The sound bite that would win the election

[Undertoad]

"Mr. Bush did create those jobs. However, he didn't create them here in the United States. He created them in other countries."

I don't know who said it but it was a pundit on Sunday.

I don't think he realized the power of what he said. That single line is immensely powerful because it's more than just a line - it's a meme, an idea virus that would spread through the nation via water cooler.

It's also probably true, which is helpful in matters like these.

[Happy Monkey]

And India is grateful.

What a wonderful guy.

[Griff]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Are ABC, CNN, and the rest running Bill's soundbites? How serious is the Reuters spin?

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by Happy Monkey
And India is grateful.

Actually I read somewhere that some folks in India are starting to worry about an increasing number of jobs being "re-outsourced" from India to China. I'll have to dig up that reference.

[Kitsune]

Actually I read somewhere that some folks in India are starting to worry about an increasing number of jobs being "re-outsourced" from India to China.

Some of ours are starting to go to China and some old Russian states, it seems. They've had more communication troubles, but management has been pleased with the intergrity of the code when compared to the crap India puts out.

[Undertoad]

Well, complicated economic questions are always spun into memes, and often the memes are wrong, economically speaking... especially regarding protectionism...

...so it may well be beneficial in the long run that jobs are outsourced; if the economy is stronger in the long run, everyone's ship will rise with the rising tide...

...and America's real strength is logistics, it really doesn't matter whether even the white-collar jobs are done overseas, and may well be a very nice trend towards the end of global scarcity and things like hunger...

...but even productive economic change is temporarily painful.

[vsp]

Originally posted by Undertoad
"Mr. Bush did create those jobs. However, he didn't create them here in the United States. He created them in other countries."

I don't know who said it but it was a pundit on Sunday.

I don't think he realized the power of what he said. That single line is immensely powerful because it's more than just a line - it's a meme, an idea virus that would spread through the nation via water cooler.

It's also probably true, which is helpful in matters like these.

Ah, pardon me. I just need to step out for a second... walk the dog, take out the trash, send an email to a Mr. Kerry...

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by Griff
How serious is the Reuters spin?

Looks mostly accurate. At the start of the war, O'Reilly promised that if they didn't find the weapons in a month or two, he would apologize and never trust Bush again. For a while, he kept giving extentions to the deadline. I guess he was finally shamed into making good on the promise, but he's still trying to make Tenet the scapegoat.

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by Undertoad

...and America's real strength is logistics

What do you mean by "logistics"?

[Undertoad]

We're very smart and we manage stuff. We don't want to manufacture anything any more. We will sell and manage the money and the resources of the world.

Look at LJ. He doesn't manufacture anything, but he produces wealth by managing risk of future earnings for productive people. In doing that, he is part of a massive system of generation of wealth. The transportation that people use are made as cheap and as available as possible. That generates wealth when they use that transportation to get to work etc.

In the old USSR, the party line was, isn't it amazing how a house can be bought and sold in the USSR for the same price as it is in the US. See how we are the same, they said. But what they lacked was a mortgage system to get people into those houses, so of course nobody could actually afford them. We developed this approach to managing money and wealth and risk over time. That takes a remarkable system, smart managers, etc.

The truth is, though, we don't really know how this is all going to play out. But nobody in the 1950s could have imagined a world in which we don't actually make most the things we own and use and such, and we are moving towards that.

When Whitney invented the cotton gin there were people who protested furiously because it would put the cotton workers out of work. Well it sure did, but now suddenly cotton was easier to process, which meant it was cheaper, which meant that the whole nation got cheaper clothes, which meant the whole nation was richer, which produced economic growth to replace those cotton-pickin' jobs.

[Kitsune]

I'm not sure anyone is really sure what the main industry of this country is, anymore. We are diverse and seem to survive the changes because of that, which is always a good thing.

I remember the great threat of the 80s when automotive manufacturing was going overseas. People complained that it would be the death of the industry in the country and, I suppose, it was. But people moved on and I didn't think it was a big deal.

In retrospect, I see it as a bigger problem that really is out of our control. I always assumed the obvious answer to the automotive industry moving overseas: the auto workers just need to re-train and find new jobs. With the recent loss of so many programming positions, though, I saw that it is a lot more difficult than that. What do you do when you spent four or more years of your life to get a degree that is now useless? You've amassed student loans and don't easily have a way to pay them off and now you're simply told you need to get yet another education. Switching functions is not so easily accomplished, especially if you have a family to care for. I fear that these changes will become much more rapid in the future and people simply won't be able to adjust to it. Picking a career and getting an education is already a gamble.

[Undertoad]

Economist (and Democrat?) Brad DeLong explains the Mankiw statements:

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/mov...es/000270.html

Increasing trade does not create or destroy jobs in aggregate. The level of employment in the United States is determined by how good a job the Federal Reserve does in offsetting shocks to domestic demand, in setting monetary policy to hit the sweet spot where there is neither high unemployment nor rising inflation (with a secondary assist or hobbling by fiscal policy).

What trade does is to shift jobs, shift the composition of American employment: people in import-competing industries lose jobs, while people in export industries (or, with the capital inflow, construction and investment goods industries) gain jobs. Economists have lots of good reasons for believing that the jobs gained are better jobs than the jobs lost, and that there are more and bigger winners from expanded international trade than there are losers.

