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Rust Belt checking in here. My hometown's in a northern union stronghold where waves of plant closings starting in the 1980's completely wrecked the local and

by csense 10y ago

Rust Belt checking in here. My hometown's in a northern union stronghold where waves of plant closings starting in the 1980's completely wrecked the local and regional economy. Which still hasn't recovered -- and seems to be getting worse, after being rocked by the financial crisis a few years ago and the currently ongoing drug overdose epidemic. Laws or union restrictions can stop firms from getting away with extremely low pay, treating their employees like crap and shitting all over the environment. But only if those firms don't have the option of relocating to other places that don't have similar restrictions. I fully recognize Donald Trump has many very obvious shortcomings as a person and as a politician. But if his election finally results in shutting down the global free trade policies that have utterly wrecked my community, then all the negative things I'm sure he'll do likely won't outweigh that single positive achievement.

a3n 10y ago
> But if his election finally results in shutting down the global free trade policies that have utterly wrecked my community, then all the negative things I'm sure he'll do likely won't outweigh that single positive achievement. What makes you think that a) he'll do it, and b) he'll succeed? Because he said he would?
brandonmenc 10y ago
Are you checking in from Erie?
mcphage 10y ago
Rust Belt checking in here, too. If you're letting the future of your community ride on hopes of traditional manufacturing jobs coming back, you're never going to get out of the hole you're in. Getting rid of free trade isn't going to stop China from roflstomping our manufacturing economy, and whatever they don't crush, robots will. The future doesn't lie that way, and hoping a pathological liar was lying to everyone but you is a recipe for disaster.
- malandrew 10y ago
  Even those not in the rust belt have a good reason to want those jobs to stay here: current account and exchange rates. The more jobs move abroad, the more money flows out of our economy, bolstering the purchasing power of those other economies, helping them invest in ways roflstomp our economy in more ways than just manufacturing. Rising exchange rates will only hurt those US businesses that rely on exports when the cost of manufacturing the same goods is higher in the US versus elsewhere in the world. That said, fully automated businesses should have approximately the same cost anywhere in the world. The better our current account, the more our money buys both here in the US and from the rest of the world.
  - a3n 10y ago
    > Even those not in the rust belt have a good reason to want those jobs to stay here: current account and exchange rates. Yes, everyone wants those jobs, or, jobs, to stay. But almost no one working today has a job that looks anything like a job of 100 years ago, and I doubt anyone would want those jobs. Almost every job worked today is going to disappear, or change beyond recognition that it's still the same job. Those lost manufacturing jobs are just among the first of the current set of jobs to disappear. Yes, it's painful and tragic; not because those specific jobs were lost, but because we have mis-managed the idleness of the people whose jobs vanished. The fix is not to cling to jobs that the free market says should not exist, and that consumers also say should not exist by buying the cheapest available products, often products not previously available. Some of those consumers are the very ones that have lost their old jobs. The only way for those manufacturing jobs to stay or come back is to never buy anything that didn't exist 50 years ago, and to stay out of Walmart and Amazon and everywhere else that sells anything at all from outside America. Who starts? We've lost the recognition that the reason we band together into communities and governments is to support each other. We've come to act