13 ms·

Becoming a Steelworker Liberated Her, Then Her Job Moved to Mexico

118 points by wallflower 9y ago

bartart 9y ago
The job was important for this woman who needed to pay for her daughter's college and granddaughter's disease. Now the job goes to someone in Mexico who might also need it to pay for their daughter's college or granddaughter's rare disease. Is there a plan to help these Americans? People like Trump or Sanders seem to want some sort of forced reshoring, which is essentially taking the job away from the Mexican worker to give it back to the American one. But how is that fair?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > Is there a plan to help these Americans? People like Trump or Sanders seem to want some sort of forced reshoring, which is essentially taking the job away from the Mexican worker to give it back to the American one. But how is that fair? There is no plan to help these Americans. They will either take lower paying jobs, or be subjected to poverty for the rest of their lives [1]. I'm unsure what the problem with "forced reshoring" is. In the beginning of your argument, you ask if there is a plan to help these people. If globalization allows for entire factories to be moved across borders to arbitrage lower wages, you must use tariffs to prevent that arbitrage if you want well paying jobs to remain in your country. Most importantly, you address fairness "How is this that fair?" about who gets the job. Economics and market forces are not fair. They are about who has the most leverage. The American economy has an enormous amount of leverage due to our size, and we should be using it to our advantage. So, when you hear a Trump supporter (or any American regardless of politics, depending on the job) concerned that Mexicans are going to take their jobs, you might be able to see how its a very legitimate concern for someone who isn't going to be able to retrain into another profession that maintains their middle class quality of life for the remainder of their career. If you care, get involved in politics. It is the only solution that doesn't involve violent revolution. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-...
- criddell 9y ago
  > But how is that fair? Who said it was fair? Trump and Sanders both campaigned on doing things for the benefit of American and its citizens. Prioritizing the welfare of steelworkers here rather than in Mexico is pretty much what their supporters wanted.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Is it their job to be fair to the world, or to support the interests of the citizens that they represent? If the government isn't fighting for their interests, then what good is it?
  - orangecat 9y ago
    Is it their job to be fair to the world, or to support the interests of the citizens that they represent? The latter, which includes American steel consumers. A few decades ago some people were seriously arguing that open source software was bad for the software industry because it made it harder to have a business selling compilers or web servers.
  - arjie 9y ago
    Well, that's the question, isn't it? If your citizens are paying for expensive locally made steel while the rest of the world can buy cheap steel from Mexico are you supporting your citizens or one tiny section of them? To make it clearer, imagine if an iPhone were built in the US. People have speculated that it would cost over $2000 for the $600 iPhone 5. Now, are Americans better off that 200 million can't buy iPhones but that 60,000 of them have jobs? In fact, _would_ the 200 million buy iPhones to keep the 60,000 employed? Or would they just buy the Samsung that costs $600? Then you'd lose the employment of the 60,000 too. Subsidies aren't free. Tariffs aren't free. They are a tax twice over on every fellow citizen who isn't subsidized or protected by tariff.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      Are you a believer that letting jobs freely flow to the cheapest place in the world, and products to flow tariff free across borders, is the optimum approach for all people and across all time frames (short/medium/long)?
      - AdrianB1 9y ago
        Long term, this will happen no matter what. There is no way to have wages in US 5-10 times bigger than in other countries only because politicians can do such a thing (if they would). If John Doe is creating X value in country Y or Z, John's wage should be linked to X and nothing else, especially politicians and location. What makes country Y more special than country Z?
- ouid 9y ago
  I think the Sanders position towards this is universal health care and education. I think the Trump position towards this is "we had the biggest inauguration turnout in history". An argument for reshoring, however, might go something like this: America has laws that ostensibly give employees more bargaining power than they have by default. We also have laws regulating how much pollution, and effects analogous to pollution, companies are allowed to produce. In order for any of that to be meaningful, however, we need to force companies to operate under our jurisdiction, and penalize them for competing via slave labor and dirty industry through tariffs. In your analogy, they were both paying for their granddaughter's medicine, but the one in Mexico was still being paid an order of magnitude less. If you reshore that job, and the new worker pays 10% of her salary to the mexican worker, their needs are both 90% filled. Surely this means that it is better.
- api 9y ago
  A counterargument would be that the US government's job is to represent the people who pay taxes to it. Mexicans don't pay US taxes. That and every major growth story involves some protectionism. China is very protectionist with the great firewall (protectionism for domestic tech) and capital controls. When the US industrialized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries we had protectionist policies. The US may need a return to protectionist developing nation style policies for a period of time to reindustrialize. We have effectively third worlded our interior.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    The US doesn't need to reindustrialize. Its industry is bigger than ever, and exports of manufactured goods have grown by more than 400% since the 80s. What's happening with the US industry is what happened with US agriculture before: tremendous productivity growth, which led to much reduced employment. Which is why "reshoring" would probably be a short term fix, lasting only until new machines could be developed. You can just compare how many people are employed to make something like a steel ring when you have cheap workers [1] or expensive workers [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWXFhdeOjMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWXFhdeOjMY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEF2erBBVZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEF2erBBVZ4