DeLong doesn't want Kerry to use this:

John F. Kerry should know better. If he becomes president--and if he wishes to have a strong American economy--he will need to build support for expanding trade. Anything that he says now that makes that future task harder is not in America's interest, or even in his interest if he wants a second term.

[slang]

Originally posted by Kitsune
What do you do when you spent four or more years of your life to get a degree that is now useless? You've amassed student loans and don't easily have a way to pay them off and now you're simply told you need to get yet another education.

These lines jumped out at me.

Do you really think that a degree in CS is now useless because much of the programming type of work is now being shipped overseas?

Now I know I'm not familiar with this whole industry, but it seems to me that having a cheap source of labor to perform the "simpler" tasks, would free up Americans to concentrate more on organizing projects. The grunt work can now be subbed out to save money but the projects in general can increase in complexity.In this way it seems possible that we might all win.

For example, in a manufacturing situation, subcontracting the basic machining of the parts saves the resources of the company to focus on operations that are high tech. Those high tech operations are beyond the current capabilities of the subcon companies. Both companies benefit from their particular expertise or efficiency at their specialty service.

Does this apply to the programming and development market, I dont know. It seems logical though.

I can remember 15 years ago when the Japanese products were forcing American products out of the market. Many people in this area were out of the job that they had been working at for many years. Those that insisted on continuing to "making buggy whips" are still receiving food stamps. Those that accepted the fact that change was uncomfortable but required, went on to do something else made out pretty well.

You also made a good point about having to get another education. Is this really true though? Again, I dont know. How many people do you know that are working in an area that has little to do with their degree? A degree does more than give you some advantage for attaining a particular position. It gives you core skills to gain more skills, a base to build on.

My view of the future is that of the US developing more diverse and complicated products......faster, giving the consumer more competetively priced products that they want. People displaced now will be very valuable when we figure out what to make next.

Join me in this optimistic fantasy. It may very well come true as it has here in the past.

[Kitsune]

Do you really think that a degree in CS is now useless because much of the programming type of work is now being shipped overseas?

In most cases, the jobs that were shipped overseas were jobs that did not require a degree and were quite simple for anyone to do. Recently, though, the jobs being outsourced have been positions that were only obtainable by someone with a four year degree in CS. I'm sure you can do other things with your CS degree, but it is rather specilized and all those I know who went that route in their education have had a considerably difficult time finding employment.

Now I know I'm not familiar with this whole industry, but it seems to me that having a cheap source of labor to perform the "simpler" tasks, would free up Americans to concentrate more on organizing projects.

Everyone I know who has had their positioned outsourced was told they were "free to do other things", yes, but those things had nothing to do with employment.

The grunt work can now be subbed out to save money but the projects in general can increase in complexity.

That is why I am a little concerned about this time around -- we're not talking grunt work leaving this country in the past year or so. These aren't meanial manufacturing jobs, these are design and engineering positions, programming and research jobs.

How many people do you know that are working in an area that has little to do with their degree? A degree does more than give you some advantage for attaining a particular position. It gives you core skills to gain more skills, a base to build on.

This is very true -- that "piece of paper" does say you are trainable and able to be educated. Most of the people I know who have been hardest hit are those that got their degree in CS/Comp E/Mech E/Civil E within the past four years. Coming right out of college is never an easy thing due to lack of experience, but more and more people I know are unable to find anything in their related field even on the lowest end of the payscale and end up returning to jobs they had in high school over the summer. That doesn't mean they won't ever find anything, but I've not ever heard of it being this bad, before.

I am still optimistic, though -- I think things will get better. Were I to lose my position (and I've been expecting it for a long time with as many people they've been dropping around here, but I am prepared) I would gladly go back to any job I could take to survive even if it is something I didn't particularly enjoy or was just enough to make ends meet and its easy because I am young. I couldn't bare to think of what it would require of someone with a family to support or someone who has been working in their field for decades.

I just think the world is different now, as we're no longer losing jobs that didn't require much of an education -- we're losing highly educated positions to less educated people who are willing to work for less than a quarter of what a starter would work for in this country. There is no way people living in the US could match those kinds of salaries and still survive.

[Beestie]

Exporting jobs doesn't hurt the economy overall. If the cost of foreign labor is that much cheaper then it translates into a lower cost of production which, in a competitive environment, results in lower prices. In a non-competitive environment, it results in an increase in the equity of the company which anyone can participate in by buying the stock.

This whole "job creation overseas" thing is election-year politics (which is fair game) and fairly meaningless in terms of its long-term effect on the economy. What is significant is that payroll is increasing which, make no mistake, is the residual of growth in the sector in which it occurs.

But, I am loathe to credit Bush for that anymore than I credit the passenger on the subway for the places that the train stops while he rides on it. I like Bush personally, but economically speaking, he is a moron of the highest order. And if y'all think Kerry has the answer go ahead and vote for him and we can all watch him f up the economy just as bad as Bush has. I've listened to Kerry speak and, take it from me, he isn't any smarter than Bush when it comes to understanding how to pull the strings to make the economy hum.