as if "I've got my support, sorry you lost yours" is the proper way to treat each other. We need to stop being so punitive and miserly, automatically blaming people for their condition. How anyone got anywhere doesn't much matter. How we move each other to the next better thing is what we should be focusing on. I despair that we can get anywhere near that as long as quarterly, my bonus, my election thinking allows the few to stay a few steps ahead of everyone else. We treat each other as social petri dishes, and we're quite willing to throw the experiment materials out if it doesn't fit our data, our view of how we think the world is and how it ought to be.
maxxxxx 10y ago
Trump may bring manufacturing back to the US but no way the workers will get any benefit from that besides maybe minimum wage jobs that are dangerous in addition. All.i have seen so far is a push to reduce environmental and safety rules because they are too burdensome for the capitalists. The workers will get nothing but tough talk.
csense 10y ago
Parent here. I want to clarify a few points. The issue here isn't manufacturing jobs. The issue here is that I want to live in a stable and prosperous society. Among other things, that means ordinary men and women need to have a narrative template. A basic plan for a reasonably safe and effective strategy to live a life that's productive, materially satisfying, and allows a person to independently support oneself and one's family through their work. If the manufacturing jobs are never coming back, I'm fine with that -- as long as we get some replacement that fulfills the same social function. The function of giving ordinary folks a job they can do that allows them to make enough money to support themselves in a comfortable middle class lifestyle.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  History seems to weigh on the sides of global trade deals for maintaining a stable and prosperous society. A lot of the Pax Americana economic experiment (including, but not limited to, the Marshall Plan) can be seen as a sort of "growth hacking" in heavily encouraging deep global trade for overall world prosperity, and maintaining "at home" prosperity by constantly growing/changing (new trade agreements, new places and ways to both buy and sell goods, replacing industries that move with entirely new industries, ...). The interesting thing is that for the most part, that worked. The worrying part is that from that view, the current reactive inclination to shut down global trade deals seems like it will only make things worse. Cutting off trade deals cuts off both potential suppliers and potential customers, cutting off potential growth. The more global trade deals you cut, the more potential growth you cut, the harder to growth hack your way back to prosperity and the more likely you snowball into depression... That's just the prosperity side, the stability side of the argument is much simpler prospect ever since the Marshall Plan: the deeper your economy is entwined with your neighbors the less likely you are to go to war with them. To date, that hypothesis seems to hold. The real questions left are "Why has the growth hacking seemingly slowed or stopped?" or maybe more accurately "Why has the growth hacking stopped benefitting low class/middle class laborers so well as it used to?" because the statistics show that everything has still been growing, on average, in the economy except for low/middle-class wages and job opportunities. The growth continues, but perhaps the hacking has been negligent. We've lost whatever hacked controls were once keeping the growth, or at least we stopped adding new controls, from entirely fueling the classic adage that the rich get richer. I don't know how we fix the growth hacking model, but I sure do feel that a return to the zero-sum morality of "no trade deals with my neighbors, no trade deficits, just good old fashioned local jobs" seems like the very wrong direction from stability and prosperity given the point of view of the last century or so of American economic successes in growth hacking.