    - mistermann 9y ago
      GDP / Population is not always a fantastic metric for well being of a nation's citizens.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        In no way did I say or imply it is.
        mistermann 9y ago
        "In no way"? The US doesn't need to reindustrialize because its industry is bigger than ever, exports are strong, etc? How is that meaningfully different than GDP being high? They all completely ignore wealth distribution.
- elboru 9y ago
  Well I guess it will depend on where you draw the empathy line. Some people care only about themselves, they will look after themselves, if they have to choose they will always pick the option that benefits them. Then you have the people who only care about themselves and their family, I guess a good percentage of the population will choose in favor of their family rather than someone's else. Then people empathize with those who share things in common with them (culture, ideology, social status, race, nationality, religion) a kind of extended family. Then you have people who think we should empathize with everyone around the world, but do they really?, if there was a chance where they have to decide between their children or some random dude in the other side of the world, who would they choose to help? Is it fair? I don't think so. Would I rather help people who I empathize with? I would lie if I say no. I'm not a monster , I don't want a random guy to suffer, but there's something inside me that makes me look after my family first. P.S. I'm from Mexico, and I live in a city whose economy depends on foreign manufacturing companies.
  - tambienben 9y ago
    I think the premise here is a false dichotomy. Consider why many U.S. companies have moved to mexico--the domestic economy since 2008 has been significant factor. I think that its in everyone's best interest to consider yourself first; then when you're secure & able, help your neighbor. There's nothing keeping some companies from having establishments in both countries.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    There's also this: If every country has its own economy, there will be far more companies and jobs than if only a few multinational companies exist in the entire world.
    - bryananderson 9y ago
      This is just not true. Interconnection creates a far more dynamic economy. Look at any country that has tried to be economically self-sufficient. The siren of autarky is deadly to all her victims.
- wernercd 9y ago
  How is it fair? It's not fair that "Our" President puts "Our" needs first? I have no issue with other Presidents or leaders putting their citizens first either. What's not fair, IMO, is uneven playing fields: Unionized, 40 day work week, safe conditions, etc... vs countries where children work, 12 hour work days, unsanitary/unsafe conditions, etc... Or, what's not fair, is government backed advantages - IE: Under-priced steel to drive American Businesses out of business... or solar panels... or... etc. At the end of the day... not everything in life is fair. Some people are born into money. Some are born lucky enough to be Americans (or other "First" world countries)... Some are born with innate skill/talent. Plenty of people aren't. We can try to keep the "world" moving forward together... but taking care of "Our" country - to protect people from losing their jobs to unfair competition - is "fair" and should be expected of our leadership. We should also try to include other countries and raise them up as well but that's no reason to not take care of #1 first: Us.
  - selectodude 9y ago
    What about the larger numbers of people that can afford stuff made with Mexican steel that will no longer be able to get the stuff they need after on-shoring? Economics is not zero-sum. We don't forcibly on-shore, we take care of the people who need help.
    - Mikeb85 9y ago
      It's like minimum wage increases; the benefits of higher employment/higher wages almost always outweigh the benefits of cheaper goods.
      - wernercd 9y ago
        The problem is "higher employment/higher wages" with increased minimum wages aren't a given. Plenty of studies (and real world examples) show that higher minimum wages means fewer jobs - why pay a cashier when you can install a touch screen kiosk? There could be an argument that it's because of unbalanced minimum wages (one city, state, etc)... but I think that even a national minimum wage increase to $15... or even a smaller one like $10... would do more damage to unskilled labor than would be beneficial. Personally? I could see an inflation based auto-increase... but just doubling the minimum wage in a short time frame is going to be damaging. IMO.
- mc32 9y ago
  It's not the American's job to care for the welfare of a foreigner and it's not the foreigner's job to care for the American's welfare. I would say if we're consuming the product then it's "fair" that that work necessary for the making of the product go to a local citizen (Foreign if foreign or domestic if domestic). Foreign nations have control of their economy and how it runs, whether they allow corruption, nepotism, off-shoring, etc., just as we do. But they can't tell us how to run our economy and we can't tell them how to run theirs.
  - veridies 9y ago
    In that case, it's not my (an American) job to care for the welfare of any other American. Why bother drawing the empathy line outside my own family? I want cheaper access for steel and iPhones, and I don't care if this woman has a job or not; I'll be fine either way. I think that's an awful way to feel about another human, but that's what you're suggesting we do with foreign citizens. Why not, instead, try to build a better society for everyone?
    - mc32 9y ago
      It's how we organize ourselves politically. Yes, mostly we owe allegiance to family. Then the rest of citizens who operate under the same laws and regulations we do. Now, we have to draw the line some place and that tends to be national governments which is where our direct influence ends. While we can empathize with N Koreans, for example, we are not the ones who decided upon their government. They are responsible for their self-determination. When we felt oppression, as a country we fought a war for independence. When we opposed slavery, we fought a civil war. It's a bloody crucible, but you have to forge your own destiny as a nation, unless you're proposing internationalization, which is imperialism by another name.
