven by the system of financial machine. We all should be so lucky to work using our natural skills or at least perform work that we enjoy. Perhaps that's how it always had been and how it should be, where one isn't lazy and knows to be working hard if one suffers. Maybe it's true that life is all about suffering...

[Alias]

Am I missing something?

[What holds up what what?]

Well said...Alias

The better question is can we and how do we pay the US workers?

Actually, it wasn't very well said, because I don't own an edit button, but you got the idea anyway.

We can't think clearly about a complex system without realizing that it is a complex system, then identifying the parts and defining their functions, then following the relationships of those components, and only then attempting to recommend a change that would improve the functioning of the whole.
For instance: the OP asks "Can we.... workers?" without identifying who are the payers and who are the workers. Which is "we"? "afford" - in what budgetary context ? "high wage" - measured on what scale?

You can identify "we" as the financial decision-makers of the world, or as the political elite of a discrete nation, or as the voting citizenry of the your own country or its entire population.
You might even paraphrase Jesus and ask: Is the economy made for man or is man made for the economy?

An average citizen can offer one of two things: physical labor or intellect to generate income.
The physical labor can also be subdivided to: production (making a physical object) or service (cleaning a toilet)
In our service industry we no longer produce anything but can only offer the physical labor as service... clean said toilet, which can easily be delegated to illegal emigrants or high school dropouts.
So, we are left with selling our intellect. However, it's not as if we are born geniuses and the rest of the world is born with a limited intellect. Some of the creative intellectual jobs (computer coding) or service intellectual jobs (reading an X-Ray by a physician) can also be delegated to...say India or Hong Kong to lower the cost.

It gets much, much darker than that. Even the Indians and Chinese, the programmers and organizers, will soon be replaced by machines.
(And self-cleaning toilets, and self-driving cars, that do a better job, cheaper and hassle-free. But I guess there will still be a few exclusively human jobs guarding the public rest-rooms against transgendered individuals who might attempt to relive themselves in the wrong one.) (Oh, and professional athletes.)

Essentially, we are useless.

Of course. Understanding that about our own selves might make us a little kinder to the people who figured it out a little sooner.
But then - useless from whose point of view? by what standard of utility?
One answer is: if each individual gets to decide what's "useful", we need and want quite a lot from other people, and they need and want quite a lot from us.
We can be as useful to one another as we agree to be. There is plenty of work needs doing - just nobody willing to pay for it.
Shouldn't we ask why that is?
Suppose you take $$$ out of the formula; suppose you measure the value of work and skill by in some other units... say BQ points (benefit quotient - How much does a unit of effort improve the community to which it is applied?)

We create jobs out of thin air just to service one another..

What does "job" mean? It means selling one's time, skill, effort and loyalty to a more powerful entity - a boss, corporation or institution that compounds the efforts of all its employees with resources and machinery in order to produce an output of goods or services.
If the employing entity is a business, a good deal of the compound effort must translate into profit (for a layer of human participants in the enterprise who do not contribute effort or resources). Alternatively, if the employing entity is a benevolent institution or government, it doesn't require so much surplus effort from each employee.
Now, if profit-making entities no longer recruit human labour, and no longer pays wages, then the organization of human effort must revert to some level of government or NPO.
If the medium of exchange and effort-evaluation continues to be $, then all community effort will have to be measured and compensated in money.

So, then, another question is: Can "we" (any of the possible groups so designated) "afford" to have 60-80% of the population idle (because only paid work counts in the economy) and unable to buy food, shelter, utilities or services.
Thus, if we must continue to conduct a money economy, this means guaranteed basic income.
journalistsresource.org/studies/economi ... income-ubi

No, that doesn't mean we all sit on our duffs, waiting to die. It means that we can organize our efforts on the community level and do what we can see needs doing, rather than look to a boss to tell us what needs doing.

[Scottie]

"Jobs" aren't "coming back."

The economy lost jobs for reasons we don't really want to understand. Many jobs lost by attrition are clerical and administrative jobs made redundant by technology. One good clerk with Microsoft Office can do what it took 10 to do in 1970. Those jobs aren't coming back.

Jobs were lost when US companies outsourced manufacturing to jurisdictions where regulations favored low pay and little regulation. Many reactionaries believe that China 'took' our jobs. They were given to China by US businesses who understood that it was cheaper to outsource and import finished product back to the US. This was a conscious choice on the part of business elites.

Jobs can be created by new market sectors opening up and by companies willing to enter those markets and hire Americans to work. The US is currently missing the boat on renewable energy infrastructure. Why? I'm guessing because US companies still don't want to be involved in manufacturing where they'll have to pay reasonably well and offer benefits, again, a conscious choice. They'd rather do finance than manufacturing. Our last few administrations were stuffed with corporatists who directly benefit from this strategy and have worked to pass laws that do not penalize US companies who outsource and to roll back pro-labor regulation here at home.

I voted for Hillary because she was better than trump but that bar is so low that it's not a recommendation of Clinton. She's part of that neoliberal group that's brought us to this pass.