by csense 10y ago

a3n 10y ago

> But if his election finally results in shutting down the global free trade policies that have utterly wrecked my community, then all the negative things I'm sure he'll do likely won't outweigh that single positive achievement. What makes you think that a) he'll do it, and b) he'll succeed? Because he said he would?

brandonmenc 10y ago

Are you checking in from Erie?

mcphage 10y ago

Rust Belt checking in here, too. If you're letting the future of your community ride on hopes of traditional manufacturing jobs coming back, you're never going to get out of the hole you're in. Getting rid of free trade isn't going to stop China from roflstomping our manufacturing economy, and whatever they don't crush, robots will. The future doesn't lie that way, and hoping a pathological liar was lying to everyone but you is a recipe for disaster.

malandrew 10y ago
Even those not in the rust belt have a good reason to want those jobs to stay here: current account and exchange rates. The more jobs move abroad, the more money flows out of our economy, bolstering the purchasing power of those other economies, helping them invest in ways roflstomp our economy in more ways than just manufacturing. Rising exchange rates will only hurt those US businesses that rely on exports when the cost of manufacturing the same goods is higher in the US versus elsewhere in the world. That said, fully automated businesses should have approximately the same cost anywhere in the world. The better our current account, the more our money buys both here in the US and from the rest of the world.
- a3n 10y ago
  > Even those not in the rust belt have a good reason to want those jobs to stay here: current account and exchange rates. Yes, everyone wants those jobs, or, jobs, to stay. But almost no one working today has a job that looks anything like a job of 100 years ago, and I doubt anyone would want those jobs. Almost every job worked today is going to disappear, or change beyond recognition that it's still the same job. Those lost manufacturing jobs are just among the first of the current set of jobs to disappear. Yes, it's painful and tragic; not because those specific jobs were lost, but because we have mis-managed the idleness of the people whose jobs vanished. The fix is not to cling to jobs that the free market says should not exist, and that consumers also say should not exist by buying the cheapest available products, often products not previously available. Some of those consumers are the very ones that have lost their old jobs. The only way for those manufacturing jobs to stay or come back is to never buy anything that didn't exist 50 years ago, and to stay out of Walmart and Amazon and everywhere else that sells anything at all from outside America. Who starts? We've lost the recognition that the reason we band together into communities and governments is to support each other. We've come to act as if "I've got my support, sorry you lost yours" is the proper way to treat each other. We need to stop being so punitive and miserly, automatically blaming people for their condition. How anyone got anywhere doesn't much matter. How we move each other to the next better thing is what we should be focusing on. I despair that we can get anywhere near that as long as quarterly, my bonus, my election thinking allows the few to stay a few steps ahead of everyone else. We treat each other as social petri dishes, and we're quite willing to throw the experiment materials out if it doesn't fit our data, our view of how we think the world is and how it ought to be.

maxxxxx 10y ago

Trump may bring manufacturing back to the US but no way the workers will get any benefit from that besides maybe minimum wage jobs that are dangerous in addition. All.i have seen so far is a push to reduce environmental and safety rules because they are too burdensome for the capitalists. The workers will get nothing but tough talk.

csense 10y ago

Parent here. I want to clarify a few points. The issue here isn't manufacturing jobs. The issue here is that I want to live in a stable and prosperous society. Among other things, that means ordinary men and women need to have a narrative template. A basic plan for a reasonably safe and effective strategy to live a life that's productive, materially satisfying, and allows a person to independently support oneself and one's family through their work. If the manufacturing jobs are never coming back, I'm fine with that -- as long as we get some replacement that fulfills the same social function. The function of giving ordinary folks a job they can do that allows them to make enough money to support themselves in a comfortable middle class lifestyle.

WorldMaker 10y ago
History seems to weigh on the sides of global trade deals for maintaining a stable and prosperous society. A lot of the Pax Americana economic experiment (including, but not limited to, the Marshall Plan) can be seen as a sort of "growth hacking" in heavily encouraging deep global trade for overall world prosperity, and maintaining "at home" prosperity by constantly growing/changing (new trade agreements, new places and ways to both buy and sell goods, replacing industries that move with entirely new industries, ...). The interesting thing is that for the most part, that worked. The worrying part is that from that view, the current reactive inclination to shut down global trade deals seems like it will only make things worse. Cutting off trade deals cuts off both potential suppliers and potential customers, cutting off potential growth. The more global trade deals you cut, the more potential growth you cut, the harder to growth hack your way back to prosperity and the more likely you snowball into depression... That's just the prosperity side, the stability side of the argument is much simpler prospect ever since the Marshall Plan: the deeper your economy is entwined with your neighbors the less likely you are to go to war with them. To date, that hypothesis seems to hold. The real questions left are "Why has the growth hacking seemingly slowed or stopped?" or maybe more accurately "Why has the growth hacking stopped benefitting low class/middle class laborers so well as it used to?" because the statistics show that everything has still been growing, on average, in the economy except for low/middle-class wages and job opportunities. The growth continues, but perhaps the hacking has been negligent. We've lost whatever hacked controls were once keeping the growth, or at least we stopped adding new controls, from entirely fueling the classic adage that the rich get richer. I don't know how we fix the growth hacking model, but I sure do feel that a return to the zero-sum morality of "no trade deals with my neighbors, no trade deficits, just good old fashioned local jobs" seems like the very wrong direction from stability and prosperity given the point of view of the last century or so of American economic successes in growth hacking.