      - closeparen 9y ago
        >It's how we organize ourselves politically. You're trying to re-install economic partitions at the national level which currently aren't there; "that's how we do things" isn't an argument. "How we organize ourselves politically" with respect to economics has been as an integrated global civilization since the mid to late 20th century. If economic partitioning is an unqualified good, why not go much smaller than country scale? If it's not an unqualified good, what makes national borders optimal? Doesn't it seem a little bit suspicious that a country grown over hundreds of years of political wrangling just happens to the mathematically optimal economy size?
- AdrianB1 9y ago
  It is nothing about fairness here; as long as an American worker costs $25 per hour and a Mexican (or Indian, Chinese, pick any country) earns $6 the difference will move business that can move towards lower costs until you close the gap enough to not matter anymore. When a consumer buys a product, he pays a price for the product. You want it cheap, then you have to minimize costs and all is fair as long as it is legal (no sweatshops, child labor, conflict minerals etc). If one wonders why the American worker wants $25/hour and the Mexican one is fine with $6, I would like to see the answer here. But an intelligent one, not "a burito is 5 times more expensive in US than in Mexico", because that is part of the effect as much as part of the cause.
  - pixl97 9y ago
    Asset inflation is part of that answer.
- Clubber 9y ago
  It's not fair either way, but the company probably makes most of it's money selling to the US market, and benefits from the US court system, so there's that.
EliRivers 9y ago
What is the endgame of all of this? If a nation is composed of rich people who live off wealth created in other countries, and a great many very poor people, for how long do those other countries continue to send the wealth they generate to foreign rich people? And advances in wealth creation; those will happen in foreign countries. The rich people in the country that no longer generates wealth will only survive by buying into those new wealth generators. Eventually, will there be a leftover country composed of rich people who own some wealth generation in foreign countries and a great many poor people? I suppose eventually, Mexicans will be complaining that their jobs are going north to people who will work for much less money.
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  Wealth inequality is the end game. Even within the united states the divide only gets bigger. This state can be maintained indefinitely as long as the ones on the bottom aren't suffering enough to the point where they decide to just stop working or raise pitchforks.
  - Mikeb85 9y ago
    It won't even matter in a generation or less, when robots do most of the labour and the rich have autonomous robotic armies to protect them from the revolutionary masses...
    - Jach 9y ago
      Seems like few of the masses will want to rebel anyway if they too have robots freeing them from the realities of classical poverty just as today's poor do. There's no fundamental need to work if your base needs of survival are met, working becomes needed only to get extra. Though for some they might go stir crazy without work, while others' base needs will be met simply by food, shelter, opiates, and video games.
    - stephengillie 9y ago
      ...the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
HillaryBriss 9y ago
the article is worth reading. it really makes you feel for the workers at these plants. they're on the front lines of globalization, unlike workers in certain other sectors, whose jobs are protected by law. a good deal of US politics is about classes of workers (and entire corporations) trying to either maintain their current barriers against globalization, or trying to build new barriers against globalization.
jamesmp98 9y ago
Maybe they should just learn to code. That's the magic job these days right?
a-dub 9y ago
1) Bravo to the Times for dressing up rural realities in terms that urban elites can understand. It's cool to care about gender equality and all, but it don't make much difference if nobody has any work. 2) Computer people complaining about efforts to repatriate factory work is pretty hilarious. You do realize where this whole industry is headed don't you? I mean no other industry is better suited for it, as tooling gets better, and links around the world get faster, it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly to the cheapest place on earth to do it.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  > it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly to the cheapest place on earth to do it isn't that idea about 20 years old?
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Not really, especially considering we're only fairly recently getting really fast global connections. Also, shrewd programmers have been keeping the ball moving with a never ending stream of new ways (libraries/frameworks/platforms) to reinvent the wheel which has created a massive number of jobs for a long time. Some day this may come to an end as well, and I think the cloud might do it.
- tim333 9y ago
  >it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly to the cheapest place on earth to do it. Software outsourcing has been a thing for decades now and if anything seems past its peak as people find their programmers in Bangalore don't actually do as well as they hoped.
  - revmoo 9y ago
    Good developers are expensive in India just as they are in the US.
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    > their programmers in Bangalore don't actually do as well as they hoped. Which is because they went to the rock bottom bidder and that came at a price: you got the newbies, and the outsourcing company was training them on the job (ie _your_ project). I heard stories that some companies rotated out their folks into higher paying projects (which existed) once they gained sufficient experience, replacing them with the next batch of newcomers - making the cheapest customers pay for "intro classes" (also known as amateur errors) during the entire project's lifetime. If true that would be a shining example of "you get what you pay for".
fzeroracer 9y ago
