09.14.10

What can’t be outsourced to China? Guess!

Posted in Crazy Weapons, Stumble and Fail, War On Terror at 9:32 am by George Smith

“I bought a new toilet! It was made in China. That’s where all the jobs went. Nothin’ could be finer!” — live verse from ‘China Toilet Blooz‘ and I do play the harmonica.

Ahem, the New York Times has run a bit asking the question: Are there any jobs that can’t be outsourced?

Well, yeah, menial cleaning, restaurant work, anything that requires a face-to-face connection. I’m willing to bet that overuse of robots and telepresence will cause the same resistance and disgust the phenomenon does on help and corporate telephone lines.

But to the quote for repeating, first from a professor at UC-Irvine:

The best jobs program is trade reform with China. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it has used a potent set of mercantilist and protectionist policies to shift millions of American manufacturing jobs offshore.

America can compete in the international environment if “free trade” is also fair.

America’s unemployed skilled manufacturing workers – both white-and blue-collar – can only trade down …

Regrettably, the current generation of unemployed workers is lost until the White House and Congress find backbones to stand up to Chinese trade policies.

In an aside, if you’re wondering why I’ve shifted increasingly away from security discussions that are purely on weird weapons lobbies and fear-mongering, it’s because the security of the country ultimately lies within. If rot and economic unfairness cleans out the middle class, there is no security.

As it stands, the US is unstable. And it can easily become moreso. An unstable US is not good for the rest of the world.

Irrational leadership leads to war and hardship inflicted on others, not just on ourselves. And if there is anyone who thinks that putting the Republican Party in control in Congress won’t lead to greater national instability, they need to get away from this blog. Nothing for you here.

Another professor called upon by the the Times has something to say about science and engineering prowess in the US. It’s not from the little Tommy Friedman class of punditry:

Moreover, there is neither a shortage of U.S. students who are world-class in their educational performance nor of college graduates with science and engineering degrees. The U.S. can claim the lion’s share of the world’s highest performing (domestic) science students and continues to graduate more than two times the number of scientists and engineers than are hired each year. Meanwhile, we produce an astounding number of very low performing students. Improving education is important but focusing on top tier skills is not a panacea for unemployment or poor economic performance …

Job growth requires a coordinated policy response that includes some protection for U.S. workers as well as stimulating demand for domestic products and services.

I would add to these assessments that there can’t be any changes until American business is harshly penalized for deindustrializing to slave labor work nations. Others have called for a democracy tariff, a price put on imports at the border for those things coming from such ‘beggar-they-neighbor’ living spaces.

It’s not like we need a place, ours, where even more snobs can have iPods whose parts are made by workers driven to suicide.

Thanks, Steve Jobs. The iPad commercial with someone playing the virtual piano on their slave-labor gadget is so great! I could never make a video that good!

I’ve said that the Obama administration’s tax incentives are essentially bribes to American business. Instead of hiring the unemployed directly, the president resorts to trickle-down efforts, hoping that some manner of payoff will juice American business into hiring.

The frontpage of yesterday’s hardcopy (no link) Los Angeles Times had, as its headline: R&D effort may yield scant jobs.

The part worth excerpting, which is pretty obvious:

Over the last two decades, US scientists and engineers have discovered or pioneered the science behind one blockbuster product after another — from flat-panel screens and robotics to the lithium batteries that run next generation power tools and electric cars.

Yet, in almost every case, production, jobs and most of the economic benefits that sprang from those breakthroughs have ended up overseas.

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And new reports show that during the recession American companies ramped up investment overseas for plants and new hires, as well research and development — even as they cut back domestically.

So what didn’t get outsourced in the Great Recession?

Census jobs. It required face to face work and an enterprising, ad hoc, self-motivating mass workforce. I kinow. I was part of it.

The US government could change things by choosing to hire people directly for national reclamation. There would be the usual business outcry that by putting itself in competition with the private sector for such work, it was being bad in all the usual ways. Anti-competitive, socialist, communist, etc.

But when you have an American business culture that’s already accustomed to just taking the bribe money and using it to hurt the US labor force even more, there would seem to be little downside to actually putting people to work without private sector help.

Paradoxically, the Sunday LA Times’s hardcopy headline was on the growth of the Predator drone manufacturing business in southern California.

It did not paint this part of the weapons industry as a boon. Building flying robot assassins employs only 10,000. It’s a relative drop in the bucket for a southern California economy that’s bigger than most world nations.

And while 10,000 do have jobs in it, it’s an industry that generates little worth to the middle class. Other than stimulating the local economy where workers presumably spend much of their pay.

Robot assassins don’t build roads, they don’t improve the infrastructure, they don’t do anything for universal healthcare, they don’t fight disease, they don’t coach high-school wrestling teams, they don’t spread goodwill overseas. And it’s not an industry that is theoretically open to everyone for a good living regionally, like Detroit in its heyday.

The Times article also addressed all the downside associated with the industry. Its political lobbying, the legalized political bribery, the association with scumbags like Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

It wrote about the fact that as technology, the drones pretty much suck. They are not miraculous things.

They’re expensive and not useful against any country that has an air defense. They were a joke over lowly Bosnia, it was said, and no one wanted them prior to 9/11.

Which again only shows the war on terror as a growth opportunity for those parts of the American economy which very little to do with a healthy middle class.

There was a Mexican sci-fi movie which a few of the same points, if rather depressingly. It was called Sleep Dealer and is probably not worth the money Amazon is asking for the DVD.

In it, drones are used to bump off poor people — “terrorists” after drinking water — in Mexico, their video footage used as entertainment in reality show American programming.

Just prior to 9/11, the Times writes of a Predator sales pitch:

The Predator could be used to spot wildfires, [the General Atomics salesman] told his latest prospects. It could monitor global warming.

The audience listened politely — then scattered quickly when the demonstration ended. There were no takers.

Despite the constant braying about it, “[The drone business is] still not big enough to single-handedly restore the Southland aerospace industry to its former glory,” concluded the Times.

These are the jobs that are not outsourced. Wow.

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Thanks heavens they’re as nasty as everyone thinks

From CNBC, billionaires bum out at esatz Davos over US and Obama administration:

“They saw the United States in a long-term slow growth environment with the near-term risk of recession quite real,??? said Wien, in a commentary to Blackstone clients. “The Obama administration was viewed as hostile to business and that discouraged both hiring and investment. Companies and entrepreneurs were reluctant to add workers because they didn’t know what their healthcare costs or taxes were going to be.???

A massive reduction in the consumer debt load, a workforce without the right skills for the jobs of tomorrow, and too high labor costs relative to other countries “are not problems that are likely to be solved any time soon,??? wrote Wien of the attitude of the people at the lunches, which took place in two groups on successive Fridays last month. “Only a few investors thought the Standard & Poor’s could reach 1200 next year.???

So what are the billionaires buying if this environment continues? Wien said “vacant office building,??? “farmland??? and “Africa??? were some of the ideas thrown out.

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