The American Dream has been for many years to own a nice piece of property and work your way up the corporate chain at a single company until you die. Both of which have been radically shifting as technology improves productivity and global competition becomes more of a major factor. We see people stuck in this mindset that a job will last you forever (and in many cases there are still towns where there is only One Company and One Job) and as a result have been put in a lose-lose situation. Meanwhile, other nations have a more flexible workforce that are cheaper to pay for roughly the same productivity in many cases. Unfortunately there is no easy solution for this problem. For the people located in areas where jobs have entirely vanished you would have to relocate the population but that goes against the dream. You could cut regulations in order to entice companies to come back, but then you're selling the lives and well-being of the American people for jobs that Americans might not even do (see: labor shortages in the farm industries). America will need to find a way to handle this and fast as automated cars enter the market and cut another huge swathe out of the market. The difference there though is that you can't blame other races or countries for taking your jobs.
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  > other nations have a more flexible workforce That story seems to be told to every nation's workforce, and so I'd be suspicious about that.
  - eternauta3k 9y ago
    Specially more family-oriented cultures where it's rare to move far from your relatives.
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  I'm not old certainly, but it did take me longer than I'd like to admit to rid myself of The American Dream as you define. Now I hold no shame in having a grocery list of employment history, but the mental gymnastics to get there was not going to earn me a gold medal on aesthetics points.
  - 9y ago
brohoolio 9y ago
One thing I picked up on was that the plan to move production to Mexico was to save 30 million dollars. The CEO's compensation was 40 million
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  It took him 6 years to make that $40 million. It's not clear the timeline on that $30 million. For all we know it could have saved the company $30 million a year.
  - kabulykos 9y ago
    The old CFO at my firm was awarded the first year of annual cost-cutting savings as his bonus. Executive comp can be weird, but at a public company it's probably not a loss-leader.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
Mz 9y ago
At a factory where black and white workers bowled together on Tuesday nights, where at least two romances crossed racial lines, a subtle divide emerged: Many white men like John refused to train and shunned those who did; many black men like Mark openly volunteered. The white workers who did agree to train tended to do so quietly, and kept it a secret as long as they could, said Jim Swain, Shannon’s supervisor. Some white men complained that they’d watched their economic prospects decline for decades. They had shared their jobs with black men, then with women. Now that blacks and women were welcomed in every facet of factory life, the jobs were moving to Mexico. It seemed like proof that their best days were behind them. This has to be one of the most concise, insightful summaries of the roots of things like racism and sexism that I have ever seen. And it is surprisingly evenhanded and sympathetic to the white men that are so often maligned. I don't know how we solve this. But, I think you have to start with having compassion for the fact that many "overprivileged assholes" are scared of losing the security they have worked so hard for, that they thought would be relatively permanent if they did the right things. How do we create a society in which all people can expect some baseline security instead of squabbling over who to leave out? This is perhaps a strange question to ask in a discussion about a factory closing in the US and moving to Mexico. Or perhaps not. I especially appreciated the part of the article that elucidated that the Mexicans had not realized they were taking the jobs of the Americans who were training them. The ending is perhaps supposed to be a downer. The headline certainly is. But the last paragraphs indicate her daughter got scholarship money and many of the workers went on to get other jobs. That isn't to downplay what a big problem this is for Shannon, nor to dismiss the very real issue the plant closure represents across the US.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nickik 9y ago
  The problem is that even if you provide security, people are unhappy with living on the cost of others. People need to feel useful, having a job is about more then just getting a roof and food.
  - Mz 9y ago
patrickg_zill 9y ago
I read a comment elsewhere that the strife is between the people on the left side of the iq bell curve, and those on the right. Steelworkers and blue collar jobs, left side, mostly, while those in upper management that ship the jobs elsewhere in search of arbitrage are on the right side. Lobbyists and pols, right side, that rejiggered the export and import laws to benefit the right side. Wondering what others think of this explanation...
- neuro_imager 9y ago
  Appallingly simplistic (if not entirely wrong). And I've never met someone in management that belonged on the right side of an IQ bell curve.
  - zo1 9y ago
    You accuse the other person of being "entirely wrong" and then you go and claim that all management you've ever worked with is effectively on the left-side of the IQ bell curve? I.e. Saying they are all unintelligent.
    - neuro_imager 9y ago
      Good, you understood me. Well done.
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    Clearly some in American society benefit directly from the outsourcing and others do not. And, it seems to be the same set of classes benefiting or losing, each time. So what patterns do you perceive?
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  I think people on the left side of the IQ bell curve shouldn't experience a declining quality of life just because they weren't genetically and/or financially blessed as a child.
luckydude 9y ago
This is a heart breaking read. And it is about the sort of people who hoped that Trump was going to make things better. In my opinion, Trump spoke to their pain, Hillary did not. So they voted him in and he's doing nothing to help them. The only positive, if you will, is her daughter got into Purdue and will maybe have a better chance in life. The american dream, for working class people, seems pretty darn dead. It's super depressing.

118 points by wallflower 9y ago

The job was important for this woman who needed to pay for her daughter's college and granddaughter's disease. Now the job goes to someone in Mexico who might also need it to pay for their daughter's college or granddaughter's rare disease. Is there a plan to help these Americans? People like Trump or Sanders seem to want some sort of forced reshoring, which is essentially taking the job away from the Mexican worker to give it back to the American one. But how is that fair?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 9y ago
> Is there a plan to help these Americans? People like Trump or Sanders seem to want some sort of forced reshoring, which is essentially taking the job away from the Mexican worker to give it back to the American one. But how is that fair? There is no plan to help these Americans. They will either take lower paying jobs, or be subjected to poverty for the rest of their lives [1]. I'm unsure what the problem with "forced reshoring" is. In the beginning of your argument, you ask if there is a plan to help these people. If globalization allows for entire factories to be moved across borders to arbitrage lower wages, you must use tariffs to prevent that arbitrage if you want well paying jobs to remain in your country. Most importantly, you address fairness "How is this that fair?" about who gets the job. Economics and market forces are not fair. They are about who has the most leverage. The American economy has an enormous amount of leverage due to our size, and we should be using it to our advantage. So, when you hear a Trump supporter (or any American regardless of politics, depending on the job) concerned that Mexicans are going to take their jobs, you might be able to see how its a very legitimate concern for someone who isn't going to be able to retrain into another profession that maintains their middle class quality of life for the remainder of their career. If you care, get involved in politics. It is the only solution that doesn't involve violent revolution. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-...
criddell 9y ago
> But how is that fair? Who said it was fair? Trump and Sanders both campaigned on doing things for the benefit of American and its citizens. Prioritizing the welfare of steelworkers here rather than in Mexico is pretty much what their supporters wanted.
khedoros1 9y ago
Is it their job to be fair to the world, or to support the interests of the citizens that they represent? If the government isn't fighting for their interests, then what good is it?
- orangecat 9y ago
  Is it their job to be fair to the world, or to support the interests of the citizens that they represent? The latter, which includes American steel consumers. A few decades ago some people were seriously arguing that open source software was bad for the software industry because it made it harder to have a business selling compilers or web servers.
- arjie 9y ago
  Well, that's the question, isn't it? If your citizens are paying for expensive locally made steel while the rest of the world can buy cheap steel from Mexico are you supporting your citizens or one tiny section of them? To make it clearer, imagine if an iPhone were built in the US. People have speculated that it would cost over $2000 for the $600 iPhone 5. Now, are Americans better off that 200 million can't buy iPhones but that 60,000 of them have jobs? In fact, _would_ the 200 million buy iPhones to keep the 60,000 employed? Or would they just buy the Samsung that costs $600? Then you'd lose the employment of the 60,000 too. Subsidies aren't free. Tariffs aren't free. They are a tax twice over on every fellow citizen who isn't subsidized or protected by tariff.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Are you a believer that letting jobs freely flow to the cheapest place in the world, and products to flow tariff free across borders, is the optimum approach for all people and across all time frames (short/medium/long)?
    - AdrianB1 9y ago
      Long term, this will happen no matter what. There is no way to have wages in US 5-10 times bigger than in other countries only because politicians can do such a thing (if they would). If John Doe is creating X value in country Y or Z, John's wage should be linked to X and nothing else, especially politicians and location. What makes country Y more special than country Z?
ouid 9y ago
I think the Sanders position towards this is universal health care and education. I think the Trump position towards this is "we had the biggest inauguration turnout in history". An argument for reshoring, however, might go something like this: America has laws that ostensibly give employees more bargaining power than they have by default. We also have laws regulating how much pollution, and effects analogous to pollution, companies are allowed to produce. In order for any of that to be meaningful, however, we need to force companies to operate under our jurisdiction, and penalize them for competing via slave labor and dirty industry through tariffs. In your analogy, they were both paying for their granddaughter's medicine, but the one in Mexico was still being paid an order of magnitude less. If you reshore that job, and the new worker pays 10% of her salary to the mexican worker, their needs are both 90% filled. Surely this means that it is better.
api 9y ago
A counterargument would be that the US government's job is to represent the people who pay taxes to it. Mexicans don't pay US taxes. That and every major growth story involves some protectionism. China is very protectionist with the great firewall (protectionism for domestic tech) and capital controls. When the US industrialized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries we had protectionist policies. The US may need a return to protectionist developing nation style policies for a period of time to reindustrialize. We have effectively third worlded our interior.
- icebraining 9y ago
  The US doesn't need to reindustrialize. Its industry is bigger than ever, and exports of manufactured goods have grown by more than 400% since the 80s. What's happening with the US industry is what happened with US agriculture before: tremendous productivity growth, which led to much reduced employment. Which is why "reshoring" would probably be a short term fix, lasting only until new machines could be developed. You can just compare how many people are employed to make something like a steel ring when you have cheap workers [1] or expensive workers [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWXFhdeOjMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWXFhdeOjMY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEF2erBBVZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEF2erBBVZ4
  - mistermann 9y ago
    GDP / Population is not always a fantastic metric for well being of a nation's citizens.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      In no way did I say or imply it is.
      - mistermann 9y ago
        "In no way"? The US doesn't need to reindustrialize because its industry is bigger than ever, exports are strong, etc? How is that meaningfully different than GDP being high? They all completely ignore wealth distribution.
elboru 9y ago
Well I guess it will depend on where you draw the empathy line. Some people care only about themselves, they will look after themselves, if they have to choose they will always pick the option that benefits them. Then you have the people who only care about themselves and their family, I guess a good percentage of the population will choose in favor of their family rather than someone's else. Then people empathize with those who share things in common with them (culture, ideology, social status, race, nationality, religion) a kind of extended family. Then you have people who think we should empathize with everyone around the world, but do they really?, if there was a chance where they have to decide between their children or some random dude in the other side of the world, who would they choose to help? Is it fair? I don't think so. Would I rather help people who I empathize with? I would lie if I say no. I'm not a monster , I don't want a random guy to suffer, but there's something inside me that makes me look after my family first. P.S. I'm from Mexico, and I live in a city whose economy depends on foreign manufacturing companies.
- tambienben 9y ago
  I think the premise here is a false dichotomy. Consider why many U.S. companies have moved to mexico--the domestic economy since 2008 has been significant factor. I think that its in everyone's best interest to consider yourself first; then when you're secure & able, help your neighbor. There's nothing keeping some companies from having establishments in both countries.
- leereeves 9y ago
  There's also this: If every country has its own economy, there will be far more companies and jobs than if only a few multinational companies exist in the entire world.
  - bryananderson 9y ago
    This is just not true. Interconnection creates a far more dynamic economy. Look at any country that has tried to be economically self-sufficient. The siren of autarky is deadly to all her victims.
wernercd 9y ago
How is it fair? It's not fair that "Our" President puts "Our" needs first? I have no issue with other Presidents or leaders putting their citizens first either. What's not fair, IMO, is uneven playing fields: Unionized, 40 day work week, safe conditions, etc... vs countries where children work, 12 hour work days, unsanitary/unsafe conditions, etc... Or, what's not fair, is government backed advantages - IE: Under-priced steel to drive American Businesses out of business... or solar panels... or... etc. At the end of the day... not everything in life is fair. Some people are born into money. Some are born lucky enough to be Americans (or other "First" world countries)... Some are born with innate skill/talent. Plenty of people aren't. We can try to keep the "world" moving forward together... but taking care of "Our" country - to protect people from losing their jobs to unfair competition - is "fair" and should be expected of our leadership. We should also try to include other countries and raise them up as well but that's no reason to not take care of #1 first: Us.
- selectodude 9y ago
  What about the larger numbers of people that can afford stuff made with Mexican steel that will no longer be able to get the stuff they need after on-shoring? Economics is not zero-sum. We don't forcibly on-shore, we take care of the people who need help.
  - Mikeb85 9y ago
    It's like minimum wage increases; the benefits of higher employment/higher wages almost always outweigh the benefits of cheaper goods.
    - wernercd 9y ago
      The problem is "higher employment/higher wages" with increased minimum wages aren't a given. Plenty of studies (and real world examples) show that higher minimum wages means fewer jobs - why pay a cashier when you can install a touch screen kiosk? There could be an argument that it's because of unbalanced minimum wages (one city, state, etc)... but I think that even a national minimum wage increase to $15... or even a smaller one like $10... would do more damage to unskilled labor than would be beneficial. Personally? I could see an inflation based auto-increase... but just doubling the minimum wage in a short time frame is going to be damaging. IMO.
mc32 9y ago
It's not the American's job to care for the welfare of a foreigner and it's not the foreigner's job to care for the American's welfare. I would say if we're consuming the product then it's "fair" that that work necessary for the making of the product go to a local citizen (Foreign if foreign or domestic if domestic). Foreign nations have control of their economy and how it runs, whether they allow corruption, nepotism, off-shoring, etc., just as we do. But they can't tell us how to run our economy and we can't tell them how to run theirs.
- veridies 9y ago
  In that case, it's not my (an American) job to care for the welfare of any other American. Why bother drawing the empathy line outside my own family? I want cheaper access for steel and iPhones, and I don't care if this woman has a job or not; I'll be fine either way. I think that's an awful way to feel about another human, but that's what you're suggesting we do with foreign citizens. Why not, instead, try to build a better society for everyone?
  - mc32 9y ago
    It's how we organize ourselves politically. Yes, mostly we owe allegiance to family. Then the rest of citizens who operate under the same laws and regulations we do. Now, we have to draw the line some place and that tends to be national governments which is where our direct influence ends. While we can empathize with N Koreans, for example, we are not the ones who decided upon their government. They are responsible for their self-determination. When we felt oppression, as a country we fought a war for independence. When we opposed slavery, we fought a civil war. It's a bloody crucible, but you have to forge your own destiny as a nation, unless you're proposing internationalization, which is imperialism by another name.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      >It's how we organize ourselves politically. You're trying to re-install economic partitions at the national level which currently aren't there; "that's how we do things" isn't an argument. "How we organize ourselves politically" with respect to economics has been as an integrated global civilization since the mid to late 20th century. If economic partitioning is an unqualified good, why not go much smaller than country scale? If it's not an unqualified good, what makes national borders optimal? Doesn't it seem a little bit suspicious that a country grown over hundreds of years of political wrangling just happens to the mathematically optimal economy size?
AdrianB1 9y ago
It is nothing about fairness here; as long as an American worker costs $25 per hour and a Mexican (or Indian, Chinese, pick any country) earns $6 the difference will move business that can move towards lower costs until you close the gap enough to not matter anymore. When a consumer buys a product, he pays a price for the product. You want it cheap, then you have to minimize costs and all is fair as long as it is legal (no sweatshops, child labor, conflict minerals etc). If one wonders why the American worker wants $25/hour and the Mexican one is fine with $6, I would like to see the answer here. But an intelligent one, not "a burito is 5 times more expensive in US than in Mexico", because that is part of the effect as much as part of the cause.
- pixl97 9y ago
  Asset inflation is part of that answer.
Clubber 9y ago
It's not fair either way, but the company probably makes most of it's money selling to the US market, and benefits from the US court system, so there's that.

EliRivers 9y ago

What is the endgame of all of this? If a nation is composed of rich people who live off wealth created in other countries, and a great many very poor people, for how long do those other countries continue to send the wealth they generate to foreign rich people? And advances in wealth creation; those will happen in foreign countries. The rich people in the country that no longer generates wealth will only survive by buying into those new wealth generators. Eventually, will there be a leftover country composed of rich people who own some wealth generation in foreign countries and a great many poor people? I suppose eventually, Mexicans will be complaining that their jobs are going north to people who will work for much less money.

crimsonalucard 9y ago
Wealth inequality is the end game. Even within the united states the divide only gets bigger. This state can be maintained indefinitely as long as the ones on the bottom aren't suffering enough to the point where they decide to just stop working or raise pitchforks.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  It won't even matter in a generation or less, when robots do most of the labour and the rich have autonomous robotic armies to protect them from the revolutionary masses...
  - Jach 9y ago
    Seems like few of the masses will want to rebel anyway if they too have robots freeing them from the realities of classical poverty just as today's poor do. There's no fundamental need to work if your base needs of survival are met, working becomes needed only to get extra. Though for some they might go stir crazy without work, while others' base needs will be met simply by food, shelter, opiates, and video games.
  - stephengillie 9y ago
    ...the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

HillaryBriss 9y ago

the article is worth reading. it really makes you feel for the workers at these plants. they're on the front lines of globalization, unlike workers in certain other sectors, whose jobs are protected by law. a good deal of US politics is about classes of workers (and entire corporations) trying to either maintain their current barriers against globalization, or trying to build new barriers against globalization.

jamesmp98 9y ago

Maybe they should just learn to code. That's the magic job these days right?

a-dub 9y ago

1) Bravo to the Times for dressing up rural realities in terms that urban elites can understand. It's cool to care about gender equality and all, but it don't make much difference if nobody has any work. 2) Computer people complaining about efforts to repatriate factory work is pretty hilarious. You do realize where this whole industry is headed don't you? I mean no other industry is better suited for it, as tooling gets better, and links around the world get faster, it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly to the cheapest place on earth to do it.

HillaryBriss 9y ago
> it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly to the cheapest place on earth to do it isn't that idea about 20 years old?
- mistermann 9y ago
  Not really, especially considering we're only fairly recently getting really fast global connections. Also, shrewd programmers have been keeping the ball moving with a never ending stream of new ways (libraries/frameworks/platforms) to reinvent the wheel which has created a massive number of jobs for a long time. Some day this may come to an end as well, and I think the cloud might do it.
tim333 9y ago
>it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly to the cheapest place on earth to do it. Software outsourcing has been a thing for decades now and if anything seems past its peak as people find their programmers in Bangalore don't actually do as well as they hoped.
- revmoo 9y ago
  Good developers are expensive in India just as they are in the US.
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  > their programmers in Bangalore don't actually do as well as they hoped. Which is because they went to the rock bottom bidder and that came at a price: you got the newbies, and the outsourcing company was training them on the job (ie _your_ project). I heard stories that some companies rotated out their folks into higher paying projects (which existed) once they gained sufficient experience, replacing them with the next batch of newcomers - making the cheapest customers pay for "intro classes" (also known as amateur errors) during the entire project's lifetime. If true that would be a shining example of "you get what you pay for".

fzeroracer 9y ago

The American Dream has been for many years to own a nice piece of property and work your way up the corporate chain at a single company until you die. Both of which have been radically shifting as technology improves productivity and global competition becomes more of a major factor. We see people stuck in this mindset that a job will last you forever (and in many cases there are still towns where there is only One Company and One Job) and as a result have been put in a lose-lose situation. Meanwhile, other nations have a more flexible workforce that are cheaper to pay for roughly the same productivity in many cases. Unfortunately there is no easy solution for this problem. For the people located in areas where jobs have entirely vanished you would have to relocate the population but that goes against the dream. You could cut regulations in order to entice companies to come back, but then you're selling the lives and well-being of the American people for jobs that Americans might not even do (see: labor shortages in the farm industries). America will need to find a way to handle this and fast as automated cars enter the market and cut another huge swathe out of the market. The difference there though is that you can't blame other races or countries for taking your jobs.

pgeorgi 9y ago
> other nations have a more flexible workforce That story seems to be told to every nation's workforce, and so I'd be suspicious about that.
- eternauta3k 9y ago
  Specially more family-oriented cultures where it's rare to move far from your relatives.
drdeadringer 9y ago
I'm not old certainly, but it did take me longer than I'd like to admit to rid myself of The American Dream as you define. Now I hold no shame in having a grocery list of employment history, but the mental gymnastics to get there was not going to earn me a gold medal on aesthetics points.
- 9y ago

brohoolio 9y ago

One thing I picked up on was that the plan to move production to Mexico was to save 30 million dollars. The CEO's compensation was 40 million

Consultant32452 9y ago
It took him 6 years to make that $40 million. It's not clear the timeline on that $30 million. For all we know it could have saved the company $30 million a year.
- kabulykos 9y ago
  The old CFO at my firm was awarded the first year of annual cost-cutting savings as his bonus. Executive comp can be weird, but at a public company it's probably not a loss-leader.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

Mz 9y ago

At a factory where black and white workers bowled together on Tuesday nights, where at least two romances crossed racial lines, a subtle divide emerged: Many white men like John refused to train and shunned those who did; many black men like Mark openly volunteered. The white workers who did agree to train tended to do so quietly, and kept it a secret as long as they could, said Jim Swain, Shannon’s supervisor. Some white men complained that they’d watched their economic prospects decline for decades. They had shared their jobs with black men, then with women. Now that blacks and women were welcomed in every facet of factory life, the jobs were moving to Mexico. It seemed like proof that their best days were behind them. This has to be one of the most concise, insightful summaries of the roots of things like racism and sexism that I have ever seen. And it is surprisingly evenhanded and sympathetic to the white men that are so often maligned. I don't know how we solve this. But, I think you have to start with having compassion for the fact that many "overprivileged assholes" are scared of losing the security they have worked so hard for, that they thought would be relatively permanent if they did the right things. How do we create a society in which all people can expect some baseline security instead of squabbling over who to leave out? This is perhaps a strange question to ask in a discussion about a factory closing in the US and moving to Mexico. Or perhaps not. I especially appreciated the part of the article that elucidated that the Mexicans had not realized they were taking the jobs of the Americans who were training them. The ending is perhaps supposed to be a downer. The headline certainly is. But the last paragraphs indicate her daughter got scholarship money and many of the workers went on to get other jobs. That isn't to downplay what a big problem this is for Shannon, nor to dismiss the very real issue the plant closure represents across the US.

deleted 9y ago
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nickik 9y ago
The problem is that even if you provide security, people are unhappy with living on the cost of others. People need to feel useful, having a job is about more then just getting a roof and food.
- Mz 9y ago

patrickg_zill 9y ago

I read a comment elsewhere that the strife is between the people on the left side of the iq bell curve, and those on the right. Steelworkers and blue collar jobs, left side, mostly, while those in upper management that ship the jobs elsewhere in search of arbitrage are on the right side. Lobbyists and pols, right side, that rejiggered the export and import laws to benefit the right side. Wondering what others think of this explanation...

neuro_imager 9y ago
Appallingly simplistic (if not entirely wrong). And I've never met someone in management that belonged on the right side of an IQ bell curve.
- zo1 9y ago
  You accuse the other person of being "entirely wrong" and then you go and claim that all management you've ever worked with is effectively on the left-side of the IQ bell curve? I.e. Saying they are all unintelligent.
  - neuro_imager 9y ago
    Good, you understood me. Well done.
- patrickg_zill 9y ago
  Clearly some in American society benefit directly from the outsourcing and others do not. And, it seems to be the same set of classes benefiting or losing, each time. So what patterns do you perceive?
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
I think people on the left side of the IQ bell curve shouldn't experience a declining quality of life just because they weren't genetically and/or financially blessed as a child.

luckydude 9y ago

This is a heart breaking read. And it is about the sort of people who hoped that Trump was going to make things better. In my opinion, Trump spoke to their pain, Hillary did not. So they voted him in and he's doing nothing to help them. The only positive, if you will, is her daughter got into Purdue and will maybe have a better chance in life. The american dream, for working class people, seems pretty darn dead. It's super depressing.